 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcasts where we're covering the latest news stories and innovations from leaders in global connectivity and digital infrastructure. Joining me today is Chris Harper, who we know well. Happy to have you here on JSA TV. You are currently strategic board advisor for Smart CIC and Group CEO for Petworth Enterprises. I am indeed. Correct. Thank you. Mouthful. All right. But I got it, yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about Smart CIC specifically? But, oh wait. First, Smart CIC is smart. You know what else is smart? Your outfit. Okay. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about your scarf, your shirt. The audience can't see your shoes. They're also quite special. All right. Well, I've got some very interesting shoes as well. So thanks, Bob. It's lovely to be here and thanks JSA for inviting me. With regards to scarf, it's a double-edged sword, really. So I wear a scarf because everyone says, which one were you in the meeting? And I don't like saying I'm the short one. I prefer to say, I'm the guy with the scarf. But the other more serious reason is sadly my son passed away six years ago this November. And so every morning when I get up, I just have a moment where I choose a scarf or a cravat just to have a think about him, put it on and out I go. So that's the reason behind the scarf. And it's quite an emotional one. And six years on, it doesn't change. She died of cancer and it was horrible. But so then what about the shirts? And we're really going for it with the shirts. So Smart CIC are an atypical company. And so we decided that we're going to have Smart Shirt Fridays. And we're rolling out to everybody. So any of our customers, any of our prospects, send us a picture of you and your Smart Shirt on a Friday. Let's not do dress down Friday. Let's do dress up Friday. Let's have a bit of fun with it because let's be honest, our industry isn't that exciting. So I try and put a bit of excitement into what we do. So that's the reason behind the scarf. That's the reason behind the snazzy shoes socks. Yeah, I mean, I wish the camera would go down so we could see the socks in the shoes. But trust me, they're special. They're smart. And yeah, and it's not Friday, but it will be Friday by the time this show is over. It's Tuesday here, day one, right? Exactly. On Friday, maybe everyone can snap some photos once they're back in their respective homes and sending some photos. But yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. And I always do remember that every time I see you and the scarf and I have a thought for you and your family. So let's now talk about Smart CIC the business. And so if you wouldn't mind giving us a little bit of an overview. So I joined Smart CIC back in May. We announced it just at ITW. And my role there, it's a bit of a Ponzi title, Strategic Board Advisor. But in essence, I'm there to help the owners grow the business, to grow it from a sales perspective and make it scalable. And we have some specific fiscal targets that we're working towards. But ultimately it's to grow sales and that's what I'm doing. So what do we do? We provide in the line services end to end. So what does that mean? What's the line? Oh, could you excuse me while this goes off? That's a customer. It's a customer wondering where I am. So we provide the line services. So that could be point to point. It could be DIA. It could be broadband. It could be fixed wireless access. And fixed wireless access is not the new kid on the block, but the rising kid on the block. So we provide the line. We provide the equipment. We can do the shipping of the equipment. We can install the equipment. We can connect it to the line and we turn the service up. Then when it breaks, we can send the engineer to fix it. So what does that give our customers? Control of delivery. So the traditional method is you buy the line from someone. You buy the equipment from somebody else. Someone ships it for you and someone else installs it for you. So you've got four moving parts there. Those four moving parts are all controlled by four different companies. So something's going to go wrong and quite often it does. So what we do is we take that out of the equation and we just run the whole project. So it gives you control, but also it reduces the total contract value. Because suddenly, the Americanism, we don't have to do truck rolls every time. We just have one guy going out doing all the work. So one company installing everything, no more multiple visits. And our motto or our tagline is to make our customers look good in front of their customers. So we're not interested in going after the end customer. We're working with the big carriers making them look good in front of their enterprise customers. That's our USP. It's in the company name Smart CIC. You refer to your offerings as smart offerings. Let's talk about that in terms of what makes your offerings smart for the digital infrastructure space. A couple of examples. We look at the total solution or the total problem. Some customers come to us with problems. Some come to us asking for a total package. So if we give an example of LD stores, I don't know if you have the LD stores in the US. But in six countries in Europe, for Telefonica, we staged the equipment. We installed the equipment and we did the total maintenance of the equipment. So 24-7, we are sat waiting for something to go wrong in an LD store. Our guys go straight out and they fix it. They're on site within one and a half hours. Now that's quite an industry leading standard. Most people are four hours. LD are very strict. They want it in one and a half hours. So when Telefonica came to us with that request, that wasn't how they were going to do it. So we looked at it from a smart perspective