Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh king:
Bring everyone back to the office or stay remote, it's the question consuming more meeting time in the virtual corner office than perhaps any other issue. But maybe the solution isn't so black and white in a recent episode of Kara Swisher's Pivot podcast, a listener posed a third way solution. His idea, the corporate version of having your cake and eating it too. Don't make a choice at all, instead offer employees a hybrid of choosing when they need a desk with all the collaborative benefit of the modern office and the counter, when working from anywhere else would let them do their job a little bit better. Wrestling with the hybrid solution that offers human choice with technological innovation is one of the themes we've been exploring these past few months here inside the ICE House. Over the past six months, we've all had those Zoom calls where someone is tenuously tethered their cell phone trying to stay connected. Well, everyone ignores the frequent cutouts and the pathetic freeze frames the speaker's caught in.
Josh king:
We all enjoy in theory, the idea of working from anywhere on our smartphones until it takes 30 minutes to download that file that you desperately need. Here at Ice, our IT team has done a Herculean task of working to keep every everyone connected. But they can't control connectivity once the data leaves our private network. And while smart phones allow you to fit an entire office in your back pocket, without the bandwidth and connectivity previously reserved for wired connection, it's easy to conclude that the best choice may be back to the office for everyone unless, and here's the big unless, you can get high speed broadband wherever you are. It seems like eons ago, but remember all those big stories around the coming revolution of 5G? If you look back at some of them starting around 2017, there was a rising attention on 5G. Who should have access to their frequencies and how would communications, as we know it, evolve by bringing the functionality of a wired connection to the mobility of that thing in your pocket.
Josh king:
According to Google Trends, those stories peaked out around April, 2020, just as the entire world went from mobile to household. The media focus may have shifted, but the infrastructure being built to allow the 5G revolution has not. Our guest today. Tami Erwin joins the podcast to talk about how Verizon, that's NYSE ticker symbol VZ, has already brought 5G to millions. And it's really just getting started. Our conversation with Verizon's Tami Erwin on the impact 5G will have on everything from office life to virtual education to the experience of watching a football game like the Seahawks-Patriots last night. We'll get into all of that right after this.
Speaker 3:
Board diversity is important.
Speaker 4:
Board diversity is important.
Speaker 5:
Board diversity is important.
Speaker 6:
Board diversity is very important.
Speaker 7:
Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because diverse leadership at companies creates better companies.
Speaker 8:
This is about value not values.
Speaker 9:
With board diversity, you built better companies.
Speaker 10:
Diversity of thought, diversity of perspective.
Speaker 11:
Different perspectives often yield better outcomes.
Speaker 12:
We need to have different perspectives with different backgrounds to really inform and find the best solutions for our organizations.
Speaker 13:
Companies that have more diverse boards perform better.
Speaker 14:
Diverse teams are better performers, that is absolutely true in the Boardroom as well.
Speaker 15:
It makes a difference to the employees who work for companies, it makes a big difference for the communities in which they work.
Speaker 16:
Our business is about building leaders for the future. And that talent cannot be only half the population of the World.
Speaker 17:
What are you waiting for? 50% of the population for some reason isn't qualified? Let's put the smartest people we can in the boardroom and why ignore people or exclude people for any reason other than that they're not qualified?
Josh king:
Our guest today, Tami Erwin, is executive vice president and CEO of Verizon Business Group. Prior to her current role, Tami was the head of operations for Verizon Wireless and lead Verizon Fios, the nation's largest residential and commercial fiber network. Earlier in her career, she was chief marketing officer of Verizon Wireless. Welcome Inside the ICE House and to the New York Stock Exchange, Tami Erwin.
Tami Erwin:
Terrific. Thanks so much, Josh. Happy to be here.
Josh king:
As CEO of Verizon Business, you were in the unique position this year of both helping thousands of your clients go remote while also transitioning your own 30,000 or so employees to do just the same. What did you learn yourself from moving the business remote and how did it go?
Tami Erwin:
Wow, where does one start with a question like that? You step back six months ago and who could have imagined we'd find ourselves where we find ourselves, in living with a global pandemic, the economic impacts that, some of the racial and social injustice that we're managing through as a country and as a world, and now it's certainly the natural disasters we're dealing with, be it the hurricanes in the South or the fires in the West. We really built a framework for how we would manage the crisis as we saw COVID coming in through Asia in January and through our European markets in February that said we needed to have a clear priority and a clear number one. And we said the single most important thing we could do was show up on behalf of our employees and keep our employees safe.
