MWC25 | Mike Bakkenist, FiberUnlimited & Steven Van Zanen, BroadForward

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Mike Bakkenist

Business Developmen

FiberUnlimited

Steven Van Zanen

CMO

BroadForward

play_circle_outline Dutch software company providing mobile core infrastructure from 2G to 5G.

play_circle_outline Award-winning innovation in 40-year-old technology for roaming support.

play_circle_outline Dutch technology leading in interconnect market, supporting security from 2G to 5G.

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Mike Bakkenist, FiberUnlimited & Steven Van Zanen, BroadForward

Mike Bakkenist

Business Developmen FiberUnlimited

Steven Van Zanen

CMO BroadForward

Join Savannah Peterson on theCUBE as she interviews Mike Bakkenist of FiberUnlimited and Steven Van Zanen of BroadForward at MWC25 in Barcelona. Bakkenist and Van Zanen, armed with years of experience in telecommunications, share their insights on revolutionizing network infrastructure through innovative technologies. theCUBE's analyst team delves into their stories, unveiling the paths these companies are carving in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

In this enlightening discussion, Bakkenist emphasizes the drive to enhance sustainability in IT by dimi... Read more

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What software infrastructure does the Dutch company provide for the mobile core and how many customers do they have in telecoms? add

What is the importance of continuing to support roaming for older generation networks like 2G? add

What role did being chosen by Microsoft play in your company becoming a market leader in the international interconnect market? add

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Mike Bakkenist, FiberUnlimited & Steven Van Zanen, BroadForward

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Steven Van Zanen

>> Did they come or not?

Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon, global technology family, and welcome back to Barcelona, Spain. We're here almost at the very end of the show, day four of our four days of live coverage on theCUBE. My name's Savannah Peterson, very excited to be having another conversation with some Dutch innovators. Steven and Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to come hang out. You've been great neighbors all week. We love it. You're both from two different companies, so I want to let you each get a little plug-in and then we'll dive into some of the meat of that. Steven, I'm going to start with you since you're closest to me.

Steven Van Zanen

>> All right. Well, first of all, thanks for having us here.

Savannah Peterson

>> Absolutely. - Great to be here. As you said, we're a Dutch software company. We've been around for about 13 years, and we provide software infrastructure for the mobile core.

Savannah Peterson

>> Ooh, cool. - Exactly, yeah. And we do that across 2G, all the way up to 5G.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. - And like I said, we've got over 100 customers in telecoms, right? So we've got another-

Savannah Peterson

>> That's a pretty significant portion of the market.

Steven Van Zanen

>> That is, and we're one of the fastest-growing. We grew 30% last year, so we're going places.

Savannah Peterson

>> My gosh, and you're all over the world?

Steven Van Zanen

>> We are global, but we have our head office in the Netherlands and office in Singapore.

Savannah Peterson

>> Very cool. - And for the rest, people around the world.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome. Oh, I love that. All right, Mike, talk to me about Fiber Unlimited. You're repping the brand real strong here. I love it.

Mike Bakkenist

>> First of all, thanks for having us.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. - I'm from FiberUnlimited. I'm doing business development at Fiber Unlimited. We are a small company, small Dutch company, 15 people, but we want to try to change the world for indoor networking. So at the moment, we're still installing copper cables in buildings. It's raw material.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. - And if we look to sustainability, we need to change something. If you look at IT, sustainability is not top of mind, so we want to bring that top of mind at IT people.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's so important. - To change the sustainability in IT for indoor networking.

Savannah Peterson

>> Walk me through that. What are the biggest steps that people could take or they start working with you? How does their stack become more or their whole operation really? How does that become more sustainable?

Mike Bakkenist

>> Copper cable is raw material. We are not using raw materials in our networking, so if you install sustainable network-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh wow, so you're just, yeah.

Mike Bakkenist

>> We're not using copper cabling.

Savannah Peterson

>> At all, yeah.

Mike Bakkenist

>> If we install our network, it'll be factor eight less CO2 footprint.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow, cool. - It's a big difference to an installed copper network.

Savannah Peterson

>> And is the, if you don't mind me asking, is the cost the same, similar?

Mike Bakkenist

>> The cost is better. Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> This is one of the myths about sustainability. As people often think to be sustainable, it's going to cost you more money, often it ends up saving you money, and even longer term, maybe in power or a bunch of other things or repairing that or replacing that material if you ever have to, it can be a really big deal.

Mike Bakkenist

>> Yeah. - Yeah, I'm happy to hear that. That's pretty cool. What is this beautiful thing sitting in front of us? I don't want the audience to get distracted by it and not have me address the-

Steven Van Zanen

>> The shiny .

