Light Reading Podcasts

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The Divide: David Gilford on local priorities for federal broadband funds Apr 15, 2021

Show notes

On this episode, we hear from David Gilford, principal at HR&A Advisors and co-founder of the Broadband Equity Partnership: a consultancy focused on ending the digital divide in the US. In partnership with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, the Broadband Equity Partnership recently issued a survey to 120 government and nonprofit broadband leaders across the country to assess local priorities for the federal government's broadband stimulus. David joins the podcast to discuss the results of that research and the key takeaways for Congress as lawmakers negotiate legislation around President Biden's $100 billion broadband plan.

Sponsored podcast: How Plume's WorkPass can bring smart connectivity to SMBs Apr 09, 2021

Show notes

On this sponsored edition of the Light Reading podcast, we chat with Tyson Marian, Plume's chief commercial officer, about the company's new product, WorkPass. We'll cover what WorkPass is and why Plume is building services for small businesses. As part of that discussion, we'll discuss how Plume uses its experience in managing smart homes – especially its cloud and AI expertise – to help small businesses deal with their most challenging network issues. As ever, with Plume, it's not just about the end user. The company's biggest customers are some of the world's largest service providers, so we'll discuss how those CSPs will use WorkPass to complement their existing offers and how it works with their current connectivity products and existing back-end systems. Marian conducts the entire podcast interview from a local small business he frequents to take a break from the WFH life. He offers some firsthand knowledge on how having smart connectivity options can make a difference as small businesses recover from their pandemic setbacks.

Microsoft Azure's Yousef Khalidi curates carrier clouds Apr 09, 2021

Show notes

Yousef Khalidi, corporate VP of Azure for Operators at Microsoft and a member of the founding team of Azure, joins the podcast to discuss how his role has evolved to working on Azure for Operators. Khalidi explains why working with service providers requires a different approach to enterprise customers. "Operators have very unique requirements," says Khalidi. "The level of carrier-grade networking and availability is higher than what most other customers need. On a technical level, things like packet processing, number of loads and so forth, are much higher than what you would need for an enterprise application." Khalidi also discusses the economic benefits operators can experience by partnering with a cloud provider, such as cost savings and new monetization opportunities, and how the cloud model enables operators to "really future-proof more of the infrastructure and concentrate on your value-add versus the plumbing."

The Divide: Scott Willis, Bruce Garrison on the 'collective ecosystem' needed to close the gap Apr 08, 2021

Show notes

On this episode, we hear from Scott Willis, CEO of DartPoints, a colocation data center provider; as well as Bruce Garrison, chief revenue officer at Bluebird Network, a regional provider of fiber infrastructure. We discuss the different ways their companies are addressing the digital divide in the communities they serve, including in rural Iowa, and the ecosystem of companies necessary to improve access to connectivity and digital resources.

The Divide: Fiber Broadband Association's Gary Bolton on the 'good news, good news' for fiber Apr 01, 2021

Show notes

On this episode, we hear from Gary Bolton, President and CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association: an organization of over 350 companies focused on delivering an all-fiber broadband network across the Americas. As the head of the Fiber Broadband Association, Gary is unsurprisingly pretty optimistic about fiber's potential and progress. We discuss why he says the US needs a fiber-first strategy and the legislation in Congress that could get us there, why hype around satellite broadband could be a "disaster" for communities, and why municipalities and electric cooperatives are becoming "the biggest emerging class of fiber deployers."

Light Reading's Mike Dano: Six questions about 6G Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

Light Reading's Mike Dano joins the podcast to discuss which service providers and vendors are pulling ahead in the planning stages for 6G. In addition, Dano examines whether 6G will reach the terabyte per second speed threshold, and whether the industry will experience a smooth transition from 5G to 6G. While much is yet to be determined in regard to the benefits of 6G, Dano says there are two tangible improvements coming with the technology: "There's a discussion that 6G will be 80GHz and above that – 95GHz – all these super high-frequency communications. Most people agree that 6G is in even higher spectrum bands." The second tangible improvement, explains Dano, is that 6G could provide more realistic VR experiences where science-fiction movies such as Ready Player One become a reality.

MetTel's Ed Fox on extending enterprise IT to home networks Mar 31, 2021

Show notes

Ed Fox, CTO of MetTel, joins the Light Reading podcast to discuss challenges in extending SD-WAN services to home networks, whether SASE makes sense to enterprise customers and how MetTel is helping its customers navigate the onslaught of video conferencing and messaging applications. "Extending SD-WAN to the home – we've done it sparingly and not as much as you would have thought," says Fox. As employees return to the office, Fox predicts that enterprises will take a hard look at the VPN, SD-WAN and SASE services available as they develop strategies around their move to the cloud and also balance IT support for remote and on-premises employees. "There was a lot of trepidation [from enterprise customers] about extending the network to home," says Fox. "Also, the IT departments didn't want to do it because now I have to deal with 'Joe's' cable modem and all of a sudden I'm in his home network? Those are some of the things we saw that really surprised us."

LR's Alan Breznick: The NFL's TV deals gave streaming platforms legitimacy, longevity Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Light Reading's Alan Breznick is back on the podcast to discuss whether the NFL's $110 billion deal with a number of streaming video services will be the nail in the coffin for traditional pay-TV bundles. "Everybody wants football and it's amazing that with football games on so many different places that the NFL is getting overexposed," says Breznick. "But it seems like you can't overexpose the NFL." In the lineup of streaming services that will now provide access to NFL games, Amazon Prime gained exclusive national TV rights to NFL's Thursday Night Football slate for a cool $1 billion per year. The move to hosting football games on streaming services also provides viewers with the ability to watch games on a number of different devices, which grants the NFL access to new data and insights into how viewers want to consume content.

Sponsored podcast: Simplifying fiber networks with end-to-end cloud management Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

Adtran's CTO, Ryan McCowan, discusses the benefits of Mosaic One, a network and services optimization platform purpose-built to reduce subscriber churn.

The Divide: Blair Levin and Clint Odom on digital equity and inclusion Mar 25, 2021

Show notes

On this episode, we hear from Blair Levin, who oversaw the creation of the National Broadband Plan under President Barack Obama and served as FCC Chairman Reed Hundt's chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, as well as Clint Odom, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Urban League. Earlier this year, the National Urban League put forth the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity & Inclusion, outlining steps toward ending the digital divide and creating a more equitable and inclusive society in the US. We discuss the goals of the plan, which include deploying networks everywhere, overcoming the significant adoption gap, using networks to improve the delivery of essential services and creating new economic opportunities in the digital economy – and how the National Urban League and others are working with policy makers at the federal level to advance this agenda.

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