Tami Erwin:
We worked to dispatch our employees, everyone that could go home to go home and be able to work digitally. I could never have imagined that in a one week period of time we would get 99% of our Verizon Business employees working from home. But in a crisis, almost anything is possible, and we proved that that was the case. But then we also framed up and realized that our customers were so reliant on our core communication services to be able to manage their businesses. So we also said in parallel with employee safety was customer connectivity and being there for our customers. And at the same time, adding two other stakeholders that we think are critically important, how do we show up on behalf of our shareholders during the crisis? And how do we show up more broadly on behalf of society in our responsibility to everyone who's been going through that and showing up as a leader in the market around some of the societal issues.
Tami Erwin:
So it's been an incredible year, we've learned a lot. I'm proud of how we've shown up for our customers. I'm also super excited as the fog begins to lift and we begin to look into 2021 and say, what did we learn from what we've been through? And how do we begin to reimagine new ways of working, new ways of playing, new ways of educating, new ways of... And I think our world will transform from the crisis that we've been through, the crisis we call 2020.
Josh king:
I read some of your professional background in the introduction, Tami, certainly so many different steps in your career, increasing responsibility, increasing learning along the way. But no one anticipated the personal challenges to one's leadership lessons that you have in your back pocket for a situation like this. Did you find that you needed to change how you led your teams and how that impacted the employer-employee relationship this year? Where did you find that extra gear in yourself and what did you have to do?
Tami Erwin:
I think it's such a fair question. Let me just take you back to my very first job at Verizon, I was a customer service rep. I say that only because I think it was there that I A, learned the importance of customers and B, learned the importance of making sure employees have the right tools, resources, and information to be successful. I think having that grounded foundation of, how do we create the right environment for our employees to serve customers is part of what I had to draw from as we've gone through this crisis. We have talked a lot at Verizon about leadership, and we talk about leadership being a profession that requires practice, and nothing prepares you for a crisis like this.
Tami Erwin:
So anchoring back to our core principles and our core values, defining the framework of serving four stakeholders, and then recognizing the immense responsibility of keeping our employees safe, of serving our customers who are so critically dependent on us, making sure that we showed up with guidance for second quarter and EPS guidance and delivered results on time and raised our capital spend in second quarter, all things that we did, acquired be BlueJeans, all things we did in the midst of this crisis really is drawn from the strength of responsibility that we have to those four stakeholders and the belief that to who much is given much is expected.
Tami Erwin:
I feel like I have such obligation to serve those four stakeholders. And was it easy? No, life's not easy, you just gear up. We have a line in our credo that I love, it says, we run to a crisis. And we've done that all year long. And I would tell you it comes from not just the leadership, it comes from every one of our frontline employees who put themselves out there and said, I'll do whatever it takes to serve our customers because I'm proud to be part of this organization.
Josh king:
Talking about running to a crisis, talking about your first job as a customer service rep, as you are talking about the fog lifting and thinking about your phased return to the office, do you think ultimately the business structure's going to remain to normal or has operations been permanently affected?
Tami Erwin:
What is normal first of all is the question. Do you return to what you did before or do you redefine? I think we completely redefine how we as employees and we as employers define work. I think we were headed this direction anyway, but we were still, I think, as the society stuck on, you have to be in a certain city, you have to be in the office a certain amount of time, you have to travel to a client's location. I think this crisis has proven that we don't actually have to do all those things, that in fact we can use our time more effectively, be more agile, move faster on some of the decision makers, give people more flexibility as to how they get their work done. I think it's really a reflection of how our employees have shown up during this crisis. They've shown up with a commitment to our purpose. Our purpose is we create the networks that move the world forward. And they've leaned into and understood that their rules were changing.
Tami Erwin:
But we didn't have to give them new job descriptions, they figured it out as part of what we were doing. We created a framework that said, listen, if you can't return to the office, don't return to the office. If you're concerned about returning to the office, don't return to the office. If you've got caregiver responsibility, we'll help you deal with how you manage caregiver responsibility. If you need to start the day at eight o'clock and get your kids online for school, do that and we'll figure the rest out together. I think at the core of that is building a trust relationship with your employees, good communication, shared goals, and then the ability to say, we will get through this and we'll be better and stronger. We will never return to the office the way we returned to the office before, we'll have a different way of working. I think it's awesome because I think we'll be better and stronger as a result of that.
Josh king:
You say that your mission is to create the networks that move the world forward. Let's talk about Verizon Business for a second, it oversees a wide range of client types. How is the division organized to meet the needs of clients from the large global enterprise to the local corner store?
Tami Erwin:
When Hans took over as CEO, it's now been two years ago, it's hard to believe how quickly time has gone on. But in April of '19, he restructured the organization. It was really based on work that he'd been doing when he was in the CTO role and really understanding, how could we take the power of our networks and use those to build a north star of 5G global leadership. When he took over and we restructured, we oriented the business to say, with the intelligent edge network that he and Kyle Malady, who's now our CTO had defined and really imagined, we could serve customers differently, we could define what consumers require, we could define what business requires.
