 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast. The newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Ukataya of JSA. Joining me here today, we are delighted to have Dark Point's top executives. We have Scott Willis, the president and CEO, Brad Alexander, CTO, and Lauren Long, Chief Development Officer. Gentlemen, welcome to JSA TV. Scott, I'm gonna start with you first. Dark Point's recently acquired a Medion, bringing Dark Point's unique internet connectivity ecosystem model to South Carolina marketplace. And very important to do this for South Carolina. Tell us a little bit about the acquisition and what this means for the state. Thank you, Jamie. So, yes, correct. We're so excited about the acquisition of our Medion recently. So when we were really out looking at, organizations that were meaningful to the Dark Point's model, we identified early on a Medion as a candidate, and we're excited about our opportunity to move particularly into the state of South Carolina. A Medion is a business that has really grown with South Carolina. It started about 15 years ago. Today, they've got four locations, one in Greenville, one in Spartanburg, one in Columbia, and one in Charleston. So they're really invested in the state of South Carolina. Today, they represent about 275 customers in the state of South Carolina. And what that means from a revenue is they also represent just under about 60 billion in revenue. So when you think about a Medion and now Dark Point's from that perspective, we are really, really excited about South Carolina. We want to remain invested and continue our investment. And that's really what the acquisition's all about. We are at Dark Point's really looking to leverage what a Medion has built over the last 15 years and introduce new ecosystems that are gonna lay the foundation for not only today's growth for the state of South Carolina, but where the leadership within South Carolina wants to take the state from a digital infrastructure perspective. Well said, well said. And Lauren, bringing you into this, I was surprised actually when I read that South Carolina is ranked 31st when it comes to state broadband access with only 344,000 people that are without reliable internet in the state. 344,000, that's a lot of people to not have any reliable internet. How is Dark Point's doing its part to really close this digital divide that we're seeing there? Well, thanks for having me, Jamie. Dark Point's is gonna play a crucial role. There's two parts to solving the broadband issues or what's called bridging the divide. Across the United States, South Carolina is not unique in the challenges they face, very similar to other states in which we operate like Iowa. They have several vibrant cities and a lot of great towns and agricultural rural areas, but they're not in close proximity to a major tier one metro like a New York City or Chicago. Therefore, they haven't seen the investment from a lot of the big providers that these cities have. So you see a lot of great federal programs, state programs, trying to invest in fiber in these communities. But what Dark Point is gonna do is change the economic landscape of how the telecom industry works by creating a nexus of interconnection that's going to encourage not only outside investment into these communities, but bringing content and applications natively. So now they don't have to come from far away. They're gonna live within the state of South Carolina, and that's what's gonna make all the broadband investment matter. So Lauren, as one of the co-founders of Dark Points, could you give us a bit more of the backstory why the company started and what your mission is today? Well, the great news is the mission today is the same mission that it's always been. We were, you know, in 2011 and 12 when we were looking at the data center industry, you know, the founders all came out of the mobile industry and we had lived through the introduction of mobile data and then the advancements through 3G and 4G, et cetera. And when you watch that industry, it was all about distribution. And instead of having, you know, one antenna for an area, it would, you would have many because as the data speeds increased, you needed to do that. You needed to distribute the assets. At the same time, back in 2012 in the data center industry, they were talking about how do we build a 500 megawatt data center in Northern Canada where it's cold. And that's absolutely ridiculous when you look at the history of technology. And so our vision was to create a distributed network of interconnection data centers across the country and beyond that would allow content and applications to flow near the people who use it most. That's exactly what we're doing today. And that's the excitement of working with a company like a median that already has a vibrant ecosystem in South Carolina where we can bring those two models together. You know, the other thing that we focused on the last 10 years, as opposed to being pulled upward to create large hyper scale data centers which is a typical gravity. We wanted to stay focused on how do we do this at the exact location required for our customers and our constituents. Sometimes that's a green field, sometimes that's through acquisition and sometimes it's in a piece of property that you wouldn't think to put a data center. But we spent a lot of years and a lot of experience perfecting that. So now when we're doing this, whether it's in South Carolina or Iowa, we can take on any challenge and put those interconnection assets exactly where they need to be. I love that. And Scott, getting back to South Carolina, you guys operate four South Carolina data centers offering Polo, Cloud, managed services to these local businesses. You're also bringing a local internet exchange called Bridge IX. Can you tell us a little bit more about Bridge IX? Jamie, listen, we are so excited about Bridge IX. I referenced earlier about Dart points' interest and commitment to further invest in the state of South Carolina. Amidion has done a wonderful job building a business over the last 15 years and Bridge IX is part of our strategy of overlaying the Dart points model on top of Amidion's model and really introducing a vibrant ecosystem in the state of South Carolina that's really gonna position the state for not only today's growth and today's demand from a digital infrastructure perspective, but also position it for the future and create an environment where not only today's businesses can grow and scale and take advantage of the digital infrastructure opportunities that exist through this combined acquisition, but also create a model from an economic development perspective where other companies that are looking to come into the state of South Carolina and the state of South Carolina is looking to attract those companies, digital infrastructure is an important piece of that strategy. And that's really what Dart points is all about. We want to be the state of South Carolina's partner. We want to invest and we want to create that environment where not only today's companies can have the same capabilities that organizations can get in Dallas or Chicago or Northern Virginia, New York, LA which was referenced earlier by Lauren, but we can deliver that locally within the state at the same performance level and at the same cost point that organizations experience in those cities. And that's what the Dart points model is all about. We're excited about that opportunity and we want to be that partner for the state to really bring that digital infrastructure strategy to the state of South Carolina. So exciting. And Brad, as a South Carolina resident, former and medium CTO we should mention as well as now of course the CTO for all of Dart points, do you want to add a little bit something regarding your local perspective? Yeah, absolutely. So a median is always believed in a customer first approach and how we operate our data centers and all of our cloud services. I see the same dedication in how Dart points operates. So we share very similar cultures and it's great to see how quickly the teams have integrated. The executive team at Dart points has experience on a national and a global level. And I would like to use that experience to help bridge the divide for cities and towns across the US that don't have access to the same speeds and services available in other large major cities. It's exciting to be part of a company with a national vision. It's going to be a huge impact on improving issues that are decades old now. Dart points interconnection services will have a profound effect on the way our cities can more quickly adopt the cutting edge technologies that we need. And we're going to be able to enable faster and more cost effective access to the content and applications for our communities, our schools, agriculture, even local businesses in each of our markets. I love that, the national vision but that local interconnectivity. Really exciting stuff Scott, for our viewers who want to learn more, where can they go? Yeah, listen, the best place is our website dartpoints.com. We have fully populated the website with both the Dart Points capability as well as the Median capability. So I would encourage you visit our website and it will provide additional information beyond what we've discussed here today. Dot points.com. Scott, Brad, Lauren, thank you so much for joining us and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. Happy networking. Thank you.