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.
Brad Hine:
Hello, everyone in broadband land. Welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m your host, Brad Hine, and today we are coming to you from Fort Lauderdale. We are at the UTC annual conference. It’s the organization’s 75th anniversary, so there’s been lots of celebrating here. Mark Ponton is here with me today. Can you tell us about you and your company?
Mark Ponton:
Yes. I’m Mark Ponton. I’m the director of Fiber and Broadband Services for Rappahannock Electric Cooperative in Virginia.
Brad Hine:
Excellent. Is this your first time at UTC?
Mark Ponton:
No, it’s not. I’ve been attending for a few years. It’s always good to be able to come out and meet others and be able to be part of the show. Sometimes I do some presentations and other times, like this year, I got to be an observer, so it’s a good opportunity.
Brad Hine:
That’s nice. You got to take a little bit of a break and walk around. So tell us a little bit about what your focus is now that you’re not on stage and speaking this year. What were some of your focuses coming into the conference?
Mark Ponton:
Just checking out all the vendors and listening in on some of the presentations that are pertinent to what we’re doing. Some that were of interest, you know, like, how much fiber is enough? Or how much is too much? Also, the cost of fiber. There are some good presentations on that.
We have our own designers, but we’re looking at outside design services to be able to keep up with the demand. We are also looking for vendors that can provide materials for us. That’s a big challenge in today’s world.
Brad Hine:
Absolutely. Obviously, with what happened in the last three years, there is a demand trying to get materials and services. And like you said, “Price them properly.” I feel like it’s been changing a bunch over the last three years.
How did you get involved with your REC; and how did you get started in this business? I know you started an electric co-op. How did that evolve into your current role?
Mark Ponton:
I started with Rappahannock Electric in 1997. I had been attending ECPI and was getting to work on an electronics degree. Prior to that, I had no utility experience. I worked for a vending and wholesale foods company. During that time, I decided it might be good to do something different. So I ended up going to college and getting a degree. Continuing beyond that and getting a bachelor’s degree in leadership and management.
So, I started Rappahannock Electric in the telecom department. So that has worked out extremely well for me. I stayed there from 1997 until just a couple of years ago when we started delving further into the broadband environment and fiber deployment. Where it all really started from the fiber side was for a utility network to be able to connect all of our substations and our offices and our tower sites and to expand it from there into some ISPs and to other service areas.
Brad Hine:
During the pandemic, you switched your role in the company.
Mark Ponton:
Yes. That’s not the best time to switch roles.
Brad Hine:
Trial by fire, I should say.
Mark Ponton:
Trial by fire, that’s for sure. But that was when things were really getting kicked off. We had started some of the fiber utility networks, or the fund project, as we call it, at Rappahannock Electric, pre covid. And then during Covid, it really slowed down. But then when all the grant monies started coming about with FCC, the RDOF, and then the Virginia telecommunications infrastructure money that came about, that really gave a drive to get the fiber project back up to speed and underway. So yes, right during covid is when all of that started happening. We looked at going into being an ISP ourselves. We applied for the RDOF auction and ultimately decided to build our fiber backbone and partner with ISPs to be able to provide to our membership.
Brad Hine:
So your model is on an OAN, Open Access network then. How did you decide to do that instead of being your traditional ISP? Was there a lot of thought behind your quickest way into the market?
Mark Ponton:
Sure. We’re an electric cooperative. That’s our focus. And there was a learning curve in getting into the broadband services and a lot of other expertise that we didn’t necessarily have in-house. Not that we couldn’t have gotten them, not that we couldn’t have built that program, but with all the grants that were coming about, we saw the opportunity to provide opportunities for our members faster. One of the big questions we’ve been asked by our members for a few years now, is,” You’re my electricity provider. How can you and what are you going to do?”
They really weren’t asking how. They were asking “What are you going to do as my electrical provider to get broadband to me? Because the big guys don’t want to do it. They have no interest. What are you going to do about it?”
