Muni Broadband Brings Commitment to Rural Communities - ETI
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May 7, 2021

Muni Broadband Brings Commitment to Rural Communities

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

In this episode, we chat with Teles Fremin, of LUS Fiber, a municipally-owned subsidiary of Lafayette Utilities System. LUS became the first municipally-owned company to provide fiber-to-the-home services in the state of Louisiana. Discussion points include:

  • About Teles Fremin
  • The Birth of LUS
  • Muni Broadband Brings Economic Viability
  • Muni Broadband Commitment to Community
  • Expanding Your Broadband Footprint
  • Overcoming Technical Hurdles
  • Rewards of Working at LUS

Craig Corbin:

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Broadband Bunch. I’m Craig Corbin. Thanks so much for joining us. More than a decade ago, LUS Fiber, a municipally-owned subsidiary of Lafayette Utilities System, became the first municipally-owned company providing fiber-to-the-home services in the state of Louisiana, and one of the first in the nation. But the effort to provide those services required a nearly three-year-long legal battle, ultimately decided by the Louisiana State Supreme Court. Bonds were issued in 2007. Construction began a year later in 2008, and then in February of 2009, the first customers began receiving service. Here to share her perspective of this great success story, someone who has been part of the LUS Fiber family since its inception, the chief communications engineer for LUS Fiber, Teles Fremin. Teles, welcome to the Broadband Bunch.

Teles Fremin:

Hello, thank you so much for having me.

About Teles Fremin

Craig Corbin:

Absolutely. It is a pleasure to be able to visit with you and learn more about one of the greatest success stories of a municipally-owned fiber-to-the-home provider anywhere in the country, let alone in Louisiana. But before we get into that, if you would, give us a bit of background on you… We know that you have been part of the LUS Fiber family since it began, but give us your background in the industry, if you would.

Teles Fremin:

Yeah. So I started with LUS when I was in college, and I did temporary side work doing PC help and things like that. But when I graduated college, I got my bachelor’s in electrical engineering, and I began working full time with LUS. And at that time, it was 2002, and I started working on what was then called the Powered Network, which was the original fiber system that was built for LUS. And so I started right out of school working on that project.

Teles Fremin:

And then through the years, I’ve risen through the ranks from an engineer one to a chief engineer. I served as interim director for a period of time, and even, even outside of that, although my title is still chief engineer, I’ve acted in a general manager capacity overseeing the day-to-day operations for LUS Fiber for probably about the past five years. So it’s been a journey.

Craig Corbin:

No doubt about it, and when you talk about being there from the early days when the fiber that was installed was not for residential fiber-to-the-home, but mainly to connect schools, government locations in the area. That was a big transition with the decision to move to a fiber-to-the-home approach. Share with us, if you would, the mindset that was in place during that decision-making process.

The Birth of LUS

Teles Fremin:

Yeah. So we had a fiber backbone ring that was built for communications between the substations. We began selling services off of those to wholesale customers, who would, in turn, resell it, or to other governmental entities like schools and government facilities. And we had a lot of requests from a lot of businesses and residents that were not happy with their current provider. And so initially, we looked at an area that was a heavily saturated business area, saying, “What can we do to serve all these businesses?”

Teles Fremin:

So we did a little pilot business plan. And then that plan took hold of our leaders and said, “Well, why just do it at this scale?” And so at the time, our then-mayor went to the incumbents like Cox and AT&T and asked, “Please come to our city. Let’s invest in our city.” And they just didn’t see Lafayette as the place to invest.

Teles Fremin:

So they decided, our city leaders at the time decided that we should invest in ourselves. So we went through the process of let’s go full forward for fiber-to-the-home. And as you said before, we had several years of legal battles. We went to a vote. We had 62% of our voters supporting the LUS Fiber initiative in 2005. In 2007, we finally won our Supreme Court case in favor of moving forward. And we began construction in 2007, 2008, and served as our first customer in 2009.

Teles Fremin:

For our city leaders, I’ll say it was about really providing infrastructure and economic development to our region. And so our then-mayor said that he saw this broadband the same as providing infrastructure, same as providing roads, the same as providing electricity. He saw it in the same capacity, providing what your citizens need to survive, to live. He saw it as a fourth utility even then.

