Competitive local exchange carrier

And we like to think we're pitching an entire tent.

Anyone that's in broadband, you know, whether you are a municipality, whether you're a WISP, whether you're an electric cooperative, a CLEC, an ILEC.

Mm-hmm.

You know, uh, you know, cable operator, it doesn't matter.

No, well, I, I did have a lot of, uh, uh, experience on the, being in the front lines, uh, back in the '90s because I was doing M&A and corporate finance in the telecom and tech arena, and I, I, uh, uh, you know, what, a lot of what Jeff, uh, was mentioning really resonated with me.

I, I think one way to think about it, uh, some of the key differences is that, you know, think about the sort of sources and uses of this massive, uh, AI, uh, build-out, uh, and then compare that to what we were seeing in the, in the late 1990s with, with massive, you know, internet, cell phone, um- Uh, fiber, CLEC, international fiber, um, you know, that giant fixed asset boom.

So, you know, in some ways you can, you could, you could argue that the uses, okay, let's, let's go, you know, uh, build, um, a whole bunch of stuff and hope they come, right? That was-- that's sort of the promise that all of the AI spend will g- will generate, um, fantastic long-term returns, and that was the same views that Global Crossings articulated in 1999 and so forth.

Um, and obviously there's a lot of risk associated, uh, perspectively with how that, uh, AI spend really works.

And we are living in historic times right now, I think, with AI.

Yeah, I lived the deregulation of the telecom business, both, uh, in one of the baby Bells and then as a CLEC later.

Yeah.

Interesting to be on both sides of it, kinda like you, you have.

So I joined Lightspeed in the summer of 2022.

Um, prior to that had stints at some larger, um, you know, CLECs and ILECs and RBOCs, if people know those legacy terms.

Um, you know, AT&T and Windstream and CenturyLink.

So, um, you know, it was a great opportunity to help with the growing organization.