With everyone belatedly getting their acts together, the boys are back in town for the first pod of the year. They delayed long enough to hit the start of quarterly earnings season and Scott starts with a look at Ericsson’s numbers. That eventually leads to discussion of Huawei’s latest geopolitical challenges, with it braving the elements at Davos to plead for reason. Jamie and Iain conclude with a look at Vodafone’s numbers and some potential existential challenges.

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The last pod of the year sees Scott and Jamie joined by special guest Ed Barton from analyst firm Ovum. Ed starts by looking ahead to next year from a digital media perspective, including a look at the trend of telecoms companies trying to buy their way into content. They move onto a look at a Nokia managing to have a great week without doing anything and conclude with reflections on the rise of digital censorship. Along the way Jamie manages to pour coffee all over himself, which is amusing.

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In this special pod recorded on location in Portugal Scott is outnumbered by no less than three Light Reading hacks, including a first appearance from US editor Phil Harvey. They start by reviewing what little they’re allowed to discuss from the highly confidential 2020 Vision summit that brought them there, before reflecting the big telecoms news of the week concerning Huawei’s misfortunes. Scott then reflects on the imminence of the first 5G smartphones and Iain tells us about his lunch with Orange.

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The core team of Jamie, Iain and Scott are beck in town and they start by mulling over the faltering attempts of by operators to diversify away from their core business in the endless search for margin and growth. That moves them seamlessly onto the topic of operator consolidation and what is the optimal number of MNOs. Elsewhere suspicion of Chinese kit vendors remains the story that keeps on giving and Iain reckons there may be trouble ahead for 5G.

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A globetrotting podcast this week features Ray from Light Reading as Scott’s only conversational partner, but since he equates to at least two regular pundits that’s fine. They discuss the recent AfricaCom event in Cape Town, before moving onto the latest corporate shenanigans at Telecom Italia, which unhelpfully took place between the recording and publication of this podcast. They conclude with a look at EE and Virgin Media getting in trouble with Ofcom and Oracle trying to buy its way back into telecoms.

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The Telecoms.com and Light Reading teams put in a quick quarter of an hour at the end of the Global Telecoms Awards 2018 because none of them felt like coming in the next day. They reflect on a top night featuring the hilarious Russell Kane before recapping on some of the events they had attended that week. There are also impromptu guest appearances featuring Liz from sales and Analyst Paolo Pescatore.

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The usual suspects assemble once more in order to record their incoherent ramblings for your pleasure. They have all been travelling, with Jamie and Iain recalling their experiences at the Broadband World Forum event in Berlin, which included reckless consumption of absinthe. Scott, meanwhile, schlepped all the way over to Hong Kong in order to hang out with Qualcomm and talk incessantly about 5G. They conclude with a look both at the latest numbers served up by the big kit vendors and also Jamie’s latest toy.

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Scott and Jamie are joined by special guest Mary Clark – CMO of Synchronoss – this week. Playing to some of Mary’s many strengths they focus on the relationship between operators and their customers, especially in the areas of product innovation and customer experience. Mary offers insights into how this stuff gets discussed at the top table and the challenges involved. They conclude with a look at the smart home as a battleground between operators and OTTs for access to the consumer.

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Jamie, Ian and Scott take a look at the emerging story regarding allegations that some tech kit coming out of China contains a tiny chip which enables some degree of espionage. Everyone involved in the report is denying it but someone must be lying. On that note the debate moves on to what constitutes a genuine 5G launch as opposed to the many ‘5G firsts’ being claimed by late-stage trials. They conclude with a look at the continued dispute in the US over net neutrality regulations and other geographical tangents.

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It’s back to the usual suspects this week, with Jamie and Iain reflecting on their recent visit to Vodafone’s HQ for an update about what the operator group has been up to. Among the highlights were a holographic communications demo that even managed to impress Jamie. A number of other topics come up including, God help us, 6G, before they move onto the growing momentum behind the NB-IoT LPWAN standard and why we should care. The pod concludes with a spot of globe trotting, which includes India and Italy.

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