00:01 - Everybody. How are you?

00:02 - My name is Stephanie Costa.

00:04 - I'm the vice president of Government and Regulatory

00:07 - Affairs and Community Impact for Comcast Freedom Range.

00:10 - And I'm really excited and honored

00:12 - to be hosting this panel

00:14 - with these titans of the industry over here.

00:16 - I must tell you,

00:17 - when we were in our prep call, I was a little overwhelmed.

00:20 - I was fangirling a little bit,

00:22 - and there were times

00:23 - I didn't exactly know what they were talking about,

00:25 - because these men

00:26 - really do know their stuff,

00:27 - especially when it comes

00:28 - to technical stuff, the technical aspect.

00:31 - So I just want to give everybody an opportunity

00:34 - to introduce themselves.

00:36 - 18 Stone back right.

00:39 - Okay.

00:39 - So my name is Dean Stone back.

00:41 - I'm with the city senior director of Engineering

00:45 - and Standards.

00:46 - I started with cable actually my first real job, corporate job

00:49 - straight out of college was with Cable 1988.

00:52 - That makes me get well.

00:53 - Getting older

00:55 - was Gerald Communications part of General Instrument,

00:57 - which later became part of Motorola,

00:59 - which became part of ours, which is now it's Commscope.

01:02 - So it's been a long history for the company there

01:05 - by training and degree.

01:07 - I'm an electrical engineer and I was working on optics

01:10 - and RF circuitry and when I started in 88

01:14 - was really exciting to be in the research lab,

01:16 - working on analog fiber optic transmitters.

01:20 - And those of you that are older

01:22 - would probably remember the name Jim Chadwick's

01:25 - was making the rounds, going to everywhere,

01:27 - touting the beauty of fiber and how fiber backbone

01:31 - would improve signals.

01:33 - And actually I was a cable subscriber

01:35 - and I think we were 26 amps, deep at our house.

01:38 - And if the weather forecast said rain was coming,

01:41 - our cable would go out.

01:43 - And I specifically remember the day that the pictures

01:45 - got clearer and and the cable was much more reliable

01:49 - after fiber happened.

01:50 - And now here we are, so many years there at Motorola,

01:55 - I became a return path expert in the nineties.

01:58 - I actually wrote a book about the return path in 1998

02:03 - and then moved into systems engineering.

02:05 - And then about nine years ago contacted us and asked

02:09 - if they'd if they saw any value would be joining CTE,

02:12 - which they did.

02:13 - So I left errors and went to ACTU nine years ago

02:16 - and now I run our standards program.

02:18 - So that was my history. Hope that wasn't too long.

02:20 - I think that was an excellent summation.

02:23 - We also have joining us Mike, Joby, good job.

02:27 - So we practiced his over and over and it's a hard one.

02:32 - So anyway, you did say

02:37 - so. So

02:38 - I recently retired from Armstrong,

02:41 - Pennsylvania, cable operator after 45 years,

02:45 - I started out at Penn State when I was 20 years old,

02:49 - on my 20th birthday as a cable guy,

02:52 - as an installer service tech, and after 17 years,

02:56 - after 13 years, went back to Penn State

02:59 - Branch campus to get my bachelor's

03:02 - in electrical engineering technology from Penn State.

03:04 - Middletown.

03:06 - Harrisburg, which I actually never

03:08 - visited, was just a branch campus.

03:10 - And then I moved to the corporate office

03:11 - of Armstrong in 1994, and as operations engineer

03:16 - and systems integration engineer and a year later started

03:20 - a little trial and error with Lane City cable modems

03:23 - and in 97 launched what became known

03:28 - as Zoom Cable Internet, Xoom with LAN City modems.

03:32 - And then in 2000, in 1999,

03:35 - the vice president at New Technologies and 2006 CTO

03:40 - and I just retired March 1st and I started my own

03:44 - little consulting business, so it's hard to leave the industry.

03:49 - Mike I would say you don't sound very retired to me now.

03:52 - It's just thinking very it's a fluid definition.

03:59 - And last but certainly not least, we have James Gallagher.

04:02 - I'm James Galliford and I work

04:05 - for Blue Ridge Communications as the director of R&D.

04:08 - James I'm not quite sure your lava lear's on

04:11 - does a better job maybe move it up a little.

04:14 - Yeah.

04:15 - Yeah.

04:15 - So my my name is James Galliford and I work

04:18 - for Blur's Communications as the director of R&D.

04:22 - My career is not as long as these guys over here,

04:24 - but I've been around since 1999.

04:27 - I started off in tech support for a little ISP

04:30 - in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania,

04:32 - and I've worked through a bunch

04:33 - of different roles over the years

04:34 - and happy to be part of the team

04:36 - at Blue Ridge, which I joined in 2021.

04:38 - And my primary focus is right now are

04:41 - working on our fiber to the home rebuild and mobility projects.

04:45 - So happy to be here from good friends to

04:49 - ask you.

04:50 - Thank you so much.

04:51 - So I thought we'd start off with a wonderful, wonderfully

04:56 - vague and general question that we can all pipe in for.

05:01 - So why are cable providers in a great position

05:06 - to provide the best option for broadband expansion

05:12 - to start?

05:12 - Yeah. Okay.

05:13 - So, you know,

05:14 - I thought about this answer and I want to say that

05:18 - the fascinating thing about this industry is innovation.

05:22 - And when I think about how cable got started in the 1950s,

05:27 - it was started by people who wanted to be able to sell

05:31 - television sets in very rural areas

05:34 - that were very far away

05:35 - from metropolitan areas where all the broadcast stations were.

05:39 - And I think they couldn't get a TV picture.

05:42 - So they built a little one tennis system called community

05:46 - antenna TV.

05:47 - And, and they were they were.

05:50 - RF folks, radio engineers, ham radio guys that knew

05:53 - about RF and built the first cable systems.

05:57 - And you have that

05:58 - entrepreneurial but also innovation

06:00 - is really going on forever in our industry. And

06:05 - in 19 I think it was 1988 or 89,

06:08 - a cable labs was formed by by MSO

06:12 - companies who needed R&D.

06:16 - Right.

06:16 - Our version of Bell Corps, if you will.

06:20 - And out of that innovation, the cable labs to this day,

06:23 - I feel is just drives innovation.

06:26 - And he is the definition of innovation.

06:28 - And we started in 1995.

06:32 - I got the honor of being part of

06:35 - the meetings that that formed the DOCSIS standard.

06:38 - DOCSIS 1.0 then packet

06:41 - cable to deliver carrier grade voice

06:45 - and then you DOCSIS 2.0 and 3.13.1 and now for Doug

06:50 - so the that innovation and I know

06:53 - and along with the member companies

06:55 - and all cable operators being able to take risk

06:59 - new technology cable labs formed this DOCSIS standard

07:04 - and the way they built the infrastructure around

07:06 - that is what provided broadband.

07:10 - When DSL was the fastest option to dial up,

07:15 - it was a of all the channel spectrum

07:18 - on an HFC plant, on a cable network, one six megahertz

07:22 - channel downstream and one six megahertz channel upstream,

07:26 - providing broadband for years in DOCSIS one data.

07:30 - And now we can't get enough spectrum

07:32 - for more more DOCSIS 3.1.

07:35 - And I really think it's that innovation and that spirit

07:39 - to try new things that will allow cable operators

07:43 - to be in the position to drive now with fiber to the home.

07:47 - Right.

07:48 - Which we're all very involved in

07:50 - 16 years now and building fiber to the home

07:53 - for the purpose of being able to build the homes

07:57 - with ten or less homes per mile.

08:00 - Right.

08:00 - HFC was the way to go, but we found that

08:04 - when you got to less than 15 homes per mile,

08:07 - it was hard to justify a return on investment.

08:10 - So we needed a way of getting to this ten,

08:14 - 12, ten homes per mile and fiber to the home.

08:18 - And as Dean is very involved in, our fund was the very

08:21 - first technology, which was still a cable modem

08:24 - and an MTA with a I always call them the little C

08:28 - because everybody had their own node

08:30 - on the side of the house, a mike we called it micro nodes and

08:35 - and then come GPON while GPON

08:37 - was something the phone companies did,

08:40 - you know,

08:40 - telephone companies to go for and twisted part of the fiber

08:43 - they used g pon and we were like, well,

08:45 - why can't we use that too, right?

08:48 - But the g pon in an industry

08:52 - that I triple, we set standards for what wavelength

08:54 - what technology is right on.

08:56 - But there is no cable labs like infrastructure

08:59 - with DOCSIS certification for own TS for o l ts.

09:04 - So this, this ability

09:06 - to really the industry being born out of war

09:10 - and the need to get to people that needed what at that time

09:14 - television right what they didn't have access to.

09:18 - If you lived in a city, you needed rabbit ears or

09:20 - maybe you didn't need anything.

09:21 - You just needed

09:23 - to screw terminals on the back of your TV

09:25 - to get local broadcast to bring TV to the rural communities.

09:30 - We know rural.

