 Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Nolan coming to you from ITW 2021. Joining me today is Jeremy Villobos, the Chief Operating Officer at Gold Connect. Jeremy, welcome back to JSA TV. Thank you, Laura. Very nice to be with you again. Gold Connect has had a busy start to 2021, including the release of a new state-of-the-art customer engagement platform for its customers. But first, Jeremy, for our viewers who may not know, could you tell us more about Gold Connect? Of course, so we're a Latin American carrier. Our bread and butter is the wholesale business. We support global carriers from all around the world and basically we enable them in Latin America. We're a customer-centric organization and basically everything we do is for the best of our customers to enable them and make them more efficient in the region. Jeremy, this year, as we mentioned, Gold Connect launched a new platform, Latam Connect, which is specific to the Latam region. So tell us about what this platform offers your customers. Yes, we are extremely excited with the platform. This is our in-house development that we did two years in the making. So finally, we were excited to launch it this year and it basically enables our customer to have everything they need to be successful with Latin America. Latin America is known for being a very difficult region where you have so many different countries with different problems. So we wanted to create a platform that basically embrace every single country, every technical matter of any requirements that they may have in the region. So basically they're able to do feasibility analysis, get firm pricing, more than 40 million on-net buildings across the region from Mexico all the way down to Chile and Argentina, including the Caribbean islands. But not only that, it's not just a pricing tool. It has a delivery model so customers can track every step of the way through the installation from site surveys, CPE installation, shipping of any equipment, everything. No more weekly updates. Now the customer, they have full visibility of the project manager timeline. So they have all the information they need so they can translate it to the end customer. Also, there is a monitoring model. So basically customers want the services installed, they are able to track all the performance of the service, the packet loss, and let them see if the service is up or down. Basically we're empowering the customer to have everything they need. They can open trouble tickets directly through the platform. Depending on where they are in the platform, they can chat, if they're doing a quote, they can chat in real time with sales. If they're in the delivery stage, they can track with the service delivery manager and same thing with the knock on the ticketing model. So the good thing is that the platform is interconnected to our models. So every time someone types on the chat feature, our people will receive the message on the cell phone. So the idea is for us to reply right away to them. So it is an end-to-end customer engagement. We're extremely excited and so far, we're getting very positive feedback. Wow, what a huge asset for your customers. Wonderful, thanks for breaking it down for us and telling us about that new platform. But if you could, tell us what sets Laten Connect apart from any other similar platforms that might be out there. Yeah, definitely. So I think the fact that we can do feasibility analysis in more than 40 million on-net locations, the platform doesn't discriminate any network. That means that it scans our network that we have in more than five countries in the region, but it also analyzed more than 87 other carriers in the region. So we don't discriminate if we wanna sell using our network or a third-party provider. We wanna resolve an issue for the customer and we wanna enable them in whatever the location that they're looking for. So we created an algorithm that basically analyzed the coordinates from the customer location to the nearest fiber optic. So it not only tells the customer that that particular location is on net, but also it analyzed the proximity to the fiber optic. So it automatically calculates any external planned works to get the fiber optic closer. And I think that's definitely something that is not in the Latin American region. A lot of platforms out there, they focus only on their assets, but all the time it's budgetary pricing. It's subject to feasibility, it's subject to commercial approval, it's subject to something else. So we wanted to go the extra mile and enable a powerful algorithm that basically puts the customer one step closer to closing that business. Very exciting. Jeremy, I know that Gold Connect also announced that your Latem Connect accepts cryptocurrency payments with BitPay, which is the world's largest provider of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency payment services if you didn't know. So what led you to offer this as a payment option? Yeah, well, we saw the news with El Salvador. El Salvador was embracing cryptocurrency, has a form of payment. El Salvador is in Central America, we're pretty big in Central America. It actually happened at the same time that we were talking to BitPay, so it was more like an extra move to keep on working on that direction. I think it is important to keep the mind open to things, new tendencies, new improvement on the way of doing business. So, we wanted to add that additional payment methods for our clients. It doesn't matter where they are, we wanna cover every corner of the business. So, I think it's just a matter of time for other carriers to embrace this, because if you operate in El Salvador, for example, you eventually, sooner rather than later, you will have to accept cryptocurrency. So, I expect other carriers to embrace this move that we were proud to be the first ones. There are lots of headlines with Rotem Connect, another one at ITW, the announcement of another new feature on the platform, very exciting. Tell us more about the new real-time monitoring service. I think you alluded to it a little bit earlier, but if you could dig deeper into that real-time monitoring. So, many carriers, they provide monitoring of the services, but normally it's requested by the customer, some work needs to be done. So, we wanted to offer that to every single customer, no matter who they are, how big or small they are, they go into our platform and they're basically interconnected to our monitoring system. So, they can see in real-time the performing of their services. Many carriers have tried to embed it into a platform like we did and they haven't been able. So, we're exciting for all the developers that we have in the back working on this because they're coming through with everything that we want to do. The point that I want to make is that LaTam Connect is going to continue growing. You know, this is just four models right now, the quoting, delivery, ticketing and monitoring. We're expecting to continue adding more models because we want to make it a powerful platform. If we want to be the new way of wholesale connectivity, we definitely need to raise the bar and the whole idea is to empower the customers 100% from point A to point C in everything that they need. So, anything that it will come to our mind that the customers need, our goal will be to add it to the platform. So, for the customers to have access to the monitoring of the service, I think it's amazing. You know, it removes a lot of things from in between, you know, contacting the knock. You know, many times they may see something on their end but the fact that they can double check through the platform is just amazing. So, our goal is to continue adding more models and make it a massive, very robust platform. Jeremy, you were talking about those customers and I know that you mentioned a little earlier that there was great positive feedback. Can you dig a little deeper into what the customer response has been to LaTam Connect? Yeah, I think the fact that we do firm prices through the platform was definitely one of the biggest reaction. Also, the fact that many times they chat with us, they ask for diversity through the platform and customers were getting response like with the minutes. You know, there were incredible, you know, there was super surprise, you know, how fast we were replying and updating the platform because on our end, we can work on the same project the customer is working and they just get an update. They get an email notification that the project has been updated. They go into the platform in a matter of minutes. They had a quote for diversity or more technical requirements that they were asking. So, it's just a matter of giving the clients the support they need. You know, Latin America is known for customers waiting weeks for quotes. You know, if they need additional technical requirements it's month that they need to wait. Now we're talking about minutes. We're talking about maybe hours and that's putting our customers in the driver position. So, now they have full control. Now they feel more confident getting in front of their customers to address the projects and, you know, we're extremely happy. You know, customers are super happy. I think there is a learning curve, you know, because this is something new in the region. They're used to, you know, the email interaction but I think little by little they're gonna start embracing each model depending on the different groups on the organizations. But I think it's amazing. You know, I'm extremely excited. I'm happy and I'm looking forward for the new models, you know. It is a game changer for customers in Latin America for sure. Thank you for sharing with us, Jeremy. Where can our viewers learn more about Littem Connect and Gold Connect? Yeah, definitely our website. We build a great website when we launch Gold Connect, the new brand. There is a section for Littem Connect to learn about the features and also on LinkedIn, follow us on Gold Connect and we always posting new features on the platform and everything going on. So... Well, thank you for joining us. So great to see you. Always great to chat with you, Jeremy. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. Take care. And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. Happy networking.