The last thing the shrinking communications networking industry would seem to need is more working groups or associations, yet new ones are sprouting.

Recent scandals at large tech companies show the industry's problems treating women fairly, but also reveal much less public tolerance of sexism.

Who's to blame in the skinny bundle wars?

Italian operator launches commercial NB-IoT services across most of the country, giving a further boost to the cellular standard.

Juniper announced this week that it would miss earnings estimates as its cloud business hits a downturn.

At an event in New York City, BMC laid out an ambitious agenda that included multi-cloud, machine learning and a new partnership with AWS.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Eutelsat acquires Noorsat for $75 million; Orange partners with Ciena and Akamai for vCDN; Finns go ga-ga for mobile gigabytes.

A 20 cent, disposable radio for IoT? It's coming soon, says Sigfox's CMO

Sure, blockchain is over-hyped. But don't let that distract you from its practical value.

This week in our WiC roundup: The wearables market brings back convention models; racial inequalities faring worse than gender differences; BBC goes to the Valley; and more.

Analytics is all very well, but NetScout's Vikram Saksena says data needs to be intelligently reduced down to something truly useful.

The merger will be the second-biggest deal announced in India's telecom market this year, and represents a lifeline for Tata.

Taking the pulse of NFV and SDN deployments.

The Application-Centric Infrastructure now reaches its tentacles across multiple data centers.

Could be good news for Arista, says MKM Partners.

In a regulatory filing Wednesday, AT&T said it expects to shed nearly 400,000 DirecTV and U-verse TV subscribers in the third quarter.

At its solutions partner event this week, AT&T unveiled wholesale versions of its FlexWare and wireless backup service offerings.

The open source Grafeas and Kritis projects are designed for securing and certify modern, complex software rollouts.

Alibaba will invest $15 billion over the next three years in a variety of research and development projects.

ACI 3.0 expands the SDN platform's multi-site capabilities for the SDN platform, stepping on the toes of another Cisco DCI option.

The shift to cloud computing is changing the way business is done. Now, the CFOs and their finance teams are seeing a benefit in cloud as well.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia lands networks deal in Iraq; Ericsson surveys 5G readiness; LoRaWAN collaboration.

Having developed a platform for monetizing newspaper content online, Google has now set its sights on monetizing online advertising for broadcasters.

Although many service providers have already deployed software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology and believe it is an integral part of their business, a clear path to vendor success and long-term revenue isn't yet visible.

CenturyLink's $34B purchase of Level 3 Communications is apparently very close to being cleared for take-off.

French telecom incumbent is ready to embark on a more widespread rollout of NFV using technology from a handful of suppliers.

Ahead of SCTE, we look at cable's ongoing efforts to shift to a distributed architecture. Is 2018 the year that DAA deployments take off?

ShiftLeft's service scans application source code for normal behavior and detects and remdiates deviations that might indicate possible attacks.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Deutsche Telekom bets on smart parking; Vivendi tries to settle pay-TV dispute; balloon goes up for EE.

Saar Gillai heads up a company that speeds personalized information from cloud providers to users.

LR hears that Google has rate-limited its new Pixel 2 flagship, much as Apple reportedly throttled the iPhone 8.

The international operator has plans to automate its network management and unify its NFV architecture in 2018.

DENVER, 10/11/2017 – Hardware is simplified, and cloud-based software is distributed as micro-services across many servers, so failure of one isn't impactful, says Tom Anschutz, distinguished member of technical staff at AT&T.

A new TIP working group will look at using machine learning and AI to improve network management.

Chinese operator is poised to migrate to 'thousands' of edge data centers as it makes preparations for the launch of 5G.

DT exec Klaus Martiny thinks ONAP and ETSI could be quite a mix.

Team of companies belonging to both groups will work on making sure LSO interfaces match ONAP needs at key north-south and east-west connections.

Vodafone's new head of virtualization is already fed up with vendors refusing to play ball and act like grown-up cloud community players.

Cable R&D group completes key physical layer stage of latest DOCSIS spec, which will enable operators to offer symmetrical multi-gigabit speeds for the first time.

Dell Technologies is looking to leverage all parts of the company as part of a big push into the Internet of Things.

Wait, what? Another ETSI group?? Major vendors and operators collaborate to form a 'zero-touch' networking group at ETSI, but not everyone thinks that's a good move.

Telcos are increasingly focused on automating their networks, but complexity represents a major challenge, said industry executives in The Hague this week.

New software development kits for its LSO Presto and Sonata interfaces build on work done by operator members to speed interconnection.

Verizon's Fred Oliveira explains how the industry needs to focus more on automation in NFV orchestration and less on managing individual network elements.

DENVER, 10/10/2017 – Verizon's Fred Oliveira addresses challenges to NFV orchestration, including the amount of time spent managing individual network elements.

German incumbent says its new goal is to build networks that can be managed without human intervention.

Light Reading is spending much of this year digging into the details of how automation technology will impact the comms market, but let's take a moment to also look at how automation is set to overturn the current world order by the middle of the century.

