Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, 5G, IoT, containers, cloud, and more:

AT&T Expands Network-Based SD-WAN to 150 Countries — Companies can mix and match connectivity for different site types while maintaining a single network.

Cisco Service Provider Group Debuts 5 New Automation Capabilities — The intent-based services extend Cisco's Network Services Orchestrator.

AT&T Fights Back: 5G Footprint Will be Nationwide, Not Just Hot Spots — Atlanta, Dallas, and Waco, Texas, will be among the operator's first 5G markets.

Here are the week's strays and stragglers we roped for you: 

Following Broadcom’s reduced offer, Qualcomm issued a statement calling out its inadequacy. In other Qualcomm news, the company increased its offer to purchase the outstanding shares of NXP Semiconductors.

Google pushed its Cloud Internet of Things (IoT) Core to general availability.

The european telecommunications standards institute (ETSI) NFV Plugtests demonstrated high interoperability for multi-vendor network services and an increase in feature support across implementations.

MYCOM Open Systems Interconnection released a cloud native platform for telco cloud assurance.

Dell EMC and Mavenir will collaborate to expand the range of solutions for service providers and enterprises on Mavenir’s OpenStack network functions virtualization (NFV) and container platform.

Saguna, Vodafone, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Greengrass will demonstrate a multi-access edge computing (MEC) connected-car proof of concept at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Radisys created a virtualized radio access network (RAN) accelerator to advance 5G deployment.

Qualcomm Technologies introduced its Snapdragon 820E embedded platform and extended its embedded computing portfolio to support IoT applications. It also released its Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine.

Oracle launched a new version of its Communications Network Charging and Control for mobile operators.

Orange Labs Networks integrated Radisys’ virtualized media resource function in the ONAP Amsterdam release.

The combined NEC and Netcracker business and operational support technology went into production at the Canadian telco Telus.

ETSI’s multi-access edge computing (MEC) group will release two white papers on 5G, MEC, and cloud RAN and will host hackathons to accelerate MEC.

Etisalat, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa-based telco, selected Nokia's Nuage software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) technology to offer to its enterprise customers.

Mobile core network software startup Core Network Dynamics updated its cloud native software to enable to deployment of mobile core networks on both private and public cloud infrastructures.

Barefoot Networks, Deep Insight, and Xilinx will demonstrate an end-to-end network performance monitoring solution.

Lanner partnered with Telco Systems to supply universal customer premises equipment (UCPE) white boxes as turnkey solutions for service providers.

Chef released InSpec 2.0, its compliance automation software.

Sprint launched a cloud-based security platform, powered by Zscaler.

InfoVista released the newest version of its RF planning and optimization software, with support for 5G New Radio (NR).

Megaport enabled direct connectivity for customers to the Salesforce platform.

Ruckus Networks announced its IoT suite for customers to create secure IoT access networks.

Alaska telco provider GCI selected Altiostar's virtualized radio access network (vRAN) technology to support GCI’s LTE-advanced network deployment in preparation for 5G and IoT.

Radcom partnered with Red Hat to provide a virtualized network visibility solution on the Red Hat OpenStack platform.

Mavenir and Ensemble, a division of AVDA Optical Networking, partnered to create an end-to-end solution for enterprises to build their own LTE network.

Test and validation company Spirent launched two platforms to extend its security and performance assurance capabilities.

Red Hat released a decision management platform to simplify the management of rules-based applications and services.

Coriant partnered with Affirmed Networks to expands its 5G customer offerings.

Software AG launched the ninth version of its open, cloud-based Cumulocity IoT platform.

Priority Software released its ERP solutions on Microsoft Azure.

PacketFabric will offer private network connectivity from its on-net locations across the U.S. to Microsoft using Azure ExpressRoute.

Portnox launched a new feature on its network access control (NAC) platform to streamline authorization processes.

Pivot3 expanded its partnerships with Zerto, VMware, and Redington Value to bring new capabilities to its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).

Network monitoring company EXFO integrated its NFV Service Assurance with the ADVA Ensemble open virtualization suite.

Digital technology consulting firm Quisitive launched a Microsoft Azure cloud assessment program.

Revenue assurance and fraud management software provider WeDo Technologies hosted an event to identify fraud risks associated with digital transformation.

Napatech launched a reconfigurable accelerated RAN for 5G mobile network operators.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: