Data Center POST Interview with Victoria (O’Kane) Lamberth, Chief Revenue Officer, ZenFi Networks

 By Contributing Editor, Kathy Xu

Victoria Lamberth is Chief Revenue Officer at Zenfi Networks, an innovative, locally owned and operated communications infrastructure company and carrier-neutral fronthaul fiber provider serving the New York and New Jersey metro region. Lamberth co-founded the company in 2013 and currently oversees their regional sales and marketing organization. With over 10 years of building, managing and selling experience with fiber infrastructure companies, she utilizes her proven array of experience to drive growth and profitability at ZenFi Networks. In addition to her role at ZenFi Networks, she also serves as a Founding Partner of Metro Network Services, LLC, and is a Partner and Board Member at Hugh O’Kane Electric Co.

Data Center POST recently sat down to chat with Lamberth about ZenFi’s approach to fiber networking, and how The 2018 INCOMPAS Show allows them to showcase their skills.

Data Center POST, Kathy Xu (DCP-KX) Question:  Tell our readers about your company: What do you do? 

ZenFi Networks, Victoria Lamberth (ZN- VL) Answer: Our company is a locally owned and operated communications infrastructure company in the New York and New Jersey Metro Region.  We build and lease fiber optic network, distributed colocation and wireless siting solutions for enterprise, carrier and wireless operators.

Data Center POST, Kathy Xu (DCP-KX) Question:  What problems are you attempting to solve?

ZenFi Networks, Victoria Lamberth (ZN- VL) Answer: When we started the company, we saw a need to create a new type of network to meet the demand of network densification. In the NY market, we saw the main issue with meeting this demand was in the way fiber networks had historically been built.  Traditional fiber networks are built as high capacity rings, suitable for high bandwidth enterprise solutions, but not well suited for the fragmentation that comes with deploying small cells around a city. Conversely, traditional cable networks are also highly fragmented, built to serve large number of locations, but are limited in capacity connectivity. The infrastructure solution for 5G will require a blend of the two, a highly fragmented fronthaul fiber network interconnected to a highly resilient backhaul network. Fiber is only as useful as the path it traverses and the customer’s ability to access it, so we designed a unique dark fiber network architecture that evolves legacy infrastructure to optimize density and network access.

DCP-KX Q:  What do you hope to achieve at The 2018 INCOMPAS Show?

ZN-VL A: Since 2014, ZenFi Networks has focused almost exclusively on serving mobile network operators in the NY market.  Our recent merger with Cross River Fiber enables us to leverage 700+ miles of fiber optic network to deliver a telecommunications service overlay to enterprise and carrier customers. We’re here at INCOMPAS to re-introduce the company as an alternative infrastructure and telecom services provider in the NY / NJ metro region.  Our accommodating support services, nimble problem solving, and deep experience enables us to quickly navigate hurdles and challenging construction logistics to meet our clients’ growing demands for network access. With our expanded product portfolio and network footprint we can now offer enterprise, carrier and wireless providers both dark fiber and managed service options. We are excited to introduce the ZenFi Networks team and our capabilities to the INCOMPAS community.

DCP-KX Q: How does your company keep up with the demands of the quickly growing and ever-changing telecommunications industry?

ZN-VL A: The team behind ZenFi Networks has more than 30 years’ combined experience navigating regulatory and infrastructure constraints throughout the New York and New Jersey metro region. ZenFi Networks is dedicated to meeting the growing demand for next generation network access with the most innovative communications infrastructure solutions. We pride ourselves on leveraging our unique, local expertise to work together with our clients to solve the most challenging network architecture problems.

DCP-KX Q:  What do you think is the greatest challenge in the network infrastructure space?

ZN-VL A: What we’re working towards is satisfying that ever-growing demand for connectivity at the edge. With the tremendous amount of data and mobile traffic, fronthaul fiber is what’s needed to address the growing challenge of today’s massive traffic loads to create faster and more dense networks. A fronthaul network enables high capacity, low latency connectivity that is needed to address the demands on mobile network operators at the edge.  The benefit of attacking this challenge is that we are able to create a truly unique and dynamic network architecture that can be leveraged for all sorts of connectivity needs.

We expanded our fronthaul fiber in NYC beyond the traditional high bandwidth Manhattan corridors to support mobile growth in the outer boroughs, so we’re now able to provide high capacity connectivity to startups and small businesses that have relocated out of Manhattan in search of lower rents. ZenFi Networks can now provide a cost-competitive solution to companies that traditionally had a lack of communications infrastructure because the business case could not support a build out to a single enterprise.

DCP-KX: Victoria, thanks so much for sitting down with us.

 

To learn more about ZenFi Networks, go to www.zenfi.com.