Frontiers in Fiber Optic Sensing | Episode 107 of the Connect This! Show

Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  It's about time to do some Connect This!  I'm having a good day.  Menards put the 4' x 8' extruded polystyrene on sale.  So I can insulate my garage.  I can afford to do that now.  I got a truck to bring that material home in.  I didn't have any caffeine for lunch, but I'm prepared to fake it.  It's a good week.  We're going to wrap it up strong.  I'm Chris Mitchell, at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.  We have a special guest today that I'll introduce last. But first, at the top  of the screen, I see Ms. Kim McKinley, from TAK Communications.

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Kim McKinley:  It's TAK Broadband.  Get it right.

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Doug Dawson:  He's never going to get it right.

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Kim McKinley:  Yeah.  That's true. And thanks for being here.  And that was the oddest intro we've had in 107 episodes.  So, congratulations.

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Christopher Mitchell:  You have no idea how excited I am.  It costs $50 a sheet now.  When I started doing insulation, it was like $15 a sheet.  Now it's 50 bucks a sheet.  And they got it down to [$]39.  And I'm excited.  I'm saving that money.  That's 20 percent off.

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Kim McKinley:  OK.  Good to be here.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  Travis, welcome.  Travis Carter, from USI Fiber.

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Travis Carter:  Hello, Mr. Mitchell.  For those -- Because we do have an international audience, Menards is like a local Midwest version of Home Depot.  So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  But like way better.

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Travis Carter:  Like way better.  Yeah. Yeah.  But just letting people know.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.

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Travis Carter:  So, you're in a good mood today, Mr. Mitchell?

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Christopher Mitchell:  Well, I am for the next hour.  [laughs]

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Travis Carter:  How are we going to get our rant?

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Doug Dawson:  We're going to work on that, Travis.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Doug Dawson piping in, from Ashville.  CCG Consulting.  We're going to discuss one of your stories from potsandpansbyccg.com.  Welcome.

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Doug Dawson:  Oh, I'm glad to be here.  And, just so everybody knows, today, I am insulation-free.

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Travis Carter:  [laughs]

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Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  So, the fun part about it is, we're going to keep talking about this.  It's two-inch thick 4' x 8' sheets --

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Doug Dawson:  [laughs]

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Christopher Mitchell:  -- and I need a bunch of it.  But use expanding foam to lock it in place, and I needed it to be above 40 degrees Fahrenheit to do that, so I need to store a ton of this stuff, but I a neighbor who's out of town, and I got the keys to his garage.  So I'm set, while I wait for it to warm up and I can actually use it.

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Our last guest is Paul.  Paul Dickinson, from  [laughs] sorry, the -- is the Director of Business Development at Dura-Line.  And he came prepared, so he knows this is par for the course.  Welcome.

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Paul Dickinson:  I'm excited and a little scared.  I've watched a couple of these episodes, and I know this crazy crew. So, it's going to be fun.

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Christopher Mitchell:  And we're going to talk about something you're pretty passionate about: the Fiber Optic Sensing Association. And how fiber optic cables can do a ton of other stuff, if we have the cooperation of different folks to get it done. Right?

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Paul Dickinson:  Correct.

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Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  So, we're going to be talking about --  We're going to spend some time on the fiber optic sensing topic.  We're going to talk a bit about the Fiber Broadband Association released the roundup of costs surrounding fiber networks from 2024, that I thought was kind of interesting.  We're going to talk about who owns the internet, toward the end. We are going to talk about, here in the beginning, about Ms. Arielle Roth, who is proposed to head NTIA.  And will set the course for a lot of government broadband investment in the next few years.  Zayo has an interesting story about an AI spike in demand for fiber, that I'm super puzzled about.  And we'll talk about the FCC killing off the effort to make sure that MDUs, apartment buildings have more competition.  And at the end, I will talk about this a little bit, but we have already scheduled our next show for two weeks from now, and it looks like we are going to have on a great guest to discuss how Comcast is doing the low-latency stuff that they've just unveiled.  And we're really excited to dig into a little bit on that.  I think latency is the next big frontier that will determine how good a connection is.  And we want to learn more about how Comcast is implementing that.  So, that's the future.  Let's dig into the present.

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Arielle Roth is going to be -- Arielle Roth, sorry -- is gong to be head of NTIA, it looks like.  She has worked most recently for Senator Ted Cruz.  And prior to that -- um -- Commissioner Michael O'Reilly at the Federal Communications Commission.  As well as a few other folks.  Does anyone know anything about her?  I wouldn't have recognized her name four weeks ago.  Because I'm not that plugged in.

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Doug Dawson:  I only know one thing about her.  She's for technology neutral.  So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  OK.  And how do you know that?  Because she said it in a --

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Doug Dawson:  Only because she said it in a press release.  Yes.  So --

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Kim McKinley:  Yeah, no.  I've read some of her articles throughout the years -- over the past few days.  She seems pretty level-headed.  I mean, I think she's going to -- everything -- all the talking points -- that she's going to review BEAD -- is no surprise to anyone.  But it doesn't seem like she's incredibly right -- right, right -- in my opinion.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  I don't how right -- or l- -- I mean, I don't know how left -- she is not.  I'm always curious in a situation like this.  A lot of people may take what she wrote when she was working for Senator Cruz as like her opinion, but that wasn't her opinion. And so --  And not only that, now she'll be exposed to a lot of other arguments and things that she may not have considered before.  And who knows?  So -- But she certainly seems not to be unqualified.  And I don't say that because I'm --

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Doug Dawson:  No.

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Christopher Mitchell:  -- trying to cast shade on her.  There's some people that are going into positions where they don't seem to have a lot of background.  She seems to have as much background in this as we would expect someone in that position. And people are speaking highly of her. So --

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Kim McKinley:  She's ** at all.

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Doug Dawson:  If anything, she has -- nah, nah.  And she seems to have more experience than most folks would.  So, yeah, no, she seems very highly qualified. So --

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Kim McKinley:  I think it was a good pick from the Trump administration. Personally.  I know --  Yeah.

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Christopher Mitchell:  So, we'll see where that goes.  The --  We don't want to spend a lot of time on that, because I think it's still mostly sort of trying to read tea leaves.

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Let's dive in to one in which I think everyone may know something about this.  But Zayo says that they're seeing a big spike in orders for fibers.  And I -- I still don't get it.  On a previous show, I had said that I don't get why AI would necessarily lead to needing more fibers.  I could certainly imagine why there's a lot more WDM and DWDM and stuff like that, to some extent.  But the numbers they're talking about are WILD.  Did anyone want to fill me in?

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Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  There's a couple reasons.  One is, I think this year I saw a stat that there's something like 1300-1400 new data centers being built.  And most of them are being built in out-of-the-way places.  And so, these places do not -- you know, if you go to a place where all that's there is, you know, 4-6 spare fibers, somebody's got to build a real big pipe.  And so, the first part of the issue is, these places need to get connected to the world. And there's a whole lot of fiber has to built to do that.  You know, you're absolutely right that these data centers don't really -- You know, an AI data center is not using any more data than a Google data center who's doing a Google search.

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Kim McKinley:  Hey, Doug.

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Doug Dawson:  Yeah.

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Kim McKinley:  Can I ask you a question on that?  So, --

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Doug Dawson:  Uh huh.

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Kim McKinley:  You're talking that 1300-1400 more data centers are being built this year. Where are they going?  Like, are they -- are we seeing them in a geographical area?  Are we seeing different ** --

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Doug Dawson:  Oh, they're everywhere.  The biggest ones are going in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is next to the major internet POP.  But, literally, they're everywhere.  Just take 1,350 states.  They're everywhere.  I mean, I'm talking to folks in Arkansas and Wisconsin and you name it.  **

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Christopher Mitchell:  Gary Bolton just mentioned one in northeast Louisiana, which, you know, didn't even have any fiber.  Wouldn't have been a candidate.  But because of some of the recent investments is now getting a major data center.

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Doug Dawson:  But even after, if someone's built a fiber to the home network, they haven't built enough fibers to support a data center.  Because these guys want --  The biggest I've seen wanted 200 fibers to leave their data center --

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Christopher Mitchell:  OK.  So, let's move on --

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Doug Dawson:  -- which was insane.  But they --

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Christopher Mitchell:  And that makes sense.  But I still --  That doesn't explain a lot of this discussion.  And so, I don't know if anybody else wants to jump in on thoughts on why we need so much more fiber, even along established routes.

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Doug Dawson:  Well, the -- half the reason is, they want DEDICATED.  They don't want to share ANYTHING with ANYBODY.

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Christopher Mitchell:  But why not --

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Doug Dawson:  Most of the --  Because they're tech pros, and they want to do it their own way.  And they're, like, I don't want to share anything.  And they have that -- They're going, I'm putting $5 billion to build this data center.  I want dedicated end-to-end transport to the internet.  So, that's the main reason.  Most of the major fiber routes don't have a ton of extra fiber. They have a ton of extra CAPACITY. That's not the same thing.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Well, that's what I'm wondering.  I mean, like --

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Doug Dawson:  Yes.

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Christopher Mitchell:  -- it's -- a lot of that stuff's been built.  But we can take advantage of more light waves.

Right?  So --

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Doug Dawson:  Well, you would think so.  But an awful lot of the old backbones are still at 100 Gbps.  They haven't upgraded.  So, there's still a --  There's not as much capacity as you think, on an awful lot of those routes.

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Paul Dickinson:  Chris, to Doug's point, they not only want dedicated and more capacity. They want it to be protected, too.

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Doug Dawson:  Yes.

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Christopher Mitchell:  OK.

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Paul Dickinson:  So, when I --  When we start sense am, all you got to -- a lot of hyperscalers are looking at their interconnects being protected and how they can enhance that.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Protected from what?  Raccoons?

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Paul Dickinson:  Protected from damage --

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[laughter]

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Kim McKinley:  There's a lot of squirrel --  We've already talked about this.  There's a lot of squirrels out there --

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Christopher Mitchell:  No, I know.

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Paul Dickinson:  Well, we had --  Aerial is squirrels.  Right? But even underground.  Right?  Bad things can happen.  So --

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Christopher Mitchell: But protected from what?  I mean, like, human intrusion?  All these things?

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:Paul Dickinson:  Human intrusion.  Inadvertent excavation.  All kinds of things.

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Christopher Mitchell:  OK.

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Travis Carter:  Like, Chris, In terms of like being on a ring.  A lot of these would be like one lateral.  They're going to build a ring.  Doug point: they're out-- they're between nowhere and nothing.  So there's new routes that have to be built.

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Doug Dawson:  Which -- yeah -- if they're out there in the middle of nowhere, that means fiber.  A brand-new fiber, in multiple directions.  It's a lot of --

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Christopher Mitchell:  But, I mean -- I get this in some cases.  And like, I'm not stupid about like -- Like, California is building a ton of middle-mile in areas where there's really insufficient capacity. But when I see Zayo naming fiver long-haul routes -- Chicago to Columbus, Vegas to Reno, Atlanta to Ashburn, Minneapolis to Chicago, Columbus to Indianapolis -- to me, I'm just shocked that we don't see adequate capacity among those areas already.  I mean, I would have assumed that would have been built a while ago, with like extra conduits and things, and like never having to re-disturb that soil again.

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Travis Carter:  Well, Reid might know in the chat better.  But, like, I'm not sure Zayo HAS a Minneapolis to Chicago route. So --

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Doug Dawson:  The part of -- part of -- That's the other part of it.  This is then putting THEIR version in, and not wanting to share somebody else's.

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Travis Carter:  And if you can attach the capex to AI, which is the buzz word of the year right now, your shareholders are going to be smiling, and you're probably going to be able to get the financing for it.  This is kind of the 5G of this year.  We'll see at Metro Connect, Kim, what next year's buzz word's going to be. But right now, --

0:11:52:

Kim McKinley:  I'm excited.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Well, I'm --

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Doug Dawson:  You're asking the wrong question, is, why do we need this many AI data centers?  That's the real question.  That seems to be mind-boggling to me.  So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  I mean -- you know, I was -- I was in high school -- I was out of high school -- by the time the dot-com bubble burst in the late '90s.  But does this feel similar?  I mean, in terms of --  It would be an interesting parallel, in that AI may yet be super-transformative, but it could still have bubbles that burst along the way.

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Kim McKinley:  What are you trying to say, Chris?  That you're so young?  Is that what you're trying to say right now?  Like, I was too young to know about tech bubble burst?

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Travis Carter:  Well, Chris, every ** has winners and losers.  Right?  For sure. You know.  There's going to be a lot of money spent.  And some of it will find a good home.  And I think some of it will be wasted.

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Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  Some of these routes will be built, and -- five yeas ago -- hey, there's nobody on our route.  That's exactly what I expect.  Yeah. So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  OK.  Well, it IS going to be interesting.  And I think I'll just wrap up that segment with what Travis had said, which is, sometimes technologists forget that the role of finance and other things in this. And certainly, if you're already planning to build a route, and you are better able to secure the capital, because of attaching some buzz words to it, that's how things can work.

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Christopher Mitchell:  The last thing we're going to talk about before we dive into fiber optic sensing and what that means is that -- we talked about the -- Chairwoman Rosenworcel's efforts to try to resolve problems in the apartment-building market. And we talked about how -- you know, I feel like sometimes a guarantee of the entire building -- a bulk contract -- kind of works to the benefit of everyone.  Sometimes, it really works to the detriment.  It's hard to have one rule that controls all of those situations. Low-income situations are much different from a higher-end building.  But all of that is being tossed out.  There was a rule that was going to allow people who are renting to opt out of a bulk arrangement.  And that will no longer be possible.  And I was just curious if anyone had any reactions to the new Federal Communications Commission tossing that out?

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Kim McKinley:  I will sit back and say what I've always said.  I don't think it's the FCC's role to tell private owners of MDUs how they should dictate their internet service.  So, I LIKE this.  this makes me happy, actually.  But go ahead.

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Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  I never thought it was going to get through the OLD FCC.  Remember, this thing was open for a whole year.  They couldn't even get it voted on.  And so, I think there was obviously -- even among the majority, there was at least one person who didn't want to vote for this.  There was --  I don't know if there's been anything since net neutrality that had so many comments filed as this topic.  I mean, they've just been plastered with people complaining about it. And almost everybody was on the "don't do it" side.  So, I think they had second thoughts on it anyhow.  You know, the thing that bothered people was not that a resident could opt out.  Their problem was that --  Remember, it also tried to force open access into apartments.  That was the issue.  Not the opting out.  So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  Travis, did you have any signs of relief, 'cause you just like things the way they are, generally?

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Travis Carter:  No, no.  My opinion was that I would NEVER go to a landlord and say, oh, the FCC says you have to. Let me in.  You know.  We -- That was never going to be an approach, if it passed or not.  So, that doesn't make much difference to me.

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Doug Dawson:  And that's the practical word.  Who would go into a building where the landlord doesn't want them?

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Travis Carter:  [laughs]  Yeah, right. Imagine that relationship.

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Christopher Mitchell:  Well, I mean, --  So --

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[multiple speakers]

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Christopher Mitchell:  I'll tell you who has:  Dane Jasper, who a lot of us hold in very high regard, running Sonic.  He's done that in San Francisco.  And when San Francisco told landlords, you can't keep Dane out, Dane said it resolved 4 out of 5 of his problems.  I haven't checked in with him more recently to see what the long-term ramifications were, but --

0:16:02:

Kim McKinley:  OK.  So, we like Dane.  We like Dane. But what other one beside Dane? Dane is kind of like a --  He's a pusher of the buttons.  Right?  So --

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Christopher Mitchell:  Monkeybrains.  Whoever's running that today, in San Francisco, also.  So, San Francisco and Oakland have both done this.  And there's a fair number of smaller ISPs that have taken advantage of it.  And I'm not saying that, you know, city government has a different role.  So, I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily, Kim, about your OVERLY-BROAD statement about the FCC's role in all of this.  But --

0:16:32:

Kim McKInley:  Overly-broad.

0:16:33:

Christopher Mitchell:  Overly-broad.  Way too broad.  [laughs] But at the same time, like, I think it's a significant issue that there's probably more than a million people in an apartment building where they have to pay the cable company -- not a good one, necessarily, or a big one -- but, like, some cable company that can't hold it together, and they don't have another choice for internet access.  And that sucks.  This is an essential utility.  You know.  Like, we wouldn't let someone lock up a building with like the electricity contract, and have them not perform.  You know. We regulate it.

0:17:05:

Kim McKinley:  This is where you're going overly-broad on the other side of the equation, **.  Well, 'cause I think it's -- we're assuming that there's always going to be bad actors in all of these spaces.  But a lot of these contracts are actually pretty robust that the people are getting. And they're actually satisfied with their bulk internet, and they get it for cheaper because it's a bulk internet deal, too.

0:17:29:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  It's hard to say --   ** million people.   Go ahead, Doug.

0:17:33:

Doug Dawson:  The last thing I want to say is, the thing that none of these FCC things looked at is -- It's not the top half of the market, where there are people fighting to get into these buildings.  It's the bottom half, where they can't talk ANY ISP into coming into the building.

0:17:45:

Kim McKinley:  Um hum.

0:17:45:

Doug Dawson:  And this didn't solve that one bit.  So --  And --

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Kim McKinley:  That's a question for Travis.  Is there ever a building that you wouldn't go into for whatever reason?

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Travis Carter:  I think --  So, we have about 80,000 units we've wired since we've started this project.  There was one building that -- we just felt was -- nobody should live in.  It was so bad.  So, it was dangerous to wire.  Other than that, we'll wire everything.  And, again, --

0:18:14:

Doug Dawson:    And Travis is  -- But, again, Travis is the Dane of Minneapolis, here.  So -- You know.  And most of these places are not in major metros.  They're in the smaller cities, where there's not even very many ISPs trying to get their business.  So, a LOT of places don't really have a good option.  So --

0:18:30:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  And, honestly, for the last 5 years, we haven't really had a hard time getting into buildings, other than buildings that are government-owned.  That's a whole separate problem.  And maybe that's where this ruling should be, is that government buildings should be obligated to let competition in.  'Cause I'll tell you what, you can't -- no one will take your call over there.

0:18:52:

0:18:52:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, Mike McCarthy has done great work in San Francisco.  And asked that question about  AT&T.  And I think that's where -- Again, the Federal Communication -- A Federal Communications Commission would be well-suited, I think, to look specifically at some of the gimmicks that have been tried.  Because --  Kim, this allows me to do a final point as we're wrapping up, which is that the Federal Communications Commission has already used its broad authority to tell the internet service providers that they cannot have exclusive contracts. Right?

And - um --  And so, the agreements that we see are ways to try and get around that.  But the problem is that when the FCC said you can't have an exclusive contract, there's no way to force a building owner to then act on that.  The building owner can CHOOSE to have an exclusive contract.  But once they sign that deal, they break it at any minute, under the existing law.  And so, I support that as well.  And that's why I think the FCC should have this authority.  Although I would agree that there is a challenge of -- as to how broadly they're going to use it.  Last comments?

