Disaggregation and open optical networking (including 400ZR), the hottest optical topics of 2021, began with the introduction of the open line system several years ago. Today, CSPs have a growing ecosystem of partners to work with as they move toward open optical networking.

SPONSORED: A recent Heavy Reading survey indicates that the majority of carriers with mobile network businesses are looking for external guidance to help them accelerate their open RAN adoption.

SPONSORED: The combination of OTN and PON can enable carriers to deploy an all-optical network that provides high-availability, low-latency connections across the network to enterprise and home customers.

SPONSORED: Key findings from Heavy Reading's Accelerating Open RAN Platforms Operator Survey show that hardware acceleration is critical to delivering the performance and cost savings improvements expected from Open RAN.

SPONSORED: Key findings from Heavy Reading's 'Accelerating Open RAN Platforms Operator Survey' show that carriers are shifting to open source for their RAN software.

SPONSORED: Key findings from Heavy Reading's 'Accelerating Open RAN Platforms Operator Survey' show that many operators will deploy a mix of open RAN acceleration techniques.

SPONSORED: Heavy Reading's "Cloud-Native 5G Core Operator Survey" explores the importance of a common 4G/5G core.

SPONSORED: Heavy Reading's 'Cloud-Native 5G Core Operator Survey' explores the adoption and implementation of 5G core infrastructure and services automation.

SPONSORED: Heavy Reading's 'Cloud-Native 5G Core Operator Survey' explores preferences for cloud infrastructure platforms.

SPONSORED: 5G monetization will be more profound than 2G, 3G and even 4G network monetization. 5G will fuel the adoption of a multi-vendor, end-to-end programmable and automated service delivery model that will transform how CSPs deliver high-value services to their customers.

SPONSORED: The new routed optical network is not your father's IP over DWDM, writes Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin.

SPONSORED: Key findings from a Heavy Reading and Intel survey show that smartNICs are set to have a big impact on the transition to cloud-native architectures and digital service platforms.

SPONSORED: Findings from Heavy Reading's Open and Disaggregated Packet and Optical Networks Market Leadership Study suggest 2021 is a milestone year for disaggregation in packet and optical transport networks.

SPONSORED: As service providers in the Asia-Pacific region seek to ramp up capacity to meet traffic surges during the COVID-19 pandemic, they should consider upgrading their networks to a remote MACPHY architecture.

SPONSORED: Findings from Heavy Reading's 'Open and Disaggregated Packet and Optical Networks Market Leadership Study' suggest 2021 is a milestone year for disaggregation in packet and optical transport networks.

SPONSORED: The findings from Heavy Reading's "The Carriers Speak" report show that both the key differentiators and challenges for SD-WAN managed services focus on how to meet enterprise business needs.

How can 5G network operators and public cloud providers work better together to improve the service experience for customers?

SPONSORED: Findings from Heavy Reading's 'The Carriers Speak: The Future of Managed SD-WAN Services' report suggest that SD-WAN SPs are focused on automating processes to accelerate growth of the service and monetize it more effectively.

SPONSORED: Heavy Reading's research confirms that effective 5G security strategies will encompass multiple standards and single key management.

As discussed at Light Reading's 5G Transport & Networking Strategies event, operators are looking at practical approaches to converged fronthaul transport, but they need to act quickly.

SPONSORED: Cox has built a team dedicated to driving network automation across the organization and is already seeing early successes.

SPONSORED: Heavy Reading's research confirms there is no shortage of 5GC SA-related security concerns to be addressed before commercial launch and that the right mix of security strategy attributes will be vital to minimizing apprehension.

SPONSORED: Many enterprise customers expect that 5G security slices will be fully hardened and automated as 5G cores (5GC) are commercialized.

New Light Reading e-book sponsored by Harmonic highlights some of the early advances made by cable operators and vendors in virtualizing the industry's access networks and expanding their capacity.

SPONSORED: The findings from Heavy Reading's 'Edge Computing in Telco Networks' report show that in this early stage of the MEC market, service providers are relying on a lot of DIY with assists from vendors and platform providers.

SPONSORED: The findings from Heavy Reading's 'Edge Computing in Telco Networks' report show that security, latency and the move to vRAN are key drivers for edge computing factors in the telco environment.

SPONSORED: How are the carriers adapting to address the network stressors brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic? They are simplifying, automating and aiming for the fully virtualized, cloud-native network.

