g on around them and the rest of the world from partners from other operators from our customers tonight this is the place to be in telecoms we'll recognize the best global and regional welcome to Capacity Europe Extra powered by JSA the live streaming newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Eric Thompson SVP and head of Avia sales and so Eric thank you so much for joining yeah yeah thank you very much it's good to be here how are you finding the show so far it's uh there's a lot of energy here I feel like we're in day two and there's you know record numbers have attended this year yeah I mean it feels like we have kind of gone back to the past everything's busy and I you know what I what I appreciate is it's well attended but people come with a better plan I think kind of COVID forced us to plan better forced us to have you know better meetings and so now that we can actually get everybody in rooms together but kind of have those those good disciplines it's been really effective conference and so what are what are you most hoping here I mean it's kind of nice for you you're you're from the US but based currently in London and and so you know everyone's kind of converging on your on your hometown at this point what sorts of things are you finding bubbling up with people as priority yeah when I tell my probably the only one who can be really honest like we're here so we have a great set of products that we think solve a lot of customer challenges so we're here to kind of talk to the market about what we're doing you know ultimately meet with customers that we haven't been able to meet with in a while and then also understand what our what our partners and what the industry is driving toward and so you know the you can you can read through a lot of marketing material we certainly us and our competitors and our partners and our customers all send things to the market being but being able to actually sit in a room understand what the market's doing kind of reaffirm where we want to play and what we want to do there's a ton of value to be able to do that live we're definitely seeing that it is a great opportunity for that isn't it I'm hearing that more and more from people I mean we've been for the last couple years few years really been relying on you know everything that we enable is an industry but you know so the video conferencing and connecting remotely and it's been effective but it's nothing replaces being in person and having those important conversations and so but are there things that from when you think of sort of the your priorities at Zeo and sort of what you're focused on as an organization what sort of key themes are aligning with what are coming up as common themes across the industry yeah I mean I think there's a number of a number of headwinds that are driving innovation in the industry and so you know you look at really basic things like supply chain issues and inflation and what it's really forcing businesses to do is focus where they're really good and focus of the things where they understand the business the investors are aligned with what you're trying to accomplish and so what we're seeing is you know organizations who try to do too much and be an expert at everything I think are struggling a little bit and for us it's really sharpened our focus on you know we're going to be an infrastructure player we're going to support the same type of verticals and customers that we've always supported we get to be a little bit selective with projects and with customers and so not everything is a bit and that's okay and so it's really it's forced us to understand our niche really well and the things that continue to bubble up are you know where where are you making capital investments how are you managing you know your base of business and one of the things that's really clear after a couple days here is you know telecom is just an industry where you can innovate alone you have to continue to build the foundation as fiber network as fiber networks age we have to kind of rebuild the foundation of the house while we're innovating and while we're building a new features and a couple kind of product offerings and so where we do that and where our partners do that and which markets we decide to work in that's going to continue to pop up as we as we see more companies realizing that you can't do all things in all markets if you want to do a good job at it I mean it's it's such an important point I think because there's so much as an industry that that it you know needs to be done could be done there's so many opportunities for everyone and it's having that discipline to really focus on what are your you know your strategic priorities is is really critical you said another thing though that I found interesting and that's this idea of you know working with partners and the and the ecosystem and so is that an important piece of this for you as well when you sort of think about reinforcing some of those partnerships and continuing to look ahead at them yeah and and I I always love the partnership conversation because a lot of times when we say partners in telecom we mean competitors and so when I you know I think it's it's great when you can be really transparent and sit across the table and say we're going to compete in these markets you know if you win I'll buy you a beer if we win you buy me a beer and that that's the way that this is going to work and then there's these markets where maybe we're not competing we actually can be really complimentary and focusing on partnering there where you both can make money you both can serve a unique kind of customer demand and not pretending that everything is a partnership opportunity you know against a against a core competitor in a core market we were not partners we're trying to beat you and we understand that you know the reciprocal is true and so you know I think if we as we hone in our partnership strategy it's it's not just it's not just logo to logo partnership but actually where where does it make sense to work together where does it not make sense to spend cycles you know you can't have 50 good partners but you probably can have five to ten competition right yes and so when we when we think of sort of what's what's in store for zeo I mean always always a lot I know but if you could sort of pick a few things for as you're looking ahead to 2023 what should we be watching out for so you know where we want to we want to we want to build the network for the future but in markets that we think make a lot of sense and so we're overlaying the flap markets right now you know kicked off construction on Amsterdam to Frankfurt working on Paris to Marseille we are a Zeus project from London into Amsterdam and then we're densifying the metros and making sure once again that we we know exactly where we play we're going to build the best networks and work with you know key anchors of partners as we get there and make sure that the network that Zeo has in five years is going to be durable for another 30 years and so you know there's not too much new to come out of Zeo and that's a good thing you know we will we will continue to think about things like encryption and make sure that we're taking advantage of the technology options that come out of the box with some Berkeley key vendors but you know we're not trying to do anything but do a great job at what we already do in the core markets well that's great I mean it's been so interesting talking to you I'm sure our viewers are going to want to connect with you I would imagine so how can they find you yeah so we have a couple conference rooms up on 303 you know I'm London based so feel free I'm sure you know our email will be part of my email address and contact information will be part of the package you get for attending the conference and feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn you know love to connect and and talk more perfect well thank you so much yeah it was really a pleasure yeah I'm looking forward to chatting with you again in the future and thank you viewers for tuning in to capacity Europe extra powered by JSA and again keep tuning in we will be continuing our live interviews throughout the day until then have fun happy networking and see you soon so it's a big event for the community it's a great networking framework for all of us and I extremely appreciate the opportunity to have this whole colleagues and partners and stakeholders in the community together and this year we have identified more than ever how important also in-person meetings are after being locked down for almost two years we're at the beginning of a new decade if it comes to the industry development and exciting times ahead of us having the digital transformation everywhere for everyone and everybody this will change our industry as well we're happy to be here capacity Europe to be again here and meet the industry and we are going every year because for us it's really big events meeting all of our partners across the carrier industry other industry as well technological partners meeting here and one venue which helps us very much to bring all the energy together to face all the challenges and to face all the business opportunities that the market is bringing to us Creative Leader to be part of Provisity Europe 2021 a true partner of choice and looking forward for the future success Thanks to me customers, partners and essentially connect with the ecosystem if we're not all successful no one is I think we'll increase the way we co-create together I think the importance of igniting end user be it consumer or enterprise experience has become more important and I think ultimately because we need to propel more growth so I'll see you at capacity 2022 and see you at capacity Europe 2022 we'll see you at capacity Europe 2022 see you at capacity Europe 2022 to the 15th annual global carrier awards I think there are an awful lot of events on the calendar it's a bit of a jamboree but I think the global carrier awards stand out the capacity events stand out I'm looking forward to this because a lot of people know what's going on around and the rest of the world from partners from other operators from our customers tonight this is the place to be in telecoms to recognize the best global and regional carriers projects marketing and sales teams campaigns disruptors and innovations you know really genuinely pretty products a new award category and I think it's brilliant for you and I'm really really happy for you very honored and delighted to be part of this this great group of companies and we want to mend some more so congratulations to everyone I hope you had a wonderful evening thank you welcome to capacity Europe 2022 pre-event coverage we are looking forward to delivering this year's equally anticipated blended event on the 18th to the 24th of October at the Intercontinental London DO2 and also on the SWAT Carder app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called five minutes with tapping into industry views but also bring out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part this year's event here in five minutes with I have Eric Sievers president global wholesale of Verizon partner solutions Eric first of all great to have you involved and great to have you speaking at this year's event ready for a quick five five minute with informal interview absolutely looking forward to it and glad to participate and support the capacity Europe event you know Verizon we like to show up each year and support the event so glad to do this for you great great to have you in the room as well we're looking forward to October all right let's start the clock so Eric first of all tell me the cover and stay or play situation in global telecoms I believe that you know enterprises around the world are kind of looking for what we call global simple and secure solutions at the end of the day and we see this as an incredible opportunity for global telecom providers in the industry if we look at our assets regardless of what's going on and kind of the economic and geopolitical vein this is just a great opportunity for us once again to deliver things into the business and to the industry so global simple secure that's the way the solutions need to go whether it's network whether it's above the network wireline and wireless services it's staff and where would you say your organization is positioned at the moment I mean we've seen these shifts obviously with post-COVID take place but also digital transformation really kind of gathering momentum within your industry but also there's also a terrible and economic and inflationary climate as well where do you where do you see your organization's position if I look at my Verizon partner solutions global wholesale team we feel we're kind of very excited about the assets that we have once again if we look at what we've done we spent over 120 billion dollars getting our spectrum with c-band and millimeter wave and once again we got vast fiber deployments across the footprint right now so very strategic time for us whether it's wireline wireless what are we doing from ethernet to wave to internet services even what I'm doing above the network with blue jeans conferencing or security services or what I really love is the passion we have in the wireless area today with wireless backup or the internet of things or our own fixed wireless access services that we're doing on LTE business internet so once again we think we're very well positioned in the industry we've made the investments and once again we want to help our customers that have big bandwidth requirements certainly and you're very much a familiar face within the industry circles for capacity events how enjoyable is it working in this industry compared to when you first entered it okay I think you're calling out the fact that I've been doing this for 36 years yeah started back in 1986 and we were doing a lot of dial tone dial tone dial tone but I will tell you the industry has just transformed tremendously so from everything we're doing from our digital customer experience transformation where ease of business is kind of the forefront of what we do at APIs candidly what we're doing across the board we look at new products and services in the industry you know the days of just dial tone when today you know as I said earlier I'm selling ethernet services I'm selling wave services we're selling internet services but above that we're adding things and partnerships or what we do in the cloud environment what we're doing with the internet of things how do we continue to leverage our wireless assets as we look at you know fixed wireless access and LTE business internet in the industry once again I think it's just a tremendous time not just selling one or two products and services but a lot of products and services that deal with our basic telecom needs so no longer just your basic telco but this is clearly a technology evolution and we're stepping up to it whether it's things we do organically or partnerships that we do organically to make certain that we can meet the communications need of the industry now we've got 90 seconds left so I'll have a quick fire kind of questions here you'll be dressing the talent gap in this year's events as well what is the state of play are we in good shape yeah we feel we're in good shape our industry just like every industry I think during this period of time once again we're trying to show folks that it's a trap to be in the STEM environment with science and technology and engineering and mathematics and so once again even with the GLF the global leaders forum we're working on diversity inclusion and belonging and one of those initiatives is making sure we're