09:32 - So to get broadband now

09:34 - to the world homes is just kind of

09:36 - something we've been doing for a very long time.

09:39 - You know, I find that really insightful, obviously,

09:42 - coming from Comcast, our our company law.

09:45 - You know, we started in Tupelo, Mississippi, right,

09:48 - with the first cable TV.

09:49 - So, you know, this rural play, this this innovation, you know,

09:53 - Ralph Roberts out there, you know, hanging wire, right.

09:56 - And that's the the you know what we at Comcast focus on, too,

10:00 - but it's really, you know,

10:02 - that entrepreneurial spirit throughout the industry.

10:05 - Right. What do you think about that team?

10:07 - Yeah, I agree is, oh, I got involved in trade shows

10:11 - very early in my career and it was fascinating to be at

10:13 - Cable Tech Expo

10:14 - and with the show, I forget what that was called.

10:17 - But to see the camaraderie

10:18 - of the people who had grown up in cable,

10:20 - you know, some were called cable cowboys.

10:22 - But that was part of the innovation theme, right?

10:24 - Just get it done. Make it happen.

10:26 - The phrase I used to answer the question about

10:28 - why cable is positioned is pay as you grow.

10:32 - Cable has always done that.

10:33 - The networks, cable operators have always thought ahead

10:36 - and so have their vendors, you know, about what

10:38 - what the next step should be.

10:39 - DOCSIS one came out, DOCSIS 1.1, two three, 3.14.

10:43 - Keep getting a better and better.

10:46 - I participate in the standards.

10:47 - And we had new specs on Taps years ago when I was at Motorola

10:51 - and I was frustrated because the product manager

10:53 - wasn't making those taps and wasn't selling them,

10:56 - and he said, Well, that would be too early.

10:57 - Nobody wants them yet, right?

10:59 - But we'll have them when it's time.

11:01 - And they did and people bought them when it's time.

11:04 - So, for instance, we just standardized

11:07 - that that the new standard for taps and passes.

11:10 - And due to the industry agreeing on this,

11:13 - the the back plate is rated

11:14 - the three gigahertz

11:15 - but the electronics only have to be right into 1.8 gigahertz

11:19 - because that's all that's expected

11:20 - to be used in the foreseeable future.

11:22 - But if the future goes on far

11:24 - enough, you'd want to be able to replace it

11:26 - without having to cut in the cables again.

11:27 - So you want the housing to be able to go two generations

11:30 - into the future

11:31 - with the electronics, one generation into the future.

11:34 - So the innovation and being able to just invest when

11:38 - necessary to continue to grow your services,

11:41 - I think is one of the strong

11:44 - aspects of the cable operators.

11:45 - Absolutely. James Yeah.

11:47 - And I think it's, you know, the, the adaptability

11:49 - of, of cable operators as a whole,

11:51 - you know, as we saw through the pandemic,

11:53 - we saw, you know,

11:55 - tons of capital being placed into networks

11:57 - to keep up with the demand that we saw

11:59 - during the whole phase of that.

12:00 - And I know a blue origin led us into,

12:02 - you know,

12:03 - looking into fiber to the home and building out a networks

12:05 - and how do we keep on offering services

12:07 - going forward and that adaptability.

12:08 - And I think that's why, you know, as operators,

12:11 - you know, small and large, we're in a really good place

12:14 - for the future and to expand our network so

12:18 - well.

12:18 - I know that we are all very excited about it,

12:21 - you know,

12:21 - so part of this expansion, obviously,

12:24 - we're going to have to be looking towards

12:25 - the most recent developments in network technology.

12:28 - You talked about the TAP developments,

12:29 - whether other developments are happening in network technology.

12:35 - I'll start with one that actually

12:36 - we didn't talk about

12:36 - when we talked

12:37 - about this before, but it occurred to me

12:38 - when I saw

12:39 - some products here on the floor, but one of the city standards

12:42 - that happened about a year ago was gap generic access platform.

12:47 - Most people would probably know it was driven

12:48 - mainly by Charter,

12:49 - but of

12:50 - strong support from Cox, Rogers and Shaw and other operators.

12:53 - That and the only reason to have Comcast

12:56 - is because Comcast is already getting the product they want.

12:59 - But, you know, they weren't opposed to it.

13:00 - But as interoperable nodes.

13:02 - So the idea was that as you move towards PON

13:04 - or maybe doing a radio interface

13:06 - or something else, you plug into your nodes.

13:08 - Everybody would have to every vendor

13:10 - would have to come with their own housing

13:12 - because the houses weren't interoperable.

13:14 - So the generic access platform is a way

13:16 - that you could have a standardized housing

13:19 - that can hold standardized modules,

13:21 - so you could buy your remote OLT from one vendor

13:25 - and buy your remote fi module from another vendor.

13:28 - And even if you did a wireless box from another

13:30 - and an Ethernet switch from yet another

13:32 - and you could even have centralized compute modules.

13:35 - So this is just an innovation that's happened

13:37 - that is just now starting to get rolled out.

13:39 - But it's so important to the evolution of the network

13:41 - to be able to have these options for future Expandability

13:45 - Yeah, yeah, I agree.

13:46 - The the innovation around

13:50 - DOCSIS has always been about one same system

13:54 - for provisioning for provisioning a cable modem.

13:58 - But when you

13:59 - look at fiber to the home and oh well, TI's and DuPont,

14:03 - you know,

14:03 - they grew up through the phone companies

14:05 - and the companies that build those products

14:07 - have their own unique provisioning system.

14:09 - So as

14:13 - as you go and try to provision a through a billing system,

14:16 - through a mobile interface for a tech in the field,

14:19 - how do you build a system that from that perspective

14:23 - is absolutely transparent, that last mile technology?

14:27 - And you know, before I retired for years now

14:30 - there's a team of

14:31 - a really talented programmers that built customized

14:35 - middleware to take information from the billing system.

14:39 - That is the only place where

14:41 - everything about the customer, who they are and what CPU

14:45 - they have, regardless of what that key is, flows down.

14:49 - It can be provisioned.

14:50 - Whether it's a cable modem or no and TI and even on conversions

14:54 - as is four or 500 conversions a week, go on the tech

14:58 - making those conversions on his iPhone

15:01 - can simply replace a cable modem, plug in the t

15:05 - o and and stay done and it all flows through.

15:09 - So this ability to be able to be nimble enough

15:12 - to have a provisioning system that can provisioned everything

15:16 - in this system that Armstrong built,

15:19 - I really wouldn't matter if it was a fixed wireless radio.

15:23 - It doesn't matter.

15:24 - This middleware can provision set between a billing system

15:28 - and a very unique last mile provisioning system

15:32 - and be that glue to allow that provisioning to occur.

15:36 - And I think provisioning is is really, really a big deal

15:41 - when if you're locked into only

15:42 - being a big eight, being able to provision a cable modem.

15:46 - Right, whether it be right, it was the DOCSIS provisioning

15:50 - of Internet standard to make an OMT look like a cable modem.

15:56 - Now that's happened.

15:56 - Now vendors

15:57 - have that product set

15:58 - where you can have one provisioning system.

16:01 - And we kind of built that on our own

16:03 - because there was a need for it,

16:04 - which is the other thing cable does, right?

16:07 - If there's a need

16:08 - and it's not out there, we just go build it ourselves.

16:11 - Mothers.

16:12 - And this is that is the mother of invention, right?

16:14 - Exactly.

16:16 - Do something.

16:18 - Yeah.

16:18 - To the point about the, you know, the channel

16:21 - with the gap model. Right.

16:22 - So it's funny like, you know, over the years in cable

16:25 - we've seen like a model

16:27 - where we centralize our technology,

16:29 - then we push the technology

16:30 - back out to the edge and we bring it back in.

16:31 - And, you know,

16:32 - you go through these ebbs and flows over the years.

16:34 - But I think we're at a point in time now

16:36 - where we're starting to see if you can use cases for

16:38 - for both at the same time, where you've got a

16:40 - centralized head and based teams, we've got Strand Mount,

16:44 - Borrow TS

16:45 - and we're in a good place where that software

16:46 - can be shared across all the different platforms

16:48 - and it's finally we're not going back and forth too much

16:52 - at this point. So but

16:54 - yeah,

16:55 - you know, Mike, I was wondering if you could actually comment

16:57 - on something we talked about yesterday.

16:59 - We talked about DOCSIS 4.0

17:00 - and you were talking to me actually

17:02 - about the lack of skilled slicers.

17:05 - Yeah. You know, that's that's fascinating.

17:07 - We we build I say we take me a long time not to say we.

17:11 - By the way, I'm retired

17:14 - many, many hundreds of miles of fiber to the home here.

17:18 - And with our internal construction

17:22 - resources, with external contractors,

17:25 - that skilled labor is very difficult to find.

17:31 - There's folks that have done this for dozens

17:33 - and, you know, many, many decades.

17:36 - It's a very physically intense job.

17:38 - Splicing fiber is not necessarily

17:40 - it's physically intense job, but Kojak slicers.

17:44 - How many people as we got to replace

17:47 - every if you're going past one point to 1.6 gigahertz

17:52 - 1.6 gigahertz every amplifier housing and I'm aware of needs

17:55 - to replace every tap every splitter

17:59 - that the hard line connectors will not work out to 1.8 gig.

18:03 - They've all got to change.

18:04 - First off, you've got to be able to find them.

18:06 - Which standards don't start to get built?

18:09 - Where do I find a labor that knows how to ream a piece

18:12 - of pure q r cable or old P three or C square work?

18:17 - Where's that labor?

18:18 - It's either retired or or sadly passed away.

18:22 - And there's one thing for sure

18:24 - you're not going to see an eight track by pulling a linear

18:27 - between two poles.

18:29 - It is still going to be physical.

18:31 - You still need that train, that skill set because it's

18:35 - you can't virtualize climbing a pole in a bucket

18:38 - truck, drilling a hole in a pole and building a physical plant,

18:42 - finding that labor and you would think splicing

18:45 - fiber would be all. That's so cool.

18:48 - It's really hard to find fiber spacers and as Bede rolls out,

18:52 - there is going to be such a huge demand

18:55 - for skilled very skilled labor

18:58 - that will be out there.

19:00 - Who's going to do all this work?

19:02 - What do we find a people to do that?

19:04 - And then for operators

19:05 - that want to keep Kovacs going for a long time,

19:07 - where do I find a skilled labor that knows all about RF

19:11 - and the nuances?

19:12 - The RF is as much of an art as it is a science team

19:16 - and James could attest to that. Right.

19:18 - It's it's

19:18 - the art of things that you have no clue

19:21 - might affect the frequency response. Right.

19:24 - And then the the power we have another duplicate acronym

19:28 - for TCP besides transmission control protocol.

19:33 - Now it's total composite power.

19:35 - So when you try to drive that much RF energy

19:38 - of OFW out to 1.8 gigahertz

19:42 - amplifiers because the definition of quorum

19:45 - is quite quadrature amplitude modulation,

19:48 - those amplifiers have to be what we call linear.

19:52 - Well, that's a lot of power to push through a linear amplifier,

19:55 - and it's going to take a lot of skill to keep those amplifiers

19:58 - balanced.

19:59 - If the right amount of power, that skill set

20:02 - that that coming up through the field and learning.

20:05 - RF If you didn't go to school for it, learning it as you grow

20:09 - those skill sets are going to be

20:11 - hard to find.

20:13 - Dean Do you have any thoughts on where we could find

20:15 - these skilled laborers or how do we grow them?

20:17 - Actually, the two major thoughts first is if you get to Cable

20:21 - Tech Expo,

20:22 - the trade show, even if you know nothing about fibers

20:25 - or cable splicing or anything, go to the cable tech games.

20:28 - Yeah, it is just fascinating to watch.

20:30 - It's a competition where people are actually coring

20:33 - coaxial cable and putting connectors on and they have

20:36 - they have to do it correctly and they're being timed.

20:39 - They're really good.

20:39 - But you get an appreciation for the art involved.

20:42 - Absolutely.

20:42 - It's actually just fun to watch.

20:43 - If you got the cable tech

20:45 - directly.

20:46 - To answer your question, though, I did ask

20:47 - so at CTE we were a large part of what we do is training.

20:51 - And so I did ask for some of the stats on this.

20:53 - So I'll be reading by phone a little bit.

20:55 - But according to the federal data,

20:58 - we lost over 50 million workers in 2020 to last year

21:03 - during the pandemic is sometimes called the great resignation.

21:06 - Right.

21:07 - And that was higher than the year before.

21:09 - So a lot of people leaving the workforce and

21:12 - the knowledge goes with them. As you were saying. Right.

21:15 - What we're doing about it is that where

21:18 - we've been working to find partner colleges

21:20 - and we actually have two of them,

21:22 - Fort Hays University in Kansas, Rio Salado in Arizona.

21:26 - But these are two colleges

21:27 - that now accept CTE training as course credit,

21:31 - and they can work towards getting degrees

21:34 - that include training to work on cable plants.

21:36 - And it helps advertise that it's a good career

21:39 - field to move into, or at least at the associate level degree.

21:43 - So that's exciting.

21:44 - And, and

21:47 - yeah, so you can get the credit for the classes.

21:50 - So we're doing what we can

21:51 - and we're continuing to improve our classes.

21:53 - I mean,

21:53 - because this is a real problem in having enough workforce,

21:57 - you know, as the years go on,

21:58 - especially trained

21:59 - in the unique skills that we want in our industry,

22:03 - I really find it interesting that we recognize this problem.

22:06 - You know, as a state here in Pennsylvania,

22:08 - the governor has disbursed with the four year

22:12 - college degree requirement for many of the state jobs,

22:16 - you know,

22:16 - and recognition to this that a four year college degree

22:19 - is not always a good prerequisite for, you know,

22:23 - some of these very technical skills.

22:25 - You need specialized training, specialized classes

22:28 - and specialized associate's degree.

22:30 - Are they doing anything?

22:32 - James?

22:32 - Are they doing anything at Blue Ridge

22:33 - to try to fill that funnel of employees?

22:37 - Yeah.

22:37 - So we have a training program internally through

22:40 - I think it's through drones in cities.

22:42 - So we do have training programs through there.

22:44 - And being able to learn on the job

22:46 - is one of the most important things

22:47 - of being and being attacking, advancing your way through,

22:51 - learning the ropes.

22:52 - So there should be a major focus placed on training schools

22:56 - and allowing people to learn

22:58 - not only this training but other trades as well.

22:59 - So yeah, so our focus on armstrong's h.r.

23:03 - Department recently

23:05 - started partnering with local high schools

23:08 - because most of the high schools, the guidance counselors

23:11 - that they know what kids are going

23:13 - on, the college and which are not

23:15 - and they can get that in during their junior year

23:18 - of high school in front of and go

23:21 - we're Armstrong and this is what we can offer you.

23:24 - These are the jobs that people do who work for Armstrong,

23:27 - whether it's outside. Right.

23:29 - Which you know, are whether it can be 95 in the summer and,

23:33 - you know, -20 in the winter or even call center positions.

23:37 - Right.

23:38 - Because it's hard to fill call center positions and

23:41 - and get in front of those kids early on and say,

23:45 - you know, spend a summer a couple of weeks in the summer

23:47 - with us, sit in our call centers, go see what we do.

23:51 - And, you know,

23:51 - if you get in front of 100 kids

23:53 - and five of them go, oh, this is pretty, this is pretty cool.

23:57 - I like working with my hands, you know, and

23:59 - and try to get in front of that and

24:02 - and then to train these folks once they come on board.

24:06 - The challenge is you're training somebody

24:09 - with a skill set that's in very high demand

24:12 - and somebody else can easily come along

24:15 - and you train somebody and suddenly

24:17 - they're a recruit for somebody else.

24:19 - They're away from you.

24:20 - So it's it's definitely a danger.

24:23 - But I absolutely agree with getting in front of

24:26 - students in high school.

24:28 - You know, my team does a lot of outreach

24:30 - because if you can't imagine it, if you've never heard of it,

24:33 - if you don't have an uncle who does

24:35 - that, it's not a job that you would readily think of.

24:38 - Right? It's not on TV.

24:40 - There's no sitcom about the cable splicer.

24:43 - Right.

24:44 - Which I think would probably be a good sitcom.

24:46 - We could probably,

24:47 - you know, group think here and come up with a sketch for that.

24:50 - But if we get in front of,

24:52 - you know, kids when they're in high school

24:54 - and say this is a life sustaining job,

24:55 - this is a family sustaining job, there is a career path

24:59 - and people are fulfilled in these jobs.

25:01 - And here are examples.

25:03 - And, you know, people from our neighborhood

25:05 - who are fulfilled from these jobs,

25:06 - you know, we could, you know, generate that funnel.

25:09 - You know, we should do it before it becomes a crisis.

25:11 - Although it does sound to you

25:12 - that we're kind of already in crisis here. Well,

25:15 - the workforce in the country is a bit,

25:17 - as you say, in a bit of a crisis.

25:19 - I would observe and I'm the engineer,

25:21 - I'm not the business person.

25:22 - But this sounds like where companies

25:24 - might want to consider

25:25 - more direct hire, because from what

25:27 - I've heard, a lot of these roles

25:28 - we're talking about are usually hired contractors.

25:31 - But supply and demand,

25:32 - that price is just going

25:33 - to ratchet up as everybody's trying to hire the contractors.

25:36 - There might be a role for trying

25:39 - to recruit people and direct staff.

25:42 - That just occurs to me as there's a limited

25:45 - labor pool in building HFC.

25:48 - But and Armstrong did 10,000 miles

25:51 - or more of what we call raise and run rebuilds where

25:54 - you would drop the whole plane and Jayhawk and use the hall

25:58 - and the pole, put new hardware, new store.

26:00 - And at that time, you were typically a 757

26:04 - five inch piece of hard line coax

26:07 - and a half inch or 650 coax and then a fiber cable.

