TokoTalks aflevering 2 // Joost Farwerck (CEO KPN)

Well, yes, I was a commissioner at the other society, but I have also been here often. It's always nice to be back. I just find it suspiciously nice smelling. You could still smell ammonia, but that's not the case. It's clean here. Naturally, we couldn't come here for a year, unfortunately, but that does allow us to do things like this. So that's actually a nice side effect in the sense of the miserable time we are in now.

Well, I don't know exactly how it is now, but at least in the 80s, it was a bit after the squatting riots, and it was also a time when many people didn't become members of student associations. Yes, so you could still see that in student life and at the society. And I think nowadays it's all a bit different. When I look at how we walked around, and if I go to a reunion dinner of my fraternity, nowadays everyone is dressed sharply in suits. We used to walk around in efficiency house clothes, dog, or just whatever fancy. Nowadays, I think...

Well, that is... yes, I came from the Gooi, and the scene was the purveyor to the AC and still is. Oh, they are so... so I knew people from many fraternities. And yes, Thalia was a bit of a peculiar club, with a certain reputation, but I found them charming. What for my reputation? Yes, you could say 'rough exterior, soft interior'. Okay, but that's what it was. I thought it was a nice club, and a tough committee. Yes, for us, that was of course great fun. I ran as first, we did all kinds of things on the recruitment. So we did a lot, and I was also president of Thalia, and it was just a fun time. We did a lot of things with many different people, and at the right time, the committee. That was a beautiful year with a very nice group of people. We were eight, of course, and we still see each other.

Well, it's a series of highlights, but I especially enjoyed that you spoke to many different people from all the fraternities and got to know them, and also made friends. I always thought a bit of a disadvantage of the Amsterdam fraternity system is that it's somewhat isolated; everyone is very much in their own fraternity. And by spending a year manning the recruitment table, you make friends throughout the entire society. So that was one of the nicer things about it. But for the rest, yes, every evening was a party, and you also had to be careful. You learned to take responsibility. Yes, no crazy things could happen, but still, safety and a bit of entrepreneurship, the finances had to be in order, so there was some responsibility.

Yes, I had an internship at a law firm, Spankracht, and okay, that was probably not for me. So everyone was applying to big companies, and not KPN, because that was still a state-owned company, just privatized. But a friend of mine, who was also a roommate, went to work at KPN, so I looked into it and found it interesting. So I went to talk to them, not with the intention of working there for my whole life until now, but that's how it happened. But it became very interesting. I was just about to say: from internship in 1993 to now CEO. Yes, that's quite a ladder, you could say. And what I found especially interesting was that when I started working there, no one had ever sent an email, no one had a mobile phone, and I even believe that almost no one had a computer. When I studied, at the law firm where I interned, there were no computers. You had to dictate to a secretary. And now, everyone has a super fast computer in their pocket, you are reachable all day, and you have all the information. That has changed the whole world, and it has become a huge booming business, but also very interesting. So I found it fascinating.

Yes, it has been a very interesting 20 years, and it has changed all of us and the whole of humanity and society, and that is why it is very fascinating.

No, I'm not focused on being sexy. It's not my top priority to be sexy, but I think that comes. We have a very large company with many parts. For example, we have twelve hundred technicians, many service center agents, so there are very operational parts, and that is often less sexy. But we also have marketing and sales in Amsterdam, a huge office with more than 2000 people, and they are commercial. So if you talk about sexy, maybe not, but it's quite sexy. Yes, there are also parts that are men laying cables, connecting houses. And we have, out of those twelve hundred technicians, one woman. So that is a bit more traditional.

So it's what you do all by yourself? Yes, all the way to the top? No, of course you do that with a good team, and a whole structure underneath. But it changes every time, so you also want to change and adapt. Nowadays, it's especially important that people have their own freedom and can develop themselves in their company. And you also make people aware that everything they do is their own choice. So it's less top-down, with the boss saying how it should be. We want everyone to have the freedom to develop themselves.

