IHS Towers CEO Sam Darwish discusses the challenges the telecom industry faces to meet the massive data requirements needed to ensure global connectivity. He emphasizes the industry-critical need for robust infrastructure to support the world's increasing demand for communication.
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00:00The telecom industry is heading one way.
00:02I mean, if you look at basic examples,
00:05artificial intelligence, it's just going to take us to the next level
00:08in terms of data consumption.
00:10Apple just came with the Vision Pro,
00:12which basically is a wearable.
00:13Now, at the moment, it's still bulky.
00:15It's still not utilizable.
00:16It's not going to be adopted.
00:18But this is a prototype for a pair of glasses
00:20that can house your phone, that can house your computer,
00:23that can basically allow you to interact with people.
00:26So that's where we're going.
00:27And because we're going there,
00:30the data requirements are going to be massive.
00:32So our industry is just going to growth after growth after growth.
00:42IHS, the company that I founded 25 years ago and currently run,
00:46is one of the largest digital infrastructure platforms in the world.
00:49We operate across 10 markets covering 800 million people.
00:54Our markets are largely emerging markets,
00:57young markets, fast-growing markets.
00:59We own roughly 40,000 towers across those markets
01:03and tens of thousands of kilometers of fiber
01:05that covers roughly 8 million homes.
01:08And we provide connectivity to our customers.
01:11Our industry has several challenges,
01:13but the biggest, I would say, is somehow positive, negative.
01:18Because of the fast-growing nature of our industry,
01:23everyone wants to consume more data.
01:25You have more people that are being born,
01:27more people that are moving into the connectivity age,
01:29which is changing by the day.
01:31My daughter, who's seven now, wants a phone.
01:33Our children are starting to kind of like adopt the phones.
01:36And when you talk emerging markets,
01:38it's not only about the initial cost, which again is large,
01:41you're talking about the operating conditions.
01:43The operating cost is also large because we have challenges.
01:46Security is a problem. Power is a problem.
01:48Governance is a problem.
01:49So you kind of like layer up all these challenges.
01:52So I would say funding and how do you organize the funding
01:56would be the biggest challenges, but there are ways around that.
02:04At the basic layer, our business model is inherently sustainable.
02:09We provide shared infrastructure,
02:11effectively splitting the cost of building,
02:13splitting the cost of running,
02:15and of course kind of like minimizing the harm done
02:17to the damage to the environment through that.
02:20But there are, of course, other layers.
02:22Because most of our markets do not have electricity,
02:25we need to provide power to the sites.
02:28Thus, diesel is largely what you use.
02:31So we've been, over the years, spending hundreds of millions of dollars,
02:34probably in the billions of dollars,
02:36to try and minimize the impact of what diesel does into the environment.
02:41Leading with purpose definitely requires a different type of skill set
02:45in the sense that you still need the traditional skill set
02:48of being able to manage balance sheet, manage P&L, manage investors,
02:52manage that aspect of life, manage the operation itself.
02:55But you have to be ethical at the core.
02:57You have to be mindful of the impact of whatever you're doing
03:02on the environment, again, on your employees,
03:04on the countries that you operate in.
03:06Ethics is at the core of it.
03:08That's kind of like the mindset shift that you need to undertake
03:11when you're leading with purpose.
03:15Communicating your purpose to your employees is actually two-way.
03:20You need to listen, and then you need to talk to them.
03:23You need to listen in the sense of what is important to them,
03:27especially that they belong to certain markets,
03:29especially that they do certain tasks.
03:32You need to understand their pain points.
03:34You need to understand their aspirations.
03:36You need to kind of help gather their points of view.
03:39And then at the end of the day, you filter everything,
03:42you put it together, and then you communicate it back.
03:44But because it's somehow coming from there,
03:48and their input was taken into account, it resonates.
03:51And then the communication becomes easy and becomes more technical.