0:20:02:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  I guess, to Mike's point, at least in our world, we run our own cabling.  We don't try to use existing cabling in buildings. And we DO try to negotiate an exclusivity with the building on the use of our cables, that we paid to put in.

0:20:17:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, when you say you try to, you're saying you don't take it as a given that they're going to be exclusive.

0:20:25:

Travis Carter:  On our own cable plant, 99.9 percent are fine with that.  You know.  If you pay to put your own cable plant in, you should be able to use it. Yup.  So, I'm a fan of that.  Other than just anyone can use it.

0:20:42:

Christopher Mitchell:  Doug, any last comments?  Or Paul?

0:20:46:

Doug Dawson:  Nah.

0:20:47:

Kim McKinley:  I DO love Juan's comment, though, in the comments.  That just made me laugh.

0:20:51:

Christopher Mitchell:  I assume that Juan is just taking a piss -- as they say -- across the pond [laughs],  because that's not my opinion [laughs].

0:21:01:

Travis Carter:  Well, we --  Here's a genius idea.  How about the state mandate what we should charge for service?  That's where -- You know.  We could do that.  That's genius.

0:21:11:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, I'll you what -- we --

0:21:11:

Doug Dawson:  He already taught you that.  Remember, he said the cities are doing it.  The cities are doing exactly what the FCC was trying to do.  So --  Yup.

0:21:18:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.

0:21:19:

Christopher Mitchell:  I mean, I -- you know, it's one of those things where it's easy to sit here and to be like, oh, if's funny.  The state's trying to make sure everyone has great internet access. Yeah.  Because it's important.  And because we are all missing out on the contributions of tons of people and children that don't have real opportunity in the society.  And we need to solve it.  And the states may not have the best solution.  But we're going to keep fumbling around in the dark until we figure something out.  Paul, were you going to say something?

0:21:45:

Paul Dickinson:  No, I was just thinking a cute phrase.  Instead of reduce the digital divide, we need to reduce the mental divide.

0:21:53:

Christopher Mitchell:  [laughs]  Yes. That's an ongoing project, I think.

0:21:58:

Kim McKinley:  I don't think that's solvable, though.  I was just going to say.

0:22:01:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, we are going to --

0:22:03:

Doug Dawson:  Chris will bring it up in another couple of shows.  We'll figure it out.

0:22:07:

Christopher Mitchell:  We are going to transition to the fiber optic sensing situation.  I will tell you -- and mostly for the benefit of Juan -- that when my grand plans are complete, and I am ruling everything, and making decisions for every person on a daily basis, we WILL have widespread fiber optic sensing.  But until then, we're going to learn more about what that means,  and what some of the barriers are to taking full advantage of it.  Paul, I didn't even know what this was until a few months ago.  You showed the video with me --

0:22:34:

Paul Dickinson:  Well, I mean, I'll bet 95 percent of your audience doesn't have -- know what it is either.  So --

0:22:38:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  Do you want me to pull the slide up, or do you want to describe a little bit about it first?

0:22:41:

Paul Dickinson:  Um.  Let me describe a little bit about it first.  So, you know, we're all here.  I mean, I remember ILSR from the last -- I don't know many years you guys have been around -- a couple decades at least.  Right?  But you're all about resilience, sustainability, autonomy of, you know -- And for digital divide reduction, and all-broadband.  Right?

So, that's what I've been about for my whole career. Whether it's infrastructure, in its rudimentary standpoint, or whether it's this new, exciting technology.  So, I'll start by -- I guess I'll start at a high level.  So, we're spending a ton of money.  We're in the process -- whether it's government grants, whether it's private investment going forward -- of continuing to try to make the U.S. catch up, and other folks globally who are going to try to catch up.  So, we're implementing a ton of broadband right now, whether it's for, you know, data centers, using 10 times more data, using AI, or other reasons.  Right? That's going to continue to go on for the foreseeable future.  I was talking to Gary Bolton, you know, just a few weeks ago about this.

And, you know, whether it's a BEAD or whether it's private funding, that's going to go on forever.  On top of that, energy infrastructure is going to start taking off. Right?  'Cause we need that.  AI drives that.  And EV vehicles.  And all kinds of --  So we're going to keep building infrastructure.  So, the thing that -- a light bulb went off in my head a couple years ago.  And I'll describe what the Fiber Optic Sensing Association is, is all this infrastructure that's already in place, AND all the infrastructure about to be put in place, if it could only be used for something more, that would justify the cost structure of going down rural routes, and low pass rates, and getting broadband to everybody else.

0:24:21:

So, I chaired the Fiber Optic Sensing Association for the last couple years.  This year, I'm not.  I'm a board member.  But I'm trying to do other cool, exciting things within the organization.  And we tried to create a lot of awareness on what this technology can do.  And what -- I guess I'm really happy you guys invited me.  I'm very happy about this.  Because every time I talk to an audience, I ask people -- and you can't do it here -- how many people know about the technology.  And you get like 2-3 percent.  Right?  Because people just haven't been plugged in on this at all.  You know, someone like Kim, she gets a discussion on Uber, and it brings them up to -- you know, provokes some interest.  Right?

0:25:01:

So, maybe we should bring up a slide.  Bring up the first slide, Chris.

So, this is kind of where I started my career, and where I start a mental mindset to get us all grounded -- is --  We all know this.  So, this is what we're building.  Right? That -- I don't care whether it's backhaul or whether it's direct connections.  Conduit and fiber cable are everywhere.  And they're going to continue to proliferate.  You know, I don't care, 5G, 6G, **, or whatever. It's required along the roads. It's required to interconnect everything.  So, as you think about this, you know, do you stop at just broadband?  Or, do you HAVE to stop at just broadband?  What else can the fiber do, to improve the business case for those who want to put the fiber in, you know, to push it further.  To lower their hurdle rate, of whatever's required.  So, that's the message.  And that's what's got me really excited.  And maybe even -- pull up the next slide --  So, I'll --

0:25:55:

Christopher Mitchell:   Well, I just wanted to interrupt for a second to make sure people have a sense.  So, what you're talking about is that you're connecting a bunch of homes.  And in an urban area, you're connecting -- paying like, you know, $1,000 - $1,500 a home.  To connect it.

And in a rural area, you know, many multiple thousands. And then, you're generating revenue off house -- or NOT, in some cases, if they're not paying for anything.

0:26:19: And you're saying, what else can we do with the fiber that's already in the ground? that would generate revenue to help cover those costs?

0:26:24:

Paul Dickson:  That's right.  Yeah. And I want to qualify what you said a little bit.  Probably the last hurdle, down the road, for fiber optics sensing is going to be around the home, and the really distributed network around fiber to the home.  That's not the sweet spot right now at all. It's basically middle mile.  It's rings around cities.  It's long-haul routes.  It's routes along highways.  It's route across bridges.  It's longer routes.

And you'll see, when I show you what the technology is, why it lends itself to that.

0:26:48:So, this is what I -- When we were at Fiber Broadband Association this past year, we won a really cool award. We won the Game Changer Award, as the Fiber Optic Sensing Association. I should tell what that organization is.  That organization is a nonprofit, like yourselves.  Formed in 2017.  With a bunch of really cool members, including most of the large fiber cable providers around the world.  You can look up on the site and see who they are.

Along with the providers of this technology.  Along with the implementers of this technology.  And the technology works.  The technology's been vetted.  The technology's been around for a couple decades.  Chris, you and I chatted earlier about where is it being used. You know, it's  been used around -- and is continuing to be used around the border.  For security purposes.  It's been used in oil and gas pipelines.  And so, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, because I haven't told you what it is yet, but basically, the infrastructure that's in the pipes now, where we're building middle mile routes and long routes on behalf of feeding fiber to the home -- right? -- can be used for an entirely different purpose.  What it does is, it turns the dark telecom fiber into a continuous distributed array of sensors.  And, right now, we're talking one dark fiber.  Down the road -- and I'm going to talk a little bit about ITU standards that are being looked at right now -- it'll be a channel.  It'll be a CWM channel, dedicated to this technology.

0:28:17:

Christopher Mitchell:  Could I --

0:28:17:

Kim McKinley:  I just need to say that -- thanks for making us all look bad, Paul, for having a whole slide deck, and everything prepared for your show today.

0:28:24:

Paul Dickinson:  Well, it's four slides, Kim.  C'mon.  If I want to give you a whole slide deck, I'll give you 60.  But I have a hard time.  As you get to know me, narrowing it down to four slides.

0:28:34:

Christopher Mitchell:  When you say a dark fiber, I want to be clear.  My understanding of a dark fiber is a fiber that has like no equipment on either end of it.  It's just sitting there.

0:28:43:

Paul Dickinson:  That's right.

0:28:43:

Christopher Mitchell:  You're actually using a lit fiber, through, that is --

0:28:47:

Paul Dickinson:  Well, no.  Actually, let me clarify that.  And probably the best way to clarify that would be to jump into the third slide, so I tell you what it actually is, before we get too far ahead of ourselves here. So, the same fiber -- G dot whatever -- 652 dash whatever -- that is being used for broadband.  We don't require -- although it has advantages to use so -- in some cases, a better fiber. Or a fiber Bragg rating fiber. This same fiber is used for this technology,  So, I want to set the record there straight.  We're not putting in new fibers on behalf of this technology.

