Current challenges of fiber network deployment in the APAC region.

Hi, everyone. We are here from FiberConnect APAC conference here in Manila 2024. So, I have been joined by today Mr. Christian M. Wirth, who is the Senior Vice President at IQGeo and managing the Asia-Pacific operation. So, hi, Christian. How are you doing? I'm doing wonderful. Thanks for having me. Okay, great. So, we're just going to have some questions about how your business is doing. So, basically, could you share some of the challenges basically the industry is facing to ramp up the fiber deployments, fiber penetration or deployments in the region? Of course, happy to do so. let me highlight on two aspects. First of all, I see a bigger challenge from design to build. There's always some gap. And this is where we can help companies to overcome this gap with more transparency, with more digitization that they can speed up and working on the data quality. You know, getting data out from the field guys. Back to the office automatically, this is one of the challenges. And maybe a second aspect is, you know, connecting with the field crews in general. You know, assigning tasks to the guys and even to the contractors. There's a lot of telcos working with contractors and it would be great to connect them as well to the same kind of platform. Okay. Nice to hear that. So, how is IQGeo solution helping the operators? They're actually mitigating those like build better networks and other stuff. Yeah, it's a good question because it's always matters, you know, to have, I would call it the right level of orchestration from the geospatial network, so to speak. You know, you work with so many different people, so many different companies and that needs to be orchestrated. You know, you should work on transparency. And efficiency. And this is something where we really can help us. Okay. That's good to hear that. And IQGeo in today's presentation talks about end-to-end fiber management. So, could you share more inputs on what actually all do those things do, basically? Oh, of course. You know, when I talk about end-to-end, I mean it starts or it's based on four pillars, so to speak. It's the design aspect. It's very important to have a proper design and a lot of companies, especially here in the Philippines, struggling with automated design. This is a critical aspect. Then, obviously, the build process as a second pillar, which is important because you burn a lot of money while building. Right, right. And this is what you want to avoid. And that means also, again, more transparency, more digitization is a big really, really helpful. Third aspect is obviously monetization because that is very important. Why you built the networks. Exactly. You want to monetize the network. And this is something, you know, you should definitely focus on as a third pillar. And then the fourth pillar basically is operating the network, maintaining the network, and giving access to all the people to the relevant data. Right. I think it's kind of a big asset, all the data, but you should have access to them. Right, right, right. Okay, yeah. So, four pillars, it's really interesting. So, okay. So, the next question I'd ask, like, it is always challenging to migrate the customer data. You probably face always. So, how you are basically working to help customers with data migration and integration? Yeah. I would consider this as one of the bigger challenges globally, actually, migrating data. And also working on data quality, actually. And what we are doing, well, first of all, we have a lot of experience with migrating data. It's not only us, it's also our partners. We are working together on these kind of projects. But what we are also doing is we have created some software tools to make the process faster, you know, while, you know, integrating the data into the new network. Because garbage is always garbage out. Yeah. You have to be careful. And there are some tools available to make the process, especially focusing on data quality, a bit more smooth. Okay. Good to hear that. And how do you typically deploy the cloud or on PREM? I would consider, especially the cloud stuff, is more and more a trend, you see. Yeah. But what we have done, we have our entire solution is cloud-based. Okay. So, we can host for you. That is really a big differentiator in terms of speed. When some business departments facing a problem, they can use our predefined things out of the cloud, one aspect. Or, you know, especially the bigger telcos, they still like to have it on PREM. And they can use the same kind of technology. I think this is another advantage. Okay. But it needs to be cloud-based. Or at least cloud-ready. And we offer even some native SaaS solutions to overcome these challenges. Okay. So, yeah, great learning for me, personally, basically. And it was very nice seeing your presentation. So, really, thanks to you for today's interview session. Thanks a lot for being here at the FiberConnect APEC conference this year. Thank you. Thank you very much as well. Really a pleasure being here. And also, it's always great to connect with customers on a face-to-face basis. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.