 Hello, and how are you doing? Gordo, the techs are here, and welcome to Iwachi Talk. Please grab yourself a libation, pull up the chair, and join us for another exciting 30 minutes of tech talk. I have my guest today, Jared. How are you doing? Thanks for having me. We'll get it. I keep wanting to say gruge. It's been pronounced gruge many times. I keep wanting to say it, and you're with Hawaii Dialogics Telecom, and we're going to talk about the telecom industry in Hawaii here. Yes, sir. But that could go on forever and ever. We liked it a little bit, no little bit about our guest, but now I just found that you're a Cleveland Indian fan. I'm a huge Cleveland Indians fan. So this has been a very short show. Nice talking to you all. We'll see you again next week. So as you can see, I've been following the Blue Jays since the very first show, and I just want you to know, and here we are, we're there, and we have our first game this afternoon. Two o'clock in an hour. First pitch. Oh, I can hardly wait. The LCS. It's hard to wait. It's going to be the Blue Jays and Chicago in the, I don't know, in, yeah, I think so. Anyway, Jared, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you. And we'd like to learn a little bit about our guests and so on. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah. So I went to HPU, I've been in Hawaii about 20 years, actually a funny story. I know we've met at HPU events and alumni events and whatnot, but actually came to Hawaii sight unseen and had enough money for my first semester of college. My mom, who's just a doll, saved up some money. We grew up pretty meager means and bought some education bonds. And we had just enough for my first semester. Got off the plane, registered, went in, and been here almost 20 years. And so you went to HPU? Yeah, went to HPU. Alumn. There you go. There we go again. Andrew Landing is an alum too, my co-host. And he's not here, by the way, in case you just noticed. He's off traveling, espousing the world of security. Okay. Yeah, that's what he does. So he does that well. So you came here and you graduated from HPU? Yep. So you had to get a job? I did. I did. I got a job and one of my first, just pretty much right out of college, went to work at a company called Summit Communications, which was a dial tone provider. At that time they called a shared tenant services. So they put it... No, they're not around it, I think. No, no. Really went through a bankruptcy in 2003 and they were sold, or 2002, and they were sold in 2003. Okay. And that's where I just kept running with it. Okay, so Summit kind of went out of business. So I got a... It's a great segue. Yeah. I love how the segues work. So we have this segment called, You Can Know Got One Tech Job. Okay. So I may have a reason why Summit went out of business. Okay. I got a shot here. We have this... We find these pictures all around. You know got one tech dog. Now zoom in on this guy. That is impressive. How'd you like them then? Is that puppy? Oh my gosh. I know. And there's a bunch of them around. But this is not in Hawaii though. Yeah. But I have pictures of Hawaii where there's some trees like that. We'll go to Mapuna Puna and go to, you know, near the airport and you kind of get down or some of the kind of mid streets of Kaka'ako. Right. And it's pretty hairy. It's... I know. You sit there and you go, welcome to Hawaii, the only third world country in the United States. Yeah. It's only blocks. There. It's just there. Now you have an interesting... You have an interesting background. So you were Summit Communications. Yeah. So there's Summit Communications. Summit Communications at that time sold to a company out of Houston, Texas that was called Direct Telephone Company. Okay. I remember that name. And they're doing prepaid... I'm sorry, not prepaid. Well they were doing prepaid dial tone and unbundled network element. So they're selling voice circuits off of Verizon's network. Long story short, I put together a group, bought it in 2004. Okay. And then Stephen Hahn, who you know from Dialogix, we merged our organizations together in 2009. Okay. And the rest is history. We've been just going nuts since then and got capitalized in 2014. Right. So we achieved that. And since then we've just been going crazy. So this is a cool story because you're a local firm. Yeah. You're definitely grass roots when you fly in and go to school and so on. So what's it like? Tell me about... What do you think of the telecommunications landscape in Hawaii? What's it like here? Well, okay. So... Why do you want to do it? I don't know. You said we only have 30 minutes, right? I know it's a bit short. So keeping it as short as possible. It's a great opportunity for people like us because, you know, Hawaii is really a small town. And I think that's why Hawaii's been so good to me. It's been such a comfortable place for me because I'm from a small town in Oregon, right? Okay. A really small town. It's