Tami Erwin:
And within business, the team that I manage, we've got a small and medium business team, we've got a global enterprise team, we serve customers in 150 countries around the world. And then we've got a huge commitment and huge leadership in public sector first responders. We've always been the partner of choice for that segment. So we've really said, forget whether it's wire line or wireless because as you look at your roadmap for 5G, it's not going to matter. What customers require is core activity, reliable, redundant, consistently available. And then on top of that, we're beginning to build platforms and solutions and applications that deliver the capability that businesses require. In the crisis, we certainly saw in small business about 50% of the small businesses when they shut their physical front door, their business shut as well because they didn't have a digital front door. So we've had to work really closely with them to redefine a new front door, which is a digital front door.
Tami Erwin:
Now, global enterprise is a different set of challenges as they imagine, how do they push work to home, how do they deliver secure connectivity, how do they manage distributed networks, how do they think about redundancy and reliability. This most recent hurricane that came through here in the US, I don't know about you, we were without power for five days. What do you do when all of your employees are at home and they have no power? It's a different set of circumstances, so reimagining that. And then the work that I'm super proud of is how we show up on behalf of public sector, both first respond as well as the military, and as well as teachers and educators. We've been super busy the last 90 days as we work with educational institutions around the country to say, "How do we deliver core connectivity to kids so that they can learn remotely?" And really set teachers up for success as they begin to imagine how they do that.
Josh king:
I want to drill in on that for a second, Tami, because I think in their own personal histories, the week of March 16th, 2020 is going to go down as a lost week in the lives of my two kids, students at New York public schools. But by Monday, March 23rd, they were both back online and going to school five days a week, albeit remotely. And as you just mentioned, school systems represents some of your biggest clients from the public sector. Drilling in because we can geek out here inside the SS, how did Verizon Business help schools prepare for both last year's fully remote set up that they had to turn on and dime and the hybrid model that many districts have adopted for starting school this year?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, last year, I give teachers a ton of credit for reacting and responding. They had to react and respond and say, "How do I do what I do in front of my classroom in front of a video or electronically?" So we really worked with school districts last year to get core connectivity, whether it was a tablet, whether it was a phone, whether it was in some cases just audio not video as well, in some cases it was just audio, so that you could get connectivity into homes. Now, we think about your kids, the reality is that there's a large percentage of kids that are out there today who don't have access to technology, don't have access us to computers, don't have access to meals that they rely on. So it was a big ask for teachers to say, how do you deliver core connectivity to these kids? And that's what we focused on last year.
Tami Erwin:
This year, we've really, over the summer, worked with many of the school districts to reimagine how you think about not only core connectivity, but beginning to package it with video and collaboration tools. In May of this year, we acquired BlueJeans, which is a fabulous video and collaboration platform. So we were able to really take the capability there and begin to package that so it's much simpler for teachers, much simpler for parents, much easier for kids. Because these kids know exactly how to use video and collaboration, it's now about helping teachers as they think about that.
Tami Erwin:
The other thing that I'm super excited about that we've done, Verizon has had the innovative learning program out there for several years right now. We've put almost $500 million by the end of 2020 into that program over the years to really be able to deliver connectivity, but then to create curriculum and to transition that curriculum into 5G so that it teaches teachers how to teach, it helps students understand how to use technology, and then it really curates content. So you begin to think about, instead of reading about the Colosseum, how about a virtual inside the Coliseum? How do you use AR and VR capability to really reimagine learning? And that's really has transitioned from last year to this year as we go back now to virtual or partial virtual, is the ability to change how content is delivered, not simply provide connectivity.
Josh king:
Before our conversation started on air, you and I were talking a little bit about our respective favorite football teams, yours as the Seattle Seahawks. So it doesn't surprise me at all, as you inferred earlier, that your journey to become the CEO of Verizon Business began shortly after the formation of the Baby Bells, when you joined that long lost name of the Baby Bells, US West as a customer service representative. How did your career develop from that first role wherever you were in the Northwest to becoming CMO of Verizon Wireless? And your employer changed from, if I've got this right, US West to AirTouch and finally Verizon.
Tami Erwin:
It's been an incredible journey and it been one where I feel like I've been a continuous student to the business. Every day, something is different than it was the day before because the rate of technology change has happened so fast. And yet I think the next five years is going to happen even faster than it has before. I would tell you, as I think back, it happened because I A, delivered a lot of hard work, but I also B, had some really good mentors and sponsor. I know that's a terminology that's oftentimes overlooked, or overused should be the case. But the reality is I had people who said, "You're capable of doing great things." And really invested in me to say, how do I have a learning plan? How do I have a development plan? How do I get pushed beyond my comfort zone into roles that I hadn't done?
