SDxCentral’s Top 10 Articles — November 2019

Check out our top 10 articles for November 2019 covering the SDxCentral universe of SDN, NFV, and related topics. Rankings are based on unique visitors aggregated during the month.

5G Is No Panacea for IoT

IoT has been a long time coming and the waiting game continues under 5G. Network operators, vendors, and device makers have been forcefully targeting the opportunity to connect anything anywhere for at least 15 years.

India ignores industry on spectrum pricing complaints

The Indian Government has said it will not drop prices for spectrum licences in the next auction, despite persistent complaints from industry.

European Parliament reprimanded by Data Protection Supervisor

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has launched a data protection probe into the European Parliament for continued work with a US firm.

Huawei mobilizes is North American legal team once more

Embattled Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is reportedly going to challenge a recent FCC proposal, while there have been developments in the trial of its CFO in Canada.

TIM dabbles in 5G surgery

Italian telco TIM is the latest to showcase 5G’s low-latency feature by enabling a surgeon to remotely get involved in an operation.

WiCipedia: Queen of Code, Leadership Sexism & Unicorns vs. Zebras

This week in our WiC roundup: Barbara Liskov reigns as queen of code; female leaders don't have support, even from women; zebras push unicorns aside; and more.

Ukkoverkot's CEO on Building Private Networks

At the 'Private Networks in a 5G World' event in London, Mikko Uusitalo, chairman and CEO at Ukkoverkot, talks about the operating and partnership model that has helped the company deploy 26 private networks in the past 24 months.

Eurobites: Telecom Italia Demos 5G-Powered Remote Surgery

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: 5G's Bastille day; T-Systems gets edgy; O2 does security deal with Sophos; Macron won't pick on Huawei.

Chinese Operators Invest $427M in Number Portability Prep

China is finally about to get mobile number portability and millions of consumers are expected to take advantage.

Canadian complaints give regulator more ammunition for new telco

The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) has said complaints against the telcos are at an all-time high, just as competition authorities are building evidence.

Huawei remains defiant in face of Android threat

In a recent interview Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei brushed off the effect of a ban on working with Google on his company’s smartphone fortunes.

Germany wants to dictate EU policy on 5G and China

German Chancellor Merkel has surprised nobody by calling for all member states to do what the EU tells them when it comes to 5G policy.

LG kicks off massive game of management musical chairs

With a new CEO, CFO and CSO, as well as new Presidents for the Home Entertainment and Mobile Communications units, the LG management team is looking very different.

Telefónica enters ‘new era’ with major business restructure

Group CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete has unveiled a five-point strategy which include prioritising Telefónica’s growth markets.

GSMA promises not to rig the eSIM standard in favour of its members

The US Justice Department has concluded a two-year investigation into the GSMA’s handling of the eSIM standard after the latter promised to play nice.

Top 5 SD-WAN Takeaways for 2019

SD-WAN reached an inflection point in 2019 as enterprises — driven by equipment replacement cycles, increased reliance on the cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, and the promise of reduced costs — have adopted the technology.

Koley Quits as Juniper's CTO

Bikash Koley has tendered his resignation and will leave at the start of 2020, with his seat reportedly set to be filled by another former Google technologist.

Lowband 5G Offers the Massive Coverage the US Needs

What's the point of gigabit 5G speeds if you can't get connected anywhere?

Telefónica's €2B Growth Plan Fails to Excite

In its latest round of restructuring, the Spanish operator is setting up a Tech business with ambitious targets. Investors may feel they have been here before.

Eurobites: Germany's Merkel Calls for European 5G Watchdog

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Proximus appoints new CEO; Salt takes earnings hit; Ericsson bags new deal with Orange.

Orange Pooh-Poohs Deutsche Telekom Merger Talk, Again

French operator dismisses latest speculation about a merger with its German counterpart.

A Deutsche Telekom merger with Orange is unlikely for many reasons

Rumours of corporate courtship between Deutsche Telekom and Orange have resurfaced by they seem as implausible as ever.