Steven Van Zanen

>> The shiny toy. - Well, not all viewers might know, but each year, the GSMA, which is the organizing and the industry body that represents telecommunications globally, they give out awards for innovation in different categories. From a Netherlands perspective, we've been the most nominated telecoms company from a Dutch company perspective. We've been nominated nine times in 13 years for innovation in global .

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. That's quite a track record.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Thank you, yeah, we believe so too.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. - We've won them twice. This is the second one we've won, and it was yesterday.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's so fun. - And we're obviously beaming with pride.

Savannah Peterson

>> I was just going to say, how's the team doing? I bet you had some tapas and maybe some vinos last night to celebrate.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Absolutely, yeah. Glad I could make it to you. But the thing is, it's such a testament to the work, especially our R&D has done because we've won this award for innovation in something that is essentially 40-year-old technology.

Savannah Peterson

>> So explain. - Exactly, yeah. I mean.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, tell me how you do that.

>> A lot of analysts are asking us the same question. The key thing is that networks from 2G all the way to 5G have been supporting roaming, right? So devices can go anywhere. Well, 2G, everybody talks about phasing out 2G, but you need functionality to continue supporting roaming across the world that still has 2G. And in fact, a lot of the IoT devices still work on 2G. Now. What we've done is we've taken that very, very old equipment and created a software version that can even run in the cloud because the existing systems are decades old, hardware that isn't supported. And the GSMA recognize that that innovation is pretty crucial for service assurance for the next decade.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. Okay. Well, that's awesome because, and I said this lovingly, when we think about telco, sometimes we don't always think about it as the fastest moving, most innovative technology sector. Not to the faults of the people who are in the industry, it's usually regulation and sovereignty and a lot of other things.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Very true. - That are super complex. But to be able to continue to innovate with technology that's 40 years old and apply this in a way that is award- winning pretty compelling.

Steven Van Zanen

>> I'll tell you last year, there's two products in our portfolio that are growing fast. One is the 5G roaming obviously, because that's the way forward. But the second one is the so- called Signaling Transfer Point, which is the element that you have to retain in order to enable roaming, and that's the fastest growing product in our portfolio, believe it or not.

Savannah Peterson

>> I do believe it. I mean, I trust you. You seem trustworthy so I believe you.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Carriers have to sustain. Either you hang on to unsecure old hardware or you move to our product. As far as I know, we're the only ones really offering this globally.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. - Yeah.

>> So how big is the team?

Steven Van Zanen

>> First of all, we're all over the world, so we have our HQRDs completely in the Netherlands.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's what I was thinking because this has got to take a lot of people on the ground too.

Steven Van Zanen

>> The ground too. Yeah, it's stuff. A dedicated group of engineers in the Netherlands completely. Then we have our support teams all around the world from Singapore, India, Brazil, 24/7, and we've got customers around the globe over 100.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. That's pretty cool.

Steven Van Zanen

>> And it ranges from this product to our 5G elements-

Savannah Peterson

>> Which makes sense.

Steven Van Zanen

>> But just to give you an idea.

Savannah Peterson

>> You're meeting people where they are, those communities and customers where they are in that G journey.

Steven Van Zanen

>> People have to realize there are approximately 4000 carriers around the world. Business-to-business market is relatively small.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, and highly competitive.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Highly competitive, so our competitors are the likes of Ericsson and Nokia and some of those, and we're doing extremely well because we are a dedicated best of breed vendor. We have something to offer that our competition generally can't match.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's a good place to be in.

Steven Van Zanen

>> It's the best place to be in, and these awards basically are an acknowledgement.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, and I bet it's really validating for everyone. Mike, what about you? How big is the company? What scale are you at right now? Where's the team?

Mike Bakkenist

>> I think we are on the verge of scaling up. We're very proud. We got nominated in two GLOMOs, one for-

Savannah Peterson

>> Amazing, congratulations.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, thank you. - That's so exciting.

Mike Bakkenist

>> Absolutely. We are nominated for the Breakthrough Tech, and nominated for Tech and Climate Action.

Savannah Peterson

>> Nice. - The sustainability part of our solution and the tech breakthrough. We're a very small company between all those big telcos and tech companies so we are very proud.

Savannah Peterson

>> How small? How many people are on the team?

Savannah Peterson

>> 15 at the moment. - Oh my gosh, that's it. Yeah, you are tiny. But powerful, obviously.

Mike Bakkenist

>> Yeah, we do sales with partners, so that helps to scale fast.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, definitely. What's next? When you say scale up, is that more customers internationally? Is that more offerings?

Mike Bakkenist

>> Internationally because we want to conquer the world, we want to free buildings from copper networks, and do it sustainable without copper.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that. Free buildings from copper networks, I feel like that's a nice way to say-

Mike Bakkenist

>> We're doing that 50 years for now. I mean, we need to change that.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, I could go on and on about that. And it's everywhere, it's ubiquitous to your point, it's all over the world. So the world is essentially your market.

