Jamie and Scott are joined by Ray from Light Reading, who kicks things off by analysing why the big telecoms vendors seem to be stepping up their M&A activity – spoiler alert: it’s all about automation and being cloud-native. Conversation moves seamlessly on to the jigsaw puzzle that is 5G as, more than any previous generation, a lot of pieces have to be in place for it to work properly. After some meandering tangents the guys conclude with a look at the growing hostility by western governme...
Sep 10, 2018•39 min
Scott is back from his challenging summer holiday and just can’t wait to hang out with his podcast chums Jamie and Iain once more. They start by talking about T-Mobile US and its distinctly conservative ‘uncarrier’ event, and ponder what operators can do to make a difference. They eventually move on to discuss the thorny issue of social media censorship and conclude with a growing trend towards protectionism and countries trying to become more self-reliant on telecoms kit. Stay up to date with t...
Aug 20, 2018•51 min
With ‘the talent’ all on holiday we’re left with just Jamie and Ray for this week’s instalment. Ray had a chat with a senior Ericsson dude about its cunning investment plans, of which he approves. Meanwhile Jamie offers an update on what Samsung is up to, including a bunch of AI investments, and wonders what the hell the point of Bixby is. Lastly Ray ponders the implications of Cisco losing the head of its service provider business but declines to make himself available for the vacancy. Stay up ...
Aug 13, 2018•30 min
Jamie is in charge, about time by Telecoms.com
Jul 30, 2018•47 min
With Jamie back from his travels, Iain recovered from his pre-season football industry and Wei making his debut appearance on the Telecoms.com, the trio have a look at Nokia’s numbers, the spectrum of convergence success this week and a bit more China chaos. Stay up to date with the most important telecoms stories from around the world with the Telecoms.com daily newsletter. Delivered FREE and direct to your inbox every day: http://ow.ly/XPA150KWZmO
Jul 30, 2018•47 min
Scott is struggling in this episode, having been led astray by Ericsson’s PR team the previous evening, but he holds it together long enough to compare notes with Ray about their chat with Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm. Leaving Ray to his Rubik’s Cube, Jamie decides to join in to tell us all about how Iliad is disrupting the Italian mobile market. Then, inspired by his puzzling success, Ray treats us to a look at blockchain in telecoms to finish things off. Stay up to date with the most important te...
Jul 23, 2018•45 min
Iain kicks off this week with tales from Transylvania, which he recently visited to hear about all the cool things Orange Romania is working on with 5G such as fixed wireless access and smart cities. Scott then moves on to chapter 11 of the ZTE saga, in which the fraught Chinese kit vendor seems to have been offered a lifeline of sorts from by the US. The guys then move on to the content side of things and pray AT&T doesn’t ruin HBO, before concluding with a tangential review the World Cup a...
Jul 10, 2018•58 min
It’s just Iain and Scott this week, with Jamie Shanghaied in China at their equivalent of MWC. They start by toasting a Light Reading report from the show in which the Huawei CEO had a pop at a US senator, precipitating a social media war. They then nip over to the smartphone world, where Scott has been mucking about with a few of the latest ones to work out which he should buy next. For a night-cap they conclude with a look at TIM/Telecom Italia, where the CEO has been moaning about his own boa...
Jul 02, 2018•54 min
There’s a cosmopolitan theme to the pod this week with Scott reflecting on his trip to Stockholm to hang out with Ericsson and Jamie looking forward with some trepidation to breakfast in China. We also hear about a recent Connected Britain event from guest podder Shannon, who also fuels a massive tangent about the pros and cons of social media. Iain ruins the jaunty mood by lamenting the continuing attrition of jobs among the world’s operators. Stay up to date with the most important telecoms st...
Jun 25, 2018•47 min
This week we bring you the pod live (or at least it was when we filmed it) from 5G World 2018 in London – an event that tested the stamina of our youngest team member. Scott reflects on apparent sentiment that everyone should stop moaning about 5G business cases and just get on with it, while Iain notes the downbeat current phase of the 5G hype cycle, Jamie laments a relative lack of ambition from European operators and guest podder Elliott reflects on living the 5G dream. Stay up to date with t...
Jun 15, 2018•23 min
Scott, Jamie and Iain ponder the significance of haircuts at the top of the corporate food chain, with the luxuriantly coiffured Gavin Patterson reaching the end of his tenure at BT and the often mulleted Hans Vestberg set to take over at Verizon. Iain and Jamie then reminisce about some swanky lunches they both attended with Vodafone and Orange, and declare a winner. Scott finishes with a look at a cheeky move by Ofcom to give UK operators a financial haircut. Stay up to date with the most impo...
Jun 11, 2018•44 min
Scott and Jamie are joined by Ray from Light Reading this week, who can barely contain his excitement at the prospect of talking about regulation. The guys reflect on the entirely predictable SNAFU that has been the first week of GDPR, before reflecting on Nokia’s more recent devices misadventures following the failed Withings experiment. Ray concludes with look at where we are now regarding virtualization which is so authoritative that the other two wisely decide not to try to pick holes in it....
Jun 04, 2018•41 min
The usual suspects are back after a week of globetrotting to industry trade shows. Iain and Scott reflect on their time at Digital Transformation World and discuss whether or not telcos should even bother digitally transforming themselves. At the same time Jamie was in the US at the Big Communications Event, at which he heard about how Jio is going to continue transforming the Indian market. They then move on to the transformation of ZTE from a thriving company to a dying one, and maybe back aga...
May 29, 2018•53 min
Jamie leads the pod this week, fresh from and appearing on proper telly to talk about BT axing a bunch of jobs, and he is clearly still buzzing. We then move onto Iain, who hasn’t even been on YouTube this week and has instead been analysing Vodafone’s acquisition of a bunch of Liberty Global stuff. When Scott gets his turn he laments the catastrophic situation ZTE has found itself in and then finishes off with his trademark fearmongering about AI, with a focus on audio. Stay up to date with the...
May 15, 2018•44 min
Scott and Jamie once more risk exposing their dilettantism this week as they welcome Gabriel Brown – an Analyst, no less, from Heavy Reading. They start with a look at the longest courtship in telecoms: T-Mobile US and Sprint, who have finally decided to make honest operators of each other. They move onto 5G – one of Gabriel’s core areas – and he becomes so animated in response to a random question from Pierre that he won’t stop banging the microphone. They conclude with some breaking news (at l...
May 08, 2018•55 min
Jamie and Scott are joined by Iain from Light Reading this week and they start by discussing the pros and cons of becoming a communications-slash-content provider. Is convergence a sound business strategy or is it better to just stick with what your company’s best at? Is it good for you to consume a lot of VOD? Not during a podcast it would seem as Iain and Scott are forced to improvise while Jamie literally goes for a slash. Unperturbed they move onto the ongoing subject of Chinese vendors gett...
Apr 23, 2018•48 min
The pod regulars are joined by Ray from Light Reading once more this week. They start with a discussion about how inadequate the policing of the digital economy is, with legislators and regulators struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change. Jamie feels so strongly about it that he’s moved to frankly shocking profanity. He then composes himself long enough to tell us about the tension between national and state-level attitudes to technology in the US, allowing Ray to step in and ...
Apr 16, 2018•45 min
This week only Scott and Jamie managed to make it into the studio after the long-weekend of chocolate, countryside walks and beer. This week sees the end of the 5G auction with the guys wondering why Ofcom feels it can charge so much, Facebook just continues to offer easy pickings for the technology journalists of the world and we finish off with a look at how to do M&A correctly… Stay up to date with the most important telecoms stories from around the world with the Telecoms.com daily newsl...
Apr 09, 2018•53 min
Scott and Jamie are joined by Ray from Light Reading and go straight into the big story of the week: Cambridge Analytica. The guys more or less agree that it’s ultimately all about how little control we have over our personal data and wonder what can be done about it. More importantly they also speculate about which Star Wars characters they are. Ray steers conversation onto 5G for a change and stresses that it’s all very well banging on about clever radio technology, but unless you deal with th...
Mar 26, 2018•46 min
The usual suspects start by discussing an Ericsson interview Scott did at MWC but soon go off onto a random tangent about devices, about which Jamie claims to be indifferent despite being umbilically attached to his. Inevitable comparisons with Nokia ensue and they speculate about who is doing better. They both need to catch up with Huawei and they will probably be helped in that aim by Donald Trump, who seems determined to make it as difficult as possible for China to do business with the US, a...