and said, this is the better way to do it. They were sending the equipment to the locations, not to the engineers. Send it to a location. It gets lost. Send it to an engineer. It's his job to make sure he's got it. It just makes a great difference. Another example would be for British Telecom. We do BP petrol stations in Poland, Germany and Spain. For that, we provide the connectivity, the equipment, the install and the break fix. And in that case, things are trending towards fixed wireless access. So we're seeing a move away from DIA and broadband and more. In fact, that's probably not true. Move away from broadband towards fixed wireless access. So that's how we do things smarter. So we had another customer come to us. They got problems with demarcations. Their service has been bought by a very large carrier and dropped over there and they need it over there. The system says no. That large carrier, and I used to run Sprint International for a long time. I know that large carriers, if the computer says no, they just can't do it. They can't work around the process, but we can. So we look at the problem, give a smart solution, off we go. So your sort of solutions come from obviously the goal and the mission of Smart CIC, but also from your background. I know that you've been around a long time. You mentioned Sprint. I knew you when you were working with Bell and lots of other roles that you've held over the years. And so you started to touch on a little bit some of the moves that are happening in the industry and some of the trends. But can you talk a little bit more, sort of peel back from that a little bit and just what you're seeing in general in the industry as some major trends? So it's very interesting. If I go back to my very early days, I started working in this industry in Russia. I worked in Russia in the late 90s. It was a bit cowboy territory. Lot of fun and I took Japanese manufacture into Russia and into South Africa. Then I joined a carrier's carrier during the dot-com boom and the dot-com bust. Our biggest client when I was working for that carrier was Sprint. Sprint took me on board and said, can you build a worldwide network? And we built a worldwide network. And I ran everything outside of the US for Sprint for the best part of 15 years. Then I took a lovely package, I'll be very honest. And I own a number of other businesses. So you refer to Petworth Enterprises. Petworth Enterprises is my investment vehicle and I invest in a number of businesses including recruitment, travel, blah, blah, blah. Then I came back and joined Bell. Bell wanted to grow their services internationally. Robby and I knew each other very well because I was his customer. Sorry, he was my... No, I was his customer, yeah, back in the day. And we built out during COVID and we had some good success. COVID held us back, to be honest. Then I went to Eastern Europe and I worked with Nutera. I was Chief Revenue Officer for Nutera and we saw some very dramatic success there. And again, what was that success driven by? That was really people moving away from the larger carriers and moving to an SD-WAN solution. So they have an SD-WAN overlay and an underlay. And the underlay is the place that we play in. So that could be fixed wireless access. That could be broadband. It could be DIA. So at that point, now we're seeing that enterprises are looking... They're always trying to reduce costs. And the first place they look is on the IT shop. So it really is that side of the business that we're concentrating on now. We're looking at how can we help our customers reduce the costs to their customers whilst keeping service at least as good as it was. And some days, I'll be honest, that's a struggle. But if you look at our latest products, CellSmart. So CellSmart is all over LinkedIn at the moment. And that's where we have a number of vehicles traversing the globe, literally, testing the 4G and 5G networks because you can look at the maps of all the providers and they'll all tell you where they are. We know exactly where they work and where they don't. We can tell you to a specific location who is nearly on that and who isn't working at all. So that's what we're seeing. So just sort of to, I guess, close our conversation. We always need more time, I think. There's so much to talk about. But I think we're sort of nearing the end of day one here in the past to Europe. We'll have another one of these next year. But let's focus on this week. And what are you hoping for the most in some of the conversations you're having with folks this week? So obviously my prime job at Smart CIS is to drive sales. We've come here with a big sales team, a very experienced sales team, and we're looking to get more business, obviously. But we're really looking to work with customers in non-traditional ways. So I'm not going to say I've got the best service in that country. I'm going to say, what's your problem? Let me provide you the solution. And then from there we get an intelligent conversation because otherwise we just become a commodity. And we've seen what that does. It drives prices down. And it was an old friend of mine that said, that's the race of the pigs. And we don't need to go there. So for our viewers who may want to connect with you during the week or after the show is over, how can they connect with you? So chris.harper at smartcic.com or upstairs in booth 318, Smart CIC. Perfect, booth 318. Right now we have one of our smart vehicles travelling through Manhattan. And you can see all the test results live from Manhattan today. And it'll be in Manhattan Tuesday and probably till lunchtime on Wednesday. Great. Thanks for sharing that. Thanks for joining us. Always a pleasure. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. Until next time, happy networking. Thank you.