26:11 - So it was a lot of cables to pull before you even

26:14 - latched on to the new strap.

26:16 - Now, it's just it's just the fiber

26:19 - and it goes it can go up really, really fast.

26:22 - And that's why with internal crews that you

26:26 - you can build a lot of five lot more fiber plant per year

26:30 - than when we built HFC because it was just

26:32 - a lot more cables to put in the place.

26:35 - I think that's actually

26:36 - a really great example because we're talking

26:38 - back to these high school kids when we go and speak to them,

26:40 - we also talk to the the women and girls in the room

26:43 - to talk about nontraditional careers for women.

26:46 - And I think there's this kind of perception that this is a

26:50 - you know,

26:51 - you have to be a super

26:51 - bodybuilder to pull this fire, this this wire, this fiber.

26:55 - And I don't think that that's it anymore.

26:58 - You know, I remember talking where we had a talk explaining

27:03 - to a lot of young high school students like what her job was.

27:06 - And she said, if you can pick up your,

27:09 - you know, your little sister and put her on your hip,

27:11 - you can do this job, right?

27:12 - That's the type of, you know, of physical physicality

27:17 - that's required. Now, it's mental primarily

27:20 - know.

27:21 - So we'll switch topics just a little bit

27:24 - and kind of went down down a rabbit hole there.

27:26 - But, you know, obviously there's a lot of conversation

27:29 - right now about broadband is the home

27:31 - sort of focused conversation about speed.

27:34 - And, you know, and I know that we're

27:36 - all getting there on speed. Right.

27:38 - But what other factors would make for a good broadband

27:42 - experience?

27:46 - Well, to me, you know,

27:49 - having a really fast Internet pipe is

27:51 - obviously really important,

27:52 - whether it be like a one day pipe, two gig,

27:54 - six gig or whatever speeds are out there.

27:57 - But that's only part of the equation.

27:58 - What we need to have

28:00 - is smart equipment that is attached to that pipe.

28:03 - And that means having the best kind of router

28:06 - or Wi-Fi experience in the home, whether it be Wi-Fi mesh,

28:09 - regular Wi-Fi router, but giving

28:13 - a having a customer have the knowledge

28:15 - that they need to have good equipment,

28:17 - connect them to that to gig pipes,

28:18 - that you can actually get closer to that to the expected 1.4,

28:21 - get whatever they're going to get on that on the service.

28:24 - But also for the service providers

28:26 - like the service providers like us,

28:28 - you know, having a solution that allows us to have insight

28:31 - into how the customer's home is performing.

28:33 - With regards to the Wi-Fi clients out there,

28:35 - whether it be a your iPhone or a printer

28:39 - or console or any kind of security stuff

28:42 - that you have in your in your home.

28:43 - So, you know, it's not just about having a large pipe.

28:48 - You have to have the smart

28:49 - and smart gear

28:50 - hooked up to it to make your connection effective.

28:53 - I think that's something that's, you know,

28:55 - whether it be through Eero or Plume,

28:58 - all the different providers out there,

28:59 - there's all different ways to see it.

29:01 - I think Comcast has, you know,

29:02 - the X, Y gateways and things like that.

29:04 - So everybody has their own flavor of that.

29:07 - Still, that technology at this point

29:09 - to think there is a lack of knowledge of,

29:10 - you know, in the general public how many devices are actually,

29:14 - you know, sitting there on your system.

29:16 - I mean, I have Stella,

29:18 - by the way, we have James Dean, and Stella is my Roomba.

29:20 - And I didn't really realize that she was,

29:23 - you know, connected until I looked at the list.

29:26 - Yeah. Yeah.

29:26 - You look at your you open the app on your phone.

29:28 - If you've got like a mobile,

29:30 - you know what mobile app on your phone

29:31 - that shows your router information.

29:33 - And I know we look at my phone, I'm like, What is that device?

29:35 - I can't what is that?

29:37 - I turn off and then all of a sudden it's

29:39 - a turn off, something I didn't I didn't see in my house.

29:41 - You turn something off. You don't know what it is.

29:43 - Some teenager will scream at you.

29:44 - You will know right away that you've done something wrong.

29:46 - Why isn't the TV working anymore?

29:47 - Excuse me?

29:48 - It was my first some weird

29:50 - Android name behind it or something like that.

29:51 - So yeah.

29:53 - So fiber to the home with poor wi fi is bad internet.

29:58 - Yeah.

29:59 - And the wi fi is changed.

30:01 - So that's absolutely critical.

30:03 - So as B comes along,

30:06 - we will

30:06 - build and the many providers will bring fiber to unserved

30:11 - or underserved homes to get there.

30:15 - Every provider will most likely pass

30:17 - through a town that already has broadband

30:20 - because these homes are outside the town.

30:22 - Well, you're not going to build to those homes without passing

30:26 - through an area that already it's not funded.

30:29 - Right. You're not getting funding

30:31 - because they already have broadband.

30:32 - But to get to those unserved homes or underserved,

30:36 - typically what DSL you're going to pass to a town

30:41 - and suddenly you're going to go, well,

30:43 - why don't

30:43 - I just need coils of fiber along the way on my backbone?

30:47 - It's a fiber backbone.

30:48 - Maybe it's the pond,

30:49 - but it's not a pond to gets out to these unserved homes.

30:53 - And oh, by the way, why don't I just compete

30:55 - with the provider that's there now?

30:57 - I built through the city, I built through the town to get

31:00 - this are homes that were unserved.

31:03 - And so what will happen is

31:06 - there won't be hardly anybody in these places

31:09 - that have broadband today that will have competition.

31:13 - You know,

31:13 - when there's three or four homes a mile that's funded for B,

31:16 - I doubt you're going to see two wire providers

31:19 - compete with one another.

31:20 - You might have a wired and a fixed wireless.

31:22 - There's not going to be

31:23 - two broadband providers competing for the same farm.

31:27 - Right.

31:27 - The same farmhouse down the road. Right.

31:30 - But in that town.

31:31 - So what's going to happen is gigabit speeds

31:35 - are just going to be, what,

31:37 - 50 megabits per second or 100 megabits

31:39 - where five years ago everybody's going to have a gigabit.

31:43 - Right.

31:44 - So what

31:45 - what sets that apart from everybody else is getting a bit

31:48 - and something that they industry is looking at now is latency.

31:53 - So latency is how long does it take a packet

31:55 - to get from the server or wherever it's sourcing from

31:59 - to my device, whether it's a phone or tablet or PC,

32:02 - it doesn't matter.

32:04 - How long does it take, typically measured in 1,000th

32:07 - of a second or milliseconds.

32:08 - How long does that take? And that's latency.

32:11 - And then as those packets traverse all the way

32:14 - from wherever in the world to your device,

32:17 - what's the difference between each packet that's set?

32:20 - And we call that jitter.

32:22 - So a lot of applications, especially gamers,

32:25 - if your kids are gamers,

32:26 - everybody every gamer knows their ping time right.

32:30 - And that the people with the lowest ping time

32:33 - when it fiber to the home that last mile of GPON pon

32:39 - because of this technology is natively extremely low latency.

32:44 - But what about in the rest of the network

32:47 - in the middle mile, in the core networks,

32:50 - when routers were built years ago, new packets

32:54 - could be set at ten gigabit, 100 gigabit per second to a

32:59 - last mile, CMT or LTE or whatever,

33:03 - and say that customer subscribed

33:04 - their 25 megabit by three service

33:08 - or those packets that came into that router really fast,

33:11 - they're going to be held somewhere

33:13 - and those we call those interface buffers.

33:15 - And now that you can get one gigabit or faster,

33:18 - those buffers are way too big. So there's an AI triple.

33:21 - We process to come up with what's known as active queue

33:25 - management in a technology called l4s2

33:29 - to make that latency that that

33:32 - fiber to the home or DOCSIS can lower in the last mile

33:35 - and have that latency go way back into the network.

33:39 - And so latency is going to be what people will compete against

33:42 - who has in Europe this is already a big deal

33:45 - they a market I don't know how they market it

33:48 - but they market has had the lowest latency

33:50 - network might not work is faster than theirs not by speed

33:54 - because everybody's going to have a gig, right?

33:57 - It's just going to become what everybody has.

33:59 - But what makes my gig faster than anybody else's gig,

34:03 - what will make that is the lowest possible latency

34:07 - by bringing those applications from the cloud

34:11 - and you hear the word edge compute, compute, right,

34:13 - to bring those applications and catch them locally, like

34:17 - Netflix caches and Amazon Prime and all those multimedia

34:21 - caches that content we bring into our data centers.

34:24 - We bring that content really close to the customer.

34:27 - So that

34:28 - latency is as low as possible so that the streaming bitrate

34:32 - resolution can be as high as possible.

34:35 - What about all these other applications?

34:37 - That edge compute can move to the edge

34:40 - to remove that latency from coming all the way

34:43 - from around the world to maybe it's ten miles away from you.

34:46 - What your sources.

34:49 - So related to latency, I

34:50 - don't know

34:50 - if you use the example,

34:51 - but the gamers would be the people

34:53 - who would fully understand and appreciate that.

34:55 - That's what we're trying to market.

34:56 - Low latency, the gamers will get it instantly, instantly.

34:59 - And anything virtual reality based or anything

35:01 - that's pointing like like the games are the other.

35:05 - I don't think mentioned

35:06 - low latency DOCSIS is part of the solution.

35:08 - Yeah, absolutely.

35:09 - That's where that came from to keep latency.

35:11 - Well yeah. Yeah.

35:11 - So that's I believe it's fully implemented in DOCSIS three.

35:15 - I think it's in three and three. It is, yeah.

35:17 - Low latency certainly in four, but it's not out yet.

35:21 - So that enables

35:23 - packets to get into the low latency queues and it's it's

35:26 - very well designed system

35:28 - and it works in conjunction with the believe standards also.

35:31 - So that's all good.

35:33 - So we were talking about speed and latency.

35:36 - I would add reliability as also very, very important.

35:39 - And most people that talk about ten G

35:41 - and the major killers of ten G would at least have those three.

35:45 - I think everybody kind of lists speed, latency and reliability.

35:49 - And my biggest connection point to reliability.

35:51 - Well, there's two really one has been going on for a long

35:54 - time is PNM Proactive Network Maintenance is using the tools

35:58 - available to the operators

35:59 - primarily in my world, it's through the DOCSIS tools, but

36:02 - it's actually scary to see how much how accurately

36:07 - cable operators can find out exactly where the problem is.

36:11 - Both cable labs and PNM working groups.

36:14 - Same similar.

36:15 - So cable

36:16 - have starts by looking at how that how it can be done

36:19 - and then the groups write the recommended practices

36:22 - and teach the world how to do it.

36:24 - And this

36:24 - this example actually comes from the chair

36:26 - of one of those groups who,

36:27 - as many of you might know, Larry Walcott from Comcast.

36:30 - But it's fascinating to see how

36:33 - Comcast tools have been developed,

36:35 - to look at full spectrum capture in homes.

36:38 - And so now,

36:39 - even before the customer even knows they have a problem,

36:42 - there are bit rates could be 1/10

36:44 - of what they should be, but it's still working.

36:46 - They haven't picked up the phone.

36:47 - They might be kind of irritated, but maybe they don't know.

36:51 - And it could be just the drop has some water in it

36:53 - and it's amazing how much water in the drop

36:55 - can destroy the customer's experience.

36:58 - And these drops have been taken out of them

37:00 - and looked at and the neck is tiny.

37:01 - You'll never see it with a physical inspection

37:03 - that the neck that let the water in was like from a knife.

37:06 - When you cut the plastic off it,

37:08 - when you're installing the drop or something

37:10 - ten years ago, who knows?

37:12 - But the customer experience is phenomenal.

37:14 - Once it drops, replaced, you know, in the thank you's

37:16 - like we knew something wasn't right but we never called.

37:19 - We can't believe you came in and fixed it for us, you know,

37:21 - without us even calling you, you know, it's so visibility

37:25 - into the networks is a big part of reliability.

37:28 - And it just started the standards

37:30 - group called Network and Service Reliability where we are

37:33 - working on operational practices to detail the best practices

37:38 - for maintaining good reliability in the networks.

37:43 - And think about latency.

37:44 - It sounds weird, but we need consistent latency.

37:48 - Latency, it sounds bad, but it's actually not.

37:50 - You didn't like it as long as you were consistent.

37:53 - That's quality connection.

37:54 - Your consistency of latency

37:56 - is what allows gamers to have a better experience

37:58 - as they're playing whatever games,

37:59 - like Fortnite or whatever games are playing. So

38:03 - yeah, that's yeah.

38:04 - Consistent latency.

38:05 - And then to your point about Pam,

38:07 - you know, as you we've moved that

38:09 - we started as we started moving over from from Co.uk

38:12 - over to fiber.

38:13 - It's kind of changed the way

38:14 - that we are thinking about the way that we troubleshoot

38:16 - because we have some tools that we're using,

38:19 - but we notice as we move over

38:20 - to fiber, a lot of the problems start to change.

38:24 - So the way you actually troubleshoot

38:26 - your broadband connections,

38:28 - change is a change. It's a different mentality.

38:30 - You're no longer

38:31 - troubleshooting ingress, you're still looking

38:33 - for uncollectible errors or problems in the return,

38:35 - but the volume of those problems disappears to a certain extent

38:40 - and it's it's a

38:42 - it's a lot of difference between the technologies.

38:45 - So it's

38:46 - very, very interesting to see

38:48 - as we start moving more and more over to fiber, how

38:51 - things will change.

38:52 - And reliability is absolutely got it.

38:55 - It's going to be expected.

38:56 - It always was expected and it's going to become even harder.

39:01 - You know, a cable network is very active, has amplifiers

39:05 - in it, and there's power supplies of power adapters.

39:08 - We talk about PON, we have a lot of acronyms.

39:10 - The P and point is passive, which is the opposite of active.

39:15 - There is no electronics.

39:16 - There is at the old

39:17 - T at the hub site or cabinet and the OMT in the home.

39:22 - And between those two is a piece of glass

39:24 - 20 kilometers long

39:26 - and there's nothing in between it, so it can get

39:29 - chewed by squirrels or torn down by a tree.

39:32 - But there's not ingress.

39:34 - There's not the downstream or upstream.

39:36 - As we go out the 1.8 gigahertz,

39:38 - there's a lot of radio transmitters in cellular

39:42 - that can get in through distortions,

39:44 - breaks in the coaxial and just take out blocks of

39:48 - not a block of FDM, but channels within the FDM.

39:52 - And we have to deal with that ingress in porn.

39:54 - It's passive, it's light.

39:56 - And as long as it doesn't take

39:59 - takes power at the hub site or cabinet in power at the home

40:03 - within that 20 kilometers or however long it is,

40:07 - there is nothing.

40:07 - The glass there is nothing

40:09 - other than the physical plant getting broken.

40:12 - It can go bad and we have to compete with that is as for Dido

40:17 - and 1.8 gigahertz spectrum actually adds more passes

40:22 - and maybe more current to power.

40:24 - Those passes, active actives.

40:27 - I mean, I'm sorry. Thank you.

40:28 - The power those actors

40:29 - will take even more more energy from the power grid.

40:33 - B especially if there's more of them.

40:37 - Awesome.

40:37 - So we are, you know,

40:39 - we're going to be doing a lot of building under bid.

40:42 - AS What do you see as some of the challenges

40:44 - do you think there's going to be?

40:46 - And I'm going to ask like an obvious question here,

40:48 - but do we see supply supply chain challenges

40:51 - coming with this influx of millions of millions

40:54 - of millions of dollars?

40:58 - James, you had some thoughts on that yesterday.

40:59 - Yeah, I think it's hard to say.

41:01 - I mean, yes, we're

41:02 - we're going to see changes in the supply chain.

41:04 - But, you know,

41:04 - I think we have to also look at the the macro economic

41:07 - situation as well, because that's changing as well.

41:11 - So as we go forward, I

41:15 - think the key is

41:16 - forecasting out what you need as much as possible

41:19 - as we're doing in newbuilds, rebuilds, moving to the docks

41:23 - for whatever

41:24 - whatever happens in the next

41:25 - few months to, you know, the next couple of years.

41:28 - That's I think the main thing is really

41:31 - staying ahead of the forecast,

41:33 - working with the vendors to making sure that you

41:35 - you have enough material in the pipeline

41:38 - so you don't stop your projects half way

41:39 - because you end up with a material shortage

41:42 - because we don't have endless capital.

41:43 - So we have to make sure that we stay within the,

41:45 - you know, the realms of what we need to spend

41:47 - and just, you know, really keep an eye

41:50 - on on how we are building our networks.

41:54 - And you spoke yesterday about if you told a great story

41:57 - about finding an alternative supplier and developing them.

42:02 - Yeah.

42:02 - So during the pandemic, that was when we

42:06 - built our first fiber to the home area.

42:09 - That was not our fault. This is the upon area.

42:11 - And we were working with one vendor

42:14 - and they were unable to fulfill our orders

42:17 - because some other

42:18 - you know, everybody was trying to order

42:19 - all the material at the same time.

42:21 - So we ended up moving to another vendor

42:24 - and working with them, but having a smaller vendor

42:27 - and we are now using their equipment

42:30 - solely for our rebuild going forward

42:33 - fully connects Rosies and work with just add, it's

42:37 - working out well and we right sized the vendor to our size

42:42 - as an operator

42:43 - and that has really helped us leverage that relationship

42:47 - and that relationship in that partnership.

42:49 - You spoke very impassioned about how that really

42:52 - was the key to your success when there was

42:55 - a supply chain problem.

42:56 - And that's why we are where we are today

42:58 - rebuilding what we're doing, rebuilding our systems.

43:00 - And yeah, so is big money

43:05 - the end of this year and the next year starts to actually

43:08 - and maybe even longer get turned into actual

43:11 - construction?

43:13 - We've learned over the years

43:15 - and from physically building plants

43:18 - that one of the biggest challenges

43:20 - every operator will have

43:21 - when they go to build in these rural areas.

43:24 - So think about

43:25 - they've had power, electricity for many, many years, decades.

43:29 - They've had telephone probably for many decades.

43:33 - These telephone poles are really old,

43:36 - really, really old.

43:38 - And a lot of them you may drive down the road

43:42 - and hopefully not just use Google Earth,

43:44 - but physically drive down the road

43:46 - and go, sure, there's plenty of space on that

43:48 - on that telephone call for another attachment.

43:50 - So you applied to the pole owner to attached to that pole.

43:54 - They then go out and do the engineering work

43:57 - and suddenly they find it.

43:58 - The polls write it often under the ground

44:01 - and you go, but sorry, this pole needs replace.

44:04 - Now you can save the pole owners financially responsible

44:07 - for a preexisting condition.

44:09 - Right?

44:09 - But that takes time.

44:11 - Right now, the project could slow down

44:12 - and maybe that World Electric

44:14 - doesn't have the manpower to do it.

44:16 - Now you got to hire a contractor who's licensed and approved

44:21 - the power utility to replace that pole and actually transfer

44:24 - the electric lines, not just to the telephone.

44:28 - That whole process of what we call make ready

44:31 - is a very not only time consuming,

44:34 - it can become a really expensive proposition

44:38 - if you're just assuming that it's going to cost

44:40 - so many dollars per mile to build this piece of fiber.

44:45 - And then once you get into the pole engineering work

44:48 - and get the cost back, you may be shocked.

44:53 - I've seen poles that cost one pole

44:56 - replacement can be 70 $80,000 for one.

45:00 - And you're thinking that there's $5,000 and make it

45:03 - in this next mile of build and suddenly

45:07 - you know what you ask for in money isn't going to be enough.

45:12 - And you can say, well, go underground.

45:14 - Well, the cost of going underground is really expensive

45:18 - and you got to know what soil is it clay?

45:21 - Is it sandy or is it granite?

45:24 - Rock is do I got to take it is dynamite to get through here

45:27 - you know,

45:27 - then those physical things of how do I build a network?

45:31 - People have built networks have dealt with it for forever.

45:34 - You just had to.

45:35 - But for

45:36 - people that are giving a go, I can run fiber down this road

45:40 - that are not looking ahead at what it might cost

45:43 - by understanding this many, many decades old infrastructure

45:48 - of poles to attach to is going to be

45:51 - eye opening experience experience for a lot of people.

45:55 - I feel like that almost comes full circle,

45:57 - kind of like our conversation about people who can splice.

45:59 - You also need people really understand these plants

46:02 - that have this decades of of experience

46:05 - and this money's coming in.

46:06 - And, you know,

46:06 - there will certainly be entrepreneurial spirits

46:09 - out there who want to jump in there.

46:11 - There and may not have these decades of experience

46:13 - might end up tripping into some of these unknown expenses.

46:17 - Right. Exactly.

46:18 - I can see that happening.

46:20 - You know, I feel like I lose my job

46:22 - if I don't talk about cybersecurity

46:23 - because that's on the tip of everybody's tongue all the time.

46:27 - So I was wondering

46:28 - if you had any thoughts

46:29 - about the technologies on the horizon about

46:32 - cybersecurity and how to make networks safer?

46:35 - So I guess

46:37 - a couple of thoughts, but I asked the cable labs

46:40 - cybersecurity teams for some talking points on this.

46:43 - And this is not a

46:44 - technical audience, so I can't really use any of it.

46:48 - It's actually crazy to read the bullet points of how secure

46:51 - DOCSIS is, really the public key infrastructure used.

46:56 - We're second only to. Oh, I forget that.

46:58 - Let me pull up that.

46:59 - No, but the cable keys

47:02 - were second only to the financial sector.

47:05 - You and peek I keys a 128

47:09 - bit encryption in DOCSIS 3.31 this is and then DOCSIS four.

47:13 - There's 12 bullet points

47:15 - here in my phone that I won't even read.

47:16 - And there are highly technical of all the improvements

47:19 - on security.

47:20 - So, you know, as far as the DOCSIS networks

47:22 - go, I mean, it was designed with security in mind

47:25 - of ever since DOCSIS 1.0.

47:28 - And you know,

47:29 - if you

47:30 - and I hope nobody has a DOCSIS 1.0 modem out

47:32 - but you know, make sure you get rid of it

47:34 - immediately and did not security but ever since then

47:37 - we've been good and so the focus continues to be on that.

47:41 - And the other term

47:41 - I would use

47:42 - in addition to security would be visibility

47:44 - that you're seeing what's going on in your networks

47:47 - and you actually have

47:48 - tracers running so you can actually see

47:50 - if there's

47:50 - any intrusions going on

47:52 - is even related, the PNM, if there is performance impacts,

47:54 - but you also want to be doing that

47:56 - at the security layers and knowing what's going on.

47:59 - I don't have anything to say about the fiber networks

48:02 - and their inherent security, but I know that we could

48:05 - we could convince anybody that the DOCSIS protocols are

48:09 - designed with security in mind.

48:11 - I feel like I'm going to need that list,

48:13 - but I'm going to need you

48:13 - to translate it into English for me.

48:15 - So I can translate it into elected.

48:17 - Speak for the electeds I need ready to go.

48:21 - So, so related to that, there was actually a cable EBS

48:23 - did a webinar on it. You probably find it

48:26 - by Googling, but I can get that to you.

48:28 - I am I will I will actually watch that.

48:30 - It will be must see TV for me.

48:33 - So it is DOCSIS is very secure and networks

48:38 - need intrusion detection systems

48:40 - because there's nefarious players all over the world

48:44 - trying to get in networks all the time.

48:46 - Just whether they're trying to get into or just sending

48:50 - meaningless packets to try to, we call them distributed

48:53 - denial of service attacks and security,

48:58 - bank financial, whatever it is, it's extremely secure.

49:02 - I forget.

49:03 - That's like 111 28.

49:06 - That would take like 18 years or 18,000 years to crack.

49:11 - I think one of the challenges we talk

49:13 - about, you hear on the news now, the fear that A.I.

49:16 - will will take over and decide that the humans don't

49:20 - need to be on the earth anymore. Right.

49:23 - There's quantum computing

49:25 - that it's going on and developments in quantum

49:28 - quantum computing,

49:28 - I forget it's just like 54 qubits have been found.

49:32 - That amount of

49:34 - cyber of computing and quantum computing comes along.

49:38 - All this security that's extremely secure today

49:42 - can be broken in a matter of minutes, not 18,000 years.

49:47 - So I think quantum computing and the power of it

49:52 - is going to be as we talk about A.I.

49:54 - and its ability to take over,

49:58 - you know, what what humans do

50:01 - in a lot of roles, I think quantum computing

50:04 - is it's going to require a whole new set of of security

50:10 - because it will be able to be broken in

50:13 - no time.

50:16 - I think

50:19 - I would say, though, that once, once,

50:20 - once that security is broken, cable's a very small part

50:24 - of probably because the World Bank accounts are secure.

50:27 - Yeah, exactly.

50:28 - You know, it would be is being watched a lot by many people.

50:31 - The quantum compute throughout

50:35 - my my concern is, you know as A.I.

50:38 - is out there and we started seeing like Chad

50:40 - JPT and all the, you know, generative A.I.

50:44 - things out there.

50:46 - When does a bad actor start using that to or

50:48 - are they already using it to crack passwords?

50:50 - And then there was a study done recently where

50:54 - they basically a white hacker group

50:58 - decided to go in and take a I guess

51:01 - you should not talk about this.

51:02 - I mean, that it's a no.

51:05 - And they took a security a security breach where they had

51:09 - I forget how many passwords, but it was

51:10 - so many million passwords and they were able to guess

51:14 - of 51% of the passwords for user within or within users.

51:18 - Within half an hour, they could do everybody

51:20 - all passwords within like a day or something like that.

51:22 - So it's

51:24 - that that

51:26 - I don't

51:26 - really think about that until yesterday

51:28 - and that's going to keep me up at night.

51:30 - So password 1 to 3 should not be like you shouldn't

51:33 - say yeah, yeah, change that immediately.

51:34 - I put a star at the end.

51:35 - Does that count as a of two stars.

51:39 - No, two stars.

51:40 - I'm good but that is concerning is how how bad actors

51:44 - are going to start using that to to attack our networks,

51:48 - to attack user devices that that's that's concerning.

51:52 - So, you know,

51:53 - I do find it ironically that ironic

51:55 - that we're trying to reduce the latency

51:57 - that exactly hit these bad actors.

52:00 - Yeah.

52:02 - Anyway, I feel like I've had a master

52:04 - class over the last few days.

52:05 - I've learned so much

52:08 - about the industry as a whole from these

52:11 - three gentlemen up here.

52:12 - It's wondering if there's any questions from the audience.

52:15 - If you'd like to ask some questions

52:17 - about you, have a while.

