A US 5G lead, more jobs and cheaper services all sound good, if not bigly, but is it all just promises right now?

The network operator is using Cisco and Juniper boxes, but will decouple the control planes to bring business and consumer services into one edge device.

Consumers, industry employees and equipment vendors must all hope that regulators block a T-Mobile merger with Sprint.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: German cable operators could face change in network access rules; Jan Frykhammar joins Openet board; Timotheus Hottges on that merger.

How much will it cost to add intelligence to the network edge?

In a Big Communications Event panel, AR and VR experts will examine whether immersive media experiences offer realistic new revenue opportunities for service providers.

But the companies will need every ounce of spectrum to succeed.

In this interview, SES's Thomas Wrede discusses what the satellite operator has learned from its trials of VR video with SP customers.

When Jennifer Kyriakakis didn't like the culture of the large company that acquired the business she was working for, she broke away and created her own with a focus on innovation.

Boingo Wireless and Comcast Business make the shortlist for our NFV deployment strategy award.

Investors may be worried about the wrong things.

US authorities were said this week to be investigating Huawei for violating sanctions against Iran. Treating it like ZTE would trigger turmoil.

US mobile operators are close to reaching agreement on the terms of a deal, according to reports.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Comings and goings at Telecom Italia; Orange active in Africa; Proximus hits 2.94 Gbit/s in 5G trial; Facebook CTO gets a UK grilling.

In which we receive an alarming email from Oracle.

This week in our WiC roundup: The NY Times' first female CIO; female founders get funding; women are needed in connected car jobs; and more.

AWS isn't just growing fast; growth is accelerating.

Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud group, which includes server, enterprise products and services, reported that its revenues were up 17% to $7.9 billion.

FCC says agency is ready for 24GHz, 28GHz and 39GHz auctions in 2019, and has plans to open up the 3.7GHz to 4.2GHz band for 5G.

Here, over three nostalgia-soaked pages, are the telecom heroes and villains that have made it into the Light Reading Hall of Fame since its inception in 2010.

AT&T CFO John Stephens explains the company's plans to wring greater profits out of its OTT video service by launching new features and cutting capex and opex.

The set-top is Comcast's primary consumer interface, but it's not the best tool for smart home control.

Open source is a product development model that should unleash faster innovation but may require business model changes for many vendors.

John Stephens tells financial analysts there's a positive trend in AT&T's business revenues, even with another quarterly decline.

The increasingly tough US line against Huawei and ZTE form part of the resistance to China's state-driven, quasi-protectionist industry policies.

Qualcomm blames its legal battles with Apple and another licensee for a fall in profits but managed to grow sales thanks to its chips business.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telefonica, Orange and KPN reveal Q1 earnings; Ericsson lands Italian virtualization job.

Finnish vendor insists the second half of 2018 will be much better than the first half as customers start to invest in long-awaited 5G networks.

Libelium and Movandi and their founders are pioneering new technologies that are already changing the game for IoT and 5G, respectively, making them startups you want to keep an eye on in 2018 and beyond.

LTE and future 5G networks are evolving in a way that overcomes previous barriers to the use of standardized public-network technologies for private applications, and there is better support for features needed in mission-critical use cases.

Cloud applications have an insatiable appetite for east-west bandwidth inside the data center, as well as between data centers. What can service providers do about that?

Market punishes AT&T for miss, but Ma Bell lauds 5G progress.

Facebook is doubling down on its ad business, and using AI to moderate hate speech and other inappropriate content.

Network operators take different approaches to using new Google Partner Interconnect.

The cost of 5G deployments depends in part on the cost of pole attachment fees.

The WSJ reports that Huawei is in the Justice Department's crosshairs for its activities related to selling goods and services to Iran.

Automation takes human error out of the equation but adds the ability to screw things up much faster.

Despite growing video subscriber losses, Comcast racks up big overall customer and revenue gains as it formalizes its $31 billion bid for Sky in the UK.

For all the banker excitement about a possible tie-up between Vodafone and Liberty, any deal in Germany seems highly unlikely.