Muni Broadband Brings Economic Viability

Craig Corbin:

Absolutely, and that mindset, Teles, is one that… The transition from being a luxury to an essential service is one that really is a no-brainer. And those leaders who had the vision to see that long-term economic viability was dependent upon making that decision, being willing to fight the battle year after year, turn after turn. And it’s a tremendous honor to have been part of the team, I know, for you to see this to its completion. But I’m always curious about… You made mention of the referendum. A tremendous plurality, 60 plus percent in favor when it went to the referendum. I’m always curious about how the response in the community is that you receive when you’re out making presentations. What do people tell you about how that has made a difference in their lives, in the lives and success of their businesses?

Teles Fremin:

So LUS Fiber, I mean, we hear nothing. We hear positive feedback. We have a 98% customer satisfaction rate. We hear nothing but positive feedback. People beg us to go into their neighborhoods and their areas that we aren’t serving today. They are not happy with their provider, and even those customers that choose not to go with LUS Fiber have a better service than they would have had had we not been here.

Teles Fremin:

So we brought competition to the marketplace. When we initially came in, there were two providers. Today, there are approximately 20. I think it’s 27 various types of providers in our area. And so customers have choices. It’s brought better speeds, better services, and lower rates to all of our citizens, regardless of what company they choose. And so people choose LUS Fiber. We have symmetrical speeds at great prices and up to one gig, and we’re very extremely reliable. We have very low downtime, and if we do have downtime, we’re very responsive to repairing that and getting those customers up. We’re all local. All of our employees are local. They all are dedicated to the area, and they all work really hard to keep our customers happy and keep our citizens happy.

Muni Broadband Brings Commitment to Community

Craig Corbin:

You know what? You just shared it, and pardon the interruption, but Teles, you just hit the nail on the head from my perspective on why I think that groups just like LUS Fiber are so successful. It’s the commitment to the community, commitment to their customers because you’ve invested so much more in service to the community than anyone else could be that is not based locally. And that’s part of, I guess, the curiosity to me of the whole equation of the battles that go on everywhere across the country from legacy providers fighting against competition because, in the end, it’s the individual who benefits from having that competition. Your thoughts on that.

Teles Fremin:

Yeah, definitely. That’s exactly what we believe. We believe, number one, we’re here. We don’t want our friends and neighbors to be upset or angry with us, obviously, so we’re always working harder to make sure our citizens, our community is the best community it can be. And so we have a special dedication for it because of that. And I truly believe that LUS Fiber coming in has brought such… It has enabled competition in the area for the services that we offer, and it has allowed so much more development of not just our industry, but other industries. For instance, Lafayette was a, is still, but it’s a huge oil field industry.

Craig Corbin:

Well known. Well known.

Teles Fremin:

Right, right.

Craig Corbin:

Absolutely.

Teles Fremin:

With LUS Fiber, and we have a unique culture here, and LUS, all of these things combined, we have been able to diversify our economy. So now we have a pretty nice health care industry. We have a tech community. We have people who are moving here because now they can live where they want to live and work from where they want to work, and not have to be in Silicon Valley because we have the broadband that they need. We have the services that they need, and it’s available to everyone.

Craig Corbin:

What you just touched on is such a huge part of the success ongoing in the long-term viability of a community. When you talk about diversifying the local community, being able to expand from its traditional history as an oil field town into technology, medicine, other diverse companies, and the ability to attract residents from anywhere. And I would assume that part of the attraction also is from neighboring towns and cities that have observed the success of LUS Fiber and want to share in that success. Talk about that, if you would.

Expanding Your Broadband Footprint

Teles Fremin:

Yeah. I mentioned earlier that everyone’s asking, “Can you bring out LUS fiber to my neighborhood? Can you please, please come here?” So in 2016, we were financially covering our operations, and so we had healthy finances. And in 2018, because of our growth and because of our financial stability, we were able to make the decision to expand beyond our current service territory.

Craig Corbin:

Awesome.

Teles Fremin:

So we made the decision. We were just in the City of Lafayette. We made the decision to expand into the Parish of Lafayette, into other surrounding municipalities, and surrounding other cities. So we have done that, and we have done that since about 2018.

