The Leading Lights, Light Reading's flagship awards program, is back for 2023. This year, our awards program is getting a slightly earlier start so you'll have plenty of time to explore our new categories as we set out to recognize the industry's top companies and their executives for communications industry achievements.

We cover a wide variety of subjects in this year's contest with 22 categories in four broad groups: broadband, digital transformation, overall excellence and wireless. While far from comprehensive, we try to highlight themes that draw attention to the constant evolution of the global communications sector, its technologies, use cases, products and companies.

Here are three important links you need to have for the Leading Lights awards:

All Stars and MVPs

Like last year, we're again looking for companies to nominate Light Reading MVPs – individuals, at any corporate level, who made an unmistakable difference in their company, in their community and/or in the culture in the past 12 to 18 months. Last year we had six finalists and two winners and we hope to see many more inspiring individual stories this year.

We're also hoping to recognize companies for their efforts to help bridge the digital divide and increase access to technology and education. Check out the Digital Equity All-Stars category and let us know what efforts your company is making to help more people participate in remote learning and, more broadly, in the digital economy.

Figure 1:

Too many choices

Last year we gave out additional awards – the Editor's Choice Award – when some categories were closely contested. Based on your feedback we're tossing the additional award chances and reverting back to one winner per category. Good luck.

Deadlines

We plan to stop on Friday, June 30. Once our entry system is locked down, our editorial staff starts evaluating entries, following up with questions and consulting with sources to arrive at a list of finalists. The Leading Lights 2023 finalists will be announced on Friday, July 28, 2023.

Once the finalists are revealed, we'll engage a panel of industry experts to independently vet the entries again and help our editorial staff judge the categories. Their scores will help us pick the winners out of each category's list of finalists. If you'd like to nominate someone or toss your own hat in the ring to become one of our Leading Lights judges, please let me know. We have a great panel so far and I'd like to keep adding more eyes and years of experience to the already impressive group.

The Leading Lights Winners will be announced via a live online video presentation in September before the industry descends on the Nevada desert to attend MWC Las Vegas.

Figure 2:

The winning tradition

Our track record in this awards program suggests that any company that shows leadership in the telecom sector stands a good chance of winning. We adjust categories and the number of awards each year to make sure that startups and industry giants are on as level a playing field as possible.

Of course, the process isn't perfect. We are applying a multi-layered numeric judging process to a subjective evaluation of companies and, yes, we know we're comparing apples to oranges in some categories. That is partly why these awards are so sought after – they're as fair as we can make them, they're not objective and they could swing in your favor at any time.

Before entering this year's contest, please have a look back at the last decade of winners to see what ideas held up, what products were ahead of their time and what companies have been disappeared completely:

Summer is coming! Don't wait until the last minute: Get your entries in soon. Good luck!

— Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading