The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on: The BroadbandBunch.com The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.
In this episode, we have a chat with the husband-and-wife team of David and Laura Gibbons. Starting out as a WISP and moving into fiber, David and Laura show us how a small ISP is evolving and bringing broadband to central, PA.
Kayleigh Cox:
Welcome to the Broadband Bunch, a podcast about broadband and how it impacts all of us. Join us to learn about the state of the industry and the latest innovations and trends. Connect with the thought leaders, pioneers, and policy makers helping to shape your future through broadband.
Kayleigh Cox:
This episode of the Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software, your zero touch automation experts. By Calix, simplify, excite, grow. By DxTEL, creators of the Harper Broadband Marketing Library. By ITK Solutions Group, process first, technology second. And by Utopia Fiber, building a more connected nation.
Kayleigh Cox:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. Today, I’m your host, Kayleigh Cox, and it’s my honor to interview Dave and Laura Gibbons of Centre WISP and Black Bear Fiber in Center County, Pennsylvania. Today, we’re going to talk about how they got into the broadband business, about their experiences getting into fiber, and some of the challenges they’ve faced with RDOF. Dave, Laura, thanks so much for joining me today.
Laura Gibbons:
Thank you,
Dave Gibbons:
Good morning. Thanks for having us.
Kayleigh Cox:
We are so glad you could be here. Dave, let’s start with you. Could you give me a little bit of background on Centre WISP and you, personally, how you ended up in this crazy world of broadband?
Dave Gibbons:
So, my career in wireless started in 2015. At the time I owned a local IT business and we were doing work for the YMCA of Centre County, who was opening a branch in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania. At the time, believe it or not, even in 2015, the only internet access available in Spring Mills, Pennsylvania, was dated, slow DSL lines that maxed out at two or three megabits download speed and a 4G connection that was data limited in terms of overall number of gigs, and also not very fast. I think it maxed around 10 megabits.
Dave Gibbons:
So, through our conversations with the YMCA of Centre County, they said, “Look, we really want to use your IT services,” which was a cloud-based desktop at the time. “And we can’t do that unless we have internet access.” So, we started really looking at how could we bring true broadband internet access into Spring Mills, Pennsylvania, which was kind of a bowl. It’s a little bit of a dip in topography that’s surrounded by ridges and taller areas.
Dave Gibbons:
And through that process, what we developed was a plan to put together a system of several high gain relays, high gain tower sites and bounce internet access from State College, Pennsylvania, which is maybe 10 or 15 miles away, through three different towers, and then down into the valley of Spring Mills, Pennsylvania.
Dave Gibbons:
In 2015, working with the YMCA of Centre County, we delivered the first 100-megabit class internet connection into the area, and it was a really a wild ride. So, since then, we’ve been adding customers, growing our footprint, honing our ability to use the technology and developing all kinds of plans around how to grow the business outside of that.
Kayleigh Cox:
And today, Laura joins you. Laura, can you tell us how you got involved?
Laura Gibbons:
Dave and I, we’ve worked together off and on throughout, really, our relationship. We met working with one another and I saw a need to lean into the business and help him out with different aspects of it. And then it really became more prevalent in the pandemic, that we really needed to lean in to get this business growing even more. Because the demand just grew so much more throughout that time. So, we’ve been working off and on with each other in our different ventures for five, six years. But this past year or two, really, we’ve been deep, deep into the broadband world with one another.
Dave Gibbons:
The pandemic is a really interesting story, right? Because in 2019, Centre County put out a request for proposals, and I give the Centre County government a lot of credit for being so forward looking. And the proposal was a request for local wireless broadband companies to essentially install gear on their 911 tower sites, to provide broadband internet access to more of the county.
Dave Gibbons:
And we responded to that proposal and ended up winning the contract with Centre County to use some of their 911 tower sites for broadband. And this was 2019, so believe it or not, it was before anybody was thinking about the idea that we might all be locked in our homes for two years now.
Dave Gibbons:
What happened was we had set up this scaffolding and this infrastructure to deliver true broadband capability wirelessly to a really significant portion of Centre County, primarily the Penns Valley area. And then, when the pandemic hit, all of a sudden, literally every single resident needed to be hooked up and they needed it yesterday because they were working from home or they had children who were students who were learning from home.
Dave Gibbons:
Our business was ready to grow at the pace we had been growing at, which was a very natural, organic growth. And then all of a sudden, every resident called, and it was like, “Oh, okay, we have 100 installs to do in a week. How are we going to make this work?” So, it circled us back to where we’ve been before, working together and truly turned this into a family team effort with a lot of other people leaning in as well.
