 Welcome to the RFL is unlicensed podcast. I'm Caleb. We got Tossos and This week after a little bit of a hiatus we've been we've been gone a little bit, you know Summertime is always a little crazy Yeah, little sketchy, but it's all right. We're back and we're back with a vengeance this week We have Dennis Burgess here from link technologies and also tower coverage comm so Dennis as many you guys knows been at this a little bit So it's got a ton of experience about wisp industry and stuff and we'll talk a lot about probably tower coverage And all the new sort of filing requirements is to be a real hot topic lately So thought we'd get into that a bit as experience running a whist and just a little bit of everything So before we hop into that Tossos gives the good people out there. They're called 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. Good job. Good job. We actually remember this time proud of us Yeah, I did good, right? Well, y'all let's make like a frog and hop to it here so Dennis my man We really appreciate you being here taking time out of your busy day sit here and talk with us to slapy's and Like I said to share some of your experience. I think you'd be good Maybe kind of give us some history like how how did you get here? There's always a sort of super generic vague question I like to ask but it usually Usually gets to be pretty interesting. So kind of had you in up in this field, you know Where did link technologies come from where tower coverage come from and we'll rock from there. Sure. Sure So we started I started an ISP back in yeek 1999 I believe We were using air bridge Equipment back then then we hopped a CB threes then the whole star west war boards and stuff Which was yeah, I mean that's all ancient with the aranco gold PCI MCIA cards and all that. Oh, yeah That was all fun stuff And then really in I think it was 2006 ish we decided that we needed to have a Company that could offer support for basically micro tech and originally it was also for star west We actually did a lot of star west stuff with what we call it our sister company called jeff coso ho Now come forward a few more years in there and then basically link technologies absorbed jeff coso ho So now we were selling hardware and we were doing consulting work, etc moved around a few spots trying to find a good home a good spot for Good internet as well as a good spot where we could grow As everybody has those types of issues when they're starting a business And then we started tower coverage comm that was basically we were offering a Training class for radio mobile. I don't know if many people know that the author of radio mobile Roger He basically came to us and said hey, we got this interesting little online version But we want to expand upon that and I don't have the skills to expand upon it But I think you guys do so we basically brought him on as a Engineer with link technologies. He's still working for us to this day And we started tower coverage comm in a lot of the feature set back then I had sold my wisp to my business partner. He was actually a designing a driving factor in Tower coverage comm usage because he's like man, it'd be really cool to capture customer information from our website and have it email us a link path profile immediately and I'm like, okay Let's go ahead and do that and then we started developing all the feature set of tower coverage comm and You know that the rest is history. So we've been in business since 2006. I've been in the wisp industry since 1999 Doing consulting work everything from consulting to training pretty much you name it I've pretty much seen it and probably have done it now There are a few oddball things that are out there that you know, you get like airspan some airspan radios. Those are just weird But once you've worked with them a couple of times all the basic principles are the same. So That's basically us in a nutshell. Well, very cool. Very cool. Yeah, you've definitely been around a while seen a lot of things so the You know as a technology in our field is advanced, you know, you've seen that over years You know a lot of the the planning used to be like how do I put my radios together? How do I cobble this stuff together versus integrated solutions now some of so forth? And I think there's a lot more focus in the industry now on sort of bigger picture ideas where you know The tower coverage is a great example, right? Like, you know for years so much of the the planning was just kind of dead reckoning, right? So like well, I know I'm on this tower and I can look and see this little neighborhood here this neighborhood here But when you started moving towards expansion, you're like, okay Well now that I've got the resources to build my own tower. I know how to do it I can fund it like where do I put this thing, right? You know and the driving around the neighborhood or surfing excuse me surfing through Google Earth only really tells you so much So I guess tell us a bit about how our coverage works You know from a planning perspective and things like that and then from there I think would be a good point to sort of jump into the conversation about how that ties into a lot of the planning the Filing that it used to be and kind of where the filing of stuff goes now So quick airplane view of things gotcha So I mean as far as doing your coverage area basically you can put a a site down Set how high above the terrain you are and then you can basically select the radio system that could be Medusa 450m it could be a micro tech radio It can be any radio that you so choose. Of course, you do need to know the proper RF characteristics of that radio and we actually had a really interesting one this happened a number of years back But we had people telling us that our propagation was totally wrong although what they were doing is they were using the old canopy reflectors and What they neglected to do is take the reflector gain and add it to the gain of the actual antenna So they were just putting the reflector gain in and you know, it's it's all about knowing You have to know RF enough to be able to put the proper information in but once you do that We basically take our terrain data, which hopefully by later this month We're gonna be rolling out one ninth arc second data across the United States To even be more accurate. We already have land cover data. So that's all your trees and stuff like that You basically pop it in and then within about 60 seconds It will pop out a map that shows you your potential coverage areas Normally under normal circumstances, it should be within a db or two ish We do have a slider in there that allows you to customize that and that's basically an additional statistical loss So further you are away. You'll have more statistical loss if that makes sense But that's where we got started the basic premise of that and then you take that your coverage area You merge it into your what we call a multi-map, which is basically all of your coverage area Once you get that now you can do all kinds of things with it. So let's say you wanted to do your tower Planning so in our particular case, we actually used a and this is when when we owned a whisk We actually had a area that we got a whole bunch of what we call E us's and those are end-user submissions from our website We had a whole bunch of them a whole little cluster of them And we had people we would always tell people go to our website fill out the form because that is the only way we know where People are requesting service from and trust me you get some that are across the country every once in a while that type of stuff But we had a whole little cluster of them. What was that? New Jersey, wait a minute. Yeah. Yeah, you'd be surprised how many people fill those things out But now you have contact information email address phone number all this information from a potential customer That's interested in getting service So then you can go into that area and you go Hey we got a cluster of customers or potential customers that has requested service that we cannot get them service currently now Let's go find a FCC tower in the area maybe there's a tower that's registered with the FCC database that we import on a weekly basis and You know, is there a tower that we can literally use so then you can sit there and plot that tower Here's this new site. Here's the radios. Let's plot that and look at that We covered 90% of the people in that area that have asked for service So then what we did is we went to the tower owner. We said hey, we want to get on Here's all respects all that kind of good stuff Just like you would with any other tower per se and then you basically enter into that agreement Now before we entered into the agreement before we signed on a deadline We sent emails and postcards to every person that had submitted uh on our website and within about a month We had 45 customers give us the hundred dollar install fee Pending tower installation. So Literally once we went out there and we installed the tower we signed the contract. We installed the tower We had 45 customers to hook up immediately and they were all pre-qualified and I think out of those 45 I think there was one that said they they didn't want the antenna on their roof or they didn't want it where it had to go So That is a great way to do your ROI. Now if you don't have a tower on the FCC database That's fine We actually have a reverse path analysis that you can select all the customers in an area And then you basically let it process and this takes a little bit because we're actually doing coverages From the customer site Saying hey, I want to put a tower. Let's say it's 120 foot I want to put a tower somewhere in this area, but I don't know where But I'm going to put 120 foot tower. So what it does is it creates a heat map So it takes each individual coverage says here's all these coverages it merges them all together and says Hey, here's a heat map of where the best place is to put a tower Then you can look on our site and you can actually do what we call a parcel data We actually have parcel data and you can actually find out who actually owns the piece of property And then go contact them. Hey, I want to put a tower up on your property It may work you may not but It gives you the tools to be able to do that if that's something that you want to do That's really cool. It's it's come a long way since I've used it last with all this kind of reverse let's say reverse engineering of In installation where to go from. I mean, these are all the things that even I've pondered myself I see towers going up from some providers. I'm like, how did I know who the owner is? How did they know what did it do? They they find their home address and hope they don't get shot driving up the driveway to say Hey, can I put a tower on your property? Like, you know, it's like false information So you guys have come a long way with that. Wow And we actually recommend that you would send them a letter or two Prior to you going out there if you can go out there and you can see them from the road Hey, hey, hey, you know wave them down. You'd be surprised how many people will sit there and talk with you About internet and most people all they want they want internet That's that's you know, if you're going to put a tower on their property They're going to say hey, we're going to sign a 20 year lease for this property. Here's the process Here's the cost, you know, and you have to put it in black and white. It has to be in black and white I cannot stress this enough Um, you know, we actually I have have done a lot with this telegraph system that cambium has um FII micro tech will be coming out with theirs. Hopefully by the end of the year Maybe don't know. We'll see but the the telegraph system is is really cool But now you have all these individual repeaters on individual homes And i'm like man, it just takes one customer to sit there and say no, I don't want that anymore and If you don't have an agreement that you can stay up on their roof then guess what you're you're Real you're gonna scramble to try to keep your customers hooked up So definitely always sign an agreement. I don't care if it's a one dollar agreement sign an agreement and exchange checks No, it's definitely some good advice. You don't want to put all that uh Work and building your infrastructure the next thing, you know, they're like, no, I'm gone. I'm gone So we and we've seen a lot especially with micropops from repeaters. Um, you know, make sure there's reliable power You know, there's small details things like that. So yeah Yeah, from a planning perspective, it was definitely more detailed the first time I fooled around with it We're like, well, we're gonna get some balloons. We're gonna fly them up in the air We're gonna drive around to see what we can see. So The uh, the mapping data has gotten so much more advanced to just in general I mean with the availability of lidar, you know, in a lot of areas, um, you know Where you see in the the resolution of the lidar stuff in terms of coverage areas You know that you're dealing with or like this new resolution data that you're talking about, you know Having a little bit lighter of this here like what's what's the resolution? Like what does that mean for people in the that might not be tapped into it? Sure. So one third arc arc second is what we currently use Um, now that could be and it is it is in some very specific aspects like the state of kentucky They actually made their lidar project open, uh open to the public so that you can go download all their data Etc. Now the big problem with lidar data is you don't actually have a whole lot of land clutter So in other words, you don't actually know. Hey, here's this tree or here's this group of trees, etc Now you might have buildings, which is a good thing Um, in some lidar cases they filter those out which is really kind of unfortunate, but Um, that those are some of those things that you get. Um, one meter data is great The only issue with one meter data is at there is a point of You're getting so so accurate that it takes almost too long to process While people are waiting right now. We're at one third arc second. So that's basically 30, uh, 30 feet resolution. Okay I would almost argue that if you are going by the exacts So like I said, if you're using another product and they offer one meter resolution data versus our 30 30 uh foot data Is it really going to be That much better than what we already have Normally I would sit there and say the answer is yes, it is better, but As a normal usage the answer is do you need better? I'm gonna probably say not really Um, one of the reasons why we've stuck with one third is because of processing time We allow all of our customers to reprocess maps as much as they want So if the process if you go to from one third down to one meter Using the same process that we have it would almost be 14 minutes per map to process Okay That's not something that somebody's going to sit there and wait for and I'm assuming that's probably why other vendors Don't offer a online site that you can go and adjust things They just process them and then give you access to the maps, which is fine if that's what you want but In all reality if a customer is anywhere close to your coverage area that you know your stated coverage area on your map Most likely you're going to send somebody out to try to do an install Simple as that. I mean it's it's it is a tool in the toolbox. It is not a definitive guide And if they are a half a mile out, then yeah, then don't bother with them. But if they are anywhere close Go send somebody out. Um Yes, I have seen some instances and they will highlight them where Oh, they say you can go on this side of the house and you're going to get this signal And on the other side of the house, you won't get signal. Okay That it doesn't really matter. You're still going to send a person out there to do the install Okay, um Again, that's probably the the major difference. Um, the big thing for us is getting A accurate data set on a hopefully national or preferably global scale Originally the srtm which is the shuttle radar topology mission Uh was the main source of our data and that was a global data set. Um, we have parts of The uk that they offer. Uh, it is one centimeter resolution light our data Okay, but they don't even offer it to allow people to download the data In bulk you have to go to their website. You have to hit submit all this good stuff And then you can download one little file that little file is like 280 mag But it's like this one little bitty