Hindsight is 2020: Broadband Bunch Highlights - ETI
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January 4, 2021

Hindsight is 2020: Broadband Bunch Highlights

The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch

Craig Corbin:

Hello everyone, and welcome to a special edition of The Broadband Bunch. Alongside my colleagues Pete Pizzutillo and Brad Hine, I’m Craig Corbin. Thanks so much for joining us. Just over 18 months ago, a brand new and distinctive entry joined the pantheon of broadband-focused podcasts, The Broadband Bunch. In the time since, listeners have heard a wide variety of conversations. Today, we’ll look back at some of the episodes we’ve enjoyed along the way in our very first retrospective, The Broadband Bunch 2020 Year in Review.

A Look Back to the Beginning

Craig Corbin:

It goes back 18 months when it got cranked up. Pete, this was sort of a brainchild of yours. Take us back through the thought process of how it all came to be.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I was definitely part of the decision. I had a hand in it but a couple of us were looking at the conversations that we’d been having with people in the marketplace and realized here’s just so many great stories of individual efforts. I always characterize it as patriotic and it really is given what we’ve all experienced in the last year. There are a lot of folks that have contributed a lot of personal sweat and equity to help out their community, and those stories are just being under told. I think as a software company dealing in helping solve the problem [of universal reliable, high speed broadband access], there were just a lot of really good stories that we needed to bring into the light, but there’s also so much innovation going on. There are so many smart people trying to solve this problem that the innovation technology angle was also being under communicated.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We thought, “Okay, how can we do that?”  So rather than trying to convince some of the other publications that are more revenue-driven and have an opportunity to talk to many people across the globe, we thought, “Hey, let’s bring a microphone and see if we can’t capture some of it?”

Craig Corbin:

That’s what’s been exciting, and I know, Brad, you’re well aware that we are in a field that is huge. There are currently more than one and a half million podcasts, 34 million episodes out there, but we’ve been able to find some incredibly interesting guests! As we tackled this Year in Review show, I know for me it was difficult to cull a list of at least a dozen, down to a top three. What was it like for you doing through that process?

Brad Hine:

I’ve been focusing mostly on the service provider side of the broadband industry whether its fixed-wireless or fixed-line operators that are out there, and to echo Pete, there are a lot of great stories that have been untold. What I’ve found is the feedback that we’ve gotten from our listeners that in terms of the content that we’ve been able to put out there regarding best practices from Fiber to the Home (FTTH) operators or Fixed Wireless operators to some of the stories of entrepreneurs in the WISP market, the Wireless Internet Service Provider market, is that it is really fascinating. A lot of the folks we’ve spoken with come from rural U.S. areas and they stake their savings to put up a business and try to figure it out along the way. They wind up being technology gurus and entrepreneurs.

Brad Hine:

I started out with a big list at first too. It was great to meet people initially at trade shows and then virtually over the phone and hear what’s really unique about what they offer to their market.

Craig Corbin:

What we did was try to cull this down to a top three for each of us, and we’re actually going to share some sound bites from each of those episodes and, Pete, I think it would be fitting that we start with your top three.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We all bring our own interests to bear on these conversations, so what I look for, what you and Brad look for, and what Joe and some other folks are looking for is a bit different.  It’s really been an interesting way to kind of explore this industry. My top three were definitely hard to pick, so please don’t take it personally if you didn’t make the list.

Francella Ochillo, Next Century Cities

Pete Pizzutillo:

This year, we had an interview with Francella from Next Century Cities and it was May or June, and we were talking about all that was going on. I asked her what was really the most surprising observation that she saw with COVID in broadband. One point that she made was really, I thought, bold and eye-opening. This is what she said.

Francella Ochillo:

I want to acknowledge that there are people as of today, like as in May of 2020, that still do not believe that broadband is essential. That is not only something that is just advocates who are saying that, those are people that are in power as policymakers and lawmakers that are saying that today.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Her responsibility is to really help advocate for communities that don’t have access or funding, or even understand how to get broadband going.  She’s dealing with policymakers, the FCC – not to name all of the people that are involved – but it just seems really ludicrous that there are kids that are at home trying to learn and understanding the importance of connection so they can get to their school work, people that are working at home, it’s just smacking us in the face, but yet there’s this disconnect at the policy and funding level which is almost scary.

Craig Corbin:

That was one of my favorite interviews all year long. Francella is such a dynamic leader and she’s passionate about universal broadband. Those are the type people that really can make a difference and it was exciting to see how she has made a difference already.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We need more of people like her.  How do we get her to keep on charging? I hope that with the change in the administration, and not to get to overly political, that there’s a lot of focus on broadband. It became part of the campaign conversation this year. We’ll see how things play out in 2021.

Craig Corbin:

Who’s number two on the list?

The Quello Center and The Merit Network

Pete Pizzutillo:

As a father of four, I had a similar perspective as our next guest, talking about broadband and the homework gap. We had the opportunity early on this year to talk to The Quello Center and The Merit Network. They had done some research around the impact of broadband on student performance and by extension to success in the workforce. In my discussion with them about the homework gap, their joint research, they were able to quantify the impact of broadband on students, and this is what Johannes Bauer, Director of the Quello Center, said.

Johannes Bauer:

A lot of these studies very clearly show that those with fast internet access have clearly higher grade point averages. In fact, the difference between those who have fast access and those who have no access is about half a letter grade.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Which is really interesting, right? Half a letter grade may not seem that significant, but to me it’s a difference between being a C student and a B student in some cases. They also identified and quantified some other areas around kids that are working off of their mobile device as their primary source for broadband because they’re sitting in a parking lot trying to get access. That to me was the kind of tangible evidence that we need to go and say, “This is not a question of if. This is a question of, ‘How do we get it now?'”

Craig Corbin:

That’s something that is making a difference not just now, but for the long haul. Brad, I know from your perspective having a son that’s been doing the distance learning now for a bit, you’ve seen that firsthand.

Brad Hine:

When we were all thrust into the COVID-19 necessity to work from home and learn remotely, too, it was so key to have the best of the best [broadband] service going to everyone’s home. You never know what kind of connectivity you’re going to have, and we’ve heard so many stories of people having to leave their home and find a good internet connection for work or school. It’s so important, both residential and commercial, to have that right at your disposal.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We talk a lot about remote learning, but it’s really more about in my perspective about remote teaching. There are universities, like the University of Michigan and Michigan State that Merit is attached to, and school districts around the country that are trying to figure out how to be better providers of education remotely.

Pete Pizzutillo:

That’s the shift that I’m excited to see – that not only do we understand that lower student performance is an outcome of our inability to provide remote education effectively, but that we start seeing some innovation, some technologies, and some interesting educational operational models, if you will, that are going to say, “Okay, maybe this remote pattern is going to happen again. How do we get more prepared? Or, how do we permanently shift how we teach our children?”

Brad Hine:

What we’ll see are people will have options in the future because school districts are really, like you said, stepping up nationwide and trying to fill that gap to make sure that they can reach everybody in their area, whether it’s face-to-face, remote, or a mix of each.

Craig Corbin:

One final thought is that we’ve actually visited twice in this calendar year with those associated with the Merit Network and it’s initiative The Michigan Moonshot, one of the most impressive efforts that I’ve ever seen doing such phenomenal work. They’re a great example for states all around the country on how it can be done.

Katherine de Witt, Pew Charitable Trust

Craig Corbin:

Part of our stated goal is not only to talk with providers but thought leaders in the industry as well. One of whom, without question, is Katherine de Witt from the Pew Charitable Trust. Pete, you had a phenomenal conversation with her.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I didn’t want to get too cynical with my top three and talk only about the problem. What I thought was most refreshing about our discussion with Katherine de Witt was the research she compiled about what has been working with states to address this broadband issue.  She let us in on not only what was working but why it’s working in these states.  This one sound bite should explain something pretty significant.

Katherine de Witt:

We did identify what we’re calling universal truths of broadband, and these characteristics were true across all nine states that we looked at regardless of their program structure. The first is the importance of executive and legislative leadership. I talk about the importance of policy, the importance of stakeholder engagement.

Pete Pizzutillo:

What I liked about this conversation, similar to what The Moonshot Initiative is doing, is that it’s moving beyond the recognition of a problem and saying, “Okay, on the path of recovery or the paths of solving this, what is working? What can you as a community, as a school learn from what has worked? What’s the best-of-breed approach to doing that?”

