As part of our 25th Anniversary celebration, Calysto Communications® is chatting with the most important influencers in AI, IoT, mobile, wireless and telecom about highlights since the turn of the century. (Stay tuned for videos and more here!) Recently, we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Phil Harvey during Light Reading’s “Network X Americas” event, formerly known as “The Big 5G.” We enjoyed getting to know more about Phil and his impressive career as a technology editor for more than 25 years, which includes more than 18 years working with Light Reading.
Phil Harvey is Editor-in-Chief of Light Reading, a leader in B2B news, analysis and insights for the global communications networking and services industry. He began his second tour as the site’s Chief Editor in April 2020.
Calysto: Take me back to when you started writing in tech. You were living and working in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). Then, you made the move to Silicon Valley working for Upside Magazine and Red Herring, before returning back to DFW, correct?
Phil Harvey: That’s right. I started out writing about computers, primarily for Computer Currents, and occasionally the alternative weeklies. I was being published a lot in The Met and the Dallas Observer and places like that as well. I would just write stories about different things happening with technology.
I also did features for the Harte Hanks paper chain, which was all over DFW, so some of my stuff would get syndicated. I was a typical freelancer, writing for nine or ten publications. All of them were in print to some degree, and that’s when I met David Coursey who was writing about technology for the Dallas Morning News, USA Today, and for his own newsletter. He was also writing for Upside Magazine. That’s when I started writing for his newsletter.
Calysto: So, it was David who led you to the Valley?
Phil Harvey: Yeah, he was based in San Mateo, California. One day he said to me: “You should move out here and write for Upside Magazine.” So, after a couple of interviews with various Upside editors, that’s what I did. I guess they thought I would be mostly harmless and reasonably OK to have on staff (smiles). So, that’s when I started my “proper” telecom coverage. I worked out in the Valley for about two-and-a-half years, eventually moving over to Red Herring.
Calysto: Upside Magazine had some of the most interesting, controversial, very edgy stories with the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley. What kind of stories were you doing for the publication at the turn of the century?
Phil Harvey: I wasn’t high enough in the pecking order to get the colorful cover stories of Jobs, Gates, and Grove at the time. But, one of the cooler things I did cover was whether Internet Explorer was unfairly bundled with the Windows operating system. I kind of picked apart the testimonies of people like Michael Dell and some of the vendors that were beholden to Microsoft, that were looking us in the eye saying “No, this is going to be great for consumers to not have any choice.”
Calysto: So, you were living and working in the Valley. Where did the jump back to Dallas and Light Reading come into play?
Phil Harvey: I met Steve Saunders and Peter Heywood at Red Herring around 1999 and they started Light Reading. By 2000, they recruited me away to join their “weird” idea of having a publication that only existed online.
Calysto: As we remember, Light Reading was completely focused on the fiber industry – hence its name.
Phil Harvey: That’s correct. Light Reading was kind of a pun on optical networking. It was the beginning of service providers’ fiber build outs. Expanding the content was natural because we were focused on the buildout of their services and what was driving it. At that point, you started to see a lot of innovation happening on the computing side of telecom equipment and a collapsing of platforms, multiple things that required separate boxes, or suddenly being done in one box, or on server blade, or took a whole rack of equipment.
Calysto: So, this innovation started driving other things as well- including new industry players and expansion?
Phil Harvey: Yes, exactly. There were quite a few venture-backed companies jumping into the game. While some of them were in Silicon Valley, the field became much broader geographically. There were several startups in the DFW area and what became the “Telecom Corridor.” In particular, the area around Richardson and Plano where Ericsson and Nokia are now based, exploded in terms of growth. There was a lot of interest around the startups building this next-generation infrastructure and Light Reading was covering that whole ecosystem because it was in the weeds and needed a lot of explaining.
There was a lot of money moving back and forth and people didn’t know which one was going to win or lose, and a little bit later enough of those companies like Sycamore Networks and Juniper Networks had gone public to billion dollar market caps. Suddenly Wall Street was interested in Light Reading.
I was only at Light Reading about a year before I was asked to make an appearance on CNN to explain what the hell an optical router was. I was answering questions like what does it mean when they say optical? And what are routers? The interest in the technology and innovation was intense, but so was the need for education on all of it.
Coming Soon
In the next edition of our Q&A with Phil, we learn more about Light Reading’s evolution and some of the groundbreaking stories it has covered.
About Light Reading:
Light Reading’s broad readership and solid reputation has made them a leading resource for telecom, mobile and cable network operators, cloud services players and all the companies that develop and supply them with technology, applications and professional services. The Light Reading Group incorporates a dedicated research division Heavy Reading, more than 15 successful annual industry events, several targeted online communities that dig even deeper into key areas of the global communications industry and its sister industry news site Telecoms.com.