Light Reading Podcasts

Cities are huge consumers of telecom connectivity and services but the path to becoming "smart" cities looks a lot different now than it did even a year ago. US Ignite's Mari Silbey joins Light Reading's Kelsey Ziser and Phil Harvey to help dig into two areas: data analytics and infrastructure sharing. Both topics are on the minds of city leaders and telecom providers as cities work to become more...

Bill Walker, former senior director of strategy & advancement at CenturyLink, joins the podcast to offer his thoughts on what telcos are good at, what needs to change in telco culture and what kinds of companies he sees becoming bigger competitors to the traditional network operators. As a former engineer at Oracle and Sun Microsystems, Bill has a background in the IT side of things and unders...

In this episode, Ray, Kelsey and Phil talk about why so many believe that innovation at The Edge will unlock a lot of promises of next-generation networks. It will be a challenge -- getting those boundaries between the physical and digital worlds to blur will require some things that telcos can do well and some things they'll need a lot of help to accomplish. Sign up today for the Light Reading ne...

Light Reading's Mike Dano joins the podcast to discuss how are all the major US telcos handling 5G pricing, which carriers seem to have the most practical pricing strategies so far, and how what we pay for 5G services could change over time. Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Light Reading's Kelsey Ziser joins the podcast to discuss some of the insights and helpful advice she's heard while doing interviews for Light Reading's Women In Comms content series. Light Reading's Women In Comms page, in case you haven't been watching, includes frequent interviews and articles by Ziser, as well as the weekly WiCipedia roundup of news items. WiCipedia, compiled by Eryn Leavens,...

What happened for telcos and cable operators to keep an eye on at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)? Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner and Phil Harvey sort it all out for you on the podcast. Apple took some big steps toward protecting the privacy of its users and distancing itself from Facebook, Google and other companies that sell ads using a consumer's personal details or device lo...

Light Reading's Mitch Wagner and Phil Harvey conclude that the government's rhetoric around Huawei as a national security threat sure would sound more reassuring if someone, somewhere actually presented proof. They also discuss when to expect 5G's benefits to come to a neighborhood near you. Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...

As the US ramps its trade war with China, Google became one of several companies that said it would limit the software services it provides to Huawei. The aftershocks of that decision could be severe, said Daniel Gleeson, Principal Analyst, Consumer Technology at Ovum. In this podcast episode, recorded May 21, Gleeson discusses Huawei's device business, which shipped about 207 million smartphones...

In this podcast, recorded on May 17, Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner discusses why Disney's control of Hulu could change things for the SVOD (subscription video on demand) portion of the service. He also weighs in on whether Disney's ownership makes Hulu more competitive to AT&T, Comcast and the other traditional pay TV service providers. Meanwhile, as 5G networks are being built, almost ever...

This "live" episode was recorded on Tuesday, May 7 at the Big 5G Event event in Denver, Colorado. After a few happy-hour refreshments, Light Reading's Ray Le Maistre and Phil Harvey were joined by two guests -- Light Reading's Mike Dano and US Ignite's Mari Silbey -- to sum up the state of 5G, why US cities are closely watching 5G deployments, and what we can look forward to as 2019 rolls on. Sign...

Light Reading Senior Editor Jeff Baumgartner joins us to revisit the saga of Omniverse One World Television, an over-the-top (OTT) distributor of live pay TV channels to all kinds of competitive players. Some of those companies have decided to back away from the pay-TV market. Jeff explains what's going on as the saga continues. Also, Light Reading's Mike Dano reviews what T-Mobile's options are i...

From a sunny conference room in NYC, Light Reading's Phil Harvey and Ray Le Maistre talk about Verizon's mobile 5G launch in Chicago and Minneapolis, what's behind the recent AWS hire of noted SDN and NFV expert Tetsuya Nakamura and they share a few notes from the front as the Internet video streaming market just gets crazier and more crowded with choices. Sign up today for the Light Reading newsl...

Forget Apple TV and Apple TV Plus. There's no wilder story in the world of pay TV than the controversy surrounding Omniverse One World Television. In this podcast, Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner and Phil Harvey discuss how Omniverse turned up on the cable industry's radar, why it is upsetting content owners and whether the company's claim of a 100-year contract to distribute pay-TV channels is g...

