- Former Verizon executive Sowmyanarayan Sampath has become CEO of Zayo at a fortuitous time
- Demand for Zayo’s long-haul fiber has never been higher
- Sampath considers himself a network operator, and he likes to manage with a bit of fun
Sowmyanarayan Sampath took over as CEO of Zayo in September, and his timing couldn’t have been better because the business is booming. Demand for its long-haul fiber has never been higher, driven by AI.
In a conversation with Fierce, Sampath said Zayo is seeing demand from hyperscalers, neoclouds and AI labs. “We are working with everyone, and the funnel we have over the next, I would say six months, is explosive,” he said. “We're just seeing crazy amounts of demand.”
In August Zayo announced Nvidia as a new “monster” customer. And Sampath said, “We have multiple deals as big as that in the pipeline. We have really good assets, and we have investors who have really long-term vision and very deep pockets to invest.”
In addition to major hyperscalers, Zayo is seeing demand from more modest data center operators who are building 20-100 megawatt projects. These are located in places where there is available power. “Those are what I call underserved network markets,” said Sampath. “So suddenly there's a demand for Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, where there's basically gas. So that's been another nice upside for us.”
The company has also been integrating the fiber assets it purchased in May from Crown Castle. The addition of Crown Castle’s metro and regional fiber assets added about 90,000 route miles and 40,000 on-net enterprise locations to Zayo’s network. “There is no one else who has the combination of long haul and metro that we have,” said Sampath.
Zayo employs just over 5,000 people.
Leadership style
Sampath is a Verizon veteran, having worked there for nearly 12 years in leadership roles, most recently as CEO of Verizon Consumer for three years. He has a reputation as a collaborative leader who likes to sprinkle everything with a bit of fun.
He told Fierce, “I do like to have fun at work. You know, kindness is important. But I hold people accountable to very high standards.”
He said, “In my opinion there are only two roles in the company. You either serve the customer, or you serve someone who serves the customer. For me, that means I'm in service of my front lines. I'm in service of my engineers. I'm in service of my builders. I'm in service of my sales teams, and getting them what they need.”
He considers himself primarily an operator. At Verizon he was president of Global Enterprise as well as CEO of Verizon Business for several years. “Look, I'm an operator. For me, the magic happens in the front lines. I've operated some of the largest businesses on earth, and I want to bring that operator mindset with execution excellence to Zayo.”
Building long-haul networks is a capital-intensive business, and Sampath said he brings a capital-efficient mindset.
He said building long-haul networks is complicated work requiring, among other things, hundreds of permits for a single route. “And when you take some of our bigger routes, you can have thousands of permits,” he said. “So, how you run governance, how you do execution, is what makes a company. Execution excellence — that's where I spend most of my time.”
The trouble with data centers
Fierce asked whether the extreme unpopularity of data centers — as evidenced by last week’s election results — will have an impact on Zayo’s business.
Sampath said, “You have to work with communities, not around communities. Communities have a problem with water, with power rates, with noise, and I do think data centers are going to have to work with them to get around that. But I think it's very doable.”
He noted that in the past people objected to cell towers. But wireless operators had to work with communities to show them the value. “The current sentiment is a little negative,” he said. “But people also know that America doesn't want to be behind any other country on AI. So, we're going to have to find a way with communities, with local advocacy to convince them about the value of data centers.”
It helps that when Zayo builds a new long-haul network it allows off-ramps to communities along the route so that fiber-to-the-home operators can build broadband to those communities. He said Zayo’s networks already help a lot of local ISPs. “Without folks like us, you can't get connectivity for them because they’re in the middle of nowhere. So, we found a way to bring in communities as we build these networks.”
Zayo is headquartered in Denver. And Sampath has lived in New Jersey for a long time. He said he’s got a place in Denver, and he’s splitting his time between the two locations.
Below is Zayo's latest U.S. map, showing its networks:
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