By: Tim Young
Software-defined wide area networks (or SD-WANs, as their friends call them) are heating up and poised to reach a nice rolling boil over the next few years. IDC predicted in March that SD-WAN
revenues will exceed $6 billion in 2020 with a compound annual growth rate of more than 90%. Not up on your SD-WAN basics? Here’s a quick primer. What’s it do? Traditional router-based WANs are
annoying. They take a long time to scale and they can be very expensive. SD-WANs take the pain out of virtualization in a few key ways (summed up nicely in a blog by Gartner’s Andrew Lerner):
SD-WAN solutions can replace WAN routers in a lightweight way that is agnostic to the WAN transport technology involved…
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By: Ittai Bareket, CEO of Netformx
Over the last few years, competition and technology advances have led Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to undergo major transformations. Their networks are becoming virtualized and
programmable. There is heightened focus on customer centricity, omni-channel experiences, and rapid and personalized service delivery. New business models embrace vertical markets, partnerships,
and expanded ecosystems. And the Internet of Things (IoT) is upending both networks and operations. These revolutionary changes are driving CSPs to Transform and Digitize (TND) and to become
Digital Service Providers (DSPs)…
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By: Charles Pol
Empowering the Liquid Workforce Is it the end of the “job” as we know it? Socioeconomic, technology and employment trends are changing the ways of working as a new generation of workers are
introduced, and CIOs need to embrace the change. These new workers are known as the “Liquid Workforce” since they quickly shift and move between jobs and companies. They are educated and informed
individuals who know what they want to do and how they want to do it, so they’re motivated to seek out and access the digital tools they know can help them succeed…
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By: Dr. Andy Tiller
The advent of the embedded SIM, or e-SIM, is seen by many telecoms operators as a threat to their business models. An embedded SIM that can be remotely provisioned would appear to make it
easier for customers – and, in particular, the billions of devices expected on the blossoming Internet of Things – to move between networks simply and seamlessly. Handset makers such as Apple
could, even in principle, become the primary service provider using eSIMs in its phones to move its customers dynamically between networks based on whichever provides the best wholesale prices or
network quality at any given time…
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By: Andy Peers
We are currently in the second age of mobile communications. Following the rapid popularisation of the mobile phone in the 1990s, data usage has overtaken voice usage. To coincide with the
massive uptake in smart device usage and network traffic, service providers should be seeing a dramatic increase in revenues. In fact, the opposite is true: operators’ profits are dropping, margins
are being squeezed and at the same time, they are under pressure to invest in their operations so they can compete in the digital ecosystem…
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By: Alan Coleman
The bill has always been the debt collector of the telecoms industry, unwelcome on your doorstep or inbox with a demand for cold, hard cash. Mobile operators, though, are missing a trick by
ignoring the bill as a means of communicating with their customers and as means to generate additional revenues and cut call centre costs..It’s a sad truth that consumers don’t like phone bills,
their only regular communication with their operator, but they dislike even more the lack of clarity in the bill itself…
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By: David Casem, Ian Reither
As businesses move beyond the digital frontier, they’re embracing new business models made possible by sophisticated technology – from experimenting with artificial intelligence to pushing the
limits of software-defined networking. In this environment of rapid change, remote workers play a critical role as firms outgrow office-centric thinking. Last year, the number of workers
telecommuting rose to 37 percent, as more employers tap into the flexibility and productivity benefits of “work-from-anywhere” arrangements…
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By: Tim Young
“Nobody comes here anymore. It’s too crowded.” -Yogi Berra I love the fractured phraseology of Yogi Berra, the famous longtime catcher, outfielder, and manager. He’s known for pithy little
phrases like “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” and “I really didn’t say everything I said.” But this quote in particular is great when we’re talking about top trends from the past year and
predictions for the year to come. We try, as a publication, to err on the side of originality. We know that our readers want fresh voices and fresh—though well-informed—takes…
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By: Jim Schakenbach
November saw a ramped up effort to drive 5G initiatives forward despite a healthy, vigorous and evolving 4G market. Companies continue to eye available spectrum and ways to exploit it, as well
as technology developments to aid its provisioning. Qualcomm Technologies announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., has introduced its first 5G New Radio (NR) spectrum
sharing prototype system and trial platform. The industry is designing 5G NR to get the most out of spectrum available across all spectrum types – licensed, unlicensed, and shared spectrum…
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