The giants of cloud computing and the divergent minds of our regulatory body politic are well behind a PR entrepreneur who filled in her own nomination. How 2018 is that?

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Apple starts paying Irish back-taxes; Nokia gets edgy; Atos hooks up with Google for AI; Elisa trumpets NB-IoT network.

Telstra's Jim Fagan explains how service providers can apply lessons learned about automation in the cloud to delivering more automation in their networks.

Containers seemed poised to take over the Earth, but they've proven slow to implement. Find out how people are implementing containers on real-world service provider networks at the Big Communications Event in Austin next month!

Executive Producer Janet Leahy shares her story with WiC, offers advice for the cable industry to better support women and gives us a sneak preview of what she's working on next.

Indian operators merge their infrastructure assets to form the world's second-biggest towers company.

Competition and adverse regulatory measures continue to squeeze the Indian operator's profits.

The new G Suite and Gmail security capabilities aren't bulletproof, but they add an extra layer of control.

The Google parent is spending hard to catch up on with Amazon in the home and cloud, and driving its businesses forward, including YouTube, hardware and Waymo self-driving cars.

Is convergence a sound business strategy? Or is it best to stick with what you know? Also: Who'd be a Chinese vendor? Discuss. And they do.

At BCE, panelists will discuss changing consumption models for SD-WAN, new approaches that vendors and carriers are taking in deploying SD-WAN, standards efforts and interoperability challenges and more.

Unlike AT&T and other major pay-TV providers, Verizon is holding off on introducing a full-fledged OTT video service until it launches residential 5G service later this year.

Google Partner Interconnect is designed for enterprises requiring cloud connectivity who don't require full 10 Gbit/s of a dedicated circuit.

Petition to US Circuit Court of Appeals in DC says FCC went against its own previous findings to roll back Obama-era regulations.

The Verizon CFO isn't sure a standards-based fixed 5G CPE will be ready until 2019.

Revenues down about 5% despite investments in fiber and newer services based on virtualization.

Norwegian incumbent loses 4% of its value in Oslo after analysts question focus on efficiency and accuse it of 'hoarding cash.'

Find out what it takes to transition telecom networks to cloud-native architectures at the Big Communications Event in Austin in May!

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Proximus strikes wholesale FTTB deal; Orange turns to Cisco for PoPs project; Ericsson's IoT findings.

With 5G on the horizon, major new innovations in smartphones and the expansion of IoT devices and services, the cloud is more critical than ever in ensuring operators remain relevant.

Are the big telcos trying to handicap the eSIM and do what they can to lock down users and make it harder for them to leave?

Open source and machine learning are strengths as Google Cloud Platform goes up against bigger competitors.

New strategic initiatives aimed at filling the technology gaps around specific use cases including NFV and the edge.

While some of the head honchos in telecom have taken hefty pay cuts in the last few years, they probably aren't yet worried about the price of milk.

Verizon's Srilakshmi Valisammagari addresses the operators' efforts to deliver automation to enterprise customers via Verizon Service Designer.

The '5G Evolution' upgrades will help provide faster 4G connections to backstop initially limited 5G deployments.

Time to gaze into the crystal ball.

To survive and thrive in the future, CSPs must find ways to prepare their employees for the integration of AI, automation, machine-learning and advanced data analytics in their operations.

At BCE, we'll dive into the topic of Zero-Touch Automation without trying to boil the ocean.

Sky TV's Richard Mills explains how the British satellite operator is scoring with VR sports, dramas, highlights shows and other short-form programming.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Vodafone/Liberty chatter ratchets up a notch; Tele2's Q1 earnings up 7%; Sky sells stake in gaming business; 'Fitbit for cars' company wins funding.

The Dell-controlled Cloud Foundry vendor has an implied value of more than $3 billion on its first day of trading as a public company.

A new joint operating platform owned by Comcast and Charter will support multiple MNVO partners.

Is Facebook a monopoly? Sure it is. Just a 21st-century monopoly, where data is king.

The UK quad-play provider's Colin Whitbread gets closer to the edge, using automation and more.

Swedish equipment vendor appears to turn a corner with its best set of quarterly results since the departure of former CEO Hans Vestberg.

ZTE hits back at US Dept. of Commerce's 'denial order' that bans US component firms from selling to the Chinese vendor for seven years, raises prospect of 'judicial measures' and questions its own survival.

Windstream's Jeff Brown explains how the operator overcame challenges in testing, scaling and deploying its optical wave service, SDNow.

AT&T isn't being scrutinized for privacy concerns in its ongoing trial with the DOJ. Given recent Facebook revelations, maybe it should be.

This week in our WiC roundup: Are quotas the answer to diversity?; women in tech on Twitter get an influx of new followers; is the tech gender gap akin to the lack of men in ballet?; and more.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Tele2 flashes its green credentials; Nokia teams up with OSIsoft; media bigwig supports Fox/Sky deal.

Texas mop, KC smoke, Carolina vinegar - I like all styles of communications, really.

Qualcomm says 1,500 job losses are part of a cost-cutting plan announced in January.

A major re-architecting of the network will be needed to deliver future services, as we'll discuss during the upcoming BCE 2018.

The trial pitting the Department of Justice against AT&T is doing a fair job of airing the pay-TV industry's dirty laundry.

Telecom Italia turns to Microsoft for AI expertise after previously announcing plans to cut 'human operated interactions' by 30%.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Red Hat, Altran join Spanish 5G R&D initiative; Sky powers on; Orange pals up with Siemens for IoT; DT's Open Telekom goes hybrid.

David Hughes, PCCW Global, explains how intent-based networking simplifies network provisioning and "puts the customer in control of the provisioning process."

Cable is moving into the Internet of Things (IoT) market, specifically homing in on home automation, using its advantage of existing connectivity and customers.

India's telcos have announced plans for a dramatic expansion of basestation infrastructure, but the network expansion will not be without challenges.

Even though IBM is turning around its long revenue decline, the stock fell hard on Wednesday.

The Chinese cloud giant is supporting Cloud Foundry on its infrastructure and joining its Foundation as a gold member.

Verizon executive Vickie Lonker thinks both vendors and network service providers can do a better job to move forward faster.

...in the net neutrality debate. Why, what were you thinking?

French service provider unveils details of AI research with Nokia and IBM as part of Europe's 5G-PPP initiative.

One of the biggest challenges AT&T's channel partners face in implementing new IoT services for their customers is an internal knowledge gap, said AT&T's Randall Porter.

Timed to arrive as the first domestic 5G networks come online.

Blind hiring, raising awareness, encouraging dialogue and ending binding arbitration agreements are a few ways the industry can thwart gender discrimination, says former Wall Street executive Karen MacFarlane.

Kevin McBride explains how CenturyLink's operations teams are adapting to the operator's efforts to move toward a data-driven network.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Vodacom offers Azure in South Africa; Facebook gets less presumptuous; EU gets tough on data; Elisa Q1 profits up.

Zinc's collaboration service is designed for field service technicians, home healthcare workers, retail workers – people who don't spend their workday staring at screens.

UK incumbent bids farewell to Business and Public Sector CEO Graham Sutherland as it embarks on its latest restructuring.

IBM revenue grew for the second consecutive quarter, driven in part by cloud growth, following 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline. But Wall Street still wasn't happy.

Democrat and Ajit Pai critic stepping down ahead of her term's end.

There's a new codec on the video block and, with promises of at least 30% greater bit-rate efficiency, it might be more than just a contender to the still up-and-coming HEVC.

Google continues on the 3.5GHz trail, as the FCC is expected to hand in a decision on the spectrum usage soon.

Optical components specialist Acacia suffered a 36% share price dip following news of the ban on US companies selling components to Chinese systems vendor ZTE.

UK authorities are not even considering the possibility that artificial intelligence could lead to mass unemployment. That is deeply worrying.

New service bundles let customers more easily access virtual services to speed their own transformations, and will lead to self-service soon.

