 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Hey, everybody. Welcome to our newest issue of Data Movers. I'm your host, James Spada-Pittaya, CEO and founder of JSA, along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Christel. Good morning, Evan. Hey, Jamie. I love being called fabulous. It's the only place I get called fabulous is here on Data Movers. But great to be here when we sit down with the most influential men and women in the data center and telecom space, supporting the infrastructure requirements of this new normal. Jamie, speaking of new normal, what do you do with your money? Do you hide it under a mattress or do you put it in 401k? What's your savings investment strategy? Yeah, there's a mattress involved. Yeah. I only feel this crazy world we live in. I don't know. But no, actually, we do have a 401k plan here at JSA that we matched, which we're very proud of. But yeah, go ahead, Evan. What do you do with your money? Tell me all the things I should be doing. Well, I was just curious because I was reading this morning, 20% of Americans now have money in Bitcoin. So that would strike me as mainstream in terms of crypto adoption. So I was curious if you're a Bitcoin holder or a wannabe crypto enthusiast. Well, it blew my mind today when I read that one Bitcoin equals $39,360. So yeah, I should have wrote that Bitcoin phase, I don't know, a couple years back now, $39,360. I think it's a little too rich now for my blood. But holy moly, I've missed yet another Wild West series here, I think. Well, you missed it, or you saved yourself from losing money. But it's definitely going mainstream. I was checking my Robinhood account. And Bitcoin, my wallet is there. You can also buy Bitcoin on Coinbase. It's in PayPal now. It really is a phenomenon that's not going away. And we all have these alternative coins, too. So Brave New World will have to do a show on crypto at some point, which is pretty relevant to the data center world, believe it or not, in terms of mining and crypto management. But let's get on to our guest, far more relevant and interesting, to be honest. And the story here is connectivity and how do we even power cryptocurrency or keep the world connected? And so they're not draining us all when that started. But it leads us to this fabulous guest, again, fabulous, that I can't wait to introduce you all to Mr. Jim Milti, CEO of Bandwidth IG, joining us today. Jim, welcome to Data Movers. Thanks so much. I appreciate the time that you guys are putting in here. And I've actually never been in the audience of an influencer before, nor do I believe I've been called fabulous. So those are two great firsts for me today. Well, thanks so much. And you have operations both in Atlanta, Georgia, and California. So let's play for you. Which is your favorite destination? Oh, I can't do that. What kind of question is that? Yeah, I can't do that. Of course you can't. They're both great markets. They're vastly different, but both great markets. OK. Well, in that case, tell us more about your two locations, about your background, and what led you to start Bandwidth IG. Sure. Sure, yeah. So I'm a Jersey guy, originally from New Jersey. And I started with AT&T in 1985. So way, way back. And nobody should be doing math right now. I realized after about 12 years of working at AT&T that I was not a big company guy. And I went to work for a couple of smaller firms like ICG and AGL Networks out of Atlanta and eventually got acquired by ZEO. So I retired from ZEO in 2016. Two years later, I got a call from some old friends who asked me to participate in doing some diligence on a dark fiber business. And what we discovered in the course of the diligence was that the demand for Bandwidth was growing faster than the supply. And that the condition of existing networks, which in many cases were 20 plus years old, was just falling short of quality. Yeah, and quality's a big concern here today, especially in fiber connectivity, keeping those data centers and enterprises connected. But at what point did you see the need to build new dark fiber networks in line? Well, we see the world. We basically see two types of businesses in the world today. We see those that have digitally transformed in those that are on the journey to digital transformation. So in both cases, their data intensity is growing enormously, right? And as a consequence of that, the need to process, move, store that data becomes an even more critical business function. So that's all putting a ton of pressure on the network and we don't see that slowing down near term. So as we've been in business over the past 24 months, we've actually found we've got customers deploying gear to leverage C plus L bands and pushing 30 terabits per second on a pair of fibers, which is an enormous amount of bandwidth that you can only get with the brand new network. So these are the things that are playing through for us in terms of why it makes sense for us to deploy brand new infrastructure in these markets. Fantastic, so speaking of those markets, you serve Silicon Valley, you serve Atlanta to very exciting destinations in terms of the economy. And you've also expanded both networks and congratulations on that. Thank you. So why those two markets? What's unique about those opportunities and those metros and are there other expansions on the horizon that you're looking at? Yeah, there are other expansions, nothing I can talk about at the moment, but we certainly see these types of characteristics playing out in other places in the country. But we saw the Bay Area and the Atlanta Metro is being collected for the most part. We saw an enormous amount of data center development going on, so considerable amount of investment there without the corresponding signal of investment from the incumbent network providers. So that led us to think that there may be a good opportunity here. And as we got into the market, what we constantly heard was there were four key things that customers were focused on when sourcing network. One is the first one is they need low signal loss. Second is low latency. Third is maximum diversity. And then fourth is inventory. And the problem is many of the incumbent networks were just unable to meet those four key needs. So signal losses, you may know goes up when you introduce splices into the network or you try to mash incompatible cables together, which many of these incumbent networks had to do. So latency goes up when you have to take an indirect route between sites. Diversity becomes a risk when your network is riding in the same ditch as everybody else's network. And an inventory is a problem when you realize that a lot of those companies placed those networks 20 plus years ago when there were only 400 million people on the internet. Today, there's five billion people on the internet. So 400 million people, you sit and you size it up and say, well, let's put 144 or 288 count cable in the ground and that should suffice for many years. We actually have customers today that are taking 144 strands on their own in a single path. You know, I love how you divided it down to those core four, if you will, the signal loss, latency, lack of diversity and inventory. And really those become even more paramount of importance when technology continues to evolve. We have things like 5G, AI, IoT, really becoming more used, more widely used. So when we talk through these new technologies, what do you think in terms of this new fiber networks, how do you think they're going to evolve accordingly? So I think this is gonna sound, there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna stop at this but I throw out the D word from time to time when I'm talking about this and that is decommission. So I believe that a lot of these incumbent networks are gonna be forced into a situation where they actually decommission segments of their network in order to make room for more advanced infrastructure down the road. You know, there's 20 billion devices connecting to the internet. So you think of internet at things, that is a population of 20 billion devices right now and this forecasted to grow to 80 billion by 2025. And it may even grow faster than that. All of those applications that all those devices are touching all have to go back through a data center in some way, shape or form. And that's the sweet spot that we focus on is making sure that the connectivity, the fabric between the data centers is robust and able to scale and secure. And so those are the things that we stay focused on. That's a great point. I mean, even if you look at 2G and 3G networks they're already being decommissioned around the US and the world. We're realizing coax and DSL aren't sufficient to many homes, particularly high growth areas. So throughout the pandemic, you know, we saw this demand spike. Anyone with teenagers working from home will have seen that personally. But what did you incur with your customers and prospects? What was the demands spike like and what kind of services did they ask of you? Yeah, we, so as I mentioned, our primary business is connecting between the data centers. So as, you know, as I noted before, every application runs back through a data center, right? Our customers were constantly evaluating application performance and they would reach out to us from time to time for additional fibers, which in many cases, since we were already pre-populated we were able to turn up in just a handful of days. So that was what helped meet their needs. But at the end of the day, we really, we started the business about six months before the world shut down. So, you know, we were fortunate to be in a position to be able to answer those calls in a meaningful way in the, probably the first six to nine months of this serious pandemic that we're facing. Of course. And you know, when you're talking connectivity between data centers of particular note is dark fiber. And I don't think it's a topic that we discuss enough in our industry, mainstream for sure. What resources does bandwidth IG have available to help your prospects, your potential customers understand the difference between older options and then this alternative bandwidth IG option? Yeah, it's a great question. We, you know, so we, our JSA team has done an exceptional job of making sure we have a fulsome set of resources out on our website. So our website is bandwidth IG.com. And we've got blogs, we've got white papers, we've got press releases, we've got a video that we just did that helps explain the business in a little bit more of a fulsome way. And then, and then of course, I've got an exceptional team of people who are more than happy to talk about dark fiber with anyone who has any questions that are answered in those documents or that they need more information on. Awesome. Well, let's, let's learn more about, you know, who is Jim Nolte. I assume you're not related to Nick Nolte. I haven't gotten a Christmas card from him in a while, so I'd say no, probably not. We do have some rapid fire fun facts and tell us the first thing that comes to mind, your favorite place to travel to. You know, my wife and I have a house in Naples, Florida. So we, we have a hard time comparing Naples to all these other great places out there, but we're starting to fall in love with Hawaii actually. After the last PTC, we spent some time in Maui and, you know, saw the whales and all the other beautiful scenery out there. So I'd say, I'd say Hawaii at the moment. You can't go to Hawaii. I want to spend some time on Larry Ellison's Island there. That, that looks pretty good. Right. We'll see. What's the last book or audio book or podcast that you consumed? I'll, so admittedly, I am, I, I hate business books, but I just stumbled over a book and finished it in a matter of days called Working Backwards. I can't remember the name of the authors, but these are two guys that were senior members of Amazon and it basically describes the thought processes and the frameworks that they use to make decisions at Amazon. So brilliant read and really well written book. All right. Are you a golfer? I am a golfer. I will. I'm a hacker. Okay. So what's your favorite course? Band and Dunes and my friends would tell you it's because I actually played well there. So, which is unusual for me. Awesome. And I see you're on Twitter. I'm actually just started following you there. Oh, anything you saw on social media recently that made you LOL, as the kids say. Oh, man. I saw a video of a woman who looked like she was in Asia and she, and somebody drove by on a moped and tried to nab her purse. She ended up knocking them off the moped and stealing the moped. Ah, that was my mom. Karma's a bitch, as they say. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Jim. And it was great. Absolutely. The work you're doing is extraordinary. And also great hearing how Atlanta is your favorite destination. Yeah. I like to get down to Atlanta down, especially in the winter where it's pretty chilly up in Boston. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, I know. Thank you so much for your time. Both of you, I appreciate it. And look forward to another session down the road. Absolutely, Jim. Absolutely. Yeah, Evan and I like to play East Coast versus West Coast over here. And thankfully, we have been with IG in both places. So thanks again, Jim. We look forward to our next session for sure. And guys, if you enjoyed listening to today's Data Movers podcast, reviewing us, I'm sure hope you did. Go ahead and check us out for more episodes, jsa.net slash podcast. Every week, Wednesday mornings, we release them, so go ahead and check us out. Additionally, go ahead and follow us on Twitter. We've got, of course, the very famous Evan Postel at Evan Postel and at J Scuddo for me. And I'm gonna say at this time, happy networking. Bye, guys.