snippet, you know, it's like 12 feet or something like that, you know And whenever you get into that that type of data set you have to have a way to either download the data Be able to make it available and then you have to be able to do something with it That's kind of the issue that we have is we don't we do have staff that monitors that And we usually update our data uh, usually at once out of quarter So as like in the united states as usgs updates their data set we're constantly updating our best data set Okay, um, but like in the case of kentucky, we were able to get that one meter data They offered it on a ftp server that's public We downloaded it and we just up converted it to one third arc second So it would work with our current application The usgs has now standardized on one ninth They do have some one meter data, but the one meter data is very few and far between And even the state of kentucky has not submitted that data to the usgs And or the usgs has not certified that data to be able to be available On the usgs website. So again, we're sticking with really a big government agency that knows what they're doing The usgs, uh, we are going to be releasing the one ninth arc second data, uh, hopefully, you know within, uh, you know this year Um, but whenever that comes out, then we'll be able to get that even uh, even more accurate for people However, there is going to be a a processing time hit on that Yeah, we got like 250 cores of processing servers dedicated to tire coverage So we have a lot of processing that we can do It's still going to just take time to grab all the data Uh, I mean think about it. You have, you know, uh, you know, let's say 20 square kilometers of data that you have to read And then you have to process on that So it does take a little time does take a little memory not a whole lot of memory But it does take time to do that and we do have quite a few servers to be able to handle that load Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Uh, that was something I was kind of curious about We have our little link calculator on our website and we know that sometimes there aren't enough squirrels running in the cages to make it process the tiles, right for the mcs rates fast enough, but I was just You know, I don't know how many cores we have or how much, you know, uh, you know Ben with we buy from from amazon from the cloud, right? But uh, I'm gonna find out so we can compare it to your 250 cores And kind of see where that is but uh slightly kind of on topic but off topic, right? This is something Uh, you know, what you're saying is your output is obviously only as good as your input, right? So the data that's coming into the system will will help you, you know Have a higher quality output and something I've always wondered about you mentioned earlier Some people said well, you know, hey your your your tower coverage tool Isn't very good because they weren't putting the proper input of reflector game plus tx power to to generate these maps and uh I've I've wondered now as technology is changing because again, we we kind of see this with our link calculator How how does tower coverage work or what do the the the input parameters look like for newer technology? like let's say even even in the case of uh Uh of the medusa, right with beamforming is where i'm going specifically, right because the beam pattern changes, right? You have stuff like torana that's coming out now doing some You know magical stuff with multi path and reflection So, you know, how does that all come in and even mimosa with the a6 platform and beamforming? So how I mean is tower coverage going to be able to calculate those solutions as well? I mean, is that something so so the answer is yes Um for beamforming it sounds like the medusa product Medusa or the cambium actually has created a dot ant file That is representative of the peak gain that all the subscribers should be able to see out of their antenna And that peak gain is really what we're calculating on Okay, so when they have that antenna file they can again our end users can upload their own antenna files Or we can get them directly from the manufacturer and we always request that it comes directly from the manufacturer It doesn't pass through a third party that's requested it because then people are going to say oh, we're tampering with stuff We're not going to do that But we always request that like mimosa whenever the the b11 came out. Where's your antenna files? You know, I understand you're using xyz antennas. Where are those gerus antenna files? And they actually created them for us and and we got them online for them um But again in those particular cases It's always usually the peak gain at that uh, the the bearing off the center access so Even if you're doing beamforming it doesn't really change the propagation model if that makes sense, okay Well, we'll see I have to I'd have to look at it gotcha. Yep. I mean don't get me wrong. There there is Times when your signal will be weaker because you're not transmitting or you're not receiving data But normally whenever you're receiving or transmitting you should be at that signal level because that's where beamforming should put you at Assuming that the beamforming is quick enough. Anyway Right. No, right. Cool That's the peak and usually these differences are within the error margin or fudge factor Some of this to an extent. Hey, right. So You know, that's that this is his fudge factor. Uh slider. He mentioned earlier, right? So Yep, and I mean you don't know I mean if you do we do have multi-path options now The big issue with multi-path is you don't actually know which direction it's going to come from Um, you know, if you're going over water Right, if you're going over water, you can actually see the the waves depending on if you move the antenna in and out You'll actually see the uh the constructive and the deconstructive interference Across water, but you know if you have a building that you just happen to be able to bounce off of That's going to be really hard to model in the real world. So again It is what it is in that particular instance Yeah, I mean in the end too, you're a lot of us you're just looking for the raw propagation, right? So, you know, whether your radio can take an egg 70 and do magic with it Well, that's that's you know, that's another sort of level that you've got to kind of approach from that perspective So in most of our customers, we recommend that they use something like an egg 65 That way they know that they're within You know a good db a margin that even if you have a small tree or something in the way That we didn't account for hopefully you can get around that, right? You're uh, you're you're installer having a little bit of the the crooked eye and stuff like that. So So With like non-line of site propagation mainly through foliage, right? You know for the longest time, you know, those assumptions were based on well, if you're in this region It's roughly this many db per kilometer or so on and so forth So, you know, how is that sort of advanced over the years with figuring out what the propagation models are through the foliage? Um, the propagation model and that we used has not changed. However, the data set has changed So part of our data set update every quarter is getting the latest land cover data from the usgs in our particular instance And or any other srtm data that we can get They're constantly doing scans like uh, Canada did some scans a while back and gave us updated to power Land cover Information and in that particular instance we applied it and in some cases it helped some cases it made it works um All you can do is that they're in assume that if you have trees there And you're using some frequency that can actually go through trees That you can have a statistical loss of point a to point b And that's our distance and that's basically all you can do um You can sit there and calculate worst case versus You know best case But in many cases we'll tell anybody if you're shooting through trees during the winter and it's not they're not Broadleaf pine trees that you know stay green all year Then chances are whenever those trees come back you're probably going to get 10 db of extra loss Whenever they go and put it into their propagation model the propagation