 for Structure Industry. Hey guys, welcome, welcome to our podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Cutia, CEO and founder of JSA. And joined with me as always, my fabulous co-host, hot B2B social media influencer, Mr. Evan Kristal. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, hey everyone, great to be here. I love doing the show because I get called fabulous. So I'll take that any day. And I'm so excited. He's a friend and I can't wait for you guys to meet him and adore him as much as I do. Mr. Lewis Fialo, Vice President at China Telecom America's. Welcome Lewis, come on in. Hi Jamie. Hi Evan, how are you guys? And thank you for having me today. Yeah. You know, let's rewind the clock a little bit. If you could tell us a little bit about your background and how you arrived at CTA. I feel like that's a good opening for us too. Yeah. So I've been in the telecommunications market for a long time. Over 25 years I guess. And I started off in telecom in the cable and wireless, cable and wireless USA. So we were a little company trying to get into voice and data services, serving US enterprises. And after during that period of time, I realized that, hey, I wanted to get into this thing called the internet. And this is before cable and wireless had met any investments. So I ended up going to Sprint, who was at the time the largest backbone provider of the internet. And I was hired on to be the responsible for a web services. So back in that period of time, the internet was just being born, coming out of the university standards. And then the second thing is businesses are running to try to figure out how do I create a presence, e-commerce and everything else. So I got involved in that business. That in right after that business, I ended up working for a startup that was called Applied Theory that we would public with in the NASDAQ. And when we did that, I ended up leading an effort for our company to expand to China. So the period of time we're talking about was 1998 to 1999, right? China was just emerging into the world scene. We had an investor who said, hey, I'm willing to give you guys money, but if you guys open up operations in China, and when you're an early stage company, anytime anybody gives you money, you take it and you go, right? And it's also, he was one of the senior board members of the company, so you go. So I was given that task to oversee that effort. So we went to China and we ended up setting up an operations there. We had a partnership with China Telecom. And we actually started getting into two things. One, data center services. We did it with a university called Fudan University, which is a very prominent university in China, and Intel China, right? Intel provided us the equipment. Fudan provided us the infrastructure, the physical buildings. And it wasn't really a data center, it was more like a telephone closet. And what we started doing is providing web services to Chinese early stage internet companies. And I met China Telecom. I met them when they were here. I had gone to, I left with my startup and I went to be the CEO of a distance learning company. And when we sold that business, China Telecom reached out to me. They were coming to the US, recommended a friend after a year, my friend decided to leave. And they said, hey, can we find somebody else? And I said, I'll help you for a little bit. My goal was really six months. And I think I'm like 17 years, okay? So you got to be careful what you say, how long are you gonna be someplace? But it's been a phenomenal experience. So that's how I got here. But it's really always been to a bit mostly in my career in the international space, in the internet space, in the data center business, as well as the international broadband services. And fun fact, you were my client 20 years ago with Cable and Wireless and at Telet System. Yeah, no, that's the other thing about our industry. Everything goes around. Everybody's been around different places and different hats. So that's awesome. Look at us just getting old in real time. You know, we're young. I mean, let's go young, okay. All right, well, you guys are young. But in any case, over that journey, what are some of the most surprising or exciting moments in the telco industry that you've seen? You know, I was thinking about that when I, the previous question you just asked me. You know, so when I was at Cable and Wireless, one of the things that we did is we, I was leading the efforts for us to get into provide voice services, right? At that time, you weren't allowed, in the big incumbents, we're the only ones allowed to provide voice services. But there was a state in New York allowed one small company called Teleport Communications Group, TCG. And I'm sort of dating myself not long ago at this. TCG was the company that allowed to provide voice services to enterprise customers in the specific market inside of New York. And at Cable and Wireless, we, I led the effort to get into that business, to get into providing voice services for our enterprise customers. Cable and Wireless USA at the time was really focused a lot on enterprise businesses. So that was our bread and butter. We did a lot of things for the, you know, for the legal industry. We did a lot of things for associations with the way we did billing, we did packaging of everything was geared towards that. So we figured, hey, we