The notion of open-model networks often involves the concept of feature/function hosting, a concept that was introduced a decade ago with the “Call for Action” paper that turned into the NFV ISG. Today, I think that most network professionals agree that the ISG didn’t get the details right but changed the industry by raising the…
One interesting point of agreement across both the network operator and enterprise communities is that “There’s open, and then there’s open.” The meaning of this should be clear; not everything that’s touted as “open” is equivalently open. Given that both operators and enterprises say that “openness” is in at least the top two of their…
You can learn an amazing range of things from government data, particularly if you push it through a model. I’ve been slogging through that process for decades now, but for the last 6 months I’ve been focusing on the question of just what vertical markets are doing with IT and networking. The raw government data…
MWC generated a lot of announcements in the Open RAN space, not surprisingly. That makes it harder to dig through to identify relevant trends, I’ve picked out some specific announcements that I think fit a pattern and offer some useful insights into where mobile networks, and networking overall, may be heading. SDxCentral did a piece…
What is the relationship between the metaverse and augmented or virtual reality? The question relates not only to just how realistic the metaverse ends up being, but also to the question of how far metaverse-friendly technology might percolate out to other areas. That has significant implications on a lot of things, including conference/collaboration and edge…
I blogged last week about AT&T’s vision of a future where new service features built on connectivity would serve as a platform for OTTs to create true higher-layer services. That obviously raises the question of what those features might be, and I’ve been trying to get some insight from operator contacts and a bit of…
Who, if anyone, could actually move everything to the cloud? I’ve never been a fan of the “move-to-the-cloud” model because my data has always shown a different trajectory for cloud growth, but the view that a full migration is inevitable is pretty pervasive. What can we say about that, based on information from enterprises and…
We’re reading all the time about how Web3 or the metaverse or blockchain are going to revolutionize the Internet. What the heck is a blockchain, as it’s applied to either Web3 or metaverse? I’m sure that you’ve already seen stories that assert a given vendor or service provider is at the forefront of one or…
Research reports are always interesting, but like anything these days, you have to consider the question of bias. Nobody is going to publish research that contradicts their own market positioning and sales efforts, which is why individual companies’ research is nearly always suspect. Organizations like the TMF, representing a collection of companies, are sometimes immune…
What do we need to see, condition-wise, for Open RAN (or other open-model networking) initiatives to succeed? There are plenty of articles on this question, but nearly all focus on a single technical/business issue directly related to Open RAN itself. As an industry, we tend to look at technology changes as isolated processes, with little…