 Live from the JSA Podcast Studio, presenting Data Movers, showcasing the leaders behind the headlines in the telecom and data center infrastructure industry. Welcome everybody to our new podcast series, Data Movers. I'm your host, Jamie Scott-Aquataya, CEO and founder of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, Mr. Evan Christel, top PDB social influencer. Hey Evan. Hey Jamie, hey everyone. And thanks to you for putting on another episode of Data Movers, where we sit down with the most influential folks in today's leading telecom and data center world, supporting the infrastructure requirements of this new normal. But first, Jamie, did you survive the Facebook WhatsApp Insta apocalypse? Yeah, I mean, Facebook went down, but sadly I have an oil spill out my window to watch going across. So I guess my reality is shifted to actual reality instead of my virtual self on Facebook. But yeah, oh my goodness, what a week, huh? Yeah, it's always something. I'm not sure if the real news of the oil spill or the virtual news of Facebook is more dramatic, but it just goes to show you how resilience is now the key theme for 2021. You know, don't put your eggs in one basket, whether it's a backup system on an oil tanker or oil rig or, you know, a data center, diversity and having plan B and having backups and resilience, I think in all aspects of your business and life, have kind of come to the fore, huh? Yeah, and how precious this world is, you know, and human stupidity needs to somehow write itself and recognize how precious this earth is and really for us to keep that first and foremost and double check, protect ourselves, protect our earth. Crazy times. It is indeed, but let's get back to some more sanity with a really interesting guest. How about that? Yes, so as you know, here at Data Movers, we really like to dive in to the background stories, the career highs and lows, unique perspectives of these leaders on our industry, the future of our industry, and I'm so excited to introduce our guest today, Christopher Lodge, of course, the United Fiber and Data's COO and Interim CEO. Welcome, Chris. Thank you, thanks for having me. I'm excited. And I'm excited as well, and I'm here on your website at ufd.com. And it's amazing, your accomplishments here, 400,000 miles of fiber, 375 plus buildings on net. Isn't it time now just to relax and maybe go kick it on the beach or get some more plans here to surprise us with? I wish that was the case, but you know how this industry works. If you're not moving forward, yeah, you're falling behind. Yeah, so tell us about some of the announcements that you've just made around, you know, your continued network infrastructure rollout. Yeah, so we just did some public announcements for some international clients, namely Deutsche Telekom and East Link Communications out of Canada that signed up on the UFD route that we installed a few years back. And we're real excited to have them as customers and solving some of their infrastructure needs. Fantastic. And I love your long haul fiber network, very much a path that is required, so necessary that bandwidth consumption just in that I-95 corridor from New York City to Ashburn, incredible, but you guys offer diversity. And along with this incredible capacity need, you're also giving us a little more of a diverse route. So it's adding some love and this congestion to you. That it is, as you were talking in the beginning about resiliency and that diversity, that was the idea and the concept behind it for this corridor. And it took a while constructing the route miles, if you will, to connect those two major markets and all the data centers that exist in them. And, but once we got it going, and as you see, in the latest press releases, it's really caught on. The driving factors obviously is the diversity itself just physically diverse in the corridor, but also we did something I think that's unique when you build something that long as we use the same cable manufacturer and we tried to stick to some tight standards. So when it did eventually get turned up, we're seeing latency that's as good or better as the shorter main corridor, but giving that diversity. I love that. And I noticed when I was introducing you, because you have a new title now. I mean, I've known Chris for a while and he's been COO, but now intern CEO. What's that new leadership role like? Well, yeah, as you know, Jamie, unfortunately the role or the title kind of came about in the passing of former CEO, Felipe Alvarez, who was very well known in the industry and sadly, sadly missed. So I kind of stepped up, I guess you would say. And trying to continue to drive the vision and the direction of U of T forward in the midst of the COVID lockdown and things like that hasn't been easy, but definitely challenging. And but I'm up for the task. Big shoes to fill for sure. Felipe, a longtime friend of the industry. Amazing, amazing legacy he leads, but my goodness, have you been stepping up really driving innovation growth over at U of D? And then I know, I know that's your next question. So I want to step on it. Well, I was, yeah, I was curious to see that because you have a lot of news at U of D, Deutsche Telecom's global carrier group out of Germany selected U of D for optical wavelength services in the U of S just in time for October fast, right? I mean, so there's going to be a big beer, beer hall festival party, I guess with you guys. But what else here says, what was it about your, you know, long haul fiber network that's so differentiated and so different and innovative that Deutsche Telecom, you know, a very storied company selected you to partner with? Again, as I previously said, you know, the route has a ton to do with it. Again, being diverse. We don't touch any of the common points, you know, when you're heading from the Northern New Jersey, you know, New York City market down to Ashburn, we don't go through Philly and Wilmington and Baltimore, you know, or downtown DC to get to, you know, that data center, you know, capital of Ashburn. You know, between that and the newness, if you will, of the fiber and the latency that we're seeing we have, you know, fiber that's been up