The communications industry is experiencing unprecedented change. For consumers, user experience now trumps technology and price as the key driver of purchase and adoption of new products and services. Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are facing aggressive new competition from device makers and powerful Internet companies all looking to capitalize on the mobile Internet. And for equipment manufacturers, cost pressures and the need to invest in new technologies are driving the need for new ways to improve efficiency and scale, while achieving a significantly lower cost structure.

These market forces are creating a fundamental new set of innovation and system integration (SI) challenges for CSPs. These include creating a subscriber device competitive with the iPhone, delivering rich converged services, connecting a wide range of new electronics such as digital picture frames and navigation devices, and building network APIs and SDKs to best monetize cloud-based services.

Equipment makers now must strike a delicate research and development (R&D) balance between investments in existing products and those required to ensure competitive readiness in new growth areas like metro Ethernet and Long Term Evolution (LTE).

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