 Welcome to JSATV the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Ukutaya of JSA and here with my friend Mike Cunningham the CEO and founder of Crosslake Fiber here at ITW 2018. Mike, welcome to JSATV again. Hi, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here, Mike, in such an exciting time in the industry, so many developments and particularly for Crosslake. Last time we chatted, we were talking about that subsea connectivity between Toronto and Buffalo. What's the latest there? Well, the latest is we've begun construction just within the past few weeks and so we're very excited about that. I mean it marks a big milestone in terms of the, you know, bringing the project to fruition and so we're really excited about it. And you literally have a cable installer. Is that right? That's right. So we just announced actually earlier today that IT International Telecom is going to be the cable installer for the Lake Ontario project. And we're very excited to bring them on board. I mean this is their core business installing cables and it's a very good, I think, solution for us and we're very excited about working with them. And for sure there's a buzz in the industry. All of our collective friends together, we're all talking about Crosslake these days. Why is this cable so unique? I mean new cable developments I think are very unique anywhere and this is a very unique system because it goes through a lake but it's really a long-haul focused cable on the wholesale market as opposed to just serving local connectivity. And it's a diverse cable that provides a very physically diverse path away from the other routes that go between Toronto and Buffalo. And it is a shorter path as well so it provides a lot of additional benefit to customers on the system. And it provides dark fiber infrastructure. Is that right in an area that might not have much available? That's exactly it. I mean we're providing dark fiber which is our primary service to the market and that really allows other carriers to buy dark fiber and scale for the first time which is unique to the long-haul market in Canada. Now skipping over to the east coast, some exciting developments there as well. You have a second, so count them, one and two. Most folks have their hands filled with just one. Mike cutting him out has two going on. This is the second subsea cable system being built and it's called the WALL-E project. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? So the WALL-E system is a system that goes from Wall New Jersey to Long Island. The name kind of stuck. It wasn't planned to be used as the name. But it's very similar in terms of its design in that it is a high fiber count system where we're providing dark fiber over a physically diverse path between Long Island and New Jersey. And it's definitely designed to provide that redundant path as well as to provide additional options for trans-oceanic cables that land in either Long Island or in New Jersey for them to really glass through to other routes that they would want to get through. And there's certainly a lot of subsea development happening, particularly leading into WALL-E locations. So WALL New Jersey and JFX facility there and LI Long Island being 1025 Connect. Just between those two facilities alone, there's so many subsea cables that have pops there, huh? Absolutely. I mean the reason why we selected 1025 Connect and JFX for our two landing points is simply because we are providing dark fiber. And so we need to get to endpoints that have the critical mass of fiber connectivity in order for us to really have a large enough potential pool of customers. And those are the two endpoints that facilitate that for the WALL-E system. And so your fiber in a way could circumvent the need to send traffic through the island of Manhattan. Is that accurate? That's exactly it. I mean we're providing diversity specifically around Manhattan. We've, you know, hit a few milestones on the front end of the project, which are the permitting, the front end of the permitting, and the route design. And we've just gone out for the Marine Survey procurement right now, which is the first big milestone for any subsea project. Wonderful. Wonderful. And again, you know, the need for security and diversity, particularly in our subsea markets, can't be emphasized enough. So we're excited that bold men like you are putting up the hard fight to do this for us. Okay, one last crazy question, but we had to ask because it was such an interesting, you know, tactical question. We noticed that you are utilizing this specialized cable installation vessel. And it's just such a tactile question. Can't resist. What is so special about this vessel? I mean, cable installation vessels are specialized and designed specifically to install submarine cables, whether telecom or power. As opposed to the alternative solution, which would be a barge solution where essentially you get a tug, a barge, and you kind of put together a makeshift solution to install a cable that way. So we're very excited about having an ITS ship to go and facilitate that for us. It provides for a very good, I'll say, plan of work and ability to get things like burial of the cable in the seabed. And so we're very excited to have this solution. Very exciting. Very exciting. Okay, taking a look out to the horizon. What are the RFS states for these two projects? So the Lake Ontario project will be in service this October, October 2018. And for the Wally project between Wall and Long Island, the in-service state will be June of 2019. Wow, coming up fast. So absolutely a company to watch and a leader of the company to watch. So thank you, Mike, for also being so kind with your time and coming on to JSA TV and telling your story. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy networking.