You're making infrastructure decisions on a system you can't see. It's fast, stable, and invisible. That's the problem.
Underneath it, global capacity is planned years in advance, routes are shaped by geopolitics, and resilience depends on infrastructure you don't control. Max Clark sits down with TS Narayanan, CTIO of EXA Infrastructure, to explain the layer most enterprise buyers never see — and why it quietly determines whether your cloud strategy, your regional expansion, and your infrastructure commitments actually deliver what you paid for. They get into why AI isn't driving the traffic spike everyone assumes, what geopolitical risk actually does to a network route, why adding nodes costs more than buyers expect, and where the real constraint is right now (hint: it's not bandwidth).
If you've ever signed a provider contract without fully understanding what sits underneath it, this is the episode that fills in the gap.
WHAT WE GET INTO
00:00 — The network layer your vendor isn't explaining to you
04:00 — Why capacity is locked in years before you make a decision
09:30 — The AI traffic myth: what's actually growing on the backbone
12:30 — Why your cloud usage growing doesn't mean what you think it does
15:40 — Bandwidth announcements and what they're not telling buyers
17:50 — How traffic patterns are shifting — and what that means for your architecture
20:40 — What hyperscalers are doing to the build equation (and what it means for everyone else)
23:50 — How subsea cable routes get planned and why it's harder than it looks
27:50 — Geopolitical risk is real: what the Mediterranean actually shows
31:30 — Why LATAM and Africa are underserved — and what's finally changing
35:20 — Data sovereignty: what compliance actually requires from your infrastructure
41:00 — Capacity vs. latency: which one should be driving your vendor decision
46:50 — The complexity cost of every node you add
52:30 — What you're actually buying when you buy network capacity
57:30 — Control vs. outsourcing: how buyers are splitting on this decision
1:02:00 — Power is the real constraint. Not bandwidth.
1:08:30 — Why infrastructure is always in upgrade mode and what that costs buyers
1:18:30 — Network as a Service: what it actually means and where it's going
WHAT WE MENTIONED
EXA Infrastructure — https://www.linkedin.com/company/exa-infrastructure/
TeleGeography subsea cable maps — https://www.submarinecablemap.com
GÉANT (European R&D network, referenced in EU connectivity context)
AMS-IX, DE-CIX (European internet exchange points)
IRU (Indefeasible Right of Use) — the long-term capacity lease structure common in subsea contracts
OVH, Hetzner (EU-based cloud providers referenced as demand drivers)
ABOUT TS NARAYANAN
TS Narayanan is the Chief Technology and Information Officer at EXA Infrastructure, one of the largest fiber and subsea backbone networks spanning Europe and North America. He's spent his career across enterprise IT, systems integration, and telecom — which means he's seen infrastructure decisions from both sides: the buyer who has to live with them and the operator who builds and maintains them. That makes him unusually direct about where capacity planning goes wrong and what buyers should have asked before they signed.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ts-narayanan-62b3617/
EXA Infrastructure: https://www.linkedin.com/company/exa-infrastructure/
ABOUT THE SHOW
Signed is the podcast for buyers in a market built for sellers. Host Max Clark, CEO of ITBroker.com, sits down with CIOs, CFOs, operators, and founders who've lived inside real enterprise tech deals.
New episodes weekly at itbroker.com/podcast.
If you're in the middle of a real tech decision and want someone in your corner, book an intro call at itbroker.com.
Buy tech without regret. Follow: @itbrokerdotcom
