Light Reading Launches the 2013 Leading Lights Awards

-- Communications industry's most prestigious awards program, the Leading Lights, is now accepting entries in 14 categories – winners to be revealed during gala dinner at THE OUT NYC, one of the world's trendiest hotels

NEW YORK, Aug. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Online telecom publication Light Reading (www.lightreading.com) has launched its prestigious annual awards program, the Leading Lights, and is now accepting entries in 14 categories that recognize the full breadth of achievement across the global communications technology and services sector.

This year's awards include a number of new categories that reflect current communications services trends and highlight the importance of innovation.

The categories are:

• Best New Product (Cable)
• Best New Product (Mobile)
• Best New Product (Telecom)
• Most Innovative Ethernet/Optical Service *NEW*
• Most Innovative Carrier Cloud Service *NEW*
• Most Innovative 4G Service *NEW*
• Most Innovative Carrier WiFi Deployment *NEW*
• Most Innovative Video Service *NEW*
• Most Innovative SMB Service *NEW*
• Most Innovative Enterprise Service *NEW*
• Company of the Year (Private)
• Company of the Year (Public)
• Best Deal Maker
• Light Reading Hall of Fame

Entries can be submitted, and more information can be found, by visiting https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/leadinglights2013

The deadline for Leading Lights entries and Light Reading Hall of Fame nominations is Friday, August 30, 2013. Finalists for the Leading Lights Awards will be announced by Friday, September 6, 2013.

Light Reading's reputation for fiercely independent analysis makes this the most credible and authoritative awards program in the communications industry. The awards program, which is managed and judged by Light Reading's editors, along with the industry analyst team at Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com), is free to enter.

The winners, as well as Light Reading Hall of Fame inductees, will be announced at a gala dinner to be held on Tuesday, October 1, 2013, at THE OUT NYC, which was voted one of the world's leading "Trendsetter" hotels in Fodor's 2012 Hotel Awards.

The awards dinner take places the evening preceding Light Reading's Ethernet & SDN Expo (http://www.ethernetsdnexpo.com/), which runs October 2 and 3 and is co-located with at the Interop show at the Javits Center, New York.

"This will be the ninth Leading Lights Awards program, and, with all the upheaval ongoing in the industry due to 4G, OTT, cloud and network virtualization, it's going to be the most thrilling. And we're going to have one hell of a party at THE OUT," stated Light Reading Editor-in-Chief Ray Le Maistre.   

For more on this year's Leading Lights, see "2013 Leading Lights Awards: Open for Entries"
(http://www.lightreading.com/software-as-a-service-saas-/2013-leading-lights-awards-open-for-entries/240159598).

For information on Leading Lights sponsorship opportunities and tickets to the Leading Light Awards Gala please contact ethernetsdn@ubm.com.

Contact:
Ray Le Maistre
Editor in Chief, Light Reading
ray.lemaistre@ubm.com

Amy Averbook
Sr. Director of Marketing, UBM DeusM
+1-917-743-2693
averbook@deusm.com

About Light Reading
Light Reading (www.lightreading.com) combines its research-led online communities and targeted events portfolio to help those in the global communications industry make informed decisions. Lightreading.com is the ultimate source for telecom analysis for more than 300,000 subscribers each month, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. Light Reading produces targeted communications events and focused one-day conferences each year for cable, mobile, and wireline executives across five continents.

About UBM plc
UBM plc is a leading global business media company. We inform markets and bring the world's buyers and sellers together at events, online, in print and provide them with the information they need to do business successfully. We focus on serving professional commercial communities, from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists around the world. Our 6,000 staff in more than 30 countries are organized into specialist teams that serve these communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. For more information, go to www.ubm.com