It doesn't help the optics when your former committee chair now faces jail time.

The Netflix juggernaut keeps on chugging.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Lycamobile strikes WiFi deal; French government trials home-grown WhatsApp; Com Hem profits down.

Windstream's Jeff Brown says operators' efforts to further automate the WAN are driven by a need to compete with OTT providers.

A UK warning that ZTE could pose a security risk in service provider networks comes at the same time US authorities ban the sale of components by US firms to the Chinese vendor.

Chinese vendor's chairman downplays 5G technology, saying it is not materially different from 4G.

Legislation, automation, defamation - it's a ball of conversational confusion on this week's Telecoms.com podcast.

Turn around bright eyes: After pivoting to Kubernetes, Mirantis is pivoting to Spinnaker.

Nine months and counting to birth this baby.

Because co-creation just sounds more exciting than collaboration.

As part of an ongoing dispute, the US Department of Commerce bans component sales to ZTE.

In a new study, LR's sister firm projects that US pay-TV providers will continue losing subscribers over the next four years but should cope by evolving their businesses.

Partnership with Arrow Electronics builds on Lanner white box with integrated solution including supply chain and ongoing support.

Kevin McBride details CenturyLink's digital transformation journey and how to prepare for a data-driven, automated network.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telecom Italia signs movie deal; Nokia brings LTE to connected car trial in Japan; UK and AI; Vodafone board change.

Internet giant says it will be 'humanly impossible' to manage networks at scale and hints at ML-based service offering.

Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and other Amazon competitors want to ensure that AWS doesn't get the whole enchilada from a lucrative Department of Defense cloud contract for millions of users, according to Bloomberg.

Gmail is getting an overhaul, including new security features, according to reports.

DALLAS - Automation Everywhere - Randy Levensalor, lead architect for CableLabs, explains how CableLabs is utilizing partnerships and open source to drive NFV interoperability in an effort to enable operators to spend more time focusing on their automation strategies.

Kontron's GM, Robert Courteau, discusses how hardware still matters in a software-defined world. He explains how vendors like Kontron and its partners have made significant strides to eliminate the arduous integration efforts of open source.

Light Reading founder Steve Saunders talks with VMware's Shekar Ayyar, who explains why cloud architectures are becoming more distributed, what that means for workloads, and why telcos can still be significant cloud services players.

Welcome to the newest bundle.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Fon buys XCellAir; Telegram app blocked in Russia; Deutsche Telekom upgrades "nearshore" areas.

Cloudflare's Spectrum service extends Cloudflare's web protection and acceleration to anything that uses an Internet connection.

A wall of lava lamps in Cloudflare's San Francisco office makes encryption psychedelic.

xRAN is for open source RAN hardware, ORAN is for CPRI, apparently...

Local branch of Australian service provider causes s**tstorm with advert stating preference for white staff.

KDDI Europe, the UK-based subsidiary of KDDI, launched a new SD-WAN service offering for its 500 enterprise customers with SD-WAN supplier Silver Peak.

Pre-packaged service chains work with leading technology providers and are intended to make deployment faster and easier.

Two-year-old NFV software startup says it is in trials with multiple large operators and will have one major deal this year.

5G as a sprint, not a long-distance proposition.

Don't get tripped up by these myths about the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Hundreds of entries were judged and now the shortlists for this year's Light Reading awards have been revealed.

The Swedish vendor seems to have a bigger problem with openness than its Finnish rival.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Google helps cut data use in Africa; Deutsche Telekom invests in Israeli IoT startup; Nokia and Telia put the 5G into Industry 4.0.

'Most of all, it took a lot of crazy.' Major telecom players are lining up to build city-scale testbeds for next-generation wireless technologies.

The Chinese vendor says its automation tools and services will support major workforce reductions in network operations.

Ten worthy women and two trailblazing startups made the shortlist this year for Women in Comms' Leading Lights awards. Winners will be unveiled soon at BCE.

A group of telecom executives at this week's Paris tradeshow deliver a critical assessment of SDN and NFV.