The Sri Lankan operator wants to be a 5G pioneer in South Asia.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Swisscom hawks its telco cloud; UK government in the dock over BT 'state aid'; T-Systems and Huawei give Kone a connectivity lift.

IBM is looking to add more machine learning and deep learning into the big data analytics process by combing its Data Science Experience and PowerAI platforms.

In a cable first, WOW is virtualizing its cable access network with the help of Nokia's virtualized Distributed Access Architecture (vDAA) technology.

Salesforce IoT Explorer Edition is designed to give enterprises a way to get started using IoT data to improve customer outcomes.

The Linux Foundation, along with the Hyperledger Project, are launching a training and certification course for blockchain.

The Light Reading sandwich makes an appearance once more as Scott is joined by Ray and Iain.

The Nokia CEO tells Craig Matsumoto why telcos need to find new opportunity in 5G and why the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition succeeded.

Ericsson's ConsumerLab releases findings from its most recent wave of research.

New services are taking hold, as businesses overcome their trepidation over virtualization and the technology matures, says Jim Sabey.

The company standardized on Oracle business applications to simplify internal operations as it looks to revolutionize the manufacturing industry.

DENVER, 10/9/2017 – BT's Jim Sabey says the global operator is delivering cloud-based virtualized services and developing its own app store, overcoming early customer concerns about the reliability of virtualization.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: mobile viewing to rocket, says Ericsson; Qualcomm offers sweeteners to EU for NXP deal; Deutsche Telekom announces new CEO for enterprise arm.

As the new GDPR privacy and data rules loom in the European Union, VMware sees cloud and security adoption increasing.

Christine Podraza, VP and head of Fujitsu's Optical Business Unit, shares lessons she's learned over the course of her career as she's gone from learning to earning to returning.

CenturyLink's Bill Walker is an IT guy, tasked with helping transform a legacy telco. He shared some very practical ideas about how to do that – notes from the trenches, as it were – in this video interview.

Nomination comes after former chairman Leif Johansson said he would not seek re-election under apparent shareholder pressure.

As enterprises spread applications across multiple clouds, they need ways to maintain visibility and control, Ixia's Jeff Harris argues.

Going deep on how MIMO underpins the development of 5G.

The third release of Open Source MANO's software drops on Monday, featuring new features, and a more detailed architecture.

The OTT video leader has raised its prices for the first time in three years according to reports.

CenturyLink's director of network architecture shares his insights on how to best train and retain good network/IT folks, and convert COs to data centers.

Swedish vendor will cut 130 jobs in Ireland as part of a broader cost-cutting strategy designed to restore profitability.

Amazon Web Services scored a major cloud deal with GE.

Bristol-based SDN startup also gets access to BT's labs.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Colt expands Asia-Pacific network with Ciena; Telefónica integrates security features with Microsoft Azure; Ofcom clamps down on broadband ads.

This week in our WiC roundup: Female founders face Twitter harassment; Amazon needs a new opener; Oracle has lawsuit battle ahead; and more.

Larry Ellison rants, networked cars look cute, dogs nap, and more!

Cisco explains why Altice may not need to deploy fiber to the home in the US after all.

DevOps, AI, NFV and other technologies will help automate the network, but organizations need to start working on that transition right away, Juniper's Sumeet Singh argues.

GTT's Kevin Sahim explained the challenges legacy WAN architectures present to achieving interoperability as operators seek to develop a smarter enterprise WAN.

The demise of Tata Teleservices would mark the first disappearance of a Tata Group business in 150 years.

To become a smart city, New York wants to change its relationship with the telecom industry.

Telecom Italia seems like an incongruous part of the Vivendi empire, and yet Vivendi is now its effective controller. Just what is the French company planning?

Facebook is now the second-largest online distributor of video, according to new research from Ampere Analysis.

Operator releases hardware abstraction framework for XGS-PON into Open Networking Foundation, supporting multivendor OLTs.

Oracle is fundamentally ignorant of the security market, Splunk says, after the Oracle chairman, chief technology officer and co-founder took aim at Splunk in a keynote address this week.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Orange trials LTE-M; Telenor creates cloud unit with Cisco; Ekinops completes OneAccess buy.

When it comes to the cloud, the right skills can matter a lot to IT pros, as well as developers.

DENVER, 10/5/2017 – Sprint's Jill Stark explains her approach to leading a diverse team, and encourages women to take risks in furthering their careers.

Finnish vendor is to supply its SDN-based virtualized services platform to China's second-largest property insurance company.

THe CES and GSMA tell LR that they are monitoring the aftermath of the mass shooting in Las Vegas and ongoing separatist protests in Barcelona respectively.

At the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talked innovation, disruption, AI and working with AWS.

FCC chairman proposes advancing up to $77 million in USF funds to service providers in Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands to finance emergency network repairs.

New One Talk capabilities target midsized and multi-site businesses with collaboration tools built right into the Verizon Wireless network.

Reports from the focus group based Thought Leadership Council cut through the hype to reveal what CSP executives are really thinking.

