 Welcome to JSATV and JSA Podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Candace Sipos coming to you from virtual PTC 21. Joining me today is Stephanie Rawlis, Director of Strategy Planning at NAVE Communications. Stephanie, welcome to JSATV. Yeah, thanks so much for having me excited to be here. Absolutely. We're glad to have you. For viewers who aren't familiar with NAVE communications, could you just give us a quick elevator pitch? How would you describe the company? Yeah, absolutely. I call us the one-stop shop for everything network hardware related. First and foremost, we provide multi-vendor equipment to keep your network running. I know there's a lot of other equipment vendors out there, so I think what really sets us apart is that we support end-of-life and legacy networks, as well as current equipment, and beyond just supplying equipment, we have a large staff of engineers who assist with everything from the design phase all the way through install and deployment. Excellent. Okay, great. Thank you. So I know you at NAVE, you all promote reuse and recycling, which is definitely a hot topic right now, especially among the data center community. Why should data center providers and telcos embrace this approach, in your opinion, and what's the biggest misconception on that topic? Yeah, so I think the biggest misconception on this topic is that used equipment is not worth enough to justify the effort of reselling it. When I first discussed this with a new client, I often hear that they are giving the equipment to whoever is pulling it or simply throwing it out. Whether it be to collect dust in an IT closet or recycling it, I think there's two real problems with having no formal disposition plan as an organization. One being the revenue you're missing out on. Clients who resell equipment can expect 80 to 200 percent higher returns than simply recycling. And second, if you're just allowing equipment to sit or be taken by whomever wants it, you're opening up your organization to a huge risk. And as an R2 certified recycler, we follow the strictest guidelines that ensure first and foremost, the wiping of any sensitive data, whether it be your own or your client. And we adhere to the growing list of legislators that's mandated by state and now federal governments as well. And the most important reason that anybody should make an effort in this area is to support zero-lamp cell efforts. The negative environmental impact required not only to create new equipment, but to smelt down used equipment is detrimental to our planet, frankly, and it requires resources that are already in such finite supply. Hmm. All right. And to move to another hot topic, how would you say that NAV is supporting rural broadband rollout? Yeah, I think this question actually ties nicely into the last one regarding the importance of reusing equipment. But being hardware people, if you will, I think that we see a very specific difficulty and it's only one difficulty of many, many more facets that rural carriers face. And that is the cost of the hardware required to roll out and maintain broadband access for all. It's significant. Being that rural areas have less users and customers, they simply just don't have the revenue coming in to support the cost of equipment for new deployments and expansion. Again, the equipment is a tiny part of what they face, but it's a significant piece in terms of the total funding required. This is one of the reasons I strongly encourage clients to resell their decommissioned equipment and maybe out of date for large carriers or content providers who have cutting edge equipment being installed. But I can assure you that there are rural carriers and nonprofits who are still maintaining those platforms and depend on that equipment being available through alternate sales channels. We're also proud members of several organizations that support rural broadband growth. Indutel is one, the Texas Telephone Cooperative. I'm in Dallas, so it's important to me. These cooperatives are member-owned and they band together to increase their buying power and they have a network of like-minded companies who are striving towards the same goal. So I strongly encourage people to join their local co-ops to see how they might be able to assist these companies who are sitting close to home because I think if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that internet access for all needs to be considered a basic right. Whether it's for parents who are or people who are trying to support themselves by working from home or students who are trying to get an education safely. Absolutely, definitely. I think a lot of people will agree with you on that. And we always like to have some kind of trend question at the end of the interview. So what's your biggest trend that your team is seeing when it comes to hardware infrastructure? Your space specifically. Do you do you have any predictions that you want to talk about for 2021? Yes, so for 2021, I think it's going to be more of the same really as what we've seen as a result of the COVID era of 2020 with more work from home and school from home than ever. Networks and remote hands personnel have been pushed to the max quite frankly. We've supported more unplanned deployment expansions this past year than ever before. So with companies still facing travel limitations and OEMs facing supply shortages, our network technicians have been on the road installing an increase in capacity for our clients since the pandemic hit. And I see no slowdown in 2021. All right. So where can viewers go to get more information about me? Absolutely. Our website is www.ncctell.com. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. Hope to see you next year in person. Absolutely. Definitely hoping for that. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcast. Happy networking.