 Welcome to JSA TV where we're covering the latest stories trends and innovations from leaders in global connectivity digital infrastructure and the networks within. My name is Emily Sherer reporting here from sunny Fort Lauderdale at Metro Connect 2024. And I am joined today to discuss broadband network infrastructure by Rich Coulter of Fujitsu Network Communications. They are a telecom leader reimagining and delivering the future of wireline and wireless networking. Rich, thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here. Thank you very much. Absolutely. So we're currently seeing a boom in network infrastructure investments and as we can certainly see here at Metro Connect. So I'm wondering what are some of the key trends that are impacting the networking market today? Yeah, you bet. There are three key trends that we see really impacting the broadband market today. Number one is just this huge influx of funding. We're seeing big influx of funding from private sources and public sources, things like BEED, which is a big government program to invest more money in broadband and close the digital divide. So that investment is driving a huge amount of interest and a lot of deployments in the network will be. The other big trend that we're seeing is just across the workforce, across the timeline of deploying networks. We're seeing more and more people retiring from the industry and aging out and that's creating a big gap in the amount of resources needing to take that funding and then deploy it. So another big trend that we're seeing and then the final trend that's just a major issue and it's not a new one is equipment availability. We've seen throughout COVID that equipment availability components reached over 52 weeks of lead time which caused a lot of carriers in the broadband projects and their middle mile projects not to be able to get equipment. So that was a big issue. We're also seeing logistics being fairly costly and things like pirates around the Horn of Africa shifting global trading routes. So these trends that is one, driving more investment and then two that still exist that are impacting the ability to actually get to market are really the major trends that we're seeing in the broadband market. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of those being discussed here this weekend, major topics that you've hit on there. So that's excellent. And then you also gave a presentation here at Metro Connect and you discussed practical tips to speed return on broadband projects. What would you say are the most important considerations to ensure a new network gets up and running as quickly as possible? Yeah, there were three tips that we talked about today that we found out from working with carriers, digital infrastructure, investors, tribal communities and state and local governments. And there were three so we'll go through them one at a time. So the first one is make sure you have a holistic plan. The second one was mind the gaps and the third one was plan with the end in mind or start begin with the end in mind. So each of these is kind of critical. We know when you're building a new infrastructure market, getting to that underserved market quickly is critical. So planning with building that holistic plan means that you need to take the financial goals that are created and turn those into a network design that implements the financial plans. And that's really challenging because depending on the carrier and where you're at those goals may be different. So you need to work very carefully to design a network that implements the goals. The second part is making sure you mind the gaps in a big project. There are multiple steps along the way. There are multiple contractors that you're working with to get the network deployed and those are the gaps that have to be minded. So the kind of most critical thing is to have a project manager that's working across the entire project making sure that the financial targets that were created initially get built into the design and then get implemented into the network that's mining the gaps between all the contractors and the pieces of the project. And then the final step is starting with the end in mind and that's really not just getting the network to the field and getting it installed. It's also being able to add customers onto the network and get revenue generating customers on the network. And that's about building an operations plan though they're costly to build a knock center to hire those expert resources and to really make sure that you get net people onto the network. That's where you get ROI. You have to plan intentionally for whether I'm going to build the knock, whether I'm going to buy that as a managed service or whether I buy it as a managed service and then transition through it over time. Perfect. Thank you for sharing that. We've had a good three step process that you've shared there. So even if people weren't able to catch the discussion that happened. Thank you for sharing that with our viewers. We appreciate it. Now finally what is Fujitsu doing to help carriers digital infrastructure investors municipalities and tribal communities build and operate broadband networks. You bet. So Fujitsu is really well known for our optical and wireless hardware. When we're talking about broadband networks this really opens up a big other part of our portfolio which is the services. The services organization that's really focused around multi vendor services. So we work really closely with carriers and digital infrastructure investors tribal communities and state and local governments to help them design networks to help them turn key and network and do everything from design all the way through implementation. We have knock centers that help manage and operate these networks so we help them throughout the life cycle. Plan it deliver it and make sure it gets there on time and we've shown over the last several decades that you know we can build up networks that have 100% commercial success rate. We've had that success with our customers. We've done 3500 projects and in counting to help deliver broadband networks with with our partners with over 2 billion of live network in the field. And we're largely on time 99.8% of the time we're helping them deliver those networks to the field on time which is again critical to make sure that you're first to market and winning and getting new. Yeah and such important work kind of closing that digital divide and helping make sure that everybody is connected so absolutely and on time at that so excellent excellent. Well thank you so much Rich is there anything else you'd like to add today. No I just appreciate being here and getting a chance to talk and repeat the key tips that we had to speed our life in that way. Absolutely thank you so much for being here and to our viewers thank you so much for tuning in.