Cable Caballero

This case study profiles Forrest Heath III and his company Somos Internet, which is building a vertically-integrated telecommunications infrastructure empire starting in Medellín, Colombia. The key challenge addressed is that traditional telecom incumbents are trapped by legacy architecture and outsource R&D to expensive vendors like Cisco and Huawei, resulting in high costs, locked-in vendor relationships, and inability to innovate. Most challenger ISPs are merely marketing wrappers around existing infrastructure rather than fundamental improvements.

Somos's strategy exemplifies the "Vertical Integrators" approach - leveraging modern technology to rebuild entire infrastructure stacks from scratch while incumbents remain constrained by legacy investments. Instead of using traditional PON (Passive Optical Network) architecture that splits bandwidth and locks in vendors, they're building proprietary solutions. The company has grown to become the third-largest telco in Medellín and expanded into data centers attached to hydroelectric plants, capitalizing on Colombia's cheap power generation. Heath has secured backing from top-tier American VCs for both ventures.

For product managers, this demonstrates how vertical integration can create competitive advantages in seemingly entrenched industries. The key insight is that when incumbents outsource core R&D and become dependent on third-party vendors, startups can gain sustainable advantages by bringing critical capabilities in-house and rebuilding systems with modern technology, even in capital-intensive sectors previously thought immune to disruption.