SPONSORED: Successful investment and execution strategies in this distributed world will hinge on the ability to integrate a flexible mix of fixed, virtualized and containerized multi-interface solutions at the edge.

SPONSORED: 5G is rolling out quickly and bringing mobile edge computing with it. Carriers need cost-effective edge solutions that can scale in terms of performance and ease of deployment and management. Leveraging FPGAs in COTS platforms may be the answer.

SPONSORED: As COVID-19 speeds up operator need to support a shift in how and where customers access network services, automation and development are key for success.

Now that COVID-19 has prompted a broad, probably long-term shift to more remote working, it's time to upgrade residential broadband networks with business-class management platforms.

Technologies never roll out as quickly as expected. Barriers to implementation arise, exuberance turns to pragmatism and numbers are restated. Not so with 5G.

Radio hardware is an expensive and difficult proposition, but one way to address this barrier to market competition and bring the benefits of scale to more vendors is through open RU reference designs.

As the telecom industry focuses on rolling out 5G mobile broadband technology across the globe, the real key to success lies in improving fixed broadband networks and smoothing the network evolution path.

Heavy Reading's Operator Strategies for 5G Transport Market Leadership Study explores how transport networks will evolve to support 5G services.

Heavy Reading's Operator Strategies for 5G Transport Market Leadership Study explores how transport networks will evolve to support 5G services.

5G core must be part of a wider industry transition to 5G networks that incorporates massive investment in RAN, transport and cloud infrastructure.

Heavy Reading's Operator Strategies for 5G Transport Market Leadership Study explores how transport networks will evolve to support 5G services.

Heavy Reading's Operator Strategies for 5G Transport Market Leadership Study explores how transport networks will evolve to support 5G services.

The right investment in full fiber solutions using the latest technology will enable fixed line networks to continue supporting higher bandwidths and greater availability than mobile networks.

The right BSS will help telecom operators ensure they have monetization systems that enable the flexibility, agility and innovation to create new 5G revenue opportunities.

Automation is vital for raising confidence levels that 5G services and networks can be fully secured in the post-pandemic world, writes Heavy Reading's Jim Hodges.

TianShu enables stronger collaboration between marketing, sales, planning, network planning, procurement, network construction and ongoing operations.

The needle is moving firmly toward an automated optical future, writes Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin.

5G NR carrier aggregation with coverage extension is a game changer for 5G network economics.

With many telecom retail outlets now facing permanent closure, digital care channels supplemented by self-service functions are becoming increasingly important for customers.

Open RAN is a new way to build mobile access networks with many benefits.

With around 7 million macro cell sites deployed worldwide, the radio access network (RAN) is critical global infrastructure.

Are mobile operators central to the private mobile network opportunity? Or, with new enterprise spectrum allocations, are they destined to be usurped by vendors, systems integrators and enterprises themselves?

To better understand how mobile operators are addressing the demands of 5G, Heavy Reading conducted a survey that examined three key areas: planning, optimization and operations.

SD-WAN will continue to be a vital service delivery platform and automation in a security context will be valuable on many levels, writes Heavy Reading's Jim Hodges.

800G single wavelength coherent is a significant development that will help meet demand for higher bandwidths from users working from home and businesses delivering services remotely.

SD-WAN security services strategies possess the richness to support a programmable and multidimensional application-aware security model, writes Heavy Reading's Jim Hodges.

Optical cross-connect (OXC) is coming back in vogue thanks to CDC ROADMs that add greater scale and automation to the photonic layer.

A successful 5G rollout is not just about upgrading existing basestations or deploying some new ones. Nor is it simply an upgrade of core network capabilities.

Huawei's new Liquid OTN solution is a small granularity technology that offers some significant benefits for organizations that need guaranteed bandwidth, low latency and resilient optical connections.

New Heavy Reading study looks at the business opportunity in cloud-based managed security services.

Providing open solutions that minimize vendor lock-in are keys to the continued growth of SD-WAN services, writes Heavy Reading's Jim Hodges.

Light Reading/Heavy Reading and MEF have teamed up once again to launch a global SD-WAN Strategies Survey focused specifically on the opportunities for managed SD-WAN services offered by network operators to enterprise customers.

It's time for the industry to walk the 5G walk.

Over the past 12 months in informal discussions with both CSPs and their vendors, it became clear that NaaS was transitioning from the promising technology column to a strategic imperative technology.

One of the major issues for the mobile networking industry going into 2020 is the deployment of 5G core networks and the migration to 5G standalone operation.