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think Merit Networks has gone back and put together a Marketplace which is helping people that are asking, “Okay, I have this problem in my community. How do I get started? What are the best tools and processes that I need to take in place?” I think that’s the kind of momentum I would love to see carry in 2021 for us to put this digital divide and lack of broadband access behind us.

Craig Corbin:

I think both of you would agree that we need to have critical mass of interest from both sides of the aisle. They’ve known it for years and years. Now, it’s time to get it done.

Craig Corbin:

That completes the first third of our Year in Review, and all three of those were on my top 10 as well.  Glad that we had those right off the bat. For my money, some of the most inspirational conversations that we’ve had come from the WISP corner of the industry. Guys that are true pioneers, dedicated, roll up their sleeves, get-in-the-trench kind of guys. We have had some phenomenal conversations.  Brad what are your thoughts?

Felipe Hernandez, VPNet

Brad Hine:

Some of the newest technology also is coming out of the fixed-wireless side of the industry with these WISPs. My first one up is from Puerto Rico, a gentleman by the name of Felipe Hernandez from VPNet. I was really attracted to his… you know, you could say rags to riches story. It was interesting that he was a technology enthusiast from the start.

Brad Hine:

At the age of 11 years old, he was an amateur radio operator in Puerto Rico and was always attracted to technology and experimentation, and like many of the WISPs, he started connecting his neighborhood and getting people connected online with broadband. In the mid-’90s, Felipe actually started his own wireless business in Puerto Rico. He sold it and moved over to Jamaica, where he started a similar business. After three successful years, he moved back to Puerto Rico and started VPNet.

Brad Hine:

The thing that really grabbed me about what Felipe was saying is he started in that commercial market. In our interview with Felipe Hernandez, we asked about why he added residential wireless broadband service to an already successful commercial business in Puerto Rico and how it led to servicing these communities and his partnership with Microsoft Airband.

Felipe Hernandez:

One day, I was approached by a friend of mine about a community that was in really bad shape. I went there, I spoke to some people, and when I left that place, I was changed. I was some other person, you know? I spent the whole day in a community, they cooked me lunch and I had conversations with a number of neighbors, and I met their kids.  They were all saying, “Can you come here to this community and bring some internet?” You know? Wow! It was a complete change of heart at that point, and then it became a mission. It was very easy to be dragged into that because it felt human. It felt that you were really making a difference.

Brad Hine:

The context is that this was after the last few years of terrible storms, hurricanes and bad weather that stood in the way of them having consistent infrastructure on the island to connect people and that it was necessary to rebuild a lot of it. It really touched me that a guy that had figured everything out on the commercial side, heard the constituents on the island asking for help and he dove into it.  He grabbed Microsoft as a partner and is now solving those connectivity issues on the residential side.

Craig Corbin:

I think it was one of the most powerful comment that we got all year long with regard to something that changed his life, how he approached his business and the passion for it because he was truly at that point invested. He was choking up a little bit as he remembered that.

Pete Pizzutillo:

This is really a great example of why we thought this podcast would be necessary, to give voice to these types of passion. It’s a great quote. It gives you chills to think about somebody that is affected by the needs of somebody else, somebody they don’t even know and they’re going to commit their lives and their business and their financial well-being to helping those people. Bob Thompson at Underline did the same thing coming out of his experience in Haiti. Also, the folks at Mural Net and what they’re doing with the Native Americans.  The broadband industry is just littered with these great stories that not enough people know.

Craig Corbin:

So many of the conversations that we’ve had in the WISP business have been with very multi-talented guys. Brad, your next selection fits that to a T.

WISPER Internet, Nathan Stooke

Brad Hine:

The story we did with Nathan Stooke, CEO of Wisper Internet, again a self-starter, was really great.  Craig, when you and I talked with him, he’s more than 10 years beyond where he started. Now, he gets to look back with confidence, that he made the right decisions.  It was interesting to hear how he leveraged his business over several credit cards and convinced his wife to start this. He was just excited about trying to solve a problem that others in the area were not [solving]. Because the Tier One operators wouldn’t come out and supply services, he started up a fixed-wireless broadband company in Middle America.