Kayleigh Cox:
And Laura, what has it been like, especially since the pandemic, when families have really recognized their need for broadband, especially families with kids at home who need it to learn? What was it like walking through those challenges in your family, while also serving families in need of greater internet? What was that like for you?
Laura Gibbons:
The lockdown phase was really difficult because I have a couple young kids at home, trying to answer the phones and keep working. And luckily for me, I have good internet at home. So, I was able to work and do that, but then I’m getting calls from people who are like, “I’m sitting in a parking lot with my kids, trying to do my work and they’re trying to do school. We can’t maintain this. This isn’t doable.” Or they didn’t have access, so they were going to the school to pick up worksheets and things like that.
Laura Gibbons:
It was really enlightening to our surrounding areas because it’s our community that we serve and the neighboring school districts and things like that, that we serve. So, we know these people and it was just really enlightening to see that they don’t have good access. It really has changed the way that they’re living, sitting in parking lots, doing schoolwork and things like that.
Laura Gibbons:
When we would hook somebody up, it was just life changing. Like, literally life changing for them to be able to do their schoolwork and do their work from home and remote into doctor’s appointments. And even just kids being able to game and maintain that social aspect that they were missing so much. That they can call their friends and see their friends and FaceTime them and stuff like that. Those kind of stories, and when I talk to people like that or grandparents that could see their kids, when I talk to them, that just really helps remind us, why we’re in this and work so hard. It’s those stories that really keep us going.
Kayleigh Cox:
In the middle of all of this craziness, with the increased demand for services and Laura, you coming on and devoting your energy to this, you guys decided to branch out into fiber. Dave, can you tell us a little bit about that timeline and decision?
Dave Gibbons:
We really view fiber and have viewed fiber, as absolutely the next step in internet access and the correct answer to the broadband problem, overall, from a long-term perspective. So, we think wireless represents a great way to solve the broadband problem for a lot of people very quickly. But in terms of where the best investment is long term, I don’t think there’s any question that it’s fiber. The question is how quickly can we build it? And is it the best use of funds immediately?
Dave Gibbons:
As part of this process, we got involved with the RDOF program. And I think we started looking at what was going to happen with RDOF, I think it was early to mid 2020. So, this is the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. This is that huge, huge FCC program that’s intended to put really life changing levels of broadband, for the most part gigabit class broadband, out to every resident of the United States. So, the goal is to light up, essentially, every household.
Dave Gibbons:
And the program is really very skewed toward gigabit class access and low latency access. And as a result, even though providers are allowed to register and bid with speeds that are less than gigabit or high latency, things like geostationary orbit satellites, things like that, when we were reviewing the program, we didn’t really see the opportunity for winning any areas if we didn’t bid with gigabit low latency.
Dave Gibbons:
So, as we started really digging into RDOF and working with some of our advisors and consultants, it became really abundantly clear that the only way to win RDOF, I should say the only way to effectively win RDOF, was fiber. And as a result, all of the funding is going to be skewed toward fiber at some point in the relatively near future. Now, I don’t know if that’s next year or two years from now. It’s not there yet, but gigabit class and low latency, especially in areas where you see significant weather events, rain, snow, things like that, like we have in the Northeast, the only answer to that question is fiber.
Kayleigh Cox:
So, you are a WISP, and have been for several years now. You’re getting into fiber and you’re doing all of this as a small family owned business. Laura, can you tell us what it’s like to serve a fairly rural market as a smaller company?
Laura Gibbons:
It’s challenging, but also really reward. With this business, I think one of the biggest challenges we face is educating people on what the services are. This is really a new type of service for most of the areas that we’re serving. So, there’s a lot of education that goes into it, explaining what wireless internet is, why it’s important, how it’s different, what the speeds mean, things like that.
Laura Gibbons:
There’s this other element of educating people that really everything they do, the way they watch TV, their phones, everything, is changing and being used with internet. So, when people call us, they’re like, “Oh yeah, you’re a cable company.” It’s like, “Nope, we’re not.” “Oh, well, what about my TV?” I’m like, “Well, you can stream it. There’s a million options to stream TV services,” and things like that.
Laura Gibbons:
There’s this huge education piece to it. And talking to grandparents that call us and want to understand how this works and things like that. So, it is challenging, but it’s also really rewarding. We just have to really put on our customer service hats and take our time and talk to people about what the service is, how it works, why it’s important, both on the wireless and the fiber side. Because fiber to the home is not something that exists in our area, so helping people understand why it’s important, why it matters, why it’s different is really important.
