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

Telefonica selected Netcracker’s next-generation business support system (BSS) platform as part of its digital transformation program.

Cisco released general availability of its hybrid cloud platform for Google Cloud.

According to reports, China is exploring a merger of the country’s three wireless carriers — China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom — to gain a competitive advantage over the U.S. in 5G.

Sprint and Ericsson partnered to build a distributed, virtualized IoT core.

AT&T and RingCentral extended their partnership to provide cloud-based communication services.

BT launched a service and network automation platform for SD-WAN and NFV.

Vodafone and Huawei completed the second-phase of a test of a cloud-based broadband network gateway.

Pivot3 certified its IoT infrastructure solutions with Milestone Systems video management software.

ZTE and China Mobile completed a decoupling test of a cloud operating system and commercial SDN system in an NFV architecture.

Casscomm deployed Adtran broadband services, including EPON OLTs, to serve as a foundation for its software-defined access network.

Verizon and Nokia completed an over-the-air, end-to-end data transmission over a commercial 3GPP-based 5G new radio network using Nokia equipment and Verizon millimeter wave spectrum and a 5G network core.

CA Technologies sponsored a study with Gatepoint Research to determine Docker container monitoring trends.

Mobile operator organization GSMA launched a global innovation discovery initiative and named the first 29 members.

Enea and Advantech partnered to build an NFV infrastructure, integrating Enea’s NFV access virtualization software platform and Advantech’s appliances for universal CPE and SD-WAN.

The Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union Sports Network selected Alibaba Cloud for its internet-based broadcast offering for the Asian Games.

Performance management company Kentik launched a native portal with Kentik Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for communications service providers.

Calix and CityFibre will jointly deploy a software-defined access operating system across its fiber networks.

Vasona Networks deployed its edge-based traffic management platform for a mobile network operator.

Asocs joined the Open virtual RAN (vRAN) ecosystem, led by Cisco.

Gigaspaces added support for Kubernetes orchestration on its data analytics platform.

Ensemble, a division of Adva, updated its NFV platform with management and orchestration (MANO) capabilities.

Security company BitSight released an analytics service that offers visibility into a company’s security program.

Hardware provider Asus selected Keysight Technologies’ 5G network emulation products for its 5G NR device development and verification.

WhiteHat Security added an artificial intelligence (AI) software to its dynamic security testing platform.

Network edge company Ori launched its on-demand mobile edge computing platform for pilot projects.

Software security provider Security Compass added support for Microsoft Azure to its knowledge library.

Arnhouse Digital Devices released a server blade to increase the performance of traditional data centers and servers.

In-memory database company VoltDB added support for Kubernetes on its intelligent operational data platform.

Here are the other stories SDxCentral covered this week: