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.
In this episode, we chat with Mico Hadjo. Mico is working hard to bring connectivity to his independent, self-governing tribe in South Carolina.
Pete Pizzutillo:
Welcome to the Broadband Bunch, a podcast about broadband and how it impacts us all. Join us to learn about the state of the industry and the latest innovations and trends, connect with the thought leaders, pioneers, and policymakers helping to shape your future through broadband. This episode of the Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software, your zero-touch automation experts, by Calix, simplify, excite grow, by DxTEL, creators of the Harper broadband marketing library, by ITK Solutions Group, the process first, technology second, and by UTOPIA Fiber, building a more connected nation.
Brad Hine:
Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. Today, we have a great story from a dynamic businessman and tribal community leader in the fixed wireless side of our broadband industry. Mico Se’khu Hadjo Gentle has been in the communications business for over 20 years. He’s a native American chief of the Yamasee Seminole people and founder of RedFi Broadband, a local wireless internet service provider in Allendale, South Carolina. He’s a modern-day entrepreneur and frankly, his entire bio would be too long for me to read. But from the books he’s written to the debut on PBS documentaries and work projects in the music field with various mainstream artists of today, that’s a lot, but his passion is community development and he’s focused on educating and helping underprivileged families get high-speed internet in rural areas in the low country of South Carolina, which we know is so important today in our environment. And he’s running that business successfully. Chief, welcome to the Broadband Bunch.
Mico Hadjo:
Thank you. Thank you, Brad, so much. I appreciate that intro. I know it’s a lot to say and try to put it all together but yes, it’s … yeah, thank you so much.
Brad Hine:
Well, I’ve looked so forward to hearing your story since we really met virtually over six months ago, and I know there is never a dull moment being an independent WISP in the US, and we’re going to dig into that but first, tell us a little about RedFi Broadband.
Mico Hadjo:
RedFi Broadband is, of course, a Native American-owned company that we created here in Allendale, South Carolina. It was designed originally for the tribe. We live at least five to six miles out from the town limits and so we had no internet. COVID changed everything for a lot of people. And we were victims of that as well but what we realized real quickly, was the necessity for high-speed internet. RedFi Broadband was created for the purpose of the tribe originally. However, during its creation, we found that a lot of the people in the town needed a secondary source of the internet. They either had bills that were outstanding with the major companies here, the two that actually provided in town, or they just couldn’t afford the monthly rate. It eventually expanded into helping people here in the local area.
Brad Hine:
Understood. This is truly a mission for you and your community and your people.
Mico Hadjo:
Correct. Definitely is, it’s definitely a mission. Our children and I think we talked about this in the initial conversation me and you had, our children were suffering from the whole school thing. We had to basically shuttle them 67 miles every day into town, into my and my wife’s central office for them to go to school. We had to set up a whole school into our office for the children, and it became a task to do that along with other children in the area. We put our wifi outside of the building basically, we extended the wifi outside the building for children who would sit in their cars or would sit in the park across the street and utilize our internet as well. But we quickly learned that people here needed the internet.
Mico Hadjo:
And the thing that we originally had started doing, which is the backstory part of this, is we are a reseller for companies like Page Plus and Verizon and things like that far as mobile phone service. And so people had always been asking about internet service, we just weren’t able to provide it. We ran a communication store originally and were just trying to figure out how we can accommodate ourselves with the COVID situation, so did a little research and found out about white space at the time. And I wasn’t really familiar with white space at all, didn’t know anything about it, and looked into that. And it was looking like a very viable option. And then I looked at the cost and when I saw the cost of the CPEs, I just realized that wasn’t feasible at all for my tribal members, especially with a lot of them being retired or on a fixed income. And so I just kept looking, kept looking and eventually I happenstance on wifi, and learned a little bit about wifi and come to understand there wasn’t much information on it.
