At the Broadband Nation Expo, host Alejandro Piñero welcomes Raj Singh, CEO of VCTI, for an in-depth look at the challenges and opportunities of expanding broadband access nationwide. As government funding ramps up for broadband expansion, VCTI is leading efforts to improve accessibility, especially for underserved areas. Singh explains how his company assists broadband providers in estimating project costs, navigating complex terrains, and using advanced mapping tools for efficient deployment.
Singh shares his thoughts on the practical realities of providing connectivity in remote and rural areas, often with limited infrastructure. From soil analysis to wireless solutions, Singh highlights the importance of adapting strategies to each location's unique needs. He also discusses why local broadband offices and state officials should consider a mix of fiber, fixed wireless, and even satellite to maximize coverage without straining budgets.
Looking ahead, Singh emphasizes the need for digital literacy in remote communities, envisioning a future where broadband access not only connects but transforms lives.
Watch now to discover the intricacies of broadband deployment and the tools driving the digital revolution in rural America!
Alejandro Piñero:
All right. Welcome, everyone. Here live with Broadband Nation. My name is Alejandro Pinero and I'm very happy to be joined by Raj Singh, CEO of VCTI. Raj, welcome.
Raj Singh:
Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.
Alejandro Piñero:
Excellent. Raj, let's get right to the topic we've been hearing, of course, as you'd expect a lot about BEAD, a lot of opportunities that are going to be provided with this funding coming in, hopefully starting to kick in next year with shovels on the ground. That's what we've heard here at the event. I wanted to take, take specifically for VCTI, what your role is or what do you see your role as in terms of allowing these opportunities to become reality?
Raj Singh:
Well, we have roles in a couple of different spaces. The first space that we work in is to help identify where BEAD's going to happen. We're also helping customers fight back where states might have allocated homes that are in their network territory and saying that these are BEAD eligible. We do the validation of that. And then beyond that, what we do is we're helping customers to identify areas and then we're helping them get the costing right. And getting the costing right is a very complicated task, right? Either you have to send people to the field, do all the detailed engineering, which is not possible because it's too much time and too much money.
We've, at VCTI, have developed methodology where we can at the desktop, do measurements of poles. We have a full US soil study where we know what's underground, as in what is the soil type, when do you going to hit rock, when are you going to be sand? And at which depth? If you're going to dig three feet, you know that at two feet I'm going to get this kind of rock and I need to get a different saw or a different bore technology. And then that can determine costing.
If you noticed in the last the ARDOF or some of the other ARPU grants, a lot of them were rescinded. The service providers went back and said, "Please take the money back. I'm not going to do it." And the reason they said that is because there was an estimation problem. What we've done is really refined the estimation process.
Alejandro Piñero:
And you talk about all these different settings and trying to help to identify what are those challenges, even the soil and down to that level. I'm sure getting this broadband out in a lot of these locations will take some creativity and some different methods. Perhaps could you talk a little bit about how you see broadband being rolled out, especially as we enter these sort of underserved, more remote areas, and how has that changed over the last year or going back into the previous funding mechanisms that were in place?
Raj Singh:
There's a stigma to fixed wireless, I think in the industry as a whole or from the government's perspective, but I think at the end of the day, I think it's just going to be a natural fight that it's not going to be done. When you have homes, they're going to cost you $20,000 a home to get or $50,000 a home to reach by fiber. It's not just the reach. It's like, "Okay, I reached the home, but now I have to maintain it." And then nobody's looking at like, okay, if you have to maintain homes that are three homes per mile and something goes wrong, it's going to be a slog to go find out where it went wrong.
The maintainability is not going to happen so easily, and people are not calculating that. And so what my advice to the industry or the state officials is let's look for homes and identify that look, two to 3% are going to be fixed wireless, and even that fixed wireless in some places is not going to work. And then we have to say, "Okay, fine. The best we can do is satellite. And let's divide up the market that way." And I think some of that is kind of being tried, but then I've seen the states when they put out their RFPs, it's like, "Well, fiber's going to win." And then people are bidding on like, "Okay, let me build a network on fiber," and the state's not taking into cognizance that five years from now they're going to have the issue. The advice is, hey, let's be smart about this. Let's get fiber to the places that we can. The homes that are $3000, $5,000, $6,000, let's get fiber to them. The ones that are like 10,000 to 20,000, let's look at fixed wireless as an option.
Alejandro Piñero:
Think creatively. And I guess you're talking there about the broadband offices obviously be going through all the different stages and all the different phases before the funding actually gets into the construction phase. How do you see these broadband offices changing in the way they're managing the influx of funds and doing so efficiently?
