Connected Nation

From copper to coax to fiber: The future is now for lightning-fast internet

• Jessica Denson • Season 5 • Episode 24

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On today’s podcast – we welcome back a great guest from Season 4, the CEO of Fiber Fast Homes, a company that works directly with real estate developers and builders to connect homes and rental buildings to lightning-fast internet.

Learn about the importance of pre-wiring new homes, whether MDUs or single-family developments, and why it is becoming paramount. Hear about the peculiarities of this task, the role of the HOA, and how this will prepare infrastructure for the next generation of connectivity.

Recommended Links:
Fiber Fast Homes Website

Scott Sampson's LinkedIn

Grant Ahlbrand (00:08):

This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband from closing the Digital Divide to improving your internet speed. We talk technology topics out impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods.

On today's podcast, we welcome back a great guest from season four, the CEO of Fiber Fast Homes, a company that works directly with real estate developers and builders to connect homes and rental buildings to lightning fast internet. Learn about the importance of pre-wiring new homes, whether mdu or single family developments and why it's becoming paramount. Hear about the peculiarities of this task, the role of the HOA and how this will prepare infrastructure for the next generation of connectivity. I'm Grant Al Brandand and this is Connected Nation. I'm Grant Al Brandand filling in for Jessica Denson who's on assignment, and today my guest is Scott Sampson, the CEO of Fiber Fast Homes, a Colorado base internet service provider. Welcome Scott.

Scott Sampson (01:04):

Hello Grant. Thanks for having me on again, I truly enjoyed doing this podcast.

Grant Ahlbrand (01:10):

So if you're a weekly listener of the podcast, you'll remember Scott from our season four episode together we will put a link to that episode in the description of this podcast. So Scott, it's only been seven months since we spoke last, but what have you been up to?

Scott Sampson (01:24):

A lot of things have been going on. We're focusing really a lot now on profitability and looking at the company and how to actually streamline our cost and make what we do more cost effective, getting our costs down on passings and customer acquisition costs. So it is been busy, it's been a lot of fun, got a great team behind me and we've done great things and always expanding and always moving forward. We've signed actually a couple big deals, got the 2000 home deal in Dallas and with a lot of homes right behind it.

Grant Ahlbrand (01:57):

So that actually takes us perfectly to the next question because concluded the last episode in season four by talking about the immediate success that you all were having in Florida, also your expansion to states like Texas, Colorado, Nevada and California. How are those projects going now and are you looking into further expansion?

Scott Sampson (02:18):

Those projects are going really well. Actually Texas is really interesting. We've got a couple of new HO deals which are really great with some new developers really having a good time with them. The FCC actually made some changes recently with the laws and how we actually deal with marketing agreements. So we're in review with a couple of our home builders to talk to them about how we can move forward, either convert 'em to HOA agreements or to see if there's a way that we're not breaking the law with the FCC and changing up what we do. Project in California did get started. Nevada, we're still in negotiations to do a couple of huge projects there. Texas is just exploding and up and down the East coast we've added quite a few projects with our premier builder that we started with Dream Finders homes. We've actually had some really good progress in doing a lot of their projects.

Grant Ahlbrand (03:08):

So we were speaking before the episode began, just like touch and base. And you mentioned that you have been invited to speak on a panel as well as a live podcast at Fiber Connect 2024 in a few weeks. What kind of hit can you give us as to what you may be speaking about in both the panel and the live podcast?

Scott Sampson (03:27):

The panel, actually we just had our meeting yesterday talking about it, where we want to go a lot of is mitigating risks for ISPs and how they're working into these locations, how to work with Middle Mile, how to work with cities, counties, states, how to look for outside funding. The biggest problem is it's a five person panel. We even went down rabbit holes. We only have 50 minutes and we are trying to limit it down to really have a good conversation and I think we'll really probably focus on mitigation risk and customer acquisitions, how to get 'em how to do, and there'll be a small part about how to work with other builders and designers and developers and how to work with other ISPs. We should all talk, not try to compete with each other because we're not all in the same market. So that should be good on the other podcast, to be honest, I haven't even seen the script yet, so it might be winging it. It's live is what I've been told, so who knows, I can talk about anything. So we'll see how it goes.

Grant Ahlbrand (04:31):

Yeah, I was actually just thinking as a CEO of a fiber company, I'm sure it's very important like you mentioned, to collaborate and to share ideas and to instead of just compete and try to one up each other. So how important do you see it as a CEO of a fiber company especially to speak and network at these events with other companies and organizations in the connectivity space and not just focus on the competition of it all?