Tami Erwin:
It also involved pick up and moving my family a couple of different times back and forth across the country. I did some lateral jobs that... People always want an upward mobility job, it's like sometimes you have to take a lateral to gain the depth and the breadth that you need. It's been a terrific opportunity to learn, to grow, to deliver. And now I can tell you that as I think about where I'm at in my career, I wish I'd been a little more intentional because I think I was A, lucky, worked hard and B, had some really good sponsors who were willing to help me navigate. I now think about men and women who are thinking about their careers, that are in their 30s saying, "How do I think about this moment in time and what are the things that will enable me to pursue what I want to pursue?"
Tami Erwin:
I would probably be a little more intentional about my development plan, about what I wanted, about what I delivered, about how I got there. It's part of the component of COVID that I believe is going to create more flexibility is, in our family, we had to make a choice. At some point my husband said, "Okay, I'll stay home so that you can do this career thing." I think that as we think about the flexibility and learning that we don't all have to live in New York City or we don't all have to live in certain locations, we don't have to be on a plane every day. I think it's going to create more flexibility for families to be able to say, "How do we balance all that life gives us so that we have the ability to have dual career, so that women can pursue a career and not feel like they're giving something else up?" Listen, there's always choices, but the ability to both have careers and bring kids along through that journey, I think is going to be something that will be a positive that comes out of COVID.
Josh king:
Intentional or unintentional, Tami, your success has been remarkable. Not only is it rare for a CEO to have risen from the ranks inside of one company, only 2% of CEOs were previously holding the position of CMO, and even fewer are women. Maybe this is a function of the marketing intensive aspects of the telecommunications business. But what do you think it is about your abilities in leadership that helped you along the way?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, I think there's a couple of things that have been important. We have always talked about the core values of respect and integrity, performance excellence, and accountability. For me, those have been at the heart of who I am as a leader. But the thing that I think probably sets me aside from other leaders and has been one of my hallmark is I care deeply about my people. Not to say that other leaders don't, but I do what I do because I love people. I believe that when you create the right environment for employees... And part of this I think, Josh, is born out of being a customer service rep. I grew up in a home where my father was a physician, wanted to be a farmer. So I A, learned to work hard but B, I learned a lot of compassion and kindness. And I think that there's an element of leadership that is oftentimes overlooked, which is the ability to demonstrate kindness and compassion to the people that you work with.
Tami Erwin:
It doesn't mean I'm not very tough on standards and expectations, but the balance of creating an environment where people believe that they have the tools, the resources, and information, they run to a common goal, and then they're treated with kindness and respect, I think is really important. And that's been an important part of my career. I think the other one is learning good communication skills, learning to be able to communicate one on one, communicate in a group, communicate in large public venues. Create and motivate teams against a common mission has been an important hallmark of what I do. And then development of my people, I believe it is my job to develop the talent on my organization, not only my direct report team, but the next team down. And to really bring them along and give them a chance to fail and to also win, to learn along the way and to recognize and respect the fact that we're a team and we'll cross the victory line together.
Josh king:
As your career has evolved. So has this industry that you work in, this communications business from the copper wires that we knew back when it was US West to the precipice of this numeral and this letter put together, known as 5G. Can you briefly explain what makes 5G such an important technological evolution to the extent that you say the next five years may be as important as the last 25?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, I've been in this business for 30 years and I look forward and say I've never been more excited about tomorrow than I am today. Because you look at the future and you say, "Wow." Think about what's changing. Take it back to one of the first days in my career, I was in the business six weeks and some said, "Hey, would you like to try a cell phone?" I checked out overnight the great big brick. I was driving a stick shift at the time and I remember distinctly pulling out of the driveway and trying to shift while I had this big brick to my ear and trying to hear I was calling my husband to tell him I was on my way home. It was staticky and you could hardly hear it, but it was so cool.
Tami Erwin:
I think about the transformation that has really happened over the last 30 years to where we have now a computer in our pocket, as you described it, anywhere and everywhere we go. And yet what we're going to see with 5G is every G that we have moved into from 2G to 3G to 4G has really helped us go faster and get more data. It has really been about connecting the person. In a 5G ecosystem, the way that Verizon has led the world, and we've been first in the world on mobility, first in the world on fixed wireless, first in the world on mobile edge compute. We've done that with the expectation this is a transformational technology and it was custom built for industry and commercial use cases. So as you think about the millimeter wave spectrum that Verizon has, and it's a wide swath of millimeter wave spectrum, it gives us the ability to really build a network that is built for industrial and commercial use cases. We talk about eight currencies of millimeter wave or eight capabilities is another way to think about it.
