 Welcome to the RF elements unlicensed podcast. I'm Caleb. We've got toss us over here. What's up, and this week We are super excited to be having as a guest Dwayne Zimmerman from crow's nest broadband say hi Dwayne Hey, how's everyone doing today? So we're super excited to talk about him his experiences as a wisp and everything that he's been doing and Ready to roll here in a second so before we hop in toss us You want to give the good people out there? They're called action Absolutely, don't forget to like listen and subscribe to our channel right here on YouTube or anywhere you download your audio podcast like Apple Spotify and Google Alright, alright Dwayne we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us man You know, we've known you for a while You've definitely known in the spaces that we hang out in you know publicly and stuff And I think this is a great opportunity for you to you know Talk about what you're doing out there what you see going on in the wisp industry ISP industry as a whole and I want to share your history share your experiences and things like that So we really appreciate you being here man. Yeah, thanks. Good good to be here I know you guys have been been after me for a little while to be on here and you know It's part of this space is always being too busy But the part of it is from my point of view is I feel like there's so many people in the space They've been here so much longer than than us, you know, it's sometimes hard for me to Remember that we've only been in space since 2019. So Lots of people with a lot more experience than us and it's like man What can I tell people that they don't already know or that they haven't already heard but Now it sounds like just and watching these shows over the years a great place to have fun I'll usually rant about a few things, but We don't Not us not at all So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I mean, I'm a numbers guy I got this whole yellow legal pad here of numbers at the end of the beginning of the months So you're on the end of the month Numbers and Something our team always looks forward to and you know, I've got some some interesting ones here that We if it's fit to get into we might do that some point here today. Yeah for sure for sure So, you know, and I think one of the values of the inner Interviewing all these operators is you think well, you know, what can I teach people? But I mean, you know, everyone's network is different. Everyone's experience is different skill sets issues challenges they overcome and stuff like that and you know a network where you're running could be completely different from a network that runs, you know out in the flats in Texas or Alaska or anywhere like that, right? So everyone definitely brings a unique perspective, I think and we're excited to hear yours So I guess you know before we get too deep into the nitty-gritty details Give us a little bit of a history lesson like how did you decide this is how you wanted to spend your life like? 24-7 and Join the madness, right? Because it really is it really is my life. I mean you're always on call you never get away You know, so so you hit the nail right on the head. Yeah, so my background is is telcom IT I started in the space about 14 years ago My then boss sat in this very office that I'm in right now. There's my uncle. I was working landscaping I didn't know anything tech at all. I didn't know Q&W or besides on the keyboard. I didn't take any technical stuff in school He reached out to me in the winter months said hey, why don't you come on board? I'll teach you how to do phone systems at that point in time. They were doing big phone systems in school districts Fear to try it during the winter didn't have anything else to do three months later I was like, I'm not going back to landscaping. I love this tech thing 11 months later. I was promoted to take the senior techs position he left and went to CenturyLink and Fast forward a number of years basically we got cross-trained into all things IT as well as telcom We did a lot of corporate wireless systems. So I was trained in RF as well So that really I came into this with a with a good understanding of RF not in the ISP space But in the commercial Wi-Fi space warehouses. I'm understood Wi-Fi. Well one goes sold his company to a Investment firm, I guess we'll call it. I couldn't stand that we were very small business common sense first name basis type company before and now all of a sudden it was all about Bottom line and numbers and nobody cared about anything. I left went through a non-compete When the non-compete was up started my own business doing IT in the small business space anything from phone systems the camera systems the POS and everything in between predominantly in a very rural setting and I Go out say you had the hardware store You put a new point of sale system in for and put a camera system in they spend $30,000 a week later They pick up the phone. Hey Dwayne this new system you put in it sucks. It's slow. It's like well now It's not slow. You're running on 3 meg DSL and I can't do anything about that And so that was where that seed first got dropped into into my mind was hey, how can I help my business customers? Do better than this and then it's like man, I know RF. It can't be that hard I knew ubiquity from working in the IT space. We did point-to-point bridges between Buildings and so that's familiar with then the M series This was you know Air Max was maybe in the very very early stages at that point Started doing some some inquiry I went to Took the ubiquity training search the UB whatever you call them UBWA or whatever the wireless admin and the network admin or whatever Took a couple of those started doing some research I still didn't really know how to go about it Our corporate office at the time was in Altoona City of about 50,000 people There's an antenna farm on top of the mountain there that has no fiber optic about 30 towers up there I went online had a yard sign made drop the yard sign out there by those towers and was like high-speed internet call this number surely somebody needs internet and Wasn't a week later my phone rings and it was somebody said hey, I saw your yard sign We own a tower up here. We're TV station. We're going from standard definition. We're back calling it all the way from Pittsburgh You know, it's 480. We need to go high-def. We need 50 megs of bandwidth 24 hours a seven days a week And I said that's great. I need a tower. What can we do and they said hey We've got a nice new tower here. You can have all the space you want on it Ren free if you get us internet and so I was like, yes There's step one next step was finding a place down in the city where I could get a fiber circuit I had lots and lots of experience. Thankfully one of the things that we did in the IT MSP space was we brokered Internet for our business customers. So we took Everything you you give us a copy of your internet phone bills. We'll review it We'll find the best rider for the best price. So I knew how to negotiate caught up all my sales people with the cable companies and the Phone companies and today I want a gig of DIA. I guess that's how you start out What can you do ended up signing an $800 a month contract on a three-story flat roof building that could see the tower The end of that building let us on rent free because he wanted internet as well So we started with basically an $800 a month out-of-pocket Commit through something. We didn't know the first thing about and that was I think August 2019 that we hooked up our first customer It's October 2019, I guess would have been wisp of Palooza Went to the trade show there didn't know never heard of RFE never heard of pretty much every name in the space It was just a matter of going there getting to getting to meet people And I don't know if you guys remember the 600 megahertz repack that happened When T-Mobile bought six megahertz spectrum The TV antenna tap that was co-located on the tower We were on repack that weekend when we were in in Vegas and they went to a frequency just above FM and he got into all of my cat cables and all my radios started rebooting They started going My tower went down and I'm a thousand miles away and you know, it's like my first tower And I remember going to Wiskaw posting about it. I didn't have any idea what this was Then the good people on there were like RF chokes. You need RF chokes and I Overnighted them from Amazon. I think it was my climber went out the next day climbed it Put RF chokes on and it fixed the problem and it was like man. This is just the greatest community ever You know within five minutes somebody had told me what was wrong, you know, what was going on and It was all down here from hell from there. It was never looked back. I mean, it's been it's been giant That's crazy Like what a wild ride to get started, right? So yeah, um So and you're still in that tower now Still I still am I think it's the top three top four, you know of our of our 60 Plus towers now. So we're still on that tower Still still great towers. One of the we actually just deployed Toronto on that tower. It's it's a brutal tower We've got 14 horns on it There's it's one of two towers where we co-locate with another whisk there on the tower next to us They've got a dozen horns brutal environments and antenna farmers 15 or 20 towers up there countless people doing five gig back calls But we're still there I mean needless to say we started out with the three by 30 ubiquity HD sectors and that was before it was a 2019 everybody said you've got to go with RFP is like I never even heard of these guys I I'm sure I shook you guys hands there at the show. I don't specifically remember Talking to you but I remember seeing the product going back and and just running that budget again It's like man, how many of these can I afford to go from sectors to horns? We decided we couldn't afford any at the time kept our sectors, but within Four months probably we took them down and put horns up and we've never looked back We couldn't be on that tower today with 12 14 horns if it wasn't for actually for the most part We're doing 30 degree Asymmetrical horns that are flipped to 20 degrees and we've just got them stacked in there Yeah, they work really well So still there still one of our favorite towers What frequency you running with the Tehran is it CBRS or is it five gig as well five gig? We're running smack on top of the the Rockets and Neither one of them seem to be fazed by it. That was why we should it there We wanted to put it in our most brutal environment and put it through the paces So right on so what so are you still running primarily for your five gig stuff? Ubiquity like Air Max AC. We've done any LTU stuff or what do you what do you mainly do in there in the distribution side? We we have a mixture. We are predominantly ubiquity as far as our five gig radios go We do a mix on pretty much every tower of Air Max at this point for the last two years Every config has been almost the same. We do 360 degrees of coverage with Air Max the rocket prism five AC gen two Generally on 60 degree asymmetrical horns Six of them if there's higher density will go to 30 degree horns and talk a few more and and then we overlay that coverage with LTU any place we've got density Under five miles. So if we've got a population center five miles or closer We'll put 30 degree horns up. We'll put LTU up and we'll and we'll have both And we've come to really really like that config we have our five nine STA from the FCC Which we've had ever since code and we keep renewing that every 90 days So we've got 45 megahertz of extra spectrum there The LTU for us it you know if I had a list of Things that have been game-changing for us It would be LTU would definitely make that list for the simple reason of the five nine STA but in but talking them in a 20 or 30 degree horn overlaying them with you know in our density areas We've been you know, we've got RF elements horns with LTU that have got 60 customers on and They they don't even blink. I mean they just they just keep going and It's been a game-change for us to you know rock of prisms. They start to fall down around 20 Well, we run a really clean network. I mean we've got 800 some five star views on social media We run the best network that we can possibly run So we don't overload our radius as soon as we've got 20 customers 25 customers on a rocket prism We either cutting that from a 60 degree to 30 degree and adding another rocket in there or coming back and we're doubling up with LTU shortening up those connections making them clean Moving everything close to tower to LTU and to do a 50 meg channel with which we've mostly done on LTU We've been able to sell hundred and fifty 200 meg plans And just rock away with it So other five gig stuff that we're using we you know, we spent 40 grand to put some Tehran out We're testing Toronto and our most harsh environments. We just officially went live with that about a month ago after about six months of testing We've also got about a dozen or so of the Radwin Neo duos out. How are they doing? You know, I I'd Honestly, so it was 4th of July 2021 4th of July 2021 or maybe it was 2020. No, it was It was I forget now 2020 or 2021 4th of July was the day it was we got the very first Radwin Neo do in the United States They direct shipped it from Israel to us. We were working with them at the time They came out on the 4th of July weekend set it up in our lab And it was like that same week. We got our 59 sta and we got 2.1.0 firmware for LTU With the sta from ubiquity 2.1.0 fixed all the bugs that we had with LTU We got 45 megahertz of free spectrum. We already were doing largely ubiquity. We're familiar with the ecosystem And LTU basically ate them for lunch for us is what happened I mean, we all of a sudden we had the ap's but we weren't familiar with them We're very familiar with ubiquity LTU all of a sudden started kicking butt We had some 45 megahertz clean spectrum And we just started deploying LTU like crazy in all the places that we had planned to do Radwin and honestly, it's why we don't have more Radwin than we do where we have it deployed It's very niche what we're do we're using it for non-linus site near line of site in high noise situation short range Because they do at the time. They were really the only player that was doing Really good Beam forming. I mean you could go to 4 50 n, but it was a lot more money And they work really well in that scenario where I go to church is You know, it's only about a mile and a half from our pop But it's going through three trees and four buildings and you know, we've got our church hooked up to And I run sound and audio there and you know, we get 150 150 there All the time through trees when it's raining a short distance But that's something that airmax wasn't doing not having beam forming Right. And so are those duos the uh integrated version or are they the connectorized version? So they are the inner the neo duo which is integrated. So they have connectorized subscriber units We've coupled with like the the starter dish or the or the ultra dish, but Um, for the most part like what we have there church is just the integrated Um mod gotcha Yeah, but yeah, we have well, I think a dozen of their neo duos out So just I don't have a ton of data It was ltu took over Where we had intended for for radwin to to take over Yeah, that's right But the point the moldy point then we got on on two ap's and now we're doing A bunch of 60 gigahertz with the with the new wave stuff from ubiquity Really impressed with that. It's not perfect. We live in a major thunderstorm zone I was really concerned about rain fade But that ax chipset that they're using in it with auto 5 gig fill over Um has been impressive. I mean short range mile and a half And under but 150 by 150 on a 20 megahertz channel For backup, but I'm not complaining about that. I mean it it works well So we're deploying y'all up to 450 by 450 Honestly, if we go to their the full channel with we can push gig by gig We just we just aren't so we can scale a little better. Honestly. Nobody needs gig anyway Um But you know, we're doing we're doing four Well, is that I'm sorry I didn't hear you say it again And our customers, you know our business customers that we've predominantly been hooking up to it are really happy with it It's impressive. We're switching them from cable over to that and they love it Yeah, I mean and it goes to show right as long as the connection is stable And reliable they really don't notice that they have 150 meg versus 400 meg right for for the most part Of course, if they're heavy users businesses, I understand I mean, you definitely have a lot of traffic going on and again, it depends on the type of business, but That's that's that's cool. I really like I really like the 60 gig product from from ubiquity I mean, it's I've I've really yet to hear anything negative about it You know, I mean it just seems like it just it just works I know micro tech for the longest time was kind of the king of 60 gig You know, I mean they kind of hit the market first and really dedicated a lot of time Into the hardware development for that stuff, but seems like ubiquity is really kicking ass right there. That's awesome Yeah, we've been impressed. I mean, it's not been perfect They've had some bugs and obviously, you know the firmware that we're running right now is still beta, you know And so we've kind of let our customers know that it's beta But you know, we're we're we're slow to deploy something here We tested Toronto for six months before we deployed it Um, we had a little higher comfort zone with ubiquity because we have so much of it out there We tested it to death set it up with our office and um, you know I I feel like it's it's ready to go at at this point with the beta 5 beta 7. It's been really stable for us Awesome. Very cool. Very cool. What about your your trauma testing? Where do you see in there? You know, we've been critical, uh, you know in the early part just because I think so many people were running on pure Hopium, right as right, which is what we you know We see this is you know when something new comes out and everyone's like well This is going to be the the the next big thing, right? And those of us that have been around a lot we're like, well, maybe one day But there's a lot of pain between point A and point B. So, you know, what's your your experience been so far? Yeah, I mean there is no magical unicorn. Physics are physics. Um, you're not going to defy those um, you know I think we had to temper our expectations a little bit um, and at this point, you know We call it a tool in the shed. It is not um The end all be all if we had to exist on strictly Toronto We would cease to exist at least at the capacity that we do right now Uh, simply because we wouldn't have the cash flow took up 100 subs a month on Toronto. We we simply couldn't do it um But to have it as a tool in the shed to deploy it to You know, right now by the end of the summer we expect to have Toronto on our seven busiest towers with 10 gig backhaul um to have it We're we're kind of doing five gig only just because I I haven't been very cracked up with all the cbrs outages that they I just I don't know how I would explain that one to my customers I haven't thought of a good way a good way to do that. Yeah, so five gig it is We're kind of going to offer two plans what we're calling blast light That's up to 100 meg That might go through some trees. It might be real long distances or just somebody who doesn't want to pay more And then we're doing what we call blast, which we're going to say it's somewhere between 100 and 400 up to 400 down and somewhere between 50 and 100 up And we're going to keep it very simple those two plans We're going to overlay it with our rfe and and uh and ubiquity We're still going to hook up as many subs as we can the ubiquity at $350 To hook up a ubiquity sub, you know with truck roll and time and labor and everything versus 1500 with Toronto, we're still going to we're still going to use that to feed our Toronto addiction I guess you might say but hey if we can start doing 10 percent of our total installs Per month, you know 10 per month out of the hundred in Toronto Those are higher revenue per subscriber customers. They're now you Therefore the people that want it the people that say we're not for real. Hey, guess what? We are for real We can you know if for real in your mind means 400 meg we can do that in the right conditions If for business customers, what have you not and even for With bead coming up here and in the state of Pennsylvania We've got capital projects fund coming up here with just 200 million that the state broadband authority is rolling out I'm pretty good friends with those guys and we're being pretty loud about the fact that But by the time that grant is on its feet We're going to have 400 by 100 via fixed to wireless to 50 of our customer base That want it and you better not come over build us on that because It's being funded for us anyway Not all of it are seven towers that i'm talking about right now are organic out of pocket We've got 10 more that are coming that are funded by the NTIA So why would you take federal money and put me out of business because i'm fixed wireless? It's 400 by 100. I've got the numbers on the plans that my customers are on I can tell you Um The extra cut 100 meg 200 meg theorem egg doesn't have a big pull in my market. It just makes no sense Um, yeah, so anyways all that to say this it's a tool in the shed. You've got 60 gigahertz. You've got five gig ubiquity You've got torana We're honestly we're doing some fiber grants right now. We're working on that we're gonna do everything we can to adapt and And be able to be nimble on our feet for whatever comes down the road at us Yeah, that's that that's really smart and really that's that's what it's all about right? I mean, you know My biggest pet peeve, you know with the unicorns out there Is everybody thinks that they're gonna get the maximum that's in the spec sheet all the time right like with cbrs You know my problem is a lot of people are playing with you know the ga right And that's that that spectrum is not going to be there all the time you may get 40 megahertz or 80 megahertz of it Who knows right but it's not guaranteed and it's really about for me You know my caution that i'm putting out there is not about the platform right it's it's about how you use it right and You start offering a gig because if you get if you have a full-size pal and you're using full-size ga And you're offering a gig well if part of that goes away the ga now you can't you can't Deliver that that's that's a problem right so you being conservative, but yet still exceeding You know what's required is is really the smart thing to do and that's that's awesome to see it because I mean the there's almost no denying the magic that torana does i mean it goes places It goes places no other radio will go hands down There's no denying that stuff right you know the back end stuff You know the issues are having what sass may not be them It's probably the sass people Software bugs all the little nuances and tricks you have to do to get it to work is a whole other story But yeah, I mean the platform itself is I mean that's what you get when you have a $15,000 ap I mean it does some really cool shit So there's a gen one product people do yeah exactly yeah is the gen one product and so You know kudos to them. I actually just had lunch with the torana sales guy yesterday and you know they They're listening. You know they're they're they're making changes. They're good. They're introducing things that this community has asked for And to be perfect. That's awesome You don't hear about it much But you've got phone companies frontiers wind streams cable companies spectrum That are deploying torana. They're they're being very quiet about it, but that's that's new in this space. No one You know, I don't know that there's I shouldn't say no one There's probably some some cable companies out there that maybe they've deployed 450m or something but Um, they've succeeded in getting the attention of some of the big guys as well Uh, well, that's their focus. I think too. I mean so yeah, right? It's it's those deep pockets and as another you know another part of my concern there is when these deep pocket customers like spectrum start firing up all these APs and all these different areas. That's when that GA is just going to start shrinking Just going to start shrinking and you're going to have problems. So no, I really like I really like your approach across the board I mean even 60 gigahertz, right? You're still not running full channels there. That's smart. You know, it's just I can go more range better rain fade and uh, you you got it. There's a reason why you're doing well You know in this space I'm telling you I can't tell you how many times I've reached out to other operators I've gone visited their facilities. I've called them facebook message them Um, everybody's just willing to help and share and you know even a podcast like this where you know In some spaces The things I'm talking about would be viewed as trade seekers for me I'm just trying to help other operators out there because they've helped me Yeah, I mean that really plays into the the community side of things, you know, um, and in the beginning, you know A long time ago really wasn't like that everyone wanted to to play their secrets really close to the pocket and not really share An information but I think when you know over the years the the industry realized hey, it's not me versus you It's us versus the big players or then us versus the government or us versus whatever So it kind of behooves you to to figure out how to run better Um, you know just do better and then when everyone does better the industry as a whole does better And it just goes a lot further when we're you know in front of washington or something like that for sure so right We faced a lot of that in the beginning too when horns came out I mean the operators everybody was skeptical to use our product because it just didn't make sense at the time And for those who actually, you know tried it behind the scenes are like wow This this is like magic at that time right it was that version of magic for them You know and they wouldn't tell anybody they wanted to keep it for themselves You know it's just like but we're like no But just just think about how much better it's going to be when your competitors making less noise too And it it took it took some time to kind of figure this out and say hey Let's let's let's make this all work together And and we started looking like a a much bigger community than than it was you know not too long ago It was really dog eat dog, you know, but right by 2019 They might we must have all figured it out because I can't tell you how many people told me at that show right now that you need to talk to our fellowmen's because you know You know it literally changed our minds at that point We had we had a sad experience trying to acquire another small wisp in our area They backed out on day of closing and ended up selling it to an employee. We already uh Borrowed the money from the bank and everything else that we went to american town We said hey, we've got these three towers. Can we get on them got approval from the bank? And uh, this was all prior to this trade show and we had already ordered most of our materials We ended up Canceling six 60 degree ubiquity sectors in that project and doing six horns out of the three towers And this horns are still up today. They were 60 degree asymmetrical Felt like a time it was all we could afford but today they're all horns. I mean 60 some towers worth of horns and we've never looked back. I mean, it's been fantastic. Yeah, awesome Rick. Yeah for real for real. So And I guess sort of tail-ending the sort of I don't know tech and rf side of the conversation here So are you using any six gig stuff or doing any testing there? Or are you just kind of letting letting everyone else figure that out first? Yeah, I mean, so we have the five nine sta which technically isn't isn't six gig But no, we we haven't um, I felt like You know, they were pretty specific about the fact that you're not supposed to be making money on that and um That's why I'm in business. So I've opted I've opted not to go that route I didn't feel like I wanted to hook up a bunch of customers to a product That we ultimately don't know the final guidelines yet, you know for You know gps receivers on the customer premise unit so that you can go full Yeah, lrp and you know in my space here um with the terrain 911 has a you know ems has a ton of towers and they're all six gig backhaul and so I don't know what's gonna happen there for me. It was like I you know every nickel I've got right now I'm putting into the likes of Of torana and and 60 gig herds and and more expansion They'll be enough time at some point down the road. We've got enough of towers. We're four years into the cycle We're constantly going back and touching towers We'll have some towers somewhere that once we know what six gig is that we can go back and upgrade them and you know I don't I don't see that being a problem. I'm excited about it. No doubt But we it feels like we've been waiting on that unicorn We still don't have it Yeah, yeah, it definitely has a potential to be here another another unicorn for sure You know and and there's just so many unknowns with the afc as well And you know, we've already or at least I've personally been you know getting feedback from some of the testers out there That the FCC has been snooping around a lot of these installs because there are complaints coming in From the uh incumbents right who are running right so the FCC is dealing going out there and trying to find these sources of noise right uh and You know what's that going to be like when you're when your customers are on there? You know and they they got to shut you down and you're down for a week or even a day I mean, it's um You know the the spectrum is nice, you know, but uh, you know, I mean it's like five gig is just still there and still You know a usable thing if you use it smart, you know, so right we'll see I mean, I hope it happens soon. Oh me too. Um, I can't But yeah, but like I said, you know A lot of people are already talking about you know running 160 meg channels everywhere, you know I'm just like, oh, you know, and you're not gonna have much six gig left if you do that Right, you know, but they're the ones that are you know, basically wanting to push that one gig narrative to everybody You know, so but we'll see we'll see how it how it turns out I mean, uh, like I said, we I have hope for the hardware cambium is really, you know Working hard right now to try and get that stuff going. I know mimosa Has some new radios coming as well. I heard somewhere, you know new cpe and stuff like that So so hopefully by whisper palooza, we hear some new news from people about that stuff, you know, including ourselves Right, right. Honestly, I I I know that the hardware manufacturers know more than we do or I would like to think that they do But I think for them Let's just talk about ubiquity for a second. I think The reason we haven't seen anything from them is they're waiting on the same thing We are, you know, they want to be cost-effective. They can't afford to invest Money in releasing a product that the final revision might be different based on fcc rules So that I think I think we'll see something from ubiquity But I think we're not going to see it until we know 100 what the rules are Then it's affecting, you know, torana and cambium and everyone else as well as they, you know, they Are waiting on the FCC as well Yeah, and you know wi-fi 7 is right around the corner too, right? So I mean, it's just like 6g Yeah, yeah, right 6g Or as Nathan says on his linkedin Inventor of 9g or something like that, you know Whatever the the eight minute ab joke or something like I forget what movie it was, you know Yeah, yeah, but um, okay So then you know to to feed all these tower sites, you know, you've got 60 some other sites Like I know you use a lot of 80 gig, right? So I mean, are you primarily 80 gig backhauling a lot of this? Are you able to get fiber to a lot of these towers or what does that look like for you? Yeah, so, you know I keep dropping names of, you know, things that have been game changing for us. Um And one of the things that have been game changing for us have been albeit Um Ken and Ben and and the team there From their support to their products the whole nine yards um So we have Hmm, I can't even tell you for sure 20 22 23 albeit links. Um And they range from 2.0, you know, 11 gig 18 gig links with 1.4 gigs of bandwidth all the way to multi band With 1180 1880 And we and we do have some 80 gig straight 80 gig We don't have many of those for just the very simple reason we get too many thunderstorms So the straight 80 if I need a 10 gig Circuit in the first place then Backing it up with a five gig link probably isn't good enough Um So I can't really, you know, we have two That we have out that are that are straight 80. Otherwise, they're multi band, you know, with at least 740 or 1.4 gigs backing up the 10 gigs um, but we have, um Just looking at my numbers list here. I think we have 15 fiber circuits. Um, so we've got three upstreams There are one core two upstreams that are other core working on connecting our two cores right now Um, and so that's five of those. So we've got what 10 12 sites that are Just basically fiber point-to-points from towers where they're too far away to do e-band um And so we've got no choice but doing But doing You know paying for whoever the the cable company that telco's got fiber at that site for the sell guys We're buying, you know point-to-points from them for the bandwidth basically what we like to do is About every five to seven towers have a fiber circuit Even if it's just there for backup and our primary is wireless Um, because we've got more capacity, you know, a 1.4 gig obviate link versus a one gig fiber circuit Um, but you know every four or five towers we like to throw a fiber circuit in the mix for poor redundancy You know we built four rings everywhere as much as pot done Uh license back cause and And fiber we do have a few unlicensed here and there. We've got a lot of silos and green legs They're down low. They're not mount top sites. I can get out of the noise, you know, we'll do Some unlicensed but honestly it's been obvious and af-11s. We've got probably other 20 Plus links that are af-11. They they're nothing special. They're cheap. They're 650 megs of bandwidth all day every day Uh, they're no noise. They work really well. Uh, they integrate with you know, everything else ubiquity Um, so that that's what we do for for bandwidth for the most part We've got a big project all these towers that we're upgrading to torana We're going back through we're going to be putting a bunch more multi-band links up with, you know Now the opiate can do dual channel on the microwave with 1.4 On the backup and still 10 on the 80, you know, if we lose the 80 At least we've got a gig and a half for the duration of that thunderstorm So we're going to be putting a bunch more of those up as well where You know where they're close enough where we can where we can actually do that with the event One of the things actually I should say too is uh, You need this So people are talking about fiber and doing fiber and we're looking at it as well We're running the numbers on this the roi six passings per mile. It just doesn't make sense, but everywhere that we're we're doing fiber It's all about Integrating into our wisp network. We're bringing as many towers into that fiber fold as possible So that we can backhaul our own towers with our own Because honestly one of our biggest monthly recurring costs are those point-to-point fiber circuits They're just a drain and so, you know, if I cut those out with my own fiber Back them up with my own wireless backhaul as it's a win-win for us Yeah, 100 and that's what you see, you know, a lot of people start, you know Getting your feet wet in the fiber thing You know realize and learning what it takes to get it done realizing that it's not necessarily rocket science But it's like anything else like there's definitely a learning curve, but yeah Once you can out as much as your own infrastructure You've got control over and knowledge of you know, you know No telling where your point the point actually runs through right you may get going a to b But there's a loop that it gets through to get the here So the more where you can control go. Oh, I know there's construction coming down this road So they're probably going to dig it up right so you can you can plan ahead and do that sort of stuff Just you know, you're you're building your own fate at that point, which I think is really important Right, right Yeah, how many subs you guys have? We are 2100 and Wow NASA of end of the month here. So that is since 2019, huh? Yeah, so Interesting. I mean, I mentioned that I'm a numbers guy. I'll just cover some of those numbers. So august 2019 We hooked up our first customer August 2020 we had 250 customers So the first year we built out to four towers of three American tower sites and then that one TV tower that we were on 250 customers four towers after the first year So from august 2020 till August 2023, which we're not quite there yet um You know, basically In the in those three years By you know by august if we continue the trend by august 2023, you know, we'll we'll be at 2500 subs We're going to be at 65 or more towers Wow three years time we went from four towers to 61 You know macro towers. We've got another 100 plus repeater sites over and above the the macro sites So like in the last year last 12 months, we hooked up 800 873 subs in the last 12 months. So we have to crack that thousand sub year That's our goal right now is to get to that that thousand subs a year But that puts us at an average of 73 new customers um Per month over the last 12 months and that's exciting man. That is so so so no taco truck for you guys Any time in the near future then right? I mean unless it's the motivated guys to work weekends Then Yeah, that's exciting. I love it man. Good for you. Yeah for you We have a great team. There's no doubt about it. You know, we've got a community that stands behind us, you know, really of those Let me just look at this ISPs here. So we we we track this. I mean we've got 47 of our customers come from dsl um 25 come from cable which the cable company in this area is offering There's two one offers gig the other offers 1.2 gig. So a full 25 percent are coming from cable um About 4 percent from satellite 3 percent from other wisp 6 percent from 5g 4g cellular And a whopping 15 percent that simply didn't have internet because there was no good ISP to get so I find interesting that you know Despite being rural 25 percent of our customers come from the cable company because they hate the cable company prices They're going up all the time. They're oversubscribing All those things It's a timing game for them and all these low prices are just the pressure everybody out of the market And then they're going to just raise their prices and rape everybody. I mean, you know, so it's like Just you know, keep keep up the good work over there, man I always have this conversation with another wisp this week and it's like, you know 30 bucks for a gig now I don't really care because they've got all I need is about 10 percent of those cable customers to be unhappy And switch to me and they still fund my rural Development where I've got six passings per mile. So if I can get 10 percent of cables customers, that's all I need I don't need 70 percent market penetration Where there's cable and there's always going to be the 10 percent of people Whose bill has gone up every six months for the last five years and they're just sick of dealing with it So if we offer a good competitive service that you know, even if it's only 150 may which is the top plan We've offered up until This year That hasn't seemed to be a major Factor for the people switching from cable Uh, and I'm sure this is your numbers guy. You probably know this offhand too But you know, how what's your average like bandwidth usage per customer in general or maybe split between Young business and residential if you've got a heavy mix But you know, how much bandwidth are people really consuming versus, you know, what they think they need this conversation We've had with other operators and it's always interesting Yeah, and I think our Where we're at is very close to like the the report that precinct puts out on the average We're very close to that. We've got two cores um And you know looking at precinct when you combine that We're pushing six to eight gigs at peak time. So over 2,000 customers Actually, our business customers use significantly less than our residential customers And they're using it during the day when residential customers aren't so we love business customers Um, but you know more interesting for interestingly for us Is the fact that our 10 meg customers Don't use any less data per month than our 150 meg customers Uh, that's an interesting stat to us is the fact that the people that think they need that 150 meg plan When you you know, we monitor how much they use per month We've got people on 12 meg plans or 25 meg plans. They're using three four terabyte a month And I would say that you know of our top 5 to 10 percent of heaviest users are all in that 25 to 30 meg plan range Not the 150 meg um, so yeah, I would say peak time it's 5 to 10 meg tops, you know Between subscribers, which falls right into right into that average Yeah, the preset number was seven. I think right. So yeah Exactly. Yeah, we use pre-seem that that's another one that's been a game changer for us I think we got pre-seem right around 250 subs and um, I Wouldn't even begin to want to run my network without it I posted about I almost saw the other day we've got we were out in that little town of roaring spring hooking up Customers we were getting 400 mag from the cable company on the speed test But netflix sat on their tv buffering and we switched them over to our connection Uh, the tv was hardwired in both cases Hardwired into our 60 meg connection and netflix went to 4k right off the bat So even though they were getting a 400 meg speed test from the cable company netflix was buffering and You know, some of that is qoe. There's no doubt about it and yeah hats off to to pre-seem for that But even just like rcsr people Love it as well. Somebody calls in and they're complaining about internet being slow or something It's like well. Yeah, you've had your connection pegged for the last two weeks You know, you really need to be on that next higher plan. So You know over and above being a network tool to keep our network clean It's become a sales tool for us as well. So we like pre-seem a lot Latency is king. Yep for sure for sure But yeah, even on that subject like a percentage wise like I like I said, I'm a numbers guy We've got 20 of our customers are on 10 to 15 mega plans We've got 42 of our customers that are on the 25 to 30 meg plan 30 of our customers on a 50 to 75 meg and 10 of our customers are 100 meg and up So we find that 25 to 30 meg being sufficient for about half of our customers and you know, we get very few complaints. We've got 828 five-star reviews on on google and facebook combined And you know, you just you don't do that in today's world where everybody's bash happy That if you have a bad network, there's just there's just no two ways two ways about it Exactly and they're always super vocal to take it out on the old google You know, that's just seems to be the the main thing. So it's always funny like looking at isp You know, not just with but isp, you know Reviews in general and it's you know, some of them are just absolutely dumpster fires within, you know Someone like you or you have some of these others that we we deal with on a regular basis or pulling You know five or four eight or something like that. You know, you're doing a good job for sure So no people love to hate their isp. There's no doubt about it and we're not perfect We've gotten some one-star reviews, but we've reached out those people We've made it right and you know, I don't know it's maybe been maybe eight or ten or so that we've had You know actually go back and change their review based on the fact that we followed up and you know made things, right? so Um customer service for us really has been What has set us apart not offering gigabit, but customer service has been Been the key. Yeah, that's definitely something we've we've gotten so much feedback We hammer on to it a lot too is you know being a real player in your community and you know Have someone that you know the little things like answers the phone and actually does tech support You know just those little minor things, but um, no, I mean that's really what's driving it versus the flashiness and You know pump, you know pimped out vans and everything else like that for sure So next sort of question wise is you know, you're you're in this sort of tremendous growth phase I mean what are your biggest challenges In terms of either, you know network infrastructure growth or client growth I mean, I'm sure manpower is definitely got to play into it You know, that's always an issue that people have but you know What are you seeing or the the hardest things to overcome or the hardest things to overcome? You know to kind of hit to where your goals are Yeah, interestingly enough, we're very fortunate with manpower. We've got an excellent team You know 2019 there was two employees and myself and those two Honestly, they will spend all their time on the it side. We kind of brought broadband in as a as an experiment really And you know today we're we're ten employees Um, you know, so we you know, we've added all those employees since 2019 The biggest challenge for us has just been shortages of things vehicles being one of them We use ford transits and f 150s for our installer vehicles and Like transits. Yeah, it's been 18 months to 20 months since you've been able to get a transit You know, you just we have more guys than we have vehicles So we started getting f 150s because we couldn't get transits Well, the aluminum cappers to go on the back of them so you can put ladders on them We have a 28-week lead time. I mean aluminum is 20 weeks out So um, that has been one of the reasons we don't have more subs than we do right now Is the fact that we have not had vehicles to put guys in to go out and hook them up So that one has been That one I think has kept us from hitting 2000 subs last year That was our goal and we didn't get it and we couldn't couldn't get vehicles. It was so frustrating, but um And other supply supply chain issues have been a problem as well. We were we're very fortunate We have a big warehouse And when covet first hit I immediately went to my bank. I said, what's the largest line of credit I can possibly take out I think we caught like a quarter million dollar line of credit and we went out and we maxed it out immediately before this the you know supply chain crises really hit and All throughout covet we deployed to 60 some towers Pulling mostly from materials that we bought and one lump some before the supply crisis hit But you know just from a cash flow perspective needing to keep three months to six months worth of install inventory and stock Because you never know when it's going to go out of stock And right now when demand is high It costs me we've pushed the pencil like crazy It cost me more money Not to be able to hook up customers because I don't have the material Then it cost me to pay four or five even six percent of interest online of credit So that I can keep six months worth of supplies in my warehouse and not run out. So um It's really been supply chain has been our number one thing holding us holding us back and I would say after that It's probably just cash flow like You know growing pains going from four towers to 60 towers and the tower rents for 60 towers hitting You don't only hook up so many customers per month And you need customers for that month in reoccurring revenue to increase and so for us it was like And we had 60 tower hit rent wise almost all at once and we didn't have enough customers We actually were going backwards for a little while and so that you know managing that cash flow Plus needing to keep that much inventory Um Was a big challenge for us as well So I would say those have been those have been the big ones and even now cash flow like for toronto We'd love to go out at $12,000 ap is a $12,000 ap. Okay. It's not the end of the world But a thousand dollar customer premise unit when you're hooking up a hundred a month That's a big deal that takes a lot of cash to make that happen And so I would say you know cash flow would be the other big one for us is just Balancing all that and knowing that need to grow and expand and stay on the edge. So we don't have Somebody be attracted to our area because they see there's a big need there that's not being filled You know, that's basically where we're at there Yeah, that's really interesting and I think that the the cash flow side of things like You know, especially for small businesses, you know, a lot of people focused on direct profitability Which is important obviously ROI super important Um and managing that but I think a lot of people just sort of neglect as to what the actual cash flow Just reoccurring is that where it comes up. So, you know, it's it's super cool Hey, I can I can wait two years to make the money back on this whatever they're doing, right? But during that gap, you know, you've got I don't know employees to feed you I like keep lights on, you know things like that and I think there's a lot of that sort of thing That gets uh neglected either you just you know, just out of ignorance or just you know, just not knowing so Right, right cash flow kill a business real quick. So Absolutely, definitely something to stay hold of so I was just saying hooking up 100 customers a month sounds great until you do the math and you realize what Cash flow takes to do that. I mean, it's it's uh, it's not insignificant and you know, I would say our inexperience With meeting the front that much capital every month to hook up the new customers has been It's been a learning curve for us in the itmsp space. You don't you don't really have that. It's a it's a break fix It's a project you're collecting 50 down before you deploy all that kind of stuff So it's been a whole new dynamic for us that my inexperience really was um Why we ended up in this tight of a situation as we did I'd say we're in a good spot today But I've certainly I've learned a lot. Um, it's maybe one of the things that You know it the whisper shows whisper blues or whatnot It's one of the things they're always asking what are things to put on the agenda and whatnot and I think maybe That would be a good one from my point of view that would be interesting It's more from a business standpoint good business practices managing cash flow So you want to so you want to do 150 or 250 installs a month? How do you practically go about Doing that leveraging that, you know Loan programs grant programs, you know, honestly that has been another Key to our success has been our community relationships with our counties our county commissioners And we've leveraged cares act and ARPA grant Dollars that helped us build out to these 60 towers in the timeframe that we did um So there's been That whole side of it that you know, some people hate it. They think big brother owns us now Um, I look at it the other way. I look at as a business opportunity. I'm serving Six passings per mile in an area that probably no one else is ever going to look at and these people It's game changing for them. And if I wouldn't have stepped up And taken that money and done a whole lot more with it than anybody else was able to do with it Who knows where it would have gone and it wouldn't have been connecting our rural communities to high speed internet Yeah, it's just keeping the money in the community and you know versus going to some, you know, nameless Mega corp or something like that because the money is going to go somewhere So whatever your feelings are about government spending and everything else Like if the money is earmarked like it's going to go somewhere So it makes sense to get and it's their money So it's going to get spent so it makes sense to to spend it somewhere where you know local business stay in the community and that sort of thing means so much so And there's a lot of people's too that are I mean they get hung up with stuff like even just, you know, reasonable use of credit You know, everything's got to be, you know, we're just going to pay for it with cash and everything else And then what happens is is you end up just completely, you know Gimping yourself because you don't have that cash and you know now in the