52:19 - We have this

52:21 - no questions.

52:24 - That means we confused everything.

52:26 - I don't think it means degrees.

52:27 - I think it means that you explained it all

52:29 - so well to them.

52:30 - Well,

52:30 - I think you totally understand it more about construction.

52:34 - And I didn't think. Oh, absolutely.

52:36 - So just so everybody knows.

52:38 - So within our standards program,

52:40 - we we've restarted a working group

52:42 - that's been dormant for five years

52:43 - now in construction and maintenance

52:45 - as it has two documents.

52:46 - One is on fiber construction, the other one's on construction.

52:50 - The documents are each hundreds of pages

52:51 - long, two very good Bibles for how to do construction.

52:55 - We want to make sure that they're accurate.

52:56 - And we have a large group

52:57 - getting assembled to to revise them again

53:01 - and make sure that they're good so that we can turn it into

53:03 - training material.

53:04 - This all has to do with getting ready for the workforce.

53:06 - We also have a bit more of a private forum,

53:09 - which is for cable operators only,

53:11 - and you can contact me directly if you want.

53:13 - But what we ask the operators do

53:15 - we enable operators to talk with each other

53:17 - about what the the issues are that they're facing make

53:20 - ready costs being one of them that has come up so far.

53:23 - So I just wanted the industry to be aware of those activities.

53:26 - You can reach out to me if you want more information.

53:28 - Are they going to be training resources

53:30 - around the construction process?

53:32 - Are they going to be like training groups

53:33 - or a training course? So we have, yes.

53:35 - So we

53:35 - I think we have a bit of

53:36 - a training on construction, but we plan to

53:37 - have to have much more around it after the

53:41 - operational practices are revised.

53:44 - Yes, it's gotten a

53:47 - we're learning among the panelists.

53:48 - So I gave them more time to ask.

53:50 - Think of a question

53:52 - if there is any.

53:53 - I guess literally God has questions for you.

53:56 - Apparently before the power goes out.

53:59 - Yeah, that's the one thing

54:05 - I guess for the audience here.

54:08 - The difference

54:10 - is that

54:12 - the different paths,

54:14 - different point technologies or the fiber construction funds,

54:18 - the the what are the benefits of the

54:25 - work?

54:26 - Well, you know, it's interesting.

54:29 - I mentioned that GPON was something

54:31 - that phone companies did before that it was there was built on.

54:36 - Right.

54:36 - And many variations of PON technologies.

54:41 - The cable started PON as our form.

54:44 - Right, which was nothing more than RF

54:46 - with a micro node on the side of the house.

54:49 - I know there's e pon there's ten g e

54:52 - pon, there's many flavors of it.

54:56 - It's hard to do that.

54:57 - They all have their own different speed.

55:00 - Like, like I remember

55:03 - B Pon

55:04 - was like it was all based on ATM at one point it was all right.

55:07 - It was always like 620 to 20 megabits per second, six, 2622

55:12 - But in modern deployments, there's only really two options.

55:15 - That's right.

55:17 - And on and on

55:20 - and on is what, two and a half by two and a half by one

55:23 - in a quarter, right?

55:23 - Yep, exactly.

55:25 - Those are advertised based on our actual rates and footprint.

55:28 - But then PON is the ten gig standard.

55:32 - So that's ten gig symmetrical

55:34 - where you end up with about eight

55:35 - and a half gigabits per second

55:37 - upstream and downstream for a service area or that it.

55:41 - So as I heard it, most newbuilds would be

55:43 - I mean if you're if you're just starting out with B, XG or S

55:47 - depending on whether you want

55:48 - full, symmetrical, ten gigabit or a ten by one.

55:51 - Yeah, right. Right.

55:52 - And we as an industry, we come up with this

55:56 - coin name of ten G, right?

55:59 - And we did that not because ten G has anything to do

56:02 - with ten gigabit per second.

56:03 - We did it because it's two times five G right.

56:07 - Five times two is ten.

56:08 - Let's use TNG.

56:10 - But it really has nothing to do with speed because right now

56:13 - it will not be long before 25 gig pon and 50 gig pon.

56:18 - Oh well ti's a no empties become available

56:21 - and then after that

56:23 - there'll be 100 gig pon to the home.

56:25 - Right.

56:26 - Already today there's four and 500, 600 gig, 800 gig

56:31 - running over one wavelength

56:32 - on a piece of glass in backbone and transport networks.

56:35 - But to the home, you know, 25 gig and 50 gig will not be

56:39 - out of the realm.

56:40 - The cool

56:41 - thing is that piece of glass that's getting installed today.

56:45 - I've not heard a physicist anywhere

56:47 - that say you can only stack so many wavelengths on that

56:50 - and that glass is going to no longer be able to handle.

56:53 - It will handle all these.

56:55 - And the cool thing is all at the same time,

56:58 - because all of these own things have bypass

57:00 - optical filters that listen only for their wavelength.

57:04 - So all the CPE can co-exist today.

57:07 - You can overlay g pon and pon on the same same piece of glass

57:12 - and the LTE puts out both wavelengths and receives

57:15 - two different wavelengths upstream

57:17 - and you simply change the OMT from a g point.

57:21 - Next pon and suddenly you you got a higher speed

57:25 - and you had before.

57:26 - So, so that pon technology it keeps growing

57:30 - and and it started many, many years ago

57:33 - when the telephone companies come up with

57:36 - b pon and it'll keep going and who knows where

57:39 - it's going to end.

57:40 - So the one more that's way out there is coherent pon, right?

57:43 - Exac.

57:44 - We're going to have to have

57:45 - several people here that are in the group.

57:46 - So that is that's out there

57:49 - because the price point is coherent.

57:51 - So coherent detection, it's it's been used in long

57:54 - haul is being used in the long haul networks.

57:56 - It's just an expensive way of doing it.

57:58 - It's like,

58:00 - I don't know how to explain it.

58:01 - The simplest way, but you have amplitude and phase.

58:03 - So not only do you just send its higher,

58:06 - but it has a certain angle to it too.

58:08 - So you have to you have to detect that.

58:10 - So we do that in RF all the time.

58:11 - You everybody's heard the word quam quadrature

58:13 - amplitude, modulation, it's amplitude and phase.

58:16 - So it's basically doing that

58:17 - two dimensional detection at optics.

58:21 - So you actually need to be phase coherent detection in optics.

58:25 - It has much better carrier noise performance.

58:27 - It's, it's better in every way except cost, right?

58:31 - So we have coherent backhaul now and the standard

58:35 - the standards are being written right now for a coherent PON,

58:38 - that's 100 gigabit PON, so not for tomorrow,

58:45 - so higher, but that's the runway.

58:47 - And then go further with it with that pon two

58:48 - instead of the 20 K or whatever you go longer or bigger, so

58:53 - you have all TS further away.

58:55 - You don't have that as much.

58:55 - I mean,

58:56 - long story short, I think anybody today that would

58:59 - deploy in a fiber network either be GPON, a 2.4 or

59:02 - one of the ten gigabits, either symmetrical or ten by one.

59:07 - And everything else I think we've talked

59:08 - about is still out in the future.

59:10 - Yep, yep.

59:11 - And PON has a long roadmap ahead of it with regards to

59:15 - a lot of life left in it and ten gigabits in both directions.

59:18 - It's a lot of bandwidth

59:20 - and from experience and users don't really use that much.

59:23 - So they think they need a lot, but they actually don't

59:25 - need as much as they they think they do.

59:27 - So it's very efficient.

59:36 - You're using

59:50 - mobile,

59:57 - which

01:00 - 11.040 I think.

01:00 - 13.443 Yeah, so I can hear you enough. I could summarize it.

01:00 - 14.877 Maybe you guys want to just

01:00 - 17.013 the basic question would be in a rural area

01:00 - 18.214 sort of having somewhat splitting,

01:00 - 21.784 you wouldn't want to split 128 512 ways in a rural area.

01:00 - 24.721 Why not just go point to point Ethernet now?

01:00 - 25.622 Is that okay?

01:00 - 27.423 Is that the question, the point of the question?

01:00 - 28.424 I think so.

01:00 - 31.694 You know, it's funny, we thought we talked about this

01:00 - 35.064 and folks on the team,

01:00 - 36.899 when you're a phone provider, typically

01:00 - 38.101 you had a wire frame rate

01:00 - 41.838 and every home had its own twisted pair from their home

01:00 - 45.008 back to the central office or to a cabinet.

01:00 - 47.910 And every home had its own twisted pair

01:00 - 49.712 when your cable provider,

01:00 - 52.615 every pole had a tap on it, cut into the codes.

01:00 - 55.385 So when we started doing fiber to the home,

01:00 - 58.454 we started to say, well, you would just put

01:00 - 02.492 the splitters, the one by eight, the one by fours out at

01:01 - 06.129 every other pole or every poll, just like you do HFC taps.

01:01 - 08.264 If you're a phone company,

01:01 - 10.733 you run a high count fiber from a cabinet,

01:01 - 12.869 maybe it's ribbon fiber

01:01 - 14.203 and from that cabinet

01:01 - 17.340 or central office or you run, everybody gets their own piece

01:01 - 20.043 of glass and now you're one by 32.

