 Hello and welcome to a very special episode of JSA TV with Telia Carrier where we get up close and personal with some common misconceptions around how and where today's enterprises satisfy their need for high speed internet from tier grading to backbone networks and even tattoos yes tattoos will uncover it all today in our discussion. I'm Dean Perine of JSA and joining me today is Mr. Mattias Freedstrom and he is Telia Carrier's chief evangelist. Mattias is dedicated to spreading the word and his own passion about Telia's impressive networking capabilities. In fact, Mattias once said if he had a tattoo, it would be a network. How's that for dedication to company. Mattias also knows that people aren't as well informed on internet connectivity as they'd like to be life just happens to get in the way sometimes but specifically when it comes to tier one providers the buyer's journey is rife with myths that can lead to misconceptions and and missed opportunities for today's businesses. So let's go ahead and jump right in and start right from the beginning. Mattias, it's great to see you. Thanks for being with us today. Why don't we start with what what do people usually think when they think about internet connectivity and and how would you personally describe it. Yeah, that's a good question and thanks for having me here. So I think that's really a good question and I think people really take internet for granted. And sometimes I feel that most people feel that everything on internet should be for free, because it's always kind of been for free. And that they should have an upgrade every year of twice the speed and half the cost. And what they don't really realize is that there is a ton of networks behind roughly more than 100,000 networks connected together, I would say 70,000 of them today are active. And I would say all of them have spent quite a lot of money on building this network for people to use. So I would say the biggest misconception is really that internet should really be everywhere and for free. And that's hard to do because it's hard to be an internet service provider. Yeah, I'm sure. So what is the number one thing that the general population get wrong and we talked about the fact that they think it should be free and that maybe it's as easy as snapping your fingers to get increased bandwidth and things like that. But what is that number one thing that the general public get wrong. I think I think it's really that they believe that internet is the same everywhere, and that you know you should have perfect perfect connection wherever you are. And I think that's the biggest thing you know, as I said you know there are 70,000 networks all connected together, each one of them is built different. And everyone is connected to either one or many other networks and the way they connect is typically not in the favor of the traffic because it's usually in the favor of the cost you know where can I send my traffic at lowest cost because if the traffic is for free then you need to lower your cost. And I think that's the biggest misconception that people have that wherever you go you should have perfect internet, and that's not really true. And also the way you connect to the internet is very different depending on what service provider you have your experience will be very very different. And that's what people don't really understand they think everything is internet, and it's built by one company and it's just everywhere. So I'm excellent segue let's talk a little bit about the many different internet connectivity providers you know in the various tiers of providers. Can you tell us what distinguishes say a tier one provider versus a tier two or tier three provider. Yeah, no absolutely. The way internet is divided this that it's divided itself into tier one tier two and tier three networks, where the tier one global networks, which is roughly 10 to 15 networks around the world. They are truly global. They're all connected to each other in some shapes or form and kind of forms the internet backbone. And there are more regional networks and regions here could be the entire US continent or Europe, but they're more the tier two networks, and then we have country specific region specific city specific networks. And that's when tier three tier four comes in. So internet this is like a pyramid where you have the top networks in the top. Other networks connecting to them. And that's the way internet is built up but I would say that there are roughly 10 to 15 top networks in the world that kind of forms the internet backbone and are the most important networks for internet to work. So as far as as tier grading is concerned you know what are you know what are what are the differences and what does it ultimately mean for the end user customer. Yeah, no for the end user customer every customer I would argue is typically connected to an ISP as we call it in the industry internet service provider. They are the ones that connect private people companies and the prices and so on. Each ISP is then connected to someone else. They can be connected to more network or one network, but that's where the important thing comes in you know who do they connect to. They can connect to someone else who's small and that one is connected to someone small. And that ultimately means that your traffic that you want to reach the internet with will take a very long route to reach whatever you want to see on the internet or consume on the internet. Or if you have an ISP or a service provider that is connected to one of the global networks. So basically, you kind of get access to practically everything on the internet with very little delay, and your experience will be very very different. So that's why it's very important for you to select the right service provider at your home, but that one that service provider needs also to be connected to the right network and that's kind of the experience on the internet and the experience will be very very different depending on what you do. Do you think the end user customer be they, you know, a residence or a business do you think they truly understand the importance of having a good ISP a good internet connectivity provider. Is that changing perhaps. Or, I don't think they've been aware of this I think they've been kind of happy with whatever they've had because I think, you know, internet is the big trust based network there are no police there are no rules on internet everyone can build a network in any shape or form they want. But of course there's some guidelines to follow and so on, but I would argue that the experience they get has been very good because if internet is best effort best effort so far has been very good. But what I see now coming is that more and more things will be online more and more companies will be online only. And even enterprises are starting to use internet applications various applications typically hosted in a cloud service somewhere. That could be sales for it could be work day it could be anything and you know YouTube and everything everything is on internet and more things will be on internet. So I would say this question is becoming more and more important, and we will start to see that some ISPs will fall out because of their bad onwards connections, they're not good enough, and people want really good connections. So I think you know we will see a more shift towards quality and and yeah, you will demand quality and therefore some ISPs will have it some will not, but that's going to. Yeah, shape the market in the future. For sure and you mentioned cloud and IOT and there's you know literally a host of other various applications that are really going to put a significant strain on on the internet that's for another time discussion. That certainly wanted to be had at a later time, but so in and you know to finalize to put a button on things why don't you tell us a little bit about tell you a carrier and you know ultimately about a little bit about your network and and what you provide for your customers. Yeah, no absolutely. As I said in the beginning we're one of the tier one providers one of the 1015 largest network in the world. Our network spans the entire globe and we have presence pretty pretty much in in every part of the globe, where we can serve our customers from there, roughly 320 locations where we then accept traffic from other customers and we hand off traffic to others you know. So our service is to serve the traffic that is, you know, and a content provider cannot provide content to every consumer that needs to be someone in between. And that's us. So that's the service we provide you know we make sure that whatever is produced in one part of the country you know could be in San Francisco. So that thing could be consumed in Berlin. We take the traffic from San Francisco to the consumer in Berlin. That's our role here. And that's the service. So all these ISPs around all these tier two tier three providers. We are the ones that they can come to and we then make sure that when they provide services to their end customers. They have a global internet offering to their end customers. There's going to be any glitches anywhere it's going to be as short as delay as you can have to the best content in the world and that's kind of Telia Carrier's role in this you know one of the 10 largest internet backbone currently ranked number one, but you know at least in the top three of these type of networks. Outstanding Matias thank you very much we're out of time thank you very much for for being with us today I appreciate it maybe we should do this again. Yeah, thank you thank you very much. You bet and thank you for watching JSA TV we hope to see you soon.