Tami Erwin:
And it's not just speed, although speeds are 10 times what they were, we're going to have incredible speeds, it's latencies that are sub 10 milliseconds. You think about sub 10 millisecond latency, you can do some pretty spectacular things. When you frame that, if you're in a driverless car to day in a 4G world, your clearance to the car in front of you is four inches. If you get into a 5G environment, it's four feet to the clearance in front of you because such low latency. You get sensor densification, you can go from 100,000 sensors in a kilometer to a million sensors in a square kilometer. You have much lower power consumptions.
Tami Erwin:
You can begin to create custom slices of the network for businesses as they begin to think about, how do I think about AR, VR or how do I think about network slices that are going to be just custom built for unique business applications and solutions? So what I love about 5G is it will dramatically change the way we think about how we live, work, and play. It's not Just about downloading data faster, it's about connecting people to devices, it's about devices to devices, and it's about taking the big data that we all have and bringing that compute power close enough to the edge to really make it real time. And that's where I think we're going to see transformative experiences that are limited really only by our imagination.
Josh king:
How fast will 5G really be? And what are the differences between things like ultra high band edge mobility and low band that a typical consumer may notice or not notice but be the beneficiary of?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, I think you'll see speeds that are 2, 3, 4, 5 gigabits per second. So speeds you don't yet experience today. Think about a gig in a files environment, imagine that in your pocket. So you begin to think about really fast speeds in terms of the capabilities that you can imagine. And really you shouldn't have to look at your phone, you should be able to look at the application or the use case that you're using and say, does it meet a need or a requirement that you have? Let's talk about NFL since we started there. If you begin to think about NFL and what's possible with the virtual gaming experience, instead of simply watching it, imagine, and we saw this at Super Bowl last year, imagine if you're actually in the game. You've got a 5G device and now you've got the kind of speed, low latency, throughput capability that 5G offers.
Tami Erwin:
Now you personalize what you want to see, you personalize the angle of which the ball came because you can turn it and twist it and make it yours. You can be in the game itself, you can be part of and watch the experience that's around you not just the experience that's coming from NBC or somebody who's broadcasting. So it really does become a very personalized use case. In that case, you won't look in the upper right hand corner, you'll follow your screen because you'll say, "Am I in the middle of that game watching my Patriots playing?" If the answer is yes, you'll know that that's really then working for you. It brings together the power of all the currencies to really begin to say, you've got plenty of battery so you can watch that, you've got the ability to have streaming that isn't buffered, it isn't stuttery, it's straight in, it's personalized and you're engaged in the game.
Tami Erwin:
I'll give you another example, healthcare. I will never sit in front of a doctor sick again because healthcare will be real time. I'll put my phone, my finger over time on a sensor. You think about what Apple announced with their watch here the last week. Think about the biometrics that now can go through this phone safely and insecurely. Now I have real time communication with my doctor, he can see my biometrics. I don't have to go to the doctor and when I'm sick, he'll deliver the solution to me. So there's so many use cases.
Tami Erwin:
And again, you begin to think about kids educating. They're not reading a textbook that's 15 years old, they're in the midst of the Colosseum and they're turning their head and watching what happened around them in a replay of living the Colosseum in Rome. So I just think there's so many awesome things that are beginning to happen because connectivity meets compute, it meets cloud. You bring it all together and you begin to think about then sensor densification, utilization of network slicing, secure network slicing, and you have the ability to do some really powerful things. And that's really mobile edge compute gives you a lot of that capability.
Josh king:
I can't wait to be situated at the 50 yard line of the edge, I can wait to be in the middle of my doctor's office, even virtually, I'd rather not. But recently at the Goldman Sachs annual Communacopia, media and telecom conference, your CEO, Hans Vestberg, announced that 36 US cities were being serviced by 5G networks with another 24 expected by the end of this year. I think of myself in the one hand, in the middle of New York City on the other hand when I'm upstate in the Catskills, population density a lot less, sometimes there are dropout areas. Where did Verizon start its 5G implementation? And what parameters do you use to decide where to offer 5G mobility next?
Tami Erwin:
So it's pretty exciting to think that by the end of 2020 we will have 60 cities that are online with 5G, and some of those are smaller cities. It's also, I think, very exciting to know that we'll have 10 mobile edge compute deployments. So in 10 markets, we'll have mobile edge compute, those will be bigger footprints. But we started, the first two cities were Minneapolis and Chicago. And we picked the cities based on the cities that there's a long permitting process to make sure that you've got the density of your cell site deployment. We also are deploying about 1500 to 1700 miles of fiber every single month. So we arguably have one of the largest commercial construction projects happening in the US today. So when you think about how quickly can you deploy fiber out because out to the cell site, you're going to have the fiber connectivity and then your last mile will be wireless, that last connection will be wireless.