0:29:23:

The other thing is, instead of sending pulses from one end to the other, like in broadband, and receiving it, and interpreting it, which is how broadband works, what you're doing is, you're sending a fine linewidth laser pulse down the fiber, and you're simply getting backscatter at the same location.  That backscatter -- which, for the purposes of your audience right now we're not going to get into -- can take on various different types of backscatter.  But --  And some of it can -- is acoustically related.  Some can give you temperature information.  And some can give you strain information.  For the tekkies on this call, the way the technology works, if you think about it, the fiber --  Like with OTDR, you're sending a laser down the fiber.  You're sending many, many pulses.  And let's assume that -- I don't know -- we're just going to pick something.  There's an excavator 30 meters to the right of the fiber.  It's making noise because it's digging.  Believe it or not, this is where it sounds -- it gets magical.  That noise is transmitted from the excavator, under the ground, through the ground, to the conduit, and through the conduit, to the outer part of the cable, past whatever absorbents you have in there, to the fiber, causes a microstrain in the glass.  And that changes the reflectance.  When that happens, then the algorithms, and all the people that have developed this technology for the last couple of decades, can identify, by the cadence, the intensity, and other cool things, actually exactly where it is, to within 5-10 meters.  And can identify -- So, that's where the OTDR part comes in.  But they actually can classify and characterize what it is.  So --  And can screen out background noise.

0:31:01:

So now, if you go back to that slide -- Let me talk through that just a little bit more, Chris, unless someone wants to jump in and ask me a question.  So, I threw some silhouettes in here.  Right? So, it could be nefarious activities. Somebody, you know, getting into a manhole.  Or doing something you don't want them to do.  For hyperscale, or whatever.  Or whomever. It could be an excavator.  It could be a guy with a shovel.  Or it could be road-wise traffic.  All these things create acoustic noise.  All that acoustic noise will be picked up by the fiber. And it will be classified and characterized as to what it is.  So, think of it almost as an infinite microphone.  So, instead of it being discrete IOT devices that you've got to place -- you know, with cameras or whatever, every X number of kilometers, you're basically  getting a continuous feed of what's happening within a long distance on either side of the fiber.  For, you know, 50 or 100 kilometers.

0:31:55:

So, now, to get to your point, Chris, before I go too far, a dark fiber versus lit fiber.  So, the way the technology is TYPICALLY implemented now is -- because there's a plethora of fibers in conduits, in cables, across right-of-ways, you dedicate a dark fiber to it.  A dark fiber not having any signal on it all.

But it doesn't have to stop --  That's the easiest to do.  But IT was looking at it right now --  How do we select and standardize on particular channels.  Because that would be the cool thing to do.  If you have a lit telecom network, for example.  So, this is coming.  Telecom is aggressively looking at it.  And --  Kim, did you have a question?

0:32:35:

Christopher Mitchell:  No, no.  She's laughing at me and Jordan fighting over who's controlling the picture here.

0:32:40:

Paul Dickinson:  [laughs]  OK. OK.  So, you basically -- I mean, there's temperature you can gather, which affects the electrical industry.  And we can go there if we have time.  But let's -- For the purpose of your audience, think of it like acoustic energy.  Think of it like damage prevention.  And think of it as situational awareness.  That's my favorite term: situational awareness.

0:33:01:

So, how do you get situational awareness in a network? You put up cameras.  You put up other sensors.  And you identify what's going on.  What if you had a passive fiber, that didn't require power, the entire distance, and it was giving you situational awareness?  Now, eventually, we'll get into it -- not right now, 'cause I'll take a breath -- all the use cases that that enables.  It's amazing how many use cases that enables.

0:33:25:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, and that's where, I think, the -- um --  Putting up cameras is, in many cases, great, if you're running a water utility, difficult.  To monitor all your pipes with cameras.  So, you had mentioned, I think, that one of the things it can do is monitor leaks and things like that.  {Nods]

0:33:44:

Paul Dickinson:  Yeah.  Exactly. So, just to give you an example. Before we get into a long laundry list here.  So, where it really penetrated first was oil and gas.  In fact, there's an API standard right now of this being a really good way to prevent an Olympic-size swimming pool leak of oil coming out of a pipeline before you detect it.  Right? Because --  And this is where the crazy magic happens.  If you have a conduit and a fiber cable -- with standard fiber cable -- maybe it's gel-filled, maybe it's super-absorbent, better if it's gel-filled -- a meter away from an underground oil pipeline under high pressure, and a millimeter-sized leak develops, the noise through that orifice of that leak can be picked up by the fiber, and you can say, on this particular mile, of this-and-this location, there's something going on.  Go fix it. So --  It's just amazing.  And then, from a temperature perspective, if you have a bigger leak, and it causes ground swell and temperature changes, you can detect that.  So, think about the environmental impact.  Think about the safety impact.  Think about the nefarious activity -- dare we say terrorism-type activity -- impact.  All this stuff can happen, now, with the fiber that's already there, if it's in the right location.  Now, in some cases, it's not.  Right?

0:34:59:

And so, what are we about to do?  We're about to build out a ton of infrastructure.  Why WOULDN"T we try to do two things at the same time?  Solve the broadband need.  And move it 10 meters to the right so you can do other things with it.

So, that's the message that myself and the Fiber Optic Sensing Association --  And, by the way, I'm going to mention another cool organization here.  The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure.  I just joined their advisory council.  They're all about this, too.  They're all about climate impacts.  They're all about damage prevention.  Resilience in the electrical industry.  If you guys aren't aware of these organizations, check them out. AII.org.

So, very, very cool organization.

0:35:36:

Kim McKinley:  Say that again.  A-I --

0:35:38:

Paul Dickinson:  A-I-I

0:35:41:

Christopher Mitchell:  Kim, Captain Obvious, the -- Paul Dickinson, Dura Line, and FOSA, and AII. This is the episode where Kim and I go after each other.

0:35:54:

Kim McKinley:  Yes.

0:35:51:

Paul Dickinson:  Dura Line pays the bills.  And, you know, of course, is the leader in wonderful things like this. Right?

Which many of you guys know, and many of your audience knows. Well, if you take something like this and do more with it, with the technology I'm talking about.  Now you've opened up a wonderful Pandora's Box of use cases.

0:36:15:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, let's --  Hold that up again for a second.  And then, I want to ask everyone if they have questions.  But let me be clear.  So, if you were to have that underground, and you were to have, you know, all seven channels of that filled up with different fiber counts and things like that, one fiber in it, no matter where, could be doing sensing for the area all around that whole installation.

0:36:36:

Paul Dickinson:  Exactly.  Exactly. So, you could think of all kinds of creative things you could do.  Right? You put this in, and then you wait until the next fiber cable -- first fiber cable goes in.  And you dedicate a dark fiber -- before you get to the point of dedicating a DWM channel -- right? --  And you say, that one fiber can not just protect the right-of-way [gesturing that the right-of-way is the entire collection of the seven tiny conduits]. It could protect the right-of-way with, you know, fiber 10 meters on either side of it.  So, guess what.  And this is where the village comes in.  What's in a right-of-way?  It's not typically just telecom fiber.  It's utilities.  It's water mains.  It's gas mains.  Right? So, if you could leverage this one fiber, and do what I'm talking about doing, to give you situational awareness in that right-of-way, everybody benefits.

0:37:21:

Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  So, we -- Go ahead, Kim, and then I'm going to go to Travis.

0:37:24:

Kim McKinley:  Yeah.  I was just going to ask.  Do we have a city or --  Like, where can people learn more about where this is actually being -- in day-to-day practice right now?

0:37:35:

Paul Dickinson:  Yeah.  That's a long conversation for another day.  But FiberOpticSensing.org.  Start there. Right?

0:37:40:

Kim McKinley:  OK.

0:37:40:

Paul Dickinson:  That's the Fiber Optic Sensing Association.  And you can read stuff there.  All the member companies that are on this organization, that have the technology.  And, by the way, down the road, probably some Tier 1's will join.  And others who are starting to implement this technology. And, by the way, open access, you'll find an open access provider on there, if you look carefully.

They are --  There are people that are excited about this technology and want to see it happen.  So, that's where you would learn.  And, you know, look on my LinkedIn.  I've done a ton of talks in the last couple years.  And it's probably too many.  Where I've given lots of examples, and things.  But, basically, that's where this came from.  People aren't aware of the technology.  And why not --  My favorite term in the world, outside of perspective, which I use with my friends all the time, is multiuse.  So, I know, Chris, I sent you this earlier.  Why wouldn't you want to have a network you're building out become multiuse? So, within the Fiber Optic Sensing Association, you know, we sent wording and letters to Congress -- to senators -- suggesting that, as they go forward and they award tons of money, they preferentially award people who are open-minded enough to try to implement a technology along with broadband that will benefit the cities -- benefit munici- -- i mean, you guys are all about municipalities, and sustainability, and reliability.  What's more sustainable than having something that you already have in place -- or you're building out -- that's going to protect your utilities, and give you better maintenance costs, --

0:39:11:

Christopher Mitchell:  We'll come back to some of the challenges of that before we wrap up. But I want to see, Travis, how are you reacting to all this?

0:39:17:

Travis Carter:  So, does this exist today?  Or is this a white paper?

0:39:22:

Paul Dickinson:  No, no, no.  It exists. Big time.  So, yeah --

0:39:25:

Travis Carter:  So, the practical use that I see --  So, our fiber network is in a metro area.  So, we spend a lot of time playing defense.

'Cause there's a lot of digging and construction happening. So, are you envisioning a scenario where we could allocate a fiber along a backbone route for sensing, and it would it would be smart enough to determine if someone was digging over -- into it?

0:39:50

Paul Dickinson:  Ah.  So, Travis, I'll have to send you a Starbucks card later or something.  So, that's the perfect segue.  Let me tell you quickly, if I can, the Texas 811 story.  So, you don't call -- You all know Common Ground Alliance.

I'm sure you do.  And you all know, there's tons of damage that occurs every year from infrastructure, that people don't call, don't do the ticket, or the stuff mislabeled and the mapping really stinks.  Nobody's sure of its results.  I mean, you've seen all of that.  Right? So, the call centers of this country, now, being led by Texas 811, are looking at --  You know how tech --  I mean, you know how high call centers work.  Right?  I'm sure you do.  Right? Where everyone puts in a ticket  And they have the polygons.  And they --  You have to wait a couple days.  OK.  Well, Texas 811 has published papers.  Go to their site.  You'll see a big fiber optic sensing blurb right there.  I think it's Texas811.org.  Right?

And we work with them -- within FOSA, I personally worked with them -- on doing lookups.  So, imagine this crazy scenario, Travis.  Imagine that a bunch of utilities, on their critical routes -- or telecoms -- have identified that this is a route that I don't have redundancy. This is a route I can't have go down. This is route where I'm tired of having drones fly over and check my stuff, or doing all this other technology. I'm going to implement this technology. So, they take this unit or two. And they -- in 25 to 50 kilometers in each direction, passively, they set up this monitoring system.  Just imagine that.  Right?  They put this in place.  And then they align with the call center and say, every time I get an alert, or you guys get an alert on my right-of-way, will you tell me whether it's an 811-sanctioned activity or not?  And 811 will say, yeah, this one was fine.  Oh, great.  Now I know when it's starting, I know when it's stopping.  That's cool.  This one was NOT sanctioned.  There's something bad going on.  Someone is digging in the wrong spot.  Guess what. An alert goes out within 2 minutes. A crew is notified.  And they say, stop what you're doing.  I don't know why you're out there.  This was never an intended activity.

0:41:49:

So, Travis, this is the vision.  Is for utilities and people in the right-of-way to implement this technology in a cost-effective manner.  And the other thing that's changed in the industry -- The cost and the functionality of the equipment have gone down.

So, first, it was, does it work?  It works.  Any one of the member companies have folks who can show you it works.  If you're interested.  I can help you facilitate that.  Number 2, does it -- is it cost-effective?  Well, guess what.  If you're one entity trying to make it cost-effective, then your hurdle rate is higher.  But if you're looking at the whole accumulation of who can be protected in the right-of-way, the costs go down.  The second thing is, the equipment has gone from being one-directional to multi-port. And the cost has dropped tremendously in the size on a rack.  So, the costs have gone down.  We're right at the sweet spot right now for this technology to be implemented, if someone will simply do the business case.  I have a municipality.  I'm doing overbuild.  And I can do the following.  And I can reap the rewards.  So --

0:42:49:

Travis Carter:  You'll spend the next 100 years trying to get a municipality to do it.

0:42:53:

Paul Dickinson:  OK, --

0:42:53:

Travis Carter:  But for a fiber operator who's trying to protect their backbones, in a basic --  So, just -- what I'm trying to understand -- basic use case --

0:43:01:

Paul Dickinson:  Yeah.

0:43:03:

Travis Carter:  We take one fiber out of our backbone, that goes from end to end.  And we put your magic laser on one end.  And it can determine whether somebody's digging along the route, and notify us?

0:43:15:

Paul Dickinson:  Yes.

0:43:16:

Christopher Mitchell:  And so, for context, Travis is a home-run, Ethernet network.

And so, he has 5,400-count fibers [laughs] that are a real headache if someone were to go chopy-chop on them.

0:43:32:

Travis Carter:  Well, that was where I was going to with it.  So, that's on a dedicated fiber.  But is this on a specific wavelength?  Can this like go through a splitter network, too?

0:43:40:

Paul Dickinson:  Splitters are difficult.  Because you need a return signal coming back.

And that's why I say, the last frontier to be conquered here will be the true PON splitter --  I mean, it will be figured out.  But right now, we're talking -- Travis, your best opportunity is, you know, 5-km routes or longer.

Middle mile routes.  Feeder routes.  When I'm talking electric grid, I'm talking longer distribution routes or transmission routes.  So, your bet- --  Don't think of it as a fragmented -- I'm going to do this through splitters and get this wonderful intelligence.  That's not where we are right now.  Where we are is still a huge sweet spot.  I mean, middle mile providers

that are out there, with government funding, or their own funding -- private funding -- who are out there building routes to support fiber to the home --  They're approaching FOSA, they're approaching me and others and saying, how can I make my entire route not just a cool right-of-way but how can I make it intelligent? I wish I could tell you.  I can't.

0:44:37:

Travis Carter:  Is this like a 1-U appliance that we can just put in, and --

0:44:41:

Paul Dickinson:  It's a 1 [U] to 2 [U] to 3 U, depending on the company.

Standard power.  Think of it like --  I'll give you an example.  So, I did a lot of work with the Utah Department of Transportation --

0:44;50:

Christopher Mitchell:  OK, but you have to keep it quick, because we gotta get done --

0:44:53:

Travis Carter:  Well, and then, how much does this cost, per object?  Any idea what somebody would pay for it?

0:44:59:

Paul Dickinson:  We're going to have to costs at another time.  It's a complicated topic.  And Chris is telling me we're short on time.  The bottom line is, it's cost effective.  And it depends on how fragmented it is, and whether you're doing multi-port, and --  there's all kinds of variables.

0:45:12:

Travis Carter:  All right.  Well, I want to try it.  So, when are we going to --  Can we do it next week?

0:45:17:

Paul Dickinson:  Reach out to me and I'll line you up with somebody.  I'm sure, right now, if there are folks listening, they're going to start calling you, Travis, right away.

0:45:23:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  We still have time to dig deeper.  I just want to make sure Doug has a chance to --

0:45:26:

Travis Carter:  I think this is a great --  If this works, it's an unbelievable defensive mechanism.  So --

0:45:30:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, if it doesn't work, I'm going to be really disappointed in Paul -- [laughs]

0:45:33:

Paul Dickinson:  Chris, can you just put up the one slide you haven't shown?

0:45:37:

Christopher Mitchell:  I will.  I will But I want to give Doug a chance to weigh in first.

0:45:40:

Paul Dickinson:  OK.  Cool. Yeah.

0:45:40:

Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  No.  He actually asked something -- cost is obviously the question.  The only other observation I have -  You said, when you go to put a fiber down a road, why wouldn't you just move it 6 feet to the left.  Unfortunately, that's not the way our damned right-of-way rules work.  And that alone is a giant problem.  It's like, here's where you can dig.  This is the only place you can dig.  And so, it does take some big coordination --

0:46:05:

Christopher Mitchell:  And this is what I think Paul wanted to make sure we would talk about, Doug. So, you're raising the exact issue --

0:46:06:

Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  Yes.

0:46:06:

Christopher Mitchell:  -- because Paul's --  When Paul -- when we were talking about this, one of the greatest challenges we have to doing this is what you've just identified, which is an unreal --  which is an un- -- a reluctance of some people to play a game and make sure that they're doing their part to make sure we can get the fiber where it could actually do the readings and things like that.

0:46:29:

Doug Dawson:  Oh, yeah.  No. That's the biggest hurdle I see. Yeah.

0:46:31:

Paul Dickinson:  So, I'll give you one example about transportation, Doug, if I could. So, Utah Department of Transportation did a lot of work -- Big and Little Canyon -- with very old fiber, that was intermittently put in, in bad locations.  And what they found was, it gave great situational awareness.  For bad fiber.  Not bad fiber.  Good broadband fiber, badly located fiber for this.  There's a road called American Fork Canyon in the middle of Utah, which is very, very rural.  In that particular case, folks in Utah had the foresight to put in conduit and fiber in an ideal location along that very rural road.  And I think it's two lanes in both directions, or something like that. You can literally see the cars going in both directions, and get traffic, speed, and low-latency information, without any power grid, without any cameras, without any microwave sensors, without any induction loops.

So, we haven't even talked transportation.  I know eventually, Chris, we'll bring up the slide,

0:47:27:

and all the use cases that I slapped together with FOSA. This is just my catchall.  I show this whenever I give a discussion.  And screen-shot it, whatever.  You already have it.  But there's a ton of --  And these are what I consider the emerging markets, that are extremely valuable, and pertinent to this group and your audience.  Right?  Telecom needs to grow, and is growing now.  Transportation -- every DOT that I know is trying to put fiber along their major and minor roads.  And utilities, as we all know, are going to need to grow, as -- to serve AI, to serve data centers, to serve EV vehicles.  If you do this, and you design it in the proper way, you're going to maximize -- you can read as well as I -- all these use cases.  Now, are they perfect?  No.  And that's where it's important to get into the granularity.  But false positives have come down tremendously.  And people are seeing, wow, I can have this -- not for free but for reasonable cost, with a network that I'm building out.  That the primary cost is building the network. Right?

0:48:33:

Doug Dawson:  Now, if you can help this show do less false positives, we've got something. So -- [laughs]

0:48:40:

Christopher Mitchell:  I -- That was actually my question --

0:48:43:

Kim McKinley:  Have we ever had a positive -- is what I'm trying to ask you, Doug.

0:48:46:

Doug Dawson:  Oh.  That -- Good point there.

0:48:47:

Christopher Mitchell:  Every moment that you're on the show, Kim, is a positive.  [laughs]

0:48:54:

Kim McKinley:  It's valentine's day.  Thank you, Chris.