Heavy Reading's Gabriel Brown takes stock of the recent TIP Summit, praising the progress made by the industry body but highlighting some blind spots.

Sunrise Communications, the second-largest telecom operator in Switzerland, reported third-quarter service revenue growth of 2.0%.

With service providers installing so much fiber in their plant right now and seemingly no end in sight, the need for automated test solutions will only keep growing.

For the Australian incumbent, reskilling an entire workforce is the route to a successful network and IT transformation.

Four key themes emerged from a recent HPE and Intel reception, 'From NFV to Cloud Native: Future Proofing Your 5G investment.'

A new set of NFV challenges is emerging as operators plan the shift towards cloud-native applications and a container-based strategy.

It's not just about mobile, you know...

Fixed broadband service provider developed its own OSS and BSS systems, a move that gives it cost efficiencies compared with traditional systems and advanced data analysis capabilities, according to its executives.

Among the many considerations facing network operators as they make the leap into the 5G world, service assurance is right up there with the toughest, as CSP executives will explain at the upcoming Software-Driven Operations summit in London.

The Eurasian operator has flipped its digital strategy to give greater autonomy to its geographically diverse operating companies.

With hype around all things 'edge' on the rise, Heavy Reading launched a research study to gain a realistic understanding of how edge computing will affect the future of network connectivity.

There's early evidence that network operators are getting to grips with the opportunities associated with 5G edge cloud architectures.

As operational models evolve, telcos are turning to public cloud platforms to host their OSS and BSS systems, but there are still hurdles to overcome.

Disruptive Indian operator is embracing open source as it evolves its back office strategy.

Heavy Reading recently managed a request for information (RFI) process for a network operator – here's what happened...

The term 'telco cloud' is used often, but it can mean different things to different people.

In a half-day conference at IBC in Amsterdam next week, Intel and partners will show off the visual cloud and demonstrate how it can deliver rich, immersive, interactive video experiences and graphics-based workloads.

Edge computing brings high-performance storage, compute and network resources closer to users and devices than ever before.

Enterprises and other organizations want to operate private mobile networks, but what are their options for getting the needed spectrum?

For the first time, Light Reading will offer two breakfast roundtables on key tech topics at this fall's SCTE|ISBE Cable-Tec Expo in New Orleans – the first on network virtualization and the second on cable and 5G.

As a keen OSS-BSS observer, I like to parse financial disclosures to gauge the health of the market.

For any operator, revamping an entire business support system (BSS) architecture in just six months and cutting IT opex by 80% as a result is a notable achievement.

Dedicated 5G campus networks, designed to meet the coverage, performance and security requirements of industrial users, are one of the most exciting – and tangible – advanced 5G use-cases under development.

LiFi is the latest effort to bring optical wireless communications into the commercial communications networking fold.

Operators gather in Paris for three days of meetings to simplify NFV infrastructure.

If AI is to play a role in communications network operations, a high degree of trust will be required. Explainable AI might be the route to gaining that trust.

Cable operators may not not need to go all-fiber or adopt the new Full Duplex DOCSIS spec to deliver symmetrical 10Gbit/s speeds to broadband subscribers.

International wholesale operator wants to play a bigger role with enterprise customers but adding services such as data center interconnect and SD-WAN requires additional operational and business support tools.

While there is a fair degree of hype around the term 'cloud native' and plenty of misuse by software marketeers, it is clearly an important topic among CSP CTOs and CIOs.

Telcos need new ways to monitor their services and networks and some are turning to the open source community for inspiration.

What's the best way forward for operators when it comes 5G transport networks?

A collaboration between the industry's largest trade group of mobile network operators and the preeminent open source consortium is aiming to simplify and harmonize dozens of NFVi efforts.

The latest release from The Linux Foundation's Acumos AI Project offers some interesting incremental improvements.

What role will CSPs play as the Internet evolves to support new consumer applications?

NaaS growth stems from the belief that by leveraging the programmability of the cloud, CSPs can create customizable VNF-based services for anybody who requires a full scope of services and does not want to deploy their own infrastructure.

The telco distributed cloud model is gaining support among service providers, even ahead of extensive 5G rollouts.

To gain a realistic understanding of operators' views and plans for transport, Heavy Reading launched its first-ever 5G Transport Market Leadership Study with support from Ericsson, Fujitsu, Juniper and VIAVI Solutions.

US operator is moving toward a more proactive and predictive operational model as it uses AI tools to extract greater value from its data, but there are hurdles to overcome.