Win a Genuine Telecom Artifact at This Year's Leading Lights Awards

Light Reading's Leading Lights Awards hardly are already a classy affair -- just check out these pics from last year as evidence -- but that doesn't mean we can't make them even more special.

So for this year's awards dinner we have something a little bit special for the winner of the 2016 Company of the Year (Public) award -- an original Ericsson 'Skeleton' telephone, designed by Lars Magnus Ericsson in 1892.

Figure 1: The Original 'Smart' Phone The Ericsson 'Skeleton' telephone that will be taken home by the Leading Lights 2016 Company of the Year (Public) category winner.

The phone, for which Light Reading just outbid other eager potential owners at auction, will be mounted and presented as the top honor at this year's awards ceremony in Austin, Texas (location details to follow), on Monday May 23. The winning company gets to keep the trophy for a year, make a few calls to the 19th century, and return it in time for the 2017 awards…

So how can your company win this amazing prize? Well, you'll need to enter that specific award category -- Company of the Year (Public) -- and prove you just had an amazing year that made you stand out from your rivals and made your investors proud and your customers and staff happy.

Not a public company? Well, there are still more than 20 other categories to enter…

You can see the full list of awards categories, details about how to enter, and a link to our FAQ document, at the Leading Lights 2016 home page.

Find out more about the awards by reading Leading Lights Awards 2016 - Open for Business.

— Ray Le Maistre, , Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading