“These are always like hero experiments to see how far can you push the number," Cisco's Bill Gartner said.

Recently announced job cuts will impact around 5% of Dish Network's workforce.

The partnership will see IBM deploy its Hybrid Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift capabilities into the tower giant’s neutral-host sites.

"Telcos should be selective when committing to any joint go-to-market initiatives with hyperscalers and other partners,” Omdia's Andreas Olah said.

But, AT&T's late-year decision could set the ecosystem up for a more bountiful 2024.

The past 12 months witnessed an earnings roller coaster, a new logo, job cuts, U.S. manufacturing plans and a lost open radio access network deal.

RSM's Andrew Fedele speculates on the verticals expected to gain the most from the government’s BEAD program

The deal was arguably the most watched across the ecosystem due to VMware’s embedded position within the cloud, software and networking ecosystem.

What were the highs and lows of the past 12 months? Read on.

Quite well, according to a new report from Network speed test monitoring firm Ookla.

“I would say the big difference in telecom is that any change effort implies risk," Dell Technologies' Dennis Hoffman said.

“We are very much willing to work with customers to try to find solutions on how they want to use our technology," CEO Michael Glickman said.

Prior to the deal being announced, Ericsson was not viewed as a leading open radio access network vendor.

“We are looking for partners to bring out latent value in assets that we have," Frontier's Vishal Dixit said.

“I'm glad that this decision was not because of our performance, because of our technology or the performance of our services,” Pekka Lundmark said.

“I don't know that the way they've chosen to do it is necessarily what I've seen work in the past,” Samsung VP Alok Shah said.

Broadcom is also killing VMware's perpetual licensing option in favor of a subscription model.

"Why do you need SD-WAN if it's one hop versus something that can control all the hops?" BT CTO Colin Bannon asked.

“Don’t hold your breath on a true success story in which VMware remains unaltered and its own independent entity," Forrester's Tracy Woo predicts.

Verizon Business is integrating Zebra Technologies devices and software into the carrier’s private 5G and 4G LTE network offering to smooth enterprise adoption.

"There's no way we can deliver that kind of experience for our customers without millimeter wave," Verizon's Joe Russo said.

“A lot of what is being driven today is a fair degree of bespoke and the challenge is that this is not scalable," STL Partners' Yesmean Luk said.

“We are ready to deliver all alternatives that customers want. This is not a religious question for us at all,” CEO Pekka Lundmark said.

The carrier's private 5G network will replace an existing Wi-Fi network at the Norfolk International Terminal.