model is going to show that loss In order to go to install they'll maybe 10 db stronger Well, that's because you're installing during the winter wait until summer and see what happens so again It is Knowing all of that information you you kind of have to keep that always in the back of your mind Yeah, there's definitely some level of like knowledge You know garbage in garbage out right so being able to put in the proper parameters But also it you know knowing and planning based on experience, right? So in a past life I had to to clean up a bunch of links that were put in because surprise surprise trees grow So, you know, hey, we're just shooting above the trees. It's a great link. It's an amazing and then you know I mean graded it's it's eight years later, right? So that little pair of nano beams has paid for itself. I mean about a thousand times over at this point But you know, you got there and look and you're 20 feet in the trees and they're like, yeah Just kind of quit working. I'm like, no, it didn't this has been going on for a while But um or what's worse is whenever you get out there and then there's a rv parked right in front of the antenna I've seen that one. Uh, the latest one happened about three weeks ago customer called us upset head We we did this link planning. It all worked out. We didn't install and now we have a customer that they're they're not getting any signal I'm like, okay And what do you want us to do about it? And they're like, well, we we just wanted to know what what your system says and it says it should work But yet it's not I'm like, well go out and check it. They were building a garage Right in front of the the antenna I mean again, if you don't have all the information that you can't plan for it And those are things that they're gonna happen. You're gonna have to just Chalk it up to experience and say, hey, we can move your antenna or or do something else to keep your service Yeah, there's a lot of those lessons. We've all learned over the years. We're like, oh, yeah I got you seeing it now. So yeah garage fade or building fade in general. Uh, the rv one was always I thought was amusing So or rv one's awesome Or like you said the simple case of putting links up, you know in the the the winner You're like, oh, it's nice and cool. We're gonna get all this work done in the spring. Everything goes to hell You're like, I don't understand. So Right So, you know tower coverage does a ton with the the mapping and the planning and stuff like that Um, but then it also ties a lot into what your coverage area like Marking out your clients and then using that for your reporting data and stuff too as I understand it, right? So, you know, there's been a a lot of hubbub You know 475 has been around for a long time people should be doing what they're doing But now we've got these new bdc requirements that are at a much more sort of granular level and, you know Clearly especially within our industry, you know, there's always a big fight against government oversight and overstep And this is not really the place for that but it kind of is what it is at this point But you know, if you kind of give us some background as to what these changes mean for the industry Like how does tower coverage handle it and where do you kind of see this going now and then, you know In the future, you know, is this a one-time thing or do you think it's going to kind of get more granular? You know, just give us some insight there about this reporting because there's definitely been a hot topic lately Well, let's let's kind of start with what the form 477 is um For most wisps it is the broadband deployment data In the broadband subscription data and the subscription data is basically a list of gps locations I'm sorry census tracks that are where your customers are currently installed. That's basically all that is Um, most of your billing systems should be able to output that data for you However, if you don't have that ability Tower coverage, we can ingest a listing of addresses And or gps coordinates and we can kick back the census tracks for that So we can do that uh that little portion the next portion is that broadband deployment data This is where you cover and can get service in a reasonable amount of time One of the things that the FCC just defined is what is in a reasonable amount of time? Because originally there there wasn't one. It was just a reasonable amount of time So they just said basically 10 working business days. So 10 business days is it? um This is where you could give a customer a install within 10 business days with no Extraneous cost so you can't put up a tower or if you do put up a tower as part of their normal installation Then hey there you go. Um, but that is the deployment data and that goes down to the census block levels Again, we can take your coverage area We can extract the census blocks out of it And then you also have to report what technology you're using and what's the maximum speed offered That is basically form 477 in a nutshell Now if you want to actually be able to receive funding for the areas There's another portion called the void requirement that you need to fill out And all you have to have is one void customer Literally and you could sit there in charge, you know, you can put it on your website and say hey, it's 100 bucks a month As long as you have one void customer and you offer void then now that can that area can be considered served. Okay Going forward Now we have the bdc. This is the broadband data collection There are two methods and i'm gonna say uh tell you about the second method. This is the polygon method What it is is hey, we want you to submit your coverage area that you can reliably get service to within 10 business days Without extra costs. Uh, we want you to submit your polygons to us. So in other words the exact coverage areas Okay, that sounds great But then the FCC says oh by the way, we need to know exactly where your towers are We need to know exactly what equipment you're using what antennas are you using what direction are they pointing? What tilt do they have? Um What model are you using to generate your propagation? What is your propagation data set a vintage the what year make model? They want all that in the left arm too, of course Um, they want all that so that basically they can sit there and they can rerun your propagation and say yes It is accurate or not. That is one method that the FCC has given us to do the BDC requirement the second method Which is much simpler is by using what we call a location fabric And that location fabric is actually built by a company called cost quest um Long skinny of it is if you have filled out form 477 in the past as if you have been operating in the past You should have received an email from them already If you have not then you need to go to cost quest website and you can submit it to their help desk that says Hey, I need my fabric data They will give you all the counties that you have filed in previously So in our case we filed in jefferson county, missouri So we would get jefferson county, missouri, but if we have one little spec in Washington county, guess what we'll get worse in county as well the fabric data Basically says here is a serviceable location. That's basically what they're going for and that location has a specific ID Okay, what they want is they want all of the locations Inside your coverage area that you can actually serve and the speeds at which you possibly could serve them Okay, it's actually for us. It's actually not very difficult to get that We just overlay your polygon on top of it. Then we extract out any data that's matching We will have that service available by the end of this month Okay, the difference is you will need to get with cost quest download the fabric data and then upload it into our system Which is just a text file. It's not overly complicated And then you will submit for your bdc information with the appropriate multi coverage map That is it. That's the only requirement. What are those? What are the fabric IDs the technology used and what was the maximum speed that you would offer at that location? That's really it Now the very last thing is what we call the pe certification thing and WISPA along with several other people have went together and they basically