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.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. My name is Pete Pizzutillo, and I am here at the Calix Connections 2022 in sunny Las Vegas and have the opportunity to sit and speak with Jeremy Whitley from Roanoke Connect. He’s the Director of Network Engineering. Jeremy, thanks for joining us.
Jeremy Whitley:
Thank you so much, Pete. I appreciate it.
Pete Pizzutillo:
This is your first time coming to this event?
Jeremy Whitley:
It is actually, yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
And what brought you here? What were you looking for?
Jeremy Whitley:
Well, we’re in a very economically disadvantaged area of the state in North Carolina, seven counties, and it’s really important to me to provide access to the internet for a lot of those folks that have never had access. One of the things we’ve looked at is, in our area, in our market, there are not that many competitors, so we could easily come in and offer speeds that are above and beyond what anyone else could provide. We know we can do that, but it’s my hope that we can develop products, roll out products, and become more of a partner with our subscribers. And so, attending this event just gives me a chance to see what’s coming in the future.
Pete Pizzutillo:
And so, Roanoke Connect is part of the Roanoke Electric Co-op?
Jeremy Whitley:
That’s right.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Where’s it located? How many members do you have? And what’s the kind of model that you guys …
Jeremy Whitley:
Sure. So, we are in the upper right-hand portion of the state and the very far northeastern portion of the state. Again, it’s seven counties. We have 16,000 member-owners. It’s our goal to build fiber out to reach all of those member-owners. We’re at about, on the broadband side, we’re at around 5,000 subscribers now, and our goal for next year is to build 25 miles of lit fiber per week. So, we have a very aggressive build-out plan.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Wow. Good luck with that, right?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
And so, what are some of the challenges that you all see? We hear a lot about supply chains, those types of things, and training. But specifically to your geography and to your location, what are some of the things that you guys see as your biggest challenges right now?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah, I’d say one of the biggest things is probably just construction. Right? So, just overall construction issues. With everything that’s going on in the country right now, a lot of folks are trying to do the same thing we are. So finding help, finding workers to get the construction done, actually getting the fiber in the ground or hung, and getting that fiber lit is probably our biggest challenge right now.
Pete Pizzutillo:
And so, you’re at Calix, partnering with Calix. You mentioned some of the things that you’re looking towards. Walking around this show and into this event, hearing other people speak, what are some of the trends and some of the things that you find interesting so far?
Jeremy Whitley:
Well, I think going back to what I was saying earlier, the ability to offer speeds is something that everyone is eventually going to be able to do. We’ve heard a lot about how that’s a commodity item, basically, or will be a commodity item. So we’re looking for, as we mature and as we grow, being able to offer products, and services to our subscribers that will make them sticky, will have some brand loyalty for us, and reduce churn for us. Of course, security is a big thing now. Wi-Fi is a big thing. A lot of our support calls come with folks that just don’t know how to manage their own Wi-Fi. Being able to offer that to a subscriber and take that headache away from them would be a big thing and is a big thing for us.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, it’s a pretty popular theme in terms of there being a lot of managed services being able to value add. It’s great that we’ve moved beyond the connection, connecting people to the internet and enabling people through the internet. You guys are rurally and underserved. Are you looking at any funding opportunities?
Jeremy Whitley:
We’ve applied for, we bid on a lot of the grants, and we are getting some funding. The areas where we don’t get funding though, it’s our plan to build those anyhow. We think that we’re the best provider in the area or can be the best provider in the area, and we want to do what’s right for our subscribers. I mean, Roanoke Electric’s been around for close to a hundred years, so being a part of that community is extremely important to us. One of the things that attracted me when I came to Roanoke, is I made a visit to the area before I actually started working for Roanoke Electric and went out to a school where techs were doing an install, and those kids had never had good internet at that school.
I thought about myself and having grown up in fairly large cities, lived in fairly large cities. It’s something you don’t think about or I didn’t think about so much, was the fact that some of these kids, whenever Covid hit and they were having to learn online, they didn’t have good internet at home. They were sitting in parking lots, they were getting internet wherever they could. So to me, it’s really important that we become that provider that makes a difference, and enables the kids to learn in ways that they haven’t been able to before. And hopefully brings, draws some business to the area as well, because it’s an area where more people are leaving than are coming to the area.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Oh, really?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yes.
Pete Pizzutillo:
It’s interesting. Trying to find purpose-driven life is always a good thing. So, you’re coming from the outside into an established co-op, a hundred years old, it’s got to be a different culture, different DNA. I mean, so what are some of the things that were surprising to you? And for folks that are considering the same kind of movement, what are some recommendations there?
Jeremy Whitley:
It’s kind of funny, you’re probably going to laugh, but coming from the for-profit world and coming into a co-op, everybody’s nice, and everybody wants to work together. It’s things like there are not those silos and challenges where one group is battling with another group. It’s more of a, hey, we’re going to get this done. We’re going to figure out how to do it and we’re going to figure out how to make it happen. The other thing is, especially for us, because we’re still in the middle of buildout, we’re almost like a startup on the Roanoke Connect side. So, we can get things done really quickly. We can change direction if we need to. If we need to make something happen quickly, you talk to a couple of people and we make it happen. So, it’s nice from that point of view.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah. That is refreshing. I won’t get into capitalism and corporate America, but having, I think, back to your point about a purpose. So that’s a great thing about the community and municipality-driven broadband, those are your neighbors. Those are the people that you probably went to school with or they taught you, and there’s that sense of community and a little patriotism. Right?
Jeremy Whitley:
Absolutely.
Pete Pizzutillo:
It starts there. Right? And so, thank you for that. And for somebody who’s thinking about coming, because as you pointed out, going from a corporate environment or a big city environment into a rural environment, we know the resources and there’s a brain drain. And so, how do we convince folks that may be considering this or maybe even considering broadband as a whole industry, what are some of the recommendations that you may have for people thinking about that career path?
Jeremy Whitley:
So yeah, coming into the broadband industry, for me at least, it was tough kind of finding my legs, so to speak. Early on, you’re working jobs that are, for me at least, it was jobs, it was learning the technical side, of course, on the side that I come from, and then developing your skills to make a career out of it. Going back to what you said about patriotism and things like that, not to get too far into it, but I felt like when I came to Roanoke Connect, I mean, I’m 52 years old and I’ve spent a career in the tech industry, and I finally felt like, when I got here, that I had a purpose.
I had a job where I knew that things that I’m doing now can have a direct impact on our subscribers. Where before, I knew I had some impact, but it was hard to see what it was. I was doing things that enabled the network, but now I feel like I’m doing things that are enabling opportunities for the community and for … Again, I keep talking about it, but when I think about the kids and the opportunities that they’re going to have to learn because you learn everything on the internet now so that opportunity is just huge. And for me, it’s been very rewarding, and it’s a place where I’ll probably retire.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, that’s amazing. Good for you. I think we all are seeking that, right? So.
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Just getting back to the show, I mean, is there anything that surprised you so far? Any stories, or concepts that popped out?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah, nothing super surprising, I guess. I’d say the most interesting thing was the public Wi-Fi offering. They are apparently just launching it today at the show, and it’s something we’ve wanted to do for our communities, and it’s going to be a huge thing for us. Because we’ve got, again, it’s a rural area, so we’ve got these small towns that we serve, and they’ve all got their downtown districts and many of them want Wi-Fi in those areas. The ability to build that out and then manage it, management of it is the big deal, right?
Pete Pizzutillo:
Right.
Jeremy Whitley:
Anybody can put up a bunch of Wi-Fi antennas and get the Wi-Fi up and running, but actually manage and make it work well. And it sounds like Calix has got a good solution for that.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, no, it is interesting. Their movement into small business and community I think is really interesting. Did you see the one, the managed service around, Bark I think it’s called?
Jeremy Whitley:
Oh yeah.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah. That’s cool.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, I mean, I thought, wow, I have a bunch of middle schoolers, and that is kind of a scary concept, so having a third-party service that’s trying to help sense cyberbullying or any kind of thing like that. So, that’s really interesting. Where do you see us in two to three years in terms of those kinds of advanced capabilities? Do you see anything that you think is coming?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah, it’s always one of those things that’s hard to predict, right? I’m excited as well about being able to just tie the whole home together, the entire home from the, you mentioned Bark, but the Arlo and the security as well. So, offering the Wi-Fi, the security, the Bark service, basically just kind of managing the entire home network for the subscriber. I’m sure we’re going to see even more opportunities for that. I’m not sure what they might be at this point, but you know how that goes. You expect, you think, ah, this is it, and we can’t do anything else over the web, over the internet, and then something else comes along. So, building the network out to enable that stuff is just the most important thing for me right now.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Yeah, no, it’s interesting. For you all that are supporting it, those network operators, I mean the complexity of dealing with, I don’t even want to support my own family and their IT needs, but having 4,000, 10,000 people calling you up saying, hey, this iPad’s not working, or how do I do this? So, how do you think you’re going to handle that scale of that kind of customer engagement?
Jeremy Whitley:
Yeah. Well, from what we’ve heard here, Calix is going to make that really simple with all their cloud offerings. So, it should be as simple as logging into the operations cloud, support cloud, and being able to drill way down because those platforms offer the ability to drill all the way down to a single user, a single device, and see what’s going on with the Wi-Fi. I’m sure the new products launched here today will have that same capability. So, I don’t see it as a huge draw on our support staff because Calix seems to be giving us the tools to effectively manage that.
Pete Pizzutillo:
No, that’s great. I think you’re right. I think they have a really interesting vision around the platform and that kind of visibility and customer engagement. So Jeremy, thank you.
Jeremy Whitley:
Thank you.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to catch up in a year from now when you’ve accomplished your 25 miles a day or a week or …
Jeremy Whitley:
A week.
Pete Pizzutillo:
A week. There you go. Thank you for being on the show. Enjoy the rest of the Calix Connections.
Jeremy Whitley:
Yes, sir. Thank you.
