 Good morning guys, welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals I'm Jamie Scott Okutaya live on the floor of ITW 2022 an exciting year ITW's 15th year anniversary very notable and Breaking news here on the floor joining me today Phil Olivero Of course the chief technology officer of light path Phil welcome back to JSA TV Thank you, Jamie. Thanks for having us always a pleasure and I can't believe it's just been a year 15 months from the company launching but a year for you as a light path leader and Yeah, so you guys have really Launched not just a telecom company, but something really different something really unique. Can you let our viewers know? Sure, it's probably worth maybe doing a little bit of a history recap So back in December 2020 Altice who's a Residential cable provider in Europe and throughout the United States You know, they had this entity light path that was a fiber to the enterprise Offshoot of of Altice, but they really felt like it could do much more and they saw lots of potential there So in December 2020 they brought in Morgan Stanley and infrastructure partners as a partner and as an investor To really grow on that foundation that really had been built over 30 years light path had been built over 30 years So great foundation But back in December 2020 again, not that long ago, you know, the mandate really was to grow the business So they brought in a new management team of which I was a part of and And we really set about to as he said, maybe do things a little differently And so that involved really investing in people processes and systems and network and And so over 15 months. We've done a lot which I'm sure we're gonna get into a little bit more here The news just keeps coming from you guys. We love it the light path network footprint, of course Aggressively expanding and I mean highlight that guys. I'm not kidding here Walk us through some of your larger expansion news. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, so as we said, you know over the 15 16 months that We've been at this now You know, we looked at the the network and we said look folks are really happy with what we're starting to do here And I guess I was remiss in saying, you know, we talked about people network or people system process and network on the people side Like we doubled our customer Facing folks like our sales folks or customer service folks and really wanted to enhance the customer experience And so as we started to do that, we've seen some real good positive feedback from customers We've done our network promoter survey scoring and really seen some fantastic results there relative to yeah relative to what we've done even in the past and Maybe even you know what we've seen over the time that we've been here And so as as we're doing these investments in people and process and enabling them to you know get customers The services they want the thing we keep hearing from customers is hey, we're really liking this Can you do this in more places for us? And so, you know, we looked at You know, it was interesting. We looked at where we are so we're predominantly New York Metro or were New York Metro area focused and Also predominantly kind of followed along where altis and cable vision before them had built and yet There were pockets adjacent pockets of network and opportunity that were right next to us but we did not really penetrate because The cable provider again cable vision or altis really didn't have you know franchise there and we said, you know Queens Queens is right in our backyard. You know, it was a great opportunity for us to start building in there So from an adjacent perspective, we saw Queens We saw Princeton and went right away to putting network there But we said, you know, there's adjacent opportunities, but our customers are still still telling us Hey, we want you to go to more places And so, you know, we had a lot of relationships a lot of good customer feedback and so on that brought us to Boston So, you know, again, we've only been at this for 15 months But you know roughly in April we said, okay, let's go ahead and and invest in Boston by June We'd identified the first smaller acquisitions to get us some fiber and conduit in Boston We've announced three other expansions since then So we've set to to really invest deeply in Boston So that's been another big expansion project for us. And you know, you've probably also heard We're lighting a new route down to Ashburn because a lot of our customers say hey We want to get down to the data centers and not too far from from this area. It's a very good spot, right? So we've done that as well. So yeah, just a lot of investment to make sure that again that the customer experience is great But then that is now Turning into hey, we want you to go to more places and you know love for you to service and more And and oh my goodness. Let's talk numbers here. You recently announced a milestone of 2000 wireless site deployments across your network footprint 2000 like that's that's a lot. Well, especially considering again that 15 months ago 16 months ago. We were just in the New York metro area But you know if you're rolling out a well as many of the wireless carriers are 5g and need Bandwidth and also need density you need to be able to provide a lot of bandwidth in a lot of places And we have over 18,000 miles of fiber just in the New York metro area We have 20,000 miles of fiber out miles of fiber now across New York metro area in Boston So we have a very very dense network and that's really really Important for our wireless carrier customers and so on and it also helps us You know sell to enterprises and more and more to wholesale That was another area that we hadn't really leveraged in our past that has been a great opportunity to leverage and so again Our our wireless customers now are saying wow didn't realize maybe that you had all these sites So some of the you know the growing customers wireless carrier customers out there are really Looking at us and saying hey, we want to grow with you So it's been fantastic and it's such a great host a wholesale story. Here. We are floor of itw What's your what's your wholesale message? Well that hey, we're open for business, you know and so And growing exactly so and also if there are other markets that You know you want us to bring our services to we want to hear about and we've had a bunch of meetings over the last Three days and that's exactly what we've what we've heard is that hey bring us to more places But I think you know, you know dealing with carriers Sometimes there's this view of hey, are we enabling competitors and so on? We know that this is a there's a co-optition environment here You know, we've got to sometimes you know our sales folks and our relationships Maybe can't get to some of the multinational or yeah international Companies out there so other carriers that are at this show here today say hey But we have a great relationship with a company that has many locations in New York great come talk to us We'd love to help you and along that eastern corridor There's a lot of subsea cables. Yeah. Yeah, I can see this. All right, so what's ahead for a light path in the coming year or so? Yeah, so more expansion really right maybe not surprised. I know yeah, that's surprising, right? So so yeah, like we planted the new market Boston in in really in 2021 and It's a great growth there and we're looking to plant two more markets really in by the end of this year and so we just had a recent board meeting and Again after really five quarters now, we've seen some fantastic growth and results So our board is extremely excited about as we are as a management team and a company to really plant two more markets like we did in Boston and so, you know We're going through our research and so on but also talking with customers about where the best places are to Expand the networks and and deliver again more of these services to more people in more places And we got to say we love your management team. You guys have you're hiring the best of the best We're we're watching you guys. Where can our viewers go to learn more information? Well, so the website is light path fiber comm Our LinkedIn site is extremely active as well. We put all our announcements out there, too So so by all means reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Excellent. Thank you so much Phil. It's such a pleasure guys Light path fiber comm definitely check them out and on LinkedIn Thank you for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA podcasts as always think green and happy networking