Scott Sampson (04:58):

I've been in this market pushing 30 years. I know a lot of people in the industry. I've had great conversations going in depth on what they do really well, how they get customers, how they don't, and these could be guys that were across town for me that I did compete with or in other states that I didn't. And I was just at an event with ADTRAN in Huntsville, Alabama and I was talking to a guy and I was giving him some ideas. He was in a small little community in Arkansas and he was looking at how to expand and doing all these things and I gave him a lot of tips and a lot of hints and he was sort of stunned. I gave him as much information and he goes, why do you do this? And I said, one, you need the help and two, we're not competition and we need to learn from each other to do this better, not just to compete. And I think that's where people really need to look because if we always just competing with each other, we're never going to make it better and to make it better is for the homeowners, make it for the end user. I don't care if you're in an office or if you're a kid gaming on an Xbox. You've got to look at how we can make this service better and more reliable for every end user down the road.

Grant Ahlbrand (06:08):

Yeah. So you mentioned helping out someone who was a little bit newer or smaller to the game when you were first introduced into broadband and connectivity in general, did you have someone that looked over your shoulder and gave you the little inside baseball of how connectivity can be advanced even easier?

Scott Sampson (06:29):

I started back selling point to multi-point, wireless door to door knocking on doors and I had a couple good sales guys that taught me how to do that, but I actually got in with the engineers and got to learn a lot of how it worked. That to me was great and that's when I started expanding. Actually we go back, I did a few trade shows and I actually got to know a guy from Cox Cable. I mean it was our biggest competition. I learned probably more from that gentleman over a two three month period where we would just do trade shows. It was trade show season. We would just talk. He was actually just a great guy mean we would just talk and we'd talk about door knocking experiences and how we sell at the trade shows and how we compete against each other. I mean probably the biggest thing that I ever learned from him was don't badmouth your competition.

(07:19):

Always talk about what you do great, not what they do bad. Say, Hey, we do this great, you should look at how my competition does it. Let the customer find the research and see how bad they do or because they might not be doing it bad, but you might do it one step better. That was the greatest thing I ever learned from him because I don't bad mouth anybody because they do a good job, they do good work out there, but sometimes I just believe I do it better and I will try to prove that every day because I'll look at what they do good and I'll try to one up them just to make it better for the end user.

Grant Ahlbrand (07:51):

Yeah, I'd imagine as well, and especially with broadband and how the digital divide has affected our country and the people that live in it. Any connectivity is more oftentimes is good connectivity. So everyone's fighting for the same cause and trying to accomplish the same feat. So switching up topics a little bit, we read on your website a little bit about how pre-wiring homes can be important. So what does pre-wiring do for the future of the internet infrastructure and how does it help the homeowner?

Scott Sampson (08:24):

And I don't know if actually pre-wiring is where it needs to go or pre conduiting. I think actually conduit in the house is probably a little more important than wiring because conduit, we're going from copper to fiber and a lot of houses, we went actually from copper to coax now to fiber and you have ethernet involved and you have all these other things. What is next? I don't know. I mean I've been in this industry like I said, almost 30 years and I mean I always tell everybody, wait till tomorrow, it will change. But I look at what we do if we the conduit in the house and you can make it easy so you can change out from a pair of copper to coax to ethernet to fiber. I think that's where we really need to look. I think we need to actually look at making it easily accessible also from the outside to the inside.

(09:13):

So if you do change providers, you change from one provider to another or you go from coax to fiber into your home, you need to be able to pull one out and drop another one in really easily instead of having another wire wrapped around your house and now you have, this is your home, this is your pride and joy. We need to actually help these homeowners in the end have something that's really pretty and really nice and it's not wrapped with a bunch of cable because we didn't prepare for it for the future. I mean you look at pots lines, which is Plano telephone service that came out a hundred years ago, it was called the a hundred year product. We're now at the end of that a hundred years and now we're getting into fiber, which I would call the next a hundred year product.

(09:52):

It'll be around for a hundred years, but you don't need fiber running throughout your house. I mean, most people don't have a device that can plug in a fiber jack into a laptop or into an Xbox. I mean, I have a fiber switch that runs into my house, but I barely use the thing, I use the ethernet. But will fiber in the next 10 years take over? Possibly. Possibly not. Somebody could come out with something better. Wireless is always getting better, but I do believe that we need to pre-wire homes to better get connectivity, especially with products that are coming. You're looking at the metaverse and you're looking at eight K TVs. It's just getting faster and wireless is struggling to keep up. It's good, but it's not great. I think you have 10 gig copper or you run fiber that can go exponentially a lot higher. I think we're really looking at a future that you're going to have to have high connectivity in the house and pre-wiring the house is going to be essential or at least having the conduit to get to places to make it work.