I think that at many companies, there has already been a big change, and ultimately you always need management, of course, but giving people freedom is important.

Yes, goodness, if you are in the spotlight or if you do something relevant, you can get a lot of criticism. But I'm not so concerned with that. But it is true that we are very important for Dutch society. Take the pandemic, when it started at the end of February, I was quite worried because all of the Netherlands started working from home. That meant that our broadband connections had to support all those workplaces going into homes. And I wouldn't have dared to dream beforehand that it would go well, but we now have such good networks that we can handle it so well remotely that all of the Netherlands works from home over our network. Yes, that is quite nice.

Yes, yes, KPN, and we are very proud of that, is always in the top 3 of the most sustainable telecom companies in the world. We have been working on it for years, and it is very important to us because it becomes part of our identity. Our employees like it, and it also attracts a certain type of shareholders who value it. So it eventually also makes financial sense. So we do a lot in circularity, it's a trending topic nowadays. Yes, that's why we rank very high in the Real Red Ranking. Everything we do, we take back into the country and put back into the world. New modems we send to customers, we take back, everything is recyclable. We no longer work with suppliers who don't cooperate. We have reduced a lot of energy consumption. Sustainability: we want to be 100% circular in 5 years. We want everyone to have electric cars. So this is a very important theme for us.

Why? It is relatively young and clean, so your budget is quickly... I think that trend will certainly continue. It is also necessary because the world is in a bad state, and most people are aware of that. But sustainability is not only about climate, but also about having a good reflection of society in your company. So not just the old men with a briefcase, but really all of the Netherlands. You have to see that when you look at your colleagues.

Yes, it's not a strategic spearhead, because that goes more towards harder objectives, but it is very important because it is woven into everything we do. So it is now very much in the culture of the company. So for us, it is very normal to look at cultural background and gender when hiring people. And we are doing that now at the top of the company. It's going well, but it can always be better. And we have just decided to also hire a few hundred extra people who are somewhat disconnected from society and cannot work independently, because we think we can play an important role. There is a project in Amsterdam that is going well, it was a pilot but we are now scaling up. We have withdrawn from the whole world and only operate in the Netherlands, and we invest a lot in the Netherlands. We are a very healthy company and invest about a billion euros per year in the Netherlands. So such a company wants to do more than just make money; it wants to give back to society. Yes, we are working on that.

Yes, look, there are always people with opinions. I was personally sued by a group of people who wanted me to personally declare that 5G is not harmful. That is a group that is also involved in other protests. But you shouldn't laugh, we take it seriously. But we simply join international research and follow the government's policy. They have set strict rules, and we stay well within them. The government has also done many tests and measurements, and it appears that we and other providers in the Netherlands adhere very strictly to all the rules. And yes, that's what you can do. Ultimately, there are always people who get excited about things. And it is my personal goal to explain as well as possible why we do things, and not to dismiss them arrogantly.

Yes, that is also partly the government. Certainly, look, a few years ago, the Americans were looking at how the world would look in two or three years in Europe, and eight years ago we saw that happening mainly in China. So I have been to China many times and learned a lot. And we, like all other telecom companies in Europe, have also bought Chinese network elements. Five years ago, I couldn't have imagined that I would end up in discussions about espionage and such. There are actually two things going on: a kind of race in the world about who takes the lead in a new technological development, and China is ahead, so that is being slowed down. On the other hand, people are also worried about foreign powers spying, not only China. That is the new world we are in. So we have to take that into account. We talk about it with the government, follow the policy, and have good consultations. I think we are well equipped to follow that.

I find the whole work fun. Yes, because most of my work is problems. If I sat around waiting for fun things all day, you shouldn't become the CEO of a large company. So we are all in this time, and you have to unravel things and find solutions with others, and try to make a step and grow. And yes, a bit of headwind now and then also makes it interesting.

Well, I see it this way: I'm thinking to myself what is less fun. It is a job where you are never off, it always continues. It's not like I switch off, I'm on vacation, so you are busy with it every day. But I have always been like that, so maybe it's also the kind of person you are to do such a job. Then what does your wife think of that, that you always have to be on?

