The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software and Vetro FiberMap.
Joe Coldebella:
This episode of The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software and VETRO FiberMap.
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m your host, Joe Coldebella, and we are at Calix ConneXions in Las Vegas, Nevada. Joining me is Tom Williams, the CEO of Schurz Communications Joint Venture. Tom, welcome back to The Broadband Bunch.
Tom Williams:
Oh, man. Thank you for having me again.
Joe Coldebella:
Hey, as you know, Henry V said, “Once more unto the breach,” right?
Tom Williams:
That’s right.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s been a crazy year, obviously, it’s almost a year since we last spoke. The broadband industry is cooking with gasoline, but it sounds like in the next couple of years you’re going to be cooking with nitro. Before we dive into that, can you share with our audience just a little bit of background about yourself?
Tom Williams:
Yeah, I’ve been in the industry for about 26 years now. I’m a pioneer in the industry, inducted a few years ago. I have worked with various companies. And I’ve been lucky enough to not just work in engineering and technology, but also marketing call centers. So I’ve gotten around quite a bit. I’m an operational specialist if you will.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. So last year you were a CTO, but this year you’re taking on a new role, a new position. Share with us the Joint Venture aspect of what you’re undertaking.
Tom Williams:
Yeah, so I’ve been lucky. I’ve worked for Schurz Communications now for the last six years, and they went out and got a little bit of money, actually quite a bit of money to go expand in the various markets that they’re currently in. They wanted to do more, and they felt that we could grow more. But they wanted to stay within a certain financial area. So they thought, “You know what? Let’s go get some private equity money or infrastructure fund money, partner with them, create a whole new joint venture, and a whole new company.” And they’ve asked me to be the CEO of the new joint venture.
Joe Coldebella:
So in terms of building out these networks, it’s not an easy task. But you’ve decided to pile on a little bit. You’re starting from scratch. That’s incredible.
Tom Williams:
Yeah, that’s what makes it so enticing. Me and my team — there’s only one person right now — we really get to define it the way that we want to define it. We get to go see what everybody else has done and see how we can do it differently. So when we go to market, we’re going to change the way that people look at broadband and be a real disruptor in the marketplace. People are going to look at us and say, “Wow, how did they do it?” And we already know how we’re going to do it.
And that’s the great thing. You go look at these big guys, the big Cs if you will. They’re unwavering in the way that they go to market. About three weeks ago, I had to call into the call center, and I sat on hold for 30 minutes, dialing around trying to get to the right person. And I just had a simple question for him. Couldn’t do it. Now, if you call one of my systems, it’s either a one or a two. It’s either service or sales, one of the two. And then you’re to a live person. You’re to a live person in under 10 seconds. You just can’t operate the way that these guys are operating and be successful. You need to get very, very local, and you have to put the right systems in place to be able to help the customer.
Joe Coldebella:
So you think that agility is so important? It almost seems like these guys are aircraft carriers, but you need to be a high-speed boat because you’ve got to turn, maneuver, and embrace the marketplace.
Tom Williams:
That’s right. And we’ve seen that. They are, by the way, attacking us in all of our markets. But they’re not getting the share that they thought they were going to get because they’re stuck in the ways that they’ve been doing things for the last 20 years. And it’s hard for them to pivot. And even when they go put in new tools and things, they go spend tens of hundreds of millions of dollars to put new tools in and does it actually help the customer at the end? That’s the way we look at things, just a little bit different. We’re not going to have hundreds of layers of people. It’s going to be the call center rep, the call center director, and then me making decisions and how we help the customer.
I remember going to an area under the Schurz Communications banner, and a guy wanted a service level agreement, like a business agreement to his house. He’s willing to pay for it, by the way. He’s asked Comcast for it, but never heard back from Comcast. In that meeting, he asked for it. And I looked at him and said, “Done. We’ll sell you a business line. No problem.” And he said, “How can you do that?” I said, “Because you’ve got the leadership here.” You’re not going to get that with the other guys.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s so true. There’s a quote, and I’m going to butcher it. But the idea is that a dollar’s worth of just slogging along versus a dime of focused energy is just so much better because you can do things and get things right where they’re not even in the game.
Tom Williams:
Right. That’s right.
