ISE Magazine, December 2019

DECEMBER 2019 WWW ISEMAG COM 13 VISIONARIES ROUNDTABLE Daniel Ashton CenturyLink That collaboration is critical I deal with Verizon AT T and other providers via the national standards bodies We all acknowledge that the only difference between any of us are the logos on our shirts We all face the same issues the same problems and the same heartburn Jeff Chapman NorthState Communications One of the biggest pain points Im having in my region of the country is deployment itself Most providers today have the same goal bring broadband to everyone But the challenge is to execute it and to do it in a professional manner Given the historical disruption that occurred along with fiber cuts and underground damages municipalities are pushing back now Theyre saying No more Weve even had instances where we are not allowed to build if the citys underground utilities are on either side of the road Thats a challenge for sure I wish we all would be more collaborative and realize that we are competitors but we can also be customers to each other Our company has laid thousands of miles of fiber and I will gladly sell it Save your capital theres no need to overbuild me Buy it from me It saves a lot of time and a lot of energy Ashley Travers Verizon This brings us to the people part of the challenge Todays C E teams have to be technical But they also must be people oriented and good communicators I expect them to be out there with the municipalities building relationships Soft skills can be game changing It matters when our teams have worked hard to be on a text basis with their counterparts at the munis Its really the only thing we can do organically to help us get where we need to be as fast as we need to be Topic YOUR TAKE ISE Share one problem or challenge that you are passionate about solving for the ICT Industry Daniel Ashton CenturyLink Grounding and bonding and network protection are my passions they are critically important to the network Thats why Im on a mission to get all the various standards bodies to work the same across all the standards Its tricky because there are so many variations Im trying to get parity across the board for everybody So when you go to a TIA standard its going to tell you pretty much the same thing that an ATIS standard will or an IEEE standard or the European standard Ashley Travers Verizon My passion is related to the human element for our organization specifically for outside plant construction Im aggressively trying to find more women and younger people to bring into this part of the business I had to build my team from the bottom up Not only did I have to find market leaders engineers and project managers I had to find those who possess superior communication skills and project management skills Those folks are winning for us with productive relationship building A program thats helping in this area is called the WiNTERN program Last year I had the opportunity to lead it for our organization We bring in college students for the month of January before they go back to college This past year we recruited young women studying IT Engineering and Computer Science as well as English and History They came to Verizon for 3 weeks to complete a project together At the end they presented to our Senior VP and our leadership team I believe these efforts are critical to building a bench full of diverse talent thats going to help our organization get where we want to be faster Ben Goth TDS Telecom We also have a pretty robust intern program that has brought people with various backgrounds into the company Theyve interned successfully in IT Network Services Finance or other areas Many have been hired after those experiences Ashley Travers Director of Network Engineering and Operations Verizon