Brad Hine:

In our interview with Nathan, he described the vision that he had back in 2010.  He had seen some stats about fewer TVs being sold in the U.S. market at that time and he was hearing friends say things like, “Pay TV is going by the wayside.” And, “There’s this new Over-The-Top-type service which is going to make us have better broadband speed.” He was also observing his four-year-old daughter watching content only on her iPad and through YouTube – she didn’t care about a television.  So he had an idea. This next quote is going to encapsulate kind of where he went next in this whole vision.

Nathan Stooke:

It was Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, who in 2015, did a whole speech about how pay TV as we know it is dead, subscription model is dead. Everybody thinks it’s going to Over-The-Top (OTT). He got a whole Wall Street Journal article written about him and I’m thinking to myself, “Wait a minute, I was five years ahead of you saying this,” but I guess he probably has a little more credibility behind him, right?

Brad Hine:

To finish that story, Nathan put all of the time into learning about the technology and innovating and building a staff. He started with just a few employees. I think he just passed the hundred-employee mark recently. The CAF II Funding was really a catalyst for him. It distributed $220 million into Wisper Internet.  Their vision and plan, within the next 10 years, is to have hundreds of thousands of devices up and running in areas that really couldn’t get good service before.

Craig Corbin:

Nathan has also competed internationally as a swimmer- for years in the World Championships. Multi-talented? Yeah, he sets the bar pretty high.

Brad Hine:

A total entrepreneur. He’s going to pick things that he loves and he’s just going to do them to the very best of his ability until he gets the job done.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Unfortunately, that’s been the state of this market – that you need those heroic efforts to start moving this digital divide up until now, right?  Thank God for people that are overachievers and that are driven because we’d probably be 10-years behind. You know what I mean? Hopefully, it’s a lot easier for normal folks that don’t know how to swim like myself.

Paladin Wireless

Craig Corbin:

One of the earlier conversations that we had with Casper Faust at a WISP in North Georgia called Paladin, is without question, one of my favorites of all time.

Brad Hine:

Paladin Wireless is based close to where we work and so was one of the first businesses we reached out to.  We got to know Casper, he was the Field Operations Manager at Paladin which is in Royston, Georgia. He climbs poles, he tests software, he configures the software, he trains folks, and above anything else, he is an amazing talker.

Brad Hine:

When Casper first joined, part of our job is to educate people also on this, too, and not just tell daily stories. Casper is fabulous at imparting technical information in a way that people can easily consume it and in a very human and simple way understand what these WISPs go through. Paladin Wireless, again, is a wireless internet service provider in Northeast Georgia. Casper was sharing his challenges of providing reliable high-speed broadband services to that rural area up in Northeast Georgia. It’s the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains with lots of mountains, trees, you name it is in the way, so the clip will tell the story better than me.

Casper Faust:

Most people out here cannot get internet. You think that you always have satellite options available. You can always get HughesNet, you can always get Viasat. We live in a very wooded part of the Appalachian foothills. Many people that we try to serve have such thick tree cover around their house that they can’t get even a satellite connection unless they cut down trees. I don’t think anybody wants to be told, “Okay, if you want the internet connection, you need to first buy a chainsaw.”

Brad Hine:

It’s very telling that whether it’s an area that’s not densely populated or you live at the foothills of the Appalachians and there’s just a ton of trees, I mean, these people were not just underserved, they were unserved entirely. Paladin really did service this community, coming in and setting up high-speed broadband wireless connectivity.

Pete Pizzutillo:

That’s the other interesting part of shedding light on this space. I’m sure there’s no Comcast trucks that have chainsaws around these areas. I’m speaking nationally and in generalizations, but a lot of us live in these bubbles. Living outside of Philadelphia, we’ve had fiber for 10 years and when you start to look at the lack of broadband in other areas and outside of these bubbles, there’s a whole new appreciation for what these WISPs are doing.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Stories like Paladin’s and a lot of the other more rural ones are great to kind of reshape our thinking and say, “Hey, you know, you got to look beyond your block to figure out that there’s a big gap of disparity and opportunity.” A lot of the conversations that we’ve talked about are around digital economies, so if you don’t have digital access, you can’t get on LinkedIn, you can’t apply for jobs, you can’t do mobile banking.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think a lot of people are shocked when they hear that, and that’s what I’m really excited about with how the Broadband Bunch is using this platform to help tell these kind of backwoods stories to Main Street.

