 Welcome to the RF Elements unlicensed podcast. I am Caleb. As always, we got toss us over here. Say hi to us. What's up, everybody? Hey, how are you? And this week we're joined by Ryan Read from Romer Communications. So he was gracious enough to take time out of his day. We're going to talk about hurricane relief, CVRS, swissful pelusa or whatever else we get into. So tight and fast, tight and fast, tight and fast for sure. So before we hop into this conversation, though, real quick, toss us, give the good people out there their call to action. Absolutely. Don't forget to like, listen or subscribe to our channel right here on YouTube or anywhere you download your audio podcast like Apple, Google or Spotify. All right, Ryan, again, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast here and joining in the shenanigans and stuff. So for folks out there that don't really know who you are, take a second to kind of give us, you know, a rundown kind of who you are, what your business does, maybe the history, how you decided to get wrapped up in all this craziness. And we'll go from there. Yeah, awesome. Thank you guys for putting this together and having this show and inviting me on. I was actually really excited when you guys sent out the invite. My history, my past in this industry is actually really short. And so I feel like I'm a newbie coming into the West space and kind of I get treated that way a little bit, but it's been a really warm welcome. It really has some amazing community. So I started doing wireless services about four years ago, but really I got into sending packets over the air when I was like eight. I'm 38 or 39 now. So, you know, it was a long time ago and things weren't the same. I did that. I got into him radio as a kid and grew up poorer. My dad worked at Radio Shack and would bring home junk. I would just put stuff together. Lots, lots and lots of letting the smoke out of things as a kid and learning how not to do that. But I really sent my first packet over the air when I was eight and it was via the amateur packet radio service, which is exclusively for ham radio operator use in a amateur capacity. So we were moving tiny bits of data really anywhere in the United States via that method because you're talking 144 to 148 megahertz frequencies, you know, in that two meter range. So my history is wireless. I got into doing a lot of managed services. I worked as a software developer for a while and built some software that coincided with the managed services we were doing mostly for construction companies. And then I stepped into strictly managed services and I had a lot of people begging for help. They were like, Hey, we don't have internet of our houses. We have it at our business. So I got talked into putting up some equipment and getting somebody online and it took off like wildfire and given that I grew up rule and I live rule. I really found that this was a much more practical place for me to do business and sold off some MSP customers and really just gave up on that part of the industry. Then COVID hit and that was it was all downhill from there and I got into WISPA two years late. I was already doing this stuff and then somebody was like, Hey, you need to get into these Facebook groups and need to come to these shows. So I've been going to WISPA shows for a year and a half now. So just really fresh. So you're not one of the old pork shitting guys. Like a lot of the folks we've been through our tosses and even though we're a couple of years older, but been doing this pretty much my whole life. So no, no talking. Shut up. I got a decade on you guys. Yeah. Don't talk any legacy gear and we'll be good. You know, PCMCA cards, no CV threes or anything like that. So no, that's good. So, you know, you definitely came up in the industry where it was a lot more accessible than a lot of folks have. So when there's pros and cons with that, you know, it's it's really easy to sort of pigeonhole yourself into a tech and then, you know, kind of get stuck in one way because it's the only way you've known how to do it. But, you know, you seem like you've really picked up and run with things and learned about all the nuances and, you know, especially being based where you are in that region, you know, it's definitely not as easy as some of the beginning folks had, you know, it's a little bit different terrain down there with the trees and everything surely. So yeah, we definitely have an expression for Florida's trees that we love to throw around, but it's it's worth the challenge. I mean, these people have been without good internet for so long. And at first, at first, I was the guy saying, you know, Fiverr's coming, Fiverr's coming, you'll get there. And then I started looking at the demographics and realized that it wasn't a small portion of the state. It was a massive portion of the state. And, you know, the grants that were coming down that were going straight to Fiverr year after year were not being used for the average person. They were used, they were being used for building out Fiverr in a constrained area. And, you know, that that left so many people on serve and just blew my mind when I finally dug in and found out and then saw the growth of the industry as a whole and saw where wireless technology has just really doubled, doubled year over year just the capacity and the capability and that's been amazing to see for me because again, I come from a background where I was like wireless data transmission doesn't work well. And now we're seeing this amazing technology taking off. So it's it's game changing these past few years, which yeah, you're right. I didn't have to suffer through some of the old painful roots, but it's awesome right now, even with the trees. There's always new pain right around the corner, no matter what. So I don't feel like you're missing out at all or you're missing out on the fun or anything. So what a what part of Florida do you serve? So we really will, depending on the opportunity, we'll go anywhere in Florida. We primarily are servicing north of Tampa upwards towards Skainsville on excuse me on the West Coast. So we we have a couple of other wisps that we friendly have friendly competition with, but we all pretty much get along. Unlike a lot of wisps, I think, you know, you pretty much are all in on CBRS, right? I mean, you're not really doing much in the five gig spectrum and anything right now. Yeah, I kind of had seen the writing on the wall when it comes to things like bead. They're really, you know, the industry as a whole internet service industry as a whole has been pushing so hard on these symmetric and licensed and fiber to the home initiatives that I didn't I didn't want to be forced into that model because while I think fiber has a use and I love fiber, I don't think it makes sense for most of my customers. And so if I can deliver them a phenomenal product and still qualify for these programs that might be coming up and be positioned to use wireless, then that's what I want to do. So I've been focusing heavily on making sure that we have every part of our network either licensed or fiber since GA has now become considered licensed as well. It just to me and made the most sense to hedge against the potential that five gig and other unlicensed bands get pushed out of these grants, right? Not that I expect the grants, but, you know, just in case and what equipment are you currently using with for CBRS? I've chosen to be really agnostic. I went in pretty heavy with Eric's and at first it's good and bad. You know, you're stuck in an LTE in that condition. It has a lot of cool uses. LTE has a lot of things you can do with it. But we're mixing it up. We're putting up really whatever makes sense for the market. So if we have a micropop somewhere and then the most practical thing to do is put up something that's lower capacity because there's only 20 homes. That's what we're going to put up there until it's justifiable to put something else up. So we've got Toronto going up. We've got Eric's and going up. We've got some of the lower end stuff. I mean, we're repurposing buy sells equipment. That we hated at first. But once we really dug into the how to run a core, how to run the EPC and not use some of the things that buy sells provides, it's really not bad equipment. Yeah. We're currently testing out a blink. The one that looks like a little football that has three single carrier sectors because, you know, in some cases we don't need high throughput on these. And, you know, we want to cover our whole area with LTE for the sake of offering things to first responders, things like that too. So we're really trying to diversify and stay agnostic. So what are some of those pros and cons if we can like go into them a little bit like on, you know, Eric's and I know that, you know, the back end is very, very expensive as well as the equipment as well. But I mean, like what are you seeing or what's your take on that stuff? It's good equipment. It's great equipment. And I would love it if it had a little more control for the operator. There's definitely challenges in working with Eric's and because they haven't really thought through the management pieces for the smaller operators, they are still requiring you to be in a, you know, a national carrier sized network management software. So you're paying someone else to be in that. They, Ericsson as a, as the Ericsson company, not extreme LTE actually, you know, made a commitment that if there was ever any issue with our union partner that they would make sure we're taking care of. So I got to give them props for that. Sports support's been great. And I can reach out to the Ericsson without really any issues. So I can't say any bad there. But yeah, the equipment is, it's good stuff. And, you know, we get three carrier down, two carrier up and we're getting every bit of that. You know, we're, we're getting some non-linus sight out of it unless it's like extremely dense trees, but we're still selling 50 by five through some trees. So it's not bad. And what kind of, what kind of speeds are you offering or, you know, what's the theoretical speeds if everything was perfect and what are you seeing in reality? Because that's always the big thing. It's the, the spec sheet that they try and sell you and everybody invests in. And then they find out when they deploy it that, Hey, I only have a 10 megahertz PAL and GA is all gobbled up. So I only have 15 megahertz of spectrum to work with. I mean, how's, how's that all pan out? We've been lucky when it comes to frequency. You know, the faster, if you're in a market where you want to use GA, the faster you deploy the area, the broad area, the better off you are. And that was kind of part of our strategy there was to get as much area covered by CBRS because it's less likely that someone else is going to want to fight with you over those channels. But we're also seeing that a lot of private entities are getting into the use of CBRS at a very small scale like campus and we're also, you know, we're working with the, some of the counties, the public radio services to coordinate with them to make sure that they don't jump onto these Motorola and Nitro and stuff like that that works in Banford 48 as well. And so we've been able to talk to them about the pros and cons and get them to stay in the, in the VHF range and not jump into our frequencies in exchange for, of course, we work with them on anything we can. We co-locate their radios when we can and things like that. So what kind of speeds are you typically getting out of the Ericsson equipment? Oh, yeah. Sorry. So, I mean, it sky's the limit, but we curtail that back down to 25 by 350 by five right now. We can offer 100 by 10. We want to be very cautious, of course, because, you know, we, we haven't gotten to the point where we have a loaded sector on Ericsson, so we're being very, very careful with our offerings on that until we get that figured out. And really, I don't think that LTE is going to be a long-term solution unless the 5G capabilities really do make a huge difference for the upload. That's really, I think, where LTE fails us in the landscape that we have to operate in coming up is that not being able to get that 20 up for most of your customers is going to hinder you. Yeah, and there's still a limited amount of spectrum you can really work with too. So it's not like you're doing, you know, 20 here, your aggregation or anything like that. So are you running your own core or are you kind of having that farmed out elsewhere? So we have a mix going on when we first stepped into using Ericsson. We just took the turnkey solution from Extreme for the sake of time. And that what that involves is having a gateway in your network going to share core with them, which is star solutions. And