can go offer voice services on top of, when I'm talking about voice services, it was really, because back then the prices, you paid for your voice usage, all right? So now, you know, we had a way to get into it and directly we don't have to resell, we don't have to do voice wholesale stuff. So that was like one of the first things that I got involved in. But as I mentioned to you, you know, I was intrigued by this whole thing of the internet. And that's where I left Cable and Wireless. And I went over to Sprint, but Sprint was very much a pioneer in that regard. But it also was dealing with a couple of other different challenging areas, especially around the mobility business and also building a national network that could provide another telecom, other data services. So what ended up happening is after a while, I was responsible for building up the web business there. We did some of that. And then I, you know, this is 1998, 1999, everybody is running to these startup companies and I did the same thing. And I went to Applied Theory, which was really a tremendous experience for me personally. And we were a company that was spun out from an organization called NizerNet. And NizerNet was one of the first organizations that was in the internet space, right? And what we did is we focused on multinational customers as well as US customers to bring them internet services, to bring them web hosting services. And when I say web hosting, because that was what we called it back then, we would actually help the enterprise get a presence online. We would augment what we put online by giving them e-commerce components to it and everything else. It was a consulting sale. There was a lot of things that we were wanting to do. And ironically, what made us a little bit different is we tried to take advantage of what we called stranded assets, which is now the creation of cloud services. We just didn't follow through and build that as a separate business. Because what we saw is that our customers were paying a lot for their own dedicated servers, their own infrastructure and security. What we thought is that we could build some of these capabilities to share it across there. But at the time, people were sort of still trying to grapple us to what do I want to put online? What do I want to keep on my own premise? And then how do I want to do it, right? So for us overall, it started going in that direction. And then I left there to try to get involved in the distance learning because I thought that was a good application with I learning the vision of the silver learning systems. And at that time, it was 2001. Unfortunately, we had the event that took place in the United States. And one of the first things we did is we said, hey, one of the biggest gaps, our para company was silver learning systems, which is trains a lot of first responders, right? So if you're a nurse, all these people, you go through silver learning. But the problem is in our society, we never had a way to go from civilian organizations to working with the military, right? And it's just different ideologies, right? Military is like, you follow China command, you don't question it, you do it. People die, as they say, right? Well, and the civilian thing is we're like, hey, I don't know, that fits into my calendar. I don't know what I'm gonna do next. And you're not my boss. So we wanted to create a way to enable the communications and the training necessary between first responders and the military. So we worked with Northrop Grumman to develop some training programs with that. And it was good. It was so good that we ended up selling the company to educational testing services. And that's where I sort of ended up back into China Telecom because we sold the company. I didn't feel like moving to Princeton. I think Princeton's a great area, but I wanted to stay in the DC area. So I stayed and I pursued the China Telecom opportunity. Oh my goodness, Louis. Hearing the past 25 years about our industry so much, we're so innovative. Like our industry is actually so young, comparatively, and we're always growing and enabling other businesses to grow and communications between first responders, et cetera. That just becomes such powerful tools for communities to be successful. And anyway, I get so excited about our industry, but I'd love to hear from you. Looking forward now next year or two, what do you see as some big trends hitting our news perhaps soon? Yeah, it's Jamie. I think you're absolutely right. One of the things that our industry does is it recreates itself. And it has a different, gives different opportunities. So to answer your question, I see the emergence of artificial intelligence, machine learning, the use of IoT devices, all bundled in with a better way of communication platform, tied to 5G to continue international broadband services, cables, international cable systems, all of that's coming together. And what I also see is the creation of new companies. And at PTC, I had an opportunity to meet a company that is actually a bunch of Harvard graduates, smart kids who created and was able to raise some money and they're building a platform for managing IoT devices. And that's actually a pretty important solution. And it's appropriate for an organization that young to start building this. And the reason I say that is because bigger organizations, we have objectives of meeting our targets and everything else, we can go and put the project to the side and see if we can make it happen. But it's always gonna be distracted with the core mission of the company. While a young organization, you're there building things and sort of carving out a solution for bigger organizations. And I think that's gonna create a new bunch of different companies. You're already starting to see a lot of new artificial intelligence companies, data analytics companies that's been around for a while now, but you're pulling a lot of information, you're pushing information faster than you ever have. And then at the same time, the problem is just too much information, right? So you need something and platform that takes that information makes it meaningful. Because you can get it, I don't even have enough time of the day to read all my emails sometimes, right? So if I had to look at reports or look at data trends and stuff, it would just overwhelm me. So we need these digital assistants essentially to be able to interpret what's happening there to give us information so we can not only manage our business better, but also help our customers manage their business better. And so I'm excited about that. I think that's really shows the opportunity and the growth of our business, right? You know, and all this information needs to be stored places and it needs to be stored in different places that we haven't even built yet, right? So that's where I get excited and I see a lot of opportunities for continued innovation. People say, hey, the internet is, oh, the telecom industry is going slowing down and everything else. It's just sort of rebuilding itself. And it takes time and it's not like overnight. We need a lot of early stage companies to get involved, you know, venture money to put in, PE money to be put in and then it grows. Speaking of growth, tell us about the markets you're in and where are you looking at next? Yeah, so, you know, we started off in the United States where we continue to be operating today. But what we're seeing is the necessity to move towards Latin America. Why? Well, it's comparable to the U.S., right? The size-wise. It's a lot of growth potential down there for us. A lot of our customers who are Asian customers are moving into that region. We also don't see us building like a national network in these countries. But instead, what we're seeing is what we're planning to build is what we call these edge nodes in these strategic countries, which really is an aggregation point to be able to provide cloud services, to be able to provide SD-WAN services and to be able to also get into what we call elastic computing power that we platform that we have. So our company is looking at Latin America as the next frontier. And our company is also expecting that with the investments in that region, we don't have to do what we've done in other regions where we've built out a network and connected to the East Coast and the West Coast, Midwest and so forth. We just need a couple nodes in each country to be able to aggregate the traffic, to serve our customers that are going into that country or originated from that country. So it's a little bit of a different mentality. There's more based on what the technologies and the people are buying today. It's incredible. It's incredible your... And we should mention, CTA, you're a company that has employees on multiple continents and customers across the globe, truly multicultural, multinational organization. What are the differences and similarities when you're doing business with customers from different countries and cultures? Like it's incredible. Yeah. You know, sometimes when I hire people in my company, I give them a book called The Geography of Thought. It's a Cal State professor. I can't remember his name off the top of my head right now. But The Geography of Thought is a very good book. It's a simple book to read, but it gets down to two things. One is that the Western world, we believe in, we follow Aristotle's way of philosophy and thinking. While the Eastern world follows Confucius, right? And understanding the differences in how the people in those particular regions of the world view the world, and view their role in the world is important, right? And China Telecom being the US-based company of China Telecom America, that is, we are, we deal with that. We have to understand Eastern mentality and most of us are from the Western world, so we need to understand. You know, just to give you a couple, I want to give you an example. You know, Aristotle says, challenge everything in front of you, okay? Because that's your contribution to society. Once you challenge things in front of you, you're going to make things better. And if you think about the history of the United States and more importantly, the recent history with around innovation and development stuff, you know, that's what we do. You know, we can build this better, okay? Well, you know, we're not satisfied with what we have. You know, we're going to build the next thing, right? You know, Google would have never existed if they would have thought Netscape's browser and search capability would have been okay, right? So, you know, they challenged it, right? Well, in the Eastern side, they do have some of that concept of creating opportunities, but they also look at it things in a holistic