Recorded at last week's CNG2019 event in Denver, Light Reading's Alan Breznick interviews Mari Silbey, the director of communications for US Ignite. Silbey, a former Light Reading editor, is also director of the US Ignite Forum, a program that brings local government officials and their partners together to share smart city challenges, strategies and best practices. Breznick quizzes Silbey on what...

Light Reading's Kelsey Ziser, Alan Breznick and Jeff Baumgartner join Phil Harvey for a round of drinks and a chat after the opening day of CNG2019 in Denver. The "bomb cyclone" did its worst, but it couldn't stop us from debating 10G vs. 5G and, also, how the cable providers are now talking about including and integrating Internet streaming services, like Netflix, instead of competing with them....

Light Reading editors Kelsey Ziser, Ray Le Maistre and Mike Dano discussed all the important 5G topics from the InterDigital booth on the show floor at MWC19 in Barcelona. They covered millimeter wave spectrum, the thrills and danger of flying taxis and what the hell we're going to do with all the data that IoT devices will be throwing off as they get connected to faster and faster networks. Sign...

In this special episode of the Light Reading podcast, Editor-in-Chief Ray Le Maistre interviewed Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm on the show floor at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Ekholm discussed a wide variety of topics, including 5G, 4G, antenna tech, the Kathrein acquisition and why Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen is better than Duran Duran. We're not sure that last point was ever up for debate b...

Late in the day on Tuesday, Feb. 26, Light Reading's Phil "Captain Jetlag" Harvey and Ray Le Maistre attempted to fight through hunger, sleeplessness and coffee jitters to do a live podcast from the InterDigital booth in Hall 7 of the sprawling, soulless Fira Gran Via in Barcelona. Topics covered during the live chat included the new role of edge computing or, if you like, localized cloud computin...

Light Reading's Mitch Wagner and Phil Harvey discuss the recently reported deal between AT&T and Mirantis. A week ago, Mirantis announced that it was joining Airship , an open source infrastructure project that aims to help telcos use on-premises Kubernetes infrastructure to support their efforts to modernize, cloudify and otherwise make their networks more efficient (and less dependent on a s...

Light Reading's Phil Harvey and Ray Le Maistre chew on the latest offers from T-Mobile, Verizon, and Orange while discussing the broader theme of how traditional carriers can become (and be perceived as) something more than connectivity providers. When should a telco become a media company? Or a lifestyle brand? Or a bank? The answer depends on the company, but each company, as it changes and mode...

The world of pay TV is an unholy mess, and no one is better at keeping up with the players, plans, and problems than Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner. In this podcast, Jeff joins Phil Harvey for a chat about how cable providers are using mobile, why adding Netflix to your set-top isn't a bad idea and what kind of subscribers aren't worth chasing. Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hos...

Mike Dano, Light Reading's Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, joins Phil Harvey for the podcast this week to discuss the big carrier moves at CES 2019. The annual consumer electronics confab last week featured all kinds of advanced tech for homes and, especially, automobiles. Underpinning it all, though is 5G, the next generation of the mobile and communications network. Dano flips th...

The first big telecom story of 2019 was an earnings miss by Apple. But why was this sales warning more significant than just a cyclical, seasonal slowdown? Light Reading's Executive Editor Mitch Wagner joins Phil Harvey to parse the Apple madness and to talk about how well the company can adjust to a world that doesn’t buy a new iPhone every 12 months. Also, we run down our roster of office pets a...

Following the company's earnings call, Ciena CEO Gary Smith told Light Reading's Phil Harvey that competitor Huawei's troubles with governments and telecom carriers around the world aren't much of a catalyst right now. Big carriers have already been eager to balance their equipment portfolios and avoid being beholden to one single, dominant vendor, Smith said. He also noted that Ray Le Maistre was...

Huawei's troubles with Western governments are more than just a setback for telco equipment sales. The vendor's problems could result in a delay and the slowed development of 5G networks around the world. Huawei has shipped more than 10,000 5G base stations outside of China, so it's reach and influence is formidable. Light Reading's Ray Le Maistre ponders whether those companies carrying Huawei ge...