Mike Bakkenist

>> And where will we be at the moment? We are in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. We like to expand in Europe, so that's why we visit the MWC. And our big dreams, of course, is to expand to States.

Savannah Peterson

>> Nice. Has it been fun meeting up with all the other companies that are in your booth and being a part of this activation?

Mike Bakkenist

>> Normally, it's very hard to speak the right people in big companies.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I bet. - Small players. So yeah, we talked to a lot of big companies here, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> Everyone's here. I mean, there's 110,000 people here.

Steven Van Zanen

>> It's the place to be. - It really is the place to be. I mean, we're here, so it's obviously the place to be gentlemen, I'm not surprised by that. What do you wish people knew? Actually, here we go. What do you wish people knew about Dutch technology and innovation culture?

Steven Van Zanen

>> Well, I think one of the key things is, just to give you an example. For several years, Microsoft picked us as their partner to replace some of the Chinese stuff in rural US.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow. - Because we're an independent player. We're not the Nokias or the Ericssons or the Huaweis, right? A a high-tech vendor in the mobile core, we're an excellent choice to fill those gaps where the big guys can't touch. And that's what happened. And it allowed us, that role allowed us to become the market leader in, for instance, international interconnect market, which is IPX, which connects hundreds of carriers around the world. There's several players like the top 10, we have eight.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's impressive. - From a Dutch tech perspective, that is pretty impressive, if I may say so, yeah. It means that our technology supports all the way from 2G to 5G connection between all of those carriers. In fact, one analyst told us that he believes that something between 70 and 80% of all that roaming traffic goes over our systems.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's really significant.

Steven Van Zanen

>> It is, yes. But you're talking about lots of stuff. We not only support that routing, that is essentially what that function is, but we also support the security that is required to make it secure and that is from 2G all the way to 5G.

Savannah Peterson

>> Man, that's impressive. - Yeah, thanks.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. And I mean, I think the Netherlands leads in a lot of different aspects. It doesn't matter how big you are geographically or population-wise.

Steven Van Zanen

>> Very true. - You definitely have a culture of innovation. Do you agree? Do you feel like you have a lot of support from the community as a leader in?

Mike Bakkenist

>> Yeah, we have a disruptive technology so the most people we talk to are very interesting in our solution. We get a lot of support from IT companies and IT integrators in Holland.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's awesome. - It really depends a bit on the life

Steven Van Zanen

>> cycle you're at as a company. We've been all around for 13 years and we really now at that place where the big guys have discovered us. Specifically this time at Mobile Congress, we've seen the bigger groups of carrier groups that are approaching us to standardize on our software.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome. - Across the multiple countries.

Savannah Peterson

>> They're coming to you, that's a nice feeling.

Steven Van Zanen

>> They're coming to us, yeah. - Yeah. And do you think that accolades and awards like this and nominations help raise that visibility?

Steven Van Zanen

>> No doubt about it. - A lot.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Oh, that's nice. - We've got a lot exposure.

Mike Bakkenist

>> The GSMA is a major brand name in our space. In fact, this is the only award that we submit. We don't do any other awards.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, okay. So this is it. - This is it.

Savannah Peterson

>> This is the Mount Everest peak here.

Steven Van Zanen

>> And the fact is that across the world, it's respected and it's really seen as, like I said, acknowledgement for the technology that's been committed. And the judges, there's a whole group of them across analysts, journalists, carriers.

Savannah Peterson

>> Everybody knows. - So the industry really judges us on our merits.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Well, I'm glad we were able to celebrate it here today. I have one final question for you, gentlemen. When we're hanging out next year at Mobile World Congress, what do you hope to be able to say then that you can't yet say today?

Steven Van Zanen

>> Well, first of all, we hope to make more inroads across the world in the larger carrier groups like I just mentioned. There's plenty of regions that we still have to get into and win customers so I hope to be able to announce some really, really big, larger tier one customers in addition to the ones we've won. That will be my goal.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome. What about you? - Expansion through Europe.

Savannah Peterson

>> Awesome. We look forward to hearing in all the different countries that you've been able to make your way through, celebrating you hopefully more hardware on the desk.

Steven Van Zanen

>> We're going for number 10 next year.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's what I'm talking about, I figured you're never satisfied, but at least definitely do take a moment and celebrate this. Thank you guys both so much for taking the time during such a busy week.

Mike Bakkenist

>> Thank you. - My pleasure. Really great to be here, thanks.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, it's been such a great time. And thank all of you for tuning in to our four days of live coverage here at Mobile World Congress. We're in Barcelona, Spain. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.