it's not bad. It has its challenges because you have to work directly with a managed service provider in that situation. So we've been working on setting up our core. We've messed around with Magma, which I think is a great solution. If you have the time and, you know, the engineer to build it, we're also looking at bringing in an Athena or a Druid, one of those as an option to try. We've really, we've come to realize that we have to try stuff. We have to use it before we know if it's going to work for us because I'm super picky. I've been in tech way too long. I mean, I'm literally in the middle of writing my own single pane of glass that we can pull APIs into so I can have my own, you know, interface for all of our daily operations because I'm just too picky. You don't want to go through 27 different network managers and see what's actually working. That is a pain. Yes. I hate it. What about the other solutions? We're testing Toronto 5 gigahertz right now and we're very optimistic and we're about to get our CBRS. Toronto put up in the next 30 to 60 days. So I don't have a lot to say about the CBRS product. The 5 gig product is probably what you would expect from a 5 gigahertz product other than the fact that it's more performance than anything else. And you do get some non-line of sight out of it with, you know, the way Toronto actually handles its, you know, black magic. Yeah, their noise cancellation and bringing the floor down and things like that. It's, you know, if you've ever sat in on one of their sessions where they talk about the technology of how they're doing it when their engineers are the ones giving the session, it's extremely informative and it all just suddenly makes sense. You're like, well, if that's how they're doing it, if they have that much processing power in the CPU and they can afford to do that, of course it's going to work. It's amazing. Yeah. It's definitely the processing power. The DSP is just, you know, phenomenal, right? Something that we've never seen in this industry before because, you know, no manufacturer has ever said, hey, let's go spend $14,000, you know, or make an access point that costs $14,000, right? So you get what you pay for is pretty cool stuff that it does for sure. Yeah, it was definitely a gutsy move on their part. It made sense for them because they needed a move. They needed to pivot and, you know, they did something really cool for us. And, you know, at this point, we still have, we still joke all the time, hey, it's still cheaper than Fiber. And when you factor in labor depending on your market, it is still cheaper than Fiber. I mean, you do your own labor and you're running a trencher, maybe you get away. No, it's still cheaper than Fiber even if you're running your own trencher. It's definitely cheaper than Fiber. It's phenomenal stuff. Well, what about buy cells? I mean, that's a name that I haven't heard really talked about in a while like comes and goes and stuff. So maybe you found out the magic on how to, you know, make it work. Definitely didn't figure out the magic. I just muscle things into submission. We've got some good people helping us here on the team. And I just, you know, we will make things work if we have to. And the fact that we have this buy cells equipment that we didn't love and now we have a situation where we just need more equipment present. So we're getting rooftops and things like that where it's not necessarily for the service of fixed wireless to the home, but it might just be that we're covering the downtown area for key businesses or key use cases. Then it, it works. And a good example of buy cells is the city of Las Vegas. When they put up buy cells, you know, it's not great, but it covers their IOT trash cans and it covers, you know, which makes sense. They have 5000 plus trash cans and they only roll a, you know, public service provider to go out and change the bag or whatever if the can is full. And that's why you don't see people going can to can in Las Vegas. So for things like that, it's it's awesome because it just gets the job done. Other than that, I mean, it's a price point. It's it's in it's on it's in far on par with any of the lower end LTE. So it just availability to me at that point, whatever is available, you know, LTE is agnostic and that's what I love about it. But for fixed wireless to home, it's not. I don't think it's going to be unless unless we really see some significant shift when we get access to fully running 5G in band 48 without a standalone, not with other bands. Then I think then we'll know for sure what the future is for LTE in our in our industry. But right now it's it's really a non starter. If you're trying to capitalize and hedge against overbuild some grants and things like that. Are you looking to get your own pals or lease some pals or anything like that? Are you going to focus just on GA for now? We have a lot of negotiations going on going on right now on licensing. In various geographic locations. I think that if we're talking about. Whether or not you need licenses, I don't think you need licenses to operate GA or to operate in CBRS, but I think the more protection you can put in place for your network that you're spending, you know, potentially millions of dollars. I mean, at least hundreds of thousands of dollars on then you you should you should try. So we have a lot of open-ended offers that are in negotiation. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like if you've got four APs up, you know, or four ENOVs or whatever you're calling them. You know, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to drop a lot of coin on a pal. But you know, you start stacking towers and towers of them. Then yeah, the the financial decision at that point does skew towards making a lot more efficient for sure. Yeah, and we don't know what the future is going to look like for us. It's you know, we have this ever changing goalpost. So, you know, it's it's hard to make a decision like that, but at the same time, if you're hedging against something, then you're probably doing a good job. For sure. For sure. So, you know, being, I guess, relatively, you know, close to the coastal areas, are you having a lot of issues with the sensor network and the SAS or how's that been working for you? We really haven't had a lot of issues for a little more inland than some other operators. One of my colleagues down