Some trends which are becoming certainties. One, mobile operator growth (or sometimes survival) will depend on implementing ever-more heterogeneous networks, virtualizing many of their functions, and supporting a wide range of services and applications. Two, attracting and retaining customers is increasingly down to the quality of user experience, not price, which means taking a far more rigorous approach to managing and optimizing the network. These two are very hard to support in parallel. Monitoring, performance management and optimization approaches are evolving, but are still inadequate for many of the new networks. Management and orchestration of virtual networks is immature and the subject of deep splits over the best approach. Even without considering NFV/SDN, there is limited ability to manage wireless,…