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.
Joe:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. We are in Dallas, Texas at Connected America hosted by Total Telecom. Connected America is doing a tremendous job with all the different panel discussions, and I was able to grab someone from one of the panels. The panel was called “Developing a Rural Broadband Strategy”, and one of the persons I was able to corral was a past guest on the broadband bunch, Amanda Hofer. Amanda, welcome back to the Broadband Bunch.
Amanda Hofer:
Thanks, Joe. I always love doing the podcast, and love talking to you guys, and talking just to you, and just the group.
Joe:
Well, we really appreciate it. We love to get an operator to give real examples, stats, and statistics. It allows the listeners to really enjoy or get a lot out of the episode itself. Before we dig into the topic, I would love it if you could just frame who you are and where you work and all that good stuff.
Amanda Hofer:
Yeah. I’m the assistant general manager at Central Texas Telephone Co-Op, in Goldthwaite, Texas. We are, as the name suggests, in Central Texas. It is a 3,000 square mile-service area that doesn’t really have any major city. We are 3,000 square miles, 10,000 passings, and are part of 10 counties. Everybody pretty much drives through our service area, but nobody really lives there. We provide service to the cell towers, and to the ones who live there, and farm there, and do agriculture, and livestock, and things that make the world go round. But again, very few people really live there.
Joe:
You would classify yourselves as a rural community?
Amanda Hofer:
100%, yes.
Joe:
Awesome. Closing the digital divide is one of the critical objectives of conferences like this and as an industry. My first question would be, in terms of the topic itself, it was developing a rural broadband strategy. I mean, everyone doesn’t already have one?
Amanda Hofer:
It depends on who you ask, and how much money is out there, as to who has a broadband strategy and who doesn’t. A lot of the panelists covered the issues that rural have time, cost, education, workforce, supply chain, and all that stuff that everybody is really making light of now. It affects everybody. But for small providers, what really affects us is that we get lumped into the large providers who haven’t been providing service. So everybody thinks nobody in rural America has service. Well, Central Texas is going to be 100% fiber build-out, 2- or 3,000 square miles by the end of this year, early next year.
Joe:
That’s amazing. It’s phenomenal.
Amanda Hofer:
It is. Most rural carriers, I would say are probably in this 80, probably to 100% fiber build-out. The large carriers aren’t. That’s where you see on the maps, where all of the under and unserved areas are the ones that are not served by rural providers because they don’t live there. They don’t go to church there.
Joe:
Sure. Right.
Amanda Hofer:
Their employees do, but execs don’t. That’s where the rural telcos get lost, or roped into the larger companies because that’s all anybody thinks about. That is really my challenge. That’s what our industry as a small telco faces differentiating ourselves because we don’t have a voice. We don’t have the lobbyists and the money to really say-
Joe:
Right. Right.
Amanda Hofer:
We’re trying to do it right. We are doing it right. If you look at rural America where there are no or very few spots, that’s where we serve. But all the rest of it is where somebody else serves that gave up on the area a long time ago. I would argue that the rural broadband strategy that’s missing has been focus, and/or providing resources to the companies that are doing it right to allow them to provide service in those high-cost areas outside of their traditional service area because we’ve been doing it right in our area. But it’s high cost. I mean, we do it on a 25-year payback period. If we get a six- or seven-year payback period in some areas, we’re doing great.
Joe:
Wow, okay.
Amanda Hofer:
Other companies won’t build it if it’s not three or five. For us, if it’s a 12- or 18-year, we’re doing happy dances. Having that funding to build out and cover areas would help us and help the areas. We just haven’t had that support historically, but I think that’s coming down the pipe.
Joe:
Well, that’s a great explanation. I live in Fairfield County, Connecticut, which is one of the densest counties in the country, yet I don’t have fiber. I still have cable. Sometimes, when people hear rural communities, they think that they’re behind the times. But in fact, you guys are actually ahead of the curve.
Amanda Hofer:
If you looked at my previous employer, Taylor, we often joked that the rural areas outside of the city of Abilene had better and faster internet service than the city of Abilene. Abilene was considered rural with 120,000 subscribers. A population of 120,000 is considered rural. I now live in Goldthwaite, Texas, with a population of 1,800. I’m like, “What would you consider that? That’s like, I don’t know what that would be considered. If you consider a city of Abilene which is larger than most cities in South Dakota, or North Dakota is considered rural.”
The scale for most legislators and people making decisions is skewed because they’re used to living in million-population cities. Again, their idea of rural is different than what rural really is when living in it. But now, a lot of areas in rural Texas, rural America, especially the ones that are served by rural providers, have better internet than a lot of urban or suburban providers in areas.
Joe:
That would lead me to the next question. There are obviously a lot of folks that are served, but then there are those that slip through the cracks, so to speak. Now, with the BEAD funding, we’ve got federal money for the broadband and the state broadband offices, which ultimately hopefully end up helping rural America. Do you think that’s a good strategy in terms of addressing these problems? It’s interesting talking to the different broadband state offices that are here. It seems like they’re really engaged. It’s almost like Washington is a little bit out of the loop.
Amanda Hofer:
As I mentioned on the panel, instead of just going from the top-down from DC to say, thou shalt do this, out to rural Goldthwaite in Texas, that the money funnels into the state of Texas, and then down to Goldthwaite, or pick and choose if it’s some county in Georgia, or Virginia, that they know their area, and their population, and what their needs are, and what providers are doing, and which providers are doing it right. But at the same time, the counties and the government officials there are so overwhelmed because they aren’t broadband providers. That’s not what they live and breathe every day. They’re getting overwhelmed. For example, in Texas, we’re slated to possibly get $3.2 to $3.5 billion potentially with BEAD.
Joe:
Wow.
Amanda Hofer:
That’s a lot of money.
Joe:
That is. That’s a lot of cabbage.
Amanda Hofer:
Before that, when ARPA was coming out and they got, I think it was $500 million or something. They were getting knocks on their door for every single county judge. And they were like, “I can’t handle this. I have court cases. I have my normal day-to-day stuff. Now I have all of this money, and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m not a broadband provider. I know that there’s a need, but I can’t deal with this.” It’s a great solution. I don’t know what the answer is, because I think it’s better than the top-down.
Joe:
Right.
Amanda Hofer:
I think they’re trying to fix it. It’s better than what it was. But I think that the local needs more help. Without knowing what the final rules are for BEAD, that doesn’t really help.
Joe:
One of the things that I did take away from your discussion was about education.
Amanda Hofer:
Absolutely.
Joe:
Is that a question of, I guess, twofold? Do you first need to educate the community, or do you first need to educate the stakeholders, the community leaders, and politicians to almost get like, “All right, we’re open to it”? I would love to get your perspective on that.
Amanda Hofer:
Pre-COVID, it would’ve been educating everybody, because everybody said, “We don’t need fiber. We don’t need internet.” Pre-COVID, you had everybody going, “I can get internet at work, or my kids can do internet at school. I don’t want to pay for that.” Post-COVID, everybody, I think for the most part, gets why internet or broadband is more and more needed in their life and at home.
Joe:
Right. I would agree. I think that now, for the most part, people have totally bought in. I’m sorry for interrupting. So then you were saying it’s, in terms of convincing, is it now the politicians and the county folks?
Amanda Hofer:
They get it. I think they understand it. More and more as days go by, they’re understanding that more and more. It’s more, I think, the resources. You still have some of the older ones who have been in office for a really long-time. I’m not trying to knock on them, but a lot of them I’ve heard, well, we don’t want anything new. Economic development is a big thing, and broadband brings economic development. I’d heard it said before, “If we have this and we’re going to have all these new businesses, then we don’t want economic–”
A lot of it’s that education in the supplemental-
Joe:
Interesting. Wow. Okay.
Amanda Hofer:
… pieces in the growth and stuff. It’s a comprehensive piece. I think they understand bits and pieces of it more than they ever have. But they still don’t understand what fiber is, how that’s better than fixed wireless, how that’s better than co-ax, and how this vendor or this solution is different or better. They understand that they need it. I don’t want them to think that they need to be an expert in it, but they need to understand the basics.
Joe:
Right. Is it almost like that everyone or every community needs a champion to guide folks?
Amanda Hofer:
I would say so or at least a trusted advisor. Not somebody who has any skin in the game. Even if they do potentially have skin in the game, somebody that they trust to shoot it straight with them that will tell them that, in your case, this is probably a better solution for you. Or this is a better solution for you, but this is more cost-effective and to just really guide them. That’s really more of a mentor for them.
Joe:
Okay. Collaboration absolutely is key on all levels, especially for a smaller community. Is that one of those things where you almost see it as a benefit versus the carriers that may not be local? Is that, I guess, one of your strong suits?
Amanda Hofer:
I would argue that is our strong suit. If we’re doing it right, then we have the local contacts and those relationships where they know that they can contact us, and ask us questions of, “Hey, well, this carrier, or this company, or this vendor came to us and said this is what we really need to do. Is that right?” I mentioned in there that some companies were sold, I’d say, a bad bill of goods saying that you’ll get a 100% penetration rate if you throw fiber up. Nobody is going to get a hundred percent penetration rate. No matter what you do or how good you are, you’re never going to get 100%.
Joe:
Right. That was great. One of those things that you said in the talk is, “If it’s too good to be true, most likely it is.” I thought one of the other panelists made a great point. It’s like, don’t be afraid to ask questions-
Amanda Hofer:
Absolutely.
Joe:
… because afterward, you’re like, oh, I mean, I should have asked that.
Amanda Hofer:
Yeah. It’s never too stupid of a question to ask. Again, if something sounds too good to be true, or if you’re thinking of going, ugh, something just doesn’t feel right, or that gut check of, well, something, there’s probably something that’s not right.
Joe:
Right. Your gut is there for a reason.
Amanda Hofer:
Absolutely.
Joe:
Awesome. Thank you so much for chatting with us and giving your perspective. It’s always really appreciated. One of the panelists talked about timelines and workforce issues we have. There are issues with the supply chain. But for the BEAD funding, we have a year in terms of a runway. What’s something that you would say to folks in terms of preparation? Could you give one or two points, as they think about deploying broadband?
Amanda Hofer:
That’s a tricky one. A year will go by so fast. But it really is just the planning and making sure you have all your ducks in a row.
It’s the start at the end and where you need it to be for day one and work your way back. You’re going to have to order your materials because materials are anywhere from 6 months to 18 months out. ONTs, fiber, duct, splice kits, everything, I think somebody said that the golden screw, it’s that one little thing.
Joe:
I love it.
Amanda Hofer:
That is going to be the thing that is going to make or break you, and it’s the little thing that you are not really thinking of. That’s going to be the one that has a two-year window for getting it in. It’s making sure, getting in contact with your vendors, having your plan, having it engineered and designed, being in contact, and getting easements. It’s a lot of work and construction to get it ready. But, I mean, even more than that, right now, we don’t even know what the rules are so you can apply.
Joe:
Sure.
Amanda Hofer:
A lot of it right now, in the pre-work, is just getting your application ready and figuring out where the areas are that, as of right now, look like they’re going to have funding available, and getting the engineering specs, and what makes sense financially. A lot of this year, right now, is that groundwork with the locals to figure out what makes sense, and who wants it, and how you can get the grants, and the matching, and start your applications, and start your base design, and then get your application started. There’s a lot of work just from now to a year-
Joe:
Okay. Great.
Amanda Hofer:
… for the application. And then once the application’s in, then you still probably have another year or two years, before money starts even flowing.
Joe:
Wow. Okay.
Amanda Hofer:
We’re still probably two to three years out.
Joe:
Basically, what you’re saying is that overprepare, over-plan, and expect it to all go wrong.
Amanda Hofer:
Absolutely.
Joe:
But you need to plan. It will allow you to create milestones and timelines, so at least you know you’re heading in the right direction.
Amanda Hofer:
Absolutely.
Joe:
Well, Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for lending your voice to the community. It’s always appreciated.
Amanda Hofer:
Yes. Thank you, Joe.
Joe:
All right. Well, that’s going to wrap up this episode of the Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you later.
