AGENDA
TUESDAY, JANUARY 19

11:00AM-12:00PM ET:
The WFH Revolution: Network Strategies

In the telecom world, two big things became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic: 1) the wired connection to the home and the associated Wi-Fi service are critical; and 2) enterprises must connect their employees to work from home (WFH). What steps are service providers taking to ensure that home broadband connections, are robust enough for the lingering WFH phenomenon? What did they learn from the experience of setting up employees to WFH? How did SD-WAN, VPN and security technologies play into WFH? 

11:00AM-11:15AM: Keynote Interview with Masergy's Vice President of Innovation
11:15AM-12:00PM: Panel Discussion

AGENDA
TUESDAY, JANUARY 19

2:00PM-3:00PM ET:
Access Network Evolution: What's Next?

Perhaps the most valuable asset owned by the telcos and cablecos is their last-mile connection to homes and businesses. In fact, the big cloud providers are partnering with service providers to gain access to those homes and businesses. But these access connections rely on a variety of technologies, some of which are very complicated and asymmetric. Based on conversations at Cable-Tec Expo, operators are forging ahead with DOCSIS 3.1 and 4.0. But are telcos and cablecos also making headway by rolling out fiber in the last mile? What’s the status of PON technologies in all its various flavors? Which operators are pursuing distributed access architectures (DAA)? And how does virtualization play in the access network?

2:00PM-2:15PM: Keynote with Comcast's SVP Next Generation Access Networks
2:15PM-3:00PM: Panel Discussion

AGENDA
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20

11:00AM-12:15PM ET:
The Telco Edge Cloud Opportunity

Distributed networking means there will be more telco edge clouds that provide compute, storage and networking closer to end users. But telcos will have to compete with others who are building edge clouds, including edge-as-a-service vendors, public cloud providers and data center/co-location hosts. What do these telco edge clouds look like? What advantages do telco edge clouds have over edge clouds from other entities? Where do partnerships between public cloud providers and service providers make sense? And what are the tradeoffs between processing data at the edge versus more central locations?

11:00AM-11:15AM: Keynote Interview with Vodafone's Head of Cloud Portfolio
11:15AM-11:30AM: Partner Keynote with IBM's Global Director for Cloud, 5G Network and Edge Computing
11:30AM-12:15PM: Panel Discussion

AGENDA
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20

2:00PM-3:15PM ET:
Network Disaggregation and Virtualization

Following the trend of the big cloud players, telcos are finally getting on board with network disaggregation by decoupling hardware from software. This network disaggregation allows telcos to use generic hardware, running the most up-to-date software. At the same time, they’re also virtualizing their core network infrastructure, oftentimes skipping the virtual machine (VM) phase and moving straight to containers. Are the data center vendors in the telco ecosystem helping to drive these new technologies? Is there a struggle at service providers to get their teams up-to-speed on new technologies such as Kubernetes for container management? What new applications will telco network virtualization enable? 

2:00PM-2:15PM: Keynote with Linux Foundation's GM Networking +Edge/IoT
2:15PM-2:30PM: Partner Keynote with Google Cloud's Global Head of Networks Cloud, Telecom Industry Solutions
2:30PM-3:15PM: Panel Discussion

AGENDA
THURSDAY, JANUARY 21

11:00AM-12:10PM ET:
Closing the Digital Divide

The COVID-19 crisis has finally brought “closing the digital divide” to top of mind for everyone, from the FCC to the big cable and telecom operators. Which technologies will be best for bringing broadband to rural areas? Will tier-1 cablecos and telcos be getting into the fixed wireless access (FWA) action? Is this new focus on rural areas just the opportunity that satellite operators have been waiting for?  And what funding opportunities such as Universal Service Funds (USF) and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) could propel the progress? 

11:00AM-11:25AM: Keynote Interview with Facebook's VP for Connectivity
11:25AM-12:10PM: Panel Discussion