south has had some issues with ship based radar as far as we could tell it was ship based radar. But once he moved out of the lower channels, I think he hasn't had another hit since and we really haven't had much. I think that overall the sensor network is doing what it's supposed to do and every once in a while we get little weird quirks that we don't understand. But if you're working particularly with federated, they're very responsive and easy to get a hold of and they will work with you quickly. So, you know, yeah, we're in Florida, it's coastal, but we're still pretty happy. Yeah, that's good. I mean, I imagine if you're a lot closer to Norfolk or, you know, the big bases, I'm assuming Miami and stuff like that, you'd probably see a lot more of that activity. But, you know, that was the big fear, you know, when things started to go live is how much of an effect that was really going to have, you know, with all the conversations that I was having people in the space and it seems like it's been, you know, relatively straightforward to manage. So, or at least muddied in with enough sass quirks that you can't really pick it out, right? It just kind of goes into the bucket of sass weirdness. But for the most part, it seems I've really calmed down a lot. I think the Google and Federated, you know, being the primary for a lot of the people in our space, they've really gotten things worked out for the most part, at least the way I understand it. So, yeah, I think that right now things are getting better and better with regards to the sass. I still, you know, I don't want to be an unlicensed spectrum as much as possible, or I at least want to over build any unlicensed spectrum with licensed spectrum, just to have it there, because it does, it does protect you in the grand scheme of if you're going to get overbuilt by a grant. Some of the other things we're doing though is we're really enjoying tera-graph and 60 gigahertz and kind of hoping for a multi-point 80 gigahertz option, because that would be considered licensed, technically. But we're running synchronous plans on 60 gigahertz. So if anybody buys a 50 by 5 plan, which is kind of the top end of our LTE, we give them 50 by 50. But we're offering plans up into the hundreds on any of the what we would call fiber-like networks where we're running tera-graph or micro-tick 60 gigahertz. Only downside about the tera-graph like the cycler, there's no 5 gig failover. So you could have some rain but we haven't had any issues really. We've been deploying it slowly and you know, if you're in a really rural area and you're building micro-pops and you can get the, you know, if you can get the bandwidth to that neighborhood, that's all you need and then you can run whatever you want in the neighborhood. You could run, you could really put an LTE and then run fiber off of a really good backhaul. I mean, we're seeing huge amounts of data being able to be pushed through the like the cyclo 8010s with the 5 gig failover. It's an 80 gigahertz radio that can push upwards, you know, 8, 10 gigabits per second in the right environment. Yeah, yeah. Backed up by a built-in 5 gigahertz failover. That's a game changer for, you know, when you're coming from the history of a Wisp where they're running backhaul after backhaul after backhaul and they're through, you know, that the customer's tower is three hops away from the fiber. In 5 gigahertz. In 5 gig the whole way. Exactly. So no license, no protections and, you know, the customer who's paying for like a 10 by 2 is getting like 6 by something. So, you know, that's that's one of the key things that I think nobody understands that's outside the wireless industry is they think fiber is the only way. And then we go in and we say, here's a 150 by 150 synchronous connection at four and a half miles, serving all these customers with 20 milliseconds of latency. I mean, that's that's phenomenal. For sure. For sure. Yeah, the tech has really gotten to the point and gotten affordable to the point where you could do that sort of thing for sure. So that said, are you looking at doing any of your own fiber at this point or maybe in the future? Is that something you think for your area doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially? Well, one of the things that we I think that has become pretty common now in the Wisp community. Or at least it's being talked about pretty frequently now is not requiring three, four, five miles of main, you know, middle mile, I guess you would call it. It's not really middle mile, but that main line to get to these fiber islands, we would call them in the industry, I guess. And when your rule like we are, you have islands of homes. And if if that island of homes has really little tree coverage, and we can do whatever we want when we get there. But if that island of homes is just dead set on having fiber, like if it's a development and there's a few hundred homes and they ask for fiber and even after educating them, they say, well, we just want it anyway. Then our philosophy on that is to go ahead and run fiber and we'll use a tower to get them a backhaul until such time as we can actually build out a redundant path via fiber that gets them serviced quickly. And it saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in fiber build to get them up. And then anything you add to that becomes redundancy, which is something that, you know, in any state, I think if you are talking about that, particularly what we've done is brought that to them to our state broadband office and said, hey, this is what we want to do. And I think that when you speak, you know, more people for less money, it lights people up. You know, they're like, oh, this is phenomenal. And we're going head to head against a co-op that is 100% fiber. They haven't built yet. They just decided that they decided that fiber is just like distributing power. Right. And so we go to civic associations and we go to meetings and then they get up and they do their talk and then I get up and go, here's the reality. And then we, you know, we actually have fats and proof behind it. You know, we say, okay, here's a fiber network, 100 users that didn't go over 600 gigabits per second for a whole week for the entire network. And you're you're telling these people they need gigabits at the home. So we're fighting that battle, of course. And I always end it with if you want