 We're in the Hilton, Hawaiian village for the 42nd Pacific telecommunications conference and They really haven't started yet. It's still early in the morning. It's only 9 30 in the morning a given Monday We saw 250 people sitting in the welcoming session the plenary this morning crossed the way but there's very few people here on the main side in the in the main Hilton ballroom and We'll we'll we'll touch base with a few of the people here and see where they're from and why they're here and what they're doing and What they think of PTC? Bottom line is you know Hawaii has a fabulous opportunity here to remain connected remain relevant to global telecommunications and These people are not just People from Hawaii matter of fact very few of them are from Hawaii Mostly they're from Everywhere If you're gonna make a deal, what kind of a deal would you make at PTC? Well, I'm not here to make deals, but I'm here to actually advise people that are making deals You're a consultant, aren't you? What do you consult in? I consult on all things. I see T So everything related to telecom and technology. This is my first time. So my only comparison has been like satellite 2019 It's pretty big compared to satellite 2019. Do you agree that telecommunications has become all computers all information technology? Well for me, it's about the network my So my colleague would probably agree with that so on my tagline on my signature block It's I changed it, but it's the basically says it's all about layer one, you know, no layer one no network So no network no computing. Well, I'm not here to make deals. I'm here to make partnerships. That's something totally different Yes, partnership is the best kind of deal, isn't it? Well, that's a business. We're in we are making partnerships all over the planet Yeah, because you tell Donald Trump this please I Can do that. Can you give me a session with him? I'll see what I can do. I'll make a call So what is your purpose in being here? To learn to learn about what's going on submarine cable systems and satellite systems and to learn for my colleagues I hate to ask you this question, but which is better? Submarine cable systems or satellite systems? Yeah, 50 50 I'll be I'll be the diplomat. Okay, you're gonna say we need to diversify We need we need to have everything in the portfolio, right? I'm going to say that they're not mutually exclusive. They're they're Supplementing each other. The other was it was a very press related question trying to put an angle on it But you can't do that. You can't do one without the other We're just having our first meeting of the day internal meeting trying to get things ready See who we're gonna meet who's gonna do what and catching up on what we did yesterday Okay, what are your aspirations? You want to make a big deal with some multinational? What? Yeah, we would love to but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be like a marriage that you turn up and you have a Speeddating and they tend to hand over contracts like that So we're happy to take it slow meet the right contacts and then see where it goes from there I feel like a football player who's been given coaching here. It's one of the top places to go for Making the right connections within our industry. You sound like a football player Okay, well, thank you channel. Where are you from anyway? I'm from Liverpool England And you guess I'm not from a Liverpool England. No, I know these days. No, I don't make that guess. I'm sorry. No Singapore. Yeah, Singapore. Do you think that Andrew Yang should win for president in the United States? Yes, the question is a very good candidate and we wish him all the best When people want to get too hard to get to places we figure out how to get them there either through Designing and developing an undersea cable system or through high-speed satellite using low-earth orbit medium-earth orbit satellite so our job is to develop solutions for people who want to get to what I call hard to get to places like someplace the Aleutian Islands or Wake Island or as we have in the past quadrillion or Pona pay Palau places like that, so We develop solutions working very closely with Clients who want to develop the project and then working with the local government agencies on Identifying what needs to be done to satisfy Regulation for them, but we do this in the Pacific we do it in the Caribbean and we do it in the Atlantic How are your global solutions being affected by the effects of climate change? It's of concern particularly to the Pacific Islanders Majuro quadrillion Pona pay and The smaller islands in the Western Pacific. They're very they're they're very concerned about it and and communications is key for Addressing what the situation might be so in that regard there's a sense of a greater sense of urgency With rising tides, but this is also occurring in other places in the Caribbean as well where there is concern so We think about that a lot of deals how many deals exactly more than 10 Less than 20 Probably yes, yes, which side you come from in in these conversations. What are you proposing? What are you offering? International voice and SMS transit This is where you from from Russia But I work for United States company. It's our first time visiting here We're very interested in telecommunications, especially with the submarine cables and data centers We're one of the Mitsubishi members. Oh, does it say? Oh, yeah, I'm a FG So we want to do financing But we need to learn more. So that's why we're here. So what do you think about? Carlos Gone Actually, everybody say he looks like me appearance Forget about what he did. I don't want to think about it means that we'll further. Okay. Why don't we see you later? Okay, how about much later? How about next year? Okay Why are we here? Well, who wouldn't want to be in Honolulu at this time of the year? I'm here From China Because this is where my customers come. This is where my competitors come Fantastic networking opportunities and to catch up with with old friends Yeah, I'm out. I'd say they're right. No because he's Japanese But you were close Ohio because I must So why are you here? Okay? This is the beginning of the year where we find the developments about the submarine cable industry and you know, I'm from