If Network-as-a-Service (Naas) is the right approach, what would it look like? There’s a surprising amount of variability in the approaches being taken, and each option has its own unique positives and negatives. Not to mention whether NaaS as a concept is the right approach, or an approach that’s a practical option for operators now. …
How will my company win in 2021 and beyond? This is a question that every networking giant and aspirant is already facing, and will face even more in just a few months. The global economy is going to start to recover next year, and with that recovery will come a lessening of fears about broad…
What will open-model networks look like, and how will we build them? What are the issues operators say are limiting their use? Operators are surprisingly confused on these issues, largely because they’re confused about higher-level issues that relate to planning and deployment. I’ve had a chance over the last month to gather operator concerns about…
5G will be truly financially successful for operators only if there’s more money collected from its deployment than was collected before it. Would users pay more for what’s likely to look like the same wireless they’ve had? Probably not many would, so 5G depends on finding applications that exploit its more subtle differences. The 5G…
Is it time to look beyond Open RAN? That question may seem strange given all the positive developments, including the story that Mavenir is looking to build radio units, but I think it’s the perfect time. In fact, it may be inevitable at this point that the focus of open 5G starts to shift. One…
Juniper has clearly gone on an acquisition tear. Just as they’ve completed their acquisition of SD-WAN technology leader 128 Technology, they’ve announced the purchase of Apstra, a data center intent-based operations automation and abstraction player. Given rival Cisco’s recent container-centric announcements, is Juniper simply trying to counterpunch, or does Juniper see 128 Technology’s contribution to…
Sometimes a term gets so entrenched that we take its meaning for granted. That seems to have happened with “virtual network”, despite the fact that just what the term means and how one might be created has changed radically over the years. In the last year, I asked almost a hundred enterprise and service provider…
Cisco loves containers. There’s no question that container and software-related acquisitions have dominated Cisco’s recent M&A, but it’s sure reasonable to wonder what they hope to gain. Does Cisco think they can become a competitor to cloud software and server companies, are they betting on hosted network elements, or what? Cisco’s Banzai acquisition last month…
Is ATT right about fiber? The CFO says it’s a “three for one” revenue opportunity, which is why the operator says they’re likely to add to their fiber inventory. One clear message you can draw from that is that a one-for-one or two-for-one might not have been enough, which leads us I think to the…
The news for Open RAN just keeps getting better, but we all know that news is an imperfect reflection of market reality. There is indeed a lot of good news and important stuff, but there’s also some major questions being raised by operators, and implied by the very “good news” we’re happy about. Operators are…