@JetSetJim
"Build from scratch high availability platforms to host a myriad of s/w that will scale up to millions of subscribers without falling over? Good luck with that..."
It's quite simple. You buy Huawei products, as they are acknowledged to be the leaders, analyse the shit out of them (i.e. pinch the IP) improve of the sloppy coding, and voila! Success!!
If you can't learn off successful companies, what else are you gonna do?