Kayleigh Cox:
So, in many industries, the company just has to get their name out there, but you have to get your name out there and explain what it is you do and what the value is, and what it is you don’t do. Because people can lump it all together when it comes to technology and their devices. But how do you get your name out there? Is it a word of mouth thing? Are there ways you’ve marketed as a small business? What does that look like in your market?
Laura Gibbons:
Definitely word of mouth is a huge one for us. Neighbors getting it, telling their neighbors, telling their family. We have a teacher in one of our areas that tells all of her students and their families about our service. She’s a really big advocate of our service. So, word of mouth and having some brand ambassadors, so to speak, in our business is really important.
Laura Gibbons:
We do a lot of Facebook marketing. We go old school with newspapers and billboards and things like that. But it is challenging. We’re still tapping into what the right market venues are for getting the word out. But definitely word mouth is one of them. Dave, I don’t know if you have any thoughts there.
Dave Gibbons:
It’s such a difficult question, and honestly, it’s a question that we’re still trying to answer. So, I’ll agree with Laura. By far, hands down, far and away, the most effective way to advertise, in at least the rural areas that we live in and serve, is word of mouth. If you get a person who’s respected in the community and purchases your service, and it works really well for them, and they tell their friends that’s it. It’s wildfire. It’s going to spread from there on its own.
Dave Gibbons:
And you can recreate some of that using Facebook marketing and Facebook advertising, but that’s lost its luster over the past year or so. I don’t know if that’s algorithmic changes or whatever, but it’s not quite as effective as it used to be to do a Facebook post and talk about broadband. So, we’ve tried billboards. We’ve tried newspapers. As Laura said, we’ve tried radio ads.
Dave Gibbons:
I think the other thing that is possibly the second most effective way to advertise is through working with local governments. So, some of our initial work in 2019 came from working with Centre County government, and the local newspapers, just by way of regular press releases and keeping the county updated about what’s going on, did stories about our work delivering broadband. They were tremendously effective. I mean, you can’t buy the kind of advertising you get from a front page headline on the local newspaper that says, “Broadband coming to Penns Valley,” as an example.
Dave Gibbons:
And then, through the CARES Act, we worked with a lot of the counties that we serve to add extra towers and put up additional coverage. And again, as a result of that interaction, the local newspapers would do coverage of the county commissioners’ meetings and what happened at the meetings and things like that. We have some really good examples out of Juniata county. We worked very closely with Juniata County, here in Pennsylvania, and they really developed a great partnership with us to essentially cover the entire county with wireless broadband access in just a few months with CARES Act funding.
Dave Gibbons:
So, I think number one is definitely word of mouth, and number two is probably the natural advertising you can get by really partnering in a community and working either directly in a public-private partnership or in some kind of pseudo-public-private partnership with the county government to get the word out that way.
Kayleigh Cox:
That is a great point. I love the idea that you don’t necessarily have to be an official partner with a municipality that’s hired you to build a network to benefit from strong relationships in the community. Even if you’re a separate company, whether or not you’re getting on a municipal level, municipal leaders still have a vested interest in spreading the word about high speed internet services. And so, it’s a great reminder to any of the smaller providers who might be listening to this episode to reach out and strengthen those relationships, regardless of on paper, in the contracts, who owns what. That there’s still benefit in banding together, especially in smaller communities.
Dave Gibbons:
That’s right. Absolutely.
Kayleigh Cox:
Now, we’re recording this in November of 2021. And so, the big news right now, the big headlines, are all about broadband funding. Dave, you have experience with federal funding, walking through RDOF. Could you tell us about your experience with that program?
Dave Gibbons:
I want to make sure the microphone catches my big sigh as I get into this. Yeah. Where to start? So, I think the best place to start is with RDOF, right? So, again, this is all pre-pandemic, and it’s hard for me because my whole world is skewed by the pandemic experience, as I think all of us have been.
Dave Gibbons:
But we really got into RDOF pre-pandemic, and the world was a different place in a lot of ways, but especially in terms of broadband funding. There’s been so much additional funding that’s come out due to some of the, we call it the digital divide, but it’s really a chasm. It’s a massive, massive gap between what rural Americans have access to and what urban Americans have access to. But RDOF is where it began, and RDOF is where we started.
Dave Gibbons:
RDOF is a really interesting program. So, I think, in general, the target is the correct target. We’re looking at probably gigabit class access. We’re looking at low latency access, and we’re looking at subsidizing various areas of the country as it’s broken up into what they call census block groups, so groups of census blocks, in order to allow a provider to create a business model that works to deliver this service.
Dave Gibbons:
But the thing about the FCC and the thing about RDOF is that, and really the whole federal government, everything is very, very skewed toward large providers with big legal departments, capabilities to run through huge stacks of paperwork and pour over GIS data left and right, and all that kind of thing. So, there really is a very, very high barrier of entry to RDOF in general. It’s expensive to participate in these types of auctions in many, many different ways. That’s in terms of your time, any consultants you might need, legal counsel, things like that.
Dave Gibbons:
So, these programs appear to be focused on delivering maybe unique types of broadband or unique classes of broadband to rural residents. But when you peel back some of the layers, what you find is they’re very much skewed toward incumbent providers who have the funds and the wherewithal and the time to just stick through the quicksand to get to the bidding process. So, RDOF is where it started. It’s a two phase process. You have to be approved to bid, and then you go and bid. And after you bid, you have to have your paperwork approved following that. So, it’s a very, very long timeline.
Dave Gibbons:
And what we’re finding has happened is that the timeline is so long. We were bidding in RDOF late last year. The timeline has been so long to fund that we’re actually seeing other types of government agencies at the state level and the local level and the county consortium, the economic development agencies, they’re actually funding over builds of territories that companies have been awarded through RDOF.
Dave Gibbons:
So, there are areas where we bid through RDOF to deliver gigabit fiber to the home, and the FCC just hasn’t finished the paperwork yet. And what we’re finding is that other agencies, whether it’s a Pennsylvania agency or a county agency, or one of these consortiums, are actually funding other providers to put in broadband in the same area. For the most part, these other providers are not delivering fiber. So, it’s not gigabit class. It doesn’t have the five nines of reliability that we come to expect with fiber.
Dave Gibbons:
But the tough part is that these markets are so small. The number of customers per mile is so low, and the existing broadband is so bad. In some cases, it doesn’t even qualify as broadband, what we’re worried about is that, let’s say that a county funds wireless access that overlays one of our RDOF territories, as an example. We’re worried that these customers will get 30 Meg or 50 Meg, or on the high end, maybe 100 Meg download speeds over a wireless technology. And it’s going to be so much better than what they ever had before, they’re going to be really hesitant to switch to any kind of different technology, because it’s just so much better already.
Dave Gibbons:
And we’re extremely concerned about this overbuild story with funding from a different source that might create a sticky customer to a less good technology. So, if you have the option between wireless and fiber, people who are in the industry are probably going to choose fiber. But what we’re very concerned about is some of these overbuilds and just the stickiness that happens when a customer gets broadband access that’s a little bit better than whatever they had before.
Kayleigh Cox:
Yeah. That’s a really fair point. Because yes, the important win is that people have the internet access they need to work and to learn and to use telehealth and all of those things. But it’s important to not screw over these smaller companies that are working so hard to bring that access because you need financial viability to be able to continue to expand and bring service to new areas. So, very valid frustrations and concerns there.
Kayleigh Cox:
So, with that in mind, I want to ask you a back to the future question, but with a twist. So, we always like to close out our episodes by asking our guests, if you could hop in the DeLorean and go back five years, or however long, and whisper something to yourself to make your job a little bit easier today, what would you tell yourself? And I’d love to hear your answer to that. But first, I’d really like to hear, what would you say if you could get an audience with the FCC in 2018 or something like that? What would you say to get them to improve that process that may improve some of these upcoming federal grants?
Dave Gibbons:
That’s a great question. I think the first thing I would say is don’t allow incumbent providers to bid. And I use incumbent loosely. I don’t mean in the true legal sense of an incumbent. I mean the large international behemoths are providing broadband in the least fast way possible to the least number of people in an area that they can, and still, get the funding.
Dave Gibbons:
So, a lot of these providers, the large national organizations, and international organizations bid in a previous FCC auction called CAF2. A lot of them won. And when you dig into what they actually did with that money, it’s very, very unclear that they provided value to the residents they were supposed to serve after that auction. And a lot of these same companies are now bidding in RDOF, or have won areas in RDOF.
Dave Gibbons:
So, I think the first thing I would say is we need to be a little bit more skeptical of some of these large national organizations, some of which are actually bankrupt and are actively bidding on these areas. And we need to say, “Hey, we gave you all this money in CAF2. Where did it go?” And they did that to some of the extent. There were defaults in CAF2. And there’s a lot of wrangling around who you serve and how you determine what a serviceable customer is and who lives in an area and all that kind of thing.
Dave Gibbons:
But I think painting with really broad brushstrokes, it’s apparent that we didn’t get a ton of value out of some of these previous auctions. And yet, some of the same companies were to bid in the RDOF auction. So, I think my first point would be, let’s skew this in a way that gives providers who maybe have a little bit of skin in the game. Maybe some of the more local providers, maybe some of the providers with interesting technical solutions. Let’s give them a shot. We’ve already given the big providers a shot. They obviously don’t care. They don’t want to do it. Let’s give some of these smaller providers a shot.
Dave Gibbons:
So, I think that’s number one. Number two would be, if we’re going to give these smaller providers a shot, we’ve really got to think about how we can lower the barrier of entry enough that it’s not a full-time job to bid. We spent months and months of human hours getting involved in RDOF, getting ready to bid, doing the bidding, everything like that. I mean, it was truly a full-time job for at least a quarter,
Dave Gibbons:
For at least two people. And that fact has the effect of blocking smaller providers. Because a lot of the smaller providers just frankly can’t spend that time. They just don’t have the time to give up. So, I think removing some of the barriers for small providers would be interesting as well. Those are the high levels, I think, from my perspective.
Kayleigh Cox:
Yeah, that is fantastic feedback and great points. Now, I’m going to flip the coin a little bit and look forward to our crystal ball question. If you could look into the crystal ball, what do you think the next 10 or so years hold for our industry and for you guys?
Dave Gibbons:
Boy, that’s the question, isn’t it?
Laura Gibbons:
We literally probably ask that question to each other every day.
Dave Gibbons:
Oh, every single day.
Laura Gibbons:
Is it three years, five years, 10 years?
Dave Gibbons:
I think we should start with what residents need to expect and demand. So, we’re seeing a lot of people talking about low earth orbit satellites and a lot of people saying, “This is the silver bullet. This is going to solve the problem.” I couldn’t disagree with that more. I think it’s super important that we recognize technologies for what they are. So, low earth orbit satellites are going to be very, very good for areas with good weather and where there are no other options. They might be better than some fixed wireless providers today.
Dave Gibbons:
But if we’re talking about funding either Leo Constellations or fiber to the home, we absolutely must fund fiber to the home. So, when I look out over the course of the next 10 years, I see a lot of effort that is going to need to be put into convincing legislators, in particular, to fund fiber to the home projects as a major, major priority. There’s so much money available, and we’ve seen this happening through the CARES Act. In some of the more recent funding proposals and investments and things like that.
Dave Gibbons:
There’s just so much money available. We have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally solve the broadband problem once and for all. And what I mean by that is we need to build fiber to the home, to every single person in the country. There’s enough money to do it. There are people out there who are willing to do it, but we’ve got to make sure that they’re incentivized to do that, and that there’s enough of a differentiator between other technologies and fiber that we’re really encouraging fiber to be the answer and have that be written into some of the funding legislation.
Kayleigh Cox:
And Laura, I’m curious. If that’s what we’re hoping for industry-wide, maybe you don’t have an actual crystal ball and can’t see what the future does hold, unfortunately. But what do you hope it holds for your company specifically?
Laura Gibbons:
Yeah, I agree with Dave. The wireless business is great. We are really happy that we have been able to provide so many customers with good internet access. But fiber to the home really is what I see our business growing into more and getting customers hooked up to fiber. For my customers’ sake, I want them all to be able to have smart homes and be able to use all of the devices and be able to stream on multiple devices and games and have cameras and all of that stuff.
Laura Gibbons:
And wireless is limiting, to have all of those devices on all of the time. So, having that fiber to the home, I think, is really important to be able to have a good future-proof system. So, I’m looking forward to growing our business in that area. Black Bear Fiber is going to grow, I think, like wildfire, too.
Kayleigh Cox:
Absolutely.
Laura Gibbons:
The same way our Centre WISP brand has, I think Black Bear is going to grow even more rapidly, especially once this funding comes through. Cross crossing all of our fingers.
Kayleigh Cox:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, you guys are such a great example for our industry. I know that there is a trend of WISPs turning FISPs, and I know that we all have a lot to learn from you guys and we appreciate your leadership in the space and your time with us today. So, thank you both for being here.
Laura Gibbons:
Thank you, guys.
Dave Gibbons:
Yeah, thank you very much for your time. It was our pleasure.
Kayleigh Cox:
This has been another episode of the Broadband Bunch. I’m your host, Kayleigh Cox. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
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