and running for two years now on an optical network that's less than a year old in terms of turning it up. So all brand new equipment, brand new fiber, and it really allowed us to see, as I said, a latency that is on par and in some cases better than our competitors on a route that is much longer. Because, you know, you come in a couple hundred miles of that corridor, by nature you're gonna be, you know, longer, we call it the crescent moon that connects, you know, New York and New Jersey down to Ashburn away from the corridor. So, you know, that latency, I think really, you know, sparked, you know, people's drive, you know, with the diversity. So I put them hand in hand. Yeah, those are definitely key value points to selling points. And, you know, as you are such a long time about leader in our industry, Chris, can you tell us what do you see as the next big shift in the industry? I don't know if it's a shift as much as, for me, I see and I call it mobility, you know, whether that be satellite type connectivity, I mean, obviously, we know with the 5G rollout and things like that. I think you throw that in with, you know, this lockdown that we all experienced this past year. And I just see a higher bandwidth being driven to the mobility side that you can have bandwidth, whether it be in your car, at your vacation home, a hotel or wherever. I think the days of, you know, we've seen the industry going this way regardless, but, you know, it's no longer good to have a 10 meg connection. You know, people want at least a hundred on the low side, you know, down to, you know, game type connectivity, you know, at my house. So I see, I think there's gonna be a lot more driven around that we know with smart cars and, you know, the evolution of, you know, the electric vehicles and things like that that are getting, you know, internet of things and how that connects. But I just, I see us continue to drive, you know, higher and higher speeds, whether it be to the handheld device or the laptop connected to some type of handheld device. You know, if we would have thought five years ago about doing a Zoom call over a laptop from, you know, the front seat of your car, which we've all probably done in this time, they weren't very successful, you know, a spotty, the videos, shopping and things like that. Now there's a, I mean, there's definitely spots that I have trouble with it, but you'd be surprised what we do in the field now. And that's just our side of the business. You look at all the other industries out there. So I just see that continuing to grow. Yeah, and I noticed in your website here, you actually talk about different industry verticals, whether financial services or healthcare, education, media, carrier services. Do you see any of those verticals of particular focus of yours over the next, you know, period of time? Like what's exciting for you? Right now, we're seeing a huge jump on our side in the financial vertical. Oh, really? Yes. You know, now again, U of T is a very young company, new network, you know, ramping up customers. But so when you look at where our, you know, talking with people has gone and quotes and then ultimately turning into orders, the financial market for us the past six months has quadrupled in terms of the conversations and, you know, the orders associated with that. It makes sense with the latency being the core asset of yours, lowest latency and being in the New York quarter financial hub. So can we move on over to the topic of Chris, the thought leader of our industry, Chris, the person. What's more about your professional path? What led you here? Like a lot in this industry, I've been doing this for many, many years. I'd have to go back and look, but somewhere between 27 and 29, so we'll call 28 years in the industry. I started like, I think a lot of people, I'm an engineer by background on that side of the house, if you will. I did back in a time where you didn't go to, you know, Best Buy and I'll start showing my age by, you know, silo or circuit cities and things like that, you know, to buy a computer you called, you know, Avar. And before you could go online and order a Dell PC to ship to your house, I started as a tech doing installs for the business and primarily the healthcare community. And, you know, where you'd go down and you would install multiple computers on a network and again, gonna show my age. Landtastic networks, Novel Networks. You are old, wow. You know, the very first mainframe I worked on required three of us and a specialized, I call it, you know, a pallet jack to take out the hard drive. That was a whopping, I think 150, 200 meg, you know, liquid cooled and, you know, it was quite the undertaking. And now we're walking around with, you know, what 500 gig iPhones with more computing power by the way of the old mainframe. That's it. And again, healthcare was kind of my niche, if you will, or, you know, where all my work was. And like a lot of stuff, you get to a crossroad, management, continue. And then started on the infrastructure side from there, doing a lot for the healthcare industry. The first hospital I went to work for, we installed more fiber within the campus than most carriers had in this region, you know, connecting places, I mean, that's the problem with the late 80s and, you know, 90s. And kind of went from there, you know, and then ultimately went to the provider or the carrier side, provider side for one of the very first ISPs, 100 ISPs in the country, back in the late 90s. And through acquisition, I tell people, and I joke, I think I sat in the same office for 14 years with four names on the door of five over time. Ultimately, prior to coming to UFD was pay tech slash windstream through that acquisition. And just, I kind of grew up with the industry, you know, in a time where I called the dot bomb days of 2000, where everybody was just going gangbusters and then the market fell out and everything came to a sudden halt. But, and then that's how I got into the data center side. And I built and retrofitted data centers for, you know, 15 years of my career all over the country. Wow, you've seen it all. So any advice for other leaders in our industry or maybe