CenturyLink expands fiber infrastructure in Troy, Michigan

In order to better service the autonomous vehicle tech corridor, CenturyLink has completed a 33-mile fiber ring in Troy, Michigan. The fiber-ring in Troy is part of CenturyLink's initiative to provide more fiber to edge network locations.

T-Mobile keeps pace on 600 MHz upgrades ahead of 5G launch

T-Mobile is keeping pace on 600 MHz and 700 MHz LTE upgrades as the operator prepares to launch broad 5G coverage next week using its low-band spectrum.  

Xiaomi still growing as Christmas spending sprees approach

Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi has reported another quarter of year-on-year growth, and while it might not be as aggressive as previous quarters, the Christmas period is upon us.

FCC’s Knapp to retire after 45 years

Julius, aka Julie, Knapp, whom Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai called a “national treasure,” is retiring early next year.

GTT hires advisors to explore sale of its infrastructure assets

The financial whip is about to come down on GTT as it looks to sell off its infrastructure division in order to pay down some of the debt it has built up after numerous acquisitions over the past few years.

Editor’s Corner: 5G is here, so what’s next?

While the industry has been talking about 5G for years, it’s really just getting started when you think about it from a 5G standards perspective.

VMware's CEO sees more JEDI-like cloud contract opportunities

While the saga of the 10-year, $10 billion JEDI cloud contract continues to play out, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said his company is well positioned to play a role in future government cloud contracts.

It’s now up to Nokia whether it punches back or gets hit again

Nokia’s struggles of late are well-known, but it’s still among the top three vendors—along with Huawei and Ericsson—reaping the benefits of surging 5G New Radio (NR) demand, which propelled the RAN market in the third quarter to a fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for the first time in over a decade, according to Dell'Oro Group.

US marketing lies about 5G are counter-productive

New research from Strategy Analytics has found that US consumers are so confused by 5G marketing that almost a fifth of them think they already have it.

Canada preps the industry with hint of regulatory disruption

The Canadian Competition Bureau is suggesting competition is not healthy in the country and new regulation could emerge to encourage the creation of new challengers.

HP on the up as PC segment boosts earnings

Share price in HP is up 2% during overnight trading as increased sales in its ‘Personal Systems’ unit push revenues beyond analyst expectations.

The UK fibre industry has reached an inflection point

Full fibre has become a political hot potato but increasing competition in the sector is far more likely to move things along.

Shell carpet-bombs lofty enterprise connectivity claims

It may only be a single presentation from a single company, but Shell’s indifference to the latest connectivity fads is a reminder that the telco industry has a way of over-hyping itself.

Compute Express Link Eyes Hardware Push in 2021

When the Compute Express Link (CXL) Consortium was formed in March it made waves not only for its lofty aspirations but for the sheer amount of support it received. The proposed interconnect technology seeks to enable a direct memory interface between the CPU and peripheral devices.

Verizon, Ericsson, and Qualcomm Boast DSS Advancements

A trio of telecom juggernauts — Verizon, Ericsson, and Qualcomm — have successfully demonstrated the use of dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) to allow 5G service to operate across different spectrum bands, including spectrum previously held exclusively for 4G LTE.

VMware Sees Green With Carbon Black Buy

With Carbon Black now firmly in the fold, VMware says its aggregate security segment will represent about $1 billion of business this year.

Telefónica Unveils Major New Strategy, Identifies €2B in New Revenues

Spanish giant has unveiled a new five-point plan that includes spinning off much of its Latin American assets and a go-to-market strategy that the operator believes can generate €2 billion in new revenues by 2022.

Gelsinger’s Greatest Hits on VMware’s Q3 Earnings Call

VMware reported another strong earnings quarter with $2.46 billion in third quarter fiscal 2020 revenue, which is a 12% increase from last year. The software giant also increased its guidance for Q4 and full-year 2020 revenue and said this boost in large part will come from its recent Carbon Black and Pivotal acquisitions.