argued the fact that hey Do you actually want a certified electronic? What is it a certificate of electronic engineering or something like that a professional engineer or whatever? Yeah Yeah professional engineer to certify these And I know several pe's that do this specific type of work And the average cost for them to certify 25 tower sites with the coverage location fabric and certify that would be between 15 to 25 thousand dollars The reason is they actually have to go out and they actually have to take measurements and actually say Yes, I can get xyz signal at this point. So now i'm going to certify that particular coverage as good They actually have to make those measurements or have somebody make them for them So It's not an inexpensive opportunity. It's not an inexpensive proposition if that makes sense Now they did just redefine it that you need to have a bachelor's science and I think it's eight years I think it might be seven years seven years seven years of experience For a corporate engineering officer to certify it or you have to have 10 years of experience In the related technology field to be able to certify it now I have a feeling most of our most of wisp's members are going to fall into that 10 year category Which is a good thing but There will be some people that they're going to have to they're going to say hey We don't have a bachelor's science or we don't have 10 years of experience. We've only been doing this job for eight years What are their options and and right now it's to hire a pe which There are not very many pe's in the united states that will be able to do this. So It is definitely What's the the right term the the government? Overreaching I think but that's a whole that it's all subjective to your pocketbook. I guess I don't know that it's Yeah, not to get into the political part of that right, but I don't know that they're necessarily overreaching. They're just as usual very inefficient and You know asking for things to be done that really aren't necessary, you know, well, yeah, and It it's it is definitely An issue and there have been definitely people that are complaining The big thing though is that they're stating that there's going to be a $15,000 fine for per incident of incorrect data and In all reality, that's not really going to come down. What they're going to do is there's an argumentative Uh process where somebody can say hey, I try to get service. I can't they said I should Can you remove me and All all you have to do is sit there and say hey that fabric ID remove it And that should be the end of it. Um, so it's it defines are going to come when people are One drawing circles around their towers without doing any propagation that and that happened When the form 477 first started like five years ago there was tons of wisps that just drew circles, you know 10 10 10 mile circles around their tower and That that's a really bad bad thing to do As well as anybody grossly overestimating that coverage Um, I would always say, you know, I would always underestimate it to submit it So you're definitely not going to take the uh link distances that are like on ubiquity boxes 20 kilometers, let me just throw this circle, you know, they said so it's on the box right here fiber 24 can do 24 kilometers Yeah in the rain. Yeah. Yeah, so Yeah, but there you go. I mean it is it is what it is and uh again by the end of this month We should have our bdc uh processes. They're actually being checked right now We're just trying to make it as automated as possible and in any of those orders We always say typically the order is ready within four hours You'll get an email as soon as it gets done with the data Um, there have been some instances where something didn't work right and they get a blank file Guess what? We'll process it for free. Just let us know what we'll get taken care of for you But again, we are trying to automate that process not just do a one-off process And it does does take a little effort to get done correctly for sure for sure So it's you know, not not a fun process But I mean this is kind of the reality of the situation is is more and more coverage areas You know are openly got for funding and stuff like that Like there's got to be some sort of of watching and monitoring that and you know There's there's here say a lot of the 477 data out there just being kind of janky as it is And you know, you can look at some of these pools and I'm like, yeah, I don't I don't really know how accurate this might be but Yeah, that's for sure and the fabric data is is not as accurate either as people may think And we've already seen in the preliminary data In accuracies of hey, this is a serviceable location and you zoom down in and it's the freaking outhouse There you go, I mean if you want to serve us an outhouse go for it But you know, it's literally a you know, you know a three meter by three meter square building of you know It's an outhouse is all I could think of or a shack or something. So Hey, you need internet everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. I mean you have to be yourself busy doing something Yeah, of course, of course Yep. Yep good for catching up on facebook. So there you go Yeah, man, it's wild and then you've got I mean like kind of what you're saying There's a whole like a tolerant stacking issue too, right? So you got you know, this data set is a little janky this data set It's a little janky and then like how realistic is some of the enforcement going to be where it's versus a data quality thing Versus intent, you know, which always is the the big question and stuff So and I I really think every every interaction I've had with the FCC on Any of the form 477 they are more than willing to work with you if there's a problem I've never had that issue where they're not willing to work with you and that includes like clear requests and things like that Everybody's willing to work with you from the law enforcement side as well as the FCC side The difference is when you turn your back on them That's when the the fangs come out and All of a sudden you start getting fines and stuff like that, which is not a good thing Yeah, I mean you gotta figure a lot of these it's like the IRS too like so many big government organizations are spread pretty thin Right, so they're like you need to do the right thing as long as you play along. Let's just get through this So but they will throw some weight around if they need to so Right and usually they're friends, right? That's why I always used to tell people You know you start messing with the FCC and go through an audit and then surprise surprise tax man shows up He's like, I'm gonna audit you too and then EPA man shows up and he's like you got some paint cans on the ground So because they all hang out at the same bars in DC, right? So there's there's some sort of like your house Yeah, there's some sort of your house is in order before you you go complaining to anybody else That's always a a really good thing to do Exactly. They've got some sort of jackass list. They're like, all right. So bob here's on the list now They just all kind of hammer down on them. So yeah They all show up that the black van pulls up and they all get out. I tax man and it's FCC guy Hi, we're here from the government We're here to help so Yes, yeah Yeah, um, yeah, it's it's gonna be painful But you know eventually once everyone figured this out over the next sort of several filing sessions I'm sure there's going to be a little bit of a you know teething issues and stuff too Yeah, well and keep keep in mind the there is a it's actually a waiver is what the FCC issued for the PE requirements and the waiver is only for the next three filings So it's not That the PE is not required. It's only required and not required for the next three filings Now can they extend that sure if they change it sure, but we don't know what's going to happen So right now for the next three filings we have that opportunity to One hopefully get things changed as well as we have the opportunity to certify people As far as tower coverage.com goes we do have A filing service fee that we can basically tack on to where we'll log in You basically provide us with your FCC login We will log in and you have to give us your certifying party So who will name email all that information and we'll go ahead and file all that information for you So basically here's my multi map get all the data And you give us the data we run it all in BAM FCC form 477 and a bdc is done within a few days We do offer that service. However, we cannot certify those results. So you will still have to provide said certification So somebody somebody's got to sign the line as the who the garbage collector is before they submit it. Yeah Yeah Cool, cool All right, so that's sort of the the background info, you know tower coverage and like I said this this 477 bdc thing has been really a hot topic on the boards and stuff lately So let's kind of roll it back just a bit here You know a lot of what we're into with this podcast and you know rf elements as a whole is you know Tied a lot into education. So, you know, we like we when we interview wisps and stuff in here And you've got a lot of wisp experience But you've also got the sort of the unique experience of being a consultant whether it be, you know A lot of micro tick stuff obviously, you know, you know that you're very well-known For but you know, there's other consulting and stuff too. So I guess from You know an educational perspective The the guy who's got his wisp and he's like, all right, this is a viable thing. He's got 50 hundred customers You know just starting out But you know, they all seem to kind of run into the same issues and those issues have evolved over the years You know, like, oh, I shouldn't run this whole network bridge. You know that kind of deal, right? So, you know and some of the times, you know, the the information has moved So it's like what we've done is say, hey, you know Sector bad horn goods so on and so forth, you know It's part of what our efforts are from that particular slice but I guess really a good thing to talk about now is, you know, for those sort of You know, upstart wisp or maybe even that sort of, you know sophomore year wisp where you've made it through the hard part You got customers you're kind of figuring your thing out But you see this big sort of stumbling blocks as to what's growing or what's next and you're ready to bring Someone in to come, you know to help you plan for growth, you know What are the things that you see, you know, you guys working with the most or where people Generally kind of blow themselves up, you know, just something along the super generic lines But you know for for those guys out there that are still figuring this out sure one of the things that we get a lot of questions on is How to deploy the network? So we get a lot of people that say these buzzwords like in PLS and VPLS That's one of those things that we get a lot of questions on I would always sit there and tell everybody this Just because it's a buzzword does not mean it fits into your network plan You need to understand How it works you need to understand how it can help your network And then you can make an educated decision on is it right for me or not? We have a number of networks that they have asked us. Hey, we want to deploy MPLS and I go I know your network you have eight exit points MPLS VPLS is not a good fit for you And here's why That is one of those choices now We have other customers that they have one internet drain or they have one data center that they're buying You know 10 gigabit or 20 gigabit at In those particular cases, it's perfectly fine as long as you're not planning to go to another data center for whatever reason Again, that is it's it's a decision that the customer is going to have to make and One of the things we do get a lot is we do get specific Pacific consultants that do make recommendations without understanding the customer's needs or wants um the customer needs to be able to support themselves at least to a certain extent and Uh, if you're not available, then they're going to sit there and they're going to try either other consultants Or they're going to try to fix things and probably mess it up even worse than it was already done So I would always recommend that you look at the consultants that you're going to use as well as look out how they're talking to you um an example is Do they sit there and say yeah, we can do that not a problem here and we'll get it done. Let's get it done That's not really a good consultant Because all they want to do is they want to do they want to move march forward with the network plan that you have no ideal What it actually is What I would sit there and do is say here's the plan that we would like to implement Here's the reasons why here's the pros and here's the cons to that Because that's what you're paying consultant for is to know What the consultant knows and to understand what are the pros and cons of any type of deployment that you're trying to do Um, we get that a lot Uh, mostly because certain consulting companies, they have a cookie cutter way of doing things That's the only way they know how to do it do it and it happens Um, we will build out however you dictate to us But you need to know the information and you need to know Um, the pros and cons of those types of things. So that's probably one of the big ones in the network design realm um another thing that we get a lot of is Uh, we have a tower that is you know, let's say it's a thousand foot and yeah, we have radios at 900 foot on it and I'm like Okay, why are they at 900 feet? Well, because there's better customers that are 20 kilometers out No Um, again, that's probably one of the mistakes that people get they think higher is better and and i'm like It's probably better higher is better on back halls, but that's assuming that you have dedicated back halls I would always put a ring down at you know, 250 maybe 400 foot between there That's probably the perfect area. Are you using horn antennas because that's what horn antennas work really good Definitely, you know, we would recommend Obviously our film meant for that but again shameless plug there It has tassel ducks But I mean that's that's what we we would recommend to get the best count of subs for per ap Just the way it works. Um, of course, you have to sit there and say here's the downsides Here's the upsides. That's what you need to make sure that you're getting from your consultant um above and beyond As far as bridge networks go, uh, again even layer 2.5, which is you know, the vp ls stuff It's perfectly fine and it is acceptable But there are mitigation strategies that you need to have for loops As well as failover And layer two is the hardest To get a mitigation strategy for failover I know people say vrp vrp. It does work when it works ish There are many things that you have to take into consideration You need to run the entire path out to your tower and back just to run vrp That that's where your vrp needs to run if you have a switch inside that you it's just running between two two routers Guess what? You're not seeing the entire path. So if a path goes down Is vrp gonna fail or not most likely not? Um, another thing I don't like doing is what we call active backup routers I know some people love active backup routers I would much prefer a active active solution to where we can share the load Share the routers and then if any router actually has a problem all your traffic shifts over to the other router The difference is we know that configuration is working because it's already moving traffic That's one of those things that I would highly recommend people to look at when they're trying to build and that's actually brings us to a good point A lot of times when they come to us They want to build a redundancy. They've built out their network. Like you said, they have maybe Two to 500 subs they have that now now they're looking for how can we make our network more resilient? In the event we lose a switch we lose a router Etc etc and that's something that we do I think we do very well Again, but we always do that active active things where you know traffic is always flowing in both directions typically So there you go. Um, just trying to think of some other things that You know common mistakes. Um, oh Using a ap With customers and back calls on it. Yeah Don't do it. Yeah, they still do that. I see. Oh, yeah, they still do they still do Um, and and I I even have well that ap is only for back calls No, no dedicate Back calls dedicate