Search engine giant is building an intent-driven tool to stop human employees from stressing out the network, says one of its chief engineers.

Never mind the coverage range, feel the gigabit speeds!

Gender consultant and author Wendy Bohling shares her thoughts on why we need to create an atmosphere of transparency, authenticity and accountability to make sure the #metoo movement doesn't ultimately backfire.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: EU officials raid Fox's London office; Nokia in talks with Google over airplane broadband sale; Orange Luxembourg goes with Comarch for BSS.

Competitors Cisco and Juniper upgrade their cloud security platforms, to help you lock up your cloud infrastructure from public cloud to private cloud and on-prem.

Just five months after merger talks were called off, the rumor mill grinds into action again.

New updates are rolling out on Comcast's smart home platform.

New work on LSO Presto specs creates abstraction and tool-chaining that can automate service delivery over multiple underlying networks.

Light Reading's recent Automation Everywhere conference provided invaluable guidance and insights for network operators figuring out their automation strategies.

Without having a full automated network, you're not going to realize the potential of digital transformation, explains Telstra's director of Global Platforms, Jim Fagan, at Light Reading's Automation Everywhere conference in Dallas.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Telia Sweden CEO resigns; new boss at Liquid Telecom; Viavi displays the Cobham effect; smart city developments.

Calix has reeled in global services company Infosys as a development partner for virtual network functions within AXOS, Calix's software-defined access network environment.

Scott and Jamie fight post-holiday lethargy to discuss the UK's 5G spectrum auction, 'Facebookgate' and more.

Kayenta is open source software designed to help operators incrementally roll out application upgrades at cloud-scale without breaking things.

Two new IBM mainframes with security, machine learning and other capabilities for cloud applications are sized to fit in standard data center racks.

Attackers can get easy access to encryption, and face low risk of being caught, making ransomware attacks more prevalent, says Verizon DBIR.

Opt-in for one and all.

Austrian incumbent plans to expand its presence through takeover activity, says CEO.

Near-term requirements will necessitate vendor-specific solutions while ONAP matures.

SD-WAN is about more than saving money – it also provides application delivery, insights and reliability. Find out more in this podcast sponsored by Citrix.

Long heralded as a growth opportunity for telcos, IoT has continued to underwhelm. Could 2018 mark the turning point?

Google and Alibaba have a long way to go to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft, but if they can keep up the triple-digit growth they'll get there.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Brexit twist in Facebook data shenanigans; Telefonica chooses ASSIA for WiFi management; Nokia gets China Mobile gig; Deutsche Telekom rethinks media-buying operations.

Kansas City hosted this year's Smart Cities Connect conference and showed off some of its own smart city projects.

South Korean company is flourishing thanks largely to demand for its memory chip products.

A shareholder battle that now includes the Italian government threatens to distract Telecom Italia from the difficult job of digital transformation.

Jim Fagan, director of Global Platforms for Telstra, delivered a keynote on the operator's Programmable Network and how it has set the stage for Telstra's journey toward network automation.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Colt expands Inbound Voice Services; Deutsche Telekom rolls out fiber in Mansfeld-Sudharz; Facebook faces flak.

This week in our WiC roundup: Chasing Grace premieres in Portland, Ore.; raising VC while pregnant; third-party salary audits; and more.

Angela Logothetis, VP Amdocs Open Network CTO, explains how Amdocs Autonomous Service Assurance changes the paradigm of service assurance, delivering game-changing operational cost savings to service providers and superior service experience to customers.

Communications service providers that are specialists in software-defined wide-area networking believe they're doing a good job on SD-WAN security but need to consider some enhancements to continue doing so.

In a new Light Reading breakfast forum at the NAB Show in Las Vegas next week, top content, service and technology providers will explore the opportunities and challenges of immersive, 360-degree VR video.

India's operators are taking their fight into the content arena.

Charter continues on its 5G fixed wireless test path in Los Angeles.

Smart cities are no walk in the park.

Aamir Hussain joined MEF's Board of Directors and points to its LSO work and the API frameworks provided by TM Forum as important.