Japan that represent KDDI and I think this is an Important things and it's important be here. Yeah. Yeah, you know of any other conference like this one No, I hear like Mobile World Congress, but you know, it's not a area of telecommunication business So I don't engage but interest to see how, you know, they run. Yeah, I think you'll be Interesting to see different things. Are you making a deal this morning? You have you have authority for example in your back pocket where you want to buy or sell something You know for a specific amount and can you tell us what that amount is? So I don't have the authority I have to ask his permission Because he's the boss Okay Wait say that again he wants me to get that on the record You say he's the brains of the outfit he's the commercial director of SPSS of Sino-British submarine systems Yeah, so we work we work together in basic Shanghai and Absolutely. He is the he's got the smarts. I have the looks as you can clearly see Yes, you do looks for radio. Yeah So tell me about the role of women in telecommunications in global telecommunications I think the role of women have been growing in telecommunications In fact, I also go to PTC as well as Nanog and ITW and we've seen the growth Happen at each of the events that we've been to So what about your technology? What's this? Oh, Hawaii's premier data center the fortress the DR fortress. I Remember you yeah way back when you were called something else Equinex as well as Piana Pacific What is that so everybody will know okay, so basically we provide customers with space and power for their sensitive equipment Yes Absolute with walls is two feet thick and concrete. Yeah, that's right Making a smoothies and uses for PTC participants. You were here last year, too. Weren't you I remember you I have Oh, I have footage of you. Yeah, and you are you better this year? Good great. Yeah, you have a store or something. We have that word Avenue. It's called now Before it's me going to just now is Honolulu bistro inside of Hanahali Marketplace How do you say hello in Korean? I'm young on your cocktail Okay Can we what are these things passive WDM which stands for wavelength division multiplexing there is four different wavelengths is japan x japan and japan 2 and 5g mobile a product Combined for wavelength is all together into this single strand of fiber piece. What does piece do? It's a submarine optic network It's the private cable network. It's will prop provide the Telecommunication from Europe to Pakistan also Europe to France Europe to Africa. So this route will Will feed the demand of the telecommunication Requirement from for local people for the hand-freak people and the force for Asia this will How say accelerate the the people Communication well the Internet Society is a nonprofit We've been around for about 27 years and we do all sorts of work in policy and development and in technology and We are here primarily today or this week talking about manners, which is mutually agreed norms for routing security And so what we're doing is we're trying to convince every telco Everyone who runs a network to do four simple things to improve their routing security So it's things like filtering and anti spoofing and global coordination And and route validation to make sure that you're doing the right thing for your network and for the entire internet What about net neutrality? Do you what is your general position on that you like it or not? We like it Okay Or oh and you you're the first one I've seen the swag You have the swag you're loaded with swag. Why oh, I see some swag. I like well, please help yourself Understand that you guys are in the process of acquiring Cooking oil company Cooking oil come. Oh, that's Crisco. Sorry What do you do at Cisco We're a partner of Cisco, but we're actually Hawaiian Telcom and CBTS part of Cincinnati Bell Why didn't I know that I think you did know that I think you're baiting me, but that's okay Let me go and bait the other guy now. I'm working with the security team So we're expending out our advanced services for security security. Yes. Somebody called security on us already Yes, we do we do physical security we could escort So security is so important, you know, I mean the world is Collapsing into fraud. I'm sorry to say that Including in some very important national capitals that we know of the big big discussion tomorrow as a matter of fact But you know, what about keeping up with the fraudsters? What about actually getting ahead of the game? Is that possible or is it is it always? You know trying to chase them from behind Unfortunately, I think we're chasing them from behind But there are some methods that we're working on to kind of try to stay ahead Could you identify those? Speak deeply into the microphone speak deeply into the microphone I don't think I could do it at this point But yeah, if you want to talk about it and in a close forum we could do that I want you to know going going forward that I prefer cable over satellite Yeah, and I know that Hawaiian Telcom does too. Am I right? Am I right? Yes. Tell us about it Well, we've invested as you know in subsea fiber that runs from Southeast Asia to the Philippines to Guam Here in Hawaii and then over to the mainland and then we have alternate routes as well and we've been Invested over the years in providing Fiber-based connectivity not just here in Hawaii, but all throughout the Pacific Rim and we're still Dedicated to that and that's an important part of what we're doing here We have a lot of meetings with other carriers in different groups that are interested in making use of that Plus we're also announcing our new relationship with CBTS And that is offering a lot of these other services that you see to our enterprise customers here And across the mainland and North America and they do some things in the UK as well Wow, Hawaiian Telcom has really really changed. It's really come up to high technology. That's what well You know, we've always been in that industry For years under different names and we're excited about our current situation with Cincinnati and CBTS And we're very excited for what the future will bring for all of us. Tell me about the new cable What's the status and if you don't mind can you give me the street address where