The Leading Lights is Light Reading's annual awards program recognizing innovation and achievement in the global communications industry.

Since 2004, The Leading Lights has honored the companies, teams and individuals carrying the industry forward.

The entry process, judging and final selection of winners are produced independently of any other program or process run by or associated with Light Reading. Every entry is judged on its own merits by our Editors as well as a curated group of industry experts.

The Leading Lights opens on Wednesday, April 15, 2026.

The Early Bird Deadline is Friday, May 15, 2026, featuring preferred pricing.

The Final Deadline is Friday, June 26, 2026. (11.59pm PST)

The Leading Lights Finalists will be announced on Wednesday, July 22, 2026, on lightreading.com.

The Leading Lights Winners will be announced on Wednesday, September 9, 2026.

All entries must be written in English and submitted via our online form (the link will be available starting on April 15, 2026).

• Please read the entire entry form before you begin. The information required is straightforward and we encourage clear, concise writing supported by data to best make your case.

• You may provide up to 3 links with additional information to support your entry. One of those links can be to a Dropbox or Google Drive folder with additional articles, charts, data or research to give our judges a fuller picture of your work.

The entry link will be available from April 15, 2026.

During the Early Deadline period (April 15 through May 15, 2026), the fee is $399 per entry.

During the Final Deadline period (May 18 through June 26, 2026), the fee is $499 per entry.

You can pay via debit or credit card at the time of submission. You may save and edit your entry at any point up until submission and payment is complete.

All entries must be paid before judging begins. Paying online is the only accepted method.

The judging process is overseen by Phil Harvey, Light Reading's chief editor, who has been a reporter and editor at the publication for over 20 years. The first-round judges include Light Reading's editorial team: Iain Morris, Nicole Ferraro, Jeff Baumgartner, Michelle Donegan, Gigi Onag and Tereza Krásová.

Final round judges are a curated group of independent contributors and analyst experts, who bring specific expertise across our award categories. Read more about the 2026 judges here.

Here's a complete recap of last year's contest with a full list of the winners and finalists by category.

Keep your awards entries clear, concise, accurate and interesting. Focus on why you think your company or work should win, be specific, and when you make a claim to greatness, back it up with evidence. Having customers or partners who will vouch for your claims helps, too.

"This is a chance for your company to explain why your products, services, and culture are unique in a competitive market. Our editors and judges look for compelling narratives that make communications technology and its uses more understandable, accessible and inspiring." – Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Most Innovative categories recognize vendors and service providers for a specific product, platform or solution that was built, launched or significantly advanced in the past year. Judges are evaluating the innovation itself: its technical merit, differentiation and potential impact.

Outstanding Use Case categories recognize how a technology was deployed to solve a real-world problem or deliver measurable results. We're looking for a network operator, enterprise or other organization that puts the technology to work, though vendors may enter on behalf of a customer deployment. Judges are evaluating outcomes: what changed, what was achieved, and why it matters.

Yes. Vendors frequently enter use case categories because they're an excellent way to showcase customer deployments, proof-of-concept results or real-world applications of their products.

The best entries will show measurable outcomes in the field, not just product capabilities. If you're a vendor entering on behalf of a customer deployment, make sure your entry clearly describes the customer's results, not just your technology's features.

One more time: This category is not a product brochure; it documents how technology changed something for a customer in the real world.

Yes to both. Most product innovation categories are open to vendors and service providers alike. If a service provider has developed a genuinely innovative product or platform, they are eligible. Similarly, vendors can enter use case categories by showcasing customer deployments with documented results.

Read each category description carefully, as some are more specifically targeted (e.g., some networking product categories will specify "vendor" as the entrant).

Yes.

The 2026 awards categories can be found here.

Our eligibility period spans the 12 months between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026. New products or services must have been introduced on or after April 1, 2025, to qualify for the 2026 Leading Lights Awards.

In general, we're looking for the very best from the industry during the past 12 months, but if you're worried about missing the cut off by a week or two, please let us know and we will sort it out.