bringing new talent forward and making sure that there are more opportunities with gender and balance ethnicity and making certain that we have a feeder pool that's ready to take on this telecom industry going forward so once again I feel good about the investments the training and the partnership we're doing with colleges and universities to bring even more talent into the fold now you lead your own organization Eric as well which I'm sure has its own pressures and strains I mean did you ever step back and wonder you know and how you optimize your own helpful and well-being absolutely step back I think it's important to sharpen the saw as we say take some time off reflect build back that strength and energy and come back even sharper than the day you left and so you know whether I'm taking vacations you know two time a year with my wife or I take the family on vacations or we attend events you know whether it's music events etc just taking that time to reflect and enjoy and be thankful for all the blessings well I think that's time's up there but just one final kind of like quirky question for our viewers that probably have probably yet to see you in person for the very first time at capacity media related events but perhaps give our viewers one fun fact that they don't already know fun fact let's see I just went to the Elton John farewell tour concert at MetLife medium in New York that was pretty cool and I like cars and clothes so I don't know that's three fun facts for you but hopefully that helps that was a good lifestyle really I wasn't drawn as well yeah well what a great artist as well so I'm quite envious that you got to got the chance to go and see him live as well thanks and for so much there Eric that was great now Eric will be speaking at capacity Europe it's October in London details of this session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now welcome to capacity Europe's 2022 pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly awaited blended event on October the 18th to the 20th at the intercontinental London the 02 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll have a series of rather light-hearted speaking interviews called five minutes with tapping into their industry views also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in five minutes with welcome to capacity Europe extra powered by JSA the live streaming newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Gil Santelis CEO of NJFX Gil it's such a pleasure to see you pleasure to be with you as well here in beautiful London it's nice to be back isn't it we were yeah we were just saying it's been a few years since the event's been on it's been on but to this level you know how's it feeling for you so last year we didn't make it out to capacity Europe to London but we missed we missed the opportunity to see our friends and colleagues I think the last two years have been trying we've done a good job as we could in terms of using video application to communicate with folks but there's nothing better than just having a cup of coffee having a cocktail having a meal and kind of catching up and seeing what makes us all different it's the human touch right I mean I honestly it's the one thing I've been hearing more than anything this week is just how great it is to see people face to face and have that opportunity to share your story and so on that note you know we know NJFX so well and a lot of people do but for anyone who may not and maybe they're just being introduced to you can you can you just give a bit of background sure so NJFX is a carrier neutral cable landing station campus and the concept was create an ecosystem of customers and networks that can collaborate get to know each other and figure out their strengths and collaborate to create new products and services because we knew in the beginning what we wanted to be when we grew up we built a facility in a way that was sustainable built for potentially any kind of natural disaster man-made or natural and and we have a solid infrastructure for these companies to now grow within our facility so what are you coming back to the event for a moment I mean it's it's always interesting you know I've been chatting with folks about the global conversation that's happening and there's there's differences of course in different parts of the world and we see that here but what would you say is a central theme that's kind of emerging from your perspective you know information is power you know understanding what things to avoid how to prepare for things that you never thought of before network diversity is now critical to all everyone's at this conference and our customers so the Atlantic Ocean has always been an important part of commerce now more than ever you need to make sure you have multiple ways across the Atlantic Ocean and you want to avoid the nonsense of trivial outages in case something really does happen and you need to have been prepared with a really solid solution and so you know we're getting to the end if you can believe at the time is flying so quickly but 2022 soon going to be coming to a close and what would you say have been your biggest milestone so far this year so we're happy to announce this week that Colt has joined NGFX in the community Colt is a premier provider in Europe they've got great assets across Asia as well and by having a solid pop at NGFX now in their presence they're able to partner with our North American providers and create global solutions so we're really proud to have Colt join us this week ironically in the same week Telseus decided to join NGFX so Telseus built three cables crossing the Atlantic two that go to Europe one that goes to Brazil and they've chosen NGFX to be a new interconnection point in North America for themselves so it's a big week for us to capacity Europe announcing both of these systems or both of these companies now available at NGFX and that's the trend we want to continue to add to our existing ecosystem new providers that'll buy and sell from the existing customers that we have those are two big bits of news thank you for sharing that with us today Colt and Telseus you know working with you at NGFX that's fantastic congratulations on that and timely for you to be sharing that with us and what about you know it's there's always but what next you know what more so when you start to think about the future what does the future look like for you so we've always had our eye on the internet the internet's important because subsea cables are present 99% of all internet traffic but when you think of the internet in North America it's really in regions the northeast the southeast and we believe because we have critical mass now with our carriers they're going to start interconnecting their networks independent of New York City allowing for a failover scenario you know unfortunately New York City gets caught in the eye of the storm no pun intended and we need to make sure that if something happens in lower Manhattan the rest of us don't have our cell phones and our PCs working so we have our big enterprise customers now interconnecting with wireless mobile residential networks to make sure they have an alternate path for the internet to always work in the northeast and that's a major project and step for us going forward things don't slow down for you do they the more you do the more you want to do and the more you can do and you're obligated to at least try to get that done well thank you for sharing all of this it's been really great to speak with you it's always actually a pleasure to speak with you and Barb same here Barb thanks to the JSA team for doing this for us in terms of getting us all together in London and letting us share our story keep the community all updated thank you yeah thanks for saying that and and for our viewers who who don't know yet we know how to find you but for our viewers who don't can you let us know sort of how they can find you and how they can connect sure so our website is njfx.net by all means please go on the website hit the contact us page and they can respond to you with an email and coordinate some time thank you so much always a pleasure to speak with you and thank you viewers for tuning in to Capacity Europe Extra powered by JSA stay tuned in we have more interviews coming to you live here from the floor at Capacity Europe at the exhibition hall in the intercontinental at the O2 until then stay safe take care and see you soon and welcome to Capacity Europe's 2022 pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly awaited blended event on October 2018 to the 20th at the intercontinental London the O2 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll have a series of rather lighthearted speaking interviews called 5 minutes with tapping into their industry views also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in 5 minutes with I had Angela Capon Vice President Global Marketing at Edge Connects Angela how are you first of all and it's great to have you involved in our conference program for this year's event ready for a quick 5 5-minute Q&A yeah thank you for inviting me definitely great okay well so certainly let's so let's start the clock right now so in our 5-minute Q&A here we go tell me just stay off at play in global telecoms yeah I mean global telecoms isn't just 5G and Gigabot telecoms anymore it's the wider challenges of country regulations trust from our customers climate economic growth the worrying inflation news that we're seeing and and where to build next so the balance is getting increasingly difficult with large cloud services requiring ever bigger capacity while also lowering overall missions across SI slot supply chains so closer collaboration among operators clients industry bodies government agencies will be needed to be at the forefront of any future expansion and where do you see your organization position at the moment obviously it's in a post-COVID climate it's fundamentally changed yeah I mean when COVID hit EdgeConnex was well positioned actually to not miss a beat we were all remote workers for years and the data centres had the ability to remote operate through our EdgeOS software systems so when it hit we kind of didn't really we felt the impact you know from a world perspective but we we didn't actually from an operational side we just continued on it's incredible so to continue with the drivers like digital transformation without the impact of COVID was a testament to our strategy to set way before it was struck and we were able to continue a pace for large enterprises as we were able to work with their IT providers to offer solutions in markets large and small and as the Edge continues to develop globally we will continue to plan and supply land and power serving the largest global companies worldwide when they need it where they need it so it's the data it's in the industry in your point of view first of all are you enjoying it and second of all in terms of the people landscape is it suffering from a lack of diversity and it's in the workforce and if so why I mean yeah I mean when I talk to people about the data center industry you kind of get that that blank look on their face so it's not incredibly exciting but what I've seen over the last 10 years of working at EdgeConnex is the talent that is actually coming through difficult but it is coming through and the diversity of the talent is what I really enjoy and I'm loving seeing our employees join at a certain level 10 years on their running teams and their head of security and all of those different roles so we are lacking in diversity for sure but I believe it's not for not trying as a company we work really hard on different projects to attract talent from going out to universities talking to the STEM type community that probably don't think about data center as an engineering type of place to go and work but when you talk to them about what we're doing and what we're developing and actually what our customers customers are doing I mean I'm very privileged to be in a position where I can see Star Trek type futures coming in and when you talk to young people about you know the the opportunity and how I mean this industry hasn't even slightly reached its dizzy heights and when you talk to young people about what they want to do from an engineering perspective and you say look have you thought about the data center industry we need you it's incredible it's growing absolutely at the speed of rate all the operators will say that so it's game on to get that talent and nurture them and grow them into something fantastic in an industry that most people probably don't think about or understand certainly so just some quick find some questions here then just about you and your enjoyment for for for Europe what's the one thing that you're hoping to take away from the event we've got just over 30 seconds to go yeah people finally we're back in a room together I mean capacity Europe's always had a fantastic agenda of content you know right broad way across of talking about the industry so I'm really looking forward to listening to that meeting our customers again face to face and yeah just being there in person yep and perhaps give our viewers one fun fact about you that they don't already know 10 seconds 10 seconds probably the bravest thing I've done in my life is uproot my entire family to the southwest where I knew absolutely no one so I have this really surreal world of data centers and traffic jams cows time is up thank you ever so much there that's a yeah that's a fantastic perspective there to find out a little bit more about you and obviously obviously the themes that you really care about and yeah so you're going to talk about that a little bit more in at our event in October yeah not like I'm really looking forward to it yeah so Angela yeah you'll be speaking in our data center session on at the talent in telecoms track details of this session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now Welcome to capacity Europe 2022's pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on October the 18th to 20th at the end continental London DO2 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Tran the conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll run a series of rather light hearted speaking to these called five minutes with tapping into their industry views but also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this event here in this year's five minutes with I have Sammy Slim CEO of telehouse France Sammy how are you first of all and great to have you involved in our conference program for this year's event ready for a quick fire five minute Q&A? absolutely thanks for having me so let's start the clock okay so Sammy tell me the state of play in the global telecoms market well we're seeing more blurring boundaries between the 10 code the OTT infrastructure something that is reaching the industry and we're looking forward to its added future right in so where would you say then your organisation is positioned at the moment as the industry is seeing these shifts like post-COVID digital transformation current inflationary pressures well what is great about our industry is that all those crisis are merely acceleration to the transformation to digital transformation however there are real risk especially related to energy problems in the energy shortage and the industry is even forced to be detected that kind of problems and does the industry have a talent issue so how can it solve the problems well definitely yes as the industry and I think the problem should be solved in the future with what we are seeing now in terms of remote work and remote teams distributed teams around the globe because that