gigabit, we'll sell you gigabit. That's up to you. But you don't need it. Yeah, that's awesome. I love I love seeing that when a wisp actually, you know, has it in them to kind of, you know, I don't want to say fight back, but to say, look, these are the facts, right? I mean, a lot of people want to what do you want? I'm going to sell it to you and you're like, well, you know, you don't always need all of that and you try and educate them. And that's fantastic to see that you have it in you to actually do it that way. I like it. It keeps me going. Honestly, I mean, I think anything anybody could take the best thing anybody could take away from this is like, just enjoy it. Enjoy the fight. Be tenacious, go out there and love it. Don't don't think you're less than these guys. These guys don't know what they're doing. I mean, they're suits. They're yep. Bottom line is dollars and our bottom line is connecting people. Awesome. So very cool, very cool. Um, so being where you are in Tennessee to get a little breezy down there too, you know, it plays into the conversation of it. The bit about redundancy, you know, got me thinking. Obviously, you know, you do have the hurricane issue in that area and you know, that really plays in the decision of these rule runs, especially to it's like, oh, just run the area all the whole way and it's not all that expensive and stuff. And I'm like, well, when all your telephone polls get blown down every, you know, several years, is this 25 year lifespan network has got, you know, two, three, four rebuilds built in their price point as well. So it's definitely part of the equation. So if you want to talk a little bit about the hurricane, I know you were this last one that came through you were you were tied into a lot with the rebuild efforts and sort of stuff like that. And, you know, we always find that conversation about that a bit, you know, kind of what you ran into or, you know, your peers of the folks that you're working with and kind of go from there. Yeah, that was really unexpected. We we I've been to Florida in my whole life. So hurricanes are nothing new to me and we grew up just, you know, we we played in the hurricanes. Yeah, it was fun. But we know that we know the potential for the devastation and damage as well and we respect that and you never know who's going to get it. Initially, it was tracking to hit my market dead on and we were watching it for a week going, OK, this is us. We we had a market that was getting a ribbon cutting ceremony that week and, you know, we had we had to push it for two weeks and we said, we don't know if we're even going to be able to have it because that right now the storm is tracking for us directly. So we prepared and we adjusted and we had a crazy couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it happened right before WISPA and, you know, we were very fortunate to get missed, but it hit in one of the worst places it could hit. And I say that because the coastal areas that are more populated that are lower elevation are absolutely the most vulnerable and what we see is, you know, you've got houses that are brand new that are built to 160 mile per hour wind code. They do reasonably well, but any of the houses that have been there for a while, I mean, they just they get devastated and the financial impact is tremendous. But having said, Scott didn't come to WISPA because his network got hit pretty hard. Scott with their ethics and he's our co-state coordinator for the state of Florida for WISPA. He was the B state coordinator up until we decided to go together on that. So I stepped in as, you know, with the incoming Florida state coordinator and Scott's going to stay on. But it was he needed to get his network back in line and he skipped WISPA for that, which you know, we were all very disappointed that he couldn't come. But he stayed home and he and he focused and as soon as we got back. I mean, we we went through prep and then we flew to WISPA and then we flew home on Friday and set up our trucks Friday night and we drove Saturday morning along with the operators from all over the place. I mean, we had guys from Louisiana, multiple different companies from Louisiana to North Florida and other operators from around the state that all came together and in that weekend, Friday and Saturday, we rebuilt like seven or eight of their smaller towers and we were able to he was able to actually get some customers back online before we got there. He's he was able to get I think about half of his network back online in a week and I'm going to tell you man with the devastation, the damage was insane. We were driving back roads with cars that got flooded out parked in the middle of the road facing the wrong way, trees down everywhere, roofs blown off of places and most importantly, fiber laying on the ground everywhere and that sealed it for me. I was like, I have full attachment agreements, but I have zero interest in attaching to a pole now. So but it speaks to number one and speaks to our ability to get people back online quickly and stay resilient. You know, we've got fiber companies that are saying it's going to be a couple of months before their customers are back online. But you know, whist are online because their DIAs and transport layers are more protected are underground and they have redundant paths and they just have to get their radios back online and go around and realign people's antennas that didn't have their roof blown away. Whereas the fiber, you know, aerial fiber is going to it's just going to take months to rehang because they have to focus on power first. I mean, there's still communities that are waiting for power to be restored and you're not getting fiber restored when you don't have power. So, but we had some amazing people come out and say, you know, thank you so much because I'm I don't know what else to do right now. I can't contact anybody. I can't I'm reading books and like it's it's one of those things where you're like suck it up, you know, like it's just life. But at the same time, if you can bring these people some comfort and get them connected back to the world, it truly does make a difference to them. Even if it's something silly, you know, sometimes it's as simple as like giving someone a donut, right? Just makes their their data that much better. Yeah, just being able to just get reconnected back to the world just that little