31 October 2024 | London, UK

This article was originally published by Neal Doran of TelcoTitans on 30 October 2024. Read the full article here.

Boldyn Networks’ Group CEO Igor Leprince is clearly a man on a mission.

Talking to TelcoTitans, Leprince reflects on a journey that saw him reach the heights of established global vendors before stepping in to release the full potential of modern networks to transform lives and organisations worldwide through the spectrum of operations that are today’s Boldyn Networks.

Change comes from within, and Leprince is moulding Boldyn to think differently about the purpose of connectivity, tailoring his own philosophy into a people-focused culture and establishing a business ambition focused on the long game.

Leprince sees the role of his neutral host venture as binding together the fabric of industry and communities — and supporting mainstream operators too. He just needs your trust.

As CEO of a global network connectivity business, Igor Leprince of Boldyn Networks is well travelled, and his mind turns to opportunities for change even as he waits in airport lounges or at baggage carousels. “You just look at the inefficiency everywhere: a plane arrives — there is nothing to bring it to the stand to offload the luggage”, he remarks, “you can really start to see how we at Boldyn could make a difference, and that’s exciting”.

Throughout his conversation with TelcoTitans — where even making sure the video call was recording properly was jokingly framed as a chance “to do something useful” — Leprince radiates enthusiasm for the growing potential of digital connectivity to change the way the world operates. This can also be seen in recent successes that have established Boldyn as a pioneering public-private partner in the Smart Places sector, blazing a trail for the digitalisation of cities and industries that are striving to embrace intelligent network infrastructure not to just innovate, but also to provide springboards for ongoing economic and social advancement.

The origins of this impulse to identify a problem and start formulating a solution are clear when looking at Leprince’s career origins. “I don’t get to say it often, but I’m actually proud to be an engineer”, he says “and I still think like one”.

As an engineer, Leprince has walked the walk and indeed designed and optimised sites, performed drive tests or climbed the towers for line-of-sight assessments. He knows the value of the role, although he’s unlikely to be seen at the top of a mast again soon, “I have a bit of a fear of heights, so it’s certainly not my preference…”.

Another personal trait explains his preference for a role in leadership: “for an engineer, I always had a lot more interest in people than technology”, he says.

These characteristics provide a throughline for Leprince’s career, taking in consultancy, leadership at major vendors, and now the evolution of eight network solution providers unified into the Boldyn Network business. Coupling his engineer’s curiosity with a focus on human-centred outcomes, he is developing a business that is ready and willing to tackle the technological, operational and logistical challenges of becoming “a digitalisation partner, and not just a tech provider” for its customers.

Since deciding at the start of his career that a rigid career path would be too limiting, Leprince set out for an international career. Today residing in the UK, his work has taken him to travel to 80+ countries and live in dozens of them on a wide range of assignments, which have “given me a very broad range of knowledge, experience and perspective”.

Leprince was granted considerable responsibility along a professional path that began at Bouygues Telecom and featured a notable twelve-year stint at Nokia where he started as Global Head of Network Planning and ultimately rose to President of Global Services with a seat at the senior leadership table. He sums up the lessons he has learnt by saying “the journey is the chance to be trusted by people and organisations”.The importance of this trust is at the heart of Leprince’s outlook on building connectivity, and is something he is intent on seeing embedded with the people in Boldyn, its investors, technology partners, and customers. The foundations for this are closely tied to the development of Boldyn Networks as both a business and a brand.

Delivering on connectivity with purpose

In the summer of 2023, the Boldyn Networks brand was introduced to represent the amalgamation of international neutral host provider BAI Communications in the Northern Hemisphere with a raft of network specialists including Mobilitie, Signal Point Systems, Transit Wireless, Vilicom, and ZenFi Networks. Boldyn has since added the Edzcom private networks business and campus connectivity focused Apogee.

When it comes to describing his business, the term ‘neutral host’ fits well but is not among Leprince’s favourites. Partly, it fails to capture the unique breadth of Boldyn, which combines wireline and wireless capabilities to offer a flexible and evolving approach to network and service design worldwide, but also because “it’s a little too bland, a little too cold to describe what we’re trying to do!”.

While happy to highlight Boldyn as a global leader in the neutral host sector, noting “we connect over one billion people”, Leprince’s priority when integrating the units under a single identity has been “taking the many companies under our umbrella and creating a compelling vision for an interconnected future that will improve people’s lives”.

Citing key contract wins with the US Army, municipal authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, and major offshore windfarms, he insists, “it’s not about the number of sites and venues we’ve signed, it’s about human stories: we’re connecting military families in the US; bringing the internet to underserved communities; and making a contribution towards greater sustainability for the future”.

With Boldyn, Leprince is determined that the brand becomes more than just a new badge to attach to the operations brought together, and he has set about building a culture that is imbued with a spirit of trust. This means that the development of the Boldyn brand is intrinsically tied to the development of its people, which reflects Leprince’s considered approach towards establishing a purposeful business.

“We place a lot of emphasis on a strong set of values and having a purpose”, he says, citing Hubert Joly, former CEO of retailer Best Buy and author of The Heart of Business, as one of his key influences. Joly’s book, written in the wake of a dramatic turnaround, helped inspire a philosophy summed up by Leprince as “put people at the centre of the business and watch the magic happen”.

“With the right working environment, we can drive performance and drive success: you can be bold, you can be ambitious, and you can be thoughtful and respectful — and you’re going to end up with better performance out of that. ” — Leprince.

Leprince recognises that it is easy to make broad commitments to a strong corporate culture with a socially conscious purpose that too often amount to “putting up posters in offices, where the writing on the wall has nothing to do with the reality”. In townhall meetings, he has acknowledged this challenge of ensuring that words are reflected in actions. “We really mean it”, he says, “we’re far from perfect, but we are pushing this agenda, and talking about it like this is a way I can be held accountable”.

As Boldyn has developed, it has attracted people from major operators and vendors, and often the message that Leprince finds himself communicating is “what we’re trying not to do”. The shift from a corporate behemoth can be significant and, while Boldyn is far from small, it does foster a more entrepreneurial set‑up and outlook, with greater individual autonomy and responsibility. Leprince shares that he has “spent quite a bit of time myself convincing people that they shouldn’t join, because it’s not for everybody”.

This emerging culture is generating a virtuous cycle, he believes, with current employees proving to be effective advocates for joining the business: “there is nothing more powerful than a person saying ‘You know what? I joined this company: they did what they said they would do, and I’m really enjoying it. You should consider it’.”.

The ongoing education of an aspiring disruptor

Leprince is closely engaged with the ongoing development of the culture at Boldyn, with activities that range from weekly blog posts and internal podcasts to sharing experiences through channels such as the company’s advanced leadership programmes and LinkedIn.

Leprince jokes that he “bores the company every week with a blog”, sharing insights from his personal activity, reading and studying. “I don’t ‘just’ do it to bore them”, he explains, “but because there’s a lot going on far away from our industry where there are valuable lessons to be learnt, whether on culture or disruption or innovation, and we can take inspiration from that”.

“There are different companies that have completely changed their market: Netflix is a good example; Airbnb is another one. I look at a lot of the disruptors and companies that have done things differently as an inspiration, either for leadership and culture implementation at Boldyn or just to see how  they managed to convince their sector that change, while it might be difficult, is also essential. And this is what we’re trying to do. ” — Leprince.

Focused on technology’s purpose: from remotest windfarms to deepest tunnels

Leprince also sees the focus on Boldyn’s brand as having value when considering its approach to technology, helping ensure it is not tied down to any individual solution, and with the need that is driving the network deployment trumping the method of delivery — “because we are focused on our purpose and brand, it will help us to be more than a neutral host in the future”.

Today, delivering effective networks depends on understanding both the technological demands and the day-to-day needs and obligations of the customers and partners that Boldyn is working with. Leprince references projects underway with major transit systems worldwide, including Transport for London (TfL), the New York Subway (MTA), and Roma Capitale. These are telling examples of the need to manage multidimensional complexity when providing neutral host networks, he says. The London and Rome partnerships also fit within wider city agreements.

“Transport systems are a complex, difficult environment, and not just because they are old, spread‑out, and have tunnels. We also have to recognise that a transport authority’s priorities, quite rightly, are running trains or running buses, not delivering connectivity. That’s why they have us. ” – Leprince.

To truly deliver on this kind of public-private partnership, Leprince considers that recognising “the bigger goal” — and working together to develop a business case that underlines the benefits that connectivity will bring to the city and its citizens — can be as important as the technical rollout specifics. Again, trust is critical, particularly as the municipal authorities have ‘skin in the game’. “It’s their assets on the line, and we need to prove connectivity is a critical investment”, says Leprince.

“With transport systems, there is operational complexity. There is deployment complexity. There is also partnership and collaborative complexity. We find this quite exciting and it is where our strengths make us stand out in the market. I think we’ve been able to win these public transit contracts because we have a track record and a credibility based on what we’ve done before. I don’t think we would have won TfL if we had not done that in Toronto, in New York, for example. The secret sauce is ‘we’ve been doing it’. ” — Leprince.

Private networks as gamechanger

As well as classic neutral host solutions, Leprince sees areas such as private networks providing opportunities, and Boldyn has invested not only organically but also through acquisition of assets from Cellnex to support expansion on this front. This scope of capability ties in with Boldyn’s prioritisation of outcomes, rather than technological inputs.

“Private networks is an exciting area for us: it’s new, it’s disruptive, and it fits our positioning with a flexible business model and a technology agnostic portfolio where we are not stuck trying to sell a specific technical solution. ” — Leprince.

Boldyn’s focus on developing long term trusted relationships and bringing its connectivity experience to a range of new industry verticals is also expected to be powered by its embrace of private networks’ potential.

“What excites us is applying all the expertise that we have into places we aren’t today. For a lot of industrial customer problems — for example, asset management, worker safety and critical operations communication in areas such as mining and energy — you can really start to see with private networks the use cases that can make a meaningful difference. ” — Leprince.

The Port of Blyth in Northumberland is an example of how Leprince sees this area evolving for Boldyn. The company is providing a 5G private network for the site, backed by local authority funding, which will also act as a testbed for smart manufacturing technology in a live setting (Blyth is a centre of excellence for offshore renewable energy, and becoming a major data centre location). Boldyn has followed this up with another 5G private network collaboration with West Sussex County Council, where the technology is supporting agri‑tech opportunities that Boldyn thinks can be replicated across the UK.

“Private networks now are real: we’ve shown that. We’ve moved beyond proof of concept and pilots: a customer might deploy a private network in one part of their business, see the impact, and then the platform expands even further. This can move quickly. ” — Leprince.

Beyond the hype, Leprince tags AI as key enabling tool

When it comes to today’s highest profile area of technology innovation, AI, Leprince is a realist.

Neither buying into the hype that may be reaching a crescendo, nor under‑appreciating the significance of potential applications, he recalls “I read my first book on AI in 1989”, and notes that the telecoms sector has been incorporating machine learning and other AI into operations for more than a decade. Going forward, he considers that the new generation of AI will be critical as running a complex network more efficiently will hinge on automation.

“If you want to have the sort of quality of network that we are offering, you need AI enabled automation. The amount of data you’re dealing with and the need for cybersecurity make it critical, and we want to be at the forefront of this in our own systems. If you talk to engineers in our Networks Operation Centre, they’ll tell you we’ve been applying it for years. So, is it new? No. Is it as exciting as ever? Yes, and as a technology it’s improving every day. ” — Leprince.

For Leprince and Boldyn, perhaps the most exciting development surrounding AI is the turboboost it is providing to development and expansion of the world’s digital infrastructure, opening up new opportunities for the business. “Infrastructure will become even more important than it is today: there’ll be greater need for fibre, greater need for connectivity, and we’re watching that as a potential opportunity”, he says.

The value of investors with trust in a long-term vision

Leprince highlights the faith placed in Boldyn Networks by its principal investor, CPP Investments, as fundamental to its ability to undertake a long-term, purpose-driven strategy.

Projects undertaken by Boldyn can be complex, with extended investment horizons. Leprince highlights CPP’s deep understanding of infrastructure development, including the rare ability to consider ‘a quarter’ in the long term of a century, as 25 years, not the short-term three month stretches that many are accustomed to. “This trust of our shareholders and their alignment to the long-term investment, and long- term projects, is a big part of what we’re doing”, he says.

Long-term investor trust also enables Boldyn to show patience, and to progress at a pace that suits customers. “We can go at the speed that our customers want to go”, explains Leprince, “because it’s not like we’ve made an investment where we need to make a return in two or three years, and ultimately we know we can deliver the operational efficiencies they are looking for”. Major transit and municipal digital infrastructure are an example, with the TfL relationship in London committed for at least 20 years, and Boldyn fronting the £1bn-plus initial funding.

Leprince sees value in his company’s strategy for other network operators wrestling with their own investment pressures. Financial constraints across both capital and operational spending, and expectations to be met on sustainability, present an opening for a neutral host player that can help solving industry challenges, and to not just be a competitor. “A neutral host player like Boldyn is really creating what the market needs right now, first and foremost”, Leprince says, “operators need a partner that can support agility, has the ability to share, and can invest, because they cannot do it all themselves”. Boldyn is already fulfilling this role internationally in areas such as 5G densification, private and transit networks, arenas and other smart places, where it provides neutral host partnerships to mobile network operators.

Playing it forward by ‘doing the difficult things’

While Leprince is willing to be patient in leading customers and partners to grasp the potential of an environment where more prevalent wireless connectivity enables not only greater efficiency, but also new and innovative services, he admits he can get carried away when, just like at the airport baggage collection, he envisages that “more and more use cases will open up that can make a difference, and that we know how to run and deliver”.

This excitement is calibrated by awareness of the complexity that can be inherent in projects with Boldyn’s customers, with Leprince’s engineering instincts again also coming to the fore: “we’re successful not because we’re doing ‘new things’; we’re successful because we are doing things that are difficult, and ultimately solving problems for our customers”.

While cheerfully acknowledging that this TelcoTitans profile on his philosophy and ambition for Boldyn “might be slightly uncomfortable for me to read”, presumably due to bearing his leadership soul, Leprince’s enthusiasm for the mission and determination to get out the message of the Boldyn purpose overcame any hesitancy.

From keeping an eye on the vagaries of conference call recordings to sharing the knowledge with employees and embracing the end goals of customers and society where connectivity is just one element of broader challenges, Leprince is making it his mission, and Boldyn’s, to step up and make a difference.

“I’m excited about the future: excited about the difference we can make to our customers and the community; excited about building the best company and environment for our people. For me, that’s what it’s all about.” — Leprince.