Just Iain and Scott this week as they record ahead of the Glotel Awards evening. Pausing only to reflect on Iain’s hangover they start by discussing claims that T-Mobile US may be on the verge of ditching Nokia as a RAN vendor, which largely revolve around the pros and cons of using fans to keep things cool. They eventually move on to a story Iain wrote examining US vendor Mavenir’s struggles with 5G, before moving on to Scott’s pet topic of how geopolitics impacts the telecoms sector.
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1:33:50
Ofcom, regulation and Fyuz
The lads were delighted to welcome Harry Rippon of UK communications regulator Ofcom to the pod this week. They start by exploring the increasing number of roles Ofcom has in the UK comms market, touching on pricing and spectrum, before an inevitable Scott rant about censorship. That only leaves time for one more segment, in which Iain reflects on his attendance of the Fyuz event, as which Open RAN’s state or progress was a major theme.
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1:53:20
The Telecoms.com Podcast: VodaThree, BT and Trump
The pod is back, having skipped a week to allow Scott to galavant around Istanbul, and is delighted to welcome back special guest Neil McRae of Juniper Networks. After hearing all about Scott’s trip they get into the main news of the week – the near approval of the UK operator megamerger of Vodafone and Three. They eventually move on to discuss the latest developments in BT’s strategy before reflecting on the recent election of Donald Trump as US President and what that may mean for telecoms.
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1:53:04
US vs China, Huawei and telecoms recession
There’s no guest this week, which is just as well as they didn’t have enough cameras to record three people anyway. The lads start by examining the many ways America is trying to starve China of access to semiconductors. That inevitably involves Huawei, which is the main proxy for this initiative, and they eventually move on to discuss Europe’s hesitance to do what the US tells it regarding Huawei, before concluding with the latest signals concerning the telecoms recession.
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1:59:01
Ericsson, Nokia and smartphone bans
Iain is back as co-host following Scott’s return from Paris and it’s just the two of them for their reunion. The big telecoms news of the week concerned quarterly announcements from big kit vendors Ericsson and Nokia, so they spend much of the pod analysing those, along with the usual tangents. They eventually get around to one more topic, a discussion of calls to ban smartphones in schools.
UK