 Welcome to JSA TV, the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals. I'm Jamie Scott-Ukutaya of JSA. And joining me here in beautiful Honolulu, PTC 2018, my friend Isabel Paradis, the president of Hot Telecom. Isabel, welcome. Thank you, Jamie. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been wanting to meet you for a long time, so I'm very excited today to be with you. Oh, we're excited to have you, and it means so much for us to have you here. Very rare, sadly, that I get to interview accomplished women in the industry like yourself, so especially poignant today and this year. So tell us the story. What is Hot Telecom? Well, Hot Telecom, in my point of view, is one of the most disruptive and creative telecom consulting and market research from in the industry. We're focusing mainly on international and wholesale. So we've been in the business for 15 years, we have 15 years this year, so time flies when you're having fun. Congratulations, 15 years has happened. Yes, it is, and still alive and kicking. So I think just for that, it's an achievement. And we do consulting and market research work with all the big wholesalers around the world. So people that work with me have 20, 30, even 40 years of experience working in the industry. So our business is more like a real, real life type of consulting. And with 15 years expertise, what are the big trends that you're seeing? Well, I think you can't hide the fact that voice is decreasing at a quickening pace. So when we talk to our customers, some of them see the voice traffic going down by as much as 25% and revenues, obviously, margins are being squeezed. So that's one trend. And as a result from that, I've heard from the wholesalers again that they're seeing more and more wholesale fraud traffic. So traffic has been created for fake voice traffic to increase the revenues. So some of them are saying as much as 30% to 40% of the wholesale voice would be fake traffic. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I'm hearing. Well, you've heard of fake news, now you have fake traffic. So also we're seeing what I think connectivity is becoming sexy again. Connectivity was a bad word for a while or seen as a bad or a negative thing. I'm not negative, but a boring business. I don't agree at all. I think connectivity will become the core of our society and there's a lot of opportunity there. The thing is, however, the OTTs are starting to go into that business as well to disrupt. So watch this space. I don't know what's going to happen in there, but I think something will happen soon. And also there's more and more activity around some buzzwords such as IoT, obviously, AI and blockchain. And with the last wholesalers, what are going to be their keys to success in order for them to move forward in this new landscape? Yes, there's multiple things they need to do. But from my point of view, there's four key mantras to success in wholesale going forward. One is personalization. So they have to tailor their services to the end user more and more. They have to give control to their customers. So creating self-build, tailored type of platforms or solutions so that their customers can define their own services. Security, so everything is wrapped up and secure and transparent. And finally enabling the connected fabric. So connectivity is like the AI we breed. We expect our services anywhere at any time. So that's a key to success for wholesalers to enable that. I love those and I very much agree. And what will Hot Telecom, your company, be focusing on this year? Well, we'll continue to help our customer launch disruptive marketing campaigns. So we're doing more art shots, articles, interviews, white papers, so continue what we're already doing, but more of it. We're gonna help them innovate. So we're gonna dig deeper into subjects, AI and blockchain. I think these are two big disruptors. There's lots of opportunities there. And wholesalers maybe, I think are at the point where they're wondering what to do with it. Can they do anything with it to transform their business? So we're gonna do workshops around blockchain, write articles again so that they can start to understand what they can do with that. We're gonna work more and more with startups. And that's very exciting, I think. And last but not least, I'm part of the Young Entrepreneurs Task Force from the UN. And I'm one of the women ambassador. So one of my roles is to encourage women in technology and telecom, part of that. So I'll do more interviews like that with inspiring women, panels with women, and just encouraging women in general to join the telecom world. And we love that. This all sings to what we're all about here at JSA. And with that, can you offer any words of advice for women starting out in the tech and telecom space? Yes, well, I think women in general in business, but I think in telecom, because it's such a men, male-oriented world, believe in yourself, don't doubt yourself, and don't be afraid to fail. Because if you're not afraid to fail, you will push yourself. You'll do things that you don't think you can do, and that's when you're gonna achieve great things. And finally, don't be afraid to be a woman. Don't be afraid to embrace your femininity, even if you're in a male's world. I think there's nothing more inspiring than a woman, a witty woman, a strong woman with guts. And yeah, just be happy to be a woman and have fun. And you're certainly a great example of that. Thank you so much for joining us, Isabelle. It's been such a pleasure. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV.