Stories about bankruptcy continue to populate our monthly countdown, but Windstream and Fusion Connect, the two biggest names in the channel to file chapter 11 this year, are making big strides to emerge as stronger companies.

Those updates appear here, as do the latest SD-WAN rankings; you love to see who’s at the top of the leaderboard and those companies pushing for that No. 1 spot.

October also saw CenturyLink data exposed online and a mammoth deal between RingCentral and Avaya that will change the unified communications landscape for years to come.

As always, our top 12, in the gallery below, feature not only those stories that get the most web traffic, but also those that get your attention in our weekly newsletters. You can sign up for those here.

Missed the previous month’s top stories? Click here to see our most-read posts in September.

Follow executive editor @Craig_Galbraith on Twitter.