LR Podcast: MEF's Grand Plans, Africa's Telecom Future

This week, the LR Podcast looks at the next wave of carrier services and the stunning variety of Africa's telecom markets.

Click on the link above to stream the podcast. It's also downloadable after you follow the link to the Soundcloud website by clicking on the "More" button on that site.

A few notes about this week's show:

• Last week, Carol Wilson previewed MEF 2017. This week, she has more details about MEF 3.0 and the organization's goals -- namely, trying to help define the next wave of virtualized carrier services.

  Her conversation comes from a video shoot that you can find here: MEF17: Breaking Down the Hot Topics.

• Carol alludes to a couple of other interviews with AT&T and Verizon. We'll add those links here as the videos go live. In the meantime, we can provide a link to her story about AT&T's plans for revamping the network edge.
  • AT&T Intelligent Edge Blurs Lines Between Cloud, CPE

• The conversation I really got excited about, though, was with Iain Morris about his trip to AfricaCom. As we disuss, starting at the 5:47 mark in the podcast, Africa is a diverse continent, with nations spanning the spectrum in terms of economic development and even political development -- just look at what's been happening in Zimbabwe this past week.

  Iain filed a slate of stories for our Connecting Africa site. I summarized them last week -- see Iain Morris on the Challenges of Connecting Africa -- but here are the links to a few others we discuss in the podcast.

  • Orange Botswana on Long Trek to 5G
  • Ericsson Forecasts Lackluster 5G Take-Up in Africa
  • Automation Anxiety Grips Africa
  • Huawei, Telcos Clash With Policymakers in Cape Town
  • ... and speaking of Zimbabwe, Mugabe's Man Bashes US & Asian Tech Firms.

• Music by Christopher Hawes (http://www.smilingcynic.com). © 2006-2014, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Let us know what you think of this format and these interviews -- and if you were at MEF 2017 or AfricaCom, feel free to chime in with your own perspective. Thanks for listening.

— Craig Matsumoto, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

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