the landing is? No, I can't But now we've been in operation now for a few years on the CUS CUS cable. We also Participate in several others that you're probably familiar with It's going quite well we carry a lot of traffic and We're continuing to make opportunities and deals with carriers and businesses alike. So this means I get I Hope I'm right about this. I get faster Broadband and cheaper. That's what's coming right? Absolutely particularly for people here in Hawaii where we serve That was one of the first advantages that we were able to do Increase bandwidth Absolutely to our customer base and then lower our cost so that we can pass that on to our customers as well But a lot of what the subsea cable does is enable other carriers and other providers as well So we sell high speed bandwidth down and now we're able based on the success We've had to offer lower speed by that I mean gigabit speeds and things under 10 gig 100 gig and things like that that's exciting I feel my heart is beating a little faster now Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. You agree with all of that, right? Absolutely Yes, sir, absolutely, I agree Okay, see you on Bishop Street. I'm also with the internet society So we're here to meet with organizations that are currently working in the internet community And how they can help support some of the initiatives of our organization and we focus on programs and initiatives that keep the internet Safe secure and accessible Do you have good manners? I have excellent manners. Yes. Are you also with the internet society with internet, New Zealand? So we run dot and Zed with the in the domain name industry, which is not a lot of people here but we also work on global internet issues and I'm here to speak about the Christchurch call initiative that's actually happened and them and sort of talk to the people who help building The infrastructure of the internet about that kind of human side of the internet and sort of building an internet for good for everybody You sound American to me. I am I originally but I'm also a Kiwi This is a good thing in our time There are a lot of people want to become Kiwis, but they can't do it. Yeah, that's right I've been a citizen for 20 years actually in May, but I've got dual citizenship. So I could talk to you privately about this There are a lot of people that would I could set up a booth probably Have you heard of Cooching? No, have you heard of Sarawak? No Have you heard of East Malaysia? Yes. Oh, right good. Good. Okay. So I don't know if you can see the map over there But there's an island there called Borneo and so we're from East Malaysia Cooching is Just you see it on there on the map. So that's our headquarters. We're from Pipitel But we're also here with the Sarawak multimedia agency authority, I should say who are the regulator in Sarawak and we're going to Be supporting them in building the the digital economy in East Malaysia so we're building a tier four data center in in Cooching and we're building a cable which takes us from Cooching down to Batam so it joins us with the Indonesian market We're also building cables It's part of a consortium up to Hong Kong. Why are you connecting all these places? So Sarawak itself is quite a small market. So we're going to be an edge for the China and the Indonesian markets and we're going to take our cut in the middle So we're we're here to promote promote our proposition and get people interested So what what effect does this have on the economies of these places on the technology in these places? On their geopolitical positioning Is this a good thing for people to be connected in that area? Well for us it kind of puts us on the map because the moment it as you Illustrated not many people know where we are and and also currently IP transit prices are very high broadband prices are high and we want to Become more of a community the IP transit community Bringing the prices down by building more cables and providing in a large amount of data center space next to our cable landing station which will Make us easily connected up both north south and in our domestic market We're we're partnering with Excel Exiata, which is a large operator in Indonesia So that will connect us very much more into their market and provide an alternative route for them because Kalimantan is part of Borneo as is and Sulawesi is next door So coming through Kuching. They have a much faster route Lower late. Where are you from? I'm from the UK. I But I've been supporting PbTel for a couple of years. You're an engineer. I'm an engineer by You know, he's tell you can tell the engineers have a certain Jonas a quai. All right. Yeah Yeah, you see we want to tap into this Indonesia market because now Indonesia Rely on Singapore 95% So they do not have an alternate route out for their Austrian traffic So that is the reason Because this is a worldwide event Everyone is here. So it's easy for us to make our networking as well What is Stulse? So we're a cooling infrastructure company. We Manufacturing supply computer room data center colocation hyperscale cooling infrastructure That's it. That's what we do. That's our core business We enjoy, you know global customers. Many of those customers are here over the last four days and They are market leaders in themselves in this region and we're very proud to be soul supplier to these facilities locally as well as in the Asia Pacific and region We have now been operating in as an Oceania team for 20 years But as a company on a global level since 1947. So we have 130 partners worldwide We have live in factories and we have 21 subsidiaries. So we're very proud of our history we've demonstrated to the market our resilience our energy efficient efficiency and That has certainly secured the company for a long time So we're really proud of that and on the stand today We have myself as managing director of the Stulse Oceania region The gentleman to my left is the responsible for our New Zealand and Fiji in Cook Orleans and the guy That's just son of runner. He's a local Australian national sales manager. So this is our first I guess participation at the forum. We're really pleased to be a part of it We've certainly learned a lot and met some interesting people Interesting sessions and we hope