Navigating the Path from 5G Standalone to 6G: Building Networks for the Next Decade

Stephen heads Spirent’s market strategy organization guiding strategic direction, identifying future growth opportunities, and serving as Spirent’s chief evangelist. Stephen drives the company’s strategic initiatives and thought leadership for 5G-Advanced, AI, and 6G networks, while acting as an independent advisor to several industry and government boards. With close to 30 years of experience in telecommunications, Stephen has been at the forefront of next-generation technologies and worked across the industry—helping companies innovate, transform, and shape the future of connected networks.

Steve is a British-born communications analyst, and the anchor of FNTV. His career began as a technology journalist with McGraw-Hill in the 1980s, and he later founded Light Reading in 2000, an online media network focusing on telecommunications news, research and security. He sold Light Reading to UBM in 2005 for $33 million, bought it back in 2014 for significantly less, and resold it to Informa PLC two years later for $67 million. Awarded an MBE in 2018, he has authored three technology books and three works of fiction. He also serves as Vice Chairman of Laser Light Communications. This year, Steve won the 2026 Jessie H. Neal Award for Best Commentary: Op-Eds — presented by the American business press industry — his seventh Neal Award, but his first in 28 years, which is either a testament to the industry’s declining standards or proof that Steve is now extremely old. Steve splits his time between the U.S. and the U.K. with his three sons.