Tami Erwin:
So it's about working with cities like Minneapolis and Chicago that we're pretty progressive about saying, "We know that when we have the capability of 5G, we have better opportunities to bring jobs to our cities." And that's really where we worked. We also, at the same time, we're deploying in NFL cities where we could deploy into the stadium. So we also have 17 stadiums where we've deployed 5G. So you think about the use cases of a dense population. When you think about going to a football game, what do you do? Everybody has their phone out and they're looking at and pulling up another score from another game. We wanted to know in those dense populations that you could serve the density with 5G. So that was also front and center for us as we looked at how could we meet the needs of that population knowing the data consumption that they use.
Tami Erwin:
It's been really fun to rule out these incremental cities. We've gotten a little bit of criticism about what people say is a smaller footprint. But what you're seeing even in 2020 is we're deploying more and more equipment so that that footprint is growing. And that's where it begins to get really, really exciting because we've been able to do that. I'll tell you what, Josh, I had to look at what our network team has done this year. They said 30 cities in '19, check, they did 31. They said 30 cities in 2020 and they're on track right now to deliver another 30 cities and 10 mobile edge compute cities and ultra wide band into some of these cities for fixed wireless access. So despite COVID, they've pressed on, they found ways to get permissioning, they've worked with the cities, they've defined new possibilities, and they're going to deliver on the targets because it's what we do.
Josh king:
The cities have the commercial opportunities that go with them. Tami, as I mentioned, I spent a lot of time up here, upstate. So I'm curious, what are the barriers that will need to be overcome? What is the equipment need or the site locations that are needed to bring 5G across the entire country or to whatever very large percentage of the population that you consider blanket coverage?
Tami Erwin:
I think putting up the equipment and you see the equipment for 5G, very small. So you think about cell site densification in these very small sites that go up on telephone poles or on the top of rooftops. So that they're very small, they're very compact. It's about deploying those small cells. And it's one of the reasons why Verizon was really built in position to deploy 5G. You think about our spectrum, you think about our 4G densification, which we've been working over the years, you think about the access to fiber and the capability that we've had on fiber up and down the East Coast, and then building up fiber capabilities. Then it's about densifying those cell sites and putting in the new radios in each one of those cell sites for the 5G capability, both in the sites we have today as well as the ones that we're continuing to build for densification. Those will go either on telephone poles or on rooftops so that you really... They're very discreet, you can hardly see them. In some cases, they're providing lighting for cities. So it's pretty cool to watch the deployment of that.
Josh king:
After the break, Tami Erwin, executive vice president and CEO of Verizon Business Group. And I discuss what happens when 5G unleashes the fourth industrial revolution. That's all coming up right after this.
Speaker 19:
Navigating dynamic markets requires a relentless pursuit of knowledge. Now, join market experts to learn with ICE Education live. Attend live video training with practical lessons across global asset classes. On demand modules provide base knowledge. Participants can then attend live training sessions, including group review and test for certification. We also tailor training for your needs and in-house projects. Ice Education live courses, continue your education today.
Josh king:
Welcome back. Before the break, Tami Erwin, executive vice president and CEO of Verizon Business Group and I were discussing how Verizon is building the infrastructure needed to bring 5G across the country. In the 200 or so episodes that we've done so far, Inside the ICE House, it'd be a low estimate to say that 20 of them have included discussions of the fourth industrial revolution and the transformational effect it'll have across the globe. As a refresher for any of our new listeners, the last industrial revolution was the digital revolution. How does the fourth build from where the third left off?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, I think the fourth really picks up in moving from the compute power that we've experienced to really moving into, how do you think about everything connected to everything? So you begin to think about humans connected to devices. And I earlier I talked about my first connected experience as a user of a cell phone, which was a big analog phone, it was for the purpose of a voice connection. You now think about all the data that we're storing in the cloud, you think about the compute power that is now available, you think about now connecting that close to the customer for real time experiences that are driven based on big data, compute capabilities, and personalization. I think that's where the fourth industrial revolution really becomes real because it becomes about taking big data, essentializing that data, creating personalized and customized experiences based on who you are and the information that's relevant to you. That's where 5G really comes into play because it delivers the full suite of capability and currency of 5G to really enable that kind of an experience.
Josh king:
If you could argue, Tami, that 5G will be the fuel needed to drive another industrial revolution, do you think that the transformation that was forced on all of us by 2020 might serve as the spark plug?
