Author: Tom Nolle

We already know that fiber technology can be divided into families based on features—long-haul versus access, passive optical versus point-to-point or active reconfigurable.  We might be seeing signs that it is dividing at the business level, into what might be called “tactical fiber” and “strategic fiber”.  If so, that could have major implications on the…

There are sometimes concrete answers to abstract questions.  In some cases, the reason why those answers don’t seem to gain traction or acceptance is that they come from a different sector.  So it is today with network transformation or “next-gen” networks.  We have spent half-a-decade framing principles that were already framed better elsewhere, and with…

Operators tell me that they are still struggling with the details of service lifecycle automation, even though they’re broadly convinced that it’s a critical step in improving profit per bit.  There are a lot of questions, but two seem to be rising to the top of everyone’s list, and so exploring both the questions and…

For the current quarter, we’ve seen Ericsson post a profit warning, Nokia warn of deteriorating outlook, and even Huawei slowing its rate of growth (to something other vendors would die for!)  Analysts say that “digital transformation” for operators is a must.  A Wall Street research company says that only one of the US operators (Charter)…

Are we seeing signs of sanity in networking?  Just the other day, Light Reading did a piece on service lifecycle automation.  Yesterday they did one on edge computing.  I’ve been arguing (and blogging) on both topics for quite a while, so it’s no surprise that I think the coverage represents a sane shift.  I doubt…

We read a lot about smart cities these days, but like many popular topics there’s a surprising lack of consistency in assigning a meaning to the term.  In fact, only about half the attributes of smart cities that governments and network operators name are recognized by at least two-thirds of the people I talk with. …

According to Light Reading, a senior Ericsson exec doesn’t think that 5G will kickstart telecom spending.  Ericsson also issued a profit warning, causing its stock to take a big hit.  That this is even a surprise is hard for me to understand, frankly.  Telcos have been telling me for years that they couldn’t continue to…

With the introduction of SK Telecom’s T-MANO into the mix, we have yet another promised improvement in the basic management and orchestration model for NFV.  In the past, I’ve tended to defend all these initiatives on the theory that somebody might end up getting it right.  Other than AT&T and Open-O with ONAP, I’ve not…

According to a recent report from Deloitte, “deep fiber” is critical to support the evolution to 5G.  There’s truth in this view—I think it’s clear that fiber is critical to 5G success.  The questions are whether “deep fiber” is the kind of fiber that’s critical, whether fiber is a sufficient guarantee of 5G, and what…

If event-handling and process hosting are the way of the near future, then (as I suggested last week) we would likely shift a lot of hosting and software development off traditional server platforms.  There are technical considerations here, of course (and I noted the key ones last week), but the primary issue is financial. Event…