Connected Nation

Fiber to the Future: Centranet and Sac and Fox Nation’s groundbreaking partnership

• Jessica Denson • Season 5 • Episode 53

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Today, we’re diving into an incredible story of technology and connection happening right here in the United States.

We’re thrilled to welcome leadership from Centranet, a company that delivers cutting edge internet via a fiber broadband communitcations network.

We will hear more about Centranet and their recently announced partnership with Sac and Fox Nation to bring one of the fastest internet speeds in the world to a rural tribal community in Oklahoma.

Recommended Links:
Partnership Article
Centranet Website 

Grant Ahlbrand (00:09):

Welcome to Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast where we focus on all things broadband. From closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds, we dive into technology topics that affect all of us are families and our neighborhoods. Today we're diving into an incredible story of technology and connection happening right here in the United States. We are thrilled to welcome leadership from CentraNet, a company that delivers cutting edge internet via a fiber broadband communications network. We will hear more about CentraNet and their recently announced partnership with Sac and Fox Nation to bring one of the fastest internet speeds in the world to a rural tribal community in Oklahoma. I'm Grant Al Brandand, and this is Connected Nation. I'm Grant br, and today I'm joined by Satin Gupta, the Vice President of Business and Technology Strategies at CentraNet. We'll dive into his professional broadband story as well as their recently announced partnership. Welcome, Sachin.

Sachin Gupta (01:01):

Thank you, grant, and thank you for having me on your podcast.

Grant Ahlbrand (01:05):

Yeah. So before we jump into the details of this exciting project, I'd love for our listeners to get to know you a little bit better. Could you share some of your background and what led you to pursue a career in broadband and technology?

Sachin Gupta (01:17):

As you have already mentioned, grant, I'm the Vice President of Business and Technology Strategies at CentraNet. CentraNet is a subsidiary of Central Rural Electric Corporative. We are an electric corporative in central Oklahoma, serving roughly seven counties roughly 20,000 meters, and we decided in 2020 to bring high speed internet to all of our members. Before CentraNet, I worked for a large defense contractor, which manufactured sensors. I've been in technology all of my life. I have a master's in mechanical engineering and another master's in telecommunications management. Through the years I've realized that solving technical problems is easy if you can communicate with and convince people who are the ones who will most benefit from the set technology. Technical problems are easy, people problems. Those are interesting.

Grant Ahlbrand (02:13):

Yeah. Yeah. So I always love hearing because it seems like broadband and technology has such a broad array of people and where they came from and what kind of roles they fulfilled now. So can you tell us a little bit about, as VP and business and technology strategies at CentraNet, you're in a unique position to influence how communities connect. What drew you to this role and what excites you most about RA's mission?

Sachin Gupta (02:43):

Like most people, grant COVID-19 was a defining moment in my life, gave me some time to introspect, and I had this epiphany that I need to find a role that allows me do more for people. That is the reason I joined CentraNet, which is part of Central Rural Electric Cooperative to help out our members, get access to high speed internet. In rural communities such as ours, there is no access to high speed internet. Most people will have speeds at less than 25 3 MVPS. A lot of them have geostationary satellites, which is like two megs down and half meg up. So they can't really participate in the digital economy. They can't really participate in remote work and distance learning and all the good things that come with high-speed broadband. So I started working for CentraNet to bring internet to all of these rural communities.

Grant Ahlbrand (03:49):

Yeah. So let's talk about a little bit, let's talk about that great milestone that's recently been accomplished by CentraNet, your team in collaboration with SAC and Fox Nation accomplish something few thought possible in a rural area like we just talked about, a 50 gigabytes per second fiber internet connection. What does reaching this level of speed mean for CentraNet and the communities that you're connecting for the future?

