Here are the top stories SDxCentral wrangled this week related to SDN, NFV, cloud, and virtualization infrastructure:

AT&T Outlines 5G Goals, Surpasses 2016 Virtualization Goal — At an annual pre-CES conference, AT&T explains that 5G has implications for all access technologies.

T-Mobile CTO Says Modern Core Makes SDN Less Urgent — However, there will be a key opportunity for SDN when it comes to 5G and network slicing.

Why Machine Learning is Hard to Apply to Networking — Wanted: A 'theory of everything' for networks.

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

Encore Networks' Class M1 EN-400 router has been certified compliant for use on the Verizon 4G LTE Category M1 (CAT-M) network. Similarly, LTE chipmaker Sequans Communications announced that its Monarch LTE Platform, an LTE Cat M1 chip, has been certified to operate on Verizon’s 4G LTE network.

Infinera announced that its Xceed Software Suite is the first optical transport software-defined networking (SDN) system to join the "Powered by OpenDaylight" program.

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, a genome researcher, has standardized its cloud computing systems and services on Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat CloudForms. Red Hat also announced the availability of CloudForms 4.2.

Security company Gemalto is supplying AT&T with a remote subscription management solution that will enable its customers to deploy new Internet of Things (IoT) applications in the U.S. and globally.

Inbox Business Technologies and Viptela announced a partnership to deploy software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) in Pakistan.

T-Mobile unveiled two IoT Access packs with wireless data and a Category 1 module to help accelerate IoT innovation and piece together wireless IoT solutions.

ZTE completed joint testing of its Pre5G FDD Massive MIMO system in partnership with the China Telecom Innovation Center.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: