Corporations can best serve the next generation by empowering leadership of their employees at all hierarchical levels of the organization. Cross-functional collaboration can provide opportunities to emphasize individual initiative in areas including strategy, growth, marketing, technology, operational expertise, and best practices. Corporations can provide the next generation an opportunity to grow by empowering them to make consequential decisions that align with corporate strategy and culture. Whether a positive or negative outcome is the result of this decision making, the next generation will have gained invaluable insight from going through this process.

Researchers can best serve the next generation by allowing access to their world-class intellectual resources and insights in an open and cost-effective (or inexpensive) manner. Thus, consumers of the information are able to achieve growth through a variety of tactical, operational, and strategic initiatives, as well as apply these same principals to their own research efforts.

Redevelopment of the telecom network should occur in dense urban environments so that a meaningful number of small cells are added to the network and located closer to where mobile customers need to connect to the network. Significantly more small cells are required to densify and fortify the existing U.S. and global networks.

Carriers continually indicate, both publicly and privately, that they are interested in deploying small cell networks. However, given the large amount of upfront capital required to build small cell networks (including the corresponding fiber), the U.S. mobile carriers have not been able to accomplish this, relying on independent infrastructure providers for a significant portion of their deployments.

Additional investment capital is required in order to build out a stronger underlay of small cells for the network given the forthcoming adoption of 5G, which will require substantial improvements to the current network infrastructure.

Urbanization is the network-related development that will have the greatest impact on the telecommunications industry over the upcoming decades. As of 2018, 55 percent of the world’s population lived in cities and by 2050 this proportion is predicted by the United Nations to grow to 68 percent, or approximately 6.7 billion urban dwellers.

Denser populations in urban environments will increase the need for digital services and thus infrastructure to be concentrated and close to end users, so that providers can deliver the connectivity their end users demand. Additional infrastructure will be required to bring further network capacity to support the increased application, data, content, and networking needs demanded by devices that are all in close proximity to these densely populated urban areas.

Likewise, global GDP will be increasingly concentrated in large urban cities providing the urban consumer the ability to pay for their growing bandwidth needs.

One of the many important components of value for Urban Cascade is the upcoming PTC’20 Annual Conference in January. Specifically, gaining more insight during the “deep dive” Workshops and Topical Sessions (e.g., Submarine Cable and Architectural Inter-Relationship of Data Centers). We consider the panelists chosen during these “deep dive” sessions, amongst others, to be industry leaders and visionaries who will enable us to gain insight into emerging industry trends. By leveraging insights gained during PTC’20, Urban Cascade will be able to enhance its conviction of where to specifically target its digital infrastructure investment efforts and thus ‘lean in.’

Additionally, the comprehensive network of PTC, including those who attend the PTC’20 Annual Conference and those who are ongoing members, is a resource of tremendous value for Urban Cascade for the purposes of business development and growth.

Urban Cascade is centered on three core values that comprise its business philosophy as an operator and investor: i) honesty, ii) integrity, and iii) humility. We have built the business and its relationships based on integrity, ensuring that we think and act like owners in all decisions and treat investor and shareholder capital as if it were our own.

PTC’s mission to advance the ethical development and use of ICT, ties in well with Urban Cascade’s goal of building sustainable digital infrastructure businesses and cash flows to provide certainty and reduce risk for the customers of that infrastructure (e.g., telcos and cloud providers). Similar to PTC, Urban Cascade accomplishes its mission through “collaboration” with its partners, “knowledge” gained through years of operating and investing, and “outreach” to form new relationships.

Bill Stein, Digital Realty’s Chief Executive Officer, is one of the key industry moguls which Urban Cascade has been following with intense interest recently. Observing how Bill and his team have strategically transformed Digital Realty over the past 18 months, including their prescient transactions with Interxion, Mapletree, Mitsubishi, and Ascenty. Bill’s actions have cemented in our view the increased push and need for a simultaneous focus of retail and wholesale colocation, globally and at large scale, in terms of facilities.

Bill’s comments on Digital Realty’s recent Q3 2019 conference call on 29 October (italicized below), exemplify the continued runway for global digital infrastructure investment growth, even thinking beyond the opportunity that resides strictly in the U.S. “Even the most technology-centric European countries are 18 to 24 months behind the U.S. followed by varying degree of maturity across the European continent.”

Urban Cascade is an experienced investor and operator of hard assets with a proven track record for creating value and sourcing off-market opportunities in key markets of both the U.S. and Europe (including the U.K., France, and Spain).

Our investment principles are centered around i) investing in niches where we possess a competitive advantage, ii) acquiring assets on a value basis with the goal of maximizing return on capital, and iii) focusing on assets that have long-term contracts, high-concentration exposure to investment-grade counterparty risk, and cash flows that are growing with customers that are growing.

As demand for network capacity grows, Urban Cascade will participate in building out the requisite digital infrastructure, guided by its investment principles.