Trump casts a cannonade of anti-Amazon tweets, but the company does big business with the US government.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: TI Sparkle appoints key execs; Etisalat goes with Netcracker's NFV knowhow; Russian cable news.

The results could leave operators short of cash to invest in 5G networks, warns a leading analyst, while the UK's spectrum imbalance persists.

Rolls out tools to automate managing secrets, certificates, firewall policies and compliance data.

The cloud provider plans to invest $5 billion on Internet of Things technologies over the next four years, and it's also cutting pricing for its IoT Hub platform for connecting IoT devices.

New Orleans is getting scrappy with its broadband plans.

What comes after blazing broadband for the 5G specification?

The anticipated 5G wave of new small cells is likely to kick off a new round of cellular 'Nimbyism' too.

It's not your parents' CDN.

That kind of narrow use case is becoming typical for how Tier 2 operators initially embrace virtualization, says Inocybe's Zannos.

Telefonica's 'fourth platform' uses artificial intelligence to analyze data from underlying platforms in order to better serve customers.

A desire to reduce headcount emerged as the most popular option when Light Reading's audience was recently asked why operators are automating network operations.

To further their goals around network automation, carriers must overcome barriers like engineers' skills gaps, and develop agile company cultures, says Heavy Reading's James Crawshaw.

The iPhone maker has recruited one of the world's foremost AI experts in poaching John Giannendrea from its Silicon Valley rival.

Aryaka has partnered with China Mobile to be the first fully compliant global SD-WAN service for Chinese and international companies.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Fox proposes Sky News sell-off; poles not towers for MTN Nigeria; MTS offers VoLTE and WiFi calling.

Diversity of thought may be the most important in an industry that depends on innovation, according to Telstra COO Robyn Denholm.

Google is investing in a subsea cable connecting the two continents, casting its subsea web wider.

Light Reading's Mari Silbey interviews New Orleans CIO Kimberly LaGrue on broadband in the Big Easy.

Newly independent vendor will pursue Internet of Things, intelligent devices and edge computing.

Fiber to the home (FTTH) and mm-wave 5G fixed wireless access (5G-FWA) are not actual competitors, as they both have their strengths and places in the market

Dan Kohn says going cloud-native doesn't require a total rewrite to microservices of legacy systems - that can come later.

How well-equipped are European operators to handle a surge in mobile data traffic on their 4G networks?

Another city leader has parted ways with the FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: BT launches WiFi calling and VoLTE; Telefonica, Microsoft partner on IoT; VEON scraps GTH move; Telia sells Spotify stake.

The communications networking industry is at a crossroads -- the insights available at the upcoming BCE event in Austin, Texas, can help identify the right course of action for all players in the ecosystem.

Launches with tools to help enterprises migrate data across clouds and multiple data centers.

Results from the Chinese equipment giant show how difficult it will be for Ericsson and Nokia to mount an effective challenge.

It's a great, important time to be a woman in comms and to join our upcoming Transformation Summit in Austin on May 14 (men too!).

In the US MSO's initial rollout of DOCSIS 3.1 across its footprint, more broadband subscribers than expected are signing up for 1 Gig packages even at high prices.

Who's doing what and where?

New capabilities are integrated in a way to enable smoother, more efficient transition to SDN.

Boingo's Derek Peterson discusses use cases and opportunities for cable companies in preparing for 5G.

Among the many great reasons to join us at BCE 2018 in Austin, Texas, are the educational workshops and panels. To find out more about Light Reading's Big Communications Event (BCE), click here.

The optical community was buzzing at this year's OFC event, fueled in part by 5G expectations and developments from the likes of Ciena, Coriant, Infinera, Nokia and NeoPhotonics.

The Internet is designed to deliver mass content from the center to the edge, but the Internet of Things needs to reverse that, says Sarah Cooper, Amazon Web Services general manager of IoT analytics and applications.

Noora Mat Rifin, SVP of Customer Life Cycle Management at Celcom Axiata Berhad, advises women to follow their passion and seize opportunities in comms, despite the challenges.