bit of normalcy just kind of helps deal with the the pain of knowing that, you know, it's going to take that much of a slog to get back. So, you know, from the the coordination efforts and stuff that you guys are working on now or maybe towards the future, like what's you know, what are you guys kind of planning thinking? You know, what's what's the main goal and drive there? You know, how how how are we setting up where you can help each other and you know, anyone else that may need help going forward? Well, we've pretty much made a commitment. And this goes back years before I ever got involved to be honest, because like Johnny Oh, in Louisiana, I mean, he's he's been in it in the in the trenches with people for years and it was really awesome to finally meet in a person by the way, but he's a character. He's a character. Yeah, not like a hurricane to bring some people together. Yeah, I mean, he brought on heavy equipment and so we so we were just we're having a great time and you know, so ultimately for me, I just I recognize a couple of things that are needed for us and I think that set us will continue to set us apart from the big operators. You know, you see power companies, they come together and yeah, everybody's getting paid, but they come together to help each other. You don't see that with the big fiber companies, big internet internet service providers. They are never going to be that they're never going to have that mentality and more and more of the country is realizing that we need. We need to be a community. We need to collaborate and that's you know, it's coming from the federal level down and it's being encouraged. So we're hoping to do at a minimum have a commitment to each other here in the state of Florida to say, hey, you know, we're here for each other in times of need. If you know, if you have a back, I'll get blown out of the way. Throw it out to us that you need a primer to come help you and one of us will send somebody you know, and you know, we'll give you a fair price and if you know, if you just need the help, we'll come get it done and we'll worry about the money later and that's how we looked at this and it was like if you can throw us something later on down the road, great, but this is about helping people and and including network operators that are trying to help their communities. So that's step one is just be a lot of us have made that commitment and we're trying to find the rest of the Florida operators because there's more, you know, and gradually and as I step in more into the coordinator role, I'm going to be reaching out to as many for operators as possible and very soon we're going to have a planning meeting. Several of us are going to come together and start talking about the possibility of creating a cooperative in state of Florida, mainly for hiring a lobbyist to send a Tallahassee, but also to have a more coordinated effort for helping each other. Stocking plans are a potential thing that's on the table from vendors, vendor sponsorships are on the table and, you know, ideally in my mind, the way that it would work out is that we have a little more availability of stock when someone says, Hey, you know, I need three 1036 and I can't find them anywhere. Well, maybe we have a stockpile having emergency prepared is taken care of where we have a mobile tower ready to go that can be rented out when it's not being used for emergencies. And put whatever your equipment is on it and roll it out having having all that deployable equipment assets in place. I think would be a really great option for that co-op to do and we can rent it out to guys that want to use it for events or whatever, but that way it's not going to waste. But when these every couple of years comes around that somebody needs it, it's there and I think that it reinforces the community aspect of what we're doing. You know, we're we're small. We don't really have much of a chance against the really big operations who are sending 20 lawyers into a meeting to secure funding from the federal government and then go use it for wasteful things. So we're sending out that message. Of course, we're saying, Hey, like we are efficient and we are effective. And now we're trying to also send the message of, Hey, we're everywhere and we're going to come in, you know, 30 of us are going to come in next time, not just two of us. No, that's awesome. You know, the the ability of people in New York to come together like that is just, you know, helps helps you realize that there's a lot of good folks out there, you know, in that same fight and they understand the challenges and stuff and come together to, you know, help people out and get things back going and then, you know, if you squabble later about whatever stuff, you can squabble later, but right now, we're focusing about the eyes on the prize for sure. So nothing changes about the competitive nature of what we're doing just because we are friendly, right? Like as long as we're not in being underhanded, we're not throwing blows below the belt, which obviously, you know, you've got to define that in your, your co-op. And of course, everybody has to be able to get a vote in that co-op. It can't be one person like that. It's it's a team. It's a board. And you know, at the end of the day, we still are competitors and we know that and we know we're going to step on each other's toes sometimes, but that's that's okay because as a whole, our industry is going to profit more if we are able to present a united front. Absolutely. It takes time. Yeah, it takes time and, you know, but being able to come as a united front like that really, you know, does a lot to boost your business, you know, down the road for sure, for sure. So, for, for individual operators, you know, in terms of self-sufficiency, I mean, what, what do you recommend, you know, seeing a lot of what people just gone through, you know, what would you recommend the people? Where do they need to put, you know, their resource allocation, whether it be generators, spare tower sections, equipment, you know, what's what's the best way that you see people able to help themselves, at least until the cavalry gets there. Yeah, that's a tough one, mostly because we're so taxed on building our functional pieces of our network that we're not spending much time thinking about our spares and our backup plans, right? Like we, we want to get customers