01:01 - 22.512 Coupler is is all in one location

01:01 - 24.547 and then you cross connect the fiber jumper.

01:01 - 27.984 Well, that really has not much to do the technology

01:01 - 30.820 that it almost becomes a religion.

01:01 - 31.254 Right.

01:01 - 35.058 So I use centralized splits or do I do distributive splits

01:01 - 39.495 at the end of the day, at the end of that drop into the OMT,

01:01 - 43.366 you're going to have nearly the exact same DB of light

01:01 - 46.869 in the that OMT, whether you do centralized

01:01 - 49.972 or distributed plate splits, it becomes

01:01 - 53.342 what your workforce has been doing all their life.

01:01 - 57.513 All their career is a centralized or distributed.

01:01 - 59.515 But as far as active Ethernet, you know,

01:01 - 01.217 our commercial services group,

01:02 - 04.921 we sell what we call DS all day long where, you know,

01:02 - 08.157 maybe we'll give somebody their own port on a router

01:02 - 12.729 and just light a SFP or SFP plus gig or ten gig.

01:02 - 17.366 And we do that for commercial to do that for residential.

01:02 - 18.367 I don't know

01:02 - 20.737 if CPE gets expensive.

01:02 - 21.771 They do. Yeah, exactly.

01:02 - 22.538 And you know, as

01:02 - 24.240 you get more out to the rural areas,

01:02 - 26.442 that's when you need to start looking at the

01:02 - 28.211 maybe a technology like a remote.

01:02 - 28.778 Let's see what would be.

01:02 - 31.247 It would just be a strand mounted. Oh well t yeah.

01:02 - 32.982 Where you just run an Ethernet

01:02 - 34.650 to the recipe or two speeds

01:02 - 36.385 depending on whether or not you have primary

01:02 - 38.788 and secondary paths for your connectivity.

01:02 - 41.491 And then you break your pons out from there

01:02 - 43.993 and your network becomes a lot more simple.

01:02 - 45.995 You only have eight optics or four optics depending on

01:02 - 48.030 what kind of outfit you're using to feed

01:02 - 50.399 all your service groups that are out there.

01:02 - 53.035 So from one parallel t you could feed,

01:02 - 56.339 let's say between £502,000.

01:02 - 00.276 So instead of bringing all your fiber back to one place

01:03 - 02.779 and having five more switches with 500 recipes

01:03 - 05.982 or 1000 recipes, you're just going to have one hour

01:03 - 09.352 T and breaking out the pan from there.

01:03 - 20.329 It's just different ways of doing it, you know?

01:03 - 21.063 Yeah. Yeah.

01:03 - 23.065 So if you have power supplies every two and a half miles,

01:03 - 26.135 you could put remote outs there and each two and a half

01:03 - 29.005 miles could be its own pond. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

01:03 - 32.341 So that that's when you start mounting o l ts on the Strand.

01:03 - 33.543 Yeah.

01:03 - 35.144 If you're the phone company,

01:03 - 38.614 I've seen technologies where it uses the old twisted pair

01:03 - 41.851 and bond tie a bunch of it together to use it

01:03 - 44.987 as an extension cord to send 48 volts out.

01:03 - 46.155 Right. Because you have the copper.

01:03 - 46.556 Why not?

01:03 - 48.858 What am I going to tear it down and sell for scrap?

01:03 - 51.060 Or do I turn it into a power cable?

01:03 - 51.527 Right.

01:03 - 54.931 And but if not, then you're putting out

01:03 - 58.234 standby power supply and you're buying commercial power.

01:03 - 59.101 You're probably going to put

01:03 - 02.872 batteries there or someday maybe hydrogen fuel cells.

01:04 - 05.041 You now have something you have to maintain

01:04 - 06.242 and you have to know

01:04 - 09.178 when it loses commercial power so you can roll a generator

01:04 - 11.180 where if you concentrate,

01:04 - 11.647 like you

01:04 - 13.916 said, your old TS back at a cabinet,

01:04 - 15.852 even if it's not a physical building,

01:04 - 18.721 you know, it's a concrete pad with a cabinet on it.

01:04 - 21.224 At least now you got one location.

01:04 - 23.226 So you might have to roll a generator

01:04 - 25.061 or have a generator there too.

01:04 - 25.595 When you start

01:04 - 29.065 putting these housings with oh well, t's all throughout

01:04 - 32.668 your plant, it's just buying the same power

01:04 - 36.539 supplies, the power and HFC network, it's just more

01:04 - 40.443 places where you could, you could lose service.

01:04 - 43.579 And now you have to be able to have manpower to roll trucks

01:04 - 45.781 to those where if you concentrate

01:04 - 48.951 the need for electricity at a central location,

01:04 - 51.220 even if it's not a building, but a cabinet,

01:04 - 54.390 there's the reliability goes up because there's much

01:04 - 56.058 points of failure.

01:04 - 58.294 I'm being proactive, like being proactive

01:04 - 00.363 in the way that all at once it's, it's

01:05 - 03.332 it's network and understanding when you lose commercial power.

01:05 - 04.500 So that's critical.

01:05 - 04.800 You know,

01:05 - 06.302 have service outages for customers

01:05 - 07.503 because you may have a power

01:05 - 10.640 outage over here the power's up your oh well t yeah.

01:05 - 12.975 It feeds all these customers over here who still have power.

01:05 - 14.043 Right. Exactly.

01:05 - 17.813 So being proactive is really a key part

01:05 - 19.115 of running a service provider.

01:05 - 20.716 Yeah, we just never come up.

01:05 - 24.854 But Carrizo cable labs, I think his names, last names.

01:05 - 26.822 Q So you had to do grid metrics? Yeah.

01:05 - 28.724 So this company Grid Matrix in a guy

01:05 - 31.560 we've known forever, Bob Cruickshank, Ph.D.,

01:05 - 34.664 that is PhD on on grid and reliability.

01:05 - 36.966 It turned into this project, the cable labs has.

01:05 - 40.536 And what you see is the whole in our case,

01:05 - 44.373 the United States in cable operators can send the

01:05 - 48.077 information about standby power supply status monitoring that

01:05 - 51.514 the are not spoke out all day long right so commercial this

01:05 - 54.183 the storm knocked out power to a power supply

01:05 - 56.352 the NOC would know that that power supply

01:05 - 59.588 is running on batteries and get an estimated run time

01:05 - 01.390 and get somebody out with a generator

01:06 - 03.526 before the batteries go dead.

01:06 - 08.030 This will allow you to see what else around you is doing right.

01:06 - 08.631 They saw it

01:06 - 12.401 during the wildfires out west, during the floods or hurricanes

01:06 - 14.904 when when Naples got hit,

01:06 - 17.807 you know, suddenly these maps went red, right?

01:06 - 19.508 Well, maybe

01:06 - 21.210 you don't service those areas,

01:06 - 23.312 but you're over here in Pennsylvania

01:06 - 26.482 and suddenly things in Ohio start to go red.

01:06 - 29.585 It gives you this little early warning, what if it's a storm

01:06 - 33.022 and whatever's happening out there is about to happen to me

01:06 - 34.890 and you get this advanced warning

01:06 - 38.427 so you can get your staff prepared saying and this grid

01:06 - 42.465 matrix is a cable labs can real metrics that I go

01:06 - 42.898 and just

01:06 - 45.001 make sure I was right there you got publicly available

01:06 - 47.403 the cable operators are all accurate, but not all.

01:06 - 49.538 Many cable operators are sending data

01:06 - 50.539 to grid metrics

01:06 - 51.907 and you can have a nationwide map

01:06 - 54.243 and see where there's power and where there's not power.

01:06 - 56.445 Yeah, it's pretty cool.

01:06 - 57.713 It does sound really cool.

01:06 - 01.684 Yeah, well, I think there's no more questions so far.

01:07 - 05.054 I'll ask our last question to all the panelist.

01:07 - 09.091 I just want you to complete this sentence in one or two words.

01:07 - 12.628 The future of our industry is

01:07 - 14.864 really awesome.

01:07 - 16.932 The future of our industry is really awesome.

01:07 - 18.968 Citing the

01:07 - 23.506 like I would say our future power of our industry

01:07 - 26.375 is endless possibilities, endless possibilities.

01:07 - 28.911 And Dean, last word to you had a simple one.

01:07 - 33.482 I was going to say bright, but it's not nearly as fascinating.

01:07 - 35.384 I like exciting as well.

01:07 - 36.252 Excellent.

01:07 - 40.089 Well, it has been exciting and fascinating and

01:07 - 42.825 lots of endless possibilities from this panel today.

01:07 - 44.260 If you could join me.

01:07 - 51.534 And of course, thank you so much, Mike and James.

01:07 - 55.738 And I'm sure if you grab them and buy them a beer or coffee,

01:07 - 58.340 they will give you all the pod information

01:07 - 01.177 that you will ever want an apple. Thank you all so much.