dedicate. I can't sit there and stress that enough Point to point. Yes point to point. What's airtime? I don't understand. So, yeah Um, but you know, we've we've run into those types of things. Um Manage your management solution and uh, we can talk about monitoring. Um, I think every wisp should have Not one monitoring system not two but three Um, the reason why I say three is you need one that can give you that single pane of glass so that you can see Your network operations are all the towers up or not. That's all I care about in that particular instance Uh, you need another one that actually monitors things like, uh interface state changes Signal strength if they change more than 10 db, etc within a given time period um, obviously can monitor other items things like that but that is a A monitoring system like xatics or Uh, I'm trying to think ptpr tg something that actually alerts you in the event Something happens, but they don't have the best single pane of glass views if that makes sense And then the third one that you need is one that is out on the public internet and there's pingdom There's uptime robot. There's tons of services out there But that needs to be is my network online from an internet perspective Um, the one we use actually takes, uh, they have 14 data centers and they have to have seven Of the data centers confirming that something's down before it actually alerts you So now even a regional failure won't actually sit there and wake you up But if you do get one, buddy, you better be on that because that's usually a you know That's like bgp reachability that type of stuff. It's it's a big big item. So Um, mostly because guess what we have a lot of people that run internal uh Monitoring systems, but guess what whenever their internet connection goes out, they can't get alerts So that's why you need to have that third party, uh, you know monitoring system I don't care if you want to host something in an aws or wherever you want to do it Go for it, but it needs to be off your network in those particular instances. So Um, that's probably one of those one of those things. I see that all the time on facebook Hey, I have a tower and then I have a switch and none of my customers are getting online Okay, what's your monitoring say? Why don't I have a monitoring system? Okay? It's kind of kind of hard to sit there and tell you too terribly much unless you know what's up and what's down Yeah, that that I've been blowing up out of band thing kind of unrelated to whist stuff But some general stuff too. I'm like, oh, haven't got any alerts The alerts are people calling you because this shit broke, right? So I was like, oh, I didn't get any alerts because all my management's in band and now I have no band. So All quiet isn't all good Yeah, we actually have a number of customers that have been deploying a lot of micro tech lte radios for out of band access to their routers It's relatively inexpensive for them to do that And if they get on a custom apn they can literally get on a router somewhere and they can access those out of band completely and Works really well and I have not been known to route customers out the lte connection every once in a while But it doesn't work very well, but it it gives them something if that makes sense Yeah, yeah pulled one of those accidentally too. Yeah, there's a 12 000 cellular bill that month, so Yeah, most people that it's like five to ten bucks a month for a sim and you know the hardware and For them it gives them a piece of mind that they can get into the equipment Or hopefully get into the equipment unless there's a power outage or something like that So that actually brings us to batteries and you know You you need to have battery backups. You need to have them tested. They should be tested twice a year If they do not last where you need them to then guess what you need to replace the batteries or replace the system Simple as that. Now. Do I recommend you go out and get some, you know, lithium battleborn You know thousand dollar batteries just for your system. No, but again, I would definitely recommend you test all of your batteries Because there's a lot of people out there that when they're starting up They think they put a battery in and you know four years later. Why get a battery backup on that? Yeah, well, it's it's a four or five year old battery. Have you tested it? No We actually had one customer major We'll try this again without knocking my microphone down at it We actually had another customer that had a a major pop site Uh, you know multiple 10 gig waves coming into there and such and they're like that sites down I can't reach it. All of my customers are down and I'm like, okay. Well, I can't reach it either I don't see the other end We need to check power. I have a big 350 Chevy engine that's a generator. It's there It should be online. I'm like, well, I understand that but I can't see anything We don't have out of band management. So someone's gonna have to go there and check it out He calls me about an hour later and he goes, uh, I'm I'm gonna fire somebody today I go, why is that and he goes the generator was when I got there was not running because it was switched off not an auto As soon as I switched to auto it started up and everything came up The pole four four poles down got hit by a car and the power was out But the generator wasn't on auto So again that those are the some of the simple things that People sit there and and take for granted. But unless you actually check all that You're you're you're flying blind. Yeah, there's there's so many times where you're like, all right I've got a backup and then you know, I'll just trust this forever You know, it's kind of like your backup router set up, right? Like, yeah, the backup was good But you forgot that you've been monkeying with the active router for the last three months and guess what it's different So, you know UPS batteries flat generators that won't fire up like a backup is only as good as a tested backup for sure Yeah, that's like every every UPS in my office Forever, it's just like it's just one day I come in the computer's off. I'm like, damn it You know, the battery doesn't hold the charge anymore. But do I ever test it? Do I ever check it? No, I basically Yeah, when the computer starts rebooting Or the battery doesn't kick in that's when I get a new one, you know Where do people UPS is cheap UPS is so a lot of these cheap UPS is one, they're not pure son Or two, like they'll be the really cheap ones where when the battery goes flat The power comes back up eventually, but it doesn't kick on you have to mainly go turn the on button, right? Like I've seen that blow people up and oh, yeah on simple setup and honestly, there's plenty of solutions out there Um The issue is cost and whenever you look at like a 1500 watt, you know, apc I mean that's a couple hundred bucks, but then you go to You know an actual industrial solution The box to to manage the batteries is about 500 bucks or more And then you have to buy the batteries, but the difference is the runtime is 10 times longer And you actually have an industrial grade unit that will power on whenever it you know gets power back um Another one that I've seen is where they're running just on the cusp of a 15 amp circuit And when the battery when the power comes back on the battery comes back on and it starts charging And then you go over the 15 amp breaker that they had and it pops the breaker and then you're out of power again Uh, those are are always interesting ones. Yeah, we've we talked about power systems with a lot of people on this is where That's where you you start learning like the the more money and work I put into up front like it pays and spades in the future, right? And it's you know, it's hard to focus on that when you're you know You're one guy shop just trying to get turned up and stuff and you look at some of these, you know Fancy boxes and you know icts and everything else. You're like one. I can't afford this too Like what the hell is all this like I don't get it, right? But it's right, you know as you scale and grow it's understanding that or even you know even understanding how the Internet works because you know when you're when you're green you're like, okay You know, I'm gonna buy some internet from the