online, we want to generate revenue because most of us are self-funded and if we do have any other funding going on, it's probably something that we have to be very good stewards of and that makes it a challenge for sure. But ideally keeping spares, even if they're hot spares, even if they're sitting on a tower somewhere, waiting to be turned on, you know, we have some equipment that we put up and didn't end up using, but it just sits now. It's available if we need it for an emergency. You know, we have some spares of specific things that we know we might need and definitely a, you know, on the, to the point of if you're running Rhone towers, like Rhone 25s and 45s, yeah, you need to have some tower sections available. You potentially need to have, you know, as many tower sections available, I'd say like, as you have towers almost, I mean, at least 50% because when a 45 blows over, the chances of much of that getting damaged are pretty good. If it comes down, you know, you get a little bit of then here and there, you can't really put it back up. So, you know, keeping tower sections and we did recover a lot. Like we took towers apart down there. I mean, put them back together with what was usable, but we had to have the additional sections, but always have a backup plan. Always have a backup plan for your systems, your hardware, your software, excuse me, everything. I mean, that's, it takes a lot of time and energy to put it together, but spending the time and money on that lets you sleep better on the weekends when you're trying to get some time with your family. I know it's been a long time since I've taken a weekend, but I got to take a weekend and I didn't stress because I know that I'm building redundancies and I have backups. Very cool. Very cool. So, all right, I think we covered that pretty well. Like the last main thing we're talking about, let's see, we've talked about a Wispa Palooza then related to that, I guess would be the Titan Fest. So, you know, you got to go out to Wispa Palooza and you've got pretty fresh eyes as to what these shows are. You've only been to a few or several of these. So, kind of like to get your viewpoint as to, you know, what these shows mean for you versus, you know, we've been, we've been doing the vendor side for years and years. You know, we know what it means for us, but you know, what does it mean for you as an operator and being relatively new to these shows? Free drinks. Commiseration with peers though. It goes a long way for sure. Now, I mean, to me, the shows are definitely about community. When I was doing MSP work, I would go to some of the shows in that industry and they were just huge, huge shows. They weren't very community focused and reality is it was some of the worst sales environments that I've ever found myself in. You know, this is very hard sales and you know, they will, the free drinks are much, much stronger at some of the MSP shows and you don't want to, you don't want to be part of that. You're silent this line. Yeah. So, you know, at the WISBA shows, it feels much more comfortable, much more like a community, you know, from an operator side, the biggest takeaways I get are just the community and the networking that I get to do with other peers. I've met some of my, you know, my closest colleagues today. I met at a WISBA show a year ago and that, you know, I wouldn't have happened most likely had we not both been in the same panel talking about the same stuff and then afterwards going, you're awesome. Like this is great conversation and then and then looking at each other's tags going, you're in Florida. What the heck, man? So, it's, it's phenomenal. And so this is the first, this Vegas was the first year or the first show. I go to the New Orleans shows too, but Vegas this year was the first show that I got to go to and bring some of my team with me and really just try and focus on meeting people and getting, getting to know vendors. I mean, I like, I would say that there's probably as many vendors as I'm familiar with and comfortable with and purchase from, there's still that many that I have no connection to at all and it's not, it's just because the timing and, you know, being able to know they're there. I mean, there's some, some vendors that because they do direct sales, I really had, I knew they were there, but I never had an interaction with them. Never got a quote from them until I finally took the time to just go around and touch with as many as possible and say, okay, I, you know, I've heard good things about you and I want to make sure that I know how to do business with you. So that was really cool. Putting faces to names and getting to shake hands with people that you've been talking to for six months, but you know, whoever they are, it sounds, I mean, in this day and age, we do everything digitally, but at the same time, the community coming together and getting to hang out. It's just, it's different. It's totally different. So this, this year, Vegas was, it was a good, it was a really good show and I think we got a lot of really optimistic information regarding the future of broadband for wireless operators. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that will complain and say that we're getting the shaft, but the reality is, what I suppose a whole is doing phenomenal work and making a big difference for us and they're continuing to try and, you know, make sure that's happening. And I think that when I go back and I mean, again, I'm new to the industry, but I can still go back and look at what the industry has done and where we're coming into a time where the more we can come together, the better we're all going to be. Horizon Tide raises all ships and the way to do that is to have these awesome community events where we have the collaboration camaraderie commissuration, as you said, and just making sure we're all on the right page. I mean, it's, it's easy to get stuck, you know, right where you don't, you can't make a decision. You're like a squirrel in the middle of the highway and when you get to sit down with your peers, it gets you out of that, gets you going. So just tons of benefit. I could go on and on about the benefits of shows. A lot of people don't believe me, but you know, you got to get out there and be open to it. You got to, even if you're an introvert, you got to like put on your extrovert hat and just suck it up and then you know, get some good sleep at night to recover. Yeah, that's I mean, that's where Titan Fest kind of came from as well, right? I mean, it was, you know, during COVID, you know, and everybody was just, you know, locked down and, you know, they were actually seeking interaction with other people. And as, you know, things started opening up and, you know, more stuff about, you know, COVID and, you know, the information was actually coming out. People were like, well, we want to get together and, you know, it's it's been fantastic ever, ever since it started. It's going to be great to see you this year and join, but that's exactly it. It's it's about the operators coming together, you know, talking shop with no sales, you know, and creating that brotherhood and sisterhood that you talked about, you know, we got each other's backs. We're there when you need us. And we still get to, you know, compete friendly with each other and stuff like that. And you know, we're there for each other when people really need it. Absolutely. That's been the biggest thing. And I grew up in the tech industry in one way or another. And I was used to, you know, in the software world, lots of collaboration got into the MSP space. Nobody's friendly got back in to a more friendly environment. And it's just incredible. So some of my best friends I've met, you know, in this industry at this point. And yeah, looking forward to tight and the best. I didn't know what I was getting invited to, you know, when the invite comes from, from Johnny, oh, a cabin in the woods with Johnny. Oh, that's a little leery, but it's super exciting. And you know, just appreciate the opportunity. I'm I'm stoked. I can't wait. Yeah, it should be fun. Should be fun. We finally got the menu all sorted out. That's something we've kind of been going back and forth as we again, kind of tight and fest grows and matures. We we kind of learned from the previous years, but the wagyu meat fest from last year seemed to be a big hit. So we're going to continue with it. I guarantee you that the wagyu fajitas are going to be the best thing you ever had. But we'll also have some reverse seared wagyu tri-tip and wagyu peccanya. So it's going to be a pretty delicious stuff along with great homemade cookies and cupcakes and all sorts of other munchies and lots and lots to drink. So excellent. Yeah, we're very excited. Yeah. Yeah. And we get to we get to try out my flamethrower to start the fires this year. Wait, we're not going to mention that. I thought we weren't talking about that for the insurance. Keep that on the deal. So, but the funny thing about it is one of the one of the key things that anybody in the tech industry does to blow off steam is get out of tech. And so it's really that's the way that's the way to recover and get back, you know, re-centered. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I went last year is the first time and it was a great experience meeting again, just meeting people that you've known quote unquote for years, but like spending that that separated time, especially away from that, but you know, Vegas environment, you know, because that can be overwhelming at times. There are so many directions and stuff. So that was a really good opportunity to get to know a lot of people a lot better. So it was it was a great time and looking forward to it again here. Sure. All right. Well, you know, it's been about an hour or so and you know, you were gracious enough to share some time. I think we've covered a pretty good depth and breath of topics. So if anyone is looking to find you reach out to you, Ryan, especially, you know, the efforts that you're doing involving the disaster recovery or anything like that in general, what is the best way for them to find you? With talk on Facebook. That's always the easiest way. You can send me an email. You can call our office by emails. My name, Ryan, R-Y-A-N at romer.io. Oops, accidentally like sponsored street wave there. I want a dollar. Yeah. Every time this video plays now. So yeah, I would I would I'm always open. I don't have my, you know, my whisper coordinators email issued yet. I just signed my NDA the other day, but I really encourage Florida operators to get in touch with me. You know, the state coordinator has a unbiased role and my mission as an operator is to connect people and I cannot do the state of Florida by myself. None of us can. So getting the support that every operator needs to them is a key to our industry and making sure that we can all work together for the betterment of Florida and the entire nation is very important. So I just would encourage anybody who's in Florida, please reach out because I will do everything I can to make sure that we are pushing for wins for the little guys in Florida and we want you to be a part of that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Man, for sure. So I'm sure everyone's appreciate your efforts and appreciate what you're going to do in the future. It's an awesome role you've taken up there. So Tossos, anyone looking for us, where can they find us? Yeah, the same same places as Ryan, you can definitely find us on social media, Facebook and Instagram is great. The Wisp talk on our corporate page, our fellow mints.com. You can email us get in touch with either Caleb, myself or really anybody at the company. If you need any help with our equipment or just in general, I mean we actually do a lot in kind of general communications for anything wirelessly related, whether it's, you know, our product or not. So you can find us in all those places. Yeah, I just want to say big thank you to all the vendors that came together. I mean, RF elements, you guys helped out a lot with the efforts in Florida. Tossos, you were in the group too. You know, and then that couldn't we could not have done what we did without the vendors showing up and making stuff happen fast. You know, there was a couple others that were involved Baltic and a couple others, but you know, RF you guys, you've really helped out and that's that's awesome. I mean, again, we could have done it without you guys. So thank you so much for that and and Caleb Tossos. Thank you for letting me be on today because it was really fun and I love it. I love this industry man. Awesome. Awesome. Well, we'll see you in December, man. Heck yeah. All right. Everyone else. Y'all be good out there. Bye. Bye. And the music plays.