New Orleans, LA 1:30 on 4/13/2018
Kirk Coburn of Shell Technology Ventures moderated a discussion between John Smola of Alabama Power and Servato's very own CEO, Chris Mangum. The panel focused on the intersectionality of telecommunications and power in today's society. Deregulation, distributed energy generation, and historical milestones drove dialogue that covered the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to the Power Secure Acquisition to Chris even pulling out the first smartphone made in 1993, IBM's Simon.
So how are these industries similar? Alabama Power identifies as a regulated monopoly providing exceptional service to their customers. Monopolistic telecommunication carriers used to abide by Carrier of Last Resort to ensure service always could be attained to some degree. These are customer-centric entities at their core that ebb and flow with their constituent demands. For example, AT&T plans to spend $20 billion each year for the next two years within their CapEx budget. This will likely encompass fiber projects, wireless towers, and supporting infrastructure for urban needs.
Even more pertinent, regulation comes from the same Public Utilities Commission on each state level. This is where the hyper-focus on end customers can shift to resource interdependence. One of the biggest topics of debate for cable, telecommunications, and utility providers is who owns the home? They all have infrastructure in your home or apartment. Rural and suburban areas are seeing this take place already where a local utility provider will offer broadband service to unserved pockets or joint organizations will form to allow for communication experts to build out infrastructure on top of energy transmission networks. Owning the home becomes best serving the home; ultimately, what everyone wants. These commissions are coming around in certain states by opening up conversations to allow for this to happen. After all, it was the original deregulation of telecommunications that has caused sparsely populated corridors of our country to be overlooked.
Add a comment below if you have any thoughts about how these industries could best benefit from one another.
About Servato
Headquartered in New Orleans, La., Servato is a leading provider of active battery management solutions to telecom, power, transportation, and solar companies. Servato’s solutions allow leading companies and infrastructure operators to reduce CapEx and OpEx by extending battery life, reducing maintenance costs and streamlining operations. Utilizing highly accurate data, proprietary algorithms, adaptive charging and cloud-based visualization software, Servato provides unprecedented insight and control over distributed DC power assets in industrial settings. To learn more, please visit: www.servatocorp.com