to be back next year as John said, we're really pleased and proud to be here And so far we've we've made some great connections and we're looking forward to making some more Have you been? Have you been? Surfing because the surf is 12 to 14 today Look, I went to the North Shore the other day. It was 15 foot. I was looking for 40 foot No, I didn't get my board out I look it's been very devastating for for for Australia You know with cover to a vast area of land It's been predicted that we've we lost 15 of 5 million hectares worth of land You know half a billion to a billion worth of wildlife and animals all together You know, do we put that down to climate change? Do we put that down to something else? I can't really answer Suffice to say that it's been very devastating A lot of misplaced people You know, we've we've been living now in in haze For four months in drought for well over 12 months and and while we're speaking today We've had well the last three days while we've been here We've had quite the opposite. We've had damaging storms and and winds and and how storms and flooding It's not arbitration mediation just mediation mediating what? call records in Telecom buildings this this we do a billing software for telecom companies So mediation is taking the call records off the switch converting it to a billable record and plugging it in the system Where do you have to be to deploy your technology? You just have to be on the internet Essentially, we have a data center in the US and you connect via the internet to our system And we run your billing we take care of disaster recovery for you And then we fulfill the billing by sending out either paper copies of the bills or electronic copies of the bills to customers so it's about billing and You have you have to have this center in the United States the service United States clients So can you be elsewhere you can be elsewhere and we also sell licenses as well So you can actually have all the software on site as well wherever your home country is what I found interesting in your your remark is that You can rebuild it in case it it's destroyed damaged held for ransom what have you huh exactly you can We with the disaster recovery scenario we have everything backed up So if something would happen and you have a crash we can get the information back in so you can rebuild it I'm here to to meet some maybe some new clients some new partners, and I'm in a very Specific field not common wholesale or common telecommunication services I'm only an international premium rate services, and I'm looking for let's say for some specific Carriers, they are not many and around and I have to meet things Which new one which new clip possible clients? Where are you from? I'm from Switzerland partners. It's meaning A company which are a which are willing and able to work with us Mostly carriers with their own number ranges. What's the nature of a telecom partnership in that context? What would you do? What would they do? They give us numbers, and then the business model. It's sharing. It's based on sharing of Termination rate so Richard serve pack you're right here You know in this global conference You're gonna rule the world. Tell me how you gonna do that. Yeah, so So, you know we we had a routine Hawaii we started here 2004 we have been really growing so our latest endeavor is Building a data center in Hawaii, you know in last 20 years there is no major data center development So we bought the land we bought the building we're doing the you know doing the development It's it is the largest data center in Hawaii 30,000 square feet not only data center, but also disaster recovery, you know, if you look at the map This is our fiber Connectivity map and you can easily tell most of the businesses in Hawaii is South China map. Yeah, the data center is here Okay, right. So this is the safest location because if tsunami hurricane, whatever major event happening on Sauture a while who is gonna affect 90% of the businesses, but we are here safe You know, if some people needed disaster recovery space, they can go there, you know shower cafeteria everything Full service I just wanted to just highlight how much of a difference this would be and how much of an impact this is really gonna affect the local businesses and really just allowing them to even look beyond Hawaii or even giving an opportunity for You know connectivity for International businesses to even look at Hawaii as since we're so located Strategically in the middle of the world or the ocean. Yeah, it gives more opportunity for the local businesses that are here in Hawaii I'm speaking at the conference On the topic of text messaging over toll-free phone numbers But what text messaging, you know, everybody telling me I have to learn to do that and little by little I'm learning But there's a resistance because I like email. I'm old-fashioned. Yeah, why should I care about text message? Well You might not but businesses that want their consumers to listen to what they're saying like text messaging because less than 20% of people check and open an email Whereas 90% or more open a text message within three minutes of receiving it Makes a difference for businesses So things like fraud alerts on your credit card or reminders of your doctor's appointment coming up critical things for folks You know wanting a good communication mechanism and the fact that it can work on a Historical telecom platform like a toll-free number that's you know been around for decades People like it future text messaging is rich Every landline phone number for a business and toll-free number in North America is going to have text enabled on it so that When a customer sends a text response, they're going to be able to see it and react to it Only about 5% do it today. So a lot of room for growth. Did you say landline? I thought you said landline How do you do that? We have Connections to all the mobile operators in North America. We've set up a cloud infrastructure that basically Takes what the carriers have been doing on a person-to-person basis for years and Replicates that for businesses. So it looks exactly the same to a consumer It's just that what they're talking to is Bank of America or Chase or their local doctor's office It's the way of the future