5G and Smart Cities – What’s Real Today with Conexcity
The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. Today we speak with Chris Smedley, the General Manager of Conexcity which is a wireless integration, small cell service company. Chris helps us understand the issues around dense networks in the New York City metro area. He helps us also understand some of the hype and the reality around 5G and other things for us to think about. We talked a little bit about the impact of COVID-19 on networks perhaps helping municipalities and communities think about the potential of smart cities and their capabilities sooner than later. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
Pete:
Before we learn more about your business, your team is not located at ground zero but pretty close to it in the New York City area. How’s everybody holding up, in your organization and at your customers?
Chris:
Overall doing well. Obviously with the pandemic virus happening in New York City, we’ve had the ability to have everybody, from a business continuity plan, work from home. Everybody’s safe and sound and its business as usual for us, still working very closely with the local government agencies that help us to continue to build this 5G infrastructure within New York City and New Jersey. Everything’s been status quo for now, although, we are getting used to a different work environment with a work from home policy. But other than that, things have been pretty much status quo for us.
Pete:
The industry that we’re in can now be elevated to essential – essential infrastructure, critical capacity and capability. It’s great that you are situated to be able to help the people in the New York City metro area because I can imagine that demand has increased as well as the support and maintenance calls. It has to be challenging to navigate this crisis and support folks remotely, without the ability to send trucks or technicians out to certain places. There are a lot of people in the industry like Conexcity who are doing a great job in figuring it out. What we wanted to talk to you about today though is around 5G.
5G Infrastructure Build Out is Real
Pete:
There’s been a lot of hype around 5G for many years. We’re in the tail end of talking about other kinds of “G”s. What I like to do is cut through that noise and have you help us understand from your perspective. In dealing with the markets that you’re in, what’s the most misunderstood aspect that you see? What should people be thinking about differently around 5G and this wave of technology?
Chris:
A lot of the questions that I get, when I talk to either customers or just people in general, with all this hype around 5G, the biggest question is when is it going to be available? We’re hearing all these things about it and all these capabilities and how it’s going to change lives. The biggest thing is when is it going to be available? That’s the biggest question. We’re in the stages of building the infrastructure at least within New York and New Jersey to be able to deliver that capability. But beyond that people are just very excited about it. Because of all of the marketing hype around it. So, giving a proposed date of when this is going to happen is a little misleading to both the consumer and commercially viable folks who are managing buildings that want all this technology infrastructure within their building structures.
Chris:
That’s the biggest challenge, just understanding when will this be ready, when is this going to be available to us? From a build infrastructure perspective, we’re a little way out. What I hear in a lot of the technology forums is that, “we’re in the first three innings of a nine inning game and we’re going through innings as quickly as we possibly can, without a determined end date”. But I’m going to say, in the near to close future, this should be available to consumers and to other end user folks who will have the capability of enjoying the technology that could possibly change the way people do business, the way people live their lives. I would say we’re in the beginning stages but we’re going through the innings faster than we were in the beginning.
Pete:
The answer to that question may also depend on the flavor of 5G? You’ve got some of the Tier One providers talking about already having 5G deployed nationwide and other folks that are looking at pilot cities. Maybe you can help us understand the two flavors that are interpretations of 5G.
Full 5G Capabilities and Services Are Not
Chris:
When you hear people say that they have 5G capability, it’s of the very minute factors of 5G and it’s more that they have the infrastructure that can support 5G then really being able to utilize the 5G infrastructure. You see a lot of these trials going on where, end user day, I have a certain amount of end users that have certain capabilities of 5G but it’s not the full suite of services, but they’re in just a lot of testing modes. A lot of these mobile network providers that tell you that they’re 5G capable, it’s more of very small infantile type capabilities of 5G and more so that we have the infrastructure of 5G available but not the actual service. It’s dependent on where you’re looking and the area of the country. Like I said, I know that Verizon Wireless is doing trials in certain areas. I know T-Mobile touts 5G network wide. That’s more of the infrastructure is there, but the actual service itself is not there yet.
