 We can find a way to break through. Welcome to Telecom Exchange. I saw a movie recently, The Great Wall, starring the oddly cast Matt Damon. I should admit, I love sci-fi and history. So mystical beasts coming to attack the Great Wall. Sign me up. The one scene that really did stay with me was when Matt Damon's character, who's really a fantastic fighter in this movie, he was awestruck at the Chinese army that guarded this wall. The army was huge with different sectors, like the archers and the spear throwers and the cannonball launchers. And they all worked so deftly in unison, across large numbers. And as I thought about this army of well-organized fighters, I thought about us. I thought about our collective global network, all the layers of the stack, the data centers and meet me rooms, the dark fiber, the lit, local, subsea, global, fiber, wireless networks leasing, buying, voice data, the unfathomable amount of information and communications that make our global economy tick. Make our towns secure. Make our education, our research, our health care, medical breakthroughs stronger each day. Make the way we decipher and utilize all this data faster and more efficient, software-driven, machine-driven. Our world has quickly slipped into sci-fi where it is potentially possible to be this global army, part human, part artificial, spreading as wide as needed to protect and conquer new lands, new oceans, new space, virtual or real. OK, so I don't think that the director of the Great Wall was trying to say all this, truly not in the movie at all. But getting back to the movie, one of the generals, a woman who I particularly admired, told Matt Damon's character, the way the army was so successful, the way it ticked, was through trust. Each unit, each soldier, trusted that the other was performing optimally as trained, that they were there for each other, acting at their best so they would be their best. I thought of the courage to have this type of team-driven trust, the confidence not only in oneself and what we can control, but in one's peers, and not in a small, manageable amount, but spread across thousands, millions, billions of people. And I wondered, is it possible? Maybe there's some mathematical equation where it's just no longer viable across x amount of people. At what size is a company too large or a country or a world? And what happens with this trust, with this advancement of time and technology? All right, so back to the movie. Matt Damon's character replies, I've stayed alive because I've only trusted myself. And my lady general, whom I might have mentioned, was kind of cooler and smarter than Matt Damon's character. She scoffed, and she said, you cannot be trusted until you learn how to trust. So I got back to our telecom and technology army, our day in, day out, building, working, partnering, cross-connecting, not just our cables, but our trust and our livelihood. My service, which will improve the lives of many, will run across your networks and flow in and out of your data centers. And I am trusting you that it will not be impacted by any hack or downtime much. So yeah, trust is a big piece of our army. And yet hackers and political upheaval and human error more chip away at our collective trust. How do we repair it? I only know of one answer. Strong partnerships with a singular goal, singular purpose, singular practice, to do better. Provide a stronger, better tomorrow for our children, where we build new fiber for our basic human need to stay connected, to communicate, and to keep delivering smarter, faster, better. With stronger partnerships, come stronger trust. So with this, now more than ever, I invite you to take part in telecom exchange. This is TEX, where communications and technology meet, where partnerships are born, where trust is fostered, where together we unite under one purpose, grow together for a better tomorrow. And this room is like no other. This room is filled with service providers and the COLO and data center operators who phenomenally attend and support TEX each year. Welcome. We also welcome the national and global tech companies who require telecom to drive their apps and services. Today, we welcome the software, hardware technologists, who are making the most out of our capacity, as well as the security companies who help us protect against the constant threat of attacks. And today, we welcome over 40 journalists, analysts, and social influencers who see our thought leaders as newsworthy. Welcome.