Sylvie LaPerrière, one of TeleGeography’s esteemed partners, is a known tech leader in the digital infrastructure community.
You might specifically know of her work as a team lead for Google’s subsea cable Equiano along the Western Coast of Africa. Or perhaps you know her as a renowned internet governance advocate and interconnection strategist.
We’re so glad to welcome her decades of expertise to TeleGeography’s Preferred Partners program. (This network of telecom professionals is like a telecom A-team ready to apply TG data to new and unique research projects. We’re thrilled to take on new opportunities with them.)
Sylvie was kind enough to speak with our team about her take on the industry, advocating for women in telecom, and setting up her own consulting shop. Read our conversation below.
What stepping stones in your career provided the best training ground for becoming an expert in network infrastructure?
I think the first obvious one was after graduating with a degree in marketing and information systems. I was recruited to join the telecom industry from financial services.
It was fascinating because it was 1993 and exactly at the digital shift. We were living in a very analogous world, and then everything was becoming digital. I knew digital, it was something I understood, so I felt like I could connect with the business.
I was doing market research monitoring technology trends and came across early commercialization of the internet for public use. Prior to that, the internet had only been for academic or military use. I convinced the company I was with to develop this offering and get into the internet space.
So I became the de facto product manager just by saying we should be on this—this will be the telecom service of the future.
I think my background in market research and data and analytics very much helped me to spot things and then act on it.
I had that vision and really bought into it—probably my first stepping stone into watching trends. I think my background in market research and data and analytics very much helped me to spot things and then act on it.
I know you’ve been a huge advocate for not just women in telecom, but just generally young people in telecom. What path would you recommend that they take?
There’s a bit of a movement—I believe it might be post-pandemic—where a lot of people are not showing up at work. They just want to work from home.
How will you train the next generation from your home office?
I was really fortunate to learn by imitation. I had a lot of mentors when I worked at Teleglobe who brought me on-site and to customer meetings. They showed me the cultural norms, how things were done.
I was really fortunate to learn by imitation … You can’t get that in a book. You can’t pick that up behind a screen. You have to interact with other humans and they have to show you how it’s done.
You can’t get that in a book. You can’t pick that up behind a screen. You have to interact with other humans and they have to show you how it’s done. That’s the nurturing, or the coaching—and it’s eroding. It feels like it needs to be reinstated.
It’s an imitation game. That’s how humans learn.
We’ve talked about setting up your own consulting shop, Sylvie LaPierre Advisory. What kind of projects have you taken on since you made the leap?
What I like to do is strategic advice.
A recent project—and I can’t really describe it because I need to protect confidentiality—was with a company that has a good business. But in the tech sector, they have maybe 10 more years of runway. They were wondering, what do we do or what other services can we offer to keep our customer base engaged and happy with us?
So I did a service adjacency study. Okay, what could you do more of that’s of value to your current customer base? You need to step back and look at the team in place. Are they at their capacity? What are their capabilities? If you add this, what does it mean for you? What more do you need? And what revenue generation could happen? I really enjoy this sort of thing.
I’ve helped small startup companies. I’m involved with a digital accelerator for women-led or women-owned startups in tech. I just like talking to other women and telling them “you can do this” and being one of the people they go to for advice.
I’ve helped small startup companies. I’m involved with a digital accelerator for women-led or women-owned startups in tech. I just like talking to other women and telling them “you can do this” and being one of the people they go to for advice.
We found your interview for Google when you talked about being a builder of the internet; that was fascinating. Do you still see yourself as a contributor to the growth of the internet in 2024? And what does it mean to be a builder of the internet?
Having been one myself, I know how extremely rewarding it is to be a builder. Building means that you have a plan to execute, and you see the result.
I don’t know that I would describe myself like that now. I would describe myself as an adviser to the builders of the internet. If you’ve done a few projects yourself, you know how it’s done. And you can say: okay, here are the pitfalls. Did you plan for this? Is this on your risk register? Are you watching for this?
Could you speak to the region of the world in which you worked on cables? You didn’t just build transatlantic cables—I mean, not that that’s easy in its own right—but it’s comparably easy when governments cooperate and the parties you’re working with are open to new infrastructure. You went into countries in Africa and renegotiated everything from landing stations to data centers to backhaul.
My posture is: the internet is so amazing, it needs to be in the hands of everyone. And I don’t see any good reason to change from that posture.
Everyone should have enough affordable access, and that access should not be constrained. You should be able to study and work and play and do your banking and interact with your government.
All of it should be free of encumbrance. The internet isn’t the product, the connectivity is. People are seeing that now and waking up to submarine cables. And 90% of the traffic is there.
I’m sure people are a bit surprised it’s not over satellite. No disrespect to satellite because they have their piece of the ecosystem—they’re useful for remote areas where you can’t build easily or where it’s difficult to maintain—but they don’t have the payload yet to make it economical.
You’ve also talked about environmental impacts as an influence on your work in the past.
I’ll be bold and I’ll say we’re not doing enough. Zero emissions or reducing emissions is not enough anymore.
We really need to not only reduce carbon, but emit less than we have in the last 10 years. That’s a big topic for me, and it touches generative AI if you look at how much energy it consumes.
This new wave of generative AI is using the internet, but it’s also using our data centers in a way that we did not suspect. And it’s more costly on an energy basis. We need to be conscious of that, the same way you should know how much you’re consuming as a citizen. What’s your imprint on the world?
So, is this the submarine industry only? No, it’s everyone. Everybody has a role to play.
I think sustainability has to be foremost and center in everything we do. We just need to think differently, and that’s what homo sapiens are good at, right?
TeleGeography’s Preferred Partners represent a network of telecom professionals with whom we’ve collaborated, presented, shared intel, and mapped major networks. This group is available to work on special research projects that require resources beyond TeleGeography’s standard product catalog.
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