 This is JSA TV Live, the newsroom for data center and telecom professionals. I'm Dean Perine of JSA and we are coming at you as the name might suggest live from beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Florida at Metro Connect 2023. And I am here with a relatively new executive, Mr. Dan Stahl. Dan is the President of Commercial and Carrier for Consolidated Communications. Dan, welcome to JSA TV. Thank you, Dean. Pleasure to be here. You bet, you bet. So Dan, for our viewers that don't already know, why don't you tell them a little bit about Consolidated Communications? No, thank you, Dean. Consolidated Communications is a long-standing and fiber infrastructure, broadband and telecommunication service provider that operates nationwide and focuses in over 23 markets and leverages its vast fiber network, which exists over 60,000 or out miles of fiber or 16,000 buildings to service and servicing the consumer, the commercial and the whole cell space. Yeah, I think we'd be hard pressed to find somebody, especially somebody in the industry in the know that hasn't heard of Consolidated Communications. So some big things happening there at Consolidated, but also with- Very exciting. It really is, but even more exciting perhaps for you, why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about your recently having joined Consolidated Communications and what you do, what your role is and those kinds of things. No, I've joined the company with over 22 years of experience within this industry, working primarily with fiber infrastructure companies, had opportunities to run multiple functions over all those years, worked with great teams and people, lead P&Ls and really work with the business to identify how we can best capitalize and go to market to be able to service and cover all of our markets and provide great quality products and solutions for our customers. Yeah, I love it. And the folks that I have spoken to at Consolidated, we're really excited about your joining the team. So, and I can see why there's a nice history and a lot of experience. There's a lot of passion for the business here and a passion for supporting customers and differentiating, so it's very exciting. I love it, Dan. So speaking of that passion, let's talk a little bit about some fiber expansion passion that's going on over there at Consolidated. What can you tell us a little bit about that fiber expansion? Yeah, it's a great program. It's underway and it's set to over time be able to build over 1.6 million crossings or passings of addresses within our footprint. Is that all? That's over, yeah, 70% of the market. When you think about the size of the market, the density of this market, that's a great amount of customers to pass. It's the purpose of really delivering that quality connection for our customers to be able to service not only consumers, but move all the way up the stack from a broadband solution all the way up to 10 gig solutions and core backbone, as well as in between some of our markets, we've made some great upgrades in the network that can cover up to 400 gigs worth of transport connecting a lot of those key middle mile routes. Yeah, so they've got you, they've got a big fiber expansion. What does that tell us about the market? What does that tell us about where Consolidated is going and where kind of just the overall telecommunications broadband market is headed? Right, yeah, I mean, if you think about where things are going and what customers want, customers are really looking to cover off on two things. One, quality. So the quality of the service now is paramount. You're using your connection to be able to connect to the cloud. You're using it to connect to the internet and connect applications. So the success of a business and being able to like run and operate as well as customers, as well as wholesale providers that are using our network, it's really reliant and fully dependent on the quality of the service. The other thing that we continue to see over time is just in the quantity of bandwidth and the size of the pipe. In terms of it's about quality, it's about like throughput symmetrical service that's going to be reliable. So you can then stack those services and applications over the top that we have a very robust portfolio to be able to tackle what customers need and consumer, the commercial as well as the carrier space. Yeah, it doesn't feel like we're gonna be taking our foot off the gas in that regard anytime soon with the- 1.6 million passings. Yeah, and the proliferation of IoT devices and all of these things. One of the things that in my own home, I think on any given day I might have it, 30 to 50 IoT devices that are hitting the internet. And I think then like 10 years ago, 20 years ago, like how businesses we used to get excited about, I guess it was more like 25 years ago, about a T1 connection. And now there's like up to a gig coming to my home and things like that. So I feel like consolidated is really kind of on the forefront of keeping the foot on the gas there. Yeah, so it's a solve where it's a before is about how much can you, how much do you need? And now it's how much can you provide because the demand for it is almost insatiable. Yeah, no, absolutely. So I'm excited, I'm excited about what's going on over there at Consolidated. But why don't you tell our viewers what you are most excited about having just recently joined the team? Oh, I'm very excited about the culture, the longstanding history and the community element that the business has, the Consolidated has in all the markets that we support. We're local, we have great teams of people, we have great network that is in place today that we're gonna continue to grow and expand and we have a very robust product set. And you put that all together, those are the key ingredients to be able to differentiate, to have an advantage in this marketplace and to be able to ultimately grow the business. I love it, Dan, thanks for being with us and JSA TV today, we appreciate it. All right, thank you, Dean. You bet, and thank you viewers for watching JSA TV. We'll see you soon.