The Role of Mobile Operators in the Private Networks Sector

At the 'Private Networks in a 5G World' event in London, Heavy Reading's Gabriel Brown discusses the role that mobile operators could play in the burgeoning private networks market.

TDS Eyes Piece of Comcast's Turf

Boundaries between cable ops continue to blur as TDS Telecom makes a competitive move in Spokane, Wash.

LFN 5G Demo Designed To Excite Kubernetes Community

Heather Kirksey, VP of community and ecosystem development at the Linux Foundation, during a keynote address at the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America event where she helped demonstrate a Kubernetes-powered end-to-end 5G cloud native network.

Eurobites: Finland's Elisa Trials 'Human-Eye Quality' Virtual Reality Over 5G

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: BT's Openreach to issue FTTH equipment tender; Virgin Media raises the broadband bar in Reading; CityFibre reportedly seeks to revamp its Vodafone deal; the continuing European adventures of Huawei.

Air France Exec on Private Wireless Networks

At the 'Private Networks in a 5G World' event in London, Christian Regnier, Enterprise Technical Architect for Critical LTE/5G/IoT at Air France, talks about the evolution of the airline's private networks strategy and how it's embracing 5G.

MEF19: Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin on SD-WAN Adoption

Heavy Reading's Sterling Perrin discusses new SD-WAN research he presented at MEF19 in Los Angeles, and why it's significant that cloud providers aren't part of MEF (yet).

MediaTek Unveils 'Dimensity' 5G Chipset

MediaTek says its first 5G silicon will arrive in commercial smartphones by Q1 2020.

Vodafone Warns Governments Off Reserving Spectrum for Industries

The European service provider slams decisions to give spectrum to companies that have not traditionally operated networks as concern grows about the telco role in private 5G networks.

Hon Hai Eyes 5G Prize as It Tips $328M Into APT

The manufacturing giant is diversifying into 5G in a bid to become a technology services company.

AI Foundation delivers third Acumos AI software release

The LF AI Foundation has delivered its third software release for its Acumos AI Project, which includes integration with ONAP and O-RAN. The third release, which is called "Clio," includes features that were designed to more easily onboard AI models, as well as design and manage support for pluggable frameworks and enable federation with ONAP and O-RAN.

U.S. plans case-by-case approach to secure telecom networks

The U.S. Commerce Department on Tuesday laid out plans to take a case-by-case approach in determining which business transactions must be barred in order to protect against related supply chain threats and national security risks to the country’s telecommunications networks.  

US government says a whole lot of not much about the telecoms security issue

Half a year after US President Trump issued an executive order calling for action against perceived telecoms security threats, some vague progress has been announced.

AT&T, Microsoft ramp up collaboration on edge, cloud

It’s early days for edge computing and 5G, but AT&T and Microsoft are sharing a few more details about their collaboration that was announced in July, including the first markets to see the results of their strategic alliance.

Dell reportedly mulls sell-off of RSA cybersecurity business

Dell is reportedly pondering the sell-off of its RSA Security cybersecurity business for at least $1 billion, including debt. Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that Dell was in the early stages of its discussions, and that there was no guarantee the sale would actually take place.

Germany's Netways picks 6Wind's vRouter for managed services

Germany-based Netways Managed Services has picked 6WIND’s Turbo IPsec virtual routers to provide secure VPN services for its customers.

Devices are key to private networks in unlicensed spectrum

Private LTE networks were once the preserve of mobile operators with licensed spectrum. But the barriers to the adoption of private LTE networks are falling rapidly. The availability of end-to-end, plug-and-play LTE network solutions coupled with the emergence of new unlicensed spectrum bands, will be an industry game changer and will embolden commercial and industrial enterprises to invest in private LTE networks, thus bypassing mobile operators.

HPE's stock drops 4% after reporting Q4 results

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's stock fell by about 4% in after market trading on Monday after reporting its Q4 earnings. Prior to Monday night's dip, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) shares have been on a roll this year by climbing 32%. HPE's shares had bounced back up by almost 2% in early morning trading on Tuesday.