Grant Ahlbrand (10:52):

Yeah, I mean for sure. I was thinking from the perspective of a homeowner, because you always hear whether one of your friends or family's building a house or even buying a house whenever they say, oh, this hiccup happened, this is later than expected. And typically everything on a home building can be complicated because there's just things that are added on or issues with HOA or whatever. So from your perspective, what peculiarities come with new build and what is the role of the HOA with this?

Scott Sampson (11:26):

I don't know if the HOA has a big involvement in a lot of this. Actually, probably the most key person beyond even the home builder is the low voltage companies. It's not even the ISPs. It's not like in my industry. I mean, we can try to give advice or whatever, but I think that's more personal opinion. I think these low voltage companies that are out there have to get out of this security mindset. They're all about security systems. They make monthly revenue and look at how to prep these homes for the future and how to help the customer figure out what is the best, Hey, here's a good wireless product, but you're running a 4K TV in your living room, you're going to be putting an eight K TV in your basement. They've got to be prepared for those things. And I think they're the guys that really do have to look.

(12:14):

When you look at the HOA, I don't think HOAs can really limit that stuff because I live in an HOA, my house was built in 93. I put solar panels on my house. I have an EV car, I've had to wrap electrical from my outside. I've had to wrap coax from the outside to get through my finished basement. I mean, I have all these little problems. It had just been nice if they would've actually prepped for this back in the nineties, but nobody knew. I think we know today and I think that's where even the developers and the builders need to start working on this and be ahead of the game, not behind the game and prepare these homes for the future.

Grant Ahlbrand (12:51):

So earlier we already spoke about the importance of collaboration and just having a community of people that work in connectivity that can lean on one another and learn from one another. So do you have any tips or questions to pose for builders to think about whenever they're considering offering fiber internet?

Scott Sampson (13:15):

I always say for the developers, look for a company that's actually going to work with you. That's always been my big one for every developer I've talked to and even when we're trying to sell 'em, we're always about communication. We work with their teams, we work with their designers, we work with this, we work with that. That's what we do as a company. And I would say even if we're not in their market, those are the questions they should ask when they're looking at ISPs. Beyond what kind of deal can you get from a homeowners if you're doing a bulk HOA deal, the homeowners should get a deal better than what they're going to pay if they just go buy it themselves. But they should also, their house should be more ready and they should be able to somewhat be ahead. I think it used to be the standard you had phone Jack dropped into the kitchen, you had a phone, Jack dropped into the master suite, and then you had coax ran to three different locations for cable TV. Today. I think we've got to change that mindset within the developer world and they've got to figure out more to ask the homeowner what do they want, what do they do? What do they build solutions, sell to these homeowners or their home purchasers and try to be ahead of their game on what they're going to do. Because tomorrow, once again, just wait. It will all change. We will have something new and we'll have to change to be ready for it.

Grant Ahlbrand (14:32):

Yeah, I mean, one thing that definitely stuck with me that you said just a few minutes ago, what might honestly find its way into the title, but you said from copper to coax to fiber. You mentioned this was the a hundred year product. This next thing was the 100 year product. Do you see anything in the future overtaking fiber as of now, or do you think fiber is pretty much here to stay?

Scott Sampson (14:57):

Fiber is here to stay. I mean, I've seen products. I've seen some really cool products out there. Worked with a couple of 'em, laser 5G, the fit generation cellular, which is really cool. I mean, it's got some great speeds behind it. starlink and the satellite version, fiber is really the here product. I mean, I don't think there's really anything. That's what I've seen. I mean, there's always somebody trying to build a better mousetrap into my world. I don't really think there's anything that's close. I mean, there's some good ideas out there, but I don't know if anybody's ready for it. Fiber's been proven. It's really works. It's getting better, more stable. It's more rugged, so you're not going to break it as bad. We have more and more and in the ground we have fiber running across this nation. It's hard to really go rip it out. Copper had a 30 year shelf life in some of the cities. I lived in Phoenix and some of the copper in the ground have been there for 70 years. I mean, it'd been there forever and it's probably still running. I mean, I think it's going to last, but I'll say it again. Just wait till tomorrow. It will all change.