Mico Hadjo:
Really, it’s still fairly a new technology because it’s constantly evolving but I decided to research the wifi side of this stuff. And that became a tedious task within itself because of the lack of information … There is no real educational portal that you can go to when it comes to wifi. And I just happenstance on a YouTube video by a guy, I think his name was Brent. And it’s RMP5 I think or something like that. Anyway, he went step-by-step, what he would was dealing with and what he had to do to get this wireless internet up and running. And so he sparked my interest. After doing a little research and finding out about all the vendors and the products, I had to make a choice and I found a vendor that I liked that was disruptive pricing. I don’t want to say their names because I don’t want to plug anybody if I don’t have to but started utilizing the vendor that I’m currently using. And it was off to the races with the headaches and all the things that come with the wireless service.
Brad Hine:
Clearly, in education that you needed … Really, you’re bootstrapping this whole thing but I know that when you and I have spoken over the last many months, you do have a history in telecommunications and I think your parents were involved early. And as a kid, you learned a lot from the business that your parents were in. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Mico Hadjo:
That’s correct, yeah. We were actually the first native American-owned CLEC in Tampa, Florida. And my mother helped me get that started. I had started with one of my uncles, he was reselling … This is when everything got deregulated of course, but my uncle was selling landline, POTS line at that time. And I was with him, helping him do marketing and stuff like that but we quickly found that margin as a reseller is slim compared to the money you’re spending in marketing and stuff. I had a vision, I had an idea and my mother was supportive and so she helped finance the CLEC. And so we became the first native American CLEC in Tampa. And ever since then, I just understood the simplicity or the simple aspect that communications are here to stay, that someone’s going to always need to talk. Yeah, we did that quite some time ago.
Brad Hine:
Right, right. Being in a CLEC, growing up in the business with your parents, I’m sure you’ve seen a ton of different technologies over the last 20 plus years. Can you walk us through some of the things, business models, and technologies that you’ve been through as an owner and as a worker in telecommunications?
Mico Hadjo:
You’re really trying to call out my age, huh. Because I don’t look my age and I probably don’t sound my age but yeah, I can do that Brad, thank you so much for that. No, been around since the first mobile phone, the big, bulky baggy phones that everyone had, and eventually, we got our first actual, ‘hand phone’, which was like having a shoebox in your hand with an antenna. But no, I used to recrystallize pagers, take the radio out of the pagers and start it back in. I saw the evolution of the first bag phone to pagers, to the text to page to …
Brad Hine:
Wow.
Mico Hadjo:
I think T-Mobile had the very first Sidekick. I think I had the very first beta Sidekick when T-Mobile came out with it, which was like rocket technology at that time. I couldn’t see it going any further than that, but just the evolution of communication as a whole, and never knowing that it would get this far, even to the dial-up. The dial-up, who could forget the AOL tones and sounds by the time you got online.
Brad Hine:
Yeah.
Mico Hadjo:
But I experienced what most of us experience who have been in the communication business, that very fast evolution. Because it was only like yesterday. And if you look at it, it does seem like yesterday that we were still utilizing some of these technologies. And even as a first responder, I still find it fascinating to go into hospitals and see doctors with pagers and various devices that were old school. But yeah, I came from an era where we had pagers. I’m proud to say that, I’m old but I’m proud to say that.
Brad Hine:
We all had them. Back in the 90s, late 90s, early 2000s. For your community now, you see this need. You’re trying to bring in connectivity for the Yamasee tribe to the rest of the world when … And we all experienced this at the beginning of COVID. I’m sure you were already trying to get schools connected, the kids connected, trying to make sure people could work from home but then once COVID hit, like everybody else, I’m sure everybody was at home. What are some of the first things that you tried to dig into almost two years ago, to start to learn this? You talked a little bit about long-range wifi internet, it sounds like you’re very dedicated to that. Are there some other technologies that you’ve found along the way?
Mico Hadjo:
Well, I would have to start with my initial plan. My initial plan was to understand that AT&T had fiber PoPs that passed us. When I understood what a fiber PoP or point of presence looked like, and where it was located, I reached out of course, to a major telecom, which is AT&T. And so they told me, “Yeah, we can do it but it’s going to cost a lot of money.”