aspiring leaders, you know, younger folks who wanna get into the management leadership space? Yeah, I know it sounds a little cliche, but a lot of drive, tenacity and hard work. You know, I know we all know it. Oh, that's all, that's all, come on, it's simple. There's a lot, I mean, obviously right place, right time, some, you know, definitely helps. But I think a lot of people today, you know, and I don't wanna get, you know, political, but we were so on demand, you know, we want things, you were talking about the Facebook and the YouTube, we're so used to social media, instant gratification, you know, you don't go from, you know, frontline worker to CEO in a two-year period or a one-year period, it takes time. Yeah, again, I started out as a PC technician to a network administrator to years, and then, you know, director, VP, senior VP, it didn't happen overnight. My family will tell you from my oldest children who were, you know, in their 30s to my youngest, I've missed different things, you know, being out there working and whatnot, and you can't just take it for granted. You gotta go do, put your time in, at least I feel you do, and it also allows you to be well-versed. I've always taken pride that because of the background at an executive level, I can sit in a meeting and talk about the optical gear or the build of the network, but I know, because I know what it's like to be in a bucket or sit in a splice truck or connect the optical gear, you know the questions to ask or challenge your team with, as opposed to never living and breeding it. Couldn't agree more, so well said, so well said, Chris. We like to end our data movers with this rapid-fire fun facts section, so our people, go ahead and just tell us the very first thing that comes to mind when we ask you a bunch of silly questions. So here we go, favorite food that may surprise us. Well, I live in Pennsylvania, so Pennsylvania, Dutch, probably pork roll, which a lot of people in the country won't know what is, what it really consists of, but it's... Sounds terrible, by the way, but that's okay. It is. Probably tastes better than it sounds. Oh, it's very good. Anybody that's had it, it's a collage of pork products, but it's very Pennsylvania Dutch. Oh, I love it. Yeah. And what about movies? If you could have one movie on repeat, what would it be? Ooh, that's a real tough one. I'm a pretty, I'm a movie aficionado, if you will, so that would be tough. Depending on my mood. If I'm in for a con, you still can't go wrong with things like Caddyshack. Ah, the classics. Still to this day makes me laugh. If I'm in another, I don't know what it is about the movie, but I can still watch it to this day when I'm clicking through the TV at night that comes on Gladiator with Russell Crow. Seriously. It's just one of those, same with the Godfather. Yep. The first two. They could be on any time. And I just saw it last week, and I will sit there and watch it again and my wife will come in and say, you've seen this movie 10,000 times, but. We have the same exact conversation at my house. And now I see Gladiator or Godfather and on the menu, I'm like, oh, there goes my next three hours. Yep. There's a great podcast called the rewatchables, where these folks just dissect some of the classic movies and talk about them in details. Fun to listen to. I bet. I love it. And then two more, maybe three more questions. Favorite thing to do in the fall in the autumn, what do you really like to do to celebrate the changing season? We do, we try to go out. I mean, obviously in this part of the country, the leaves changing are very dramatic if you go up into the Poconos. I don't know about favorites. So I like, I'm a boater. So I actually like to take my boat out at that time. It's cooler. You're in a sweatshirt, things like that. But the lakes and the Chesapeake Bay are kind of empty, but you look and you can see all that dramatic change up in the distance and it's just, it's relaxing. Awesome. And for productivity, what app do you use mostly on your phone or maybe it's Netflix for watching movies? I don't know. What do you say? It's funny because now with all the advancements in the apps, you get these reports that tell you how much time you do different things. Yeah. It's pretty much Twitter 100% for me. Yes. Yeah. See, for me, it's, I'm sad to say it's about 90% of my phone is male. Yeah. Yeah. Very sad. Very sad. You can't get away from it. No. All right. So last question, I promise we won't burden you with this fun facts section anymore, but one last one. What one word would folks use to describe it? Well, good or bad. Good. Good. Good. It's really good. No. Good. I would say drive. Again, I'm, you know, my drive to excel or move forward or get something done. The bad side, I hear, I'm impatient. I can admit it. I have a very short, you know, patient. You know, fuse, if you will, not in a bad way, but it just, I do even know, I don't like how social media has portrayed certain things. I like things, you know, instant. Like a lot of people. Well, I'm curious, I'm sure your customers are happy about that. And thanks for joining us, Chris. Amazing deer about you have these meteoric rise and, you know, the massive plans you have for the Northeast and beyond. So onwards and upwards. Good luck. No, thank you. We have hopefully some new great news that'll come out towards the end of the year, the beginning of the year of some new routes and connectivity and things like that that will be very excited to start sharing with people. Sounds great. Yeah, I like that meteoric. That's definitely U of T. And thank you, Chris, for being such a wonderful guest but also industry thought leader, really inspiring. And guys, thank you for today's Data Movers podcast as much as I did. Go ahead and check out jsa.net slash podcast for more episodes of Data Movers as well as any other JSA podcast series we've got. We do drop our Data Movers episodes every other week on Wednesday morning. So go ahead and tune in. Yeah, and forget about Facebook and Instagram. Get on Twitter and follow us on JSCOTTO and Evan Kirstel, the real, some real fun. So until then. Until then, as always, guys, stay safe and happy networking.