It took some maneuvering, but Fries and his team successfully acquired 100% of Belgium’s Telenet and its portfolio of nearly 5 million customers. At the same time, Fries struck partnerships designed to use Liberty Global’s networks as a place of innovation. The operator teamed up with Amazon Web Services to create a Network as a Service framework to open its fixed and mobile networks to developers. It also teamed up with CableLabs as part of that program to explore customer frustrations tied to insufficient network performance, security risks and more. Called the Explorer WiFi solution, it promises travelers a private WiFi network for the duration of their stay at a location and allows guests to request performance upgrades as needed.