Sachin Gupta (04:14):

This was a pretty exciting project for us when we started this project. So we started thinking about this project almost 18 months ago. We talked to different technology partners trying to figure out how this is something that we can do and how this happens for the first time in America, right in our backyard. So as we converse with the different technology partners, what we figured was that quite a bit of work was needed to get there. The three guidelines that we had, the three things that really, really pushed us to make this project happen, one of them was that we wanted to let everyone know that rural communities deserve service that is at power or better than their urban counterparts. The second one is that rural operators such as rural electric corporators, like ourselves, we are the rural innovation engine. We bring innovation in the heart of America, and we wanted to prove with this pilot that the outside plant that we have, of all of the fiber infrastructure that we have laid out, we have laid out 3,300 miles of fiber infrastructure across seven counties. The outside plant did not need a change as we deployed this 50 G PON technology. So we made sure that there was no change in our operating procedures as we deployed this at the tribal member's house. The only changes were in the inside plant, which is the electronics that went inside the house of the tribal member as well as within our data centers. So those were the three real reasons which really motivated us to get this project up and going.

Grant Ahlbrand (06:07):

So now that we've covered the motivations, you'd imagine that the challenges are much higher at deploying in rural areas compared to, you mentioned earlier urban counterparts. So what kind of challenges did you face in deploying 50 G PON technology in rural communities?

Sachin Gupta (06:25):

Yeah, all new technology comes with its unique set of challenges. People would think that making the technology work is a big challenge, and that is absolutely true. But 50 G PON is not new. It has been around for a year or so, so most manufacturers have been working on it. A lot of those technical problems have been solved. The issue we had, which was most challenging, was that as we provide 50 gigs of connectivity to a single household, we have to come up with that backhaul and that backhaul in rural areas is extremely expensive. So I'll break this down a little bit more. Last mile connections are not going to do you any good unless there's a middle mile connection that connects to a data center or to other networks that allows us to get that backhaul to connect to the larger internet. Otherwise, we are just islands and in rural area, the middle mile does not exist. That allows us to access that back haul at cheap enough rates. So our biggest challenge is that if we provide a 50 gig connectivity to a household, we'll have to charge them thousands of dollars. And if it's not affordable, nobody will take it. So we are meeting that challenge head on. We are trying to develop a middle mile network here within Oklahoma that will allow us to drop that cost down significantly as we introduce multi services next year.

Grant Ahlbrand (08:07):

So yeah, this achievement was recently showcased at the future of Rural Broadband Showcase. What was it like to present this technology live, and how has the response been from the community and industry after such a great achievement achieved by CentraNet?

Sachin Gupta (08:22):

So the future of Rural Broadband Showcase, we had that right against the connected Oklahoma show. Connected Oklahoma Show is a conference that the Corporate Broadband Coalition of Oklahoma does every year. The coalition is made up of 11 co-op members, and every year we do this conference where we invite speakers to come and speak about topics on broadband. And our showcase was right before the conference, we were able to get a large amount of attendance. Well, one, because it was a cool technology that we were demonstrating, and two, also because it was right before the connected Oklahoma show. We had several people from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA that came to attend the showcase. We had people from the FCC, we had people from the Oklahoma Broadband office. The executive director from the Oklahoma Broadband office came and congratulated us on this accomplishment of ours.

(09:35):

So it was one of the most exciting things that we have done in a long time. We have had a very, very positive response from the community. A lot of people have reached out to us asking us when we will make multi speeds available here within our service areas, and we have told them that multi speeds will become available next year on a larger scale. We have also had a lot of people reach out to us and ask us how we manage to do this in the rural landscape, in the tribal household that we did it in. And generally the answer has been hard work and difficulty.

Grant Ahlbrand (10:20):

The project is funded by the NCIA under the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, a $35.8 million initiative. So how is this funding helping CentraNet fulfill its mission and what is unique about working with SAC and Fox Nation?

Sachin Gupta (10:35):

The Travel Broadband Connectivity Program or the TBCP program by the NTIA is a $3 billion program that was actually funded by both administration, both Trump's administration as well as the Biden administration. So it is about as bipartisan as it can get. So the program is $3 billion, and we were lucky enough to get $35.8 million in collaboration with Second Fox Nation to build a network within their tribal territory. The unique part of this project is that because it is being built and within tribal lands, we have to ensure that 100% of the tribal members within those tribal lands can be connected and will have access to high speed broadband as we finish this network. The last date for us to finish this is August of 2026, which we're not too far from that, roughly about a year and a half, and we still have a little bit of ways to go. As you would understand, most government projects have their own level of bureaucracy, but NTIA has been phenomenal in working with us and guiding us through those bureaucratic pieces to get this project initiated and finished.

Grant Ahlbrand (12:05):

So you just mentioned 2026, and I understand that this is one of four projects under the Tribal Broadband connectivity program. What's the big picture for CentraNet as you work towards completing all projects by that 2026 date?

Sachin Gupta (12:19):

We have four independent projects that we are building. The first one we finished, which was the one under which we did the 50 G pond pilot, we have three more projects to go that we will finish by August of 2026. Most of the time as we start projects, we have to first go through an environmental process where we have to ensure that any place where we are digging trenches, we are not disturbing anything that has environmental value. So we have to go through the environmental process, and that lead in generally takes some time. Our next project, I believe we'll be able to start that by March of next year. Once we start it, it's fairly quick going, and then we are able to finish that project within three to four months. We fully expect that we'll finish all four of our projects by August of 2026.

Grant Ahlbrand (13:19):

So yeah. As we look to that future, what are some of the ways you envision that this level of connectivity will be used, and what's the potential impact on these communities that are now receiving speeds that they never thought before possible?

Sachin Gupta (13:35):

So one of the questions that I'm asked a lot is who needs 50 GPS? Right? Most of the time people today cannot even saturate a one gig link. So why are we working towards building a 50 gig connection to the communities that we are building it to? And the answer I have is that we do not know what technologies will come out in the future. If there was no highway system in America, then Amazon would not be as big as it is today. You would not get goods delivered right to your house if we did not have the highway system that we have in America. So unless we build that in infrastructure, you do not know what new technology, what new thing will come along that will make use of that infrastructure to make the lives of people better, which is what my answer is, right? That yes, today's technology will probably not utilize the 50 GBPS speeds, but once we build the infrastructure, new technologies will come out that will start utilizing that speed. It is if you build it, they will come kind of a scale.

(14:52):

The applications that we are talking about in rural areas, precision ag is one of the biggest applications. When we look at precision agriculture, a single plant of corn in the field can generate 18 gigabytes of data. What this means is that the average cornfield can produce 18 times the amount of data. As a library of Congress, that is a mind boggling number. If you do not have high speeds, you're not going to be able to get all of that data back to an edge compute center where you can make computations and come up with decisions that you need to be able to bring precision agriculture online. So you really need those speeds in farmlands when it comes to telehealth and telemedicine. You really need to be able to do things in real time. At some point of time, remote work will become virtual presence. At some point of time, distance learning will become virtual classrooms. When that happens, you will need those kind of speeds. So those are the applications that you really, really need to look at when you are building this infrastructure. And like I said before, yes, it's true that people are not even maxing out their one gig connection today, but tomorrow when remote work becomes virtual presence, when instead of having a teams call, you will put on your VR goggles and sit down in a room and be in front of everybody in virtual reality, you will need those kind of speeds.

Grant Ahlbrand (16:33):

Yeah, I absolutely loved a couple of the analogies you made there. And previously I had a podcast where we talked about how internet connectivity went from copper to coax to fiber, and that consistent replacement that happens in technology and like you're doing at CentraNet, is you're preparing for the future and you're going out there and you're building something that's going to stand the test of time. So as the part-time host and producer of the podcast, I think I found my soundbite for promotion, so I appreciate it. But Sachin, it was great to hear from leadership all about the impacts being made in the present, as well as being able for us and our listenership to see the vision for the future. So thank you for joining us today in the Connected Nation podcast. It was great talking to you.

Sachin Gupta (17:20):

Thank you very much. Grant,

Grant Ahlbrand (17:30):

Again, we've been talking with Sachin Gupta, the Vice President of Business and Technology Strategies at CentraNet. I'll include links to their website as well as more on the story of their groundbreaking partnership. 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 connected nation.org or for the latest episodes of Connected Nation on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Podcast, Pandora, or Spotify.

 

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Jessica Denson

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