Partnership news included several interesting developments. Cybera has announced a new partnership with Toshiba, the global leader in retail store technology. Toshiba will extend the capabilities of its Toshiba TCx™ Elevate digital commerce platform to the cloud with Cybera as its preferred SD-WAN partner for the Asia Pacific region. Nuance and Microsoft have announced a partnership to bring together leading technologies from both companies to transform the doctor-patient experience, shift more of the administrative and clinical tasks to AI workflows and tools, and to help reduce physician burnout while enhancing patient outcomes.

Network Evolution News

Network news this month included a major partnership announcement as well. Microsoft and SAP have entered into an extensive go-to-market agreement to accelerate cloud migrations and customer adoption. The partnership will bring together the two companies along with a global network of system integrators to provide customers with bundled solutions, including unified reference architectures, road maps and market-approved journeys to illuminate a clear path toward the cloud.

New developments intended for operators made headlines. Nokia has introduced several new additions to its Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) portfolio that bring greater flexibility to FWA deployments: the new FastMile 5G indoor gateway to expand regional coverage for operators, and the new FastMile 4G indoor gateway for immediate rollouts in areas with 4G networks. Harmonic has launched CableOS™ Central, a new AI-enabled service that features data analytics, 24/7 operational support and engagement tools for operators, to enable network diagnostics and capacity planning.

Efforts to close the digital divide continue. In the UK, Vodafone will share unused 4G spectrum with StrattoOpencell to extend high-speed mobile broadband to rural areas without fiber connectivity. Vodafone will continue to use the 2600MHz spectrum to boost mobile capacity for customers in busier areas, such as stadiums and city centers. The spectrum-sharing agreement between the companies is part of a three-year deal.

5G News

Mobile World Congress 2019 in Los Angeles bubbled with announcements related to 5G. At the conference, NVIDIA announced the NVIDIA EGX Edge Supercomputing Platform – a high-performance, cloud-native platform that lets organizations harness rapidly streaming data from factory floors, manufacturing inspection lines and city streets to securely deliver next-generation AI, IoT and 5G-based services at scale, with low latency.

Ericsson and NVIDIA announced at MWC 2019 that they will collaborate on technologies that can allow telco operators to build high-performing, efficient and completely virtualized 5G radio access networks to enable faster and more flexible introduction of new AI and IoT services.

Altran has created an industry-first disaggregated fronthaul framework based on Intel field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) that will enable wireless carriers and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to accelerate large-scale 5G fronthaul deployment in a scalable manner. The framework was demoed October 22-24 at MWC.

Security News

In the US, November is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so many announcements referenced awareness, new product developments, and other related topics. Security software company Segasec announced new capabilities to help online brands protect themselves and their customers from fraud and phishing attacks. The primary capability is an early detection feature that allows Segasec to spot potential account takeovers before consumer accounts have been taken over, and without alerting attackers. Forescout Technologies has introduced new innovations to its industrial control system security solution Silent Defense. The Asset Risk Framework will help organizations aggregate and prioritize risks targeting OT and IoT devices.