AHL: Project Management Lessons For Field Techs

We take live questions on copper and fiber, career growth, and what’s changing in ICT as AI, smart buildings, and data centers accelerate demand. We share hard-earned lessons on communication, planning, and why the “right” technical answer still fails if the business and people side is ignored. 
• AFEXT explained and why far-end interference matters in the field 
• technician versus project manager responsibilities and accountability 
• solving problems versus doing the technical work as a PM 
• business skills that protect margin, schedule, and customer trust 
• school infrastructure choices under AI, cybersecurity, and bandwidth growth 
• BIM value beyond 3D models, preventing conflicts and change orders 
• converged AV, security, wireless, IoT ownership and cybersecurity risks 
• AI-driven data center growth, fiber demand, speed, and skilled labor shortages 
• pre-fab copper and fiber gains plus the design and logistics pitfalls 
Remember, submit your questions for next week's show. And until then, everybody, remember knowledge is power. 

Transcript

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After Hours Kickoff And Q&A

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wednesday night, 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That can only mean one thing. Live after hours with your favorite RCD. And you know that's me, Chuck Bowser. Yes, I'm here to answer questions for the next 30 minutes on credentialing and copper and fiber, installation design, all that fun stuff. Stay connected. Do it right. Every and if Wednesday night, you know that I do this. It's not like I haven't been doing this for five years, you know. I'm new at this. I'm still trying to figure this out. Yeah, we know how that works, right? Yeah, so there we go. We're answering your questions tonight on copper and fiber, career path, project management, all that fun stuff in tonight's class. Tonight's class. Tonight's live stream. Sorry about that. Yeah, we got uh lots of fun stuff to go over tonight. Oh, let me turn on the the chat box. So you can always start every every QA with what are you drinking? What are you drinking? Chuck is drinking water mixed with ginger ale xevia. That's what I'm mixing tonight. And obviously melted ice. Tell me in the chat box, what are you drinking? Because you know, it is after hours. You can drink whatever it is that you want. Again, you know me, and I I love my Zevia sodas. My Zevia sodas. Lazy Brown Bruh is in the house, Brandon's in the house, Manzai

Acronym Challenge AFEXT Explained

SPEAKER_00 2:00

is in the house. Acronym challenge, you can do every week we do an acronym challenge. If you struggle with acronyms like the rest of us do, there's a free book that you can download. It's not mine. I make no money off of this. Go to the old Google machine, type in ICT Terminology Handbook. It's a free PDF that you can download from Bixie that has all the acronyms in it and also the definitions. So the one we're gonna do tonight is A F-E-X T. A F E X T. Okay, so if you know what that is, put it in the chat box. Let's see if anybody's tried to uh tried to respond to that chat box. There we go. Chats. Come on, open up the chats. There we go. No, it's not that one, it's the other one. Chuck, there we go. Yeah, it's showing that there's two responses there, but dang, if I can see them. Huh. A-F-E-X-T, what is it? Type in the chat box. Well, I'm trying to figure out my chat things here. I am not sure what it is doing. Okay, but we'll figure that out later. Anyways, it stands for alien far end crosstalk, and that's defined as the unwanted signal coupling from a disturbing pair of a four-pair channel or permanent link or some type of component to the disturbed pair of another four-pair channel, permanent link, or component measured at the far end. So you're measuring between two cables at the far end of the cable. How much one cable interferes with another cable at the far end? My cuz is in the house. Cole's in the house. What's happening, cuz? What's happening, Cole? Uh, upcoming shows. So uh let me see. Monday show is gonna be about hearing protection. Huh? What? And why is that important? And then I got some other good shows coming up, like uh show on OPGW and uh someone over First Nations class, and he loved it. Nice, nice. What was your student's name? Very cool. All right, so question number

Tech To Project Manager Mindset Shift

SPEAKER_00 4:10

one. This comes from Ryan on LinkedIn. He's a uh former technician, he's a current project manager with nine years of experience, and his question was what's one lesson that every field technician should understand before becoming a project manager? The first thing you need to know. Those are two different job titles, two different, two different responsibilities. Everything you know as a technician is not going to, well, it's going to help you as a project manager, but there are additional skills you need to know to be a good project manager. You see, as a technician, your focus is usually on getting the job done, getting all the cable pulled, all the jacks installed, getting terminated, getting that customer happy, getting that project sign-off. As a project manager, you're responsible for every outcome. Even probably most of them, the ones that you don't directly control. And that's one that's a hard thing to learn as a project manager because people go into project management thinking, well, I'm gonna manage this the way that I would do this work. Well, not everybody works the same way. Okay, the biggest surprise for many new project managers is realizing that solving the problem becomes more important than actually doing the technical work. Solving, I'm gonna say that again, because that's important. As a PM, solving the problem is more important than doing the technical work. Let me tell you a little story. Once upon a many moons ago, I was a project manager for Hinkles and McCoy out of Lorton, Virginia. Lorton, Virginia. And I was running a project, a really big project. There was other projects in that same office with me. The project who sat in the project manager who sat next to me was managing the installation of three schools for Fairfax County. And one of the schools had gotten really far behind in their schedule. And the project manager got so overwhelmed, he would go out there to pool cable, terminate cable, and test cable instead of solving that problem, trying to figure out why it was behind schedule. What can we do to make this better? How can I communicate this schedule conflict to the customer? Okay. Project managers are accountable for the budget. They're accountable for schedules. They're responsible for the labor, the customer's happiness, procurement, and risk management. They got a lot on their plate. A lot on their plate. So you really shouldn't be doing technical stuff because then you're taking away from one of those other fields that you really should be paying attention to. So the project may be technically successful, but still lose money because of poor planning, because the project manager didn't manage the change orders, or they didn't properly forecast the labor. Okay, contractors and supervisors and technicians moving into leadership roles really need to develop business skills alongside their technical expertise. You've already got the technical expertise, but you really need to develop the business side of that. And there's lots of ways that you can do that. Go to school at night, take some project management classes, some business classes. So you understand what is revenue? What's markup? What's return? See, a lot of people they get that they get markup and return confused. I should do a show on that. I should do a show on business terms, markup revenue, good business practice. Did you hear that, love? Write that down. Show on business terms, revenue, um, margin, and all that fun stuff. My my my business operations manager sitting outside there. So communication is way more important as a project manager than a technician. And most project challenges aren't caused by cable pulls or or equipment installations, they're caused by misunderstandings. The best project managers spend as much time communicating expectations as they do reviewing schedules and reports. I saw this great post today on Low Voltage Nation Facebook book group. If you're on Facebook, look up Low Voltage Nation. They've got a great group there. It's like, I don't know, I think it's like 200,000 people or something. And somebody did a post on there saying that the one of the one of the most common things that are mismanaged by a project manager is a uh, oh, what's it called? It's a document that you give to the customer and it lists everybody's roles and responsibilities, what they're doing. So that way they know the project manager can be managing this, the operations manager can be managing that, the customer is responsible for this. There's a name for that document, but for the life of me, it's escaping me. That's a you know, it's a great thing to know. You know, studies across the construction and technology projects, they consistently identify communication as the number one leading cause of displa of delays and disputes, missed assumptions between the owner and the and the you, misassumptions between the consultants and you, misassumptions between the general contractors or subcontractors, and you, the project manager. Project managers must learn to proactively communicate with everybody that's a stakeholder, stakeholder on that project. Because once everybody's informed, it's funny, you if you listen to my show for more than two episodes, you've heard me say this. Just because we work in the communications industry doesn't mean we communicate. Yeah, we're bad about that, aren't we? Success is measured differently for project managers, okay? It truly is.

Communication And Business Skills For PMs

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Question number two. This comes from Melissa, and she is a technology director at a K through 12 school, and she wants to know how should schools balance today's budget realities with the growing demand for AI, cybersecurity, and high bandwidth learning environments. That's a great question. Okay, building a good infrastructure still delivers the best long-term value. This is where that term future proofing comes in. We've talked about this before. I know a lot of technicians hate that term future proofing, but schools they may have the budget this year because of a grant or something, but they may not have the budget for the next five years. So if you can afford it, especially like in a school environment, future proof it. Put in Cat 6A now. I did a I did a walkthrough at a school in West Virginia, um Richmond, uh, and they had actually did these, uh they did fiber to telecom enclosures with switches and enclosures. They didn't do telecom rooms. And they have way more bandwidth than that school would ever need. You should go check out that episode, right? And here's the thing. This is why this technology really matters in today's in my environment, in my environment, school environment, it didn't. You brought in your pen, your number two pencil, your three-ring notebook, or your or your spiral-bound uh paperbacked uh notebook, and you would write notes in it. That's that's not today's environment. Students today are bringing all different kinds of devices into the school. And they're and they're gonna notice when they start getting those spinny wheel of death, right? So they they've sure that their phone works properly, their their laptop. In fact, a lot of schools now are issuing tablets to students. That's pretty cool. Where was that when I was a kid, right? Yeah, educational technology, refresh cycles, they're often much shorter than that for a regular office building. Because, again, the kids always have the newest technology, and that's always going to drive the most bandwidth. Many districts are preparing for increased bandwidth consumption driven by cloud applications, driven by AI tools, video learning, and security systems. When you tie all that stuff together, that's a lot of bandwidth, a lot of data, a lot of cybersecurity. So a lot of the school owners, a lot of people who are designing schools, um, they are benefiting from prioritizing infrastructure that can support today's environment and tomorrow's environment. Okay, it's not the same anymore. So make sure that you that you do that. Question number three. This comes from Christopher on LinkedIn. Has BIM finally become the standard practice for ICT projects, or are we still struggling to move beyond basic coordination? BIM oh BIM is such great building information modeling. Uh it's it's it's think of it this way everybody, every all the trades turn all the information into the general contractor, they put it in BIM, so now you can do a 3D modeling and look at how that telecom room is going to look. It's not but the bet the bet the biggest benefit from BIM is not the modeling, it's to prevent those expensive surprises in the field. Instead of, you know, the let's say the electrical contractor came in and put in the the ladder rack in the telecom room, and then now the the sprinkler guys come in and say, wait a minute, that's directly underneath where we're gonna put our sprinkler heads. That's an expensive change. If you do it on a on a in a BIM model, that makes it a lot easier. Everybody, when everybody participates in BIM, it's gonna eliminate those conflicts and those potential change orders. Okay, it's it's it's a great thing for you. Most organizations that don't struggle with BIM software. Let me say that rephrase that. Most organizations don't struggle because BIM software is difficult. They struggle because the workflows have not involved. BIM is out there, BIM is being used. If I had to put my finger on a number, I would say probably 40, 45, 50 percent of projects are using some type of BIM. That's still a lot of projects that aren't using BIM. But we are moving forward. This is the conversation I hear quite often at conferences and stuff like the conference is shifting from design coordination to operational intelligence. And building owners are really starting to ask how's that data created during the construction cycle? And how can the support facility manage that those decisions for decades? So that's there you go. Bim. It's gonna be around for a long time, and it's getting more and more every day. Question number, I think this is three. I lost track. Alex from LinkedIn. He's a systems integrator, systems integrator, and he wants to know as A V security, wireless, and IoT and ICT systems continue to converge, who should be responsible for the overall technology strategy? Okay, technology strategy. So technology silos are becoming project-rich. What I mean by technology silos? I mean the AV is their own team, the telephone guys, their own team, the computer guys, their own team, um, AV is their own team. What happens is they're not talking to each other. So somebody has to coordinate amongst each other. Okay, most most integration problems aren't caused by the hardware. They're caused by those each of those teams that I just mentioned designing their stuff independently and not talking to each other. And they're not finding out that they don't work together until they try to do the cutover for the customer, right? You know, two days, two days before they the customer wants to move in. And the more connected buildings become, the harder it is to separate those different types of technology decisions into those individual disciplines. Get everybody on board and have everybody have those conversations. Okay. Decisions are made with within one discipline, and they are and one here's one they always forget: cybersecurity. Cameras. Oh my gosh. Cameras are hackable. They are absolutely hackable. So, you know, how's that going to affect your system? You need a sp a successful project that's going to have a unified vision. That means someone has to look beyond those individual systems and focus on what is the outcome of this ICT. That's why we call it ICT now, not structured cabling. Information, communication, technologies. It's all those systems together. And the most successful projects are going to start with the alignment before anybody starts even selecting that technology. Okay. Now, the the easy answer is well, the customer. The customer should be the one doing this. Okay, well, the customer may not have the technical fortitude, the technical in-depth knowledge of how each of those systems work. So this is this is why I tell people all the time get your RCDD. Get your RCDD, because that will get you 80% of the way here. There will be some additional systems you gotta learn, but you'll learn all those different systems, what kind of cables they use, the type of topologies they use, and also how they interact with each other. And then now you just got a little bit more learning to go, and you can incorporate everybody. That sounds like the perfect job to me. Well, take it back. I love my job now. I love training and teaching people. That's and if you if you sit in one of my classes, like somebody in here in the in the TikTok feed said, you know, you get you get it. I love to teach. I love to teach. Next question comes from Jason on TikTok. He's a data center cabling specialist with 11 years experience. When is my next class? Ooh, keep watching my feed. I will put out an announcement. I got another class coming out soon. Um, because I'm I've got three weeks left of the current one that I'm in now. Uh get back to Jason's question. With AI driving explosive data center growth, what opportunities are being created for low voltage contractors that didn't exist five years ago? You know, I got that I got asked this question today, and I don't want to say who sent it to me. It was somebody within my day job, and uh they wanted to know what kind of problems are low voltage contractors um having today in today's environment. I'm pretty plugged into the low voltage community. I talk to technicians on a daily basis, I talk to contractors on a daily basis. And I'm telling you right now, data centers is one of those issues. But see, the data center is is it's reshaping, it's reshaping the infrastructure demand. It's not just it's not just more servers, it's changing how the facilities are designed from the ground up. There's a I mentioned the RCDD. If you're gonna start thinking about doing data centers, look up the Bixie DC DC, the data center design consultant. That's a great one. I I took the class. I took the class, the DC DC class. I didn't take the test, but I took the class. And oh my gosh, they went over so much stuff that I didn't know. It's an absolutely amazing class. And now it seems like every AI deployment requires more fiber, more power, and more consolidation. That's why we're talking about, you know, it used to be, okay, well, we went from 12 strands to 24 strands to 48 strands. Now they're talking about 69 12s. Now they're talking about even different types of fiber. They're talking about holocore fiber, multi-core fiber because of AI. So there's a lot of things moving on in the data center environment that's

School Networks For AI And Security

SPEAKER_00 19:56

that requires different skill sets than most people have nowadays. And that's going to really make sure that there's going to be lots of opportunities. Do you want to be in the design side of it? Do you want to be on the installation side of it? Do you want to be on the project management side of it? Speed has become a competitive advantage in this industry. There are some companies out there. There's one, I won't mention any names, but if you send them an email, you'll be lucky if you get a response back from them in a month. That's not the speed at which this industry operates at. Owners aren't asking if projects can be delivered quickly anymore. They're asking how much faster can we build them? How much faster can we build that data center? Right? You know, when you start talking about schedule compression, it's becoming one of the most defining challenges of installing and designing modern data centers. Okay. Accelerated project schedules, they're increasing interest in pre-fab stuff, pre-made copper fiber, copper assemblies, pre-made fiber assemblies, because that stuff's made off site ahead of time, so now you can deploy it faster. But let's be honest here, the biggest bottleneck is still going to be skilled labor. Skilled labor. That's why there's lots of grants and stuff out there to help people with this. Technology isn't just slowing these projects down. It's it's finding the qualified people. Finding the qualified people and finding the people that will show up and will actually do the work. This industry needs technicians faster than we can currently develop them. And that is that's a good thing for somebody coming into this industry because that means you might get paid more than somebody does not. Every employer really needs to invest more heavily in training and retention and career development programs. Next question, Michael from LinkedIn and R. RCDD, a fellow RCD, with AI-driven design tools becoming more capable. How often do you see the role of the ICT designer and the RCDDs changing over the next five years? And what skills become more valuable as those routine tasks become automated? Yeah, automated. So AI can absolutely help you produce their drawings faster, but owners still need someone who understands the business goals. What are the risks? Is this being done in January? Are the roads going to be frozen over? Right? What are the operational requirements? AI is not there yet. I mean, it's it'll get there, I guess, at some point, but the real value is shifting from producing the documents that help make the clients make better infrastructure decisions. Okay, that's where it really kind of boils down to. So a design may technically meet the requirements when you're using AI, but it's still going to fail the support for the long-term operational goals for the customer. ICT consultants and designers, they need to be stronger business consulting and stakeholders with management skills. That's what it boils down to. Um, yes, yes, the AI can do count the number of drops on the print. Yes, the AI can come up with the cable pathways. But again, it's gonna be the person operating it who's gonna understand what's the eventual goals there. Okay. Next question. This is a question from Anthony on Facebook. He's a wireless consultant with 14 years experience. What lessons are contractors learning from early Wi-Fi 7 deployments? And what and where are the owners seeing the biggest return on their investment? I'm gonna be honest, I don't know too many people right now who are designing and deploying Wi-Fi 7. It's out there, I know it. But the good that the successful organizations are gonna focus on the access points, but they're gonna overlook the cabling and the switching requirements. When you're supporting infrastructure, it often determines whether the upgrade is going to deliver what the customer is expecting for a performance. Yes, Wi-Fi 7 gives us higher throughput and new operational capabilities, but the legacy cabling and the network hardware is gonna be the bottlenecks. And how do they interact with each other? Should I get put in Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6A, Cat 8? Right? Should I be doing fiber? Should I be doing OM12,3, OM4, OM5? Should I put it in single mode? The designers and the contractors should evaluate the entire ecosystem before deployment. See, people don't they don't compare today's Wi-Fi performance to yesterday's networks, they're comparing it to the best experience that they've ever had. And people become truly impatient when they can't pull up something on their phone. And that's gonna cause a lot of problems.

BIM Adoption And Better Workflows

SPEAKER_00 25:00

A lot of problems. Question number whatever it is, because I lost track. Ryan from LinkedIn. Ryan wants to know how smart, how are smart buildings projects changing relationships between the ICD contractors, the building automation system providers, the security integrators, and the AV teams. I mentioned earlier about convergence. It's accelerating, and all these systems that once operated independently are now sharing data. And this gives opportunities, very exciting opportunities because they introduce complexity and we we love putting in hard things. We love putting in you know hard systems and stuff like that, which we got we gotta use our mind to solve issues. But building technologies, they're becoming connected through the IP-based platforms, and owners want greater visibility into building performance and occupancy stuff. And those project teams have to collaborate. So the ownership questions are emerging. Owners are starting to ask, you know, okay, everybody wants integration until something stops working. Then when it stops working, who do you point to to fix that issue? Converge systems, they often involve multiple vendors and stakeholders, but again, it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier. If you have that one person who can manage all those different silos, all those different stacks, that's gonna help solve those problems. Ashley from TikTok, operations manager, wants to know what's the most effective ways you've seen companies attract and retain younger technicians entering into the low voltage industry today. This is a problem for us. This is a problem for us. I've talked to I've talked to HR people, hiring people for all different kinds of companies, and they're all looking for people. They're looking for qualified people, people who show up, right? Chuck, you should check out the Quantum Supremacy by Michael Kaku. Do me a favor, send that to me in a DM because I can't write it down right now. I definitely want to check that out. So, so they're they're looking for people to install these ICT systems, the category radio cabling systems, fiber optic systems. It's the young professionals that that want to understand where today's job can lead tomorrow. It's not the cradle to grave jobs that they were around when I was a young technician, where you went to work for somebody and then you retired from them 40 years later, and then you died, right? Um there's lots of stuff. So workforce shortages are affecting not many regions, but I would say every region. That's why the IBW is really big about putting out, if you watch the social media, they're putting out lots of stuff to try to attract people to come to the industry, the low voltage industry and the electrician industry. Candidates often compare multiple industries when they're making decisions. So they have the luxury now. You know, it's not like, oh, I gotta go do this because that's the only thing in my town. They have opportunities and they're weighing those opportunities.

Converged Systems Need One Vision

SPEAKER_00 28:05

And they're choosing the employers who can demonstrate growth opportunities and those other types of things that make keep make the technicians stay around. It's no longer just, you know, how much money am I gonna make? Am I gonna be able to retire off that? A lot of people in today's environment, they want to know how is this gonna make the world better? You know, our industry, we offer way more technology than people realize, but we also need to do a better job of telling that story, right? And you have you start, you know, talk about the internet. If you want to get young people and young people interested, how does the internet work? How do you, when you get on there and you're watching them YouTube videos, how's that information getting to you? Where's it coming from? What's the medium that it's coming across? And many ICT projects involve those mediums, for example, like wireless, networking, cybersecurity. And many students are unaware of the opportunities within the low voltage career. That's why we really need to get better at going to those high school events, those career events, those career days, and telling people about the low voltage industry. The low voltage industry is not just cabling. Okay, it's security, it's AV, it's building automation, it's uh distributing antenna systems, it's Wi-Fi, it's data centers, it's access control. There's many, many facets to our industry. There's enough for everybody. And we need people because the best training often happens when you hire on those people with a little experience and you mentor them. Mentor them. The knowledge transfer becomes critical as seniors like me start to retire. Uh again, you go back to the old uh Mike Rowe thing, and I saw him do an interview many, many years ago. I say many, many years ago, but three or four years ago. And they said basically for every every ten people who retire from this industry, there's only four people to come to replace them. So we're not even keeping up with the people retiring. And there's more work coming down the pike. More work coming down the pike. You know, get them on, get hire them, go to those local events, go to those career days, get them to come on, and then mentor them, then train them. And then you can start talking about, you know, informal field education. You can start talking about credentialing, sending them to, you know, Bixie classes, FOA classes, light brigade classes. But mentorship is where it's all where it all begins. Okay, last question. This is from Brandon. As more projects adopt pre-fab, where are the teams seeing the biggest gains and what obstacles still need to be solved? That's a great question. Again, prefab is pre-terminated stuff. Pre-terminate copper, pre-terminate fiber optic cabling. And what that does, that takes the heavy load off of the cable guys because they don't have to pull, terminate, and test everything. It comes pre-terminated, comes pre-tested. They literally just drop it in the floor, plug it into the back of a patch panel, plug it into a fiber cassette, and then do a test. That can be done a lot quicker. And when it terminated in a factory setting, that's often going to be a better type of termination because it's in a controlled environment. Most construction sites, there's

AI Data Centers Create New Opportunities

SPEAKER_00 31:27

dust floating around and a bunch of other stuff like that, and that's going to cause a lot of problems.

unknown 31:31

Right?

SPEAKER_00 31:31

And a prefab, that's it's easy. So it's higher quality. And and you also can it also helps with your scheduling. So prefab, the thing about prefab, though, in order for it to be successful, you need to have that reliable information up front. Okay, mistakes discovered on the on the on the back end can do as much damage as just not even doing prefab. You know, that's why I said when you go to measure out your lengths for your for your pre-terminate copper assemblies, pre-terminate fiber trunk assemblies, measure it three times, four times, five times. It's better to be 15 feet too long than 15 inches too short with the pre-terminated trunk assembly. Okay. And that all comes down to the design. And then you need to understand the logistics challenges that are going to remain. The logistics challenges, for example, what is the turnaround time? When you put in that order for that pre-term copper, the pre-term fiber trunk assembly, how fast can that manufacturer get that to you? Not can I get it out the door, but I mean, literally arrive at your door at the office. Because getting it right is still going to require planning. Again, transportation, logistics, are there slowdowns? Are there strikes? Is there weather? Is there shortages? Right now, there's a shortage on fiber because so many data centers are buying up fiber for data centers. We're starting to see some long lead times. I heard somebody say just the other day they had a one-year lead time for a particular type of fiber they were trying to purchase. I get people reaching out to me all the time. Chuck, where can I buy fiber in Florida? Because I live in Florida. Where can I buy it in Florida? Okay. So that all has to be managed. And those expectations have to be communicated to the customer so that way they understand. Make sure they know those delivery schedules.

unknown 33:28

All right.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

So yeah, it's gonna prefab is prefab absolutely has a spot in today's environment, and it's gonna help make it more make you more efficient. But it's also gonna mean you have to you have to manage it more as well. Yeah, manage it more as well. There you go. And let me just check one thing. I had some there we go. Alrighty, so let me see. Robert here says, let me go ahead and put that into this in this thing. I'm transforming from a desk to infrastructure. I hate, I hate desk work. Yes, yes. Yeah, it's funny. People want to aspire to become project managers getting into the office until they realize they got to sit at a desk all day long, especially when you're used to walking around and climbing ladders. The bearded knowledge is in the house. Hey, bearded knowledge, right? What's my take on game changer, Comscope, or Giga Reach cabling? Oh, that's a great question. That's a great question. So the thing I like about Game Changer cable is it caused our industry to think about going outside that box. Right? We were stuck with that 90 meters, 295 feet, 100 meters, 328 feet for the for the channel. Um, and then when in reality, length of cable, it doesn't stop just because of a magic number. It's you know, it's bandwidth, it's conductor size, it's twist rates, it's the quality of the installation. There's a lot of factors that go into it. So game changer got us to think about cabling outside of that 100 meters. And that caused the manufacturers. Well, like you mentioned, Comscope. Levitton has one now too. They're their Paradigm system that goes beyond that 100 meters. So if you're doing stuff like cameras out in the parking lot and you're only doing, you know, 100 meg, you can go some 600 feet, 700 feet. So that's that's the thing I like about Game Changer cable. They got us to think outside that box. And they got the other manufacturers to start producing stuff outside that box. Now, which is better, Game Changer, Compscope, or the Leviton? That's a whole nother conversation. And that's not a conversation that I'm gonna do tonight because I'm already six minutes over on tonight's show. I'm already behind. That's a great question. All righty, so let's go ahead and shut this down. So I hope you learned anything. Remember, submit your questions for next week's show. And until then, everybody, remember knowledge is power.