If your product or service wasn't shortlisted last year, but is still eligible this year, you may enter it again. But please be sure to highlight the changes and advancements that happened since.

Most Innovative Optical Networking Product or Solution (Components) is for vendors that make the building blocks of optical networks: transceivers, amplifiers, filters, modulators, photonic integrated circuits, and similar devices. If your product is something that goes inside a larger system, this is your category.

Most Innovative Optical Networking Product or Solution (Systems) is for vendors that make complete optical networking platforms: line systems, ROADM platforms, optical transport network (OTN) equipment, and coherent transmission systems. If your product is the integrated platform that houses or orchestrates the components, this is your category.

If you make both components and systems, enter each in its appropriate category. Don't enter the same product in both.

Outstanding Use Case: High-Capacity Transport & Optical Innovation covers real-world deployments of optical or high-capacity transport networking. This is the right home for case studies involving long-haul upgrades, subsea cable deployments, data center interconnect at scale, or any compelling story of optical technology solving a connectivity challenge.

Yes, we're comparing apples to oranges in this category. Fear not: we love both apples and oranges.

Most Innovative New Networking Product (Cloud or Data Center) is for routing, switching or other IP/Ethernet networking equipment built for hyperscaler or data center environments. It's for stuff like spine-leaf architectures, high-density switching for AI/ML clusters, or products purpose-built for hyperscaler infrastructure.

Most Innovative New Networking Product (Service Provider Network) is for routing, switching or other IP/Ethernet networking products aimed at communications service providers. It's for stuff like core routers, edge devices, aggregation platforms and related gear that moves traffic across carrier networks.

The key question is who the primary customer is: a hyperscaler or data center operator (Cloud or Data Center) or a telco/cable/satellite service provider (Service Provider Network).

Most Innovative Agentic AI Product or Solution specifically recognizes products that deploy autonomous AI agents to perform complex, multi-step tasks – systems where AI takes an action towards a specific goal with minimal human intervention. If your product's defining characteristic is autonomous, multi-step AI decision-making and execution, this is the right category.

Most Innovative Telco AI/ML Product or Solution is a broader category. It covers any creative application of AI or machine learning to support the changing needs of network operators. This includes predictive maintenance, network optimization, automated troubleshooting, intelligent customer operations and more. The AI used doesn't need to be agentic to qualify for this category. If AI or ML is central to what your product does for telcos, but it doesn't operate autonomously across multi-step workflows, enter here.

We'll try not to get too bogged down here, but we think of agentic AI as a product that primarily executes tasks autonomously and chains actions together to reach a goal.

What we want to see in the Telco AI/ML category is a solution or product that augments operator decisions or automates specific tasks with AI or machine learning.

Outstanding Use Case: AI/Machine Learning is an intentionally broad category. It covers any compelling application of AI or ML to improve network performance, customer service or business operations for a communications service provider. If your AI use case doesn't fit neatly into a more specific category, this is the right home. We reserve the right to reassign your entry to the appropriate category, but we'll let you know before we do.

Unlike the broader AI use case category, Outstanding Use Case: AI-Driven Broadband & Access Networks is aimed squarely at improving network performance, subscriber experience or operational efficiency in broadband and access networks.

If your AI story is specifically about the broadband access layer (fiber, cable, DSL, fixed wireless), enter here rather than in the broader AI/ML category.

Most Innovative Telecom Security Product or Solution is an award for vendors. Enter it if you've built and launched a standout security product that protects communications networks, infrastructure or subscribers from cyber threats, fraud or unauthorized access.

Outstanding Use Case: Network Security & Resilience is a deployment award. In that category, we're seeking a compelling story about how a security challenge was addressed in the field. Did you repel an attack, mitigate a threat, or help a company improve its overall resilience? Did you document that change? If so, this is your category.

One more time: The focus for this use case category is on outcomes, not product capabilities alone. A vendor with a strong product and a documented customer deployment could legitimately enter both, but each submission should tell a different story.