Joe Coldebella:
So you’re here at Calix ConneXions. You’re going to be speaking with Matt Colins on Tuesday. Is that correct?
Tom Williams:
Yeah, I’ll start with Michael Weening, and then I’ll do my thing. Then Matt Collins will come on.
Joe Coldebella:
So the idea is that you’re going to be partnering with Calix. Can you unpack that partnership for us?
Tom Williams:
What Calix has done is not only have they built the back-office systems and the equipment and the software that goes around it, but places that they’re missing like OSS/BSS, they partnered with really good companies that we can leverage. So instead of going out and reinventing everything and doing vendor selections all over the place and picking an OLT or an ONU vendor and doing those things, let’s partner with a company that wants to work with us. And in the six years that I’ve worked with Calix, the one thing that I know is they listen to feedback, and they execute on feedback. And you know what? Their stuff just works. It works; they’re reliable; they do what they say; and they make adjustments where the customer needs them to make adjustments. That makes them an outstanding partner to me.
So as we look at the joint venture and why I’m speaking on day two, it’s really to wrap up everything that happened on day one and how I’m going to leverage it all for the joint venture.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. And so the idea is that it’s going to be managed services. So are there any specific areas that you’ve already acknowledged like, “I’m going to do marketing with them,” or is that still to be determined?
Tom Williams:
Yeah, some of it’s going to be determined. Certainly, from a support cloud perspective, we’ve been using that at Schurz for years and years and years. And I’ll tell you what, having managed Wi-Fi increases our NPS scores. It makes our customers more sticky. Having the Command IQ application for our customers, you add on the layers of protect IQ and experience IQ, that’s a really powerful solution for our customers that Calix provides.
And then having that managed piece that allows us to be local because we have all the tools in place. Being able to understand what’s going on with the market because we have focused on Calix as a provider instead of a whole bunch of different companies that are out there, it allows us to have better looks into our network. And AI comes into place and helps us understand what’s going on with the network in the future. Are we having enough bandwidth moving around the network so that our customers can get to the content that they’re looking for and that the home has the right amount of bandwidth compared to what they’re paying for?
Joe Coldebella:
Okay. So then it’s ultimately about reducing costs, also improving efficiency. And then the true focus is always on the customer.
Tom Williams:
It’s always on the customer. Customer experience is number one, and that’s how we’re going to try and change things. Everything from how a customer communicates with us because we know that customers communicate in a multitude of different ways. The older generation likes to call. The middle generation likes to text. Other generations like to chat. We have to be able to be in all of those different areas. Some of them like to do a mixture of text to chat.
Joe Coldebella:
Sure.
Tom Williams:
So you’ve got to be there in all those different ways in order for the customer experience to be right.
Joe Coldebella:
And do you think that’s one of the big problems that these mammoth companies have is that they’re not thinking about the customer, they’re thinking about themselves?
Tom Williams:
Oh, I think they think about themselves. That’s the distinct advantage that I think companies like ours have, especially private ones. We don’t have these shareholders that are going to be over us because we’re not hitting our numbers. And so it makes it very hard to be nimble and to move and not go execute on those numbers. There are numbers out there for the big Cs to be able to overbuild themselves from these DOCSIS networks to fiber, a couple of trillion dollars. Now, imagine if they had to go to the street and say, “Hey, we need a trillion dollars to go overbuild ourselves. And guess what? We’re not going to gain one more customer.”
Joe Coldebella:
Right. But eventually, they’re going to have to do it because it’s inevitable.
Tom Williams:
It’s inevitable.
Joe Coldebella:
I’ve got cable right now, which is fine for what I do. But there’s going to be a point where I’m going to have enough devices in my house where I’m going to want fiber. People, whatever the speed is, they’ll find room for it. It’s amazing, right?
Tom Williams:
Oh, it is.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s incredible. So isn’t that one of the goals for you as well is to deploy a super-fast network?
Tom Williams:
When we go to deployment, we will be the fastest network in the United States, if not the world, just depending on timing. But we will be the fastest in the United States. And what that does is it gives us room to grow for a long period of time. It gives us the electronics, so I don’t have to go touch them for the next 30 years. It allows me to collapse both the business and residential networks onto a single network, which makes us extremely more efficient than the competitors in the area, which means I could probably charge a little bit less for services than they can.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. I can tell that you’ve been in the industry. And it’s almost like, “They did this wrong. I can do it this way. They’ve done that right. All right, I’ll copy that as well.” One of the other things that you’re trying to do is as you’re building this is you’re trying to be environmentally conscious as well.
Tom Williams:
Yeah, certainly fiber’s significantly more efficient in the way that you deliver broadband to a home than say a DOCSIS network. And you can get into the efficiencies of how many splits that are out there and that reduces the amount of carbon footprint that you utilize from a fiber perspective.
Our goal is at launch to be carbon-neutral in the environment, and that’s a lofty goal. And we may not hit it on day one. But very soon after, we will. We’re looking at EVs and the cost of that and could we make a deal to go get some EVs cheaper instead of using service vans? Do we really need a big van to go on a service call? You could put a ladder on a smaller car that’s EV rated. So we’re looking at all those different things, but carbon-neutral is our goal.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s awesome. I really enjoy the way you think. You’re a little bit different in terms of how you approach it. One of the things that we talked about last year, and I would love it if we could talk about it again. You say that everyone thinks the war is one thing, and you think it’s something totally different. I would love it if you could talk about that.
Tom Williams:
Yeah. So if you think about what’s going on, the big Cs like to talk about how they’re edging out, like it’s some cool thing that they’re doing. They’re edging out, and they’re giving their service to these smaller markets that are out there. And back in the day, they used to crucify companies that called themselves overbuilders. And the interesting thing is that edging out is overbuilding. It’s the same thing. They’re just trying to use different words to say what they’re actually doing.
And the war is around them coming into these smaller markets and overbuilding these smaller companies. And the smaller companies aren’t reacting fast enough. They’re getting overbuilt, and they’re losing subscribers. But they’re not going out and overbuilding the other guys. And so that causes the market to get smaller and smaller for these smaller cable broadband operators, and the market’s getting bigger for these big guys.
What needs to happen is we all need to be going out and attacking these big guys, and that’s the real war because the space is getting finite in areas where there’s more than one broadband provider. So if you move into an area and it has one broadband provider, all day long, 30%, all day long. If you run the company easy enough or well enough, you’ll get 30% all day long.
Now think about this. Let’s say, and I’m just throwing out a number, let’s say they go overbuild 100,000 homes. They get 30% of the market. That’s 30,000 homes. Right? What if I go overbuild a million of their homes? I get 300,000 of theirs. So think about it. Who’s winning in that scenario? Is it them, or is it us?
Joe Coldebella:
I would almost say that the winner is ultimately the consumer.
Tom Williams:
That’s right because there’s a choice now.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s a really interesting component in terms of how they’re edging into their territories. But then in areas where they’ve got 100% domination, they’re slow to switch over.
Tom Williams:
Oh, yeah.
Joe Coldebella:
Why is that? Just because they can?
Tom Williams:
Certainly. And they’ve been able to be in this place for a very long time, not just from a broadband perspective but also from a television perspective as well, video perspective. And so they haven’t had to go out and do these upgrades like they’ve had to in the past. You get somebody like me or some of these other guys that are coming in there, hot and heavy, fiber to the home, multi-gig services, and Wi-Fi 6C router. And then you convince the customer to move to some OTT service, and suddenly their bill drops.
It was interesting, we did a review of one of the C companies, the big Cs bill. And there were $58 of hidden fees within the bill. There’s no transparency at all that’s going on, and that’s how we can differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.
Joe Coldebella:
I see surveys all the time, and usually, the only ones that are below cable companies are Members of Congress in terms of trustworthiness.
Tom Williams:
Right.
Joe Coldebella:
So I think there definitely is a real opportunity there because I think you’re right. People just want to know what the bill is. Don’t tack it on. If it’s a good service and you deliver what I need, I’ll pay for it. You don’t have to sneak in fees.
Tom Williams:
Sure.
Joe Coldebella:
So what do you think is the key thing in the broadband space that these folks get wrong?
Tom Williams:
You’re saying my size?
Joe Coldebella:
You know what? I’ll leave it open. What do you think the broadband industry gets wrong right now?
Tom Williams:
I’d say for the big Cs, they like to over-promote themselves. So that’s what they get wrong. For instance, I just saw an article this week where Comcast is boasting two gigabits symmetrical, and they’re launching in a couple of cities — I think Colorado Springs and Atlanta. And what’s funny about that is that we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now, so what’s the big deal about two gig? You can finally get there, and on your 10 gig network that doesn’t do 10 gig? So I’m not sure what they’re promoting themselves with.
What we get wrong, I think on our side is I don’t think we promote ourselves enough. We need to be loud and proud about the things that we’re doing in the marketplace and how we are changing the way the broadband market is to the consumer, and I think that’s what we get wrong.
Joe Coldebella:
Okay. So that’s interesting. The big guys say, “Oh, we got two gig.” But unfortunately, they’re huge companies. And when someone says, “Oh, let me get it.” Then they look, and they don’t have it. It’s like that’s just another nail in the coffin. It’s like these guys say they’re going to give me something, and then they never do.
Tom Williams:
That’s right. Because I haven’t seen it yet, but I can almost guarantee it’s not a two-gig service. It won’t hit two gigs. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll make up something, “Oh, it hits 1.8, it’s fine. It’s 1.7, it’s fine.”
Joe Coldebella:
Well, that’s sort of the joke is they use, “As advertised.”
Tom Williams:
That’s right.
Joe Coldebella:
And I think the consumer isn’t educated enough to know that. But then as soon as they find out, they feel, “Oh, I got duped.”
Tom Williams:
Yeah, I completely agree. And so I think those are the two areas. From the big guys, I think that’s what they get wrong. And from the smaller guys, I think that what we get wrong is we don’t promote ourselves more.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. All right, so you’re taking on this big new venture. What are the challenges that sort of like, “All right, this is going to be tough. But I know we can pull it off?”
Tom Williams:
Certain things like pole permitting is always tough. Railroad crossings are tough. Negotiations with the various government officials are going to be tough. They’re going to lose big because there are no franchise fees. They’re getting all these franchise fees from all these cable companies or video companies that are out there. And they’re not going to get franchise fees. So when a Comcast or Charter, whoever customer moves over to our service, suddenly that’s a franchise fee that the local government isn’t getting, which is essentially a tax on consumers anyway.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. So that’s really interesting that the biggest hurdle is regulatory.
Tom Williams:
Yes.
Joe Coldebella:
Everyone is clamoring for better, faster service, not only here but in the rest of the world. And we can’t fall behind.
Tom Williams:
And it’s really disappointing when talking — and again, I’ve been out quite a bit when I was with Schurz Communications and visiting local governments. And it was always about, “What do they get if they allow us to come in and build an area?” It’s really unfortunate. Instead of giving better service and giving consumers a choice, their constituents, they would rather try to find out how they could squeeze us and get us to pay for things that we have never paid for in the past because they know that they’re losing the franchise fee.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s incredible because of the economic case for higher-speed broadband. Look at the City of Chattanooga. Look at all the different places around where they show that it’s such a win-win for everybody. And to your point, it’s like, “Oh, let’s put the thumb on these guys.” It’s like, “No dude, you got to think longer term. At the end of the day, you’re going to win, and your constituents are going to win.”
Tom Williams:
Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right.
Joe Coldebella:
All right, last question. Thank you so much, Tom. This has been great. What’s got you super excited?
Tom Williams:
Oh, gosh. I’m going to build the coolest broadband network in the country. It’s great when you don’t have a bunch of legacy equipment and software and things that you have to think about and how you’re going to integrate them. We get to come in fresh. We don’t even have a name yet, and we’re talking about how radical to make the name. So it’s just noticed across the entire country that this is what we are, and this is who we are. And we’re really focused on five specific pillars around the company, from innovation to sustainability, transparency, and simplicity. Those are the things that we’re going to be focused on, and I’m just excited about the opportunity.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, it sounds phenomenal. And I hope a year from now we can sit back here and then you can tell me all about all the cool things that you’re doing. I am really excited to see everything unfold. Thank you so much for joining us.
Tom Williams:
Yeah, I’m just hoping I’m generating revenue by then and making the investors happy.
Joe Coldebella:
All right, that’s going to wrap up this episode of The Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
