 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 Data Movers. I'm your host, James Goddard-Cutaya, founder and CEO of JSA. Along with my fabulous co-host, top B2B social influencer, Evan Christel. Hey Evan. Hey everyone, welcome to Data Movers where we sit down with the most influential men and women of today's leading telco and data center world supporting the infrastructure requirements of this next normal. Jamie, good to see you here. Are you at home? Where are you these days? Yeah, I'm still in Southern California enjoying the fabulous view and weather. But where are you? I see this hotel-esque background there. I am in a hotel and I'm excited to be in Miami. I'm excited to have a kind of work-cation here with my friends and clients at IT Expo, the big tech event happening this week and gathering with former colleagues and friends and getting out of the world, very exciting. Yeah, this is so exciting. IT Expo is really the first conference Expo that's having a session now that COVID's numbers are getting less and less scary. So what's it like? Are there lots of people on the floor? Well, I will not be on the floor. I'm a little gun shy of getting together in large groups but I will be having dinners and lunches with friends and clients and smaller gatherings and just covering the event from afar. But speaking of amazing people to meet, we have a great guest today, huh? Absolutely, you know, here on Data Movers, we really love to get the movers and shakers of our industry today. We are very honored and excited to welcome Stefan Jojer, he is the CEO of Telia Carrier. Stefan, welcome to Data Movers. Thank you and thanks for having me. It's good to be here. Thanks Stefan and thanks for interrupting your mid-Somar vacation in Stockholm, Sweden. We know that's a big deal and we appreciate you being with us. And congratulations on your company, Telia Carrier being independent and worth what, about a billion dollars? That must be a nice feeling. Yeah, it absolutely is, right? And I think we're three weeks into this now after actually becoming fully standalone. And I think the entire organization is very excited about the prospect of being standalone really and doing it on our own from that perspective. So it's really good. Yeah, well done. And, you know, I wish COVID weren't part of the conversation, but unfortunately it still is. Although we're getting back to normal in many countries here, including the U.S. But it's been a long road. How has the pandemic impacted the business at Telia Carrier? And more interestingly, maybe for our audience the network itself, what was the impact on your planning of infrastructure, your maybe security implications and otherwise? Yeah, I think I'll cover just a bit briefly, I think on the organizational aspect because I think that's also very interesting. We're a global organization with around 500 people in 20 different countries and we're very accustomed to working distributed. So typically you have your team colleagues in multiple different offices around the world. And I think when this hit and everyone was homebound essentially in all the different markets that were present it was more or less work as usual for a lot of people from a daily interaction point of view at least, right? So I don't think we suffered as much as an organization from the new working habits and working through teams or Zoom or whatever kind of application you're using but that sort of was just a normal way of working for us in many ways. Of course, there were quite a lot of things that were different apart from that, which of course is from just getting access to all the different technical sites being able to actually perform your work on a database and so forth. I think in most countries that we're present in where we have network presence, people actually saw telecommunications as an essential service, which meant that we had the good ways of actually being able to access and get into it with the right type of paperwork of course and making sure that we could get access to the various different locations that we needed to be present in. But I think those were a lot of the practicalities around that I think in many ways we, you know when you look back at it now it's been unfortunately almost a year and a half already, right? And sort of the major concerns that we had at the time when it really hit didn't necessarily materialize as bad as we thought at that point in time at least. But what we did see was of course the importance of what we do and what the telecommunications and data center industries doing in combined in that sense with providing enormous connectivity needs. Everyone went home, homebound, working from home, using video services, traffic exploded in many ways. We could see it gradually happening through the Asian market that were the first and the European and then the North American and Latin America. So in that way we could sort of almost follow unfortunately the way that the pandemic spread globally in the way that traffic surged in the different regions. I think we saw a full year's growth more or less in a couple of weeks on the global footprint. And of course that's a challenge in itself in just coping with that kind of volume increase in such a short time span. So I think it was a lot of scrambling both internally within our own operations of making sure that we had the ample amount of connectivity between all the different sites that we're providing but also to be able to provide that to clients because a lot of clients were in desperate need of more capacity. But at the same time also interconnecting to a lot of other players in the global internet community because it is a network of a lot of networks which means that that's critical as well to ensure that we had that up and running at all times. And I think it was, I think I've commented on that somewhere else as well. I think it was kind of relieving to see in some ways that it was people were getting back to the engineering core of internet and really throwing away all the political aspects and business aspects and