actually brings the talent pool to a more global world and you'll be speaking in a subsea data centre related session about interconnectivity between those two landscapes it must be an exciting industry to be a part of incredibly diverse and things seem to be moving along quite a relatively fast pace absolutely that's actually our main driver to the capacities here and we are very very excited to about the kind of topic we share because the telecom geography is changing thanks to the subsea and we are looking forward to see what are the future settings where the interconnection can happen and how often we have reshapen that as well now I wanted to tap into a little bit about you yourself as a person so Sammy what's your preferred method to connect with your fellow industry peers given how platforms like teams and Zoom have transformed my ability and convenience in connecting with fellow professionals in the past two years in person or virtual in terms of you know day-to-day engagements a nice drink with a great view I've got a lot of teams and views I like that but to be honest it's good for introduction which to human beings right so if you want to solve it in the future we need to do it in person and I'm looking forward to do that in London next October well yeah definitely it's a great segue there to capacity Europe to be there in person in adding to continental the O2 in London so what's the first thing what's the one thing that you're hoping to take away from being part of capacity Europe this year well I think that's the answer to those questions on how do we manage this blurring boundaries between different technical segments how do we manage the new Europe that we come how do we manage the new crisis and energy in Montana those are things that I am looking forward to discuss with my colleagues in the ministry but again we have a chance to be able to see growing and that the world is in need of impact especially with the current crisis it will be a thing that looks like we mean definitely and it is a it's this huge event as well and taking place in the UK capital of London so tell tell me about what you most love about London the location of the capacity Europe 2022 definitely the view there in O2 it's really great to meet the people but I happen to we have to have office in London so I need to actually not be able to see to see some kind of good so one of my definitely my favorite cities in New York and I'm saying that I'm from Paris you know the competition between plenty of competition between Paris and London but too marvelous so European cities and really modern as well we've got 45 seconds to go so basically we've got a few quick wild questions here for you give our viewers one fun fact about you that they don't already know most people so I mean normally in the industry I see you in France but tell you how it's fun most people don't know that I'm actually not French I'm Tunisian and yeah well when people yeah discover that they're Tunisian is there a person away from this industry that inspires you the most well I would love to meet in person someday if I have the chance I and Adela from CEO of AccraSense that's someone that reshaped the entire community as big as Microsoft and yeah that's the time's up so yeah that's that's our buzzer for that one as well so really great speaking to you Sammy there is a very quick find so you just realise how quickly five minutes goes up in the flash doesn't it but thanks so much that's been great and then Sammy will be speaking at capacity Europe this October in London details of the session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now welcome to capacity Europe 2022's pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on October the 18th to the 20th at the Intercontinental London DO2 and on the SWAT card out I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in a run-up to the event we'll have a series of rather light-hearted big interviews called five minutes with tapping into their industry views but also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in five minutes with I have Matthias Freeschrum the vice president and chief evangelist of Aurelian Matthias how are you first of all and great to have you involved in our conference programme for this year's event ready for a five-minute quickfire Q&A I'm absolutely ready get to staff Matthias so let's start the clock Matthias tell me the current state-of-play situation in global telecoms I would say it's in a pretty good shape you know traffic is still growing post-pandemic which is a good sign there are though some signs of costs going up because of some circumstances around the world but I would say the overall feeling in the industry is pretty good and where would you say your organisation is best positioned at the moment as the industry is seeing these shifts like post-COVID taking place digital transformation and also the current inflationary pressures that we are seeing I think we are in a pretty good shape you know we're not a big organisation we're very focused on high-capacity transport services and IP services and I would say digital transformation moving traffic to the cloud using public internet much more those are good signs for us so I would say we are in a very good position right now in a tough market and how have the past couple years to shape the way you connect with your fellow industry peers from a personal perspective yourself Matias yeah you know I think that's a good question and I was very skeptical to webinars in the beginning but I would say through the pandemic I've kind of enjoyed all the webinars that's been going on and that's been a fairly good way but I'm really eager to see people again now so you can get the feeling of the industry from a much better point of view well definitely you know we're looking forward to bringing capacity Europe in person in October the 18th to the 20th in London so how enjoyable is it working in this telecoms industry compared to when you first entered it I would say it's really really enjoyable I've enjoyed it all the way through but you know when I started 25 years ago I would say not very many people understood what we were doing you know internet was very new everything was more of a phone call situation in the telecoms world today everything relies on what we do you know internet is for everyone so it's much more seen these days and therefore quite a more funny industry with many more being part of it what's the interconnectivity between data centers and subsea is exciting as well as important to see these in sectors talking to one another Matisse what do you think we are seeing this overlap between the two markets why is it becoming more profound yeah no I really think you know content needs to be as close as possible to end users and you know you can't really be closer to end users if you're at the submarine cable station and therefore I see this it's a very good sign when cable or content providers locate their content at the station itself because you know at the end of that C cable there is an end user and that user wants to take advantage of that content as soon as possible and therefore we see these two industries merging as we speak and what's the one thing you're hoping to take away from being a part of capacity year 2022 this October I think you know you want the overall feeling of the market you want to hear the bus on the floor you want to see what people talk about but then I really think you know the rumors that's what I'm there for you know speaking to people sort of on the side asking them you know how are you doing what's going on what's happening what's happening with this company and so on that's you know what you've been missing for the last couple of years yes definitely and I'm talking of the event itself and the location of the event what do you most love about London now London is a really nice city but it's also this international city you know you hear the bus from really everywhere which is what you've kind of missed the last couple of years seeing this feeling this international bus with people from everywhere kind of in one place I really love London and we've got a couple of questions there but we realized we've still got 17 seconds on the clock here so if it wasn't for going to an event talking of London or you know other international cities around the world Matisse what would be the first thing you'll do if you're in a new city I absolutely look at maps I love maps you know and when I come to a new city I want to see the map so I know where everything is and I kind of enjoy just looking at maps following maps making sure I see as much as I can when I come to a new city that's really what I look for and perhaps give our viewers one fun fact about you that they didn't already know no I'm a really big sports fan many people know I'm a big sports fan but I'm really a big sports fan because I love all sports and I kind of have a secret habit of trying to learn all the rules of every sport there is and I'm not too many people try to do that but I just enjoy pretty much every sport there is I don't watch it too much but I read a lot about it okay well we've got eight seconds so any any hobbies any other hobbies four seconds no I I like I like being in the forest as well oh brilliant good stuff well that's time's up there thank you ever so much there Mateus that was that was great Mateus will be speaking at capacity this October in London details of this session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now right so that's just that's just a flavour of what's coming what what we're going to talk about today is what it's taken to get here what we're doing and the entire scope it's not just about mobile there we go right so I'm Matthew Griffin I'm head of commercial telecoms at Transport for London and I have with me Andrew Conway and he's CTO or Director of Solutions and Innovation sorry for for that's your old job title for BAI communications we're here today because BAI were awarded a 20 year concession from TFL just in June 21st of June and we're going to explain what what what that concession's all about it's in line with the mayor's transport strategy the mayor has asked TFL to make its asset welcome to capacity Europe extra powered by JSA the live streaming newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Brendan Press CCO of Gulf Bridge International Gigi B.I. that's a mouthful there yeah one golf just only one golf yeah and speaking of that very nice to meet you nice to have you here thank you very much welcome yeah and so tell us a little bit about Gulf Bridge International yeah I mean we're Middle East based we're based out of the state of Qatar central to the Gulf region and we support with our subsea cable threshold cable the Gulf region access to Europe access to Asia with a basically the platform the infrastructure platform for all of the services you enjoy on the internet and all the business applications that people enjoy use utilize using the internet using bandwidth that an infrastructure that we provide in the region and out into the region and now you've been based in the Middle East for some time but but London and I would say you would call it originally home right and so how it's it feel like to come home for you to this event absolutely I mean London is my home city but I've not actually lived in in London for for many many years our first one out to the Middle East into the UAE back in 2005 thought it's for a couple years but I'm still I'm still in the region now and enjoying what it's got to offer and what we can offer to to customers both in the region and those coming into the region and I think it's really interesting to hear you know as we we're speaking with such a global audience here today and throughout the week and and the the industry is is so global I think it's interesting to hear if you can share with us a little bit about what's happening in the Middle East what are you seeing what are what are some of the trends there are they different and you know if you just give us some highlights yeah I think Middle East when I first went there you know it was a burgeoning development market and I was looking to the rest of the world still is of course but it's doing an awful lot to now itself and in terms of investments in technologies and state of the art it's there you know it's really is looking to be able to provide the populations of the region the latest exciting services that can be offered so you know in terms of our role in that you know investment in capacities are going up and the need to acquire bandwidth to support new services is ever-increasing so yes there's a lot of development inside the region now on the back of what we're able to provide and others and that will continue and I see you know exhibitions like this continue to demonstrate I think how far we've come in the last 15 years so so within GBI what would you say you know we're as we're considering we're kind of at the time of the year where you can look backward a little bit and see sort of what have we been able to accomplish this year and start to look ahead but from the 2022 perspective what would you say were some of your big wins this year yeah our wins really is establishing our brand and recognizing GBI strengths I mean we were a little bit quiet in the few years before 2021 say that way we were not able to reach out to as many customers I would like to and we've done a lot of basically communications developing understanding of what we can do we put a lot of investment into our core infrastructure we're investing many of the vendors that are showcasing here today again the state of the art in terms of what the platform can provide and beyond the traditional customers that we've always catered for in the in the sort of carrier business we've also developed relationships with the new players that are investing in their own services in the region localizing the services so the likes of Meta Facebook Microsoft etc AWS and Google who can look to the region now as a new area which they can really start to generate additional services and with gaming and new latency efficient or latency needing low latency needing services you know coming to coming into the market you know we're ideally positioned to help these companies deliver what they need to deliver so for from 2022 we've really reasserted ourselves I believe in the market and demonstrated to our customers our new customers what we can support and deliver for them and so then let's look ahead you know if you can give us a sneak peek into maybe some of the plans that are on the horizon for you at JBI and you know in the short term at the beginning of 2023 but but even beyond that you know sort of looking further out I mean there's lots of people talk of the buzzwords buzzwords used through technology events are very common but you know digitalizing your services we we hope that what we do is be able and provide a platform that other players and partners and the whole exhaustive ecosystem of different players can support in providing the digitalized services and that might mean you know access to apps in terms of being able to you know do anything you want on an app as opposed to walking into a shop or walking into a a government entity or whatever it might be you're supported on your apps whether it's gaming or it's the metaverse coming down there's lots of and an endless flow of innovation of services so we've got to do the same thing I mean and I think you know the criticism of the industry has perhaps been about how we've not basically digitalized ourselves so as much as we're out we're looking facing the customer and helping them we're also actually now involved in our own projects to ensure that we're able to offer APIs to our customers and able to do you know e-business as much as our customers expecting them to deliver to their end users so that's a very important part dynamic for the future I think from GBI's perspective overall offer we offer you know our own owned cable across the region and we are able now to deliver new routes and we've focused on routes like Iraq for instance in the last few months which is breaking the ground I think in terms of literally in terms of being able to provide a new route to Europe at competitive rates so it's very exciting in terms of how we can evolve our business from a network perspective how we're digitalizing and how we're basically building the trust of our customers I mean the other important thing from our business is we're in a submarine cable and that can be prone to you know outages etc what I've made as a mantra for our business is that if there are any outages we always have an option B restoration for customers and we'll be talking more about that as we go into 2023 exactly what that means yeah important points that you that you bring up and it'll be interesting to connect again with you you know later next year maybe maybe at the next capacity event in the spring or here again next year you know we're we're always here I know you've been coming for many years to this this event but maybe a lot yeah aren't we all I'm very important event happening in Qatar in the next few weeks to cause the World Cup so a lot of our attention certainly latter part 2022 beyond making sure that's an excess with all the partners and the friends we have engaged in that so that's really be a very exciting situation support of five five billion viewers you know around the globe dependent on what we're doing and join the football fiesta that it will be very much looking forward to that but then we'll be going to 23 with new new objectives new plans new milestones and yeah yeah this will set a base for us and for the region I believe as it develops going forward well the world would be tuning in for the World Cup next month and on that note you know for our viewers who want to connect with you they'll be able to see you tonight if they're in person and maybe win some of those tickets right so I'm afraid there's only two but there are two people so we'll be doing a draw later tonight and it'll be an interesting way of doing the draw so if you are in attendance to the Gala event tonight I look forward to seeing meeting you there I can't guarantee you'll get one of these one of these wonderful tickets but you'll have a chance and that's the main thing so look forward to that we can always try and and for those that that miss tonight and want to connect with you later and find more about the great things that you're doing at GPI well the world is connected I'm connected you know we are always available that's part of the management of our lives you know we have our personal lives we try to manage that in the best way possible but the way things are we're always connected we're in this industry we have to be connected so yes anybody wants to get in contact always welcome so thank you so much for joining us I really appreciate it not at all thank you yeah it's been a it's been a great a great chance to connect and a great chance to talk and hear about what you're doing so thank you look forward to chatting again soon and thank you viewers for tuning in to Capacity Europe extra powered by JSA keep tuning in we're going to take a short break here for a few minutes but we'll be back this afternoon streaming live with thought leaders from around the world sharing insights on the world of telecommunications and data centers see you soon great that's just that's just a flavor of what's coming what what we're going to talk about today is what it's taken to to get here what we're doing and the entire scope it's not just about mobile there we go right so I'm Matthew Griffin I'm head of commercial telecoms at Transport for London and I have with me Andrew Conway and he's CTO or Director of Solutions and Innovations sorry for that's your old job title for BAI communications we're here today because BAI were awarded a 20-year concession from TFL just in June 21st of June and we're going to explain what what what that concession is all about it's in line with the Mayor's Transport Strategy the Mayor has asked TFL to make its assets available for telecommunications use and to put mobile coverage on the Tube and that's what we're doing so TFL if you don't know TFL it's a very large organization people think of it as London Underground it's a lot more than that it has if you move in London then we're responsible pretty much so it includes a major road network it we manage all the traffic lights for example and just to give you a scale of TFL here's some sort of big numbers 31,000 31 million journeys every day we're slightly down on that at the moment but actually we found the road traffic is back to normal bus networks around 75% and the Tube is running during the week 50 to 60% and at weekends even higher than that so so we are we are edging towards normality in terms of the the number of journeys that that we're looking after so so what we have here is a network that is very large for the Tube the underground part of the Tube we have 132 stations on the Tube that need covering with mobile coverage and we have hundreds of kilometres of tunnels likewise now I was tasked with getting mobile coverage on the Tube amongst other things my responsibility in TFL is to liaise with the telecoms industry we already provide access to our rooftops for cell sites we have the Wi-Fi network and we also have fibre running through the tunnels to a certain extent quite a small extent actually but what we what we decided is we needed to supercharge that and we needed investment to do that internal to TFL I was told I had no money so so I was told zero we're not zero budget I could run a procurement but that was it so we needed a partner to come in and invest in our network so what we did is we created a an offer that included all TFL assets previously a lot of times we'd looked at mobile on the Tube and looked at just the Tube assets and just from a mobile perspective but what we did in this case is we looked at it from a much broader context and Andy's going to talk about the ambition that BAI have got for that and we have found a partner that matches our ambition to use all of our assets to deliver a step change in connectivity for London and the other thing we wanted we wanted a neutral host so we wanted a partner that would open up our network to the net to the industry as a whole and we believe it creates a whole load of opportunities way beyond those that we can think of at the moment now the other thing we've done on a technical basis we've been de-risking it by installing antennas through the tunnels and we've also been putting in fibre and connectivity within the station so lots and lots of infrastructure has been going in over a hundred million is already been invested the other thing we're supporting as part of this is the new emergency services network the new emergency services network in London is replacing airway which is tetra-based technology it will be sitting on a 4G network provided by EE and to support that in the tube environment we needed and the EE 4G signal everywhere including back office so areas where the public go but also everywhere else so we've been doing that that element of it and aligning these two projects together has allowed us to save hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money by creating a neutral host network that will be shared by the emergency services as well as the mobile operators so that was our compelling financial case also I'm hoping some of you travelled on the Jubilee line today if you did you will have noticed that we have a 4G network just on the eastern end of that and that was a project that we delivered brilliantly this went live the day the UK went into lockdown so we were going to do an enormous announcement we kind of got overtaken by events so it's been there for quite some time now although for us because we've barely come into London or travelled on the tube it's kind of a new experience but it's been there over a year that network is very similar technology that's going to be rolled out everywhere and therefore we know that this service that can be produced by such technology is excellent and provides a really good customer experience we do know now I was quite surprised at how busy the tube was today because I've travelled on it recently and it's not been so busy but you know you're still getting a decent throughput on that network and be able to use your data services in a way that's I think perfectly usable we'll still improve on that and continue to invest in that network so that service March 2020 that went live so we are confident that rolling that out of the entire tube network will provide the levels of service that we require and that the customers of BAI the mobile network operators will require so as I say we've let a 20-year concession to BAI and I'm going to talk about Andy talk about what they're planning to deliver from that perspective thanks Matt so yes good morning it's nice to be here in person rather than at home on a Zoom call yeah my name is Andy Conway I head up Solutions and Innovation at BAI Communications Broadcast Australia International as you can probably tell from my accent I'm not Australian I'm from Yorkshire there you go BAI who are they so we've been around about 100 years so we're headquartered in Sydney where we've been running the terrestrial broadcast network for nearly 100 years about 20-25 years ago we branched out into specialised telecommunications designing and building in areas where there is no signal so on transport networks we acquired a company in Hong Kong who specialised in that indeed in Hong Kong now I think they're on their fourth generation studied on 2G now they're rolling out 5G on the Hong Kong metro and then about 10-12 years ago we moved into New York so our operation there Transit Wireless where we deploy cellular service and Wi-Fi service on the underground system we've done the same now in Toronto and then we came to London five years ago to set up shop and ready ourselves for the TFL opportunity we've also recently acquired a company in the US called Mobility they also specialised in transportation systems and cellular systems at key venues we like long-term deals the partnership that we have with TFL is 20 years the reason being that we are majority owned by the Canadian Pension Plan and Investment Board so we really like these long-term infrastructure deals and partnerships with authorities so this is the kind of technology on a page just a single sort of technical blueprint really of what we're designing and building in London so there you'll see at the top all of the red dots in the capital we call those edge data centres or base station hotels I think the one thing that's different about the topology versus the solution that's currently present on the Jubilee line pilot is that the mobile network operator equipment is off TFL premise and located in one of these edge data centres so this will be the base station equipment from the mobile network operators that are throughout London they're in those red dots and then connected up to the London Underground as Matt said we have a vast array of low power radio network nodes that you'll see throughout the stations and they're connected up with a lot of wires my colleague the CEO last week was saying it's incredible how much wiring you need to put underground to actually provide a wireless service so last night as you all slept there were over 400 people down there in the tube manually pulling through cable coming down escalators attaching the cable and connecting it up so it's a very manually intensive business in a very very harsh environment it's hot, cramped and very damp down there so we have to choose the electronics as well with extreme care and then you'll see that it's not really just about cellular of course there's the commercial mobile service and as Matt said, if you travelled today on the jubilee line you know I had a great 100 megabit download with my mobile operator you can tell I'm in the comms industry I was probably the only one using speed test and getting excited about it but it offered that great cellular service but it's not only about cellular and emergency service network albeit they are very important our ambition is that we would take over the existing Wi-Fi concession there's been Wi-Fi on the underground for several years and we see that as a co-existing with the cellular offering and then really I think the exciting thing the ambition that we've got together with TFL our partner is that we will be investing and deploying a high capacity fibre count throughout the city underground following the TFL network and bringing that above ground to meet me points or points of presence at each of the stations on the underground system and I think that's really exciting to offer that kind of like alternative dark fibre connectivity within the heart of London and then finally working with TFL TFL have also provided as access to their streetscape assets so the holes and poles the CCTV columns lighting columns bus stops and so on there's a vast array over 80,000 of those assets which we want to bring into the mix as a neutral host just a little bit more detail it's the only technical slide really in the deck that at the heart of the system then in terms of projecting and rebroadcasting the cellular signal on the underground is a thing that we are deploying called a DAS distributed antenna system which is connected to the the nine base station hotels and rebroadcast the cellular signal both throughout the stations and the connecting passageways but also of course through the tunnels where we are deploying the radiating cable or leaky feeder as it's called it's the only thing really that you can get down there with that very narrow gauging as you've probably seen the underground it being one of the oldest in the world over 150 years old there's not much space between the train and the tunnel wall so the way that we do it is to to roll out the radiating cable system down there in the underground so I think when you take a step back of course the cellular system is important the streetscape is massively important people that are in the mobile industry particularly the MNO community know that it takes an awful long time to give birth to a macro site in a global city like London it can take in excess of three years from putting a cross on the map to actually delivering a macro cellular site three years and yet data traffic is doubling every two so there's a problem there there's a crunch point coming so we are really really interested in leveraging that small cell estates that streetscape really to provide a lot denser network much closer to the customer down at street level and really that's where we see a lot of the activity going over the period of the 20-year concession I think first on fibring up those assets and then offering them up to MNOs but it's not just about mobile network operators the streetscape assets can be used for a plethora of other use cases for example pollution monitoring there are a lot of people out there that offer some great technology with IOT sensors so we have air quality monitoring people and traffic counting and analytics and so on and all of those can utilize that streetscape that streetscape asset so really that's the sort of closing piece really that it's all about mobile coverage in the tunnels 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G ready it's that dark fibre network that alternative network underground which we'll be rolling out and then bringing to the surface taking over and improving that Wi-Fi experience and then really leveraging the small cell estate across the nine base station hotels plus we're also in two to three other major London data centres so there's 12 in total so really at that point that's the end of the presentation today thank you for your attention so it's a big event for the community it's a great networking framework for all of us and I extremely appreciate the opportunity to have this whole colleagues and partners and stakeholders in the community together and this year we have identified more than ever how important also in-person meetings are after being locked down for almost two years we're at the beginning of a new decade if it comes to the industry development and exciting times ahead of us having the digital transformation everywhere for everyone and everybody this will change our industry as well we're happy to be here in Capacity Europe to be again here and meet the industry and we are going every year because for us it's really big event meeting all of our partners across the carrier industry other industry as well technological partners meeting here in one venue which helps us very much to bring all the energy together to face all the challenges and to face all the business opportunities that the market is bringing to us creative leader to be part of Capacity Europe 2021 a true partner of choice and looking forward for the future success it's a fantastic place to meet customers, partners and essentially connect with the ecosystem if we're not all successful no one is I think we'll increase the way we co-create together I think the importance of igniting end user be it consumer or enterprise experience has become more important and I think ultimately because we need to propel more growth so I'll see you at Capacity 2022 and see you at Capacity Europe 2022 we'll see you at Capacity Europe 2022 see you at Capacity Europe 2022 it's annual global carrier awards I think there are an awful lot of events on the calendar it's a bit of a jamboree but I think the global carrier awards stand out the capacity events stand out I'm looking forward to network with a lot of people know what's going on around and then the rest of the world from partners from other operators from our customers tonight this is the place to be in telecoms we'll recognize the best global and regional carriers projects marketing and sales teams campaigns disruptors and innovations you know really genuinely pretty products a new world category and I think it's brilliant for you and I'm really really happy for you very honored and delighted to be part of this this great group of companies and we want to meet some more congratulations to everyone I hope you had a wonderful evening thank you welcome to Capacity Europe 2022 pre-event coverage we are looking forward to delivering this year's equally anticipated blended event on the 18th to the 24th October at the Intercontinental London DO2 and also on the SWAT Carder app I'm David Tran, conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run-up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called 5 minutes with tapping into India industry views but also bring out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in 5 minutes with I have Eric Seavis president global wholesale of Verizon Partner Solutions Eric, first of all great to have you involved and great to have you speaking at this year's event ready for a quick five five minute with informal interview absolutely looking forward to it and glad to participate and support the Capacity Europe event you know Verizon we like to show up each year and support the event so glad to do this for you great great to have you in the room as well we're looking forward to October all right let's start the clock so Eric first of all tell me the cover and state of play situation in global telecoms I believe that you know enterprises around the world are kind of looking for what we call global simple and secure solutions at the end of the day and we see this as an incredible opportunity for global telecom providers in the industry if we look at our assets regardless of what's going on and kind of the economic and geopolitical vein this is just a great opportunity for us once again to deliver things into the business into the industry so global simple secure that's the way the solutions need to go whether it's network whether it's above the network wireline and wireless services it's staff and where would you say your organization is positioned at the moment I mean we've seen these shifts obviously with post COVID take place but also digital transformation really kind of gathering momentum within the industry but also it's also terrible and economic and inflationary climate as well where do you where do you see your organization's position if I look at my Verizon partner solutions global wholesale team we feel we're kind of very excited about the assets that we have once again if we look at what we've done we spent over 120 billion dollars getting our spectrum with c-band and millimeter wave and once again we got vast fiber deployments across the footprint right now so very strategic time for us whether it's wireline wireless what are we doing from ethernet to wave to internet services even what I'm doing above the network with blue jeans conferencing or security services or what I really love is the passion we have in the wireless area today with wireless backup or the internet of things or our own fixed wireless access services that we're doing on LTE business internet so once again we think we're very well positioned in the industry we've made the investments and once again we want to help our customers have big bandwidth requirements certainly and you're very much a familiar face within the industry circles for capacity events how enjoyable is it working in this industry compared to when you first entered it okay I think you're calling out the fact that I've been doing this for 36 years yeah started back in 1986 and we were doing a lot of dial tone, dial tone, dial tone but I will tell you the industry has just transformed tremendously so from everything we're doing from our digital customer experience transformation where ease of business is kind of the forefront of what we do at APIs candidly what we're doing across the board when you look at new products and services in the industry you know the days of just dial tone when today you know as I said earlier I'm selling ethernet services I'm selling wave services we're selling internet services but above that we're adding things and partnerships to what we do in the cloud environment what we're doing with the internet of things how do we continue to leverage our wireless assets as we look at you know fixed wireless access and LTE business internet in the industry once again I think it's just a tremendous time not just selling one or two products and services but a lot of products and services that deal with our basic telecom needs so no longer just your basic telco but this is clearly a technology evolution and we're stepping up to it whether it's things we do organically or partnerships that we do in organically to make certain that we can meet the communications need of the industry now we've got 90 seconds left so I'll have a quick fire kind of questions here you'll be dressing the talent gap in this year's events as well what is the state of play are we in good shape yeah we feel we're in good shape our industry just like every industry I think during this period of time once again we're trying to show folks that it's attracted to be in the STEM environment with science and technology and engineering and mathematics and so once again even with the GLF the global leaders forum we're working on diversity inclusion and belonging and one of those initiatives is making sure we're bringing new talent forward and making sure that there are more opportunities with gender and balance ethnicity and making certain that we have a feeder pool that's ready to take on this telecom industry going forward so once again I feel good about the investments the training and the partnership we're doing with colleges and universities to bring even more talent into the fold now you lead your own organization Eric as well which I'm sure has its own pressures and strains I mean did you ever step back and wonder you know and how you optimize your own health and wellbeing absolutely step back I think it's important to sharpen the saw as we say take some time off reflect build back that strength and energy and come back even sharper than the day you left and so you know whether I'm taking vacations you know two time a year with my wife or I take the family on vacations or we attend events you know whether it's music events etc just taking that time to reflect and enjoy and be thankful for all the blessings well I think that's time's up there but just one final kind of like quirky question for our viewers that probably have probably yet to see you in person for the very first time at capacity media related events but perhaps give our viewers one fun fact that they don't already know oh fun fact let's see I just went to the Elton John farewell tour concert at MetLife medium in New York that was pretty cool and I like cars and clothes so I don't know that's three fun facts for you but hopefully that helps that was a good lifestyle really I wasn't doing this well yeah well what a great artist as well so I'm quite envious that you got to got the chance to go and see him live as well thanks ever so much there Eric that was great now Eric will be speaking at Capacity Europe it's October in London details of this session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now welcome to Capacity Europe's 2022 pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly awaited blended event on October the 18th to the 20th at the Intercontinental London the 02 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking to views called five minutes with tapping into their industry views also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in five minutes with I had Angela Capon Vice President Global Marketing at Edge Connect Angela how are you first of all and it's great to have you involved in our conference program for this year's event ready for a quick five-minute Q&A yeah thank you for inviting me definitely okay well so certainly let's so let's start the clock right now so in our five-minute Q&A here we go tell me the state of the play in global telecoms yeah I mean global telecoms isn't just 5G and gigabot gigabit telecoms anymore it's the wider challenges of country regulations trust from our customers climate economic growth the worrying inflation news that we're seeing and where to build next so the balance is getting increasingly difficult with large cloud services requiring ever bigger capacity while also lowering overall missions across SI supply chains so closer collaboration among operators clients industry bodies government agencies will be needed to be the forefront of any future expansion and where do you see your organization position at the moment obviously it's in a post-COVID climate it's fundamentally changed yeah I mean when COVID hit EdgeConnex was well positioned actually to not miss a beat we were all remote workers for years and the data centers had the ability to remote operate through our EdgeOS software systems so when it hit we kind of didn't really we felt the impact from a world perspective but we didn't actually from an operational side we just continued on it was incredible so to continue with the drivers like digital transformation without the impact of COVID was a testament to our strategy to set way before it was struck and we were able to continue a pace for large enterprises as we were able to work with their IT providers to offer solutions in markets large and small and as the Edge continues to develop globally we will continue to plan and supply land and power serving the largest global companies worldwide when they need it where they need it so it's the data center industry in your point of view first of all are you enjoying it and second of all in terms of the people landscape is it suffering from a lack of diversity and it's in the workforce and if so why I mean yeah I mean when I talk to people about the data center industry you kind of get that that blank look on their face so it's not incredibly exciting but what I've seen over the last 10 years of working at Edge Connects is the talent that is actually coming through difficult but it is coming through and the diversity of the talent is what I really enjoy and I'm loving seeing our employees you know join at a certain level and you know 10 years on their you know running teams and their head of security and all of those different roles so you know we are lacking in diversity for sure but I believe it's not for not trying as a company we work really hard on different projects to attract talent from going out to universities talking to the STEM type community that probably don't think about data center as an engineering type of place to go and work but when you talk to them about what we're doing and what we're developing and actually what our customers customers are doing I mean I'm very privileged to be in a position where I can see Star Trek type futures coming in and when you talk to young people about you know the opportunity and how I mean this industry hasn't even slightly reached its dizzy heights and when you talk to young people about what they want to do from an engineering perspective and you say look have you thought about the data center industry we need you it's incredible it's growing absolutely at the speed of rate all the operators will say that so it's game on to get that talent and nurture them and grow them into you know something fantastic in an industry that most people probably don't think about or understand certainly so just some quick find some questions here then just about you and your enjoyment for Europe what's the one thing that you're hoping to take away from the event we've got just over 30 seconds to go yeah people finally we're back in a room together I mean capacity Europe's always had a fantastic agenda of content you know right broad way across of talking about the industry so I'm really looking forward to listening to that meeting our customers again face to face and yeah just being there in person yep and perhaps give our viewers one fun fact about you that they don't already know 10 seconds 10 seconds probably the bravest thing I've done in my life is uproot my entire family to the southwest where I knew absolutely no one so I have this really surreal world of data centers and traffic jams cows time is up thank you ever so much there yeah that's a fantastic perspective there to find out a little bit more about you and obviously the things that you really care about and actually you're going to talk about that a little bit more at our event in October yeah it's not like I'm really looking forward to it yeah so Angela yeah you'll be speaking in our data center session on at the talent in telecoms track details of this session walk here in the following closing messages right for now to capacity Europe 2022's pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on October the 18th to 20th at the end continental London the O2 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Shran the conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run up to the event we'll run a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called five minutes with tapping into their industry views but also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this event here in this year's five minutes with I have Sammy Slim CEO of telehouse France Sammy how are you first of all and great to have you involved in our conference program for this year's event ready for a quick five minute Q&A absolutely thanks for having me so let's start the clock okay so Sammy tell me the state of play in the global telecoms market well we're seeing more of blurring boundaries between the 10 code OTT infrastructure something that is reaching the industry and we're looking forward to an exciting future great so where would you say then your organisation is positioned at the moment as the industry is seeing these shifts like post-COVID digital transformation current inflationary pressures well what is great about our industry is that all those prices are merely acceleration to the transformation to digital transformation however there are real risk especially related to energy price and the energy shortage and the industry is even thought to be tackling that kind of problems and does the industry have a talent issue so how can it solve the problems well definitely yes as the industry and I think the problem should be solved in the future with what we are seeing now in terms of remote work and remote teams distributed teams around the globe because that actually brings the talent pool to a more global level and you'll be speaking in a subsea at data centre related session about interconnectivity between those two landscapes it must be an exciting industry to be a part of incredibly diverse and things seem to be moving along quite a relatively fast pace absolutely that's actually our main driver to the capacities here we are very very excited to what kind of topic we share because the telecom geography is changing thanks to the subsea and we are looking forward to see what are the future cities where the interconnection can happen and how can we have to reshape it as well now I wanted to tap into a little bit about you yourself as a person so Sammy what's your preferred method to connect with your fellow industry peers given how platforms like teams and zoom have transformed our ability and convenience and connecting with fellow professionals in the past two years in person or virtual in terms of you know day-to-day engagements a nice drink with a great view I've got a lot of teams and views I like that but to be honest it's good for introduction which to human needs right so if you want to solidly appreciate we need to be a person and I'm looking forward to that in London next October well yeah definitely is a great segue there to capacity Europe to be there in person in adding to continental the O2 in London so what's the first thing what's the one thing that you're hoping to take away from being part of capacity Europe this year well I think that's the answer to those question on how do we manage this blurring boundaries between different technical segments how do we manage the new Europe think about how do we manage the new crisis and energy in Montana those are things that I am looking forward to discuss with my colleagues in the industry but again we have a chance to be able to see growing and that the world is needed in the back especially with the crisis so it will be a thing that will exactly mean definitely and it is a it's this huge event as well and taking place in the UK capital of London so tell me tell me about what you most love about London the location of the capacity Europe 2022 definitely the view there in O2 it's really great to know the people but I happen to we haven't had officer numbers of people I actually love being able to do it so yeah one of my definitely my favourite cities in New York and I'm saying that I'm from Paris plenty of competition between Paris and London there but two marvelous European cities and really modern as well we've got 45 seconds to go so basically we've got a few quick wild questions here for you give our viewers one fact about you that they don't already know most people so I mean no the industry I see you in France but tell you how it's France most people don't know that I'm actually not French I'm Tunisian and yeah when people discover that is there a person away from this industry that inspires you the most well I would love to meet in person someday if I have a chance I ended up on a CEO of AcroSense that's someone that reshaped the entire community as big as Microsoft and yeah that's the time's up so yeah that's our buzzer for that one as well so really great speaking to you Sammy there is a very quick part into you you just realise how quickly five minutes goes up in the flash doesn't it but thanks so much that's been great thank you very much and then Sammy will be speaking at Capacity Europe this October in London details of the session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now welcome to Capacity Europe 2022's pre-event coverage we're looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on October the 18th to the 20th at the Intercontinental London DO2 and on the SWAT card app I'm David Tran conference producer leads of this year's event and in a run-up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called five minutes with tapping into their industry views but also bringing out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part in this year's event here in five minutes with I have Mateus Freeschrom the vice president and chief evangelist of Aurelian Mateus, how are you first of all and great to have you involved in our conference programme for this year's event ready for a five minute quickfire Q&A I'm absolutely ready good to start Mateus so let's start the clock Mateus tell me the current state of play situation in global telecoms I would say it's in a pretty good shape you know traffic is still growing post pandemic which is a good sign there are though some signs of costs going up because of some circumstances around the world but I would say the overall feeling in the industry is pretty good and where would you say your organisation is best positioned at the moment as the industry is seeing these shifts like post-COVID taking place digital transformation and also the current inflation impressions that we are seeing I think we are in a pretty good shape you know we're not a big organisation we're very focused on high capacity transport services and IP services and I would say digital transformation moving traffic to the cloud using public internet much more those are good signs for us so I would say we're in a very good position right now in a tough market and how have the past couple years shaped the way you connect with your fellow industry peers from a personal perspective yourself Matias yeah you know I think that's a good question and I was very skeptical the webinars in the beginning but I would say through the pandemic I've kind of enjoyed all the webinars that's been going on and that's been a fairly good way but I'm really eager to see people again now so you can get the feeling of the industry from a much better point of view definitely you know we're looking forward to bring in capacity Europe in person in October the 18th to the 20th in London so how enjoyable is it working in this telecoms industry compared to when you first entered it I would say it's really really enjoyable I've enjoyed it all the way through but you know when I started 25 years ago I would say not very many people understood what we were doing you know internet was very new everything was more of a phone call situation in the telecoms world today everything relies on what we do you know internet is for everyone so it's much more seen these days and therefore quite a more funny industry with many more being part of it what's the interconnectivity between data centres and subsea is exciting as well as important to see these in sectors talking to one another Mattes what do you think we are seeing this overlap between the two markets why is it becoming more profound yeah no I really think you know content needs to be as close as possible to end users and you know you can't really be closer to end users if you're at the submarine cable station and therefore I see this it's a very good sign when cable or content providers locate their content at the station itself because you know at the end of that sea cable there's an end user and that user wants to take advantage of that content as soon as possible and therefore we see these two industries merging as we speak and what's the one thing you're hoping to take away from being a part of capacity year 2022 this October I think you know you want the overall feeling of the market you want to hear the bus on the floor you want to see what people talk about but then I really think you know the rumors that's what I'm there for you know speaking to people sort of on the side asking them you know how are you doing what's going on what's happening what's happening with this company and so on that's you know what you've been missing for the last couple of years yes definitely and I'm talking of the event itself and the location of the event what do you most love about London now London is a really nice city but it's also this international city you know you hear the bus from really everywhere which is what you've kind of missed the last couple of years seeing this feeling this international bus with people from everywhere kind of in one place I really love London and we've got a couple of questions there but we realize we still got 17 seconds on the on the clock here so if it wasn't for going to an event talking of London what or you know other international cities around the world Mattes what would be the first thing you'll do if you're in a new city I absolutely look at maps I love maps you know and when I come to a new city I want to see the map so I know where everything is and I kind of enjoy just looking at maps following maps making sure I see as much as I can when I come to a new city that's really what I look for and and perhaps give our viewers one fun fact about you that they didn't already know no I'm a really big sports fan many people know I'm a big sports fan but I'm really a big sports fan because I love all sports and I kind of have a secret habit of trying to learn all the rules of every sport there is and I'm not too many people try to do that but I just enjoy pretty much every sport there is I don't watch it too much but I read a lot about it okay well we've got eight seconds so any any hobbies any other hobbies four seconds no I I like I like being in the forest as well oh brilliant good stuff well that's times up there thank you ever so much there Mateus that was that was great Mateus will be speaking at capacity year of this October in London details of this session will appear in the following closing messages bye for now great so that's just that's just a flavor of what's coming what what we're going to talk about today is what it's taken to get here what we're doing and the entire scope it's not just about mobile there we go right so I'm Matthew Griffin I'm head of commercial telecoms at Transport for London and I have with me Andrew Conway and he's CTO or director of solutions and innovations sorry for that's your old job title for BAI communications we're here today because BAI were awarded a 20 year concession from TFL just in June 21st of June and we're going to explain what what what that concession is all about it's in line with the mayor's transport strategy the mayor has asked TFL to make its assets available for telecommunic telecommunications use and to book mobile coverage on the tube and that's what we're doing so TFL if you don't know TFL it's a very large organization people think of it as London Underground it it's a lot more than that it has if you move in London then we're responsible pretty much so it includes a major road network it we manage all the traffic lights for example and just to give you a scale of TFL here's some sort of big numbers 31,000 31 million journeys every day we're slightly down on that at the moment but actually we found the road traffic is back to normal bus networks around 75 percent and the tube is running during the week 50 to 60 percent and at weekends even higher than that so so we are we are edging towards normality in terms of the number of journeys that we're looking after so so what we have here is a network that is very large for the tube the underground part of the tube we have 132 stations on the tube that need covering with mobile coverage and we have hundreds of kilometers of tunnels likewise now I was tasked with getting mobile coverage on the tube amongst other things my responsibility in TFL is to liaise with the telecoms industry we already provide access to our rooftops for cell sites we have the Wi-Fi network and we also have fiber running through the tunnels to a certain extent quite a small extent actually but what we what we decided is we needed to supercharge that and we needed investment to do that internal to TFL I was told I had no money so so I was told zero we're not zero budget I could run a procurement but that was it so we needed a partner that to come in and invest in our network so what we did is we created a an offer that included all TFL assets previously a lot of times we'd looked at mobile on the tube and looked at just the tube assets and just from a mobile perspective but what we did in this case is we looked at it from a much broader context and Andy's going to talk about the ambition that BAI have got for that and we have found a partner that matches our ambition to use all of our assets to deliver a step change in connectivity for London and the other thing we wanted we wanted a neutral host so we wanted a partner that would open up our network to the net to the industry as a whole and we believe it creates a whole load of opportunities way beyond those that we can think of at the moment now the other thing we've done on a technical basis we've been de-risking it by installing antennas through the tunnels and we've also been putting in fiber and connectivity within the station so lots and lots of infrastructure has been going in over a hundred million is already been invested the other thing we're supporting as part of this is the new emergency services network the new emergency services network in London is replacing Airway which is tetra-based technology it will be sitting on a 4G network provided by EE and to support that in the tube environment we needed and the EE 4G signal everywhere including back office so areas where the public go but also everywhere else so we've been doing that that element of it and aligning these two projects together has allowed us to save hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money by creating a neutral host network that will be shared by the emergency services as well as the mobile operators so that was our compelling financial case also I'm hoping some of you traveled on the Jubilee line today if you did you will have noticed that we have a 4G network just on the eastern end of that and that was a project that we delivered brilliantly this went live the day the UK went into lockdown so we were going to do an enormous announcement we kind of got overtaken by events so it's been there quite some time now although for us because we've barely come into London or travelled on the tube it's kind of a new experience but it's been there over a year that network is very similar technology that's going to be rolled out everywhere and therefore we know that this service that can be produced by such technology is excellent and provides a really good customer experience