Raj Singh:
Well, they need good help. They need to get educated on what does it take to make a broadband network. And then there's a lot of good consultants out there that can help them. We can augment that information if needed with our geology, which we have across the United States. I think that would be very crucial for them to know they have underground networks. They need to step back and say, "What is the impediment?"
For example, in a lot of rural areas in the US there's poles that are from 1950 to be upfront and say, "Okay, fine. If your pole is more than 30 years old, let's give money to whoever the pole owner is to let's change those poles out." Now, if I'm going to change the pole out, then I make broadband installation much easier because I can say I can mandate that your pole needs to be 45 feet high or 50 feet high, and you need to have this much room for communication cables. And essentially you can make that much easier. I mean, putting a cable on a pole is like anywhere from two bucks to four bucks, especially if you don't have to do make ready. If you can give money to the utilities and say, fine, fix the poles, I think everything goes a lot smoother.
Alejandro Piñero:
Then let's think ahead, right? Once the funding does kick in and we're able to see BEAD really at a stage where we're getting networks being deployed, what do you see as the first priorities? What are the most pressing issues that the state brought up in offices and the grantees need to address?
Raj Singh:
That it gets implemented properly. The implementation has to happen. There needs to be some kind of check and balance that it actually got done. And then you need to have sort of what I call the equity as the education because just, I mean, who lives in these remote areas? It's not young people, young people that moved out and moved to cities. It's the old people. But you have to now train them and give them the tools as to how and why they would use broadband.
For example, setting up a session to do telemedicine, that's a perfect use for good broadband. Setting up a session for, let's say getting food delivery or Uber or setting up. Now, I don't know if those services would exist in those remote places, but possibilities exist that can start up where a local restaurant can start saying, "Okay, I can now deliver because it's easy for me to get orders and go deliver them." There's going to be services, education, showing people how to do stuff, but if they don't know how to turn on the monitor to set up a video call, that's not going to happen.
I look at my mother-in-law, who's a hundred, she's on ring. Everybody in the family monitors her and they've set it up so that she can have video calls with the grandchildren. When the caretakers there watching it over her, she can set up a call. I do a video call with the grandchildren, and that is broadband. I mean, that basically brings us together. Like today I do video calls with my relatives in India and it's like, well, if I didn't have broadband and they didn't have broadband, that's not possible.
Alejandro Piñero:
And lastly, I wanted to also talk to us about the next steps and where VCTI specifically comes in. As we think about, you mentioned all the tools that are there currently, as we think about all the different types of terrain and all the information that is needed to ascertain the deployments, once we enter that next stage and we're thinking about network management and that next layer, how do you guys fit into that piece?
Raj Singh:
We have stuff. We have software that is deployed in service provider networks that does provisioning. We're building a tooling in some service providers today that is going to be able to alert the consumer if there's something wrong with the broadband. Large guys like Comcast and folks like that have spent a lot of money doing that. When Xfinity goes out of service, you get a notice. The smaller guys don't have that luxury. We're building those tools for the smaller guys.
And from a mapping perspective, from the state perspective, what would the states do once the stuff is getting deployed? I think the states and the counties really need to show on a map where broadband is getting implemented. Where is getting implemented for the first time where you're getting fiber or fixed wireless connectivity and where you have dense populations. As you know, there's a lot of investment going on in the dense populations where people are over building. Now in those overbuilt places, you're going to get a choice. Today, you may have a single MSO, that's your choice for broadband. You can do that or you can go to DSL. Right?
Whereas the next generation in the next five, two to five years, what's going to happen is that you have all these fiber providers that are standing up networks that are saying, "No, I can give choice to people." A state broadband office, for example, being able to show or as county on a map saying, "Hey, these are the areas that have multiple broadband providers. These are the areas that have fiber." And essentially to be able to attract businesses, attract people who are moving, attract people that want to work remotely and enjoy that lifestyle to be able to do all that.
Alejandro Piñero:
Well, I think these are all critical challenge. I think if there's something we've learned over the last couple of years is mapping isn't easy, so I'm sure that you'll be kept.
Raj Singh:
Well, we have a mapping tool. We have a software as a service platform where we have brought together mapping of broadband, all the service providers, all the demographics, all the physical constraints of weather, roads, and railroads. You can put that together and kind of come up with, "Okay, how difficult is it going to be for me?"
Alejandro Piñero:
Yeah. Brilliant. All right. Well Raj, I'm afraid we're out of time, but always a pleasure to hear from you and see all the great things you guys are doing. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Raj Singh:
Thank you for having me. And I thought the fun just began.
Alejandro Piñero:
Absolutely. Yeah. The fun is just beginning for all you. All right, thank you so much.
Raj Singh:
All right, thank you, man.