FEATURE
6 QUESTIONS WITH SEAN BERGIN: Talking Technology Trends with APTelecom’s President & Co-Founder
1.
WHAT IS APTELECOM’S MISSION?
Officially, our mission is to help enable our customers to achieve their commercial objectives by providing value through experience-based expert consulting in the monetization of their connectivity assets and more so these days, in various data centre markets. We now also find ourselves supporting due diligence activities being undertaken by investors & lenders seeking to understand the connectivity space in this ‘new world’ of convergence. With regard to the monetization of connectivity assets, we are focussed on continually finding ways to innovate in the way we prepare our clients and their products for short- and long-term success, regardless of their endgame. We have developed an extended portfolio of clients which now also include satellite and data centres which is a direct response to the convergence that we see occurring right now across various connectivity technologies. Understanding our client’s business inside and out along with the industry as a whole, sets us up well to support not just subsea, but a variety of players in congruent verticals, such as debt and equity providers seeking to better under-
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
stand the space. APTelecom has moved way beyond simple subsea pre-sales & monetization, although we do remain true to our roots.
2.
HOW DOES APTELECOM PARTICIPATE IN THE SUBMARINE CABLE MARKET?
You could argue that we are Pioneers in subsea pre-sales. We have helped in excess of $2 billion worth of systems achieve ready for service status over the last decade. No one else has been focussed on this space. The submarine cable market however, is changing and again, it’s all down to convergence. Now, when looking at monetization and commercialization aspects of new systems, one needs to take into account the data centre environment (core and edge), who the most appropriate joint built partners may be and beyond sales, where the debt and/or equity will come from. We see ourselves playing an integral role in all of these elements.
3.
IS APTELECOM CURRENTLY INVOLVED WITH ANY NEW SUBMARINE CABLE PROJECTS?
Absolutely. As mentioned earlier, APTelecom re-