Verizon completes DSS data call with Ericsson, Qualcomm

Verizon and its partners Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies are tooting their collective horn over a proof-of-concept demonstration they conducted using Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS), which allows 5G service to run on multiple spectrum bands, including those historically reserved for LTE services.

Nokia reckons it doesn’t need a COO anymore

Joerg Erlemeier, a Nokia lifer who is currently its Chief Operating Officer, is calling it a day at the end of the year and Nokia won’t be replacing him.

Are private networks a golden opportunity or another false dawn?

The potential to earn money is certainly there, but the telco industry needs to demonstrate speed and agility to take advantage of the private networks opportunity, and history is not on its side.

SFR FTTH buys fibre wholesaler Covage for a billion euros

The French fibre sector is undergoing a spot of consolidation with the news that Altice-owned SFR is acquiring the country’s fourth largest fibre wholesaler.

France won’t block Huawei from its 5G network

One by one, members of the European Union are announcing they won’t follow the United States’ lead on banning Huawei from their 5G networks.

SD-WAN Vendor GTT Ditches Its Infrastructure Division

GTT Communications earlier this year announced it would begin liquidating assets it had acquired over the past several years. Today, GTT made good on that promise in selecting Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs to help the company offload its infrastructure division.

Dell Posts Mixed Q3 Amid RSA Sale Rumors

Dell Technologies reported mixed results for its third quarter fiscal 2020. The tech giant’s adjusted earnings hit $1.75 per share on non-GAPP revenue of $22.9 billion. This beat analysts’ expected earnings of $1.62 per share. But it missed on Q3 revenue, which analysts forecast to reach $23.04 billion.

Nutanix Q1 Wows Wall Street, CEO Warns Bloody Oceans Ahead

Nutanix wowed Wall Street with its first quarter of fiscal 2020 earnings, posting $314.8 million in revenue and sending its stock skyrocketing more than 21% in after-hours trading on Monday.

HPE Q4: Intelligent Edge, Hybrid IT Revenues Slump

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) reported disappointing fourth-quarter and full-year fiscal 2019 results on Monday as quarterly revenue fell 9% from a year earlier to $7.2 billion. Analysts expected $7.4 billion in HPE Q4 revenue.

Palo Alto Acquires Aporeto for $150M, Posts Mixed Q1

Palo Alto Networks announced plans to acquire Aporeto, which has made a name for itself doing machine identity-based microsegmentation. The deal will cost Palo Alto approximately $150 million in cash.

Nokia Kills COO Role Amid Struggles

Nokia is heading into the next decade with a smaller C-suite. The Finnish vendor, which has faced some pricing and supply-chain challenges and recently slashed its profit outlook through at least 2020, has discontinued its COO role and announced that Joerg Erlemeier, who currently holds that position, will leave the company after a 25-year run on Jan. 1.

AT&T, Microsoft NEC Work Starts In Dallas

AT&T and Microsoft are taking the first step of their recently announced cloud collaboration to the edge with a limited roll out of network edge compute (NEC) technology that ties together Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AT&T’s network edge locations.

For Deutsche Telekom, Private Networks Offer Glimpse of 5G Growth

Germany's biggest operator is under pressure to show that private 5G remains a growth opportunity for the telco business.

CableLabs Mothballs its Startup Incubator

After a three-year run, the R&D organization has halted its 'Fiterator' program for startups amid bigger changes underway at CableLabs's UpRamp unit.

Cisco Boasts 20,000 SD-WAN Customers

Cisco says 20,000 customers use its SD-WAN technology. This number, as of its first fiscal quarter of 2020, includes the vendor’s Viptela and Meraki product lines. And, according to a blog touting the customers count, this crosses all industries and the globe.

Deutsche Telekom Eyes Private Wireless Networks Growth

At the Private Networks in a 5G World event in London, Deutsche Telekom's senior VP of 5G Campus Networks, Antje Williams, explains how the German operator is seeking to develop new business opportunities by providing public and private wireless network services to enterprises in multiple verticals.

