Sharon Vollman, VP/Editorial Director, OSP® magazine: Your biography is quite impressive, Bob. With such a wealth of experiences, I think it’s important that OSP®’s readers learn about you as a person so they can understand how your value system supports your management philosophy. So, I’d like to begin by asking you about the stuff that really matters when it comes to work and life balance? In this economy what is the most important for us, as professionals, to keep in mind?

Bob Tregemba, Executive Vice President, Network Operations, Qwest Communications: A couple of things come to mind right away. In our company, we are trying to blend legacy networks and transition into newer applications and the newer forms of technology. That means we have to keep the legacy networks in very good order. We’ve built super reliability in those for 150 years. As we make the transition into the newer forms of technology, we must make sure the base platforms are in place to deliver that same network reliability on an ongoing basis in the future. It is an important requirement and a huge challenge for us.

OSP: I bet. BT: The challenge is the “toy department” of new things people would like to have in today’s high tech world. They want “this and that and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing”, but it’s absolutely critical that the fundamental pipe we use to bring them those toys have a high-speed presence in the home or office on a terrestrial basis. This is imperative to deliver the kind of reliability we want, need, and expect on a going forward basis. So, that continues to be a really big challenge for us, trying to upgrade the legacy systems one step at a time. Sometimes we can take a complete jump but most of the time it’s still a progressive kind of evolution.

OSP: That leads to my next question. What keeps you up at night? BT: The answer to that one, Sharon, is nothing.

OSP: Really? BT: There are several reasons why that’s the case. The first is that we’ve demonstrated over time that we have a reliable platform, in general. I mean, we’re not perfect. Mistakes are made from time to time. Everyone who works with mechanical or electrical pieces of equipment knows failures are going to happen. That said, we do practice reliability exercises and disaster recovery exercises on a regular basis. That is part of our DNA.

The second reason why I don’t let things keep me up at night is all about the people. When you surround yourself with a team of people who are very capable, you must let them do their jobs. You know they’ve been tested under fire and hurricanes and tornadoes and rains and floods and whatever else. When you have that core team of strong capable people, you must let them do what they do well.

OSP: Obviously you’ve had a lot of executive-level positions and I admire that. The transitions you’ve led people through are daunting, to say the least. With all of those experiences, what wisdom have you gained over the years that you wish you had possessed early on in your career? BT: I think the answer to that is that you can’t always know what you don’t know. So, by gaining experience, wisdom comes with time. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. Some wisdom can be gained only through the experiences that you face and the cumulative background you bring with you as you progress through your career.

OSP: So true. BT: When I entered this business as a young manager, for example, no one had ever lied to me. I grew up in a little bitty town in Kansas. When that first person in my business career told me a fabrication, I was stunned! I thought, “What do you mean? My family and friends didn’t lie to me. Now I’ve actually found somebody who will lie to me?”

That is a watershed moment in your management career, when you run across the first person you can’t trust. Then you kinda take it, and you build on it. You naturally go through a period of skepticism, then you examine things a little bit closer. Still, that moment helps determine your position about how you’re going to deal with your colleagues throughout your career.

I decided quickly that I have a basic trust in people. I believe most people I work with are really, really good people and want to tell you the way it is. They want to work just as hard as you do to put the customer first. That’s led me to the belief that your peers are the ones who make you successful.

OSP: That’s a beautiful statement. BT: It isn’t your boss pulling you up. It isn’t self-promotion. You see, most people can get to a mid-level position in any company just on sheer intelligence. But you can’t ever take the next step unless you have the ability to work with people, to lead people, and to share as an equal partner and deliver on your promises.

I’ve always believed that, and so I have had a lot of people help me enjoy an incredible career. I’ve had 16 years in the Bell System, post-divestiture. I spent a little bit of time with AT&T. I listened to a recruiter back in the mid-1980s after the Bell System divested, and went to Sprint and helped that company start their fiber optic network.

Your readers will relate to the challenges of making the transition from being a construction company and then migrating to an operating company that allows you to service and use that infrastructure that you just spent several years of your life constructing. You have to find a way to make that transition to something that actually generates revenue and can sustain the company over time. That was my charge during the seven or eight years I spent with Sprint.

Then I came to Qwest in 1996 when we were just beginning to construct the infrastructure we have today.

OSP: You’ve been in this position since June 2007. How has it changed over the last several years? BT: Over the last four or five years, the speed and the complexity of the issues surrounding the evolution of the network continue to amaze me in terms of how quickly the changes occur. Just the sheer growth of the IP generated by (the social networking sites) YouTube and Facebook and Twitter will take your breath away, if you let it. The trick is to place infrastructure in the background that allows it all to happen as seamlessly today as it does.

OSP: Which is amazing when you think about it. BT: It is really unbelievable, because of the complexity of the lab testing necessary and the standards work that must be done. My hat goes off to the people in the industry who determine what really has to be done at that level to allow it to integrate with that which is already in place.

OSP: Speaking of network evolution, let’s discuss convergence in the wireline and wireless networks. Tell me your reaction to the idea that successful providers must have wireless to compete in this environment. BT: This is a sweet-spot request and clearly one we plan to embrace. Since Qwest doesn’t have a pure wireless play of our own infrastructure, we partnered with Verizon Wireless because we are committed to working with the best partners in the industry.

We also have numerous opportunities with such a partnership. You see, the wireless guys, bless their hearts, like to move as quickly as they can. And every wireline provider needs to understand that and make that a part of their business. With wireless providers’ progression to 3G, 4G, and future networks, the capacity requirements are much easier to deliver terrestrially across a fiber footprint, and even in some cases across a copper footprint. We’re going to be right there to give our wireless friends the capacity they are going to need to satisfy the demands.

The problem we’ve got is with the growth in IP, people underestimate the infrastructure requirements. People still don’t get The Last Mile pieces of the puzzle or all the different things that physically connect us. Provisioning advanced wireless services means they still have to get to the ground and get to the node, and get around the globe and back.

OSP: Exactly! In fact, I’m going to jump over to a question about collaboration with other providers.

Internationally, providers are beginning to work together to face their competitors. Recently, two Swedish operators have announced their intentions to launch commercial LTE networks in 2010 as a joint venture. This follows on the heels of the TeliaSonera’s January 2009 announcement that it will launch two Scandinavian networks, in Oslo and Stockholm, by year end. Sweden enjoys an advantage over its European counterparts in that it and Norway were the first to auction off their 2.6 GHz 4G licenses. The top three carriers in Sweden are taking advantage of that head start to bring their LTE networks to market quickly.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Tele2 and Telenor’s plans is the joint venture. The two companies are mitigating the costs of a 4G rollout by sharing spectrum and infrastructure - a trend that’s becoming quite common.

Telus and Bell Canada are pooling assets to build a high-speed packet access network, which will eventually become an LTE network. Even Clearwire’s WiMAX network was created in collaboration. Though not officially a joint venture, Clearwire took possession of Sprint’s 4G spectrum and networks in exchange for a substantial ownership stake.

Do you see this trend of network collaboration and joint ventures as positive for the telecom industry? What are the pros and cons for the vendor community and the end-user? BT: Though we discussed this a little bit already, let’s move to how Qwest is collaborating with Verizon for wireless, with DIRECTV for enhanced TV experiences, and Qwest WiFi is part of AT&T.

In the mid-1990s, we made a decision to sell our wireless assets. Once you make the decision to sell the wireless asset, it would be cost-prohibitive to make the decision to go back into the wireless business. Would it be worth it to put billions of dollars toward being third or fourth in the market? With the T-Mobiles, the Sprints, Verizon, AT&T - could we really think the “Q”-brand could jump right to the front because we decided to spend a bunch of money?

Instead, we had to figure out where it is that we play in that wireless continuum. And we play, just as we talked about earlier, in the space that says “let’s provide huge amounts of capacity for these folks.” We can do that in our footprint, as well as the transiting across the U.S. in terms of our long haul assets right there in the heart of IP land.

You see, people have a hard time understanding why it’s difficult for the carriers today. They think wireless is a growth business for carriers. But, they forget that we have to provide the assets and the ability to carry the bandwidth needed for all that wireless backhaul.

For example, let’s just take a $25/month high-speed connection. In the last 12 months, every carrier is going to have the same issue, which is a traffic increase of 43 percent.

That means in the cloud behind it, we still get paid $25/month. Yet, we have to be able to let that customer go around the globe searching and doing the uploading and downloading of any IP application they want to. So as carriers, we make the investments that are required, but how can we make up that difference between the investments and the price we’re charging our customers?

Of course, we’re always on the lookout for the technologies to be able to reduce our costs. But still, we find ourselves on that continuum, in terms of the investment, asking if it’s the right time to upgrade this or to make this next function. Then we all have to pick our points along the way where we invest. We’ve chosen a fiber-to-the-node application in many situations.

But nonetheless, our fundamental problem is continuing to have infrastructure everywhere that allows those price points to be competitive. Particularly in today’s economy, you have folks that don’t want to spend $25 a month. They still want the capability, but they want to do something else. So we offer various packages and alternatives that allow customers to do the video thing with DIRECTV, and if high-speed is your thing, we’ll package that.

OSP: That naturally leads me to a question about the erosion in landlines. Do you believe that consumers have less of a need for network reliability than before? BT: If you’re a network person, one of the things that is always a little bit frustrating is when we have a disaster. What is reliable is the landline into the home. Yet, people want to cancel it. During the disaster, we get three days worth of great press about the reliability of our network. So, we go to market with ideas to shore up the home phone line and yet customers say, “What do you mean? I don’t need that. I’ll just use my wireless. It will probably work well enough.”

But it didn’t work during the disaster. And sure, we’ve come a long way in wireless operations, in 911, and in VoIP 911. But truth remains: when you dial from your landline, it goes through with a very high degree of reliability.  But many consumers don’t think that way–until disaster strikes.

OSP: With wireline and wirelss convergence, how has your leading wireline network professionals changed? BT: Leading people through this transition can be difficult. Some feel that if they’re not involved with the part of the business that handles an IP wireless device then they aren’t a part of the critical piece of telecom any longer. But that’s not true.

That’s why it’s important to motivate people to understand why it is we do what we do. Then you have to reinforce that they are still appreciated and what they do matters in telecom’s future. In fact, they are in the grassroots of where it all begins!

OSP: Exactly. Great insight! BT: Allow me to circle back to our collaboration topic with our vendors. Both the vendors and the standards bodies need to determine early on what they are trying to achieve in order to get in front of these new technologies. Both the user community as well as the vendor community need to ask ourselves what makes the most sense now so we don’t have so many stops and starts.

Let’s consider the CDMA/GSM and LTE technologies. If we as an industry can decide on which is our standard, we still have outstanding competition between a variety of vendors, but we could make the industry move forward together. The better we can shape the investment early on and agree on the direction we’re moving, the easier it will be to make that transition and deliver to our customers.

When I meet with vendors, they will inevitably show me a PowerPoint slide that discusses strategic partnerships. I usually stop them right there and say, “I don’t care about strategic partnerships, but what I do care about is Qwest’s ability to be able to make an investment in your company and sustain our company in a better fashion at the same time.” I realize that they need to be able to make a buck, too. So while price is clearly an attribute on our decision matrix, it’s not the only one.

There are so many things that you have to weigh and measure. But bottom line, it’s important for all of us to get in front of the standards process early on so we can move the industry forward in a quicker fashion.

OSP: Speaking of making the right product decisions early on, I can’t help but wonder how you enroll the technicians in the product decision process. They are the ones working with products in the field, right? But, do they have a voice? BT: We have technicians here in Denver who I insist get a chance to come into the lab with their supervisor and actually, physically, work with a product that’s being evaluated. Or we’ll take the product out to the site where we’re thinking about deploying it and see if it works for the technician.

We have a good relationship between the technology people and the operations people.

When you think about it, the engineer will design a fiber distribution panel in a certain way. But, if the technician can’t get his finger in there without bumping something else, the design won’t work. In the past, we may have allowed someone to dream up an idea to save us $10 a unit. But before we’ll buy the product, and before our procurement people and our outside plant product selection people make that decision to change what’s already being used, we ask our technicians to use it. Only then we purchase it.

It works much better because the techs know immediately whether the product will or won’t work. And if we have products that break, we’ve got unhappy customers. And we’ve got an unhappy work force. And to be honest, that’s about as bad a mix as you can get, so we go the extra mile to ensure a good customer experience upfront.

OSP: On a related subject, the organizational chart within Qwest has you leading both the network operations and the technology and engineering side of the business. That isn’t necessarily the way other telecom companies are structured. Do you feel that structure offers you the advantage of seeing a correlation between those two key pieces of the business? In this economic environment, do you feel it offers you a slight competitive advantage, because you’re seeing the forest as well as the trees? BT: I don’t know that it’s because I see how to create better efficiencies. Instead I have strong people in the organization who do see the right things. I have engineers and technology people, who spend time with customers to explain why it is that we came up short somewhere. They see what works and what doesn’t. They’re included because they’re having the dialogue with the customer, along with our operations people who have to deliver it.

With this structure, we’ve got a broader sense about how best to organize what we do. “Do we need to put this piece part a little closer here to this other part?” Instead, we’ve chosen not to move the piece parts around – instead we move the people around. So the people who have had their 20 years in operations now get to be technologists. That’s one of the things we discuss within our organizations. We address succession planning, particularly between our technology organization and our technical support roles, and our network operations and our NOCs, etc. When you do this, it’s amazing what happens!

OSP: I bet there’s more empathy when you have to walk in somebody’s shoes. BT: Exactly. Last week the person who designed the site and made the decisions about the vendor and the next bunch of transport equipment to purchase now gets to be on the operating end. And the guy who was on the operating end now gets to be the person who is in charge of selecting the transport management protocol.

OSP: Indeed, that’s one of the key criteria in keeping an organization vitalized and productive. You have to cross-train and rotate people. BT: And it isn’t easy to sell because people don’t necessarily want to get out of their comfort zone. Three years in one position is ideal. You are in one position for several planning cycles. That means you have to deal with whatever alligators you’ve left in the swamp.

OSP: And you have to wrestle with your own alligators! BT: Yup, they’re there all the time.

OSP: Does Qwest’s structure reduce the difficulties associated with functional silos that can be a natural part of a larger organization? BT: That would be the hope. In our case, we’re fortunate that the maturity of the leadership is strong. We have people who have done these jobs in various settings, in various companies, and have been successful doing them. We’re talking about senior-level people here, so it’s not like they need a lot of babysitting to understand what they’re supposed to do.

This leads me to a theme I am passionate about: diversity. Qwest is strong because of diversity happening on many fronts – not just the traditional EEO diversity, which is an important part of it, of course.

If I look at my team, we have a pretty diverse group of people, but they all have very strong industry backgrounds. Some of them are homegrown from the Bell System days to now, and others have gone out and worked startups and done different kinds of things. So, that diversity brings something valuable to the party.

Diversity is important on the supplier front as well. These are tough times, and so you pick from a suite of vendors that you know can and will be here tomorrow. You have to use vendors that generally have world-class R&D capabilities. Some have specialized niches so they don’t try to be all-things to all people, and these folks are pretty successful with us as suppliers. Others have world-class R&D that we all would expect and that everybody recognizes. We think supplier diversity is the best model.

That doesn’t preclude the little guy, but in this economy we are only willing to take measured risks. Let’s be honest. As we talked about earlier, you still have to deliver the mail every day. It doesn’t matter what else is going on, how shiny the object is that you’re chasing - you still have to deliver that product with great reliability every single day.

OSP: These are strong messages, Bob. Now, let’s allow OSP® ’s readers to know the man behind the title. I’ve been waiting to ask you this next question: “If you hadn’t become what you are today, what might you have done?” BT: What would you guess?

OSP: Well, I saw a cowboy hat in your office. Anything pertaining to a rodeo? BT: Yes. That’s my hobby. I ride cutting horses all the time.* But what I probably would have aspired to be is the head basketball coach at the University of Kansas.

OSP: Good for you! Do you still play basketball? BT: No, I quit. You get to where you can’t keep up with the kids. It’s no fun anymore. Instead, today I ride horses - far more often than my wife would probably care for me to do. I also sing a little bit. My wife and I have done choral groups for years. It’s the thing we do together.

OSP: So, those are the things that recharge you so you can do your job well? BT: It doesn’t matter what level you’re in. Everybody’s got to care about their job. But, they also have to take a step back from their job. They have to be able to turn it off.

OSP: Good point. And that leads me to my last question. If you could offer advice to someone in telecom aspiring to do what you do in the future, what would it be? BT: We may have touched on it in our previous conversation. It’s all about dealing with your peers. You can’t just look up and say “What’s the next thing that I attempt to do?” You’ve got to be able to work with people, and they have to have a certain amount of confidence in your ability to make a decision. Particularly if you’re looking to be in leadership. Our folks have to know that even when I’m thinking about capital, facility costs and expenses, I’ve got them in mind when we’re making decisions.

When we’re properly managing billions of dollars in expense, my peers and teams have to believe that I understand enough about what they’re doing and what they’re faced with every day. I have to understand the challenges, the changes, and their life pressures. Every day they’re not always on their A-game. No one is.

In this job sometimes people take a step up into corporate leadership and forget that people face a lot of stresses, especially right now.

As a leader, I must remember that. So I keep it simple. I ask them to do one thing. When they’re here, when they’re a part of the organization, I ask them to give us the best they’ve got. And, you know what? The rest of that takes care of itself.

*Cutting is an equestrian event in the western riding style where a horse and rider are judged on their ability to separate a calf away from a cattle herd and keep it away for a short period of time. The sport originally evolved from cattle ranches in the American West, where it was the cutting horse’s job to separate cows from the herd for vaccinating, castrating, and sorting. Eventually competitions arose between the best cutting horses and riders in the area. Rules were added, and in 1946 the National Cutting Horse Association was formed, which today is the governing body of the sport. Source: Cutting (sport). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_horses. July 17, 2009.

Bob Tregemba, Executive Vice President, Network Operations, Qwest Communications
As executive vice president of Network Operations, Bob Tregemba leads Qwest’s network operations and technologies organizations. Appointed June 29, 2007, Mr. Tregemba is responsible for network services planning, engineering, field, staff, and center operations, and directs technology strategy development and deployment.

Previously, he served as the company’s vice president of network services, a position he assumed in 2004. In that role, he led 18,500 local and national network operations employees responsible for providing voice, data, and video services, and ensuring network reliability to serve the needs of consumers, businesses, and government agencies.

Mr. Tregemba’s telecommunications career began in 1970 when he was a key player in the operations group at Southwestern Bell. He held several executive positions with Sprint Corporation, including that of vice president of engineering and planning during the company’s transition to a successful long-distance company, and vice president of marketing for the local exchange division. He joined Qwest Communications, prior to its acquisition of US WEST, as executive vice president of engineering and operations.

Mr. Tregemba received a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from Kansas University in 1971 and a Mathematics degree from Baker University in 1970.

What are your thoughts on this discussion? Tell your fellow readers now!