Teles Fremin:

More recently, especially with the pandemic, we’ve had a lot of communities talking to us and saying, “We want you to come here.” And so obviously we can’t do it all at once, but what we were successful in doing is we recently were awarded a grant from EDA to expand to neighboring parishes, Iberia Parish and St. Martin Parish. So we will. We are in the process of constructing services to those two parishes, to be able to serve both businesses and residents in those areas. And we’re really excited about that.

Craig Corbin:

That is so exciting. Well, that is it. And you should be excited, and that’s the perfect segue, because that was something that I definitely wanted to touch on, that $3.1 million federal grant, and I know there are matching funds that will be provided. But knowing that, LUS Fiber has gotten to the point that you’re cash flow positive, congratulations there, a phenomenal effort. But being able to utilize this new federal grant for expansion will be life-changing for people and businesses in those parishes. And I’m sure that you have probably received a lot of positive feedback from the elected leaders in those different parishes. What are you hearing from those folks?

Teles Fremin:

Yeah. So they were extremely excited about the opportunity to bring fiber to their area. They had been trying. Every community is facing plans for developing their community’s economic development, attracting businesses, attracting people. And they, just like Lafayette, see that fiber is a necessity.

Teles Fremin:

And quite honestly, a lot of those city leaders have been talking to the incumbents for years and begging them. And the incumbents keep saying, “Oh.” Either they don’t see it’s worth it, or they keep saying, “Well, we will do it. We will do it,” and they just haven’t stepped up. And so even now, even before we’ve even constructed, the incumbents are now deciding that they’re going to step up. And so now, they’re trying to do things to provide better service in those areas, knowing that we’re coming, so knowing that now they have competition, now they have to step up. And so it’s been a tremendous positive movement, and we’re really excited about it, and we’re hopeful that we can provide the same quality that we provide to Lafayette and the same enhancements to those areas. And I’m from Iberia parish. That’s where my family is, so I’m excited. It brings another level of excitement, right?

Craig Corbin:

No doubt about it, and it’s a big project when we talk about adding 47 miles of fiber infrastructure that will connect not only the Iberia Parish, but St. Martin, Lafayette Parish, and that could mean up to 1,500 or so additional customers for the LUS Fiber family, and something that we’re excited to see how that progresses and look forward to following that story as it develops.

Craig Corbin:

By the way, this is the Broadband Bunch. Our guest today, Teles Fremin, chief communications engineer for LUS Fiber. And when we look at the transition into being a leader in providing fiber-to-the-home service in that part of Louisiana, I know that there have been challenges along the way from a technical standpoint. What have been the biggest hurdles towards success, from a technical standpoint, for success with LUS Fiber?

Overcoming Technical Hurdles

Teles Fremin:

So I would say we built the system in 2009, and the biggest hurdles were honestly keeping up with the pace. So we have a small, small staff. We’re not a large staff, and our staff members kind of do everything. No one has a single specialty. We have to be well-rounded in a lot of areas and handle a lot of things. So the growth and the time we had to grow was probably our biggest challenge and then making sure that we can attract and retain those talented staff members has been one of the biggest challenges as well. And so I would say that was our biggest challenge.

Teles Fremin:

We were trying to serve customers at the same time we were building the network and getting everything up and running. We have to make sure we manage our aging equipment and make sure we are being financially sound at the same time, so there’s always a balancing act thereof reinvesting back into the system and making sure that our finances are sound. So those are probably the biggest challenges. We can’t just spend money just to spend money, so we make very calculated decisions on what we do and how we do things. And so all of those things have been challenges for us, but I think we have a wonderful, wonderful staff and a wonderful community that help us through it.

Craig Corbin:

What a great opportunity for you personally, not just professionally but personally, being able to shepherd the growth of LUS Fiber from its infancy, as part of the design team, to the tremendous growth, and to do so in your own backyard, where you grew up, and the new expansion with the $3.1 million grant, being able to get back to your home parish service from LUS Fiber. It’s obvious you have a passion for what you’ve done over the years at LUS Fiber. What has been the most rewarding aspect of your service to LUS Fiber?

Rewards of Working at LUS

Teles Fremin:

I’ll say the ability to grow, the ability to learn. This project has offered me so much knowledge, so much potential, and that’s what I hunger for. I always wanted to learn something. I always wanted to be a part of this project. And at every step of the way, I had wonderful leadership who allowed me to do that. I would constantly be asking, “Can I please be part of that project? Can I please be part of that project?” For a young engineer starting out, it was the most exciting thing, and it still is.

Teles Fremin:

I still enjoy learning something new. I still enjoy being able to grow. I still think we have a lot of time, and a lot of work we still need to do to grow, and a lot of potentials. So I think for me, the most exciting thing was learning all the things I learned. Even today, continuing to learn, continuing to grow, being part of those strategic plans, learning how to look at all those things have been very exciting for me.

Craig Corbin:

And when you talk about growth, that’s a perfect segue to my next question. And that would be, what do you foresee down the line the next five years, 10 years, if you will? Pull out the crystal ball for LUS Fiber. What do you see down the line?

Teles Fremin:

So today, especially with the pandemic, there is a lot of opportunities for broadband, and there’s even more of a need for broadband in all of America. And so I think there’s a lot of opportunities for LUS Fiber to continue to grow beyond where we are today, to continue to add value to citizens in different areas, whether it’s Lafayette Parish, whether it’s another parish, or whether it’s some other community. I think that all of those things, everything that is happening today with the excitement around broadband and bringing broadband as a necessity is where LUS Fiber is going. So seeing all these things happening is what I see happening for LUS Fiber. Continuing to evolve with the industry is always a necessity, and I think we’re in a prime position for that, and I think we’re in a great place to make all that happen.

Craig Corbin:

The flip side of looking to the future is something that we like to ask all our guests, and that’s sort of the back-to-the-future question. And if you could pick a time over the course of your tenure there at LUS Fiber, hop in the DeLorean, and go back, and whisper in your own ear a bit of advice for how to make technical decisions, strategy, is there anything that you would tell yourself at an earlier stage in your career?

Teles Fremin:

That’s a tough question. I’ve had a lot of bumps along the way, and I think personally I’ve had… I wish I would have done this differently. I wish I would have done that differently. But I think honestly, I think as LUS Fiber, what I’d like to go back and tell all of us at LUS Fiber is, “Spend more time in developing a lot of our customer service aspects, and the groundwork for that, and really building our staffing and organization properly.”

Teles Fremin:

Because we were in such a rush. We had huge commitments to get this project working, that it was just about getting it working. And we’ve been able to be successful despite all our flaws, but I think we could have been or we can be even more successful if we invest a little bit more into ourselves and into our business. I mean into our staff. We expect a lot from our staff. Our staff is wonderful. They work around the clock no matter what. It doesn’t matter. A lot of times not being paid. There were a lot of times when we didn’t sleep. So investing in our staff and investing in our groundwork, I’ll say, just spending that time, instead of trying to just make it work, I think would have been nice.

Craig Corbin:

Yeah. I’d like to say that LUS Fiber, Teles, has been successful is certainly an understatement. 98% customer satisfaction rating, a robust network that’s symmetrical services, and the ability to be a positive attribute for your local economic development authority that I think has very effectively used the fact that fiber is available there to sell companies on coming into the area. So a tremendous legacy there.

Craig Corbin:

I’m so happy to have been able to get your perspective on things at LUS Fiber and the story as it continues to develop. Congratulations again on the grant award. Can’t wait to visit with you down the line to see how that works out. The expansion to the additional parishes there was a new 47-mile backbone. We appreciate your time joining us here on the Broadband Bunch and telling your perspective on LUS Fiber. It’s been a blast.

Teles Fremin:

Well, thank you so much. This is exciting. I’ll always say that LUS Fiber is my first baby, so it’s always a proud moment for me to be able to talk about it and share our story.

Craig Corbin:

Well, we appreciate you and what you have meant to all the people in that area, with the work that you’ve done at LUS Fiber, and thank you so much for joining us today on the Broadband Bunch. That’s all the time that we have, but on behalf of everyone here, thanks for letting us be a part of your day. We’ll see you next time right here on the Broadband Bunch. So long, everyone.

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