The architecture and deployment of mobile networks has experienced dramatic transformation in the past decade, enabled through embracing “disaggregation” at different levels. This in turn has led to diversification of the ecosystem. At the same time, disaggregation of mobile networking systems introduces new challenges. In this talk, I’ll start by giving my perspective on the key drivers (economic and beyond) behind the remarkable transformation of the mobile networking landscape and outline three levels of disaggregation that played a pivotal role. I’ll then shift focus to the challenges arising from disaggregation and my research works aimed at addressing them. In particular, I will highlight my two most recent works in this direction — CoreKube (MobiCom’23) and SpotLight (MobiCom’24) that respectively focus on choosing the right granularity for effective control plane disaggregation in the mobile core and easing the operational complexity in disaggregated multi-vendor Open RAN.