0:48:58:

Christopher Mitchell:  [laughs]  That was -- I was curious, Paul, if you can speak to that.  I mean, I think that is one of those things where --  You know, if you're talking about -- I mean, in Travis' case, for instance -- If over the course of 10 years, he avoids one unintentional cut of 5,400 fibers, I can imagine that there's still tremendous value in there.  But the question is, how many ghosts is he chasing over that time, also?

0:49:20:

Paul Dickinson:  That's a tough question to answer.  Let me just --  I'll start -- I'll give a nebulous hand-waving answer. Ghosts have gone down tremendously. And, basically, there's several things that the practitioners of this technology do.  They do a background noise evaluation first.  If you have a crazy area in your network which you know is always going to have activity that's uncontrollable, you can screen it out. So you can identify where you want to look at it.  So, that's another thing.  The other thing is, these algorithms and libraries of information have become very sophisticated.  I could hand-wave and say "AI learning."  But some of the companies claim to use just that. Right?  And so, by looking at the intensity, and the cadence, all the other experience they have, they do a really good job of lowering the false positive rate.  And then, you could ask yourself, OK, how do you vet that?  How do go about -- and make sure you're not sending crew out there to stop things?  You can think of creative answers there.  You can think of -- I don't know.  I mean, the police do this now with shot detection.  They have drones that fly over and see, hey, what's going on here?  I triangulated someone's shot from this area. Why not have drones fly out and see if it's a real activity or not?  So, there's two sides of the coin.  One side is the detection, and making it cost-effective if it were to work.  The other side is, once you get that alert, Travis, what are you doing with it?  How do you act upon it in a cost-effective manner?  How do you stop, you know, a 100 -- a series of $100,000 damages occurring?  Or that one catastrophic blowup thing that you're going to avoid that you're really glad you detected ahead of time?

0:50:55:

Christopher Mitchell:  Kim, any last thoughts?

0:50:58:

Kim McKinley:  No.  This is the smartest show I've ever been on.  I think this is fascinating.  But I -- I'm excited to go learn more.  Because I think we can talk about it.  But if we -- I like the use cases, so I can see practicality of it.

0:51:09:

Paul Dickinson:  Yeah.

0:51:09:

Kim McKinley:  And my last point is, I think you're going to see the Tier 1's and middle mile providers and long-haul providers be the first on this.  Um.  Before any --

0:51:17:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah, well I think --

0:51:18:

Doug Dawson:  Or the traffic guys.  Traffic guys want to count cars --

0:51:21:

Paul Dickinson:  Well, I can see the middle-mile providers, absolutely, for sure, especially the new ones, that are getting funding and building out new routes. Right?  Because I've already talked with a few of those.  And I can also --  I would love nothing more than the work that we've done at Utah Department of Transportation to be not just provided in a small fashion, but all the DOTs to be cognizant of that, and to go forward with it.  And -- but I think -- and I think the Tier 1's -- as I already told you -- There's an ITU standard that's being looked at now, out of a working group, as to how to integrate this, and how to make it monitizable and functional for -- I mean, what better indication do you have -- do you need to have that it's coming?  For telecom?

0:52:00:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, and that's -- I mean, one of the things that Doug just said -- I don't want to miss -- I did want to make sure we get on to some other topics. You know, from the perspective of me, thinking about how municipalities can build infrastructure, whether that's citywide or elsewhere, the ability to count traffic and know where traffic is, without having to put a significant power source on every single street corner --

0:52:23:

Paul Dickinson:  Yes.  Yes.

0:52:23:

Christopher Mitchell:  -- is significant.  I mean, like, you're talking about saving enough money, both in the build and in the operations of these areas that you could justify a fiber build where you might not be able to otherwise.

0:52:34:

Paul Dickinson:  Well, so, Chris, here's the business case.  For someone to etch out.  Right?  If you have the cost of induction loops, you have the cost of microwave sensors, you have the cost of cameras, all on your road, and you can't put enough of them to capture every incidence.  Right? So, the DOT has a portfolio of maintenance cost and capex cost, and truck rolls that have to occur every year. What if you could put this along your route and reduce the density of those devices by 10-20 percent?

0:53:00:

Christopher Mitchell:  Um hum.

0:53:00:

Paul Dickinson:  The business case is there, right now, to have a low-latency way to monitor traffic, to vet it against these other devices, AND to --  I mean, you could talk climate and green issues, too. There's tons of reasons why every DOT -- in my opinion -- should look at this, and implementing this along the roads. That's just one vertical market.

0:53:19:

Christopher Mitchell:  Right.  But it's one in which I just think --  When -- My understanding of this --  One of the things I think about with telecom is how expensive electricians are.  And if the avoided cost of sending an electrician out to a bunch of places -- And not only that, now avoiding copper theft and stuff --  Like, it's pretty significant.  Doug, you might have one last thing to say, it looks like.

0:53:38:

Doug Dawson:  No, no.  It's -- There's --- I'm sitting here thinking of 50 different uses for it.  So, yes. [laughs]

0:53:45:

Paul Dickinson:  You guys are welcome to reach out to me.  I can hook you up with the right people.  Please check out AII.org, FiberOpticSensing.org, and --

0:53:53:

Kim McKinley:  I do have a question for you, Paul.  Paul, can this fiber optic sensing stuff help Chris with his whatever insulation problem he has today?

0:53:59:

Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  Yeah.

0:54:00:

Christopher Mitchell:  I already use fiber insulation.  [laughs]

0:54:03:

Paul Dickinson:  If you put a ring around his house, and someone tries to steal his insulation, he will be the first one to know, within several meters, and he can take them out.

0:54:11:

Kim McKinley:  OK.  I'm curious about that.  Thank you, thank you.

0:54:13:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  The extruded polystyrene provides an air seal in addition to an R-10.  And so, use fiber optic on the inside of that to get a little more R value.  OK --

0:54:26:

Doug Dawson:  Next topic.  Move on, please.  [laughs]

0:54:30:

Christopher Mitchell:  Not a single person in the chat has complained about my waxing eloquent on this.  OK. Fiber Broadband Association released their Cartesian fiber deployment costs.  The annual report for 2024.

And we've looked through it a little bit.  And I thought it was interesting.  And really cool that they do it.  It's a good place for people to start if you're just trying to get a sense of how some of this stuff works.  So, before I ask whether anyone has any thoughts on it, I do want to say thank you, Paul.  That was wonderful.  Glad you're going to stick around **.

0:55:04

Paul Dickinson: ** got questions here.  So, please, I don't know, maybe people can email me, and I can try to talk to you.

0:55:10:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  Paul's easy to find.  And if not, you can always reach out to me, and I'll connect you.

0:55:13:

Paul Dickinson:  LinkedIn.  LinkedIn. Find me on LinkedIn.

0:55:17:

Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  And Paul's sticking around.  Who wants to weigh in on the FBA report?

0:55:22:

Doug Dawson:  Well, there's a whole bunch of different things in there.  The one I found the most interesting to me was, they're saying that the cost of construction of fiber will continue to increase in the future.  And the reason for that is, you know, the big guys -- there's only like five companies who are building the bulk of the new fiber: AT&T, and Frontier, and -- They've already cherry-picked all the cheap stuff.  So, now, it's -- AT&T wants to do 45 million more passings.  They've got to spend a lot more money per mile.  They - AT&T -- three years ago, you wouldn't have caught them burying a fiber.  Now, they're going to have to bury fiber all over the place to meet those kind of goals.  So, that's one of the drivers behind the FBA's predictions, is --  And it's because we've built so many passings with fiber.  The cheap, easy stuff is done now.  The low-hanging fruit's been done in the cities.  We're now into the stuff that's no longer easy to get to.  And I've always been wondering --  AT&T says 45 million more passings.  As they get 30 million into it, are they really going to do the last 15 [million], when they're really expensive?  I mean, Travis knows the difference in neighborhoods of fiber costs.  It's not the same everywhere.  So --

0:56:27:

Christopher Mitchell:  Right.  I mean, it's one thing to announce a number.  It's another thing, economically --

0:56:30:

Doug Dawson:  It's another thing -- yeah --

0:56:31:

Christopher Mitchell:  -- if the interest rates change.  Any number of things could make a change to the plans.

0:56:34:

Doug Dawson:  Yeah.  So --

0:56:34:

Christopher Mitchell:  I do want to know --

0:56:36:

Doug Dawson:  No doubt --  No doubt it's getting more expensive.  Absolutely.

0:56:38:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, it's getting more expensive, but -- this is an interesting piece out of the executive summary.

"While this year saw deployment costs increase compared to last year, the expectation going into 2025 is that this may cool down slightly.  25% of respondents expect a cost increase of greater than 10% to occur in 2025,"

whereas 40 percent expected that cost -- or, saw that -- or experienced that cost before.

0:57:03:

So, people are expecting the increase to decrease. [laughs]  Which is to say, they think it will increase by less this year than it did in previous years.

0:57:13:

Doug Dawson:  And that's more -- that's more a reflection of interest rates  and inflation, and -- which Travis could talk about all day long.  So, yup. So --

0:57:21:

Kim McKinley:  Travis  is our CFO, like, on here.  Is that what we're saying?

0:57:25:

Travis Carter:  [laughs]

0:57:26:

Doug Dawson:  Yes.  Travis talks real numbers to us all the time.

0:57:29:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  I mean, I think, you know, people are --  You know, I wouldn't be surprised if construction didn't go up 50 cents to a dollar a foot this year.  And it will go up a dollar a foot next year, and the year after, and the year after.

0:57:43:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, to give people a sense of what that would mean, the typical costs for construction in 2024 ranged from $10 to $27 per foot for underground. Travis, I think you're well in that -- you would agree with that range, from what you saw.