Brad Hine:

When we visited Royston and Paladin, to chat with Casper, there are viable businesses there running in the small downtown area (which he says is three blocks of buildings}, because they all have high-speed internet connectivity.  So the proof is right there in the city center for them.

Craig Corbin:

That’s so important in the WISP vertical part of this industry. They are very well-positioned, very nimble, very agile in quickly bringing service to areas that don’t have it. That’s so vital.

Pete Pizzutillo:

So Craig, what about you? What’s your most memorable from the past?

Craig Corbin:

I’ll tell you that it was a difficult challenge to cull down to three. I literally started with a dozen that just immediately popped to mind. Guys like Evan Marwell, the CEO/Founder of EducationSuperHighway. What they’ve done nationwide making a difference. We talked about it early in the show with the ability to impact distance learning and get children, students connected. They’ve done phenomenal work. Guys like Attorney Tom Cohen with the law firm Kelley Drye, with a tremendous background in the industry. Conversations with Carol Mattey, Betty Buckley with WITA, and a great conversation with Marc Dyman of Fiberlight.

Sascha Meinrath, Palmer Chair, Penn State University

Craig Corbin:

When it came down to making the decision, one of my favorite conversations had to be with Sascha Meinrath, and he is the Palmer Chair of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University. That’s a mouthful.

Craig Corbin:

In addition to that, Sascha is well-known on Capitol Hill for work that he’s done on both sides of the aisle and consulting work with the FCC.  He’s also well known for his work in data mapping, which is something that is of the essence with any conversation that we’re having about broadband and funding.  We have RDOF, $24.4 billion over the next decade, other things like CAF I and II funding, but having accurate broadband mapping is a component of how those funds get allocated.

Craig Corbin:

Sascha has done amazing work over the years.  In addition to what he does at Penn State and on Capitol Hill, he founded and is a director at X-Lab, an innovation think tank focused on digital equity.  One of the questions that came up in our conversation dealt with the FCC and how it gathers data from service providers every six months, but then it takes two years to release that information publicly. I asked Sascha about another problem with that data and that is the veracity of thisself-reported broadband data.

Sascha Meinrath:

There’s no verification of the accuracy or precision of this [self-reported] data. What our data is showing, (and we have a lot of data), is that over time ISPs have become increasingly hyperbolic in exaggerating what speeds are available and where those speeds are available.  At one point in the last data collection effort, the FCC’s official maps showed universal, 100% gigabyte connectivity across six states!

Sascha Meinrath:

It was only when public interest groups and non-government officials questioned the data very publicly and said, “This is so absurdly inaccurate it can’t possibly stand,” that the FCC decided to remove that one provider’s data from its data set, but still refused to actually verify the accuracy of all of the other data that they have collected.

Craig Corbin:

Look at the passion that he brings to this, I just love any response that includes the word “hyperbolic.”

Craig Corbin:

He has worked with everyone on both sides of the aisle, up to and including the Chief Technology Officer of the US, looking to push the appropriate investment of those funds, and it all starts with mapping. I think we’re on the cusp of finally getting some progress made there.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I agree. Ajit Pai of the FCC is going to leave soon probably in the spring, so there might be some shifting with the new administration, but there’s also a lot of grassroots efforts going on. If you go back to The Michigan Moonshot, they actually have self-reporting but at a school level, the kids are doing it, which is interesting but there are a lot of states that have been trying to figure out how to solve this problem.

Pete Pizzutillo:

In 2021, I would love to dig into this topic a little bit further because I think there’s a lot of ways for Microsoft and Facebook and other organizations and platforms that are out there to say that the data has to be at hand right now. I just feel like there’s a gap in being able to codify it.

Craig Corbin:

Brad, you know exactly what we’re talking about.

Brad Hine:

We attended the Esri conference in 2019 and we spoke of the importance of location intelligence.  Location intelligence is a part of the digital transformation that everybody needs to go through in using maps and making sure organizations have reliable data for geographic information, network insight and prediction. As far as just general record keeping like this topic here, it’s absolutely essential to everything we do to be able to look at a map and derive certain things rather than having to look them up in a spreadsheet.