we do know now I was quite surprised at how busy the tube was today because I've travelled on it recently and it's not been so busy but you know you're still getting a decent throughput on that network and be able to use your data services in a way that's I think perfectly usable we'll still improve on that and continue to invest in that network so that service March 2020 that went live so we are confident that rolling that out over the entire tube network will provide the levels of service that we require and that the customers of BAI the mobile network operators will require so as I say we've let a 20-year concession to BAI and I'm going to talk Andy talk about what they're planning to deliver from that perspective thanks Matt so yes good morning it's nice to be here in person rather than at home on a Zoom call yeah my name is Andy Conway I head up Solutions and Innovation at BAI Communications Broadcast Australia International as you can probably tell from my accent I'm not Australian I'm from Yorkshire but there you go BAI who are they so we've been around about 100 years so we're headquartered in Sydney where we've been running the terrestrial broadcast network for nearly 100 years about 20-25 years ago we branched out into specialised telecommunications designing and building in areas where there is no signal so on transport networks we acquired a company in Hong Kong who specialised in that indeed in Hong Kong now I think they're on their fourth generation studied on 2G now they're rolling out 5G on the Hong Kong metro and then about 10-12 years ago we moved into New York so our operation there Transit Wireless where we deploy cellular service and Wi-Fi service on the underground system we've done the same now in Toronto and then we came to London five years ago to set up shop and ready ourselves for the TFL opportunity we've also recently acquired a company in the US called Mobility they also specialised in transportation systems and cellular systems at key venues we like long-term deals the partnership that we have with TFL is 20 years the reason being that we are majority owned by the Canadian Pension Plan and Investment Board so we really like these long-term infrastructure deals and partnerships with with authorities so this is the kind of technology on a page just a single sort of like technical blueprint really of what we're designing and and building in London so there you'll see at the top all of the the red dots in the capital we call those edge data centres or base station hotels I think the one thing that's different about the topology versus the solution that's currently present on the Jubilee Line pilot is that the mobile network operator equipment is off TFL premise and located in one of these edge data centres so this will be the base station equipment from the mobile network operators that are throughout London they're in those red dots and then connected up to the London Underground as Matt said we have a vast array of low power radio network nodes that you'll see throughout the stations and they're connected up with a lot of wires my colleague the CEO last week was saying it's incredible how much wiring you need to put underground to actually provide a wireless service so last night as you all slept there were over 400 people down there in the tube manually pulling through cable coming down escalators you know attaching the cable and connecting it up so it's a very manually intensive business in a very very harsh very very harsh environment it's hot cramped and very damp down there so we have to choose the electronics as well with extreme care and then you'll see that it's not really just about cellular of course there's the commercial mobile service and as Matt said you know if you travelled today on the on the Jubilee Line you know I had a great you know 100 megabit download with my mobile operator you can tell I'm in the comms industry I was probably the only one using speed test and getting excited about it but you know it offered that great cellular service but it's not only about cellular and emergency service network albeit they are very important our ambition is that we would take over the existing Wi-Fi concession there's been Wi-Fi on the underground for several years and we see that as a co-existing with the cellular offering and then really I think the exciting thing the ambition that we've got together with TFL our partner is that we will be investing and deploying a high capacity fiber count throughout the city underground following the TFL network and bringing that above ground to meet me points or points of presence at each of the stations on the underground system and I think that's really exciting to offer that kind of like alternative dark fiber connectivity within within the heart of London and then finally working with TFL TFL have also provided as access to their streetscape assets so the holes and poles the CCTV columns lighting columns bus stops and so on there's a vast array over 80,000 of those assets which we want to bring into the mix as a neutral host and just a little bit more detail it's the it's the only technical slide really in the deck that at the heart of the system then in terms of projecting and rebroadcasting the cellular signal on the underground is a thing that we are deploying called a Das distributed antenna system which is connected to the the nine base station hotels and rebroadcast the cellular signal both throughout the stations and the connecting past Welcome to capacity Europe extra powered by JSA the live streaming newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Kim Ginellius CCO and co-founder of Fikolo at the moment but we'll speak about that Kim thanks for joining us today Thanks it's a pleasure to be here so I alluded to this but of course we know you as co-founder of Fikolo but some recent changes have been taking place for you since last year's announcement with D9 so fill us in on what's been happening Yeah so we decided to rebrand the company and go with the brand of Burn Global and this was announced yesterday so we'll be using the same brand as the Icelandic Burn Global and the recently rebranded Volta data centers that's also now Burn Global so we'll have footprint in these three countries so that makes us you know anortic data center platform Yeah very nice I mean it's been part of your goal to to expand in that way and so it's a perfect fit right with Burn Global and then Burn Global Finland operating as as companies under the D9 portfolio and being able to service companies in your and customers rather in your targeted areas and so for your current customers what does this mean Well for the current customers it doesn't mean anything we'll actually be keeping a separate entity so we have the three companies underlying this is just for marketing purposes so basically as we address say the US markets or the German markets and we say travel to California we don't want to spend the first five minutes talking about three separate companies and you know explaining the structure we just want to have one Burn Global brand and then tell them what kind of services we can offer and get the discussion ongoing and also the second part of course is that this actually makes us a platform so from looking from the outside it looks like a platform so we've got a bigger footprint so so it's it's more consistent for the for the customers so I think it if it makes sense for the customers it makes sense for us yeah it makes sense and and to your your point there about I mean that's customers but when you think about the market and who you're serving you know this makes a lot of sense and I think that you've had a large focus on reaching hyperscalers and and talk a little bit about about that and how you're servicing that market and some of the priorities that you have in place for that right so specifically for the hyperscale market what our portfolio is that you know we we have an excellent sustainable platform now both in Iceland and in in Finland and we've got a lot of capacity so the hyperscalers can come in they can grow there and we've got the flexibility of a small company so that's really our benefit in in the kind of Nordic kind of segment for the hyperscale and what other benefits do you think will come from having this partnership with with burn I mean why why did that make sense for you to to make that move well it's not only burn really it's also D9 so so we have a kind of a shared vision of you know doing this very sustainably so with for instance since day one we've been using 100 percent green power so we did the climate neutral certification 2021 and we are sort of looking at pushing the envelope on all of sustainability aspects and it's the same is true for burn and indeed in D9's name it's already incorporated UN sustainability goal nine which is talks about infrastructure so all of this works really well together and that's what how we want to position ourselves for the you know the hyperscale and also the HBC markets where your sustainable partner in the Nordics I love that that's such synergies both from a obviously that I remember us we've chatted a little bit about that earlier this year in Monaco I believe about D9 and the the commitment there really you know very clear commitment there to the environment right in their name but also you know you where you're based of course you are you know based in Finland and there's obvious advantages there to climate and your commitment as an organization to that you wrote a chapter in the book greener data that came out across the industry earlier this year you know and it's been interesting to see the industry talk so much more about sustainability and DSG this year have you are there milestones ahead for you on that front of course there's always a lot to do you know so even if we have reached carbon neutrality now what's the next step you have to think about that so so the way we think about it is that we need to go to the carbon negative and how do you do that we look at what we call a positive handprint because normally you talk about the negative footprint right so we're thinking about what can we do for the ecosystem how can we help for instance our customers in becoming less carbon intensive replace maybe some some brown energy that they are using and that's that's what we're already doing with the heat reuse which we're feeding back to the district heating grid so buying 100% green energy feeding that back to the grid it actually replaces some of the energy that the district heating grid is using so we can do I think there's a lot of ideas that we can do more in this area for instance build an ecosystem say to help our customers save energy you know by optimizing their code for instance or any other areas where we can work as an ecosystem and have a positive handprint so important for our industry but also for our planet you know and increasingly a topic of conversation across the world really in the midst of you know an energy crisis that people are experiencing countries are experiencing so really important work that you're doing and exciting news that you know we're here the day after your big rebranding announcement so congratulations on that for people that want to connect with you further either at this event or after how can they do that so please go to burnglobal.com the fickle.com is still live certainly but we're moving towards a very global brand so okay burnglobal.com okay thank you so much thanks for sharing that news with us today Kim and it's always a pleasure to see you and and to speak with you and thank you viewers for tuning in to Capacity Europe Extra powered by JSA stay tuned as we'll be continuing our live stream of conversations with thought leaders across the telecom and data center space here at Capacity Europe see you soon so it's a big event for the community it's a great networking framework for all of us and I extremely appreciate the opportunity to have this whole colleagues and partners and stakeholders in the community together and this year we have identified more than ever how important also in-person meetings are after being locked down for almost two years we are at the beginning of a new decade if it comes to the industry development and exciting times are ahead of us having the digital transformation everywhere for everyone and everybody this will change our industry as well we're happy to be here at Capacity Europe to be again here and meet the industry and we are going every year because for us it's really big events meeting all of our partners across the carrier industry for us other industry as well technological partners meeting here in one venue which helps us very much to bring all the energy together to face all the challenges and to face all the business opportunities that the market is bringing to us Creative ledger to be about to visit Europe 2021 a true partner of choice and looking forward for a future success fantastic place to meet customers, partners and essentially connect with the ecosystem if we're not all successful no one is I think we'll increase the way we co-create together I think the importance of igniting end user be it consumer or enterprise experience has become more important and I think ultimately because we need to propel more growth so I'll see you at Capacity 2022 and see you at the Capacity Europe 2022 we'll see you at Capacity Europe 2022 see you at Capacity Europe 2022 it's annual Global Carrier Awards I think there are an awful lot of events on the calendar it's a bit of a jamboree but I think the Global Carrier Awards stand out the capacity events I'm looking forward to network because a lot of people know what's going on around and the rest of the world from partners from other operators from our customers tonight this is the place to be in telecoms we'll recognize the best global and regional carriers projects marketing and sales teams campaigns disruptors and innovations you know really genuinely pretty product a new award category and I think it's brilliant for you and I'm really really happy for you very honored and delighted to be part of this this great group of companies and we want to mend some more congratulations to everyone I hope you had a wonderful evening thank you welcome to Capacity Europe 2022 pre-event coverage we are looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on the 18th to the 24th of October at the Intercontinental London DO2 and also on the SWATCADA app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run-up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called five minutes with tapping into industry views but also bring out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part this year's event here in five minutes with I have Eric Sevis president global wholesale of Verizon Partner Solutions Eric first of all great to have you involved welcome to Capacity Europe Extra powered by JSA the live streaming news newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Mano Nakum chief product officer at ConnectFace thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me it's been a fun event so far busy have you enjoyed the week so far oh yeah very busy we have lots of meetings it's a lot of interest in our product and this is in line with our plan to expand into this market here in Europe so tell me a little bit about for our viewers who may not be as familiar can you let them know a little bit about ConnectFace sure absolutely ConnectFace was founded about seven years ago by Ben Edmont to address the frictions and the inefficiencies in the connectivity network connectivity marketplace this has been a very labor intensive slow and manual process that basically impacted the industry and its ability