0:57:57:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  You know, again, that's -- to Doug's point, you know, the -- a lot of the easier neighborhoods are done.  So, now you're getting into the more costly areas.  So, yes, your --  That range is correct.  Yeah.

0:58:08:

Christopher Mitchell:  And the range was $5 to $14 for the aerial deployments.  And one of the things it said was that they found that labor was 60-80 percent of the cost of any build.

0:58:22:

Doug Dawson:  That's right, too.  Yeah.

0:58:23:

Travis Carter:  So, I would say, labor, conduit, hand holds, locate wire is 85 percent of your construction.

0:58:30:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, what does that leave out?  Permitting, --

0:58:33:

Travis Carter:  Sorry, that's in there, too.  Basically, everything other than fiber and, you know, connectors --

0:58:38:

Doug Dawson:  The rest is fiber, splicing, and connectors.

0:58:41:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  About 85 percent, to build a conduit network.

0:58:45:

Christopher Mitchell:  Wait a minute.  So, Doug added fiber splicing, but you would have included fiber splicing in your 85 percent, but you wouldn't include the physical materials of the fiber.  Right?

0:58:54:

Travis Carter:  Nope.  The extra 15 percent would include the fiber materials, the pulling, the blow -- you know, the jetting, the splicing, etc.  The vast majority --

0:59:04:

Christopher Mitchell:  But isn't splicing labor?  This is where like my mind is -- I'm exp- -- I'm caught.  Right?

0:59:07:

Travis Carter:  You can capitalize the labor, 'cause -- if it's 100 percent allocated to the splicing of a fiber network.

0:59:15:

Christopher Mitchell:  OK

0:59:16:

Doug Dawson:  First, the way to think about it.  Most of the labor is getting the damned conduit in the ground.  That's what it boils down to.

0:59:23:

Travis Carter:  100 percent.

0:59:24:

Kim McKinley:  I mean, Chris, you didn't mention this, but if anybody on here wants to go see the report, it's actually, I think, on the FBA's site.  Or, I followed it through on their LinkedIn profile yesterday, too.

0:59:34:

Doug Dawson:  Yeah.

0:59:36:

Travis Carter:  Reuben, we're talking --

So, in a metro area, it's different than rural.  So, in a metro area, it really depends on what you're running into.  A lot of it is dictated by hard surface issues.  I know my buddy, Jay, he plows fiber cheap out in the rural communities. But in the city, as you're, you know, $12 to $25 a foot.

0:59:59:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  And they -- it does talk about the cost of plowing.  So, you can -- if you look at the report, you can find more details along those lines.

1::00:06:

Doug Dawson:  The city builds, especially of downtowns, they could be $300,000 or $400,000 a mile --

1:00:12:

Travis Carter:  Oh, yeah.

1:00:12:

Doug Dawson:  -- because the issue there is dealing with all the gigantic amounts of infrastructure that's already under the ground.  I mean, --

1:00:21:

Kim McKinley:  What did you say, per mile, Doug?  Would you repeat that?

1:00:21:

Christopher Mitchell:  No, I think --  I mean, --

1:00:26:

Doug Dawson: $300,000 or $400,000 or $500,000 a mile in downtowns.

1:00:28:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  I mean, if you're looking at like --  I mean, particularly -- I mean,  I know that California is California.

1:00:32:

But if you're like at less than a million dollars a mile in California, I think you're really happy.  I think that at some places, like downtowns, you're looking at --

1:00 38:

Doug Dawson:  That's California.

1:00:38

Christopher Mitchell:  But, I mean, even other places, you're looking at --

1:00:40:

Kim McKinley:  You can't -- you can't count ** in California.

1:00 :43:

Christopher Mitchell:  I thought you were looking at like on the order of $100,000 a city block in a number of places.

1:00 49:

Kim McKinley:  Hmm.

1:00:50:

Doug Dawson:  But an awful lot is crazy local costs.  I mean, just permitting alone in cities is a nightmare.  Locating them. They just get you on every single thing you touch.  So, yeah.

1:01:00:

Travis Carter:  I think our last construction through downtown Minneapolis was a little over $100 a foot.  To get through there.

1:01:10:

Christopher Mitchell:  Yeah.  So, that -- that's a --

1:01:14:

Doug Dawson:  That's a half million.  Yup. So --

1:01:14:

Christopher Mitchell:  I was just trying to figure that out.  Is it a half million?  Or is it $5 million?

1:01:18:

Travis Carter:  No, no, no, no, no.

1:01:20:

Christopher Mitchell:  It's a foot -- so, yeah, it's -- **

1:01:22:

Travis Carter:  5,280 feet in a mile, times --

1:01:24:

Christopher Mitchell:  And that's today's episode of Chris doing math in his head too quickly.

1:01:28:

Kim McKinley:  ** refer to the CFO -- that would be Mr. Travis on the call.  So ** talk about this.

1:01:35:

Travis Carter:  So, you gotta have a really good use case.  I will tell you, though, the one advantage of doing those downtown builds: not a lot of construction after.  So, the net- -- you don't have a lot of operational expense moving on, 'cause nobody digs there again.  So --

1:01:48:

Kim McKinley:  Is it hard to find space in some of the downtown areas?  'Cause I know that a lot of them are just congested underneath there.

1:01:55:

Doug Dawson:  A lot are almost impossible.  That's an issue.

1:01:57:

Christopher Mitchell:  And then, I think --  This is where I always enjoy Travis' perspective on the joint builds in downtown areas, where he reports that, inevitably, he gets Christmas Day at 3:00 am as his time slot to build.

1:02:10:

Doug Dawson:  [laughs]

1:02:10:

Travis Carter:  Well --  And you get 4 hours.  So get in there.

1:02:12:

Doug Dawson:  [laughs]

1:02:15:

Christopher Mitchell:  Paul, any thoughts on any of this discussion?

1:02:18:

Paul Dickinson:  No.  No. Not right now.

1:02:20:

Christopher Mitchell:  All right.  Let's jump into who owns the internet.  We're going to talk more about more about Comcast low latency.  Oh, we actually  had one other -- I do want to talk about this other one first.  What do we think about fixed wireless access providers focusing on mobile home complexes as a business model?  I think it's great.  I actually think that it makes -- it's like the best technology for rapidly deploying, and just dealing with that situation.

1:02:43:

Kim McKinley:  This is actually a conversation that we're having right now. Like, why is this such a big conversation.

1:02:48:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, Ry thought it would be a good idea.  And I agree.  That's why.

1:02:51:

Kim McKinley:  [laughs]

1:02:53:

Doug Dawson:  It's really not that different than what they're doing --  They essentially, go out to rural guys -- like where I live.  What they tend to do with fixed wireless is, they don't try to serve everybody, 'cause in hilly areas like where I live, they go pick off little pockets.  So, around here, they'll beam down and pick up 10 houses, 20 houses, 100 houses.  So doing anything like an RV park is EXACTLY what they TRY to do.  So --  That's the only way they can justify even using it.  That doesn't make nearly as much sense if you're in the big, old, flat, open -- you know, of Minneap- -- of Minnesota.  But in a lot of the country, that's exactly how you build a wireless network anyway.  So --

1:03:33:

Christopher Mitchell:  Um.  Sorry. I just want to -- Reuben notes his county and the numbers.  And I just want to point out, Maine has a lot of granite.  And so, depending on where you are, I think, costs are all over the place. If you can plow in Maine, great. If you're hitting granite, you're in big trouble.  So, --

1:03:49:

Doug Dawson:  Is there a place in Maine where you don't hit granite?  [laughs]

1:03:53:

Christopher Mitchell:  I don't know, but --

1:03:54:

Kim McKinley:  Just to clarify, Reuben, that you're not building the network.  That CCI is building the network.

1:04:00:

Travis Carter:  I mean, I've never seen a scenario where rural is cheaper, just because of your density.  You just don't have the same density.

1:04:06:

Christopher Mitchell:  But it -- Well --  Right. It's not --

1:04:08:

Doug Dawson:  It's cheaper per mile, not --

1:04:11:

Christopher Mitchell:  It's cost per subscriber may change.  But the actual physical costs are still quite significant.

1:04:17:

Travis Carter:  Correct.  Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:18:

1:04:20:

Christopher Mitchell:  All in the air.  Right. So, Reuben -- ** -- Maine's also made access to the poles a lot different.  Although CCI would have had access to all the poles.  OK.  RV parks. One of the things I'm seeing is, it is hard to get a fiber to each unit.

And so, the ability to just set up a Tarana installation on the outskirts and then serve everyone has worked pretty well, I think.

1:04:43:

Doug Dawson:  Actually, do you know what the real issue is?  The guys who own the RV parks don't let them dig.  These are private roads, and they go, you're not screwing with my road.  They won't let them in.  So, this way, they can go right off the property, and they can serve everybody, and they don't have to ask the guy any permission.  That's actually what the real reason is.  So --

1:04:59:

Travis Carter:  See, we ran into it different.  We actually have had them -- pretty good success.  I mean, we've only done 3 or 4.  But the RV parks are --  or, mobile homes parks, I guess they call them here -- are pretty open to do it, because a) they bring a competitive service, and then b) we usually throw an extra pipe in for them, so they can put a camera at the entrance, and maybe a camera back by the dumpsters, and a few other things.  So, --  And there's no permitting issues, because it's all private land.  So --

1:05:26:

Doug Dawson:  It's all private.

1:05:27:

Travis Carter:  Well --  So, I guess, your mileage may vary.  We've had really good luck.  But I would never do wireless in there.  I would just run fiber.  In the long term, I think it's cheaper.

1:05:38:

Doug Dawson:  But you figured it out.  You're landlord-friendly.  A lot of folks are not.  They just want to come in and --

1:05:41:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.

1:05:42:

Christopher Mitchell:  What if FCC Chair Mitchell said that every landlord in the country had to pay for you to install their stuff?  Huh?

1:05:52:

Travis Carter:  Well, GOOD NEWS.  We're at least 4 years away from Chris MItchell being the head of the FCC.  So, we'll kick that down the street a little bit.

1:06:03:

Doug Dawson:  That gives him four years to go get his law degree.  And you kind of need it.  **

1:06:11:

Kim McKinley:  He's going to start right now.  He's applying tonight.

1:06:13:

Christopher Mitchell:  A quote from the A Team just jumped into my head, but I -- in lieu of that, I'm going to jump instead to:  Who owns the internet?  Doug wrote a fun post.

This is a topic that I feel like is super important, and a lot of people get confused about.  So, I want to end the show with it.  Who wants to jump in first with who owns the internet?  [pause]

1:06:34:

Kim McKinley:  I thought it was Al Gore.  Is it not?

1:06:37:

Doug Dawson:  Good point.  Yes. It was a fun post, 'cause the answer is, every --  Travis owns the internet.  Every foot of infrastructure that reaches people is probably the most expensive part of the internet. So, the fact is, everything is the internet.  Now, behind that, we have the giant hubs.  And we have, you know, all the servers.  But --  And then, we have undersea cables.  So, that's like the biggest four components of the internet.  So --  And then, there's -- the fifth component is all these guys who write the standards so it all works.  So -- Yup.

1:07:08:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, the question is, what would you even own?  I mean, I think this is one of the commenters to your piece, Doug, hit it exactly right.  I mean, you described the telecommunications infrastructure that the internet uses. Which is what people tend to think of. But the thing that is actually "the internet" is an agreement among tens of millions of people, that isn't written down anywhere, that they're all going to exchange traffic according to some protocols.  The internet doesn't exist.  [laughs]

1:07:33:

Doug Dawson:  It really does not.  It is a --

1:07:35:

Travis Carter:  I would argue, the internet is owned by ICANN, the group that --

1:07:40:

Doug Dawson:  See, now I -- that's funny --

1:07:41:

Christopher Mitchell: ** to move around it and find things.

1:07:44:

Doug Dawson:  -- because the whole point of my article was, the Russians said ICANN owns it. And they [ICANN] said, the hell we do. We do NOT own it.  that was exactly what set off the --

1:07:50:

Travis Carter:  Well -- yeah.  Because it's like --  yeah. Who owns the phone book?  You know.  The -- So, we could have --  The internet could be running, but if there's no DNS, there's really no internet, for 99.9 percent of people.

1:08:04:

Christopher Mitchell:  I think that last --

1:08:05:

Doug Dawson:  But ICANN just gives out the numbers.  They don't tell anybody what the --  They don't really tell you --

1:08:11:

Travis Carter:  Yeah.  I know. But if they shut --  If DNS gets shut down, the internet -- it's -- the internet's done.

1:08:18:

Christopher Mitchell:  I --  I think for your typical person, perhaps, the internet would go back to people who know what IP address are.  But -- um -- I -- I think I -- I mean, I know I'm being --  You're right, in that most of the things people use it for -- and a heck of a lot of devices that have DNS hard-coded into it --  But at the same time,  I feel like it would be interesting to see, if we magically removed DNS, how rapidly workarounds sprouted up and people, you know, found they could still get to social media, and things like that.

1:08:49:

Kim McKinley:  I hate this topic.  'Cause now you're going to have me thinking about this all flipping weekend, and it's going to be -- annoy the crap out of me, of who owns the internet.

1:08:59:

Christopher Mitchell:  Just find a college dorm room, and, you know, a little bit of legal weed, and it will be a perfect conversation.

1:09:06:

Kim McKinley:  [laughs]

1:09:06:

Travis Carter:  Chris, I don't know.  I --

1:09:08:

Doug Dawson:  Wait a minute.  She's in Utah.  Where the hell is she going to find legal weed?

1:09:10:

Christopher Mitchell:  She spends most of her life up in the air, where there are no rules

1:09:13:

Doug Dawson:  Ah.

1:09:13:

Kim McKinley:  First of all, it IS legalized, "medically," in Utah.

1:09:17:

Doug Dawson:  Is it?

1:09:17:

Kim McKinley:  Yeah.  Yes. Shocking enough.  And, second of all, I can think about this without any recreational substances, Mr. Mitchell.  Now, moving on.  [laughs]

1:09:27:

Travis Carter:  I think -- I think Chris gives too much benefit to people.  If it -- you know, if it just doesn't push a button, you know --

1:09:36:

Doug Dawson:   Right.  I agree.

1:09:38:

Travis Carter:  I mean, I can't tell you the number of people that call and say their Wi-Fi is down.  And I'm like, we're in the fiber network business.  Our Wi-Fi is not working.

1:09:45:

Or, d- --  Yeah.

1:09:49:

Christopher Mitchell:  [laughs]  Sorry. But Reuben owned me.  This is so great.  [laughs]  "Some guy named Dennis owns the internet."  I love it.  I'm going to be thinking about THAT all weekend.  And then I'm going to try to explain it to someone, and they're just going to be, what are you talking about.  [laughs]

1:10:05:

Travis Carter:  Well, Reid -- if Reid's daughter -- he probably knows better than I do. But I think there was like seven key holders that own the keys to ICANN.

1:10:12:

Christopher Mitchell:  Oh, yeah.

1:10:13:

Travis Carter:  So, there you go.

1:10:14:

Christopher Mitchell:  Those are the root servers.  Right?

1:10:16:

Travis Carter:  Those are the guys.

1:10:19:

Doug Dawson:  If I'm required to actually pick an answer, it's not only ICANN.  It's ICANN and the three or four other groups that do all the standards.  THEY own the internet.  I believe that's the answer.

1:10:27:

Christopher Mitchell:  Well, one of the people wanted to know about ITU.  ITU?  ITU. Which gets back to that sort of issue of -- the internet relies on so many telecommunications connections, and things like that.  So -- um -- but in no way owns the internet.  And, I think, frankly, every time the ITU has attempted to assert some kind of ownership, people like US have screamed NO.  [laughs]

1:10:54:

Doug Dawson:  We largely have ignored them.  Yes.  So --

1:10:57:

Christopher Mitchell:  Um.  OK. The -- um -- I think it's valuable. I deeply fear a time in which the internet goes the way of radio, which is a commercial wasteland.  Or television, which has been heading in that direction for a while, but still has amazing pieces of content, like Shoresy. Um.  If you like foul-mouthed humor or hockey, Shoresy is unreal, and shows you what you can do on a budget.  Wonderful television show, available on Hulu.  So, I'll throw that out there.  And there's no discussion of insulation.  So, if that put you off, they don't talk about it at all.  It's the one drawback of the show.  So --  But, the internet is --

1:11:35:

Kim McKinley:  That was your funniest joke you've ever made, Chris.  Thank you for that.

1:11:40:

Christopher Mitchell:  Two of the best jokes in our history.  TODAY.  Right at the end of the show, when our three listeners aren't watching anymore.

1:11:47:

Doug Dawson:  And Paul was here.  You witnessed it first-hand, Paul.  So --

1:11:51:

Christopher Mitchell:  Um. So, we are going to be back in two weeks.  We're going to have on a guest, and we are going to be, once again, talking about hot topics, as well as whatever other random part of my life I decide to inject into the introduction to the show.  And, more importantly, I'm really excited to learn more about what Comcast is doing to reduce latency so much in their network. Hoping that we'll see that elsewhere in other networks.  We'll probably talk about buffer bloat, at least briefly, because it's something we've barely talked about, but it has significant impact on how good the network is that we use.

1:12:30:

But before we go, I want to thank you, Paul.  Really great having you on here, blowing our minds. I think I will give you dispensation, that if you want to come back on, with a really great use case or something that you want to dig back into, I think we'd all like to learn more about how this is being implemented.  So, this is not the end.

1:12:50:

Paul Dickinson:  It was my pleasure.  And I love listening to you guys chat, too.  So, it was a lot of fun.

1:12:56:

Christopher Mitchell:  Great.  Thank you. Thank you, Doug.

1:12:59:

Travis Carter:  You didn't rant, Chris.

1:13:00:

Christopher Mitchell:  You're right!  There was --

1:13:02:

Doug Dawson:  He did not.

1:13:02:

Christopyer Mitchell:  This was a happy episode.  There was nothing to rant about.

1:13:06:

Travis Carter:  ** insulation has been in for a couple weeks now.  I figured you'd be going crazy.

1:13:09:

Doug Dawson:  He was fully insulated from his rant.

1:13:11:

Travis Carrter:  Ah.  There we go. There we go.  All right.

1:13:15:

Christopher Mitchell:  We will be talking more about  -- um -- about, you know, what's going on, I think.  But at the same time, like, it's one of those things that those of us that are working to the glorious revolution where Chris will control everything know that it's a long fight, not a short fight.

1:13:33:

Travis Carter:  [laughs]  Yes. Long.  Long.

1:13:35:

Christopher Mitchell:  So, Travis, Kim,  -- Travis, Kim, and Doug, I greatly appreciate your bringing your full selves to this show.  And we'll see you in two weeks, at the same time,  We're planning ahead now.  Anything is possible.  I hope you have a great weekend.  It has been another fun episode of Connect This!

1:13:58:

END