Netrounds Joins Rakuten's Vendor Roster

Swedish network assurance specialist selected by high-profile greenfield Japanese network operator Rakuten Mobile.

MEF19: Heavy Reading's Jennifer Clark on SD-WAN & the Edge

Edge computing, 5G and the cloud are drivers of and enablers of multivendor SD-WAN services, said Heavy Reading's Jennifer Clark, in a discussion about the progress of SD-WAN standardization.

Eurobites: Nokia Discontinues COO Role

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Tele2's Croatian deal comes under scrutiny; Orange takes its bank to Spain; TIM agrees €350 million EU loan to support 5G rollout.

The Telecoms.com Podcast: AT&T, India & 5G Races

Hangover? What hangover? This week the below-par podders put late-night carousing behind them to talk AT&T, India and 5G deals.

Ericsson Hurls NB-IoT & Cat-M Into Spotlight & Lets Them Sweat

Like any doting parent, the Swedish equipment giant is expecting a lot from the NB-IoT and Cat-M technologies it helped to spawn.

T-Mobile sways Nevada, gets AG to drop out of lawsuit

T-Mobile struck another win, this time with the Attorney General of Nevada, who announced  settlement resolving concerns related to the planned merger with Sprint. The announcement came on the same day Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that his office reached a settlement with T-Mobile.

T-Mobile prepaid customers hit by data breach

T-Mobile last week notified prepaid customers who were hit by a data breach, which included unauthorized access to personal data and rate plan information.  

Nokia axes chief operating officer role as part of its reorg

Following on the heels of lowering its guidance for this year and next year during last month's earnings call, Nokia announced on Monday that it is eliminating the chief operating officer position.

Optical transport sector enjoys robust Q3—report

The demand for network capacity continued unabated in the recent third quarter, which continued to benefited the optical transport equipment sector. A report by Dell'Oro Group estimated that that wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) revenue grew 3% year-over-year in Q3. The amount of capacity shipped on WDM equipment grew above 30% year-over-year, which led to the increase in Q3 revenues.

Ligado offers immediate opportunity for FCC, Verizon, T-Mobile

Ligado Networks for several years has been waiting on FCC approval to put its lower mid-band spectrum to use for 5G, and analysts at LightShed Partners say the time is now for agency action on the L-band to help enhance 5G deployments.

T-Mobile entices Texas AG to settle over antitrust claims

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced today that his office reached a settlement with T-Mobile to resolve the state’s antitrust claims against the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile.

R&D spend is increasing in UK, but still not at the top table

Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggest investment towards R&D is heading the right direction, though there is still work to be done to compete with the worlds’ best.

Intel reduced to using MediaTek modems for 5G PCs

Remember when Intel was Apple’s 5G secret weapon to break Qualcomm’s modem stranglehold? Well, now not so much.

Spectrum Enterprise kicks tires on network-as-a-service

At last week's MEF19 conference, Spectrum Enterprise teamed up with some other vendors on a proof-of-concept for intent-based networking. The proof-of-concept (POC) focused on using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and data from IoT devices to predict network demand, but the bigger picture is using all of the above for intent-based networking en route to building network-as-a-service architectures.

Sprint counters that the small cells in Long Island do help

Sprint took exception to this story, which reported that the strand-mounted small cells it deployed in Long Island, New York, in collaboration with Altice, didn’t improve its network much. Sprint said that the research the story was covered a time frame after most of these small cells had already been deployed.

Huawei files defamation lawsuits in France

Huawei has filed defamation lawsuits against two individuals in France after claims that the business is controlled by the Chinese Government were aired on national television.

Global 5G uptake won’t start to really ramp until 2021 – Ericsson

The latest Ericsson Mobility Report is forecasting 2.6 billion 5G subscriptions by 2025, but thinks we’re still a year or two from it going mass market.

Uber fails to meet London’s standards once again

Uber is a firm which is never too far away from controversy, and it has opened a new chapter in the UK as Transport for London (TfL) has refused to grant the firm a new private hire operator’s licence.

