8:30 AM -- Light Reading is looking for candidates for the telecom industry's best private company of 2012.

Entries are now open, and everything you need to know about this year's Leading Lights awards and Light Reading's Hall of Fame, including links to entry forms, is right here.

Of course, private company of the year is just one of the nine categories in the 2012 Leading Lights awards. To be considered for this category, our criteria is simple, as follows:

Previous Winners: Where Are They Now?
Last year, the award went to mobile video optimization firm Bytemobile Inc. , which was snapped up by Citrix Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS) in June this year. (See Citrix Acquires Bytemobile to Target Telcos and Citrix Closes Bytemobile Acquisition.)

And in 2010, we gave the award to policy control and Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) specialist Openet Telecom Ltd. . In June this year, the Dublin, Ireland-based company completed a $21 million funding round that brought its total funding to about $55 million. (See Openet Raises $21M.)

Check out which companies made the list of finalists last year, and our reasons for choosing them, in this blog post. The finalists for 2010 are listed here.

So which do you think is the best private company in the telecoms industry? Let us know all about it by entering that company today. The deadline for entries is Monday, Sept. 10, 2012.

— Michelle Donegan, European Editor, Light Reading Mobile