Craig Corbin:

Congratulations to States like Georgia and Michigan where they have gone through a phenomenal mapping process and been able to show the tremendous difference between what the FCC numbers show and what the reality truly is. I think in Georgia there’s a delta there of about 70% between the two.

Craig Corbin:

Merit Network has done similar work in Michigan.  Those are just two states that have shown how it can be done. Huge thanks to Sascha for the conversation and all the work that he has done.

David Theodore, Climate Resilient Internet

Craig Corbin:

Just last month we focused on, perhaps the most unique topic of the year, climate resilient broadband.  We talked with one of the most dedicated professionals in the industry for decades, David Theodore, the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Climate Resilient Internet. He spoke about how for years and years he had attended conferences that focused on how there were vulnerability issues with the infrastructure for providers while no one wanted to talk about data vulnerability.

David Theodore:

Data underlies everything today and you can’t, for instance, be a hospital without access to the internet and to cloud data. You can’t run a lot of different businesses or government functions without access to data. After sitting and listening and realizing what this missing piece is, I could see how it connected to what I’ve been doing my whole life and I thought back about my experiences and the experiences of many of my friends who’ve provided true carrier class microwave radio equipment and installed it to best practices. We all talk about it.

David Theodore:

We talk about how we had links that withstood Superstorm Sandy and every one since. I’m not saying all of them do, but we know that the technology is capable of doing that, and so it was really just a matter of connecting the dots. I had this “aha” moment. It was like, “Holy smokes. I mean, we can really do this. Wireless can be like data life boats for the internet.” This isn’t a typical backup proposition. We’re talking new best practices for the telecom industry worldwide.

Craig Corbin:

I was so impressed with how David and his company have approached this because we need connectivity, but we also need to make sure that that connectivity is there when you need it every day.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think shifting our brains from just access to the services is really what we’re starting to see. I’m glad you picked this one out because given the pandemic and in terms of all of the climate issues that we’ve had in the US and globally this year, that it’s just another reminder that we need to be thinking about broadband as a utility.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We can’t handle the power being off for a protracted period of time, a couple of hours, before things start going bad or we lose productivity. You’re right, this type of digital capability has to have the same level of resiliency, predictability, and reliability as other utilities.

Craig Corbin:

Ensuring that the network and the data is protected and more importantly, certified, to guarantee that those providers that have gotten the protection they need moving forward. I just thought it was an intriguing conversation.

The Ammon Model with Mayor Sean Coletti

Craig Corbin:

We talk a lot on the podcast about evolution in the world of broadband and I think one of the concepts that has the potential to make a large impact is that of Open Access networks. At the forefront of that conversation, is the City of Ammon, Idaho.  I think my introduction for that particular conversation was, “Okay, if you had to pick the best internet service of any city in the country, let alone the world, would you ever think of Ammon, Idaho?” They literally have the top network in the U.S., the seventh-best in the world, and it’s all because of how they approached the concept of open access.

Craig Corbin:

I talked with the Mayor of Ammon, Sean Coletti, about the city’s transition from an unlimited commercial network to an open access network.

Mayor Sean Coletti:

The real magic happened, I think, when we decided what the Ammon model would be, where the Ammon model is really an open access and opt-in model. So if you want it, you can have it and if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it. Open access allows for multiple providers to compete on one line into your house. You own the line that runs into your house and the competition lowers the cost of the service dramatically, and that has really made all of the difference and made it a very popular program, not just in Ammon, but throughout Idaho and the United States.

Craig Corbin:

If you were a customer of the open access system there in Ammon, Idaho, what would you pay on a monthly basis for synchronous gig service?

Pete Pizzutillo:

It’s in Idaho, so can we pay in potatoes? Or does it have to be cash?

Craig Corbin:

$9.99.

Pete Pizzutillo:

That’s crazy. Wow.

Craig Corbin:

For those that are not familiar with open access, you have competition between multiple providers on a network that typically is owned by a municipality or a utility in some places. There had been sort of the equivalent of the old-fashioned gas war, price war last June when Mayor Coletti tweeted about a reduction in price from one of the providers, and immediately within 24 hours, everyone else bumped it down. They actually now have a level of service that is free to their residents.

Craig Corbin:

It’s a phenomenal concept and they are now branching out and working with other municipalities in the region to show them how it could work for them.

Pete Pizzutillo:

There’s a lot baked into this topic, this interview. The business model that you’re talking about when we talk about the open access business model in terms of being the network provider versus the retail provider. There’s a lot of attention on this space. There’s satellites coming in, there’s public money, there’s private money. There are municipalities working on this problem, there’s big corporations working on this problem, so it smells like there’s going to be a lot of overbuild going on and that’s not sustainable.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I want somebody to say here’s the national plan and then we can find the places where we have shared resources and shared assets because that becomes sustainable. Then, you dislocate the maintenance from the marketing piece of it.

Brad Hine:

I love the open access model, not just in technology, but in the business model because the open access provider remains neutral and independent, but they offer a gateway in a way for competition in an open market to happen in that community. With an open market, you get all of that competition and you get innovation when you have competition, so in these rural areas, you’re going to get better services because of it.

Pete Pizzutillo:

The last piece of that, and I think the back end of it is the technological and the design components because you’re right. It’s not a race to the bottom where you’re building cheap stuff that doesn’t really work because you have to have the customer service. We just mentioned about [broadband] needing to be a utility-grade service, but it also has to be affordable. That duality is really forcing people to think about, how do you build, construct, design, (whatever word you want to use) systems that are sustainable and future-proof?

Pete Pizzutillo:

I think a lot of what we’ve seen in the networks that were born in the last 20 years, they were built for the very short term. We know that you can’t build a highway that you’re going to need for the next 30 years with a five-year view. The open access model forces you to address the communities’ future needs and uses early on.

Craig Corbin:

You start with a robust network, a solid backbone, and then let the providers come in and do battle for the customers. The customers obviously win in this especially when they are paying less than $10 a month for synchronous one gig service.

The Mystery Questions

Craig Corbin:

We’ve recounted each of our Top 3 podcasts of the year.  Now there have to be burning questions that each of us have been waiting to pop on the other two. Pete, I’m again going to start with you.  Let’s categorize this as a mystery question.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Mine hearkens back to one of my favorite movies, Fight Club, where Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are sitting in the bathtub talking about if you could fight somebody, a historical figure, who would you fight? Back to you guys and our PG version of it is, if you could interview a historical figure for The Broadband Bunch, who would it be?  Let’s stick with real people, not fictional characters, and it could be any person.

John Malone, The Cable Cowboy

Craig Corbin:

John Malone. He’s still kicking. The Cable Cowboy. Without question, the most visionary CEO that I ever had the chance to work for. Phenomenal from the days of TCI, now Liberty Global and Liberty Media. One of those guys that was always five to 10 years ahead of everybody else. That would be my dream interview in the industry.

Harald “Blue Tooth” Gormsson

Brad Hine:

I’m going to go with an unsung guy named Harald Gormsson. Now, Harald, he was a Viking king who ruled Denmark and Norway from the year 958 until 985. His nickname was Bluetooth, which is where the name of the product comes from because being a Scandinavian king, he had amazing communication skills and got several different groups and tribes of people together under one rulership.

Where do we see this industry in a year?

Craig Corbin:

Looking at the future of this industry and how rapidly things are evolving, I guess my question would be, where do we see this industry this time next year?

Pete Pizzutillo:

That’s really interesting and there’s a lot of X factors out there. I think it’s now about how do we get there [universal broadband access] quickly? I know there’s been a lot of talk about 5G and all of the hype around it, but I think we’re getting the infrastructure in place to begin realizing some of these crazy services that we’ve been talking about for so long. It may not be in the purest sense. There’s a lot of hybrid networks and hybrid solutions that are going to be strung together to start getting there, but I think we’re past the demand point.  People are ready to consume these things.  Look at telehealth – I don’t know why doctors have waiting rooms? It’s crazy. I don’t want to sit in a germ bath like that.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Being a personal germophobe, I think let’s get there as quickly as possible. The pandemic and the situation that we’ve been dealing with, everybody’s kind of done that calculus much quicker than they had in the past.

Pete Pizzutillo:

I’m excited to see a lot of the services, smart cities and smart capabilities becoming real because there’s a lot of money getting poured in, and if the access continues to grow as it is, then those services become a lot more accessible.

Craig Corbin:

Brad, how about from your perspective?

Brad Hine:

It was interesting back in March when COVID-19 started forcing everybody into remote working and going to school. Being in the tech industry already, we have a lot of these functions and a lot of this know-how already, it just hadn’t been utilized on that scale and most were kind of forced into this. What I’ve noticed over the last many months, eight, nine months, is that people are adapting quickly to working remotely. We’re going to see, like Pete said, “Why do we have waiting rooms?” I think you’re going to see places of business start to make different decisions on whether their employees are going to work in one building, whether they’re going to have a permanent building, whether they’re going to work from home.

Craig Corbin:

Brad, while you have the floor, do you have a mysterious question?

Brad Hine:

What I’m curious about is that now that we’ve been moved into this remote work from home and schooling from home and we’re not always sitting at a desk and in front of a computer. How often do you look at your phone each day?  There’s no right or wrong answer, and this is kind of a two-parter. The second part is, if you’re not looking at work stuff, what do you look at the most? What type of topic do you look at the most?

Craig Corbin:

I’ll go first. Without question, I look at my phone more than a hundred times probably before lunch because inadvertently you will be notified of an incoming text or email first on your phone, then see it on the laptop. Then, you’ll be multitasking back and forth. Easily in the triple digits on that. Then after work stuff its easily ESPN.com that I’m looking at the most on my phone.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Then, Weather.com.

Craig Corbin:

Well, that’s the way I start the day is Weather.com, yeah.

Pete Pizzutillo:

This goes back to my point about what we’ll look like a year from now is I just got the Galaxy 3 Watch, which it’s LTE-enabled, so I can do phone calls and I can leave my phone at home.  But the reality is my phone has taken over from my computer, so I get to leave my laptop behind, but I still don’t want to carry the phone around either but I’m tethered to it.

Pete Pizzutillo:

Now, how often do I look at my watch? It’s a lot. It’s kind of continuous, whether it’s work-related or kids-related, but I can call on it, text on it, and I can pay bills on it. That’s the beauty. I’m that kind of person where I want to see AI telling me what I’m thinking before I get there. I want the Starbucks guy to show up at my door and deliver me my latte as I’m walking out the door. I want the systems to know and integrate into my life, a lot like electricity.

Pete Pizzutillo:

We don’t have a dedicated thing for the TV and the lights and the fan and all that stuff. It’s just part of the fabric, and I think we’re starting to slide in that direction and I think once we get rid of the Baby Boomers, we won’t be afraid of change and we’ll be able to embrace it.

Craig Corbin:

So much has transpired with the podcast during this very unique year. As we close out, quick final thoughts. Pete, we’ll start with you.

Pete Pizzutillo:

What we’ve accomplished in the 18 months since we kicked this off has been fantastic, and thanks to everybody that’s involved. There’s a team behind all of this stuff. I know Craig and Brad and myself get a lot of the glory, so thanks for all of your help. It’s just going to get better. It’s a great little platform that’s been well-received and I look forward to expanding that.

Pete Pizzutillo:

As far as the industry goes, I’m even more excited than we were 18 months ago because I think there’s more patriotic endeavors and heroic efforts happening because the spotlight’s shining bright in this area. I think Americans are figuring out, and globally, that they can really help people’s quality of lives, help kids be in a better position moving forward. It’s great to be a part of that.

Craig Corbin:

Brad?

Brad Hine:

Since we started this podcast 18 months ago, I’ve noticed a lot of other podcasts running, and so my content and my life after work hours is spent really listening to a lot of podcasts, getting more knowledge. I find that what we want to give to our listeners, best practices, unique stories, interviews with government folks that are making policy, things like that.  We’ve done a great job with just getting a balance of that content on the show, too. I’m excited and enthusiastic to get connected to more service providers and find those gems, those stories out there that can spark innovation and better productivity through other listeners, too.

Craig Corbin:

The enjoyment has been not only the conversations themselves, but the preparation for them. I am constantly intrigued and impressed with what I find about our guests in prepping for the interviews and look forward to another year of that. I also look forward to our transition to adding a video component to The Broadband Bunch in future.

Craig Corbin:

That’s going to wrap it up for this edition, the 2020 Year in Review on The Broadband Bunch. On behalf of Pete and Brad, I’m Craig. Thanks so much for letting us be a part of your day. We’ll see you next time right here on The Broadband Bunch.

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