Pete:
That’s a really important distinction – to pull that story apart – because there’s a lot of claims being made but not a lot of reality in terms of access to the services. You have been in this market for a while and the complexion is changing. As we mentioned, COVID-19 is going to change that moving forward. 5G over the last 18 months, two years, has changed. What kind of evolution have you seen and maybe take a look forward in how you see that evolving further with the current crisis?
Evolution of 5G and Conexcity
Chris:
Conexcity is a full-service wireless integration company. So primarily our start was in the fiber distribution business both on the inside of buildings and outside buildings of engineering and construction, these fiber plants. And then over the last couple of years we’ve been heavily involved in the wireless 5G infrastructure dense network area, meaning that we’ve been engineering, designing, planning, constructing and maintaining these networks throughout New York and New Jersey. As of now, as of today, our business has not slowed down even with the current pandemic that’s in effect. Once again, all the government municipalities that we work with are still operating, still giving us the ability to construct. And a lot of that is because these municipalities, and even the federal government, understand that this is a needed environment for people, particularly in this situation, to be able to conduct business and live lives.
Chris:
Having that dense infrastructure up and available is so critically important through these times that I think even after this, there’ll be even more of a push to get all this infrastructure and get it installed and get it up and maintained so that these mobile network operators can deliver this 5G service to make this just to make these crisis situations a little bit more available so people can live their lives as normal. Although very abnormal in the fact that some of this situation we’re in, but we’ll give them the ability to live life a little bit more normally and businesses to be able to operate a little more clearly.
Pete:
The situation will not slow down the pace. But part of what we talked about before is industry being technology forward thinking and really technologists pushing the technology to promote potential capability. There hasn’t been as much of an appetite on the consumer side. What I’m saying is that pushing this potential to the market and having the market ready to accept it have been a bit misaligned. And in this situation where schools and hospitals and even work from home folks weren’t ready for it. We’re all kind of thrashing around to figure that out and while the demand is going to increase, it’s going to be different. So you service commercial buildings as well as MDUs (large, residential buildings).
Chris:
Our main focus is always on mobile network operators. In-building commercialized buildings, in-building residential buildings, that’s the target, the vertical that we support here in New York and New Jersey.
Broadband Is Another Utility
Pete:
We’re noticing with remote working or teleworking is instead of having a T1 running to a commercial building, an office building where you have the access, now you have all these people dislocated that don’t have the same infrastructure in place, but they have the same demand. Now it’s going to be an interesting opportunity for you to see how you can help residential owners of buildings understand that they need to plan for this capacity rather than it just be a “nice to have” capability – that having broadband is a rental requirement now within enterprise grade wiring.
Chris:
No doubt about it. After this crisis is over, what we need to be prepared for, as an industry, and in particular Conexcity, is to have the wherewithal to be able to explain to these building owners that this is almost like another utility.
Chris:
It’s really a must have. And what people are going to see more and more after we get through this crisis is that, “Hey, I need to have every bit of bandwidth, every bit of remote wireless capability”. Because listen, the other piece of this is nobody wants to have all of these cables and all of these other things within their space. They just want to be able to get on their cell phone and be able to do the things that they did in the office, to do those same things in other locations that they conduct business in, and be able to do the same things at home.
Chris:
I think it’s extremely important. The bigger eye-opener is all this remote schooling that’s going on right now. I have younger children at home and some school districts where I live are prepared, some aren’t prepared. This will give even more of a push to get this technology built and online and usable for the consumers sooner than we probably all imagined because people are going to demand it now.
Pete:
We finally got that alignment there. The organizations or the communities that you’re dealing with, they’ve been thinking about broadband for a while, that it’s been a “nice to have” and they’ve been trying to find the cost to value justification. What will actually become clearer in the coming months is that broadband is really the lifeblood of our global economy. People that can manage to run businesses digitally are the ones that are going to excel or survive this situation. So how do you help, what’s your advice to communities that are now moving past the “nice to have” to the stark realization that they need to have this. And in their early stages, they haven’t really built up networks yet, but they’re there in that planning process. How should they be thinking about this now?
