Nilay Patel

And I wanted to know how Gary was managing his investment and pushing that technology forward, and whether he was thinking about the next kind of technology that might disrupt it. I also wanted to know about Ciena's customers. There are only so many companies building deep-sea cables and giant data centers.

And it won't surprise you that Ciena's customers have largely shifted from telecom providers and ISPs to giant cloud companies like Meta and Google and Microsoft over the past few years. In fact, just a few months ago, Meta announced it would pay $10 billion to build its own exclusive subsea cable stretching nearly 25,000 miles.

And it won't surprise you that Ciena's customers have largely shifted from telecom providers and ISPs to giant cloud companies like Meta and Google and Microsoft over the past few years. In fact, just a few months ago, Meta announced it would pay $10 billion to build its own exclusive subsea cable stretching nearly 25,000 miles.

And it won't surprise you that Ciena's customers have largely shifted from telecom providers and ISPs to giant cloud companies like Meta and Google and Microsoft over the past few years. In fact, just a few months ago, Meta announced it would pay $10 billion to build its own exclusive subsea cable stretching nearly 25,000 miles.

CNS sits right in the middle of that complicated relationship between industry and infrastructure, and I think you'll find Gary's perspective to be pretty unique. And of course, that led us to talk about the fracturing state of the internet itself, and what it means that people in different countries, depending on different levels of government control, experience the internet differently.

CNS sits right in the middle of that complicated relationship between industry and infrastructure, and I think you'll find Gary's perspective to be pretty unique. And of course, that led us to talk about the fracturing state of the internet itself, and what it means that people in different countries, depending on different levels of government control, experience the internet differently.

CNS sits right in the middle of that complicated relationship between industry and infrastructure, and I think you'll find Gary's perspective to be pretty unique. And of course, that led us to talk about the fracturing state of the internet itself, and what it means that people in different countries, depending on different levels of government control, experience the internet differently.

Connecting cables that structure across continents means people on the other ends of those cables might have very different ideas about the internet. And Ciena has to take that all into account. See, I'm guessing you didn't know about Ciena before, but almost every single decoder idea is right here, sitting on the backbone of the internet. Okay, Gary Smith, CEO of Ciena. Here we go.

Connecting cables that structure across continents means people on the other ends of those cables might have very different ideas about the internet. And Ciena has to take that all into account. See, I'm guessing you didn't know about Ciena before, but almost every single decoder idea is right here, sitting on the backbone of the internet. Okay, Gary Smith, CEO of Ciena. Here we go.

Connecting cables that structure across continents means people on the other ends of those cables might have very different ideas about the internet. And Ciena has to take that all into account. See, I'm guessing you didn't know about Ciena before, but almost every single decoder idea is right here, sitting on the backbone of the internet. Okay, Gary Smith, CEO of Ciena. Here we go.

Gary Smith, you're the CEO of Ciena. Welcome to Decoder.

Gary Smith, you're the CEO of Ciena. Welcome to Decoder.

Gary Smith, you're the CEO of Ciena. Welcome to Decoder.

I am very excited to talk to you. The Decoder team and I were talking earlier. We love stories of hidden companies that run the world, and Ciena very much feels like one of those companies. It is a huge player in networking. It's a huge player in the future of our networks. There's some AI to talk about. There's undersea cables to talk about, which is always fun.

I am very excited to talk to you. The Decoder team and I were talking earlier. We love stories of hidden companies that run the world, and Ciena very much feels like one of those companies. It is a huge player in networking. It's a huge player in the future of our networks. There's some AI to talk about. There's undersea cables to talk about, which is always fun.

I am very excited to talk to you. The Decoder team and I were talking earlier. We love stories of hidden companies that run the world, and Ciena very much feels like one of those companies. It is a huge player in networking. It's a huge player in the future of our networks. There's some AI to talk about. There's undersea cables to talk about, which is always fun.

Quickly for everyone, describe what Ciena is and what it is you do.

Quickly for everyone, describe what Ciena is and what it is you do.

Quickly for everyone, describe what Ciena is and what it is you do.

I always think about it as two internets, right? There's the internet we experience, the digital internet, and then there's the very physical internet, the actual cables and wires that connect our networks together, that connect us together. That is Ciena's business, right? Running these cables, figuring out how to move data across them more quickly, figuring out how to move more data across them.