 Welcome, everyone, to Know Before You Go, a new broadcast briefing powered by JSA and telegeography. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Oketaia, CEO and founder of JSA. Know Before You Go is your show that covers everything attendees should have on their radar from insider talking points to conference logistics before attending the very next big industry event and, of course, talking big industry events. Today we are focusing on Capacity Europe 2023, taking place October 17th through the 19th in London. And you can go ahead and scan that code over on my shoulder to learn more. All right, guys, we are really excited to be joined by telegeography's principal analyst, Eric Kreifelt and Ms. Jezebel Gilmore, Chief Commercial Officer for ConnectBase and one of, of course, the featured speakers at this year's Capacity Europe Conference. Welcome, Eric. Welcome, Jezebel. Thank you so much for talking us through the conversations that attendees can expect in and around today's conference sessions. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We are so thrilled, so excited. Let's go ahead and get started on our industry insight. Okay, guys, let's go ahead and start with the state of the international network. Jezebel, what can you tell us about trends you're seeing within the European international investment? Well, there's so much good things going on everywhere. And in Europe, we are seeing that there's enormous amount of investment going into both the automation and the automation of the trading of the services. So investment in OSS-BSS across the board and how to make the asset you already have be known and seen by everyone that are in the market to buy. So, you know, get to the demand if you have supply, right? And moreover, we're seeing a lot of people interested in building. But what is the intelligence? Where can you find the data on where to build and how to put your investment to use in the most effective manner? So many ways, so much money, and so much new. So well said. Eric, with Europe's role evolving, what do you see as a digital hub for Europe? And where do you see hyperscalers fitting into this? Yeah, well, Europe, I mean, first of all, this capacity of Europe in Europe is one of the biggest bandwidth markets in the world. It's actually the biggest in terms of just primary regions and several reasons for that, one of which is certainly the hyperscalers, but part of it's just lots of borders in terms of international bandwidth that it also serves as a hub for itself as well as other regions, particularly Africa and Middle East that are quite dependent on Europe for exchanging traffic. And that role continues for all network operators, hyperscalers included. But also, you also have this massive connection with North America, a lot of it through the United States to interconnect all the huge facilities in Europe and the rest of Canada. So it all adds up to a huge market that is still growing, even though it's a very mature market, it's growing up in the last year, it was about 35%. Only 35% if you take that back about four years, compounded annually, it's about 41%. So still at that Moore's law, kind of doubling every year type of growth. So that's a lot of growth. And that aligns pretty well with global growth in international bandwidth. Yeah, in terms of the hyperscaler portion of that, I mean, they're doing a couple of things. They have some of their biggest facilities are in Europe and they're kind of augmenting that, they're kind of doubling down on that, but they're also augmenting that to expand to other regions. Some of that they will go to other regions, but some of those will continue, sir, out of Europe. So you have all the connectivity following on with that and diversifying all that connectivity as well, finding, you still have the traditional hubs, but you sort of have, you want some diversification around those, moving to some other ones as well. So lots of things going on Europe center. And that really takes us to another hot topic, network advancement. We're talking these into connections, global growth, expansions. So network advancement, absolutely on the minds of many. Of course, Jezebel, you will be a featured speaker on day one at Capacity Europe on a panel that's really exploring the potential of fully automated networks, as you mentioned earlier. And of course, you'll be joined by executives from Equinex, Uber, Deutsche Telecom, Talk Talk, Wholesale Service, Palo Alto, Innovation Advisors. So quite the lineup of thought leaders there. Can you give us a preview of some of the potential key takeaways you may think will come from this panel? Absolutely. As you know, that there are many industry leaders on the panel who have built fully automated networks in their region or their footprint, right? But is there a key focus area for anyone who's interested in building automation into their network? And what's the benefit from having someone like Uber on the panel that's really the consumer, the customer's perspective, right? In saying, hey, we are the consumer of this types of service. What's important to us? What does it matter? Why does it matter? And what is important for you to build that would attract us to come to consume in the fully automated fashion? And are we interested in particular type of SLA? A quality of service? Or what are the drivers, the motivation for us? What are the challenges that one had gone through in building a fully automated network? But lastly, what's really near and dear to my heart is how do we bring everyone into the platform where a fully automated session can happen across the world? So there's ubiquitous access through this type of automation for everyone. Because if it only reaches part of the world that you're trying to get to having it fully automated, it's not enough. Such great points. And Eric, are you seeing improvements in cost and performance that this automation can achieve now in the near future? What