How AI agents are reshaping network planning at IQGeo. 

All right, Welcome back everyone to another Executive Interview right here at FNTV. I'm Alejandro Pinedo and today I'm very happy to be speaking to George Hughes, Head of Value Consulting at IQGeo. George, great to have you with us on FNTV. Nice to be here. Thank you. Great and exciting times. You've just made an exciting announcement. I don't want to say too much to let you tell us all about it. But why is this significant? And tell us what it's all about. Coming up at this year's Fiber Connect, we are going to preview our Autonomous Network Management AI agents this year at the show. And this is a significant shift because this actually brings AI agentification specifically to the Fiber Network Management space. Excellent. And, you know, of course, AI big topic. We've been talking about it for a while. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about what benefits AI is already providing for network operators. What are you seeing? We hear a lot from the ISPs and other network operators specifically about the quality of their data. And anybody that's worked in AI knows that the quality of the data is the benchmark to create any AI. You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, or any data management, you know, or any data management reporting, you need good data. And the lack of quality of data is really slowing down a number of operators in their ability to deploy new fiber as well as operate. So what we have done is we have taken that, that AI agent and said, why not leverage it to look at data that's that's available and pull data directly from, you know, publicly available sources or private images and automatically update that, that digital twin. So instead of saying, okay, let's put an AI agent within network management, because a lot of people are saying they can't do that because their quality of their data is so bad. Well, apply it to improve the quality. So you got continually autonomously updating your data, but you got totally and automatically updating your data so that the data gets improved and then you can leverage other agents in the future. So let's speak specifically to IQgeo and your vision for AI. Of course, next week in Nashville, we'll be able to witness that. But what's your overarching vision for AI and its role in network management? Where we start out with is, you know, improving that data, looking at data sources, you know, private images, you know, street views that are out there that's currently available, starting with polls and determining, you know, from a poll, is it overloaded? Where's the location of the poll? Can that poll be leveraged? Anybody that's done a network engineering project understands if you plan your project that's going to be all aerial, just to find out that you can't leverage those polls because they're already overloaded and you've got to start all over again with a buried, that is very time consuming. So this actually will autonomously go out and improve that data so that you know if you can do it. And also the other issue that this will resolve specifically is whenever you're planning on your drops to your home, are those going to be aerial or buried? So you're putting that data autonomously in the hands of that customer. So whenever they go to place that order, you're giving them that information, right? Because if it's a buried drop, you still have to do call before you dig, right? So that takes time. So, you know, if your practice is to put a temporary drop, you can tell those customers, hey, are you okay with a temporary drop? Or do you want to wait the three days so that we can do the call before you dig because your location is buried? It really improves that customer experience and that network experience. That's that first exposure that that customer has to your company. So what we're doing is instead of actually having people walk the streets and giving you that information, you know, we're doing it autonomously. So you're able to move faster. You can get that monetization happening right away and present your company in a much better situation in front of those customers. Great. So, of course, we've got Fiber Connect next week in Nashville. Can you tell folks where they can learn a little bit more and see these AI agent previews? So we're going to be previewing our AI agents at both of our booths, the Diplomatic booth as well as the IQGeo booth. And you can get information directly at the booth or you can go to the IQ Geo website and get some additional information and we can reach out and schedule a demo for you. Awesome. Well, George, thanks for taking the time to give us a small preview of what you guys will be showing in Nashville. I'm certainly very excited to see it in person. And we hope to have you join us again to tell us a little bit more about all these great developments at IQ Geo. Thank you.