stuff building and expanding the business You're in a position where you're just waiting for this organic money to come up Which is great, but you could be building it so much faster with, you know, smart uses of capital where it makes sense Right. Yeah, for sure Yeah, unless you do you have any other sort of like main areas or topics and stuff like this has been great This has been a super useful conversation. Are there any other main areas or topics that you want to hit up going? Um, yeah, I mean I would I would um, I just want to give a shout out. Yeah, I've been mentioning, you know A few things that were game changing for us along the way Obviously, we talked about our fellow and it's talked about pre-seem talked about the community Whisper talk like it or hate it whatever just be smart on how you how you interact there But it's great. There's a lot to be gleaned in there. The trade shows have been fantastic for us Um, but there's there's been there's been a few there's been a few other ones. Um You know, I a lot of people know that I'm not necessarily a big cambium fan I love what cambium does for the community. They're a great vendor Um, they haven't necessarily worked out for us. Um, but cn heat From cambium has single-handedly changed the way that we do business. Um From a pre-qualifications standpoint for installs from a no-go We switched to cn heat Six eight months ago, whatever it's been and we went from about a 30 to 40 percent no-go ratio to where We didn't do pre-qualification. So we used google earth. We used Whatever other tools with were out there and we'd say hey, it looks like a go But ultimately we can't tell we'd roll a truck we'd get out there And there was trees in a way or whatever and we couldn't couldn't connect about 30 percent. So then that Time was wasted because you couldn't necessarily fill that time slot with another install because you didn't have one on the schedule We had to wait till the next schedule install And so it it was expensive for us It was inefficient. Um, we switched to cn heat and I think our no-go Rate since we switched to cn heat is like it's ridiculously low under three percent. Um, So, you know, we're going out there Every installer is getting their three installs a day almost every day Uh, you know, and so that has been that has been huge. We've been able to process We've been able to advertise a lot more Um and bring more leads in in general because we're able to weed out the bad ones So that actually caught us flat footed. We had to ramp up our advertising Because suddenly we were going through leads that much faster because our qualification process was better So, you know people like oh man, it's that much expensive. It's per tower per month. Listen guys It saves you a ton of cash per month. It doesn't cost you So and Seth and his guys there on that cn heat team I mean, I'll send an email and I'll get a response in 30 seconds or five minutes I mean, it's they've just been crazy. They've been fantastic to work with so in the last six eight months That has been the single biggest Game changer and and and ramping up our number of installs and being efficient. Um, I can't imagine going back to being without that Uh, a couple other ones, you know like it or hate it uisp has been is free It's been a very powerful tool for us for me being Running a lean team to have that much power in my palm on a mobile app See being able to see that much of my network has been huge. Um, so we we use them a lot. We like that There's been some vendors. I I knew networking but not networking as an isp Like ip architects has come in and basically took us to A fully redundant ring the network, you know with npl s and osp f and all those things Just a game changer. I get a bed at night and I know if I lose a link who cares, you know, the backup link Is going to pick it up. You know, I can deal with it tomorrow, you know, and so Um, you know going to bed sleeping easy and I Switching from, you know edge routers to micro tick and juniper for routers, you know in the evolution of our business That that has been huge. Um And I'd say lastly for me it's been the reviews So I I mentioned the reviews some people hate them some people like them For us one of the things that we've done. So it's hard to keep installers Motivated there's only so much that's exciting about going out every day and putting dishes on people's rows And we offer a $50 bonus for every five star review And we tell our installers Go after the customer for that review ask them for it tell a customer that you get a kickback if you get a review Um, it motivates our installers. It makes us look good So we get the reviews and then what that has done is when we go to advertise billboards facebook Whatever people see us. They've never heard of us. They google is they see, you know, 800 five star reviews They're like an internet service fire with that many five star reviews. I want to do this I'll forget about the price. They forget about the speed It's just we're just coming for that customer service experience. And so I would say if you aren't pursuing getting A positive social media Presence you should be because if you want to grow Use that in conjunction with your advertising you don't make your advertising That much more effective because people do see the reviews and they do care about it So I think that's kind of been um You know for us as we've grown we've needed to advertise and our advertisers become that much more effective because of those reviews So I think it pretty much sums it up. Yeah, I was just trying to think about ways of you know Let's make this call useful beneficial to others and those have been some of the tips that have really They've really been game changing for us in the last couple years That's awesome. So much great information in this episode, man. Thanks for sharing all of that Yeah, my pleasure. It's great. Yeah, just incredibly useful So dwayne if anyone's looking to find you um, you know or to reach out, you know, uh, of course You're on you know, whistalk a lot. I think that's where a lot of folks out there know you're from Um, but you know anywhere else where if anyone's looking for you where they can reach out Yeah, sure. I mean so you can google us, you know, we're on social media. So facebook google Um, our website is out there. You know if you email us from the website I still kind of watch that mailbox even though i'm not the guy who responds to it But you know facebook messenger, I don't have facebook friends I don't have a personal facebook profile really, but I have a facebook account so I can you know follow the The industry-related pages and I do use facebook messenger some Um, but yeah, google search will will pretty much get us. I'm on linkedin as well. Um, you know Yeah, fairly fairly well connected on there. So you can reach out there if you want if you need to find me there You know, you can you can connect up. We use telegram for uh internal messaging So if you've got a telegram account probably uh Hit you up there because that's uh our preferred communications platform as a company Very cool. Very cool. Tosso is anyone looking to find us working lately? Yeah, you could definitely find us all over on social media as well. You can find us uh at our rf elements page on facebook any of the industry groups like wisp talk and the like LinkedIn and of course our website rf elements.com or just email me tossos at rf elements.com Caleb at rf elements.com. We're everywhere all the time All right, everyone. So until we talk to you guys next time, we'll be talking to you later Bye Thanks guys. Bye