internet man And I got the internet hole and I plugged in and I plug it into my router And you might be really good at understanding how from your router to the rest of the network works But if there's something that's not a binary failure in the internet hole Then you know, that's a lot of times where people can really get blown up I've seen that happen quite a bit too. So it it's always dns. Yeah You found that too. That's it always happens to me And I would always sit there and tell any any wisp especially if you're above, you know, 250 to 500 subs run your own dns It's not that hard It doesn't cost that much And now you take all the guesswork out of you using a service that you don't pay for To run your isp. I can't I cannot sit there and tell I probably get We probably get I would say two to three customers or potential customers A month call us up and say I have everything it's working but nobody's getting on And it's literally they're either using google or cloud fair And google is very bad about blacklisting ip's and they don't tell you and they don't sit there and tell anybody All you can do is sit there and test it and if it doesn't work Why are you not getting there? And then we've had instances where Customers have put in their own dns like google because they think it's faster And then there's some type of routing issue on the google's network and in this particular case The one i'm thinking of it was an actual routing issue on google's network And we were not able to get to 8888 And guess what all the customers that had put that in was not getting online And it's not like you can pick up a telephone and call somebody and say hey You know dns isn't working Because we're talking about google here. I mean good luck trying to get a hold of anybody I don't even think they list the number on their work You know Type google phone number and see how many numbers you get or how many numbers you don't get Isn't that what alexa is don't you just say alexa my dns isn't working Yeah, you got to use you actually got to use bing. So you'll just bing google's phone number Yeah, there you go. There you go. Yeah, they don't magically work But yeah, I mean that's it happens all the time and I would really recommend everybody run your own dns It's it's not complicated Yeah, there was actually a whole big conversation on one of the lists like two days ago about that for the exact same sort of thing So there's I seen it. I didn't I didn't chime in on it. That's okay There's a lot more to the internet than 8888. So and 4 4 in that either so 111. Yeah So I I got an interesting story that there could be a little segue to completing our our show here So I I you know, I've done a lot of dns Stuff in the past and I actually attended a nine odd once And this gentleman who's presenting on dns sec um I actually Followed his conversation and in his presentation really good presentation etc and then I get him uh at the the meet and greet afterwards and we start talking This guy makes you know six figures a year and all his job is is to take care of a dns server cluster That his university has that's it. That's his entire job And he starts going in into dns sec and and starts talking about all the intricacies with it and I thought I was well versed in dns after this talking to this gentleman I was I was just dumbfounded how much I am ignorant about or was about dns because Of you know, that's his whole life is dns and doh requests and dot requests and all these types of things so, uh If you ever get a consultant that says i'm not still learning. I know everything fire because I every day learn new stuff um Just by asking questions and that's really the only way that anybody can learn so Definitely, you know, keep learning. That's a big aspect of especially a wisp life You know when we started when I started my wisp it was because we needed we had a need That's what most wisps. I see started They they came because you know, hey there, you know jim started his wisp because his daughter needed their access There you go and It ballooned into a business that you know, he then eventually sold but that's just the way the internet it should work and Going to the cost of the barriers of entry again the form 477 for the most part All we have is the form 477 and the bdc I mean other than you know, if you need license spectrum for a backhaul or something everything else Is pretty much provided for you or you can get your knowledge for So yes, the cost of entry barrier has been raised up because of the bdc requirements But there are companies out there that can do that for you and do all the legwork for you So It's up to you if you want to pay them if you don't then you're gonna have to do that legwork But never underestimate your time in uh, your time is a valuable resource too. So just keep that in mind Yep, it's You know, you've always got to keep learning and you know, there's there's also you got to understand your own limitations You know just whether it's wisp world or life in general I mean lord knows I got plenty of minds So, you know, you got to know something but you ain't had to know everything necessarily or at least until you grow to The point where you can bring someone in so, you know, you got to bring in a consultant or something That's great But also understand what they're doing have some idea like you can't black box everything forever Uh, because at some point it's just not going to work. So but and and we've We've seen countless consultants and I'm not gonna name any names because uh, I I feel it. I'm better than that but We've seen countless consultants sit there in They cookie cutter a network solution for a customer and then the customer calls us up and says, hey We can't get ahold of them our networks down. We have network issues. We don't know nothing about it You know, we were told we had to have this box That is a, you know, $4,500 a remote It's a council server And I'm like, why why why do you need that? I don't understand that obviously to get in remotely, but there's other ways of getting getting that accomplished that doesn't cost that much and It happens all the time. So, you know always, you know Challenge your your consultants and ask them those questions because if you don't know how your network operates Then you can't do any troubleshooting. Yep. Yep for sure. So Well, cool. This is uh, this has been a great conversation in this. I think, you know, we we've learned a lot about some of the new stuff We've covered, you know, a lot of the things like I said, it's always fun talking about how people blow themselves up Or honestly, it's a lot of it's how we blown our own selves up doing stuff. So I heard a story about a guy like some dumbass did this. Yeah, that was me But um, but no, this has been a great conversation. So Dennis, uh, anyone out there looking to to find you or track you down For good or for not? How can how can they find you the simplest way link text net is our website? Or you can give us a call that number is three one four seven three five zero two seven zero Standard business hours. Just give us a call. You can talk to anybody in our sales staff. They can help you out Get you some estimates. We do do work. Uh by the hour. So it is There is no contract pricing so you can buy a bulk bulk amount of time and then we can work on it And if you only use two hours, then we only charge it for two hours, etc. So um, that's the simplest way we uh Also can be reached via support at link text net as well And for any of our tower coverage dot com subscribers Support at tower coverage dot com is free as well as our support phone number is free during normal business hours So just give us a call or send us an email. Well, cool. Cool. Again. Thank you for your time now Tasos, where can I find us except for the place that they're literally talking to us right now? You could find us anywhere on social media LinkedIn you could find us on the gram. You can find us on facebook's, you know, so Yeah, everywhere online, especially our website rf elements dot com or our forum rfe lab dot com. So Email is always available and you know a dm is probably the best way to reach either of us All right. All right guys. Well until we talk to all you guys next time y'all be good out there. Yep, everybody be good. See you