Light Reading Podcasts

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 every telco offering 5G services has a different approach to video. Light Reading's Mike Dano discusses T-Mobile's video strategy and why TVision is such a disappointment.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 if it is not allowed by merge with Sprint. And we quickly review Sprint's rather long list of strategic misses. Cringe right along with us, won't you?Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 genuinely over the top.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 makes a city smarter, what opportunities there are for network operators in this effort and what examples we can look at to find out how city governments and service providers have gone from squabbling about TV franchise rights to building cities of the future. Before that discussion, Light Reading's Phil Harvey kicks off the podcast with a quick rant about why he doesn't live in a smart city (and neither do you).Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Later in the podcast, Phil poses the question: "Would you ever buy your Internet video or pay-TV services from Exxon or Walmart?" It's not as silly a question as you might think. In non-conference topics, we debate what kinds of desserts and sweets really need to be served after lunch during a business conference.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 but, when you're talking to Light Reading, you'd better have a definitive cultural opinion at the ready. We caught Ekholm just after he finished speaking to analysts and reporters at the opening press conference at MWC19. There, he was echoing his worries that post-development 5G testing -- testing proposed to address concerns about network security -- would run the risk of being of harming competition for 5G services in industrial markets. For more coverage of his remarks and the rest of Light Reading's MWC19 coverage, please visit https://www.lightreading.com/mobile-world-congress.asp.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 computing in manufacturing. Phil thinks that making industrial equipment more mobile and agile is perhaps more exciting than anything 5G-related. Meanwhile, Ray adds that telco business models, as both connectivity providers and technology enablers, are sure to change as telcos begin to properly use AI and react to the trends that their customer data reveals about their businesses. Finally, the two wrap up with some general show observations and Ray continues his decades-long streak of abusing Duran Duran and anyone who likes their music.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 single vendor). We discuss Wagner's reporting on the subject and how it led to an even bigger story about AT&T's use of OpenStack and Kubernetes and what those technology choices say about AT&T's evolving 4G network (the one that it calls "5G"). Wagner talks about the strategic importance of open source to AT&T and, during the last 7 minutes of the podcast, he even gives public relations pros some useful advice on getting his -- or any other editor's -- attention. At the 30-minute mark, Phil's cat Rosie decides she's not going to wait for theme music before bringing the whole show to a screeching halt, as only a professional office cat can.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 modernizes to keep up with competitors, should always be looking for places that it can disrupt others. Later in the show, we ponder then unintended consequences of Huawei's troubles in the U.S. Could we someday miss out on innovation in the U.S. and Europe because we were all too quick to demonize a world-beating Chinese rival in the telecom space?Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 through his notebook and offers his updates from the show, assesses each national carrier's progress in the 5G race. We also test just how good-natured a guy he really is by asking questions scientifically engineered to get journalists to complain about trade shows and casinos.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 and discuss the proper ways to use one of those fancy Apple watches. Hey, Siri, you really don't want to miss this podcast.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 right about telecom RFPs. Yeah, we're pretty shocked, too.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 gear will now put everything on ice and wait to see what happens next. Also on the podcast, with so many advanced technologies making their way into the communications landscape, it is becoming more apparent that case studies -- use cases of any size and scope -- are increasingly valuable as news. Light Reading's Phil Harvey insists that your industry colleagues want to know what's going on and he explains why now is the perfect time to start sharing.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this podcast, we discussed CenturyLink new CTO, why Dull But Critical (DBC) is our favorite category of telecom infrastructure, how cable companies are warming up to the cloud, and we ask a critical question: Does the telecom industry need RFPs? Recorded on Nov. 12, 2018.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Light Reading's Jeff Baumgartner and Phil Harvey discuss why CommScope is buying Arris and whether the combination will rejuvenate both businesses and make the new company a player in 5G. Recorded Nov. 8, 2018.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Le Maistre and Harvey discuss the upside of Verizon’s recent restructuring under new CEO Hans Vestberg, as the carrier prepares to bring 5G to the nation. These things always sound good in theory and this probably is a good thing for Verizon, but it’s going to be tough to pull off. Later on, the two discuss the new Freddie Mercury biopic and why even a critically panned movie is okay if it reminds us of great concerts and excellent music. Recorded on Nov. 5, 2018.Sign up today for the Light Reading newsletter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.