Grant Ahlbrand (16:04):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll actually share a little story of my own. It reminds me a lot of, I worked back when I was in high school just working little odd manual labor jobs to fill my time in the summer. I worked for a contractor who, he did all kinds of stuff. So he owned a cemetery. He owned mowed yards, but he'd also do some odds and ends construction projects. And he was the guy that the city relied on whenever a pipe burst or maybe there was flooding, he was the guy to go in and do the quick fix. And he always talked about the downtown of my hometown was every single pipe was like a ceramic clay type pipe because back in the forties and fifties and sixties, everyone thought, oh, there's no way that plastic will stand up over time. We need to build something strong, something like ceramic. And they were wrong. And now that PVC and plastic has taken over, all of these places need to be replaced. So what is the true footprint that fiber needs to overtake to fully connect places that maybe have a little bit of outdated software?

Scott Sampson (17:19):

Wow, that's a great question. I mean, there is some infrastructure. We are not perfect in this industry. We're not perfect. We try to make sure we're playing for the future. I think death levels, I mean, I see that probably as one of the bigger problems I see today. Some companies just when they're running up to your house, they bury it two inches in the ground. If you have a little kid that's out there digging in the dirt, they're going to hit it. Most of 'em use armored cable, which is great, but I've seen 'em not use armor. Careful. They just direct Barry. I think we need to be more astute to what's going on and what can happen. I mean, I don't think they're just looking at, Hey, this is going to save me $10 or $20 or a hundred dollars, but they're not realizing if that little five-year-old kids out in the backyard playing in the dirt digs a hole and hits it, that's going to cost more than a hundred dollars.

(18:13):

What they saved to fix it. Sort of like where you said it with PVC, I mean PVC last. I mean, I think they're just going to have to look at that more closely and going, are we saving money or are we throwing money away because we're going to have to just replace it faster? One of the things we do at Fiber Fest Homes is when we build all of our infrastructure out, especially in the neighborhoods, we pre conduit and we do it for a lot of reasons. One, we just go out there when they open, trenches open, put the conduit in the ground, and it becomes, now it's just ready. And I don't care if they're grading backhoe, sprinkler guys, whatever, go and nick that, whatever. It cost me two bucks to get a sleeve fix that I'm back up in the conduit's still there.

(18:57):

I don't have fiber in it. We wait until pretty much everybody's done. Then we pull the fiber through. But I've now got it's armored armored cable, so it's an armored fiber, so it's a shielded fiber in the ground, but it's also got conduit wrapped around it. So if somebody does come and dig it up and it's at a foot to 18 inches deep, so if they come and dig it up, they're going to hit something solid and hopefully it stops a fiber cut. We see fiber cuts all the time, and these guys are going in with a backhoe. A backhoe is going to win every time it's going to dig this stuff up. But how do we get smarter with that and protecting our fiber? Because nobody likes it. Nobody likes an outage, nobody likes 'em. They happen to, every day somebody is doing something. We've just got to figure out how to make it more solid to keep the customers happy.

Grant Ahlbrand (19:46):

Yeah, this same contractor, we would dig little trenches and stuff like that. And he always mentioned, he goes, if you ever feel anything, let me know. I was obviously just the 15-year-old manual digger, so I would just have a shovel digging a hole while he was in the backhoe or whatever, and he's like, if you feel anything you have to tell me, don't keep digging. So yeah, that's very, I wish that the areas that I was digging in had those armor cables and everything like that.

Scott Sampson (20:18):

Oh yeah. If it's just a piece of glass in the ground, you will break it. If it's a piece of armored cable or in a conduit, if you hit the conduit, even though you might crack the conduit, who cares? But if you hit it, you're going to stop. A backhoe is a little different. Walk behind trencher is a little different, but they're just, they don't feel anything. But we hand dig a lot and my guys, they don't want to bust a gas line. They don't want to bust waterline. They don't want to hit electrical. Nobody wants to get electrocuted. But that, you're right, it is a big issue and it is probably one of the bigger issues in our industry. I mean, you hear about fiber cuts every day because people just like, oh, it got tagged wrong on the 8 1 1 or it was mismarked by the company that put it in.

(21:03):

They said it's two feet off the road and it was three feet off the road. I mean, these are things that happened. Once again, we're putting a lot of it in the ground. We're moving really fast. It's almost take that step back and make sure we're documenting it perfectly to make sure the next person that comes up. I look at a lot of stuff we do today as I'm not building it for myself. I'm building it for my kids', kids', kids, my great, great grandchildren when I'm not around. So I want them to have a good product that they can still use. It's 60 years, 70 years, that's still something that's in the ground. It's still useful. I mean, copper was great. I mean, everybody has a phone line. If your house was built before two thousands, you still have a phone line in your house. Actually, probably even 2010, you still had a phone line in your house. You might not have used it, but you had it. That's a product that stood the test of time. And I think fiber is there. Fiber's going to be that next product. You're going to have fiber pulled into your house. You might even in 10, 20 years have fiber ran throughout your house. But the house, house, I'd have to go wrap my house or run a good wireless product, which I'll always say there's a lot of great wireless products out there.