Tami Erwin:
I think it certainly serves as an accelerant for sure. You think about, and we talked about dispatching 30,000 employees home in a one week period within my business, I would have told you that was impossible. Yet the crisis proved that it was possible. What we've seen and we've talked a lot in Verizon Business around customer's digital or transformation journey. And as I was talking to CIOs around the world in '19, they all said, "Yeah, I need to over time distribute my network over software defined networks. I need to amplify my security capability. I need to really build redundancy and resiliency for my network." Those are all things they talked about. Now they're saying, "I have to have them now." Because as what's really fueling that is the experience that we've all lived through in a COVID environment, which says, I've got to find a different way to transform my business to meet the needs of customers in a digital ecosystem.
Tami Erwin:
So absolutely, I think it is the spark plug. And it's exciting because people are now much more open. We as consumers, regulators are much more open. I say regulators only because I used the healthcare example earlier. Healthcare, doctors wouldn't see patients via video because the insurance wouldn't pay for a reimbursement. Guess what, now the insurance will pay for a reimbursement. Doctors are like, "I can learn how to do that." Patients are like, "I'm in." It changes the ecosystem. So really what 5G does is it becomes the fuel to ignite that ecosystem for change. And COVID has certainly created an urgency around how we do that as a result of what we've been through.
Josh king:
How is Verizon pushing the boundaries of 5G with its acquisition? I think you mentioned earlier of BlueJeans video conferencing and also creating 5G labs.
Tami Erwin:
We believe that first... So let take the labs first because think we've got six labs now across the country. And the sixth one actually opened in London during the COVID period, so we're excited to have that there. But it's really creating an ecosystem and environment for developers and customers alike to really begin to imagine their solution in a 5G world and test it and create use cases for it and proof of concept, which has been really terrific. I think bringing innovators, bringing customers together, we actually also have 5G deployment on customer locations where they can be testing it in their actual ecosystem and in their lab environment. It has given us the ability to go from what was really a PowerPoint conversation just too short years ago into proof of concept and now into commercial deployment. And that's really what has been exciting about doing that.
Tami Erwin:
We brought in part of what we knew was important as we went through and defined customer requirements by segment. Is we knew customers, and B2B in particular, had a video and collaboration requirement. I didn't imagine what we would all live through over the last six months, which is we live our lives on video collaboration and we know every platform there is. So that had been an asset we knew we needed to serve our customers. We're super excited about that acquisition. It was built for industrial use case, it was also built with security at the forefront. So when you think about secure communications and video collaboration, it's now given us a tool to then begin to imagine new models in a 5G ecosystem for things like healthcare, things like education. So it's really given us another nice asset in our portfolio to serve customers and to reimagine use cases that I think are going to be super relevant.
Josh king:
Speaking of labs, Emory Healthcare and Verizon partnered up to build the first 5G healthcare lab back in March. And in the just release documentary, I think it's called Speed of Thought, potential medical breakthroughs due to 5G are featured from beginning of the film to the end. What does 5G offer to science that wasn't available before?
Tami Erwin:
I think when you come back and you begin to look at some of the potentials around science, it really allows for big compute and personalization of that compute capability. So if you think about the brain, brain is an example that I'll use because I think about all of the scientific research that has been done on so much of the human body and science ability. And much of that is built on compute power of what is A case versus a B case. As you begin to get into the brain, you realize that everybody's brain is uniquely wired, the synopsis are different in terms of the experience that that person has had and how their brain has developed. I think you begin to think about 5G and the ability to synthesize and manage the compute capability of a ton of data with big machines at the edge. It really begins to change how science thinks about what's possible.
Tami Erwin:
Beth Israel, a great example of a mobile edge compute case that we launched with Beth Israel up in Boston as we were deploying our mobile edge compute. It gives them the ability to do testing, colonoscopy, they can do the scanning, they can find the palp faster than the human eye can actually see it. So they can detect something that wouldn't otherwise be detected. So it's that kind of capability for scientists that take a lot of the hard work out of it and give them the ability to take that synthesized information, understand it, use it, and then create treatment protocols that are very personalized for the individual.
Josh king:
It's been somewhat of a maxim that these periods of disruption bring both winners and losers, Tami. Will the company's recent acquisition of TracFone and the ongoing partnership with Samsung to produce 5G capable devices play a role in making sure that 5G is accessible at a variety of different price points?
Tami Erwin:
I think we will find, first of all, the TracFone acquisition, they've been a long term partner, we're super excited about that. My colleague, Ronan Dunne, who runs the consumer team has worked with that team for a very long time. In my role as the CEO for wireless, I worked with that team. They are a great team that meet the needs of a customer segment that allows us to take our network as a service and meet the unique needs of subsegments within these teams. So for Ronan's team, being able to meet that prepaid market in a new and different way for 4G and 5G over time will be an important factor as we think about continued expansion of network as a service.
