 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for data center and telecom professionals. I'm Laura Nolan here in beautiful Miami for Metro Connect USA 2022. Joining me today is Mike Moray. He is the president and CEO of Bluebird Network. Welcome Mike to JSA TV. Thank you Laura. Nice to meet you. For our viewers, could you tell us a little bit about Bluebird Network and what you do? Well, I'm the president and CEO of Bluebird Network. We are a fiber and data center provider in the Midwest, Missouri, Illinois and the nine surrounding states. I won't bore you with walking around and going Kansas. Anyway, so that's where we're focused. We do four things. We do fiber connectivity. We do data center space. We do cloud connectivity. And the fourth thing we do is internet over all those things. And it's all for businesses, no resonances. Okay. All right. Well, that's a good summary for us. Thanks Mike. There you go. So Bluebird Network recently made the headlines for its speed, security and reliability. So tell us what the news was about. Bluebird is really focused on our customers and making sure that we provide the best services for them. A lot of people have been focusing on connecting to the cloud. A lot of people do that through the internet. And that's not necessarily as safe as it should be. People really direct connectivity and our cloud connectivity is the way that we keep them secure from that perspective. Having them, their critical data located in one of our data centers in Springfield, Missouri or in the Quad Cities between Illinois and Iowa is another way for them to protect their critical data from problems with power or problems with tornadoes or those kind of things. So that's really how we're focusing on that. Also from an internet perspective, the types of services that we provide for internet so that if in fact your internet is compromised, we can kind of shut those kind of things down pretty quickly. So those are really the areas that we're focusing on. And then our network is built to have the lowest latency, the lowest jitter, the lowest packet loss, all real technical terms. People don't really understand what they mean half the time. But the bottom line is if those things are good, your internet is terrible. And so all that combined is really what we've been focusing on as a company. Gotcha. So what's ahead for 2022? Well, we keep growing. So I always like to say we keep doing what we're doing. We've been adding on new cities, new markets, new routes, more fiber. We right now are over 10,000 miles of fiber. We are over 75,000 on-net and near-net buildings. And I would expect to see that grow. We're growing at least 500 miles a year in fiber. We're probably growing 10,000 on-net and near-net buildings a year. So just do the math and tell them, you know, if it's two years from now, you can figure out where we'll be. But one thing I know we're not going to do is go outside of those 11 states, Missouri, Illinois, and the Nines Islands. Because we're focused on that market. Our goal is to be the biggest regional supercarrier in the Midwest. And hopefully we'll be that way at some point. Well, as you continue to grow and expand, what industry trends are you watching keeping your eye on that that can help that growth? So COVID has had a huge impact on what's going on in the marketplace, right? Not as many people going into work in businesses, lots of people working from home. I mean, I was in Santa Belle Island last weekend and that place at this time of the year is usually dead. It was packed. Everybody is now working from their vacation homes. And that's true all over the nation. And so that kind of shift to kind of home versus office. I think it's a permanent shift. Maybe not quite as hard as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. But I think that's one big shift. And I think it's combined nicely with the focus on building fiber to the home for homes. The government has been pushing over $65 billion into this market. It's just at the right time because there are a lot of folks like me. I don't have fiber at my home. I wish I did. I can't work from home. I have to go to the office and I wish I could work from home. So I think those are the trends that are really impacting what we're doing. And then one says, well, how does that impact Bluebird Network? Because Bluebird Network doesn't do residential. Well, all of those companies that are building fiber to the homes, many of them are buying from Bluebird to connect themselves. Because we've got the connections into all those markets, but just not to the residences. So those kind of companies are coming to Bluebird because we're not a competitor of theirs. And so we're actually really benefiting from that. And because we have such high quality network, such high quality internet access, you take that and you push it into one of those residential developments and the customers are really happy. So that's what we're looking at. And I don't think that the money is going to slow down going into telecommunications anytime soon. Well, a lot's happening at Bluebird Network. Where can our viewers go to learn more and watch your developments? Well, it's super easy to go to the web, bluebirdnetwork.com. And on your podcasts and on your websites, right? That's right. We'll be sharing the news as well. We'll be watching and going to the website, just like Mike said. Thank you very much. Well, thanks for joining us, Mike. We appreciate you. Okay. Have a great day. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. Happy networking.