After an extended Christmas break, from which Scott has yet to emerge, Jamie drafts in Iain from Light Reading and Jesse from TBI to take an early look at what we should care about, or not, in 2018. They start by trying to care about net neutrality and largely fail to do so, but they do manage to care a bit more about the prospect of Apple buying Netflix. With a heavy heart the team concludes with 5G, which they feel compelled to at least pretend they care about, except Jesse.

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Having taken an extra week to get over the GloTel Awards, Scott and Jamie are back with a brand new special guest. William Webb is a wireless industry consultant and author and has some strong views on all the hype around 5G, so we thought we’d focus on that topic for the whole pod. Jamie reflects on some sceptical vibes coming from operators around 5G, while William asks what took them so long to speak up. They conclude IoT is likely to be the most useful 5G feature in the mid-term and finish off with some utopian predictions.

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This special edition of the Telecoms.com podcast is brought to you from the Global Telecoms Awards because nobody felt like coming into the office the next day. Scott, Ray, Jamie and Iain all reflect on a top night out, with Scott trying to nip his hangover in the bud with a bottle of bubbly he nicked off another table. Earlier in the week Vodafone tried something a bit different with its tariffs, but Iain wasn’t impressed, preferring instead to bang on about Ericsson’s lofty 5G claims.

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Having been abandoned a week ago Scott is once more joined by Jamie and Iain. They start by recapping the recent Broadband World Forum event in Berlin, which was attended by Iain and Scott, the latter being reminded how little he knows about fixed line networking. Meanwhile we’re in the middle of the Q3 earnings season and the big US tech giants are raking it in once more. One the back of that they mull over the power of the big internet brands and wonder which other industries they might yet disrupt.

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This week we welcome guest podder Jesse from TV business title TBI to talk about how video content is distributed and monetized, and what lesson the telecoms world can learn in its apparent desperation to move in that direction. Jamie is back from his latest travels and brings us news of what was discussed at the Nordic Digital Business Summit. We conclude by reviewing some of the week’s corporate dramas, with Hollywood even managing to put itself in the spotlight on that front too.

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The Light Reading sandwich makes appearance once more as Scott is joined by Ray and Iain. They start by arguing the toss over whether ISPs should be allowed to sell broadband on the basis of ‘up to’ a maximum speed that is rarely achieved, which leads to a showdown between the LR lads. Moving further afield, they reflect on the turmoil in the Indian telecoms market caused by the disruptive entry of Reliance Jio and then move on to the growing need to automate a lot of network management. To finish, the guys reflect on their favourite cocktails and conclude Iain may need to revise the way he orders his.

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Our team of talkative telecoms trouble-makers turn their sceptical gaze onto the turmoil at the top of TIM this week, where Vivendi is exercising far more control than its 24% shareholding would seem to allow. Later they wrestle with the many challenges surrounding the smart home, which in Scott’s case includes even being able to say it properly. Lastly the guys tackle the age-old question of how operators can best move with the times and ask whether they’re even capable of change.

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Jamie’s back and he, Scott and Iain from Light Reading discuss the decision to kick Uber out of London, which threatens to make going out on the piss until the small hours significantly more expensive in the capital. Meanwhile Deutsche Telekom has launched an offensive on the content market as the two worlds increasingly collide. Lastly the team have a look at Google’s latest smartphone move, which involves grabbing the cream of HTC’s engineering talent, and wonder what this means for the future of HTC.

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In the absence of Jamie, Scott becomes the filling in a Light Reading sandwich as he’s outnumbered by Ray and Iain. The three discuss long overdue big investments in fibre from the likes of Vodafone and Verizon, and why they matter. Talking about big investments they move on to the exceptional sum Apple wants for its latest shiny thing and to what extent that’s taking the piss. The gang concludes by reflecting on the necessity of the distributed cloud and how paying for it is nearly as expensive as buying an iPhone X.

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Scott and Jamie are joined by Ray from Light Reading and the team start by reflecting on the amount of moaning the impending UK 5G auctions have caused. They then ponder how little control we have over our digital live and ask whether there should be a limit on the power of the dominant digital utilities. Lastly Ray derides dirty data, which is bad, naughty and needs to be thoroughly spanked to teach it a lesson, prompting one of Scott's paranoid AI tangents.

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