to grow and expand and offer connectivity to the market so we have created an end-to-end connectivity marketplace to support this process and to accelerate the digitization and the ability of buyers and seller to plan and execute all the way to order the connectivity marketplace so essentially we're empowering the providers to drive growth drive efficiency drive growth and basically making a smarter future and a more connected world yeah and I think that you've had some interesting news recently that should probably help move that along right a series seed funding led by digital bridge can you talk about that yeah money is always helpful and this is we just closed this around a couple of weeks ago we announced it last week so this will help us fund our next growth basically we are going to use this money to accelerate our product innovation and also to expand our market into new markets so we started in the U.S. our strong market is in the U.S. but we definitely have a lot of interest here in this show in Europe and other markets in Asia and specifically with the with the market and with the product we're going to accelerate the plan to order the insights into our platform that drives decisions and enable the user to make decisions on the fly based on real market data and also building specific use cases to user persona like the commercial seller so all in all again we're going to use this funding to grow this product and the market to accelerate our ecosystem into the market please and as you said funding helps and especially to that I think it was a 21 million dollar raise bringing your funding so far up to 48 million dollars I mean that's hopefully it you know it should help with a lot of that growth of infrastructure etc and so what does it mean then for your customers once this comes into play yeah our customers for them what it means that we they have even a stronger partner now for their move into an automated marketplace ecosystem in their transformation of the selling and buying of capacity so we we will deliver as I said before additional capabilities in the platform we will expand our global reach so there will be there will have been more opportunities for our customers to partner in our marketplace globally and extend their their market and their ecosystem so all in all we're going to help them in transforming this market faster than before and with more opportunities globally and now you have a platform I believe the connected world platform which obviously helps with this user experience and as you know had a product for Connectbase I think that this is probably near and dear to you tell us about how that's going to impact the experience for your customers sure absolutely as you indicated when I joined the company about seven months ago this was one of the objectives to improve the the user experience of the platform so we took a very strategic approach to that and very holistic approach to user experience this is a very important topic for the company and for me personally so we have taken this holistic approach by looking at overall user experience from product to support to overall how our users what's our user experience inside our ecosystem so we we have been conducting a number of approaches so number one we identify identified fictions in the industry that have been existing for a long time we're trying to eliminate them the many areas of frictions and inefficiency so number one we try to tackle that for example we we created what's called near-net analysis a few years ago this is a process that we analyze the network and identify locations near your fiber assets so you can expand your serviceability market so we we had this process for a while in a semi-manual that took a long time now we fully automated it and created a user-guided process so this is just one example but we took a user first approach to the process we analyze the the user experience we conducted significant number of user experience interviews we understand we analyze the the process we understood the user personas and their journey and based on that we created an amazing user experience and user interface that will be actually launched soon and we're actually going to demonstrate it in our customer summit in a couple of weeks ah a couple of weeks customer summit that sounds interesting you'll have a lot to show there and so that's great for your customers that can be there what about for the folks that you know maybe won't be there but want to have heard this and maybe want to connect with you a little bit more how can they find you sure first people can still sign up for a customer summit it's going to be November 1st to 3rd in Boston but definitely the easiest way to connect with us is on our website and we are very active in social media and LinkedIn and other places so there are many ways they can connect with us and get information and demonstration of our solution great well and it's and the week's not over here and so you know enjoy the rest of your week definitely in London and it was a pleasure speaking with you today Madam thank you thank you for having me any time it's always a pleasure and thank you and thank you viewers for tuning in to Capacity Europe Extra Powered by JSA stay tuned as we continue to stream live industry thought leaders across the telecom and data center space talk soon and welcome to Capacity Europe's 2022 pre-event coverage we are looking forward to delivering this year's eagerly anticipated blended event on the 18th to the 24th October at the Intercontinental London DO2 and also on the SWAT Carder app I'm David Tran conference producer lead of this year's event and in the run-up to the event we'll have a series of rather light hearted speaking interviews called Five Minutes With tapping into industry views but also bring out the person behind the speakers that will be taking part this year's event here in Five Minutes With I have Eric Sevis president global wholesale of Verizon Partner Solutions Eric first of all great to have you involved and great to have you speaking at this year's event ready for a quick five Five Minutes With informal interview absolutely looking forward to it and glad to participate and support the Capacity Europe event you know Verizon we like to show up each year and support the event so glad to do this for you great great to have you in the room as well we're looking forward to October all right let's start the clock so Eric first of all tell me the cover and state of play situation in global telecoms I believe that enterprises around the world are kind of looking for what we call global simple and secure solutions at the end of the day and we see this as an incredible opportunity for global telecom providers in the industry if we look at our assets regardless of what's going on and kind of the economic and geopolitical vein this is just a great opportunity for us once again to deliver things into the business into the industry so global simple secure that's the way the solutions need to go whether it's network whether it's above the network wire line and wireless services it's staff and where would you say your organization is positioned at the moment I mean we've seen these shifts obviously with post-COVID take place but also digital transformation really kind of gathering momentum within the industry but also there's also a terrible and economic and inflationary climate as well where do you where do you see your organization's position if I look at my Verizon partner solutions global wholesale team we feel we're kind of very excited about the assets that we have once again if we look at what we've done we spent over 120 billion dollars getting our spectrum with c-band and millimeter wave and once again we got vast fiber deployments across the footprint right now so very strategic time for us whether it's wire line wireless what are we doing from ethernet to wave to internet services even what I'm doing above the network with blue jeans conferencing or security services or what I really love is the passion we have in the wireless area today with wireless backup or the internet of things or our own fixed wireless access services that we're doing on LTE business internet so once again we think we're very well positioned in the industry we've made the investments and once again we want to help our customers that have big bandwidth requirements certainly and you're very much a familiar face within the industry circles for capacity events how enjoyable is it working in this industry compared to when you first entered it okay I think you're calling out the fact that I've been doing this for 36 years yeah started back in 1986 and we were doing a lot of dial tone dial tone dial tone but I will tell you the industry has just transformed tremendously so from everything we're doing from our digital customer experience transformation where ease of business is kind of the forefront of what we do at apis candidly what we're doing across the board when you look at new products and services in the industry you know the days of just dial tone when today you know as I said earlier I'm selling ethernet services I'm selling wave services we're selling internet services but above that we're adding things and partnerships with what we do in the cloud environment what we're doing with the internet of things how do we continue to leverage our wireless assets as we look at you know fixed wireless access and LTE business internet in the industry once again I think it's just a tremendous time not just selling one or two products and services but a lot of products and services that deal with our basic telecom needs so no longer just your basic telco but this is clearly a technology evolution and we're stepping up to it whether it's things we do organically or partnerships that we do in organically to make certain that we can meet the communications need of the industry now we've got 90 seconds left so I'll have a self-quickfire kind of questions here you'll be dressing the talent gap in this year's events as well what is a state of play are we in good shape yeah we feel we're in good shape our industry just like every industry I think during this period of time once again we're trying to show folks that it's attracted to be in the STEM environment with science and technology and engineering and mathematics and so once again even with the GLF the global leaders forum we're working on diversity inclusion and belonging and one of those initiatives is making sure we're bringing new talent forward and making sure that there are more opportunities with gender imbalance ethnicity and making certain that we have a feeder pool that's ready to take on this telecom industry going forward so once again I feel good about the investments the training and the partnership we're doing with colleges and universities to bring even more talent into the fold now you lead your own organization Eric as well which I'm sure has its own pressures and strains I mean did you ever step back and wonder you know and how you optimize your own helpful environment absolutely step back I think it's important to sharpen the saw as we say take some time off reflect build back that strength and energy and come back even sharper than the day you left and so you know whether I'm taking vacations you know two time year with my wife or I take the family on vacations or we attend events you know whether it's music events etc just taking that time to reflect and enjoy and be thankful for all the blessings well I think that's time up there but just one final kind of like quirky question for our viewers that probably have probably yet to see you in person for the very first time at capacity media related events but perhaps give our viewers one fun fact that they don't already know oh fun fact let's see I just went to the Elton John farewell tour concert at MetLife Stadium in New York that was pretty cool and I like cars and welcome to capacity Europe extra powered by JSA the live streaming network for telecom and data center professionals I'm Barb Mitchell and joining me today is Maria Ortega Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Telefonica Global Solutions thank you for joining me Maria thank you thank you for receiving me here yes it's it's a great event so far we're on day two I guess just wrapping up day two feels like I keep saying day two going on day seven it feels like it's been so busy and so many exciting conversations tell me about how how it's felt to you to be back at capacity Europe this year it's been very refreshing and very exciting being able to be here again all together talking about our market our business and how we can all together solve the the challenges that we face from now and on the next yes coming years and so yeah I think this is the we're hearing the biggest capacity Europe ever and so it's you know gets bigger every time and of course we had a couple years that it was a little smaller for for various reasons which we won't discuss but yeah big lots of energy and lots of great conversations happening are you seeing any key themes emerge this week that that you expected or surprised by or that that are consistent with what you're talking about at Telefonica yeah I think the full agenda is quite consistent with the challenges that we see at the market we are seeing how connectivity is evolving and how it it's the base in which all the metaverse that everyone talks about is going to be based and this is one of the greatest topics that we have in the agenda the convergence between data centers and networking this is also a clear need because all the companies are migrating everything into data centers and employees branches headquarters everything needs to connect there to get the information the processes and everything and this is a key issue that needs to be addressed by the industry the user experience needs to be consistent across all the elements that take part in that in that communication we are as wholesalers we need to transform ourselves to face these challenges and this is something that is being faced here that is being addressed in the in the meetings and all around the event and of course diversity is the other one that I'm very involved about and the whole industry is very involved because if we are not as diverse as the markets we serve we won't be able to face all the exciting future that we happen from really I mean you touched on so many important topics right the metaverse what that looks like how we're serving it as a community of you know an industry community and yeah diversity it's such an important topic but tell me specifically then how is Telefonica planning to address some of these key themes we are transforming ourselves to serve our customers in this hyper hyper connected market we are transforming our network our customers front front lines how we can address all the automation and all the sales service that our customers are asking for us and and we are facing the future with energy and trying to put together all the different pieces of the puzzle that customers need for serving their evolution to digital their digitalization and we want to be those that help them to solve those complex problems with simple solutions so as you look ahead to 2023 and the years beyond that even what are some key things that we can expect to see coming from Telefonica we are working in NAS network as a service this is one of our priorities we are working in putting together things like 5G edge computing networking data center everything that is needed for transforming the company's businesses and that's our focus our priority well you know Maria it's been really great speaking with you today is there anything any sort of overarc