 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom professionals. I'm Dean Perine, EVP at JSA and joining me today are my new friends, Mr. Andy Parrot, President and Chief Operating Officer at Vibe Broadband and Mr. Ed Butler. Ed is the Chief Commercial Officer also at Vibe Broadband. Gentlemen, welcome to JSA TV. Glad to be here. Thank you very much. Andy, we're going to start with you for our viewers that don't already know. Why don't you tell them a little bit about Vibe Broadband and Vibe Business Services? Thank you, Dean. Yeah, so those that don't know about Vibe, Vibe is a national operator, prides itself in providing both business services and residential services, providing voice, video, data, cloud-based services, managed and hosted support and we kind of span all the way from the Carolinas and Georgia to California and Washington. So we're across 16 states, we've got a little short of a thousand people on our team that are focused on being empowered to take care of the customer and we passed a little short of a million opportunities and possible customers within their network and just we're growing as we'll talk about hopefully on this podcast about some of the things that we're up to. But we've kind of put these together through a handful of other acquisitions from Northland Communications, Eagle Broadband, Legacy Vibe, it's another small one from FamilyView so and we're continuing to look and grow and with that I'll turn it back over to you. Awesome, Andy, thank you very much for that and that's actually why we're here, isn't it? You guys just made a very, very significant announcement with regard to product and market and I'm going to turn it over to you. Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about that announcement? Yeah, well we're incredibly excited. We're embarking on a new initiative for 2022. We're going to expand our plant and our network and our opportunity to some 25 markets across the country where we have not operated here before and we're excited about developing these new relationships, bringing a new breath of service offerings to some historically underserved communities and so we're incredibly excited and it's frankly it's a continuation of an effort we've been under for the last three years. We've spent about $200 million really upgrading and expanding our network to try and bring the latest and the technology solutions to the markets that we're going to be serving so we're incredibly excited and we're looking forward to it. Well guys, congratulations number one on the announcement but you mentioned the communities, these markets, how are they and this is for you Andy. How did you choose those markets? Was there a certain set of criteria that you use? Let us know a little bit about that. Yeah, so we absolutely had criteria. We're looking into markets where we think we have the greatest value to add to those communities. Obviously, we're not looking at Dallas and New York and Chicago as those cities are pretty well served and that's not really our area, what we think we're going to bring the greatest value to to the customers and communities in which we serve so we absolutely looked at communities that we are partnered up next to or already nearby where we have local trained technicians and engineers on location or at location or within minutes away so we could actually make sure we have a network that we build that's always on and you know two guys in the back row take it out. We want to make sure that we're there within minutes and preferably with redundant routes so we have to have two guys in two back rows at the same time as you guys know those scenarios do happen from time to time so hopefully that doesn't but we feel that we are bringing a value of services whether it's dark fiber, you know crazy fast, you know 10 gigabit ethernet connections into their you know into their shops and their businesses and if needed you know I always tell Ed you know if we need to do more we'll do more. It's really we're building you know we're building a great menu of products for these communities that don't exist today and my job is to create you know I'm going to say the chef's kitchen so when Ed comes in and says I got something I need that's not on the menu I want to make sure that we're building the infrastructure to provide whether it's a government hospital you know schools whatever their unique needs are in these communities that Vive is the solution and has the solution to whatever challenges that they're facing and you know we think these markets are faced with with limitations so we want to take the handcuffs off those markets. I love it I love it you know and again true to your mission everything I know about Vive is about serving these markets and giving them all the opportunities that every other market may have or some of those tier one markets but let's talk a little bit more about that solution I understand that it's up to 10 gig and do you want to talk a little bit about what the I know it's a fiber-based solution but why don't you tell our viewers a little bit more about the specific business solution that you that you are rolling out in those 25 markets. Yeah absolutely and so we've deployed really state-of-the-art technology in delivering a multitude of options for our constituency you know we don't take a cookie-cutter approach customers needs vary and so we're proud that we're going to be able to bring everything from a 100 meg solution to a wide area network a private network about fiber solutions 10 gig solutions and even regional coverage but in addition to just being a transport provider we hope to be able to provide business solutions we're going to try and solve business problems and so we've got a full array of managed solutions that we think we can help bring to our customer base so whether they need office productivity disaster recovery backup security IP cameras we want to try and meet the customers where they are and build customized solutions specifically for their needs. I love it so big announcement at the very beginning of the year why you tell our viewers a little bit more about what they might be able to expect from vibes say six months 10 months a year from now and we'll take this we'll hand this over to you. Yeah so you know we're constantly growing you know we've challenged ourselves to continue to invest Ed was telling me about the you know the hundreds of millions of dollars that we're investing in the network we're building peering relationships we're getting into every single you know meat point that's out there across the country so if you need to get in the Dallas Atlanta you know some of these other key areas for these businesses we're setting those relationships up we have them in place today and you know we're going to continue to you know add a national redundant backbone across there so you know you know we say five nines you know we're always on that's our goal as we continue to have these investments that investment into our backbone our infrastructure we stood up recently our own not operation so we have our own in-house resources that are constantly monitoring the network we stood up a dedicated commercial tier support team that any commercial customer that does do business with us gets a direct line into into this you know high tier group experts that are out there troubleshooting and you know our mission with local uncull texts and continuing to invest in in our people which we talk about the network but we're equally investing in our people through partnering with groups like the scte and getting business class certified specialist experts that are out there in the trucks you know you know working directly with our customers to ensure that we both find the solutions install it within their time frame and ultimately create a network that's always on and always delivering everything that we commit so that's what exactly everybody can expect us to you know wake up every day as a better version than we were yesterday. Words to live by right that's that's outstanding and thank you so much Andy and thank you very much for being with us today I appreciate it and thank you viewers for watching JSA TV we'll see you soon. Thank you Dave.