a big city, operates like a small town. And, you know, there's opportunity to push innovation. Now, in small towns you typically have the incumbents that kind of do things as they see fit. They're away? Yeah, they're away. They're away. Or the highway. I would like to think that we have helped, you know, at least to some degree push some of the innovation that happened as far as like internet speeds and fiber deployments. You know, we were Hawaii's first one gig internet provider for residential customers. Right. And just a few months after that, WineTel made their announcement. Right. So I mean, I know everyone kind of has it on the roadmap, but when somebody's really pushing for faster speeds, better prices and flexibility, and, you know, so often, I won't name any names, but, you know, we're a customer too, right? Right. So internet comes into Hawaii and then, you know, we disperse it from there, right? Right. So we buy from people too. Right. But customer service isn't the, some people are good at it and some people are not so good at it. I think some companies are just so big, you know, they're just so big that no matter how hard they try or they don't, or they just decide not to try it, you know. So explain what it is that you're, what you do, you know, what you're, what you do. Sure. So, you know, you've got, you're not a phone company, are you? Yeah, so we're an internet service provider. Okay. And licensed public utility. So we are a phone company. Okay. So just like anything else, you know, you have your, your smartphone, the phone part of your iPhone or your Android is an app, right? Right. So Voices is just one of the many apps that we sell on top of our bandwidth. Right. So we deliver, we try to deliver the fastest, most affordable internet throughout Hawaii. Okay. So your, your primary focus is providing high speed internet services to businesses and residential or just one or how does that work? So Voices and then residential high rise buildings. Oh. So typically the multi-tenant environment. Okay. So you'll go into an office building and, and talk to the owner of the building or the building manager. I'm looking at offices and say, okay, we can look at, we want to talk to the tenants in there. Well, I can give you a couple examples. So we do, we do business customers just all over the state, right? So just, but from a residential perspective, we'll go into the AOAO and say one of our, one of the largest buildings that we have actually the largest condominium in Hawaii is the Kukui Plaza. Right. Yeah. So that's a bill. So we come in and we show them what we want to provide their tenants and offer for their services or offer our services, those tenants. And then they, they allow us to come in and sell and we bring our equipment. The way that internet works, which as far as speeds are concerned is distance plays a huge role. Okay. So if you have a central office and your apartment is far from the central office, it's very difficult for you to get really good internet speeds because it has to travel that distance, right? So that's why some buildings struggle. So what we do is we bring our network to the building. Okay. So we have to worry about that distance. We're building the building. Node in the building, building in there, bring, you know, multiple gigabits of internet and we pass through there. We add it to our network. Okay. And we go from there. So that's the residential side. And then like we did with the Shidler Group. Okay. We, we did a deal with the Shidler Group where we installed a hundred percent of their tenants with fiber based internet services, which they give 10 megs complimentary to all their tenants, which is awesome. Wow. Symmetrical. So that, so that semester being up and down. That's right. And so, so that gives them an edge over saying another call while banker building. I'm just picking up names. I don't know. No, that's three hundred percent. And say, well, that's not offered in their package that they're giving to the potential office. That's right. That's a complimentary bandwidth. But imagine, I mean, you know, Gordon, you're, I mean, you, you know how valuable high speed internet is. Yeah, tell me about it. They'll, they'll go to also, they'll go to say a full floor tenant looking to possibly move in and say, hey, we'll throw in a hundred meg circuit or a gig or whatever it may be in your lease to help entice them and help them save money that way too. So it's really good. So they've equated, they really use it. They build it into the square footage value. That's really, really cool. And is that, so is that your, your hyper fiber? That's right. Is that, so that's what it's called. You call it your hyper fiber. Yeah. Our hyper fiber network is when we have on net buildings, both residential and commercial. Okay. So we bring our node into the building. Like you said, we deliver fiber through the building and that's hyper fiber. And then so, so I'm just