are those improvements? Yeah, well, there's certainly a motivation for that. I mean, you'd like to think you could take for granted basic inventory management and service delivery, but in this business, that can be really hard to do. And to be fair, that's hard to do because some of these networks are sort of have legacies extending from Alexander Graham Bell. I mean, there's a lot going on there and it's a lot to manage. And then you wanna try and modernize all that while taking all that with you. So there's a lot of work to be done there, but certainly in parts of this business where there's not a lot of margin to provide some basic connectivity services, you'd like to do that as efficiently and as automated as possible. But as the technical challenges weren't hard enough, you also have all the commercial arrangements that you have to bring along with that. Everybody wants to be special and get the best deal. And this is capacity Europe. It's a big part of what goes on there. So can you automate a protracted negotiation for connectivity and extend that as Jezebel was alluding to across networks, across borders and assure that service from end to end. And these aren't new issues. You know, this is a big deal, but automation can certainly be a big part of that. And we're hinting about it. So let's go ahead and talk about it. Jezebel, let's talk a bit about interoperability. How do network operators ensure those network advancements across country borders and through partner network interfaces? Well, there's lots of different types of interoperability. As networks, we've always had interoperability because you have to be able to pass packets from one place to another, right? So the technologies already exist on the physical layer. We do pack packets easily, but when it comes to interoperability, Eric said it well. Beyond technology, there's a ton of complexities, right? There's commercial relationships. There's software, if you're actually doing automation, how are you moving packets in the software layer from one place to another? You need to have some sort of standardization, translation to be able to move, to speak. Everybody have to speak the same language to be able to move things from one place to another and to have a ubiquitous environment. And beyond the technology, right? Beyond the software technologies and the infrastructure technology and the software technology, there's also the business terms, right? We need to align the business terms for the different service providers so that their customer who used to be consuming service in a particular fashion can continue to consume that service in a particular fashion but in a different area where the network that they're working with does not have current coverage. No network can have globally ubiquitous coverage in their own network. There's just not enough capital to invest in that. So all of the networks really need to work together and collaborate to bring a ubiquitous, smooth and pleasant experience to the enterprise customer base. And that is what the enterprise customers are looking for. That's right. That's so right. Well said. All right, so Eric, with everything we just discussed, how do you see the service mix evolving? Well, there's a lot of different services kind of up and down the value chain and we covered a good portion of that. You can start at the very core. I mean, again, it's a big wholesale event so you're always gonna have your bread and butter transport and transit services. And I guess part of what's going on there, they're getting less granular. 10G is becoming 100G, 100G is becoming 400G. And then in some really big time transactions, you've got more fractions of an entire fiber or even building up new fiber. But then you go the other way down the value chain where in the enterprise side or this whole wholesale ecosystem, again, that Jezebel was alluding to of, you have maybe 80% of the customer's locations you can service with your own network but nobody has ubiquitous network that other 20% or whatever it is, you have to go elsewhere with partner networks to achieve that. And a lot of the way that works now by default is with kind of a VPN and using local access from some other carrier and kind of terminating the VPN service on a partner network. But that's no longer the default option with new technologies that are available, that there's more internet involved and in some cases even private lines say for example, directly to cloud providers are in the mix as well. So that service mix is really evolving and it creates some really interesting opportunities for automation and I guess expedited delivery of those services since these VPN defaults are no longer, well, the VPNs are no longer the default option. So we have some, the market's kind of in flux with those choices but you still have that fundamental need to partner with other networks. So it'll be really interesting to see how that involves as the service mix evolves, as the technology available changes and yeah, to ultimately accomplish the same goal which is to interconnect all the end users seamlessly over a global network. Yeah, absolutely. We all need each other. That is definitely one of the core messages here. And one of the reasons why capacity Europe is happening at a very critical time. So Jezebel, Eric, thank you so much. We really appreciate you sharing your insights, especially as we rev up for capacity Europe coming up soon. Now let's go ahead and finish this briefing with some insider tips for making the most of our time at capacity Europe. Ms. Sophia Simpson, head of research Europe in Asia for capacity media to share with us some tips on how we can make the most of this year's capacity Europe. Welcome, Sophia. Thank you for having me, Jamie. No, thank you so much for being here, Sophia. And tell us what do you think attendees will be most excited to learn about during capacity Europe this year from an educational standpoint? This