Brad Hine:
Right. Common problem. I know from being in this industry for over 15 years and talking to a lot of rural operators of utilities funding their own fiber networks for their own communities, adding a utility, but also, like you just said, it’s cost prohibitive in some ways for the larger carriers to come into the smaller areas.
I have read a couple of articles on this in the last couple of years, talking about people moving away from the larger metro areas, seeking out more peaceful communities, higher quality of life, connected communities, walkable communities, and things like that. But they have to have high-speed internet. And you can’t run a business today in this modern age, especially after the last three years, without being connected to high-speed internet.
Mark Ponton:
Right. And I did the same thing myself. I moved out of a more metropolitan type of area, very densely populated. Fredericksburg is about halfway between Washington, DC, and Richmond. The growth has just expanded from Northern Virginia to Richmond to Fredericksburg. We have some other areas like that as well. I was born and raised there. I stayed there for 55 years and decided that it was time to go somewhere a little slower. So I did move into a much more rural community. I didn’t even think to check into this first, but fortunately, it had broadband available at that time. The street right behind me did not. I was very fortunate in that, but now I live on a lake, in a lake community.
It’s a much slower pace of life. I appreciate that very much. And yes, we’re hearing that a lot from our membership. They’re finding that one of the first questions they folks ask when they go looking for a home or somewhere new to move, especially when they’re moving from somewhere that they have pretty much everything right around the corner that they’re used to having. When they are looking to move more into the rural areas, they are asking, “Is there high-speed internet at that home?”
And if they’re told no, then they say, “Okay. Show me something else. I’m not interested.”
Brad Hine:
That’s great. I think since we’ve had to go more remote with all of our technologies in the last three years, it’s clear that folks are looking for a close-knit community, a higher quality of life, more peaceful, things like that, as you said.
I know with your open axis; you’re growing like crazy as you mentioned. There’s plenty of work for you to do. How many counties right now are you trying to connect in Virginia?
Mark Ponton:
Between the two ISPs, 13 of the 22 counties that we serve in Virginia.
Brad Hine:
Wow. Those are big plans.
Mark Ponton:
They are big plans. You know, Rappahannock Electric covers 22 counties of Virginia. We have over 170,000 members and over 17,000 miles of line that we maintain. And we’re using that infrastructure to be able to build these networks. Because we already have the poles, we already have the structures there, so it makes sense to utilize those for broadband as well.
Brad Hine:
That’s great. You have a current project that I read about with Firefly and All Points Broadband.
Mark Ponton:
APB, yes.
Brad Hine:
Can you talk a little bit about that partnership and the role of each one of those?
Mark Ponton:
Yes. We’ll start with Firefly. We’re building a fiber network that they’re going to be using to provide services in five of the counties that were served electrically. One of the counties will be completely served by Firefly. They’re a rural county, and they have basically no broadband, no internet service other than satellite, maybe some DSL in some areas or cellular. And those are, you know, very low speeds. And so that they’re a partner to be able to do that. It’s a sister co-op that’s one of our bordering neighbor’s co-cooperatives.
So it made good sense for us to partner with them to be able to expand because they were looking to expand their broadband Firefly service into other areas beyond themselves. Since we bordered each other, we’re both electric cooperatives to be able to expand that into our service territory. So we’re covering five counties with them building all that fiber in our electrical space.
For All points Broadband, APB, what we’re doing is our backbone Middle Mile that we’re building for our own utility network. We’re overbuilding that in fiber count to be able to lease dark fiber services. And All Points Broadband is going to take advantage of that to build in seven or eight counties that we’re looking into expanding broadband services into. So, and then they will build the last mile themselves.
Brad Hine:
Wow, it’s a lot of work.
Mark Ponton:
That’s quite a few thousand miles of fiber being built just for those two projects. And then there are others that have some interest as far as wireless carriers, small, independent broadband services that are looking to utilize our fiber to get out into the rural areas. One of the biggest issues that these ISPs have is they want to get out there and serve.
They want to get that fiber out there or a wireless service out there. But their issue is how to get there. In many cases, there was no pathway there. Even with the larger carriers, they weren’t in that area. So now that we are building this utility network for ourselves, covering all these counties and the many miles of fiber, it gives them an opportunity to get out there into those rural areas and provide that last mile of service.
Brad Hine:
That’s fabulous. So in essence, you’re stepping in for those larger carriers that are not interested, but you’re providing that open-access network for all those ISPs.
On another note, since you’ve been here this week, what are some of the most surprising things you’ve seen at this conference? Any topics that came up that you didn’t think you would see here?
Mark Ponton:
Um, I think probably some of the most surprising things is the one that you already mentioned. In a previous conversation that I was having with another gentleman, we discussed the small amount of education that these ISPs and others have in what it takes to build these fiber networks. There’s quite a bit of work that needs to be done ahead of time and that’s something that we need to educate them on is the amount of work that’s needed to be done overhead, underground, you know, pole replacements, getting everything prepared.
So I see that a lot with different ones. And even hearing that in some of the sessions of trying to get prepared, get planned, and get a good plan together instead of just saying, “Okay. We’re going to do this and hope for the best.”
That doesn’t work well. That’s something that I see a lot, and I’m trying to help them understand what it takes to be able to just go out and put the fiber up. It’d be wonderful if you could just go out and hang it on the pole and say, “We’re good to go.” But it’s not quite that simple.
Brad Hine:
Right. That’s a great point. You don’t know what you don’t know. Electric networks, although a network, like broadband network, has a lot of different pieces to it and details to it. So education is paramount.
So how large is your team?
Mark Ponton:
I have a team of eight right now. We have a person who is very experienced with splicing. We have another who was a foreman who is a lineman still, but he’s on our team now. He’s able to help with a lot of the construction. I have a designer, and I have someone who takes care of all the work orders and the invoicing, which is a lot in itself.
And then there are three others that are solely dedicated to these two projects from the side of all the construction. They oversee all the crews, whether it be our in-house crews or contract crews. They review all the designs ahead of time. Once it gets to them, they’ll go out into the field, look at the design, look at the poles, and then they can help make wise choices and decide if the work really needs to be done or not.
A lot of designers design from their seats with Google. Right. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you really need someone to be able to focus on that and be dedicated to this and be able to go out in the field and see what needs to be done. They can also see if there’s a better way that we can do this. Or maybe we don’t really need to do that at all.
Brad Hine:
Right. That’s a great point. As far as design programs, we see a lot of automation and AI and using data to maybe shorten that design process, but you can’t take the human out of the process entirely.
Mark Ponton:
No, you can’t.
Brad Hine:
I appreciate you coming to talk with us. It’s great to meet you. Before we wrap up today if somebody wants to get in touch with you or with REC, where can they go for that?
Mark Ponton:
Sure. My information is on our website at myrec.coop. For anyone who wants to email me, my email is mponton@ myrec.coop. You’re welcome to email me or contact me. I would be glad to talk with you about anything that you may have or any interest you may have. Some of the experiences, the challenges, the things that we didn’t do so well, you know, that we’re trying to connect and collect, you know, correct as we move along. And maybe someone’s just out there with an idea like, you know, we want to get into this. I’d be glad to talk with anyone that may be trying to think about it or might be far into it. Between the two of us, we may be able to help each other. So I’m always open and welcome anyone to whom I can help.
Brad Hine:
I love hearing that you’re a big participant of this UTC community and filling this community with education and knowledge and willing to share. I invite you next time to come chat with us too. Next year, I think, we’re in Mobile. So please don’t be a stranger. And you take care.
From me, Brad Hine, and Mark Ponton, thank you for joining us today. Bye-Bye.