really making sure that the internet worked as well as it could do during that time period. And I think that was very positive experience I think in the midst of a very bad experience. I love that description, getting back to that engineering core of the internet and for certain the interconnectivity between networks really skyrocketed and therefore also choice that enterprises have when choosing networks or networking related services certainly also skyrocketing. How does Tilia Carrier differentiate itself in this networking marketplace and stand out to respective customers? Well, I think in a few different ways, right? For one aspect, I think we are one of the key fundamentals of the internet in that sense of providing the internet backbone services and arguably the largest or one of the largest internet backbones at least and with a very global footprint located in many different data centers with a lot of interconnect capabilities. And that's sort of on the physical side of how we differentiate a little bit on the softer aspects or let's say the more human aspects in that case it's really to be able to interact throughout the chain with the enterprises and make sure that we actually service them through not only through a good sales experience but also through a good delivery experience and a good customer support experience throughout that entire workflow that the typical enterprise customer has. And I think that those are the main things which sets us apart a little bit from the competition in that sense. And of course it's kind of difficult to have a proof point of your customer excellence and your customer experience unless you are a client of ours. But at the same time we do get a lot of positive feedbacks from the existing clients that we have. So hopefully a little bit of word of mouth would help in that sense, right? It's great to hear you talk about customer experience something that's rarely talked about in the traditional legacy Telco world. But I've actually seen Telia Carrier in the news quite a bit lately. You've made this significant expansion here in the Americas. I believe you're the first non-US carrier to offer 100G gig services both in the US and Europe. So tell us some of the drivers behind that network expansion and for our technical audience maybe more about your fiber backbone itself. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, actually we've been present in the US as an operator since the end of the 90s actually. And I was actually living in the States building up the very first part of the US network that we had, which was an exciting time at that point in time. But I think we've been very consciously building on our network out on modern technology in that sense, being able to do 100 gig first on both sides of the transatlantic ocean. But then of course also taking next steps up to 400 gig capabilities as well, both on the optical side, but also on the router side to be able to interconnect in that manner as well. So I think that that's a gradual journey that we've done. We've always tried to be a little bit in the technology forefront in that sense. If we look at our footprint in the US, I mean, we have a coast to coast network and then I would say the traditional figure eight network in that case, spanning the major cities on the east coast, the major cities on the west coast and then across the US, but also then tying in that network down to the region where you're present right now in Florida and up north a little bit as well. And then of course into the Mexican region as well and to the borderline in Texas as well. So we gradually expanded our footprint both with the fiber and optical capabilities, but then also following that very much with the IP domain throughout the swan. So it's been a gradual organic growth over quite many years in the States, but also on the European market. Yeah, I remember back in the days, early 2000s, you were having a pop in 60s Street. Yeah. Exactly. A long time. Yeah, it's a long time ago. We started this interview, of course, looking back at some of COVID's impact on the industry and in one of the business, but let's now take a look ahead. There's so much to be hopeful for, I think, while making big plans when the world returns to normal, so to speak. We'd love to hear more about revision, but we'll turn the power over the next five years. Yeah, I think we're all longing for getting back to something that is more normal, right? And then the question is, what's gonna be the new normal in many ways as well, if that's gonna be different than what it was pre-COVID in that sense, but we'll see, I guess. But having said division for telecarrier, I think we are continuing now. We're under different ownership since a few weeks back. And of course, that gives us a little bit of a different platform than what we had previously, and being very much of a standalone organization brings something different with it. And I think it's, to some extent, it's all different, and to some extent, division is very much the same, if I put it that way. I think we are very much at the core of connectivity services and the importance of internet and global distribution of traffic. So having said that, I think there are quite many things that we still is left untouched for us in many ways. Internet is gradually moving further and further out, both from, not only from a user perspective, because the people want to be able to sit in use services in a different manners, but the actual content is moving closer to the end users as well. So I think there is always gonna be a gradual expansion of the footprint in the areas where we're already present. But on top of that, I think there are a few markets, of course, that we're not present in today, which I think is a great deal of interest. And if I could, I mean, if I could really wish for where I would want to be, I would like to see Telia Carey be present everywhere. That might be a little bit tall order in five years, but hopefully we're on that path, at least, of expanding our footprint into markets where we're