For the northern hemisphere, August mostly means well-deserved holidays, while for us southern world inhabitants, the eighth month of the year means regular working days, and this includes ComSoc activities too.

During this month, we had virtual visits of two Distinguished Lecturers: César Vargas Rosales from Tecnológico de Monterrey (México) and Fabrizio Granelli from the University of Trento (Italy). We can say that both talks were dynamic and engaging for the attendees, showcasing the state of the art on each topic.

César Vargas Rosales, currently Leader of the Strategic Research Group on Telecommunications at Tecnológico de Monterrey, offered the talk “Error Correcting Codes for Communications and Storage” on August 24, 2021. During his talk, he described the relevance of error correcting codes in telecommunications and their fundamental role in the efficiency and robustness of communications links. He also showed a number of these techniques on storage applications, specifically for optical media such as DVDs and Blu-Rays. One of the strong aspects of the talk was the right balance between technical depth and the application context. Prof. César Vargas Rosales belongs to Region 9, so his views on telecommunications reality are closer to what local industry professionals observe on a daily basis and the future reality of students. In this talk, there were attendees from all over Latin America, from both industry and academia.

Fabrizio Granelli, currently Associate Professor in the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI) at the University of Trento and Lab Coordinator, discussed the topic “Automating Network Management in 5G and Beyond Mobile Networks” in his talk on August 31, 2021. Recently, we have seen 5G promoted all over the world as the natural evolution from 4G, denoting the most relevant features at the service level, while the management and automation side has not had the same degree of public awareness it deserves. In his talk, Professor Granelli first walked the attendees through 5G architecture, incorporating the concepts of software defined networking and network function virtualization, combining them when he introduced network slicing mechanisms. Then, as he progressed through the talk, he arrived at the fundamental need on the 5G backstage: network management and automation. After the talk, there were a number of technical questions regarding the increasing complexity of telecommunication systems, cloud RAN availability, the space for new optimization techniques given the existence of self-organizing networks, and finally, the possible connections with control theory, specifically to address stability issues.

To sum up, we had the great honor of listening to and interacting with Professors Vargas Rosales and Granelli during their talks. We are grateful for their openness and their interest in sharing their knowledge and experience with us.

At the IEEE ComSoc Chile Chapter, we would like to thank the Virtual DLT Program organizers, the IEEE ComSoc Region 9 volunteers for their support, and especially Fabricio Braga, who is the current Virtual DLT Regional Coordinator, for all the work they have done to make this possible.