Rakuten Symphony made inroads with multiple industry stalwarts at MWC Barcelona 2022, indicating growing momentum and respect in the telco space.

“Operators are using the cloud to transform the core of their businesses now," AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said.

The updates are part of the software vendor's plan to shift downmarket and capture a larger portion of the lucrative small to midsize business pie.

Microsoft announced Azure for Operators updates; AT&T showcased its private 5G at MWC; and Qualcomm released its open RAN platform.

“Today, we’re at the start of the next transition as we build for the metaverse," Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

HPE, Mavenir, and Rakuten also embraced Qualcomm's 5G radio access network accelerator cards and massive MIMO antenna chipsets.

AT&T’s commitment to Microsoft for all things cloud, not exclusive but increasingly broad, also grew this week.

This new wave of Azure for Operators, recently combined with AT&T’s Network Cloud tech, is designed to support AT&T's mobile core network.

Telefónica’s CEO stressed the importance of tech ethics; the usage gap has outpaced the connectivity gap; and Nokia released its Edge Network Controller.

Cisco Private 5G integrates with existing enterprise systems and WiFi, operates as-a-service on a pay-per-use basis, and supports open RAN principles.

Last month's top stories included Palo Alto Networks wanting you to say goodbye to SIEM and a recap of recent cyberattacks.

"We are losing faith in ourselves and in our future” because “the link between material progress and ethical progress has been blurred," he said.

APIs represent a huge security threat; Gelsinger’s best may not be enough for investors; and Verizon tapped VMware in its global SD-WAN push.

The VMware-backed managed SD-WAN targets globally distributed enterprises.

Dish faults technical difficulties for its 5G delays; IBM warns ransomware follows the cloud migration; and Ericsson rises to the top of the RAN market.

The operator says it's developing “Advanced DU pooling” with Intel to bring elasticity to the distributed unit layer in the RAN.

“Ericsson finished neck and neck with Huawei with just one percentage point separating the two vendors,” LightCounting's Stéphane Téral said.

“We’re six months behind where we thought we’d be, and it’s my fault," Dish chair and co-founder Charlie Ergen said.

Kyndryl partnered with AWS; Arrcus wins customers from rivals through entry points; and CloudBolt reported IT leaders think the cloud has hit a wall.

The partnership rounds out the managed service provider’s cloud arsenal, which already included Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Benu partnered with AWS; the cybersecurity skills shortage remains particularly acute; and Arista Networks embedded NDR into its campus switches.

“​​What we're trying to do is bake security deeper into the network,” Arista's Rudolph Araujo said.

The partnership enables telecoms to offer SASE services even in markets where they have little to no physical presence.

Ericsson touted its 5G energy efficiency progress; Nvidia's Arm ambitions are anything but dead; and the Great Resignation might collide with the developer shortage.