Serving the Overlooked: Building Broadband for Manufactured Housing Communities - Episode 674 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another Community Broadband Bits podcast. You know, I think I missed that up. I think I usually episode of, I don't know, but y'all know what you're listening to. I'm Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm here with Sean Gonsalves or as some people say, Gonsalves or Gonesalves.

Sean Gonsalves (00:33)
Yep, yep, you can just call me Sean G though.

Christopher Mitchell (00:36)
Sean G. And we're gonna be talking today with Brendan Kelly, who is the founder of REVinternet which is a new Internet service provider focused on digital equity. And Brendan is here in the frozen North where our kids have no school tomorrow. It's gonna be another cold day. So we're excited to talk about this. know Sean's already talked with you and gotten a sense, but welcome to the show, Brendan.

Brendan (00:58)
Thank you for having me Chris. Appreciate it. And happy to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (01:01)
Yeah, we're excited to learn more about it. I mean, I feel like what we're about to talk about is the future of actually solving this issue, I think, which is targeted investments rather than trying to figure out how to like find one policy that solves everything, finding the right solution for different groups of folks. So Sean, let me turn it over to you and I'm going to try to be a loud, occasional fly on the wall.

Sean Gonsalves (01:23)
Good flap your wings. Good, good, good to meet you. Actually, Brendan, we met virtually not long ago, I am not in St. Paul, I am in the tundra of the northeast, actually, we're supposed to get like a big snowstorm this this weekend. So we'll see how we make out. But I am excited to talk to you because I feel like you have been focused on an area that is a particular challenge and one that doesn't often get a lot of attention.

And so I think the best place to start is to tell us what REV... Well, first tell us a little bit about your background in the industry and then also tell us about REVinternet how your background led you to this point.

Brendan (02:01)
Yeah, Chris isn't kidding. We're gonna have... we have now and we're gonna have extremely cold weather all next week as well. We're even being warned if you can believe it or not. I've never seen it but exploding trees. So I hope someone gets that on camera because that'd be pretty cool to see. My background, I've worked in telecom and broadband for you know 15 plus years at this point. Worked for some large ISPs, Frontier, CenturyLink, Lumen.

division of Zayo called Allstream and

past few years I found out about a company ⁓ based in Minnesota as well but their virtual ⁓ called ⁓ Kwikbit which formed an ISP that wants to bring Internet to a underserved community ⁓ which is manufactured housing communities. They've had their difficulties and also work for another

kind of boutique ISP called AccessParks that try to do the same thing. And both companies are struggling in their own right. But my time with them was valuable to me because I completely see a lot of the mistakes that they were making addressing this audience. Frankly disrespectful to this audience. well, I like to say I'm not the smartest guy, but if it was easy enough for me to see the mistakes that these two were making, it...

it needs to be done and I finally put on my entrepreneur pants and launching REVinternet to address the problems with this community.

Christopher Mitchell (03:23)
So you're focused on the mobile homes primarily then?

Brendan (03:26)
Primarily,

yes. That's the focus. But I also, you know, if something's easily reached just outside the parks, you know, we could bring services while, you know, be it a hotel or apartment. I call those NOOFs Near out of footprint locations. But primarily our focus is on the culture and to lift up the stakes and address the stigma of manufactured housing.

Sean Gonsalves (03:33)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

Chris likes fun euphemisms or not euphemisms, I guess acronyms you would call it. Like I think Chris coin SLFRF right Chris? ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (03:57)
Yes,

State Local Fiscal Recovery Fund. SLFRF

Brendan (03:59)
Nice.

Sean Gonsalves (04:00)
So we can add that to the lexicon. So, I mean, I feel like mobile home parks in particular, manufactured housing developments and what have you are in a bit of a bind in a lot of ways. And I was kind of hoping that you could kind of put that, give us some context. Like, what does that look like on the ground? Like what is the state of connectivity as far as you can tell as it relates to mobile home parks?

Brendan (04:16)
Sure.

Certainly. Well, you one thing and you kind of hinted at it in terms of constraints. The first thing I'd like to address is mobile homes aren't mobile. Once they're on a pad, that's where they're going to stay. It can be anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 to move a mobile home and it's never the same after it gets transported. So these are now physical location. These are homes. For their state of connectivity,

My research, would want to say about close to 80 % of the parks that I've researched, they at least have cable. But it's key to note that this is aging infrastructure. 40 plus years that coax has been in the ground. Big cable will not upgrade plant. Because of that immobility, they know they have these customers locked.

So they're ⁓ under no constraint to or have any impetus to upgrade their service. Likewise, with 80 % of coax in the ground, that prevents the big telcos from going in there. No one's going to overbuild with fiber. Even though it's a big giant market, there's over 52,000 manufactured home communities in the country.

20, yeah, 7 million homes in total, housing 20 million people. a, it'd be this, it'd be the country's seventh largest state if it was a state. But it's, you know, 52,000 some real small locations and that prevents.

lot of fiber deployment. So their really only choice if they have it at all for wired service the PREM is coax but then they also have fixed wireless access like we all do now in satellite but those are not the best alternatives and they're expensive alternatives as well. So this is a community that's locked into poor service, poor plant and

you know and and and the powers that be know this there's no one giving them a good choice for something better and these are the people that you know deserve faster Internet to upload you know increase their station in life ⁓ more than a lot of people so that's what we're trying to do ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (06:23)
Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (06:24)
Yeah,

if I could just jump in for a second with local, local context, I'm curious, like, there's a range of economic up of like, I don't know, I'm trying to say economics, there's a range of people's with different incomes coming in here, right? There's there's some of these parks where people are deep in poverty. I drive by a fair amount of these, you know, as I'm doing different things around the Twin Cities. And some of them, you know, have a lot of people that have nice cars, right? It's everyone from like, working class people that have great jobs, ⁓ who are there.

to people that might be on public assistance or things like that. It's not like everyone is struggling to make ends meet is what I'm trying to say.

Brendan (06:58)
That is true. there's... you know, in the, ⁓ you know, the southern climates, some of these, you know, 55 plus mobile home communities, they're actually what are known as private ⁓ urban districts. They actually own the land underneath the house as well. And, you know, these are like really gorgeous retirement communities, but the vast majority...

at or at somewhat of ⁓ economic disadvantage. So at the very least we want the Internet to be good for them, you know?

Sean Gonsalves (07:23)
Right. Now, as you're looking to break into this market, as it were, I know in our conversation when I met you first virtually, you talked about being service agnostic. What do you mean by service agnostic? What does that mean in practice?

Brendan (07:38)
Well, we've seen, obviously, the competitors, the cable company delivers Internet via coax.

Telco will do fiber to the prim if possible. We're going to offer any kind of conveyance that's needed. So be it fiber to the prim would be ideal, but then we would consider a point to multi point solution, a 5G solution, whatever gets people the choice that they need, you know, at a fair price. That's what we're going to pursue. So it's built in a way that the farther we reach out, you know, to very more rural areas where it might be

prohibitive to do fiber right away, you know, we will, you know, construct another fallback. So again, it's just trying to make the process as easy as possible.

Sean Gonsalves (08:21)
And so in thinking about that, how do you think about when you make that, in making that choice about what Internet access technology that you're going to deploy, how do you think about that in terms of what's most efficient or what's most workable? How do you think about that in making that decision?

Christopher Mitchell (08:39)
is most pleasing to the owner of the facility perhaps.

Sean Gonsalves (08:42)
Hahaha

Brendan (08:43)
It's a mixture of both, absolutely, yeah.

lot of these parks, ⁓ you know, being on private land, you know, it ultimately is the decision of the, ⁓ you know, the park owner and we will work with them to make the most ⁓ agreeable solution. But in terms of hierarchy, you know, we'd want to start with fiber to the prem first. If that doesn't work out, then we'll probably have a fiber spur circuit, you know, to a head end in the park and then, you know, beam out via RF.

and then on down the line to the conveyance and it may be a 5G solution which you know could be respectable. would certainly you know the 5G solution is good for like a redundant system as well and you know that's another thing a lot of these parks don't have is there's not good redundancy like a site built home will have to so if you know there's a fiber cut or something's wrong with the coax everyone's out so we want to ensure that that doesn't happen either.

Sean Gonsalves (09:36)
And so, and as it relates to mobile home parks, and admittedly, I am far from an expert on mobile home parks, even though growing up, like I always thought it would be really cool to live in a mobile home. I kind of still do actually in a lot of ways, but more to the point, what is it that's unique about serving mobile home communities and what have you, as opposed to, know, single family housing or, you know, MDUs?

Brendan (09:49)
Me too.

Well, in reality, there really is no difference and, you know, people shouldn't see it as any difference. It's just another neighborhood. You know, that's the view people should take and it's the views that I hold. But what does make it unique is that private land.

You know, people may own their home, but they have to pay their lot rent fee. So they're kind of caught in that position that they own, but they don't own. So that's really kind of the big unique difference right there is that they're still paying rent for a home. I mean, for the slab of concrete that the home sits on.

And then, know, they're often, you know, not normally embedded in a regular neighborhood. They could be on the fringe of ⁓ a community. You know, maybe perhaps not in the best area, that sort of thing. So there's a sort of stigma that arises to manufactured housing living, which, you know, frankly isn't quite fair.

in our DNA at REVinternet, we recognize that there could be a stigma and we're going to do everything we can to address that and alleviate it as best as possible.

Christopher Mitchell (11:07)
It sounds like what you're saying is the biggest difference is a perception of the network builder in terms of the difference between a manufactured home park and a different neighborhood that really pretty similar. It's just that we conceive of them differently.

Brendan (11:21)
Yeah, I would say so. In terms of, you know, physical plant in the park, I think the difference is, again, it kind of goes back to that land ownership. Over the course of decades, who knows what's under the ground. The coax got put in a long time ago. It's there and it's fine. But in terms of overbuilding, it's just not done. One, they don't want to do it because they're they find that the the payback, they're not going to get that, you know, wanted 18 month payback.

so they just skip it. And when they do go in, you know, they're often going to find a lot of problems underground. So it's better just to avoid the upgrade, which is kind of unfair to them.

Sean Gonsalves (11:56)
Now I see that you are sitting, it looks like in the world headquarters of REVinternet. But I think I remember you mentioning though that you have a pretty lean and mean team. Tell us a little bit like who else that you've got with you.

Brendan (12:10)
sure. Well really quickly noted that the world headquarters is my basement and it's also our slash pharmacy. My wife is a retired midwife so we are we have all kinds of things in case anything goes really bad. We're almost got a little hospital here.

Christopher Mitchell (12:23)
You're well equipped to,

in the end times, we're gonna be equipped to barter.

Brendan (12:26)
yeah, absolutely. Yes. But my team is great. know, it's men and women I've worked with in the past that kind of the same boat as me, you know, a little older and grayer and kind of getting to that point in their career that, you know, let's go out there and do something good for our community. So they've really rallied to the cause. But the chief operating officer was a colleague of mine. He was a general manager at Frontier Communications.

Sean Gonsalves (12:26)
Ha ha ha.

Brendan (12:50)
from Kwikbit, guys who were recently laid off because Kwikbit was falling into a lot of trouble. Is there someone who will help with fiber procurement, knows a lot of good people. Their chief of engineering who also has a background working for the DoD, the Air Force, so he's a genius.

The woman I'm really glad to work with, she has 20 some years experience in customer service. She'll be the director of customer experience, but she is also an assistant park manager in Michigan. So we go out of our way to, you know, kind of walk the walk as much as we're talking the talk. So she's really key to the...

to the brand and what we're trying to represent because she's in the MHC culture. She's of it. And we've all, you know, helped establish Internet in mobile home communities in the past. So we're familiar with the culture too.

Sean Gonsalves (13:40)
Now, I guess the, was about to say the $64,000 question, but it's probably bigger than that, which is the difficulty of raising capital, et cetera. How are you dealing with it? mean, there's a lot of these, there's private equity out there and venture capital, which, I don't know how good that is ⁓ for the ISP business, but I'm curious for you to talk to us about kind of.

getting off the ground and where are you trying to raise capital and what's that look like?

Brendan (14:08)
Yeah, that's a really good question. know, even though, you know, being in this category for decades, you know, I've always been a marketing executive. So this is kind of really my first foray into being an entrepreneur. And yeah, so I'm learning. It's hard. It's the proverbial, you know, everyone's got money when you have money, but if you don't have any money, it's very hard to get going.

So, you know, private equity is really interested. What do you have already? What do you have up and running? I'm like, well, I don't have anything up and running yet. I need some starting capital just to, you know, pay a little bit to this great team, you know, secure money to, you know, afford the tech stack that we need. So, it's a battle. That's why I'm really grateful to, you know,

talk to guys like you to help get the word out. You know, be sure to give my address at the end. But it's a difficult process. And I'm starting to have modest luck with it. But on the P.E. side, the thing that we're trying to be very conscious of is that we don't want to be beholden to private equity.

for a host of reasons. We want to keep our autonomy.

We want to be delivered on our brand promise, which is first and foremost for us with us we We have a great deal of empathy For manufactured housing residents, and we don't want to impinge upon that whatsoever So we're not going to work Solely for the behalf of being able to you know to flip the company. We're trying to build something new here revolutionary Where a lot of PE firms just really are seeing fighters down the

to sell the company to make ⁓ to make their money back and some additional funds and that's quite not quite where we are you know spiritually if you will

Sean Gonsalves (15:46)
He

Christopher Mitchell (15:46)
What stage are you at right now? Do you have a initial build that you're working on or a prospect or what's happening?

Brendan (15:53)
We had a prospect all teed up, ready to go. Everything was perfect in Laramie, Wyoming. Last second, the park owner decided to back out. And so be it. So we've actually kind of dialed back a little bit from the hunt for money and really trying to ⁓ just secure some clients. And myself and the chief operating officer were both in Minnesota, so we're probably going to be focusing on the upper Midwest just because we're here.

but we hope once we get a couple prospects lined up, then we can at least maybe get some purchase order agreements that will allow us to go to the bank saying, hey, we have the bird in hand, can you help finance these first couple tranches to get these parks rolling? And then we can start finding bigger investments and the like. Gonna wait a little bit till it warms up though.

Sean Gonsalves (16:34)
Now,

yeah, now, I mean, of course, you you know, here, you know, at ILSR you know, community broadband networks team, you know, we've been strong advocates for municipal broadband, but we also don't see that as being a one size fits all solution and smaller independent private ISPs, I think have a really important role here. But I think when we talk,

You did mention though, you your awareness of municipal broadband and your willingness or even desire to potentially work with municipal broadband providers and do it. Did I that right? And can you talk about that?

Brendan (17:02)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

And we would love to as well. Because Muni's, think, in the same with, you know, private big firms, they kind of run into that roadblock where they meet the fence of the park. And they just can't get in contact with the park owner, all the construction that needs to be done, frankly, the marking that needs to be done in park to alert residents as change is happening. It just seems that

you know, the municipal bill, you know, really tends to end at the edge of the community. So we hope that we could be that kind of, you know, help to, you know, get into the park, talk to the park owners, help them, you know, understand the value of this and get them to see the value of a park with good broadband. That's, you know, that improves the lives of the residents and, you know, frankly makes them more sticky. It's it's

in the long run it helps the park. So that's why we want to work with any kind of Muni ISPs if such a case arises where they can't get into that privately owned land that's a manufactured housing community let us help. That's it you know I mean it's our secret sauce that's where we can add value to the Muni build.

Christopher Mitchell (18:22)
Can I ask about one other area where I feel like you may have to add secret sauce, is ⁓ collections. I feel like maybe more challenging. I suspect that you're going to have a higher concentration of people that don't have credit cards that are active perhaps, or would prefer to pay in cash and things like that. Whereas if you're trying to create a new startup, you really want to simplify that. want everyone to pay in a credit card, pay ahead, you know, that sort of thing. Could be a challenge here. What are you planning to do around there?

Brendan (18:44)
Mm-hmm.

Well, it's gonna be reality. know, churn will probably be likely a little higher in a manufactured housing community. But, you know, that's okay. We're gonna differentiate ourselves on that customer experience. You know, we're gonna be more than just the Internet provider. You know, we want to be digital navigators and help this community get more savvy.

But yeah, it's a reality that will happen and that actually happened with the last ⁓ ISP that I work with. Everything was self-service. Go to the portal, use your credit card. So we'll at least... and we found a good OSS, BSS provider that ⁓ can do ⁓ automatic clearinghouse. That's actually something I kind of learned, which is troublesome in the industry. To be able to take cards over the phone is very

expensive to get accreditation for CPI accreditation so it's difficult but we know you know there there's a little more work involved with helping customers and MHCs they they tend to be a little bit older a little less tech savvy so there's going to be hand-holding involved and that's going to be our differentiator yeah it'd be great if people know how to log on to their portal put in their card and be done with it but I know that won't be the case but that's that's something we have to do

And part of being a digital navigator is to help these people with ongoing education that they will become a little more tech savvy.

Sean Gonsalves (19:55)
It's

Yeah, I mean, it's heartening to hear you talk about being, you know, about digital navigators and what are, you know, sort of out in the world or, you know, sort of separated out as digital equity issues versus, you know, building, you know, networks and infrastructure. But, you know, obviously they're ⁓ even from a business standpoint of you. I mean, you want higher adoption rates and

and take rates and so forth. if a segment of the market that you're targeting has difficulty with those things, which is one of the reasons why it was so, I think, devastating that we lost the Digital Equity Act and some of those programs. But it's really ⁓ interesting to hear you talk about being a digital navigator and how that is a part of being an Internet service provider in your eyes. Now, Chris, what's the name of?

⁓ that. Yeah, no, I'm trying to think of the ISP that was started by some former charter guys in New York. What's why can't.

Christopher Mitchell (20:47)
you got me a quiz now?

Brendan (20:48)
Hahaha ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (20:55)
they

have the people's communications, something like that. Yeah, there were mostly outside plant and installers, I think, who were laid off, apparently in violation of labor law. And then they started up a co-op in order to be able to still provide services to people who were being left behind.

Sean Gonsalves (20:57)
people's communication. So I mean,

That's right.

That's right. That's right. So it just made me wonder about, you if there were people, you know, leaving, you know, sort of the big telecom industry and are kind of looking to do what you were doing. mean, that's the only other example that I can think of. But, you know, it's

Brendan (21:13)
for them.

Christopher Mitchell (21:26)
Well, I mean,

a lot of I feel like the front range of Colorado has several municipal networks that I feel like are also they're the ones I've heard mostly talking about the manufactured homes and doing some of that work. And it just so happens, I mean, at Longmont in particular has ⁓ two people that are formerly CenturyLink. know, Chattanooga has several people who had made a lot of learned a lot of AT&T over the years. So it's not uncommon for people to take that expertise and then bring it into into this field.

Sean Gonsalves (21:42)
That's right.

Christopher Mitchell (21:54)
I'll just say that I learned a lot about how the business world works through my family. My dad worked at IBM and then as IBM kind of struggled, a lot of people who were really sharp at IBM would go off and start ancillary businesses or businesses that were related to what IBM was not doing and not taking advantage of. And so you often kind of have this spillover in these fields and that's one of the ways that our economy hopefully is pretty vibrant.

Brendan (22:13)
Thanks

Sean Gonsalves (22:17)
Yeah, well, I just love stories of people out there really trying to get things done and not just, ⁓ you know, pay lip service to it. so, I mean, I know it's very, very difficult. So I think it seems like you've got a pretty good experience crew with you. And so, you know, as you embark down this road,

Brendan (22:34)
Mm-hmm.

Sean Gonsalves (22:37)
I hope that we're able to, you know, stay in touch and because as I said, I think that, given the way kind of BEAD has been upended in so many ways, I think there, ⁓ a lot of communities are going to have to take, as Chris said, towards the beginning of the program, a much more targeted approach where you're not trying

Christopher Mitchell (22:56)
Yeah, I mean,

I wanna ask a little bit more about the digital equity because I do feel like I think your business is harmed by the Digital Equity Act being canceled, right? I mean, I think depending on where you're looking, residents of manufacturing homes are more likely to be their active service duty families or retired out of the military. These are people that we wanna make sure have real economic opportunity that they're able to access their government benefits that they're entitled to.

Brendan (22:59)
Hmm?

Christopher Mitchell (23:23)
⁓ on computers and things like that. And there was supposed to be money available for people that had specialized knowledge to work with these covered populations. It seemed like that's something that I would have hoped you would have been able to take advantage of. So I'm just curious, you mentioned digital equity, and I'm curious if you had a sense of how you're gonna be tackling that.

Brendan (23:42)
Well, really just in the case that coming from, well, nothing formalized, but really just the idea of having our heart in the right place is, you know, we've discussed about as a team. there's a situation where someone calls us and they will be able to call us directly any time of day, I mean, hey, I can't afford my medicine this month. Well, you know what? We'll work with you. I mean, that's just how we have to be. Yeah.

we're not going to impinge on someone's health, you know, so we get paid. I mean, that's just not the way we're going to operate. So that's our point of difference. really just, you know, trying to be that ear. And, you know, being local.

and having the team that we have been placed to, we're quite certain that we have enough knowledge that we'll be able to operate efficiently as well. So, I mean, the other thing is not only to have the service that's as good or better, but priced at parity or even a little less. So, you know, that's going to be a value as well. If we could, you know, go back to...

ACA again, would be, or ACP again, that would be so fantastic. We really need that again.

Christopher Mitchell (24:48)
Right, because the cost, like your cost of deploying, like every foot of fiber that you put in the ground, you're serving more people than a lot of places because you have that density in these parks.

Brendan (24:57)
Exactly,

yeah. mean, typical park size, you know, anywhere is about 100 to 125 pads. There's some giant ones and there's some very small ones, but they're all right there. know, very, yeah. And at a point to multi-point solution, it's just one fiber circuit to a head end and boom, you know, just put on some outdoor radios.

Christopher Mitchell (25:15)
Right, and the RF is great there.

I mean, it's actually, really nice. Some of these parks have mature trees now, right? Because they're so old and the trees have grown up. So it's not like people might be imagining. They've seen in some the, some popular media. Sean, do you have any other questions?

Sean Gonsalves (25:30)
no, I really appreciate but before we leave, should, you know, we should offer people an opportunity to find out you know, how they could contact you if you know, if they're interested in in helping particularly around financing.

Brendan (25:42)
yeah, please. Well, a simple website REVinternet.com R-E-V Internet.com and there is a... to message me. My email address is brendan, B-R-E-N-D-A-N at revinternet.com and yeah, I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota. I love to hear from a lot of people advice, you know, good wishes and...

Yeah, you want to help get the people who need it most better Internet, I'd love to talk to you. And thank you both for allowing me this opportunity because local service is important. manufactured housing communities, they are communities as well. They deserve everything that site-built homes get.

Christopher Mitchell (26:23)
Absolutely. Thank you both for coming on and Brendan, I hope we'll bump into each other in the neighborhood here. We'll see if we can work that out.

Brendan (26:28)
Yeah, that

would be great. Yeah, we're neighbors. This is fun. yeah, that's true.

Sean Gonsalves (26:33)
Go have a Juicy Lucy.

Christopher Mitchell (26:35)
yeah. ⁓

okay. We'll wrap up with this. What's your favorite Juicy Lucy if you're into them?

Brendan (26:40)
⁓ Well, you know, I don't live too far from the Nook. So, yeah, they have a good one. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (26:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

The Nook is good. took, I took Sean and also Jordan, a few other folks to the, Matt's, which is, uh, you know, yeah, I can, I can pick it up in South Minneapolis and almost get home before it's too cold. You know, it's still all right. So, all right. Well, uh, stay warm and thanks for coming on.

Sean Gonsalves (26:48)
Yeah.

Brendan (26:51)
Well, you gotta go to Matt's if you want to do Zulu's here.

Sean Gonsalves (26:58)
Hahaha

Brendan (26:59)
Right, right.

Thank you.

Thanks again, guys.