Gray explains why paying it forward as a mentor is critical because 'the next generation of wireless is not going to build itself.'

Gray explains how she has applied learnings from her military and athletic background to leadership roles in the telecom industry.

As women in the telecom industry work toward parity in representation, particularly in technical roles, they can't let fear get in the way of their career goals, said Palmer.

Light Reading recently caught up with Bhattacharya during a fireside chat at Light Reading's Big 5G Event in Denver to discuss the role mentors and sponsor have played in her career, and what she sees as the current biggest barriers for women in the industry.

In this mentor spotlight, Kurshid shares her insight into how COVID-19 has impacted customers' priorities around cloud networking, how corporate culture can better support a distributed workforce and advice she's received in her career that has helped her blend technical skills with business development acumen.

In part two of this Mentor Spotlight series, Cox's Patricia Martin shares how organizations can better provide flexible working environments to support the remote workforce, and how women can tap mentors to accelerate their career trajectory.

Cox's Patricia Martin shares some potential growth areas for the industry this year, why every employee needs to take responsibility for cybersecurity, how the cable industry is addressing the digital divide and what progress is being made in closing the gender gap in cable.

In this Women in Comms Mentor Spotlight, GPONDoctor's Maria Alejandro shares her approach to the dilemma of vendor interoperability, how she's improved automating test procedures for her customers, and her professional advice for other women in technical positions.

Over 60% of enterprises aim to increase or significantly increase their SD-WAN usage this year, and 59% plan to increase MPLS usage in 2021, Avant study finds.

In part two of this Mentor Spotlight series, Light Reading's Women in Comms caught up with Clearfield President and CEO Cheri Beranek to discuss how far the needle is moving for women in telecom who are interested in historically male-dominated roles.

Light Reading's Women in Comms caught up with Clearfield President and CEO Cheri Beranek to discuss how the pandemic has impacted broadband demand, fiber infrastructure and the industry's efforts to close the digital divide.

In part two of this series, Navisite COO Gina Murphy shares how the company is working with customers to assist their move to the cloud and help automate their operations.

In this mentor spotlight, Gina Murphy discusses the key to completing a successful acquisition, and the importance of building a company culture that supports new ideas, new technology and diverse teams.

Once the process of bringing 128 into Juniper amps up next year, it will be clearer how this acquisition repositions Juniper in the WAN space, and whether this move can improve Juniper's service provider business.

In part two of this series, Ruth Rowan emphasizes the importance of keeping the 'why' for a rebranding front and center, as well as how to minimize confusion and improve the employee and customer experience.

In this Women in Comms mentor spotlight, CMO Ruth Rowan shares the challenges and lessons learned as she led the charge in rebranding dozens of tech companies across multiple countries.

PacketFabric's Anna Claiborne explains the formula for successfully leading a diverse team, the top cybersecurity concerns facing the telecom industry, and her professional advice for other women in comms.

PacketFabric's Anna Claiborne explains how the company got its start, why network automation is a necessity, how to take calculated career risks and shares her advice for other women in comms in leadership positions.

Omdia's Cliff Grossner explains how this acquisition may impact the industry at large and shares his predictions for the SD-WAN market in the coming months.

Sorabh Saxena, AT&T Business's EVP of customer service and operations, discusses how AT&T has handled customer service during a pandemic, and how it can help other companies adapt to change.

Omdia Principal Analyst Rik Turner discusses whether SASE is the next evolution of SD-WAN and security, why ZTA is front of mind during COVID-19 and more.

In lieu of using purpose-built devices such as routers, firewalls and switches, Verizon's enterprise customers can access the VNS portfolio to deploy, manage and orchestrate VNFs from a central location.

Marilyn Chaplin tells WiC how to lead diverse and inclusive teams, NTT's initiatives to support women in leadership roles, and the challenges of managing a global - and increasingly mobile - workforce.

Pearson shares his forecast for when standalone 5G will emerge and the potential barriers to commercial deployment.

In this Mentor Spotlight, Edith Santos explains how NTT is addressing the cybersecurity threat landscape in light of COVID-19 and why enterprises need buy-in at the top to implement a successful cybersecurity strategy.

Feamster joins the podcast to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting Internet traffic.

The Light Reading crew debates which industries could experience the biggest economic benefits from 5G deployments, if 5G can be considered a 'green' technology, the connectivity challenges New York City faces in reducing the digital divide, and more.