TechUK joins the manifesto bonanza

With the UK General Election only weeks away, the chest pumping, and ego stroking will only become more fabulous, but there might have been a few surprises to see a TechUK manifesto emerge.

KT SAT Conducts World’s First Satellite 5G Connection

KT Corp. said its satellite-operating subsidiary, KT SAT, has successfully conducted the world’s first 5G data transmission with a satellite connection. The test was aimed to expand the fifth-generation technology linked to KT’s 5G network and KT SAT’s KOREASAT 6, located some 36,000 kilometers above the equator, said the leading Korean telecom provider.

Ovum's Talmesio on 5G Private Networks

At the 'Private Networks in a 5G World Event' in London, Ovum analyst Dario Talmesio discusses the business opportunity for mobile network operators in delivering 4G and 5G private networks to enterprises.

Intel Partners With MediaTek for 5G PC Chips

The pair expect to launch silicon, to be used by Dell and HP, in early 2021.

AWS: 5G Is ‘Not the Holy Grail of IoT’

Amazon Web Services (AWS) revealed a series of new IoT features in a bid to bolster its platform leading into its big annual conference next week. The updates include Alexa Voice Service integration, fleet provisioning, and configurable endpoints for AWS IoT Core; container support and a stream manager for AWS IoT Greengrass; and secure tunneling for AWS IoT device management.

Starz Plots Global OTT Play as US Pay-TV Landscape Erodes

Premium programmer launches new direct-to-consumer in Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico and the UK, with plans to expand into almost two dozen more countries in 2020.

5G NR Demand Skyrockets RAN Market, Dell'Oro Says

5G new radio (NR) drove the radio access network (RAN) market to new heights during the third quarter of 2019. This marked the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth for the first time in over a decade, according to the Dell’Oro Group RAN Quarterly report released today.  

FCC Bans Huawei, ZTE From USF-Funded Projects

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finally made good on its pledge to safeguard the country’s networks by unanimously voting to ban Huawei and ZTE from receiving federal subsidies.

AT&T, Juniper Claim 400GbE ‘Firsts’

The push toward commercial 400-gigabit optical connections has surged as AT&T is now carrying traffic over a link in the South and targeted at its 5G network, and Juniper Networks claimed a successful trial with SCinet targeted at the supercomputing space. The best part is that both moves include “industry-first” claims and come as analysts predict the 400 gigabit Ethernet market (GbE) market won’t start to see broader adoption until next year.

Amazon Challenges Pentagon's $10B JEDI Award

Amazon Web Services filed suit Friday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims challenging the Pentagon’s decision to award the $10 billion JEDI cloud contract to Microsoft.

How Will Cable Business Services Keep Growing?

With the commercial services engine clearly slowing down, where will cable operators turn for new growth as new technologies like SD-WAN and 5G emerge?

Telcos Need Enterprise Schooling to Seize Private Network Opportunity

To profit from the private network opportunity, operators need to become experts on the needs and business drivers of their enterprise customers.

Indian Telcos Find Some Relief

Price rises and deferred spectrum payments should help operators that have been hit by a recent court ruling.

'AT&T TV' Tunes In More Major US Markets

NYC, Miami, Minneapolis and Seattle join a list of US markets to trial AT&T's new OTT-delivered pay-TV service that uses a 4K-capable Android TV device.

Russia's MTS Quits Ukraine With $734M Sale

The Russian operator is abandoning Ukraine to focus more keenly on digitalization efforts at home.

Eurobites: SFR FTTH to Buy Covage for €1B

Also in today's EMEA regional roundup: Enreach buys Masvoz for UC expansion; French government raises the floor on 5G auction; Orange sells its Niger subsidiary.

Vodafone Supports IoT Customers in the US With Cat M

Donaldson Company is an initial user for connected dust filtration systems.

Ericsson Makes Bold Growth Predictions for 5G, Cellular IoT

In its latest Mobility Report, Ericsson predicts 5G will account for 2.6 billion subscriptions and generate 45% of the world's total mobile data traffic by 2025.