Mar 19, 2018•46 min
Iain, Jamie and Scott move on from the rigours of MWC by reflecting on some of the conversations they had in Barcelona about how much progress we have made with NFV. The answer seems to vary wildly according to who you speak to and it seems clear that industry consensus remains elusive. Jamie then talks us through some of the highlights of the next version of Android, including a new indoor location technology, which leads to conversational tangents including Bluetooth and the MWC smartphone app...
Mar 12, 2018•46 min
Such is our devotion to podcasting that we even did one from the MWC show floor in Barcelona. Scott and Jamie were joined by Dan Jones from Light Reading and Ed Barton from Ovum. They started with a look at the state of the megatrends that are 5G and IoT, with Scott reckoning talk around them got a lot more focused this year but some of the other guys were not so sure. Jamie has been focusing on artificial intelligence at the show, Dan has been all over the latest smartphone launches and Ed was ...
Mar 01, 2018•32 min
With the biggest telecoms event of the year just around the corner Scott, Jamie and Iain bring you this special preview of Mobile World Congress 2018 for you to download and listen to on the plane. Scott starts with the obvious stuff – the big buzzwords that are 5G and IoT. The level of 5G fervour will hit fever pitch but how many solid business cases will there be for the new wireless generation? The same goes for IoT, which promises much-needed diversification for operators but who’s buying. J...
Feb 23, 2018•58 min
This week’s pod had to battle the odds to take place at all, with Jamie and Iain both on holiday and Telecoms Towers undergoing refurbishment, but Ray from Light Reading found a window in his hectic schedule to keep Scott company. First we heard about Ray’s trip to sunny Valencia to learn all about the state of European fibre. He expressed frustration at the apparent lack of urgency in building fibre to the building as it’s as important piece of infrastructure as any and the potential returns on...
Feb 19, 2018•26 min
Scott and Jamie are joined by special guest Paul Nolan from PR agency CC Group, who tells us about a bit of research his company commissioned into how operators are going about the macro trend that is digital transformation and what vendors are doing to help them. Spoiler alert – it’s complicated. Scott tells us about his week in San Diego with Qualcomm, hearing all about the wonders of 5G and definitely not talking about all the other dramas Qualcomm is currently involved in. Lastly Jamie expre...
Feb 12, 2018•37 min
This week, Scott and Jamie welcome back Iain ‘sicknote’ Morris to get knee-deep in the barrage of quarterly financials. In the UK, BT has wobbly through the three months like a bland jelly, Nokia and Ericsson contemplate life in the spending drought, while the technology giants suck up profits like a demonic Henry the Hoover. We also have a go at guessing what Apple might spent the billions it has stashed away in the bank… Stay up to date with the most important telecoms stories from around the ...
Feb 06, 2018•18 min
Iain called a sickie this week so we drafted in Trystan, otherwise known as the man in the street, to give us a different perspective on all the stuff we bang on about. Jamie kicks things off with a look at increasing calls for transparency and what this says about the breakdown of trust, but they soon go off on a general social media tangent. Scott eventually moves things along to the US/China tensions and what this might mean for big US chip players, but slips in an Orange content tangent. The...
Jan 29, 2018•53 min
The usual suspects attempt to circumnavigate the globe from the comfort of their studio. Iain, Jamie and Scott start by taking a look at the UK broadband scene, where we’re increasingly looking for more fibre in our diets but we’re still not sure why. Moving on to Germany Iain claims a little scoopette with the revelation that Deutsche Telekom has had a cabinet reshuffle and gets to show off his awesome German pronunciation skills. On the other side of the pond the US seems to be getting increas...
Jan 22, 2018•46 min
Scott’s finally decided to do some work in 2018 and is joined by Jamie (and his many donuts) and Iain from Light Reading. They start with a review of CES – the first big tech show of the year – and its obsession with voice-driven smart speakers. They move on to the hot topic of social media censorship and, between donuts, Jamie seems to think Scott should be censored for starters, followed by government ministers tweeting about their days out instead of running the country. The team concludes wi...
Jan 15, 2018•53 min
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. Stay up to date wi...
Jan 08, 2018•47 min