year's agenda covers challenges and opportunities across the connectivity sector from the future of the subsea consortium model to talent and how the industry can prepare for the disruptive impact of AI. New technologies and new business models are fundamentally changing how businesses operate and access capital for new infrastructure builds. And this will be front and center at capacity Europe. Yeah, I love it. So subsea, AI, finance, can you share with us what type of companies will you expect to see there? We're expecting to see the entire digital infrastructure landscape, those at the forefront of enabling and facilitating connectivity, including international, long-haul, short-haul, middle-mile operators, subsea operators, data centers, hyperscalers, cloud service providers, satellite operators, software enablers, infrastructure providers, messaging and SMS aggregators, as well as investors. Year on year, this list is expanding. And that's a reflection of the transformation we're seeing across networks. It's so true. We are an ecosystem, a digital infrastructure ecosystem. And you guys have all the key players attending, so exciting. Tell us again, what's new at this event? And what's different from this year than that our audiences might be watching out for? So we've got a lot going on this year. We're really excited about our new digital studio and the spotlight stage, to new concepts for content delivery, which will really wow our attendees. The digital studio is a newly built stage in the hub of the exhibition, where the keynote panels will take place, where CEOs and industry influencers across all sectors will take the stage to share their vision for the next five years. And the spotlight stage features more dedicated forums to cater to specific interest groups within the wider community at Capacity Europe, covering network transformation, satellite investment, sub-C and fiber connectivity. Also, there's a focus on Central and Eastern Europe, as that's a market for growth. And as we've sold out of every possible meeting space at the International O2 Hotel, where we've been holding the event for the last few years, we're also thrilled that they just completed the build of a completely new additional ballroom, which gives us a lot more space to host many new companies and meeting areas. And we're also really excited, you don't want to miss out on meeting our celebrity keynote guest, the incredible Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women, exposing data buyers in a world designed for men. She was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire, as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2015, for her work in equality and diversity, particularly in the media. You can catch up with her at the Women in Telco and Tech Breakfast on the first day of the event at 9 a.m., where she will deliver a keynote presentation, as well as at the Digital Studio at 12 p.m., where she'll be joining the panel on talent. Oh my goodness, you just blew my mind from the digital and spotlight studios to a new ballroom, to celebrities. Amazing, so exciting. Also as an attendee, what should, how do we make the best networking experience? How do, are there special events or meeting apps that we should be checking out? Absolutely, and networking is really at the heart of this event. We always kick off the week with the famous welcome reception sponsored by Colt. It's always packed and sets the scene for the week ahead. And that's followed by multiple receptions throughout the event, including the networking lunches sponsored by Exit Infrastructure and Sparkle, happy hour reception sponsored by Nios Networks and Telehouse, as well as the NTT networking reception on Tuesday evening. And finally, there's what we like to call the Oscars of the connectivity industry, the Global Carrier Awards on Wednesday evening, where more than 450 executives will unite for a dinner and will celebrate this year's most vividly and innovative companies. Oh, how exciting. Yes, I have to say that award ceremony is always my favorite. Okay, so I love this next question. I try to share it and ask it of all my event organizers. So, Ms. Sophia, can you share with us your top three tips for getting the most out of this year's conference? Absolutely. Most important is to log into Swapcard, the event meeting planner, update your profile, view the attendee list and set up meetings in advance to make sure you get face time with your key partners. Diaries do get very booked. Get your digital business cards ready to make connections and have a point of presence at the event. The best way to impress partners and customers is having a meeting space or booth. Don't forget to book your pass at the Global Carrier Awards to celebrate industry successes at the glitziest night of the year. Oh, I love it, glitzy and all. All right, so without further ado, what is the best way for attendees to keep up to date on the latest from Capacity Europe as we lead up to our arrival over in London? Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook. Keep your eyes peeled for our emails and download the Swapcard app. Thank you so much, Sophia, for joining us and to Della Geographies, Eric Kreifelt and ConnectBases, Jezebel Gilmore, for giving us such great insight on the latest trends. To get all the details so you are as prepared as possible for Capacity Europe, go ahead and visit CapacityMedia.com and be sure to use JSA 10 for a special discount on your registration. You've got a QR code right here on the screen just to make it a little easier to get to that event page. Also tune in this the week of Capacity Europe as JSA got broadcast live from the expo floor with interviews with top thought leaders. In the meantime, follow both JSA and Tella Geography on LinkedIn or find out more about us on JSA.net and telegeography.com. Thank you guys for tuning in to new Before You Go and as always friends, happy networking. See you soon.