trying to make it so that lay person can understand what's happening here. So, so your, your public utility regulated, I quote unquote phone company. So that's a competitive local exchange. So you're a local exchange carrier. So you can compete with the big guys. Yes, sir. And then you, to get out to everybody around the world, you have to essentially connect somewhere. Yes. And so where does that central kind of peak? We're at DR Fortress. Okay. So you're, well, we've had Fred Rodie on the show. So Fred has been on the show at DR Fortress. So you back, go back to the, I love this stuff, right? Yeah. Interwines. The importance of DR Fortress and what they provide because you're not the only guy there. Oh yeah. Phone carrier. There are other phone carriers there. Yeah. That all have to interconnect. Yes. And so that's how it would happen. Now, Mike, next question would be like, well, how do you, you know, you've got to compete in other spaces because they're all bundling stuff now. That's right. They're bundling, you know, I can get my phone, I can get high speed internet, and now I can get television. Yes. You know, I wouldn't even call it television. Whatever the video, I'll call it video. You know, you get video services and so on. So are you playing in that space or are you going to go into that space or what's the. So on the residential side, the, the video is obviously a real opportunity. Right. You've got your incumbent who's been around forever in Oceanic and you have Hawaiian Telcom who has been working to take some of their market share. Right. But we have thousands of residential customers. So that's a need that we need to fill. So we definitely look at that from every direction, how best to fill that gap and that need on our own network. On your own network. And then from a business perspective, bundling, you're 100% right. I mean, we have all of our voice or, you know, voice over IP, host to voice services. But then we have a ton of cloud services that we've, that we've really launched over the last, you know, 18 months. And that's a managed security storage and backup, you know, business continuity, VDI, you know, virtual desktop. Right. Yeah. So I mean, we're our managed Wi-Fi, which is great, which I'm sure we'll talk about. We're going to talk about that. That was, that was one of the clues of all clues I think I've seen. Yeah. When you guys pulled that off. So now you're going into the condos, you're going into the office spaces, you're offering these bundled services. I mean, I don't subscribe that much to the television services because I use, you know, Netflix or, I get it off my internet service provider, right? Of course. And that's why high speed internet is important to me. I use my, you know, my Amazon or my Apple device or whatever. Firestick and everything. Those, those are my vehicles that I use to get my video. I really don't care about, you know, the buy little I get from whether it be Oceanic or, or Hawaiian Telecom. It doesn't matter that much to me, as long as I've got high speed internet. Yeah. That's over the top, right? Over the top. OTT services. And we love that because, you know, we, let's say a customer signs up for one gig of internet service, which is $125, by the way. Yes. That's awesome. Residential symmetrical one gig. I remember when that was. So, yeah, it was like impossible, right, to get that. So, but I'm the same way. I mean, I've got my Amazon Fire. I've got my Roku. I've got a seven-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son. So they've got their Roku in their room. Okay. And they need to fire it up. And it's, it's Amazon Prime. And, you know, Netflix and Hulu and NFL Sunday Ticket. Wow. So I subscribe to that. Aren't we there? Yeah. So it's, uh, yeah. I, I'm the same way. I'm all about over-the-top services. All right. Cool. Well, guess what? We, we take a, we take a break. Sure. And you haven't met Angus yet. So, Angus is, Angus is going to come up. Oh, I've heard about Angus. He's going to try and fill in and do a security segment, which is going to be a piece of work I've ever seen in my life. Anyway, I guess we'll be back. Okay. In about a minute. And so will we. So we'll see you shortly. And welcome to The Savvy Chick Show on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm the weekly host at 11 a.m. Honolulu time. Very excited for the next six weeks. We have the Aspire series, which is all about the coolest careers I could find and interviewing and getting insights from these amazing people who want to share it with you and help you live your dreams. I look forward to seeing you on the show. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Richard Emory. I'm the host of Kondo Insider. You know, associations are really prominent here in the state of Hawaii. And they have a lot of complex issues with elected boards of directors repairing and maintaining the building, how to make it a quiet enjoyment to live there. So our show tackles the issues of living with an association by bringing in experts on various topics and owners' rights to association living, to reserve studies, to pipe repair, to the new law regarding overtime. You will find it very useful in living in an association as well as we serve on our board of directors of learning all the risks and rewards of living in an association. We hope you can join us every Thursday at 3 o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We are giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva Health Coach! Viva la comida saludable! Hi, I'm Kili Ikeena, president of the Grass Root Institute. I'd love you to join us every week, Mondays at 2 o'clock PM, for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock PM. Until then, I'm Kili Ikeena. Aloha! Aloha! How are you doing there, lads and lassies? Okay, Megan, he wants you to talk. I'm coming in here for Drew. So I got a wee security movement for you. So get ready for this. You know the Office of Civil Rights, it's called OCR. You know, it's issued new guidance in connecting with increased malicious silent attacks in health care. You know, we told you before that, you know, health care records are worth a ton of money. And you know me and my money, I like to save my money. You know, so the thing that's made it interesting, unless the covert entity or business associate can demonstrate that there is low probability of a data breach, then they're considered to be guilty already, that a breach has already occurred. So, you know, and interesting that, you know, recently there's been 4,000 daily ransom attacks. Nearly in 2016, which is 300% from 2015. Anyway, so that's my wee security minute that I'm putting in there for Andrew. You know, watch out Andrew because you may lose your job if I keep doing a great job on this. Anyway, there's another cool thing, you know, I'm a gadget guy, and I just love these gadgets. So, no, I didn't have diabetes, but you know, these are the diabetes insulin pumps. They're really cool kind of things. But guess what? They now found out that it can be hacked. Johnson and Johnson announced just the other day that their insulin pumps can be hacked. No, I didn't know what you're going to do when you're hacking. But anyway, it's something to be aware of and so watch out. So if any of you are one of these devices, please make sure that you go out and do the software upgrade that they're putting out on the web that are at Johnson and Johnson. Anyway, that's what I have. But I have a wee question for our guest. You know, I'm a wee guy. We, not very big. That's what he means. All right. So I'm a wee guy. And so, you know, you come into the islands and you go in and you go up against the big guys. That's right. Hotels. You know, those aren't the big, the big plotters out there, right? But everybody gave you the idea to go out against the big guys. That's a good question, Angus. Hi. Nice to meet you, Angus. I can't believe you, too, man. It's a great day, great day, right? Yeah, so we saw a real opportunity to push innovation. And, you know, we're just, we're not telecom guys, right? I'm not a telecom guy. But I know what services I like to use. I know what we're looking for. I know as a business owner, the things that made doing business difficult for us. And a lot of that was expensive and slow connectivity. So we made a conscious decision and led by Stephen Hauner, CTO, to build our own network. And that really, we said, look, we need good internet. We want good internet. We want it for a home. We want it for our friends, our family. So let's do it. And then it just grew from there. So we just grass-rootsed it. So I'm going to come back and hit you with another question on top of that. Sure. So tell me, what is the HDT, Hawaii Dialogix Telecom Network? What does that consist of? Because it's got to be pretty substantial in size, investment, and those kinds of things. Yeah, definitely. What's exciting about it is it continues to grow, right? So if you can just imagine like a small ring, right? So we started with a small ring of, say, that covered downtown. Right. And then we grow out, and then all of a sudden it's Punahou and Kalihi. And then it's, or excuse me, Kakaako and Kalihi. And then it's Punahou. And then it's Waikiki. And then it grows West. So it just keeps growing organically and getting bigger and bigger the more customers we add. And the more buildings we add, the more areas we add service to. And it's exciting. I mean, we literally had a partner's call today where we were talking about our rapid expansion Westward, which we have a lot of customers there. But Westward, do you mean as in Kapolei? Yeah, to Kapolei. So we have Kapolei as on our network, but there's a lot, not everything, but a lot in between that's kind of, you know, this part of Waipahu and this part of Pearl City, but then there's a gap. So we're talking about our expansion to cover that whole area. Cover that whole. And it's exciting, because it's just going to keep going until the island's covered, which is great. So let me give you a piece. This is going to be a business meeting. I'm going to write it up. I'm going to give you a piece of advice. Yes, please. I was involved in the infrastructure design and development in Kapolei. The Kamakila Boulevard, the main drag and some of the main side streets that go into the commercial side. Yes. The way that was built and provisioned is it's a non-exclusive right to use. So Hawaiian Telecom does not own that conduit system. They have the non-exclusive right to use that system. So anyone that wants to go into the main thoroughfare or those side thoroughfares just has to talk to Campbell Estate and cut a deal with them. That's really interesting. So we do have our pole attachment conduit rights with Hawaiian Telecom, but I did not know that outside of that, outside of the main drag that it was with Campbell Estate. That's really, really interesting. Yes. So the James Campbell Company, which is what they are now, I can put you in contact with their person up there. And then so you'll be able to go and not have to deal with the big guys and say, I want to pull some fiber down these, show us your grid, and I want to pull some fiber down this. And you just negotiate a deal with them. Yeah, that's great. And so they're not out there pounding the pavement selling that stuff. So I'll just go to their CEO and say, hey, Tim, I got a customer. Yeah, I would love that introduction. I mean, you look at the kind of the landscape of internet nationwide, you see Google is in the service provider realm. And one of the things that they're having such a hard time with is building their network because of the pole attachment conduit rights. And even if they get it, it's just so hard because the carrier that would lease the space to them or the utility pole doesn't want them there. So they have to do it, but they make it long process and they make it incredibly difficult. You can read about Google and AT&T battling all the time. Oh, I've tried, when I was the CIO for the city, as you know, I tried so hard to enable you guys to get into the roads and get on them. Did you get to experience the wonders of the joint pole committee? No. Oh, well, so far you have not left out. The joint pole committee. Sometimes if you try to get on a pole, sometimes they will get involved. They're an unregulated, non-legislative, approved group of employees that work for the carriers who decide who can and cannot get on the pole and when. And my standard line, and I was with the city trying to put stuff up for the citizen at no cost. I had people donating it and the joint pole committee went, oh, no, it's too heavy. It's going to break the pole. The pole's going to fall down. Now, if you want to put in new poles or go underground for the next 10 miles, we'll let you do it on your dime. And you don't make money. There's no way those things pencil out. Nobody said it was easy. Yeah, I know. You going up against these big guys is pretty incredible. But Ty goes so fast but I want to talk about your kakaako story because that's a great story how you went in there and did you know there was going to be 6,600 condos built in the kakaako area? You did this? Yeah, what was great about it is we were actually hired by Kamehameh Schools. So they brought us in. They had their vision for our kakaako, which is really great. By the way, night market tomorrow night. So people can come and check it out down at Salt. They used our free Wi-Fi and the whole deal. So this is what I thought was really innovative and we got lucky. This is kind of, we're known for being really flexible. So with Kamehameh Schools' development of our kakaako, they had to be flexible because you have a high rise going up here and it's going to be under construction for a while. And if you build a Wi-Fi network and you run, say, fiber only to certain locations and then you start building, you have to tear it down, you lose that infrastructure. So what we built was a flexible, movable, moldable infrastructure where we could move things around during construction and then reposition them with no loss of infrastructure. So it was really cool. So our network is actually kind of always evolving as the construction goes on. Salt was just a warehouse. Now it's an open-air market and they put that parking garage in. None of that existed before. So we couldn't just put infrastructure and have them pay for it on old buildings and then have the building tore down and then Kamehameh Schools was paying for the same thing again. And I think that's what helped us win that contract because we showed them that we could grow and mold and be flexible with them. And it's still one of the fastest free neighborhood Wi-Fi networks in the country. See, that's a cool thing. It's a free neighborhood Wi-Fi. And you know how hard I tried to do the Wi-Fi? Well, and then I had Chinatown with Kukua Wireless. I started that. We did that kind of thing. And just the battle that went on. So I think the brilliance of this is the Kamehameh Schools and what they were able to do. And then the vision with you to take this thing and then slowly build out this Wi-Fi. But again, coming back to the fact that, now with 6,600 units coming in there plus those condos, you must be knocking on the door of that every developer, every AOAO that's not even started up yet to see how you can get into those buildings. Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, that's what we do. And it's cool because it started when, you know, our Kaka-Ako is just coming together. And you know, now our Wi-Fi network expands over to Restaurant Row and Waterfront and we're makers and tasters just around the corner. Right. So makers and tasters and time for Eat the Street and all of that. So it's really growing and expanding. And what the funniest thing about this network, Gordon is a Pokemon Go. Everybody loves Pokemon Go. We were talking about that. So I live in Kaka-Ako as well. So you walk down at night in Kaka-Ako. I mean, it could be 11.30 at night on a Friday and there are hundreds, hundreds of people using the free Wi-Fi to play Pokemon Go. Are they still playing there? Oh my God. You go to Kaka-Ako on a Friday, Saturday, even a Tuesday night and people are everywhere. You can't find a parking spot. It's crazy. I'm still playing that thing. And there's kids. Like, 1230s, little kids with their family are playing Pokemon Go. Man, people love it. It's crazy. So now you must have the largest free, I'm going to call it municipal Wi-Fi because even though you're not part of the city, you must have the largest free municipal provided Wi-Fi in the state. We do. We do. So one of our competitors provides a lot of free Wi-Fi hotspots but they put a restriction. Right? So 30 minutes, an hour and if you're not our customer, you can't use it anymore. And you know as well as I do. I mean, that makes it difficult. Yeah, you're on there. You're a business person. You're on there going at it. Yeah, you're on there. So, yeah, ours is just no restriction and we're trying to build as many places as possible. And you know what? We're really a kind of a gorilla style, urban marketing type enterprise, right? Right, right. So I mean, we don't have the pockets to go up against these big guys. So by building more free Wi-Fi, that's investing in our brand as a marketing expense too and you're going to like this, we have a mobile Wi-Fi truck. Oh, I didn't know that. So we took an existing boom truck and wrapped it up. Right. And we go to events within our network. Okay. Extend the arm and grab free or grab internet off of our network and we provide free internet. Moelie Lee Summerfest at the Blaisdale at the CrossFit Games. You've got to get to the UH football games, man. Oh, I know. That'd be awesome. We could do it. Yeah. We need an incentive to get the students to come to the games. I know. And technology is one of the key ways. Oh, we need to talk about that. Oh, we can park that truck right in front and give free Wi-Fi to everybody. And free Wi-Fi for everybody. Yeah. Okay, so we got a minute but I want you to just tell everybody where they can get in touch with you, your company, your website, those kinds of things. So they have, you know, you can contact them. Sure, yeah, HawaiiDT.com. So that's HawaiiDT, like DialogixTelecom.com. Yeah. Send us, get on there. Send us emails. Fill it out. All the information's there. You can even sign up for service and all of that when you go. Make it easy. And really go there. And then, I don't know what I'm going to ask. Investors? Well, you've got so much money now you don't need to. Well, I wouldn't say that. You always need more money. But yeah, we're in a really good situation. We were able to secure capital at the end of 2014 and the guy, the group, the guy, he's just been amazing. It's been great. So fortunately for us right now we're doing pretty good. Jared, you're an excellent local story. You can make good in Hawaii. Without government assistance, I might add. Yes. Without government assistance, which I've been arguing for all along. Anyway, we burned up 30 minutes of time. Goes by fast. It's been a very valuable show for me. I've learned quite a bit. So, but no guest goes unrewarded. So you're going to get, we have autographed solar cups. Okay. This is number 90 in the series. I'm in. So you're on their 90s show. So we'll sign this up right at the end of the show. Okay. I love it. And here's, and just in case you didn't know what a solar cup was all about, here's all the different D-marks and how they're supposed to be used. And you know what, I use every one of those. Mine's the whatever. Just fill it up and we'll go from there. Anyway, that's our show for today. And we have a little thing we always say at the end of every show. Okay. One, two, three. How are you doing?