Month: February 2016

MWC16: What’s Already Happening at Mobile World Congress – A Focus on Rural Areas

by , posted in Het Nets, Ultra Broadband
Ed Gubbins
Ed Gubbins

Summary Bullets:

  • Mobile access infrastructure solutions focused on rural and remote areas are already a trend at MWC16.
  • Infrastructure improvements in rural areas pose the potential for growth from at least two primary sources.

The benefit of waiting too long to write a “What to Expect at Mobile World Congress” blog is that you get to write a “What’s Already Happening at Mobile World Congress” blog.

You can already guess many of the topics that mobile access infrastructure vendors will be talking about at MWC16: 5G, unlicensed spectrum, Internet of Things, etc. Some of the pre-MWC announcements they’ve already made have focused on an area you might not have predicted: remote and rural networks. Continue reading “MWC16: What’s Already Happening at Mobile World Congress – A Focus on Rural Areas” →

The Year in Telecom Vendor Services Support

by , posted in Net Transformation
Jason Marcheck
Jason Marcheck

Summary Bullets:

  • 2015 was characterized by increased support for IT services and traction regarding vendor strategic ambitions related to VoLTE, small cells, vertical markets, and embarking on SDN/NFV commercialization
  • As LTE build-outs reach completion in a number of regions, operators have turned their investment to improving capacity, density, and the user experience
  • Managed services contracts continued a steady pace, although operator demand for value creation within engagements leaves work to be done for vendors

While the industry begins its ramp-up to Mobile World Congress and another year of services engagements, aimed at technology migration and network transformation, it’s a good time to look back on the year that was in vendor services support. The year in professional and managed services was characterized by continued growth of IT services and increased traction for vendor strategic ambitions including VoLTE, small cells, vertical markets, and SDN/NFV commercialization. With regard to IT services engagements specifically, solutions that accounted for a quarter of overall activity in 2012 now make up over half of the service engagement tracking database at Current Analysis.
the way, we’re excited to see the road ahead.

Continue reading “The Year in Telecom Vendor Services Support” →

INFOGRAPHIC: Key Findings from Current Analysis’ 2015 Carrier SDN/NFV Survey

by , posted in Net Transformation, SDN/NFV
Jason Marcheck
Jason Marcheck

Summary Bullets:

  • In 2015, Current Analysis surveyed 100 decision makers at network operators regarding challenges facing network deployments, what they need most from their vendors, and which suppliers they view most favorably.
  • Although a key focus of vendor messaging in 2015 was helping operators to operationalize SDN/NFV, operators are facing more fundamental questions standing in the way of their decision to fully embrace network virtualization: uncertain ROI.
  • When asked what one thing operators feel the SDN/NFV supplier community is not adequately addressing, VNF performance dominated the responses. A word cloud below summarizes the key responses, with the size of each word corresponding to the frequency in which they appeared in the response results.
  • Cisco and Huawei have topped SDN/NFV vendor perception results for the past several years. However, IT-oriented suppliers – namely HP and IBM – made up considerable ground in 2015, now ranking closely behind Cisco and Huawei as top perceived SDN/NFV suppliers.
  • Ericsson also made a considerable jump in perception to round out the ‘Top 5’ in terms of best perceived vendors in the survey.

Continue reading “INFOGRAPHIC: Key Findings from Current Analysis’ 2015 Carrier SDN/NFV Survey” →