Ridha Hamidi, PhD

What is Neoclouds ? telecom opportunities. It aim to bridge a gap between centralized hyperscale clouds and highly distributed telecom networks As telecom operators face mounting infrastructure demands — from AI workloads to cloud-native 5G networks — the industry is entering a new era of cloud strategy. At the center of this shift is the neocloud: a next-generation model of cloud infrastructure purpose-built for AI performance by offering flexibility and local processing at scale. Many of us first heard this term at this year’s MWC Barcelona — but what exactly is a neocloud, and why is it suddenly popping up in telecom conversations. #AI #NVIDIA #CLOUD #NFV #HYPERSCALER #6G #6G

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Every telecom executive I speak with is facing the same reality. 5G standalone rollouts. Open RAN integration. Cloud-native core migrations. AI-driven automation. Cybersecurity escalation. And yet the one resource required to execute all of this at scale is becoming the hardest to secure. Network engineering talent. The global network engineering services market is projected to grow from $60.7B in 2025 to $133.28B by 2034. Demand is accelerating. Supply is not. So the real question is no longer whether to outsource. It is where to build your next engineering hub. Kosovo sits at the heart of Europe, operating in CET, within real-time collaboration distance of London, Berlin, Zurich, Milan, Vienna and beyond. For U.S. operators, it enables a true follow-the-sun model without night-shift premiums. But geography is only part of the story. Kosovo has the youngest population in Europe, with more than 50 percent under 35 and over 2,600 IT and engineering graduates entering the workforce annually. More than 30 percent of university students pursue STEM fields. Certifications across Cisco, Juniper Networks, Fortinet and other ecosystems are deeply embedded in the market. This is not theoretical talent. It is production-grade telecom experience. Kosovo's telecom ecosystem includes 5G deployment, a €15M radio modernization program across 400 base stations, Ericsson's R&D presence, 96.4 percent internet penetration, and full regulatory alignment with EU standards. Engineers here are not learning in labs. They are operating real carrier networks. Now let's talk about what procurement teams actually care about. Cost. Engineering labor costs are 50 to 70 percent lower than equivalent roles in the U.S. or Western Europe. Corporate tax is a flat 10 percent. Operational overhead is 45 to 50 percent lower than the EU average. For a 10 to 50 person engineering team, annual savings range from $0.6M to over $8M depending on role mix. But cost alone does not win Tier 1 contracts. Execution does. 75,000 plus ports migrated for a nationwide metro core refresh across all 50 U.S. states. Zero customer-impacting outages. Six months ahead of schedule. 900 plus workloads onboarded across 120 branches and three data centers with spine-leaf EVPN and Zero Trust segmentation. This is what happens when you combine young, hungry engineering talent with strict SLA governance, MOP discipline, NMS integration and outcome-based pricing. Kosovo is not a backup option. It is a strategic advantage hiding in plain sight. If you are a telecom operator rethinking how to scale your engineering capacity in 2026 and beyond, this whitepaper lays out the full economic model, risk framework and implementation roadmap. Built for decision-makers who care about resilience, margin and speed. Download the full playbook in the comments and see why Kosovo is becoming Europe's most cost-effective network engineering hub. Your network. Your SLAs. Your outcomes.

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The OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation launch: It represents a key step forward in open source RAN, specifically for CU and DU. The open collaboration hub dedicated to building, scaling, and sustaining the OCUDU technical project assets and leveraging them to establish a foundational reference platform for RAN including AI based algorithms and solutions. The OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation provides a critical mechanism for industry vendors to optimally guide OCUDU development to support 5G and early AI Native 6G services This initiative brings the best of the open source model to one of the most critical layers of future wireless: the foundation for an interoperable, software-defined radio access network. #AI #OCUDU #AIRAN #5G #CUDA #ORAN #6G #AUTOMATION #4G

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At Dell Technologies, we’re proud to lead with our Telecom Self-Certification Program—designed to empower partners to validate their solutions for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) faster, more efficiently, and with confidence.   This program streamlines validation process, reduces time to market, and ensures compatibility with Dell infrastructure. Partners gain access to our Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab (OTEL) to test and optimize their solutions. Those who meet our standards earn the Dell Technologies Telecom Certified badge—giving CSPs confidence in quality and readiness.   To support growing demand, we’ve expanded certification capacity with the new Dell PowerEdge R470 server—delivering performance, efficiency, and flexibility for modern network functions.   Together, we’re enabling faster innovation and stronger partnerships across the telecom ecosystem.   🔗 [Read my blog to explore our telecom self-certification program] https://lnkd.in/gMYznqd2  #iwork4Dell #OpenTelecomEcosystem #DellTelecom

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OCP 2025: Unveiling Our Next-Generation Service-Oriented Global DCI Network — Alibaba eCore Traditional backbone network architectures rely on complex protocols and devices, many of the protocols were invented decades ago. These networks are challenging to operate, difficult to scale, and ill-suited for the demands of the AI era. Five years ago, we launched the eCore project to rearchitect our global DCI network. With the rise of AI LLMs, we adapted the eCore architecture to meet the evolving needs of this new era. eCore embraces a minimalist design philosophy, utilizing a single-chip, single-protocol stack, and deploying white-box routers at large-scale. Its multi-plane, multi-routing domain approach reduces the scale of traditional ISIS domains by two orders of magnitude, significantly mitigating systemic network risks. Innovatively, eCore introduces a new traffic engineering method that combines simplicity with flexibility, eliminating the restrictions and operational complexities associated with DSCP-based TE. eCore has already been in mass production, successfully meeting our design goals and resolving major issues faced by our previous-generation backbone network. Truly, simplicity is the key. The network is SRv6-centric, thanks to collaboration with Cisco's segment routing team — special thanks to Clarence! If you're interested, join us for our presentation on Thursday at 10:30 AM.

