 Welcome to JSA TV, where we're covering the latest stories, trends, and innovations from leaders in global connectivity, digital infrastructure, and the networks within. I'm Allison Whelan, coming to you live from Metro Connect USA 2024 in beautiful Fort Lauderdale. And today I am joined by Karen Miller and Jeff Sobatka of Vivacity Infrastructure Group, which develops, designs, and deploys comprehensive, fiber optic, wireless, and related network infrastructure. Jeff, Karen, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Of course. So, Jeff, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Vivacity? So my background is in telecommunications extending back 30 years. I started with what was known as, well, it's not Lumen anymore, but now it's Lumen, working for AT&T, T-Mobile, and XO communications. So a very different group of companies within that industry. In 2019, I had the opportunity to become the state broadband director for the state of Arizona when I was appointed. I did that through the end of 2022, which was fun and interesting in its own right. And then for the last year, I've been working with Vivacity. What I love about Vivacity, as you mentioned earlier, is that we do design, build, operate, maintain, and commercialize networks all around the country. Awesome. Thank you so much for introducing yourself. And Karen, congratulations on your recent transition to director of commercialization at Vivacity. Can you tell us a little bit about your new role? Thank you. My role, at Vivacity, we represent a lot of government and utility organizations. And many of those companies have built out lots of dark fiber and conduit assets that facilitate broadband service. And my role here is going to be to help commercialize those assets. Well, congratulations. Thank you again for joining us. So network infrastructure growth is occurring nationwide, especially with initiatives like NTIA Middle Mile Program and Bede. How is EX Technology and Vivacity Company fueling the breakdown of those broadband barriers? So we're active all around the country. One of our current projects is in Grafton County, New Hampshire, where we're building a middle mile network to connect the various communities within Grafton County. Grafton County won one of 11 NTIA middle mile grants, which is very exciting for the community. And for that region of the country. We're also excited about Bede because Bede offers us the opportunity to partner with states and counties and cities, but with ISPs as well to deliver service to end users within those communities. Looking forward, I think one of the interesting trends within the industry is the ability of states through the Department of Transportation to partner with their broadband office. State of Utah sort of pioneered that. State of Arizona and State of Kansas have started to work on that. Not only building new asset, but unlocking the value as Karen had mentioned in existing fire burning existing assets. This is this way the taxpayer gets more for their buck because things that are sitting dormant all of a sudden become monetized and provide valuable services to the citizens in those communities. That's great. That's wonderful for those communities and great that these initiatives are available. Is there anything else on the horizon? We have so much stuff on the horizon. We, like Jeff mentioned earlier, we service multiple markets across the country. But the majority of what I would call the contiguous assets are in the Southwest. So for example, Arizona Department of Transportation has several large projects tied up across Arizona. Along all of what I would consider to be the main or main interstate routes throughout the state. So I 17 was recently completed by a dot. It connects Phoenix to Flagstaff. Another one of our clients APS is going to deliver a route between Phoenix and Payson, which is the northeastern part of the state. And then we also are, or I'm sorry, a dot is working between Tucson and Nogales to create infrastructure on that route as well. So lots of lots of good activity, bringing much needed broadband and services to areas that have really never seen this type of infrastructure, at least as long as I've lived in Arizona. We're very much like Switzerland tying all these different networks together. As you mentioned, you know, you have state assets, but you also have the two large electric utilities in Arizona that we manage. Anytime you can interconnect networks, it makes all the networks more valuable for everybody in terms of redundancy and other things. So we're super excited about this opportunity to work not just within Arizona, but around the country. We do a lot of work in the Upper Midwest. We're doing the Atlanta Beltline in Atlanta, Georgia, the Indiana toll road in the Upper Midwest. And making it work for the actual users is the exciting thing for me. And our company does an excellent job of working not just with the government entities, but working with the private sector as well to pull these solutions together. Yeah, I love that, making it work, making it work for the communities, making it work for the different parts of our organization and our industry, of course. But thank you so much, Jeff and Karen. It was great getting to chat with you today and thank you for joining us on JSA TV and thank you viewers for tuning in live from Metro Connect USA 2024. See you soon. Thank you.