On this Light Reading podcast, Haugh provides an update on the evolution of enterprise network automation and how Gluware uses software-defined networking concepts to 'treat the underlying network infrastructure as code and then interact with it programmatically.'

Women in Comms caught up with Giuhat to discuss how 5G may impact career opportunities for women in the industry, new developments in Metaswitch's UC platforms and the impact of mentors on her own career path.

CSG's Haifa El Ashkar explains the broad industry impact we can expect from the intersection of mobile identity, blockchain, eSIMs and IoT.

OBS CEO Helmut Reisinger weighs in on what it means to be network-native and how the service provider stands out from its competition.

This podcast examines how service providers are revamping their managed services and how Windstream is evolving from a traditional telco to a true managed services provider.

Samir El Rashidy explains Multisourcing Service Integration (MSI) – Orange's approach to helping companies select and manage the right network services and technology suppliers.

Light Reading's podcast features guest Sunil Khandekar, who examines where the SD-WAN market might be headed in 2020, as well as the potential impact of standards on the market.

Mike Dano explains how Verizon and other service providers speaking at the 5G Transport & the Edge event are well positioned to talk about edge computing, transport and traffic routing.

MATRIXX's Founder Jennifer Kyriakakis says 5G will enable the creation of many new opportunities in the telecom industry, especially around microservices, networking, automation and security.

During a Women in Comms breakfast workshop, panelists shifted focus from the hype around connected cars and drones to debating how 5G could impact job opportunities for women in comms and tech.

In a recent podcast with Light Reading, John Isch discusses how Orange 'co-innovates' with SD-WAN customers, and shares several case studies on what this process looks like by describing collaborations with its SD-WAN customers Siemens and Sony.

As 5G takes off, service providers must plan ahead for its impact on SD-WAN. In addition, Ely says growing demand for 'co-managed' SD-WAN services creates challenges around scalability.

AT&T's Rupesh Chokshi says the case for disaggregated routers at the edge goes beyond the usual examples of increased business agility, network visibility and performance.

Ovum and Heavy Reading explain how MEF has stepped in to create SD-WAN specifications to provide clarity in the market, and how this service definition could impact the industry.

In addition to kicking around the idea of 5G's impact on SD-WAN, Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin shares insights on how the SD-WAN market might evolve this year.

Matrixx Software board member Glo Gordon addresses initiatives and legislation that will support more diversity in corporate boardrooms.

STEM can help women self-correct the gender gap, but girls lose interest in STEM early on. That needs to change.

Shay Phillips says women can change misperception in the workplace by identifying a career advocate with an open-door policy.

CenturyLink's Bill Walker explains how edge computing can help service providers efficiently manage traffic and meet increasing bandwidth demands in the 5G era.

Colt's Mirko Voltolini explains where the operator has seen success with its On Demand service platform, but also addresses why the traditional service delivery model still has staying power.

During his keynote at Light Reading's NFV & Carrier SDN event in Denver next month, CenturyLink's Kevin McBride plans to address real-world challenges for service providers in monetizing and scaling the deployment of SDN/NFV and cloud technologies.

Antonio Elizondo says his keynote at Light Reading's event next month will focus on how Telefonica is using UNICA, its network virtualization program launched in 2014, to automate network services.

Dr. Ron Marquardt, VP of technology for Sprint, will kick off Light Reading's annual breakfast workshop at Mobile World Congress America next month with a keynote focused on Sprint's strategy for deploying 5G.

AT&T's Chris Penrose says the IoT industry is quickly moving toward a focus on applying data in a proactive manner to further improve operational efficiency for customers.

In collaboration with AT&T, startup Aira is deploying its assistive glasses globally to the UK, Canada and Australia.

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.

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

Intent-based networking is making a resurgence as a potentially promising way for telcos to advance self-configuration and automation in the network.

This week at Upskill U, Heather Kirksey, director of OPFNV, will examine the use of open source and automation in accelerating the deployment and management of network and business services.

This week at Upskill U, Ed Fox, VP of Network Services for MetTel, will cover the challenges operators face in furthering their goals for NFV while also meeting security requirements.

At BCE 2017, Intel's Lynn Comp addressed cross-industry collaboration as central to driving network transformation.

The service provider panel at BCE's WiC workshop discussed how diversity in company culture starts with top-down, consistent messaging.

AT&T's Sarah Obermayer covers best practices for operators to re-build analytics teams as the industry moves toward network virtualization.

A new Upskill U series on Analytics starts Friday with a course on predictive analytics led by returning speaker Prof. Nick Feamster.

Upskill U launches a new four-part series on Analytics, beginning in April.

Start 2017 on the right foot with a resolution to reskill with Light Reading's Upskill U.

Sterling Perrin of Heavy Reading examines how SDN shows promise in enabling IP and optical integration in the final course in Upskill U's SDN series.

Equinix's Paul Mason examines the benefits and challenges behind implementing software-defined data centers as part of SDN strategies.

Upskill U Faculty Advisor Chris Rice of AT&T examines open source opportunities for advancing SDN strategies.

Orange Business Services' John Isch delivers the first course in a new series at Upskill U on the challenges and opportunities inherent in SDN.

Heavy Reading Senior Analyst James Crawshaw examines the role of open source in the advancement of NFV MANO this Friday at Upskill U.

Toby Ford, AT&T, tackles the challenges of and solutions to successfully implementing NFV MANO.

Princeton Professor and returning Upskill U lecturer Nick Feamster addresses the security risks and benefits of open source software.

Arbor Networks' Gary Sockrider examines proactive countermeasures to DDoS attacks at Upskill U.

Tata Communications' Rasool Kareem Irfan examines critical changes to data center security in the era of virtualization.

AT&T's Rita Marty examines fundamental shifts in security strategies in light of virtualization at Upskill U.

Comcast's Ty Pearman and Saif Rahman tackle the challenges and benefits of DOCSIS 3.1 in a live session at Upskill U.

In light of virtualization and rapid technological changes in telecom, AT&T launched Workforce 2020 to reskill employees.

Next on Upskill U, US Ignite's Joe Kochan examines the growth of smart cities underpinned by advanced networks and gigabit services.

Dr. Robert Howald, Comcast, and Alan Breznick, Light Reading, examine developments in gigabit technology and best practices for future deployments in the Upskill U course, 'Gigabit & the Great Migration.'

This week Upskill U launches a new series on Gigabit with lecturers from Orange, Comcast and US Ignite.

Upskill U's series on Agile/DevOps culminates with a course on the implementation of DevOps, delivered by Burt Klein of Tech Mahindra.

Cisco's Colin Kincaid covers the fundamentals of DevOps in a live course and Q&A at Upskill U.

Director of Agile Transformation addresses the challenges and best practices to implementing the Agile methodology.

Upskill U launches a new series on implementing Agile and DevOps with expert speakers from Cisco, Tech Mahindra, Agile Alliance and more.

At Upskill U, Saikrishna Kotha with LinkedIn examines the role of open source in the white box network transformation.

Roz Roseboro with Heavy Reading addresses telecom's approach to open source and cloud services at Upskill U.

Jim Fagan of Telstra addresses 'The Role of Open Source in NFV' at Upskill U.

Phil Robb of OpenDaylight kicks off the Open Source series at Upskill U with 'Telcos & Open Source 101.'

Upskill U launches a new series on the role of open source in cloud services, NFV and the white box network transformation.

Guru Parulkar with the Open Networking Lab explains how and why telco central offices are being re-architected to mimic data centers.

Equinix's Rodney Elder examines the changing face of the data center world at Upskill U.

Upskill U welcomes AT&T's Chris Rice of AT&T Labs as Curriculum Advisor.

EdgeConneX examines how web-scale operators and traditional telcos are re-thinking data center strategies in the virtualization environment.

Upskill U launches a series on the Telco Data Center with speakers from Windstream, EdgeConneX, Equinix and the Open Networking Research Center.

Upskill U and Cisco's Rajeev Raman, senior director for Infinite Video, will examine the benefits of utilizing virtualization for video delivery.

Jason Thibeault, executive director of the Streaming Video Alliance, tackles CEM strategies for video delivery at Upskill U.

Upskill U and Cisco explore OpenStack solutions for video delivery at 1PM ET on 7/1.

Upskill U on the impact of next-gen wireless networking technologies on video delivery with Tata Communications.

Upskill U goes Ivy League with Princeton Professor Nick Feamster for a deep dive into the role of analytics platforms in IoT.

Creating a strong security strategy is front of mind for players in the IoT space. Jason Porter of AT&T tackles the toughest IoT security challenges today at Upskill U.

Embedded analytics are opening a new frontier to enhancing customer experience, but challenges remain. Juan F. Gorricho of The Walt Disney Company will address these challenges in an Upskill U course at 1PM ET today.

The ever-changing landscape of security threats is driving service providers to rethink traditional security measures. Tune in to 'Big Data Analytics & Network Security' with Masergy to boost your security strategies.