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Seizing opportunities created by APIs in 5G Core Network | Ericsson Software and Aduna Global 🎓 https://bit.ly/3ZbcuJA 📌 #CoreNetworkSummit2025 #5GCore #APIs #ad Anthony Bartolo, Aduna CEO, and Jon Illana, Head of Solution Line Exposure, UDM & Communication Services at Ericsson, joined a robust gathering of global industry leaders at the Core Network Summit, in Madrid, hosted by Ericsson and Telefonica. The role of APIs in advancing innovation and monetization in the 5G core network was a hot topic at the summit. Aduna, “a venture between global telecom providers and Ericsson” is “dedicated to revolutionizing the network API market.” As Aduna explains: “Through our single unified portal, we provide streamlined access to a growing suite of network APIs built on existing industry-wide CAMARA standards.” Explaining how operators are capturing new business opportunities and the role network APIs play in that journey, Ericsson’s Jon Illana said: “We had a lot of learnings and experiences in this Core Network Summit. One clear area that has already come as a key successful use case of 5G is Fixed Wireless Access that service providers can already grasp new subscribers and opportunities there.” He also cited “Differentiated Connectivity” and moving to “the next step…‘monetizing the moment’, as we call it.” He noted that all these can be complemented and wrapped up through network APIs, connectivity, and additional capabilities like location or authentication. He noted that 5G Standalone will enhance use cases even further. Bartolo, speaking on Aduna’s role in the Core Network ecosystem, observed, “Aduna provides a common access layer to all the networks that are presenting those new network APIs.” “And I think that's a really important place is to have an ecosystem where someone can go and consume those APIs in a consistent manner, at a scalable manner, from a single place.” Explaining how Ericsson Core Networks equip operators to expose the right capabilities, Ericsson’s Illana said that “the first principle is that things need to really work end-to-end.” He noted that Ericsson ensures that “all these functions work in a consistent way in the Core Networks and across domains for it to work.” He cited other examples as well. Monetization of APIs in BFSI Focusing on the monetization of APIs, Bartolo noted that some of the biggest monetization is happening in the area of authentication and security in the BFSI industry. ➡️ MORE: 1️⃣ “Monetizing the moment and APIs” https://lnkd.in/ee-bFucE 2️⃣ Critical factors for success with 5G business transformation https://lnkd.in/eyYBRxsH 3️⃣ Looking to the Agentic Future | Telecom Takeaways https://lnkd.in/ec7Vu2eW #hyperscalers #CPaaS #5GCore #APIs #Telco #ISVs #FinancialServices #Banking #FinTech l #BFSI #CAMARA #5GSA

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How do you explain where rApps fit into the future of intelligent RAN automation? I see rApps as more than an evolution beyond SON. They’re the shift that brings openness, intelligence, and multi-vendor flexibility to the center of modern RAN operations. With centralized control, open interfaces, and multi-domain data fusion, SMO and rApps enable operators to automate at scale with far greater accuracy, speed, and visibility. They enable: 📉 Breaking SON limitations 🌐 Multi-vendor automation 🧠 Intelligent workflows 📊 Multi-domain data fusion ⚙️ Centralized control 🚀 Faster innovation cycles 🔍 Better network outcomes Sign up now for an exclusive broadcast hosted by TelecomTV to learn more: https://lnkd.in/ec3y8kYc Which of these areas do you think will create the biggest shift for operators? #TeamEricsson #rApps #TelcoAI #Telecommunications

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📡 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗥𝗔𝗡 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗽𝗶𝗹𝗼𝘁. It is being deployed at scale  and most teams are not ready for it. A conversation between me and Tech explorer about Open RAN 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗿: Mohamed, I keep reading that Open RAN is struggling. But I also see massive deployments. What is actually happening? 𝗠𝗲 (𝗠𝗼𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱): Both things are true and that tension is exactly the story. 1)     AT&T is spending $14 billion to move 70% of its wireless traffic onto Open RAN by the end of 2026  and is on track. 2)     Vodafone is targeting 2,500 Open RAN sites in the UK by 2027 and 30% of all European masts by 2030, with thousands of sites already contracted across Germany and Romania. 3)     Deutsche Telekom has deployed Open RAN across 3,000+ sites in Germany to reduce its Huawei dependency with ambitions to scale to 30,000 sites. 4)     Airtel already operates 2,500 live Open RAN sites in rural India, with a roadmap to reach 10,000 sites. This is not a lab experiment anymore.  𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗿: So what is still the problem? 𝗠𝗲 (𝗠𝗼𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱): The gap between deployment speed and team readiness. The hardware is being installed. But the engineers managing it were trained for legacy RAN architectures. Open RAN is not just a new radio. It is cloud-native infrastructure, running on Linux containers, managed through APIs, and automated through the RIC. Your best RF engineer from 2019 needs a completely different skillset to operate this environment. In every Open RAN project I support today: • The integration works • The multi-vendor orchestration works But what often breaks is the human layer  the team that has to run the network at 2am when something goes wrong. 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗿: What should operators do right now? 𝗠𝗲 (𝗠𝗼𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱): Three priorities in this order: ✓ Accept that Open RAN requires cloud + radio + AI + security skills simultaneously ✓ Start upskilling NOC and RAN teams now, not after go-live ✓ Build internal multi-vendor expertise instead of outsourcing it permanently The operators deploying successfully in 2026 did not just buy the right hardware.They built the right team first. 💬 For operators already running Open RAN  what has been the hardest operational challenge so far? #OpenRAN #5G #ORAN #CloudRAN #Telecom #5GAdvanced #DigitalTransformation

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