not present currently as one. Yeah, it'll be exciting to watch, that's for sure. You know, our audience loves to hear a little bit about the careers and stories of our audience, of our guests rather. Tell us about your journey to Telia Carrier, starting from Telia, how you sort of found yourself in the C-suite, any advice that you might give to younger folks in our industry. You know, give us some highlights on your journey, if you would. Yeah, I'll try to at least. I don't know if there are recommendations in that sense of how you reached there, but I think it's important to try many different things throughout your career. And then I'm not meaning necessarily different kinds of businesses. That could be one way of doing it, but different kinds of roles. And I think actually I'm a business major from the beginning and from university, but I'm actually starting working with technology when I started working and the internet was very new. So everyone was sort of searching a little bit in terms of, well, is this technology and how does it work? And how can you in one way or another make that work even better? And I think one of my greatest learning experience I had from the very beginning was I was on a trainee program in the beginning and I was working for six months in the US at that point in time. And the first job I had there was to sort of, it was a little bit of a mall and pop shop internet ISP there. And I was a salesperson, but at the same time you sold something and then you took the route around your arm and you went out and configured and set it up for the client as well. And I think those kind of things are actually kind of important when you look back at it because you sort of understand a little bit more of the full chain of actually of how a business works both the technical aspects, but the selling aspects and even the delivery part in that case, right? So I think it's important to do many different roles throughout your career. And I've surely done that through my career and then it's gradually been sort of moving up a little bit but at the same time in different kinds of roles to get different perspectives on things. And I think that's very important to actually enhance your skill sets and also probably also have a little bit more empathy for what different roles requires. So if you're gonna lead, you also need to understand what those roles requires and what's good and what's not bad and what's bad in certain of the roles and behaviors and things like that. And if you haven't done it, it's kind of difficult sometimes to judge I think in some ways as well, right? So I feel that if any recommendation in that sense don't hesitate to try different kinds of jobs. I think that's super important. So I love that, I love that. Yeah, I'm from a higher perspective. You know, try to hire next generation Stephans out there who are... Yeah. Well, that's not go there. I don't think that's a good thing. I'm sure very few, sadly. But now that brings us to our fun little end section of our program. We have the rapid fire section here. We just ask a few fun questions in a rather quick pace and you tell us the first thing that comes to mind. Yes. So, okay, first step to a carrier of course based in Sweden, although global. So we have to know what is your top recommendation for someone visiting Sweden? Oh, well, I'm from the countryside from the beginning. So I would say a little small town called Vastena which is about 200 kilometers south of Stockholm. That's a very beautiful area. Not very commonly visited by foreigners. So I'd recommend that. Americans tend to go to Stockholm, but it's a very big country. Are there other places up north as well that are accessible? Because we love our northern lights and our reindeer here in America. Right. Exactly. And then what is your favorite location to travel for? Yeah, well, I mean, I've lived for several years in the U.S. I actually really enjoy going back to the States and in particular, actually the East Coast because that's where I spend most time. So I really enjoy going back there every once in a while for work. Well, come back to Miami. We'll have a mojito here in Pseudonia. Yeah, that would be nice. And, okay, chew up. What is your most used app on your phone and why? This one is a boring answer, I'm afraid because the most used app in these days is unfortunately the Mail app. Oh, very boring. You can at least shout out Spotify, you know, another great Swedish company. Yeah, well, it's commonly used, but if I'm actually gonna be true and honest, it is probably the email app, to be honest, but Spotify is very well used, but not the most used one. And having a one-year-old, my monitor, my baby monitor is also getting like equal exposure, I think, between emails, baby monitor, my new world. Okay, so what is your favorite hobby or pastime when you want to unwind? Yeah, when I unwind. Well, if I do something with my friends and I actually do enjoy playing golf a lot, and that I do, as soon as I can get some spare time in, I'll try to do that every once in a while. So, fortunately, season in Sweden is kind of short, but that's a good way of unwinding and you get outside at least for a while. So, that's a good way. I'm going to use my Emmy with a mojito with Evan. Yeah, exactly. Plenty of courses down there, at least. Well, thank you so much, Stefan, for joining us. It's great to see you as almost a new kid on the block at Tilly a Carrier. And we see a lot of opportunity and innovation and frankly disruption coming from your corner in the upcoming months and years. So, great to learn and we'll be watching. Well, thank you very much. And then nice having me on board here. I appreciate that. So, and take care and enjoy Miami a lot as well. Thanks so much. And guys, if you enjoyed today's Data Movers podcast, be sure to check out jsd.net slash podcast for more upcoming Data Movers episodes. You'll release every other week on Wednesday mornings as well as other JSA podcast series. So, go ahead and check us out there. And until then, stay safe everyone and happy networking.