Savvy communication service provider CIOs and CTOs have abandoned the past - where they would align their new technology infrastructure investments with traditional IT and networking equipment vendors. In hindsight, the status-quo disruption was somewhat inevitable.

Today, 77 percent of all telecom service providers will now require some level of digital transformation over the next three years, to meet the changing market needs in their franchise area and to remain competitive, according to the latest...

We are all aware of the fact that the world is moving towards intelligence-based automation. Emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine leaning, will be playing a key role in making network more intelligent. The journey towards a ‘zero touch’ network is started with a need by telecom service providers to couple with digital innovation and incorporate their efforts in the upcoming fifth generation (5G).

But automating deployment and managing operations in largely distributed...

It’s telco cloud, Jim, but not as we know it. Telefonica has announced it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help organisations in their journeys to the cloud.

Customers are ‘asking for support in their cloud adoption processes’, as the Spanish operator puts it – and rather than go their own way, as the market has seen with less than impressive results, it’s better to go with a hyperscaler.

The partnership includes a variety of initiatives. Telefonica will include...

Telco cloud: two words that can strike fear into many in the industry. Yet a couple of new initiatives from Nokia and Ericsson will aim to help operators in their projects.

Nokia has officially opened its Cloud Collaboration Hub in Singapore. The hub ‘enables operators to visualise, develop and execute cloud offerings’, in the company’s words, and joins the facilities already available in Texas and the UK.

The hub will aim to resolve the dreaded cloud skills gap, cited by Nokia as a key reason why...

There's been a significant increase in enterprise investment on technologies that analyse, organise, access, and provide advisory services that are based on use cases for unstructured data. In fact, worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018 - that's an increase of 54.2 percent over the amount spent in 2017.

With industries investing aggressively in projects that utilise cognitive and AI software capabilities, International Data...

MYCOM OSI has announced a collaboration with open source solutions provider Red Hat with the aim of assuring and managing telco clouds.

When MYCOM OSI’s cloud-native Experience Assurance and Analytics (EAA) solution, which provides real time and automated assurance for end-to-end hybrid telco cloud networks, is deployed on Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform and OpenShift Container Platform, its capacity will not just be limited to dynamically discovering, monitoring and correlating vertical layers in...

Today, telecommunications companies are forced to reckon with the changes that have taken place in the market: the emergence of new competitors; competition with wireless networks; VoIP; cable companies; IPTV; the influence of the Internet and OTT, and so forth. In response, network operators accelerated the transition to digital formats based on IP technologies, low latency, better standardisation and now even on virtualisation of network functions (NFV). So it’s...

IT investment within the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region is on track to further growth.  IT spending in EMEA is forecast to reach $1 trillion in 2018 - an increase of 4.9 percent from 2017, according to the latest market study by by Gartner.

In 2017, however, all categories of traditional IT spending in EMEA under-performed the global averages. According to the Gartner assessment, currency effects played a significant part in the weakness during 2017, and will also contribute to the...

Red Hat and Orange have teamed up as part of a joint engineering programme with the aim of bringing in new technology innovation in network virtualisation.

The motive of the joint engineering programme is deliver additional features supporting network functions virtualisation (NFV) into OpenStack and other open source communities and also to meet the explicit requirements of communications service providers and their networks when formulating technologies.

The recent integration of the OpenStack BGP VPN...

Cisco has announced that it will acquire cloud calling and contact centre solutions provider BroadSoft for $1.9 billion (£1.43bn) net of cash.

The acquisition of BroadSoft will not only augment Cisco’s commitment to unified communications but also intensify its capacity to address the large number of old TDM (time division multiplexing) lines poised to transition to IP technology and cloud native solutions in the future.

Rowan Trollope, SVP and general manager of the Cisco applications business...

The OpenFog Consortium and ETSI will be joining hands to develop fog-enabled mobile edge applications and technologies, as the two have signed a MoU with an intent to benefit organisations working to develop 5G, mission-critical and data-dense applications through fog computing and networking and thus reduce technical overlap across the multitude of domains.

The Consortium will be working with the ETSI Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) Industry Specification Group (ISG) wherein both organisations will...

Mobilitie, a company based in Newport Beach, California, has installed a new cellular wireless system at Avaya Stadium in San Jose. The new system is expected to provide fans with access to an advanced cellular voice and data communications network that includes over 150 small, digital antennas, remote unit and other network components.

The neutral-host distributed antenna system (DAS) installed by Mobilitie is a flexible, small antennae and radio solution. With the new system, attendees at the stadium would...

Ecosystems, APIs, open source software, agile development, COTS servers, programmable network; these are some of the attributes of the cloud that service providers plan to leverage by using technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV).

Service providers plan to move from closed appliances to open servers and software components. However, making this move requires a significant change in thinking, acting, and probably choice of suppliers. As a result, some...

Open source hardware and software projects continue to gain momentum in the global telecom sector. However, after a relatively slow start, the network function virtualization (NFV) market will experience growth through ongoing technology investments by major telecommunication service providers.

According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, North America will lead global growth, accumulating $13 billion in NFV-related investments during 2022. Meanwhile, Europe will experience the highest...

Research firm IDC has identified AT&T, BT, Orange, and Singtel as leaders of the next-generation telecom service providers in Asia Pacific (APAC).

The findings, which appear in the company’s latest report, titled IDC Telecom MarketScape for Next-Generation Service Providers 2016-17, argue the four leaders showed a strong regional network presence, comprehensive suite of enterprise cloud and managed ICT service offerings, diverse portfolio of services in areas such as IoT and collaboration in the...

Nearly all segments of the Internet of Things (IoT) market recorded double-digit growth in the fourth quarter of 2016 (4Q16), driving an overall 19.3 percent year-to-year revenue gain to $8.2 billion, according to the latest study by Technology Business Research (TBR).

This market is still evolving. "We expect growth to continue apace as more customers undertake implementations due to the emergence of packaged use cases, standards are adopted and pricing models become more rationalized," said Daniel Callahan, analyst at

It’s now well understood that the entire telecoms industry is technologically and operationally migrating to virtualised network functions utilising network functions virtualisation (NFV) as the architectural framework. Many operators have already deployed NFV and those that haven’t are advanced in their planning. It’s no longer a question of if the telecoms industry will transform to virtualised environments but the questions of how and when are being determined by the unique situations of...

Large scale telco cloud deployments will hit global critical mass after 2020 in parallel with the deployment of 5G, according to a new report from ABI Research.

The report, titled ‘Telco Cloud Framework and Deployment Roadmaps’, argues the latest network generation will likely require a new core network to allow for advanced concepts, including network slicing and services geared toward different business verticals. Early 5G deployments, during which time there will not be an immediate need for a...

Ericsson has signed a partnership with car brand newcomer Lynk & Co to boost their vehicles’ connectivity even further.

Lynk & Co is the first car brand to have launched completely in the digital age and brings with it all the connected car technology you would expect. The brand’s owner, Geely, also owns the Volvo brand so potential buyers can have some confidence the company at least has some experience with building automobiles.

"Our cars are built on a number of...

Digital disruption is a borderless phenomena that has reached all parts of the globe -- including the Asia-Pacific region. According to the latest worldwide study by IDC, digital transformation (DX) is a key growth driver of the services market, requiring business and IT organizations to work together toward shared goals.

Transformation, as a part of an enterprise organization's digital growth journey, is emerging as the top theme requiring significant change across the board; including alteration of legacy...