Ailing Swedish vendor is now looking at merging Abentel with Spain's Dominion as a way of boosting profitability.

New research from Digi-Capital finds that mobile AR will be the fastest-growing segment in the AR/VR space.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: EU takes Ireland to court over Apple's missing tax millions; Zain deploys Openwave in Saudi Arabia; Proximus strikes FTTH deal.

Salesforce is preparing to expand its Financial Services Cloud into the retail banking space.

Oracle's feisty co-founder says automation is required to fight off cyber attacks, and fortunately Oracle has just the tool to do it.

Profits are disappearing, debts are mounting and yet India's biggest operators are still forced to maintain their legacy networks. Something must change, says the boss of one of India's biggest operators.

Uber could receive up to $1.25 billion from SoftBank as it continues to fight regulatory opposition to its activities.

SAN FRANCISCO, 10/4/2017 – Durga Malladi, SVP of Engineering from Qualcomm, discusses how momentum continues to build around Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology with growing ecosystem support.

SAN FRANCISCO, 10/4/2017 – Ixia's senior product manager, Charles Seifert, sits down with Light Reading editor-in-chief Craig Matsumoto to talk about the recent launch of the world's first 400GE testing solution, which garnered multiple Best of Show awards at Interop Tokyo 2017.

Regulators could put the brakes on Broadcom's acquisition of Brocade, and Arris's acquisition of Brocade's Ruckus Wireless assets.

Network automation startup Apstra launched AOS 2.0, which integrates automation of operations across the underlay and overlay network infrastructures in data centers.

Gartner released new figures that show IT spending is set to grow about 4% over the next year, thanks to enterprise spending more on cloud.

Oracle is revamping its IaaS offering with more compute, storage and networking options as the company looks to challenge AWS more head-on.

Sales, supply chain, human resources and other enterprise apps make their own connections between data and try to anticipate user needs.

Steve Saunders sits down with RIFT.io CTO Matt Harper to learn how a bunch of telecom veterans are tackling the core issues behind NFV.

Finnish vendor exposes its analytics capabilities to operators that do not want to spend heavily on their own analytics infrastructure.

Nokia's diversification into high-growth enterprise markets is starting to pay off, says the company's global services boss.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing rapidly, but the lack of standards – as well as uncertainty about its revenue potential – is a major source of frustration for communications service providers (CSPs).

'Custom roles' gives cloud administrators the ability to give users the permissions they need to do their jobs – and only those permissions.

CenturyLink has approval from the US Department of Justice to acquire Level 3, but it will have to divest itself of some of Level 3's nationwide fiber assets.

LONDON, 10/3/2017 – Our team of talkative telecoms trouble-makers turn their skeptical gaze onto the turmoil at the top of TIM this week, where Vivendi is exercising far more control than its 24% shareholding would seem to allow.

New technology from the University of Lancaster could replace remote controls with 'gesture control.'

New version of Apstra Operating System helps enterprises 'cloudify' their legacy data centers.

GE is about ready to fully deploy its Predix platform, along with Asset Performance Management software, to its own facility to ensure the flow of electricity doesn't stop.

India's fifth-biggest operator may have to resort to the sale of some valuable assets to pay off debts after calling off a merger with local rival Aircel.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Nokia and Zain trial NB-IoT in Saudi Arabia; fiber boost for Sweden; taxi for Uber's UK boss!

Amazon Web Services is the undisputed leader of public cloud, and at the Gartner Symposium AWS chief Andy Jassy offered a window into how that happened.

SAN JOSE, 10/3/2017 – Xilinx discusses product details of their Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC family, which integrates multi-giga-sample RF data converters and soft-decision forward error correction (SD-FEC) into an All Programmable SoC architecture.

Amazon and SAP say Larry Ellison's claims against them are baloney.

Seeking to help small and midsized cable operators compete in the OTT video market, vendor introduces app-based streaming video service to deliver local broadcast and cable channels.

First-gen virtual network functions were still vertically integrated but combining next-gen disaggregation with open source will pay off.

Artificial intelligence is thought to be destroying jobs. However, Gartner analysts believe that the only way to fill important IT positions for security and IoT is through AI.

Oracle is offering blockchain as a cloud service, while SAP plans to integrate blockchain into its Internet of Things, manufacturing and digital supply chain solutions.

Threat of blackouts still looms large in programming negotiations.

In examining the 'good, the bad and the ugly' of NFV, Masergy's Ray Watson likened progress to the unpredictable toddler growth stage.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Orange and Microsoft combine on industrial IoT; BT lands Sky Ireland broadband deal; Proximus acquires app development company.

Automation is one of those buzzwords that CIOs are starting to pay attention to. However, before you automate all your IT processes, think about the people first.

India has until now been regarded as a technology follower, rather than a technology pioneer. But its government and operators hope to change all that with 5G.

Oracle OpenWorld attendees are rapt as Larry Ellison delivers Sunday's keynote.

Latest network-sharing deal in Europe will boost Vodafone Portugal's FTTH footprint by nearly 50%.