I’m particularly pleased with what we’ve been able to do in the utility space. So we’ve signed a variety of different private networking deals with utilities, helping them manage their networks more securely providing them with more control, smart metering solutions. And this is a particularly interesting space because they don’t necessarily — utilities don’t necessarily compete against one another. And so a solution that we provide to one utility they can talk about with others. And so we’ve actually seen pretty significant momentum in that space. And I expect that to continue. So if I were to point at one thing, it would be utilities. More broadly I think enterprise is where you’re going to see those 5G use cases emerge. And so we’ve leaned into enterprise while many of our competitors have actually pulled back.
And I believe that positions us well for the future. The challenge, of course, is that there has been a long, I’d call it, hangover from COVID disconnects, particularly in the education space. And so what occurred during COVID is a lot of money flowed from the government into school systems to enable them to connect students, teachers, administrators, remote those — that created a lot of connections for UScellular for the industry as a whole. That funding has dried up. And so what you’ve seen is you see school districts pulling back on some of those connections that they previously had funding for. And so the overall momentum and the trajectory that we’re seeing in the business is attractive, even though the subscriber counts appear challenged because of those edu disconnects.
So getting to the final question that you asked, what’s the metric that we’re going to focus on, the metric I’m focused on is revenue. I expect to see revenue growth in that segment, notwithstanding some of these lower ARPU disconnects, I expect that the IoT revenues that we’re seeing, the private networking that we’re seeing should continue to increase revenue in that space and I’m optimistic that we’re going to be driving that in the coming quarters.
Sergey Dluzhevskiy: Great. My other question is around partnerships and network sharing because I think a number of times, you talked about the company exploring opportunities for more robust partnerships around infrastructure and more specifically, network sharing. Obviously, we see a lot of network sharing deals in Europe, Latin America, in North America, maybe they are not as frequent, but I think Bell and Telus in Canada have a very robust partnership. So my question is if you could provide an update as far as your efforts on that front? And also, more broadly, is there a way for your cellular to better align itself with one of the national providers in the value-enhancing way using network sharing or other partnerships and how you guys look at that going forward?
Laurent Therivel: The interesting thing about network sharing is that it’s a single term that covers an incredibly broad spectrum of possible methods, partnerships, arrangements, whatever you want to call it. Roaming is a form of network sharing. And so clearly, we engage in network sharing partnerships with our roaming partners as do the other carriers. We’re in consistent communication with other folks in the industry to explore alternatives. I’ll go back to comments I’ve made on these calls in the past, which is that I simply don’t think that it makes economic sense to build 4, 5 duplicative 5G or 6G networks in rural America. We feel we have a fantastic set of assets in rural America, whether it’s the spectrum that we own, the network that Mike has built out, the towers that Austin is operating, and we see opportunities to use that in a creative fashion, and so I would go back to some of the comments Austin made about some of the network equipment and network elements that we’re actually offering up to people that co-locate on our towers.
And we have the opportunity to offer shelter space, the generators, we’re even discussing backhaul sharing. Those are elements of network sharing that we’re in the middle of doing, and we’ve actually signed some agreements there. They’re very small, right? It’s on a tower-by-tower basis sometimes. But it’s another way of thinking about network sharing. And so I think the conversations are ongoing. We’re seeing continued interest in, for example, that tower sharing construct. Beyond that, I probably can’t comment on anything specifics here.
Sergey Dluzhevskiy: Got it. And my last question is for Michelle. So obviously, you commented about the A-CAM — on A-CAM program expansion. And it seems you have a positive view of the program. Could you maybe provide more color about what this could mean for TDS going forward. What the implications are — what the implications are for potential revenue and award opportunities under this program going forward.
Michelle Brukwicki: Yes. Thank you, Sergey. Yes, so the A-CAM program is seen as a benefit to TDS Telecom. We’re very excited about this. We’ve been working with the FCC for a long time. On trying to get this enhanced program over the finish line. And so we’re just very pleased that has happened. There are a lot of program details that are still being reviewed. We know the high levels as I mentioned, this program is going to extend the revenue support for an additional 10 years. So the current A-CAM program was scheduled to go through 2028. This will take the revenue support out through 2038. And in exchange for that, though, we have to deliver higher speeds to all of the addresses that are eligible for the A-CAM program. So that means that we have to get speeds of at least 100 megabits down and 20 megabits up.