Tami Erwin:
As I think about network as a service, I can begin to think about that both for my small and medium customers and then unique network slices for global enterprise customers. So it really reinforces, coming back to the intelligent edge network, of taking wire line and wireless assets, bringing those together with the north star, 5G. It allows us to take those unique network use cases, fill that network to full capacity meeting the unique needs of different customer segments. And that's exactly what we're able to do is we effectively lean in on some of the capabilities out of TracFone.
Josh king:
My family and I have certainly had our share of experiences over the past six months of patronizing small businesses who have set up temporary locations or popups using various point of sale payment devices. How is Verizon Business working with small businesses to help them recover from their current economic difficulty that they're facing and prepare to compete in the fast growing digital economy with or without a 5G focus?
Tami Erwin:
Listen, I'll tell you, small businesses have been most directly, I think, impacted. I give these guys a ton of credit where they found unique and creative ways to do different kinds of delivery mechanisms. And yet those small businesses, as I said earlier, about 50% of them had to close their business when their front door closed because they didn't have a digital engagement model. We have worked very closely with small businesses to do a number of different things, to give them incremental data for those that are still running their business, because we know data is a lifeblood, that connectivity is a lifeblood of making sure they can engage with our customers. We have set up new digital platforms for small business who did not have a digital front door. So we worked very, very closely to help them create a digital footprint and digital ecosystem redefining their business.
Tami Erwin:
We've also put a lot of focus and spotlight on the small business demand and the small business impact from COVID. We did very early on a program called PayItForward LIVE, which was our commitment to working with entertainers and gamers to really use Tuesday and Thursday nights to have a little bit of levity people's life, to talk about something other than COVID. But to take a $7.5 million donation that we made to small businesses for grants and really have these artists then talk about the demand of supporting and the need to support small businesses. So what you and your family did in supporting that small business is one of the things we asked people to do to be part of that. Then we out grants between $5,000 and $10,000 to small businesses who applied for that. I'm really proud that a greater than 60% of those went to women and minority owned small businesses, as they were thinking about how do they keep their business afloat. We felt like we had an important role to play there by making a grant donations and then putting the spotlight on it.
Tami Erwin:
We've continued that with a program called Comeback Coach. And this has been an awesome program where small businesses who really don't have the IT infrastructure that so many of us enjoy in a corporate environment, we've given them a coach to really help them redefine what's required for success coming back. We've hosted a number of webinars that are available on our website for any business to really understand, how do you do everything from connectivity to how do you think about financial capability. Things that are outside of our expertise but we're really bringing in specialists to talk about topics that are important, reigniting your business for growth, et cetera. Then we're doing the business round table discussions with women in business, where we're focusing very much on targeted segments. We did one with finance, we're going to do one, women in sports we're going to do one, women in tech to really begin to put a spotlight on these small businesses, the demands, they have the role they for us in society, and how we collectively can support them as they reignite the growth in their business.
Josh king:
As we wrap up, Tami, it's not lost on several of us that you're not alone in terms of companies that are building out a 5G network. What is going to continue to keep Verizon ahead of the pack?
Tami Erwin:
Our commitment to serving customers and innovating on behalf of customers is part of what I believe sets us apart from our competitors. We have continued to be the leader in network technology, performance reliability, and coverage. And our brand really stands for two things, we talk about innovation and we talk about trust. Our customers put a ton of trust in what we deliver. They expect us to deliver network that performs in the good times in the bad times. I say bad times when there's a crisis and there's a fire coming through or there's a hurricane coming through, we're on the ground to be there with first responders. When people think about the kind of capacity that's required, when you go in a COVID crisis from working in New York City to dispatching those people out to homes, our network performed. When you think about leading the world to innovation around 5G, first in mobility, fixed wireless, mobile edge compute, Verizon continues to do that.
Tami Erwin:
And we can do that because of our commitment to four key stakeholders. How do we show up on behalf of employees, our customers, our shareholders, and then society at large. I think you think about the responsibility to not only support our customers, our shareholders, and our employees but be part of how we think about using technology to solve some of the world's biggest problems. Whether it's the kind of environmental issues that we're facing as a result of how we've treated our earth, whether it's diversity, inclusion, and really equality for all, it's having a voice on those things that matter. We believe that having a balanced view of serving all four of our stakeholders allows us to continue to lead and innovate on behalf of our customers and earn their trust.
Josh king:
Delivering a network that performs in good times and bad with innovation and customer service. Tami Erwin, thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Tami Erwin:
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Josh king:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Tami Erwin, executive vice president and CEO of Verizon Business Group. That's NYSE ticker symbol VZ. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle, on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @icehousepodcast. Our show is produced by Pete Asch with production assistance from Ken Abel and Ian Wolf. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening, talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor is affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of what it is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