manner and saying, you know, my contribution is to build something bigger and better that will help my whole community, which is a different way of thinking of things. And working in a child telecom, we have to understand both sides, right? We want to be the innovators side, but we also understand how we share those thoughts in our plans in the holistic view of like how we're going to help China Telecom overall as a company. You know, that's one of the, I would say it was one of the better parts in what's kept me here so long. You know, it's not like I'm, you know, it's always a learning experience. And for me personally, I feel like I learned more from my colleagues that come from Asia than I do, you know, that I share. They may have a different view, but I think I am always learning, right? I'm always learning about different cultural aspects of it. You know, it's never boring. So if you're not bored, you love your job, then you stay. So that's it. Never boring. I love that. That's my new mantra. So let's have some fun. Let's have some just get to know you a little bit with some rapid fire questions. So whatever's on your mind. So if you could watch one movie on repeat, 24 hours straight, what would it be? My favorite all time, which I've done many times when I'm stuck on a plane that I haven't downloaded to my phone. It's Gladiator. I just love that. Wow, that's a good one. It has so much, I mean, so many different aspects of it. And if you pay close attention to what's happening, what the messaging there, there's so many things about life, so many things about how to survive, how to move forward, how to rebuild yourself. What's the purpose? It's totally amazing. I got my son to read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Oh, that's awesome. A senior in high school, and he's super interested now in that whole era of Roman history. Great catch. And so much you can take into being a leader in our industry. Exactly. Gladiator is just a great movie overall. I really enjoy it. So fun. Yeah. All right, so first concert or best concert, what comes to mind? I'm saying this because I went there when I was five years old. No, I'm kidding. Asia. It was my first concert. It was here in Maryland, and I forget the name of the place who was allowed to, but it was a, so when you were a teenager, you go to your first concert. Asia was a band that played in the 80s, and I really enjoyed it. I liked it. It was at the arena. I left a lot of impressions on me and a lot of things that were positive for a young teenager at that time. So funny. So nice. Yeah. I went in there, Jamie's first or best concert. That's what... Yeah, that's a great question. Oh my goodness. Come on, Jamie, tell us. My first concert, it was Tiffany. I will admit. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Hopefully no one heard that. Yeah. Of course it was. Yes, of course it was. I can't believe I actually revealed that. How about you? Now that was Sharon, let's hear yours. Come on, yeah. The boss, Bruce. No, oh come on, that's too cool. Bruce Springsteen, yeah. I mean, he's just the best. And the older he gets, the more I like him. Like he's just so interesting and smart, not just a great musician. He's transcended a lot of time. That's awesome. So, and I guess the next question, beach or mountains, where do you want to spend vacation or travel? What's your preference? I think I had the answer to that. Mountains with a lake. We're a big hiking family. We're big outdoorsy, you know. I have a six-year-old and he can tell me every tree that is out there. And we don't live too far from Sugarloaf mountains where I live today. And on the weekends we'll go out there and we'll spend time. I mean, so for me, the mountains, fresh air, being away from things, being in nature, getting to explore outside of the digital world, essentially, that's really a relaxing environment for me. Don't take me wrong. I like the beach as well, but if I had to pick one of the two, we'd go with mountains. Nice choice. Well, thanks so much for joining us, Lewis, and really interesting conversation in the sense that CTA as an organization, the company, I was mysterious to me. I just didn't know anything about it. So thanks for sharing some anecdotes and stories, and I'm sure we'll hear more. Yeah, no, thank you for having me, both of you, and our companies were, like I said, I've been here a long time, and I think we always provided value to our customer. It's always been built on that concept, right? It is that there's a value to what we're doing, and that's what's allowed us to serve the majority of the Fortune 1000 today. So we're happy with what we've done and what we've built, and we look very positive to the future. And with you and your team, there's only positivity and good things more to come. It's incredible, the people, they are supporting the brand. Well done, Lewis. Thank you so much for your time, so generous. And guys, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast as much as we did, go ahead and check out jsa.net slash podcast for upcoming Data Movers episodes, releasing every other week on Wednesday morning. And be sure to follow us at Twitter on Jay Scotto and Evan Christel. We're hanging on Twitter, we're still there, and we'd love to- Come on, Hudson, push this off yet. And guys, as always, stay safe, get back out there, and happy networking.