Mico Hadjo:
And when I say a lot of money, I mean a couple hundred thousand. And it didn’t make sense to me at that time because we are only maybe … If they had dug under the road … Well, not even under the road, if they just dug through the ground a thousand feet, they would have hit our community. It didn’t make sense but I didn’t understand what needed to happen. Of course, that wasn’t a viable option. Like I said, I looked into wifi and once I did, I was learning about the wifi and understanding that everything had to be a line of sight. Now, at this point, for everything that I’m reading, it is … You got these spectrums, you have 2.4 gigahertz spectrum, you have a five gigahertz spectrum, you got 60 gigahertz and you have all these different spectrums but the 2.4 gigahertz, from everything I was reading, was a saturated market because everyone is using the 2.4 gig spectrum. I immediately tried to figure out how to get this line of sight that everyone was talking about.
Mico Hadjo:
And I was going to use the five gigahertz system. I went and spent a ton of money on antenna mast. And so I put one on the main building. I did my research and found out that the elevation of ours where we were versus where the reservation is, I should be able to get it. I purchased an antenna mass and I got my firefighter brothers to come on and they helped me get this antenna mass up. And then we went out to the res and we put up this 60 foot, 70-foot antenna mass. And we did all these things, trying to get connectivity and to no avail. It didn’t work. And for the audience, it’s still not working, okay. But that’s again, one of those things where we are trying our best to make it happen. When I realized that I didn’t have a line of sight, at this point, it was helping the community and trying to get the community connected because as we were doing this, people would come into our store and say, “Hey, do you guys have internet? Do you guys have internet?”
Mico Hadjo:
And it became a thing that I and my wife saw, “Well, obviously there’s a need for internet outside of just us.”
Mico Hadjo:
And it was surprising to us that it was a need in the general area, especially for us, we were like, “Hey, you guys have internet. We don’t have anything or no options except for satellite.”
Mico Hadjo:
From that point, we decided to do it and offered on a prepaid basis. We also got with the town and again, on this journey for a line of sight, got to the town and said, “Hey, if you allow us to get on your water towers so that we can get that line of sight we need, we in return will offer internet to the children who can’t afford it during school hours.”
Mico Hadjo:
And so the towns jumped right in. They were like, “Yes, no problem. Of course, thank you so much.”
Mico Hadjo:
And they created an ordinance for us to be on the water towers. However, that wasn’t immediate because we still had to wait on our fiber backhaul, which was something I didn’t know we need originally. We had things that we needed to do to make this happen prior to. In the meantime, we had to focus and work on getting a backhaul provider for the that’s your uplink provider, and …
Brad Hine:
I love the way this story is unfolding because you’re trying to support the Yamasee people. You find out that there is a general market need in the area outside of that in your town. Now, you’re trying to fill that market. Your team is digging into the technology and trying to find the best practices and the best vendors to work with. And of course, now you’re meeting with the town. Now, there’s a formal partnership. You guys are trying to work together to bring connectivity to the whole town. They’re giving you space on some of the structures in the town. Where do you go from here now?
Mico Hadjo:
Well, where we’re going now … And one of the things that have hindered us of course finance because I and my wife have financed this out of our pocket. Our tribe doesn’t get any federal assistance or federal monies. Even though we are considered Seminole, we’re part of the Seminole nation, we aren’t registered members with that particular nation. We are an independent tribe that is self-governing. And so everything that we have comes out of our personal pockets. And so we found out about, of course, the rural broadband and the connect everybody monies that are going on with the government. Right. And we contacted people at the USDA and tried to get some of that. However, we didn’t qualify because of course, they wanted you to have so many subscribers and you had to go through all these hurdles to get it.
Mico Hadjo:
And so where we are right now, we’re doing great far as in town but we still have a ton of not just tribal members on our reservation but areas around us that are little individual towns with 3, 400 people communities who are coming to us and they’re in the same situation. They have no connectivity, they have grandchildren and children and people who are working for home and telehealth issues, they’re trying to be as safe as possible. And so it puts us back in the same situation where we’re just having problems expanding out to them. The best thing that I will say at this point, is my mindset has changed. And I’ve come to understand because I’ve had to do a lot of workarounds, that everything isn’t a line of sight. I don’t have to be high in the air to get to a customer. I can do point to points. And again, these things are the …
Brad Hine:
A mix, a hybrid network then.
Mico Hadjo:
Correct, correct. And that’s what we really want to do. We want to do a point to point and then get point to points, get as much throughput as we can, and then set up fiber from there if possible. That’s the end goal for us.
Brad Hine:
Excellent. I know that you’re constantly seeking education and reaching out to leaders in the community and in your state, how does that work for you? Even reaching out to government representatives, congressmen, senators, I’m sure you’re getting relationships going with those folks in South Carolina.
Mico Hadjo:
Right. And I would definitely say that. And here’s what’s been happening. I’m in direct contact with Senator Tim Scott’s office. We have contact with Congressman Clyburn, and we have contact with a government master. The problem is everyone is saying, “Hey, go over here and look at these people. They’ve been funded, they’ve been doing it.”
Mico Hadjo:
But these people that are getting the money … And I’m not trying to negate anything that’s been done but the people who are getting the money, we are not on their priority list. They’re looking for thousand resident communities and things like that. They don’t want to spend this money to run fiber out here to a little Indian community and be able to only charge 20, 30 people monies for that. The pitfall for us is even though we have these connections on the legislative side and these political connections, everyone is trying to follow protocol, which is based on whoever has been going to. They haven’t looked at small organizations like us, tribal organizations like us, and say, “Hey, these guys have already successfully done this.”
Mico Hadjo:
Or even just ask, “What have you done so far? And what can we do to help you get to that goal that you’re trying to … Or at least get you to a point where you can do it yourself.”
Mico Hadjo:
Those are the questions not being asked. Everyone is just saying, “Hey, team up with this guy and team up with this guy.”
Mico Hadjo:
And of course, these other guys, this is a business opportunity for them, as much as it may be passionate for them to say, “Hey, I’m the one who put the internet in this rural area.”
Mico Hadjo:
For them, it has to make sense as well. And that’s the pitfall of what we’re going through right now, that’s the blockage.
Brad Hine:
Sure, sure. I’m assuming there are a lot of tribal communities that are in your position right now in the US, not just yours.
Mico Hadjo:
Yes, that’s correct.
Brad Hine:
It sounds like a coalition may be in order for everybody to band together and try to create that need and that awareness from the government so you can fund those projects and get folks connected in your areas.
Mico Hadjo:
And since we’re on the tribal aspect of it, so much of it has been federally recognized, federally recognized, federally recognized tribes. There’s a big push for as the federally recognized tribes. And I think one particular push is toward the Lakota people. However, before you become, ‘federally recognized, you have to prove sovereign autonomy. You have to prove that you have been self-governing and handling all your internal affairs and things of that nature but that is overlooked when it comes to funding and grant monies. And so one of the things that I’m hoping for at some point in time, there’s a conversation that needs to be happening because contrary to what everybody believes, a lot of tribes don’t want to be federally recognized. There’s still a large distrust amongst tribal communities when it comes to the federal government. A lot of tribes have opted out not to become federally recognized but it does not mean they don’t need federal assistance or guidance.
Brad Hine:
Sure.
Mico Hadjo:
And my biggest hope was that we could succeed in getting internet to our tribe and showing other tribes that this is not only about connectivity, but it also can be a viable business model for you because a lot of tribes are anti-gambling, they’re against the gambling aspect of it. And they don’t want to use gambling, that’s the only source of income but I don’t think a lot of them have thought about the telecommunication business as a very viable and large business model as well. We’re hoping that through our success, when it happens … When I say when it happens, not that we’re not doing it, but when we can get over these hurdles that we have far as in the reach to other communities outside of our little area, that we can go now and say, “Hey, here’s the business model. Here’s what we did. This is how we did it, this is what you’ll have to go through.”
Mico Hadjo:
And then provide that roadmap for not just only tribes but anybody who has a necessity or need to get internet to their rural area because they’re being overlooked by the big companies or for whatever reason, they just can’t get it to them.
Brad Hine:
Wow. Wow, interesting. As you’re building this business, you’re meeting with all these people, you’re still having to deal with all the technical spaghetti, as we know in our industry, connecting all these things, making sure the folks are receiving a signal from the tower directly to their home. How are you finding your workers in your area, especially with we hear in the US, a shortage of workers, people are still maybe not always comfortable since we’re not completely out of COVID? How are you finding your workers to depend on in this process?
Mico Hadjo:
Well, at this point, to be honest with you, there is no workers. We don’t have anyone that’s qualified technically in the area to do the work that we do. A lot of what I have been doing … And just to be honest with you, is I’m a part of the volunteer firefighter service here. I’m a firefighter too, I’m also an EMR. I work with EMS and I’ve literally had my fire brothers … I’ve been giving them crash courses on wifi. And they have been helping me, assist putting up radios and getting them configured and aligning them and things of that nature. If I did have to hire, I would be hiring in major cities like Charleston, Columbia, Savannah, Augusta, places like that. And then you would have to have someone that’s willing to come and travel 80, 90 miles just to work in this little area. We’ve literally had to be just picking a specific litter of people, which again, my fire brothers and sisters in the service, that has been helping us. Workers are null and void for us at this point.
Brad Hine:
You have true volunteers.
Mico Hadjo:
True, correct.
Brad Hine:
That’s amazing, that’s a great representation of the community. It’s great to hear that. Just real quick, describe to me … I’m curious, what a day in the life or a week in the life of Mico Hadjo is like, what are you doing during that day or that week with your business?
Mico Hadjo:
Oh wow, you really asked that question, do you? Honestly, a week of my life is investing because I have to get money back for this project. And so I’m investing in cryptocurrency. I am working pretty much full-time with EMS 911, so ambulances, fire departments. And this is on a daily basis. I’m dealing with political stuff in my tribe, documentary opportunities, I’m teaching, I’m getting offers to teach or go out of town to teach. And of course, my baby, my brainchild is the internet. I’m constantly trying to educate myself. I’m constantly trying to reach out to sources to figure out how we can make this project happen still for my tribe and still for other parts of the community.
Mico Hadjo:
And just without even going into more, for the most part, it’s 911, it’s tribal issues and politics, it is tribal responsibilities, it is business responsibilities, it’s being a father on top of that. It’s all the things that come, preparing for the ceremony. And this is a daily task and a weekly task for me because we do have green corn coming up in 2022. And so that takes a lot of preparation as well but it’s a lot, it’s definitely a lot. There’s not a dull moment in my life and I’m completely staying busy.
Brad Hine:
I didn’t get that impression when we’ve been speaking over the last many months. But what was really interesting is that when you and I initially spoke, outside of you being chief of the Yamasee and your fixed wireless business for your rural connectivity for everybody in Allendale, you really started out in the music business. Just take a brief moment and tell us a little bit about how you got started and maybe some of the folks you’ve worked within the music business and how you try to light that fire and keep it going amidst everything else that you’re trying to accomplish too.
Mico Hadjo:
Brad, you just going to do it all and going to it all out of me, aren’t you?
Brad Hine:
I’m going to try, I’m going to try.
Mico Hadjo:
Yeah. Yeah, I got into the music business when I was 12 and just had a passion for music, like most children. It’s a tribal thing when you grow up and you have tribal dances and ceremonies. For us, music is a large part of native peoples’ life. And so got into the music industry and got into hip hop more than anything. That evolved for me to where I did it for about 10, 15 years straight and got a little tired of it. And I dropped off about a year or two, and then my Godbrother contacted me and was like, “Hey, we have the opportunity to write these songs for these major artists, and are you interested?”
Mico Hadjo:
And I was like, “Eh, really? No, but okay.”
Mico Hadjo:
And so we started communicating with and writing for artists like Britney Spears and Jaheim, and all that led to working with Dr. Dre, which was the end of my tenure, the last part of my music career. Because I’m retired but I’m not technically retired because I still have a music distribution company that I have and a publishing company and stuff like that. But the last tenure of my music relationship was with Andre Young, Dr. Dre called him big brother. And so worked with him for about four to five years. My brother’s still there working with Aftermath. He is in California, from California to Atlanta, back and forth. But that’s the gist of my music career, and I could go a lot deeper for us who we worked for and who we’ve performed with and everything like that but we did a lot of work for a lot of major artists and loved it, just I got burnt out from it.
Brad Hine:
Understood, understood. Is interesting in the parallels between some of the technical side of music and the technical side of what you’re trying to accomplish in your business, being a WISP there in South Carolina. And the fact that you have to think outside of the box in music, you have to be creative and innovative, the same applies when you are an independent WISP, trying to make that business successful. That’s absolutely an inspiring story, how you’ve bootstrapped all those, and would love to see you back in the music industry at some point. I’ll tell you what …
Mico Hadjo:
No, I’m okay. Thank you. The music industry has changed so much my brother. I don’t think at 47 years old than I and the 20 year-olds will see eye to eye on the music.
Brad Hine:
Isn’t that funny how we all get to that certain age and we start to lose that thread with the younger crowd? Interesting.
Mico Hadjo:
Yeah, that’s so true. So true.
Brad Hine:
Well, before I wrap up some of these amazing stories that you’ve shared with us, on our show, we tend to offer and ask a couple of questions right at the end. And we’re really trying to get your take on things. The first one is a bit of a game, it’s called the back to the future question. And just very simply, if you had the ability to go back in time, in a time machine, the back to the future DeLorean, just before RedFi Broadband was started, would you change anything? And what would that be?
Mico Hadjo:
Well, the tribal part of me, the heritage and culture of me say all things happen for a reason. We firmly believe that creativity does things for a reason. There wouldn’t be anything I would change. I would love to be able to change my mindset of how I viewed a WISP, meaning that I wish I had known that it wasn’t about the line of sight, it’s about creativity. Everything for me was about getting high, getting high, getting high. I had to get high. Anyone that’s listening to that is a WISP, don’t think high, just think the line of sight. And that doesn’t mean that I have to be 80 feet in the air or be on a tower. I wish I understood the point to points more. That’s what I wish if I had to change anything, it would be my mindset and that I understood the point to points and not necessarily getting high.
Brad Hine:
That’s a great answer. And my other question would be, we talked about your past, we talked about … Especially over the last year and a half, two years with COVID and what we’ve been through and what we’re trying to accomplish still, you’re still trying to create partnerships and meet more folks, especially in government and folks that can help you. But maybe more of a crystal ball question, if you were to look into the future from here, where is broadband going for RedFi and where do you see RedFi in maybe the next 5 to 10 years? If you had your way, what would you want to be accomplishing there?
Mico Hadjo:
Where do I see broadband going as a whole and how RedFi Broadband would be a part of that is I see a future where this virtual world and cryptocurrency are going to merge. I see a world where bandwidth is going to be needed. I see us being able to provide a lot more bandwidth for homes to be able to accomplish that. But I see where cryptocurrency is going be a … It’s going to be a know-all, do all and a must-have for businesses. And then just trying to find the right cryptocurrency to support that and/or cryptocurrencies. I see the necessity for more bandwidth because there’s going to be a lot more going on the internet. There’s going to be a lot of things happening far as mining and stuff of that nature.
Mico Hadjo:
And my hope is that we at that point, are prepared for it. I have been within everything that I’m doing, trying to make that adjustment. I’ve reached out to several cryptocurrencies. I am working with one because I want to have a lock-in on cryptocurrency and a cryptocurrency that our clients can use because we are in a college town per se. We have USC Salkehatchie, which is down the street from us. We do have a lot of students and I think we’re going to need to be able to bridge that gap. The future that I see is one of course, of constant connectivity. I see everything going to be … I think that the internet is going to be, and is a public utility at this point. We have to be able to provide the services people are going to need when it comes to that.
Brad Hine:
Excellent, excellent. Well, you just said a huge mouthful and we’ve dipped our little toe into cryptocurrency even on this episode. Well, I think it’s a first for the Broadband Bunch but … Well chief, I’ve so enjoyed our time together today and sharing your stories with our audience. I know they’ve learned a lot already about your community. And I want to encourage you to stay in touch with us and to continue to reach out and I’ll do the same and share stories as updates. We’d really like to hear where Allendale and RedFi Broadband go from here in the very near future. And for me, Brad Hine, and the rest of the Broadband Bunch, I want to thank our audience for listening today. And I want you to have a great day. Thank you so much, bye-bye.