Most Innovative Network API Product or Platform recognizes the innovation in the platform itself. Meaning, we're focusing on the technology that exposes network capabilities as programmable APIs for developers, enterprises or other operators. If you've built something that enables API-based access to network capabilities, this is the right category.

Outstanding Use Case: Network API Monetization is a category for you to share a compelling example of how network APIs were exposed, commercialized or used to deliver new value to enterprise customers or the developer ecosystem.

Like all use case categories, this one focuses on business outcomes. You have to point to revenue generated, new use cases unlocked, ecosystem partners enabled or some kind of result.

A vendor or operator could enter both if they have a genuinely innovative platform and a strong story about how it delivered commercial results. But each entry will tell a different story, and our judges will notice if the same narrative is being recycled.

Naming these categories is such a beating. Ah well. Here we go.

Outstanding Use Case: Network API Monetization is about monetizing network capabilities through programmable APIs, such as those from the GSMA Open Gateway ecosystem, developer platforms, and the commercial models that expose network functions to third parties.

The other monetization category – Outstanding Use Case: Monetization & New Revenue Models – is broader and covers any compelling example of how a vendor or service provider unlocked new revenue streams or transformed its business model. This could include network slicing, B2B2X models, platform-based services, edge computing monetization or other approaches that go beyond traditional connectivity revenue. If your monetization story is compelling, but doesn't center on network APIs specifically, this is the right category.

One. Each use case entry should be built around a single, specific customer deployment or application that best demonstrates the results you're claiming.

A single well-documented example with clear outcomes will consistently outperform an entry that gestures at three or four deployments without giving details on any of them.

Additional context is welcome, of course. For example, you can tell us that a solution has been deployed across multiple customers to establish scale or repeatability. But the ONE example should be the clear focus of the entry, with specific results, a defined customer situation, and a coherent narrative from challenge to outcome.

I swear to all that is holy, if you load up a use case category with a bunch of product features and just vaguely hint at "hundreds of customers," I will print your entry out and performatively burn it in your front yard. Don't test me.

Named customers are preferred.

Anonymous entries are accepted, but they require explanation. If your customer cannot be named due to a confidentiality agreement, regulatory constraints or other legitimate reasons, please say so clearly in your entry.

Anonymous entries should compensate for this lack of specificity elsewhere. Give us an idea of the industry, the scale of the deployment, the geography, the challenges faced, and the measurable outcomes achieved. Vague, anonymous entries are tougher to judge and they generally get lower scores.

We're looking for:

1. A clearly defined problem or challenge the customer faced

2. A specific description of how the technology was deployed to address the problem, and

3. Measurable results with enough context for judges to assess their significance.

   a. Weak: "We improved network performance."

b. Strong: "We reduced mean time to repair by 40% across 1,200 cell sites over six months."

We use human judges and the best use cases tell a good story. What was challenging? What was different than the routine? What stood out? How creative was your approach? Those details help the overall narrative, and judges will remember your entry even if the field is crowded with competition.

We do not publish awards entries. If you are a Finalist or Winner, the title of your entry (product name, executive's name, etc.), as well as company name, will be shared with our audiences.

However, we reserve the right to use any of the information disclosed in your submission, especially product claims and verifiable market share and sales statistics, in our reporting. Rest assured, we will be respectful of your company and responsible to our readers. We will contact you to verify anything we aim to report that's not readily available in the public domain.

Any financial details provided by private companies will remain confidential and not published/released to the public domain unless approved by the submitting company.

No. The Leading Lights is editorially independent. If we could only pick from a pool of advertisers and sponsors, some of our most remarkable and controversial selections would never see the light of day.

That said, please contact sales@lightreading.com to learn about how you can benefit from advertising, paid media and custom programming through Light Reading.

Please send an email with the subject line “Leading Lights Question” to LeadingLights@lightreading.com, and we’ll respond as soon as we can.

Please DO NOT email Light Reading's editors.