Yes, she stood next to me having a drink, and I always throw a drip tray over... passion, leads a group with sexual fire, fell in love? Yes, so we have been together since then. No, no, those years, she also works hard, but I can combine it well.

Well, look, they always react very enthusiastically, they would never tell you if they didn't like something. But I think what people appreciate is that I am fairly myself and transparent, and I try to speak in normal language, with little English jargon. And yes, just be normal, and I really try to make contact with people. That works well. But I can also be quite critical and passionate in discussions, and I am aware that I can confront people quite a bit, and they react much less enthusiastically to that.

Yes, maybe, or maybe already before that at Thalia, or in my youth, I think, to assert myself against my brothers. But yes, so that's a bit of a mark, you have to watch out.

Yes, always. You have 2G, then 3, 4, and 5, so undoubtedly 6 and 7G will come. Are you already working on that? No, we are now looking at 5G, and that will bring a lot in the coming years. It is very different from 4G, which was really a super-fast carpet rolled out over the Netherlands, allowing you to download and upload a lot. But 5G is really about connecting things, especially in industry, making processes much easier. How can I visualize that? Is it more like large-scale tapping? Well, we are working on building a 5G network in the port of Rotterdam for Shell, making an entire industrial process much easier to operate remotely with drones, no more people needed to do inspections in dangerous places. That all happens via 5G. Its characteristic is that it has no latency. So we also have a car that is blindfolded, and you wear goggles, and someone else drives the car, but you actually control it yourself from a control room far away. Because there is no latency, it works. You don't feel anything, but it's a fun demo. And we are working with agriculture to monitor crops better via 5G solutions, all in real-time, processed so farmers can decide how to manage their crops. But that's all just the beginning. Actually, I haven't seen anywhere in the world that it has made a lot of money yet, but you can do very nice things with it, so it will be exciting in the coming years.

Well, that has become a very large and important part of our business operations. In 2012, we discovered that we were hacked. And then I was allowed to manage the crisis. Eventually, someone else had, as a joke, put customer data of KPN on the internet, but that came from a site of a baby... or something like that, so it couldn't be from us. But we thought our customer data was leaked, and we also saw traces of hackers in our systems. So I impulsively decided to shut down all broadband connections for all our customers: two and a half million. If we knew by evening how it was, we would open them up. But it turned out to take two weeks to close off, and opening takes time. Anyway, long story, but hacking is something we deal with daily. I think we have five to ten thousand attempts per day to get into our systems. And we have all kinds of systems that monitor, they alarm you if someone tries. We have a large Security Operations Center with people behind screens doing smart things, but also a lot of software to protect. And we do that for our customers as well. Daily, parties are hacked. There is currently a big hack, not at us but at another party in the Netherlands. I can't say more because it's secret. But in general, parties cooperate closely when there is a serious threat. Daily, companies and people are hacked, but those are small incidents. And there is good cooperation between telecom companies, service providers, internet service providers, and the government. I am also on the Cyber Security Council with the government, science, and businesses, and we advise the government on how to improve. This is something that will never go away, it's the new world. And there is a lot to do. You see a lot coming from certain countries, so that is also interesting to see. But also from the Netherlands itself. Ultimately, the big hack we had was a minor boy from Barendrecht who did it from his bedroom, going through our systems. That was about ten years ago. So it's quite clever, but also very disturbing that it is possible. Yes, so it can be anything, and you have to defend against it. So we have built incredible protective walls, and it is a daily race.

Yes, that's a tough question. I think, when it comes to the association, have a lot of fun, it has everything to offer, and don't take it too seriously. I had a lot of fun, it's a big theater. And there are people who take it more seriously. Try to get everything out of the time you have now. And life cannot be planned, so try to live consciously. That's what I try to do. Enjoy today, you never know what you'll face in five years. So it's not later, it's now. Okay.