Grant Ahlbrand (22:16):

So like you mentioned the test of time. So it is 2024, and we have fully entered the age of artificial intelligence. I mean, obviously it's been around, but as far as regular citizens are now feeling the impact of artificial intelligence. So how do you see AI affecting the future of fiber Fast homes in the fiber market in general,

Scott Sampson (22:39):

And I look at ai, I mean, to me, AI is still analytics. It's still taking a lot of data, putting it into a great database and then being able to pull that data out for us. I think with the internet, really the internet more than just, not even really, it's not going to affect the fiber in the home. Maybe with the wireless it will or like the routing within a house, but it's really going to be how it routes outside. It's going to look for smarter paths. It's going to look at different paths. Mean right now we do that very well with networks and our BGP and routing. We will look at how to get from point A to point Z the fastest route. I think it's going to find ways to do it faster or maybe even look at saying, Hey, you need to move the Netflix server from Dallas to Houston because there are more people that get on there or add a secondary one to get paths quicker so the latency is down and we get better response times.

(23:35):

I think that's where really AI is going to take in. I mean, it's going to help in, this is where everybody knows it's going to help in with marketing. I'll be honest, I English is my second language. My first language is ones and zeros. I've been in it for so long, I know it very well. But if you have me write a little article, it's the worst. And now with some of the products out there, I can go put it in there and say, Hey, rewrite this for me. I look better. But with the AI in my world and how it's going to interact, it's just going to help routing and make things be quicker. Because everything about my world is always about how to get it on and off my network as fast as possible. And I think that's what we're going to see.

(24:14):

And it's going to go more down to the computer side and what's talking to it and how do I get it to Netflix or to Amazon or to whatever product they're looking for, a B, C site, how do I get there faster? And then how do I get them the response even faster? Right now it's fast, but almost to that point and also try to be predictive on what people are going to do. That's really where the Internet's going to go. I want to more say, Hey, you're looking for this or you're looking for that. Let me show you the best of what you're going to find.

Grant Ahlbrand (24:46):

So yeah, focusing definitely more into your world specifically. Is there anything else that you're excited about coming down the pipeline? In the world of fiber, fast homes,

Scott Sampson (24:59):

I'm always looking at tomorrow. I mean, tomorrow, what is going to happen for us? Do we expand? Do we tighten up some of our sites? Do we cut costs? Do we save money? I'm always looking at what's next for the business and how to really secure. And it's not just the company itself, it's also the people that work with me. I love my team. People don't realize the people you work with are family. I mean, I spend just as much time with them as I do with my own family. I'm always looking at their futures and how to make sure if I'm here for the next year or the next 20 years, how do I make sure that they're here for the next 50 or they bring their kids in, or we hire new people that there's always something secure. I mean, we're a good running company. We got good boss. Omaha is a great holding company. I love working with them and their teams. We always have the best future in mind for the company. So once again, just wait and see, and I'm always excited to see what we'll do, Lance.

Grant Ahlbrand (26:05):

So yeah, this has been a great insightful conversation. To wrap it up, what would you like our listeners to from this episode?

Scott Sampson (26:15):

Wait till tomorrow. You'll see what happens. That sucks. Sorry. That's really how I look at it. I guess probably the biggest thing I want people to take from this is plan for tomorrow. And I'll take that with anything, not just the internet and what we do, not your home and how you build it, but plan for tomorrow. It's not about us. It's not even about my kids, it's about my kids' kids. How do we prep them to be better people and have better services and offer quality products? How do we make their lives better than it was for us? I mean, I look at my parents and I think I have a hundred times better life than they had. Well, how do I make my kids? And this isn't about money. This is about living a good life and living a good lifestyle.

Grant Ahlbrand (27:04):

Okay. Well, Scott, thank you for joining us on the Connect Nation podcast today. We are looking forward to seeing what's next in Fiber, and we'd love to have you on again in the future.

Scott Sampson (27:15):

Thank you. I really appreciated AB being on.

Grant Ahlbrand (27:25):

Again. My guest has been Scott Sampson of Fiber Fast Homes. I will include a link to their website in the description of this podcast. I'm Grant Al Brandand. Thanks for listening to Connected Nation. If you like our show and want to know more about us, head to connect to nation.org or look for the latest episodes of Connected Nation on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Podcast, Pandora, or Spotify.

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