Broadband Access is a “Must Have” For All Communities
Chris:
Honestly, they should be pushing their local governments or the mobile network operators that they get their service from today and say, “Hey look, we really need to get more of a technology presence in our communities today.” And whether that’s a high-rise commercial building or a high-rise residential building or smart cities is always is becoming a very large product out there. People want to have the ability to walk around towns and be able to have high streaming internet access and be able to do online shopping and all those other things. What we’ll wind up seeing is all these building owners and these building management companies and these community leaders are going to start to develop more of a technology type roadmap and people who support that internally to push that rock along to make sure that they can get the technologies that they have in their office building in their community.
Chris:
Once again, you’ll see a lot more of this pushed to the forefront because with this pandemic and the situation and the crisis that this country is in right now, they’re starting to realize, “Hey look, I need to have the ability to do what I used to do outside of my house, inside of my house.”
Chris:
We’re going to see more and more of that push to the right people within your building, within your community, within your commercial office building. Because that’s what we’re seeing more and more. We’re starting to get more inquiries from commercial management companies and building ownership to say, “How do I get this technology in my building?” A lot of these building owners didn’t understand how important this really, really is. They’re starting to realize that now.
Pete:
You could look at some of the capabilities that we’ve been thinking around smart cities for years around remote monitoring, remote assistance or emergency communication – where as a community you’re actually able to tell people what’s going on. We will have the ability to monitor fire, dampness, other kinds of conditions from a utility’s perspective. There is also a much more tangible personal connection that is coming into focus because of the current situation where people have had to be stuck at home and be socially isolated. Broadband access is alleviating this in some cases.
Chris:
Look at all this video conferencing and everything that people are doing to make sure that they’re in touch with their families. The local phone call is becoming non-existent. It’s evolving into video conferencing and making sure there’s face to face recognition between people. I mean, even the texting that’s going to start to go away. I see more and more people, in particular in this crisis because they have no choice, is more video demand type of applications and those types of things.
Broadband and 5G Technology Benefits Dense City and Rural Populations Alike
Chris:
That’s even more of a benefit to push this technology. Not only to the mass dense markets but to the rural places of America as well to make sure that those folks all have these capabilities because it’s becoming more and more prevalent. Like I said, these devices, these end user devices, these cell phones have become more and more powerful. Every new phone that comes out has more and more capability on it. And at the end of the day they need bandwidth to do that, which this 5G technology is going to give them the ability to do the things that they really want to do.
Pete:
We’re looking to the major cities to understand the ripple effect. I mean that the stimulus money that’s coming in, it’s a little bit unclear about what money’s in there, what’s not in there and how that’s going to flow down and to match the demand and awareness for broadband as a utility and the importance of it, we still need to figure out how to pay for it. Do you have any views on how funding is going to change or if private public partnerships maybe help us get there faster?
Chris:
I think you’ll see more private funding, more engaged in the ability to get more involved in this in the companies that are evolving this technology and evolving in the infrastructure and you’ll see a lot more investment. I mean I’ll tell you, just a point from before of some of our conversation. I know that the City of New York has identified all the different companies that are supporting a lot of these MNOs and building owners in these technologies to make sure that they have the ability not to shut down and to continue to be able to support the technology and making sure it’s available to people because they are understanding the importance of the broadband technology to make sure that it’s available to people. Because, once again, being in the situation that we’re in, we need to make sure that infrastructure is up and available to the end user.
Chris:
Conexcity and a bunch of other sister companies of ours, all have special dispensation to travel about and conduct work as business as usual to make sure that this infrastructure is available and operational and up and running so that end users have the ability to use it because it’s vital right now to live your life being inside all the time. What we’re seeing is the larger cities that have more dense population are starting to understand more that this is more of a utility and they need to ensure the infrastructure is operational and available.
Pete:
It’s a really interesting and scary and exciting and challenging time for the industry. I’m looking forward to lessons learned once we come out the other side and to see what best practices are bubbling up from all this effort. How can folks learn more about you and Conexcity?
Learn More
Chris:
You can get in touch with us at our website at www.conexcity.com. You can contact me directly at csmedley@conexcity.com. Either one of those mechanisms will enable us to get back to you and give you more details on our services and solutions.
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