Employee Spotlight: Craig Jackson, Channel Manager – UK

“I’ve never experienced an organization as agile and collaborative as Arelion.”

Expanding our Conflict-Free Channel Program has been a major strategic focus over the past few years, enabling us to serve large enterprise customers that require reliable, high-capacity backbone connectivity. We’ve taken steps to strengthen our global Channel team, with Craig Jackson, Channel Manager – UK, joining us in January 2025. We spoke with Craig to learn more about his background, experience with Arelion’s culture and his focus areas for enabling continued Channel growth in European markets and beyond.

Q: Can you tell us about your background?

I’ve always been curious about technology, so studying computer engineering was a natural progression after high school. I became interested in telecom specifically after my older brother became one of the first people to import mobile phone routers into South Africa. I began my career as a Samsung engineer, then moved into sales because I enjoyed the interpersonal interaction aspect.

I found the sales process fascinating, from identifying a customer’s problem to solving it with a specific technology instead of just pushing blanket solutions. I’ve worked for one of the largest Technology Service Distributors (TSDs) in the UK, supporting and offering multiple leading products to some of the UK’s largest partners.

Q: What does Arelion’s culture look like on the inside?

I’m not saying this just to say it: Arelion’s culture is unreal and unique. Many of my coworkers have been here for decades and genuinely love coming to work every day. While we have our challenges like anywhere else, Arelion’s people truly believe in the mission of enabling global connectivity that spurs technological innovation, job creation, interpersonal communication and more.

By nature, the business is agile and unafraid to pursue every possible solution to our customers’ problems to understand what works and what doesn’t. The open culture here allows us to avoid the hindrances and operational silos of traditional corporate hierarchies. Above all, we’re not rigid. We’re malleable.

Q: What is your day-to-day experience?

Arelion is unique in the telecommunications industry because we’re truly Channel-friendly. Our Conflict-Free Channel Program prevents the usual battle between the Channel and direct sales teams that you typically encounter in traditional telecom sales models.

I work closely with our enterprise sales team to enable our partners to sell a leading service to their customers. There’s an aura of positivity where people enjoy collaborating to solve complex problems, and our leaders are always transparent and available to hear our ideas.

Q: What are the Channel team’s goals? How will you achieve those goals?

Our goal is to foster more trust and engagement with partners and the broader Channel community. We also strive to increase revenue annually through partner growth and supporting our customer base. Education is integral to this mission, allowing us to increase brand awareness by ensuring prospective customers understand our capabilities as the operator of the #1 global Internet backbone.

High-capacity Waves and Ethernet are particularly significant focuses in the UK market, which has traditionally been less Channel-focused than the US market. So, while raising awareness of our services and network footprint in Europe is a key goal, we also see tremendous potential to expand our Channel Program in these markets.

Q: Anything else?

With the rise of AI/ML and other computationally intensive technologies, everyone needs higher bandwidth, lower latency, better access to data centers and more cost-effective, secure connectivity. As AI/ML requires companies to move tremendous volumes of data reliably and quickly, the backbone connectivity piece becomes more essential. Luckily, we’ve been building our network for decades to maximize these qualities.

Beyond our technological expertise, our culture and people are the true drivers enabling us to grow our presence in Europe and beyond. Whilst working in the IT industry over the years, I’ve never experienced an organization as agile and collaborative as Arelion. I’m grateful to join this journey, and I can’t wait to see where we go next.