Max Clark: [00:00] It’s more because, uh, I forget, and then it’s really weird. It’s like we, you get into a conversation, you’re like, oh man, I forgot to press the record button, and this was great. I wish I’d recorded all this. Like, what was I thinking? You know, like, you just have this like,
Oliver Maxwell: I’m, uh, an amateur musician and that happens to me all the time. I’m trying to
Max Clark: yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: retort record guitar, piano parts, and then I forget, it’s not on
Max Clark: So what is, what is your, uh, what is your instrument du jour?
Oliver Maxwell: right now, it’s guitar. I started about three years ago starting in your, you know, at around 30. It’s slow going, but we’re getting there. I can now actually perform in front of people, which still makes me sweat a little bit, but we’re getting there.
Max Clark: Do you like, uh, do you like a acoustic or do you like, um, electric?
Oliver Maxwell: my time pretty evenly between both. I, I started just on electric, but there’s not that much like standalone electric stuff you can do in your [01:00] bedroom that carries over. It’s like, you
Max Clark: Yeah,
Oliver Maxwell: in, come in my room and let me show you this little I learned it. Eh, I, I needed to pick the acoustic cup and, you know, be able to do my, have like a full song and composition.
I used to be in a, a high school southern rock cover band. All weird dude, we were so bad. Oh my
Max Clark: it’s incredible. It’s so good.
Oliver Maxwell: my hair was down to here completely
Max Clark: Oh, it’s so
Oliver Maxwell: dried it. I didn’t flipped up at the end. wore a bandana and our, uh, our band was called, uh, Dynasty.
Max Clark: That’s so good.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah,
Max Clark: I, uh,
Oliver Maxwell: I.
Max Clark: I mean, I was, I played, uh, I, I, you know, I, I think like everybody, it’s right. You know, I was in kindergarten or first grade or something, elementary school, and you start with violin and then somehow I got like tapped to start playing clarinet. So then I started playing, you know, clarinet in elementary school.
And I played all the way through [02:00] like sophomore year of high school, like in bands like the orchestra and symphony. And then, you know, I didn’t get into marching band, but I was playing in the band. I didn’t want to be in marching band. Lemme maybe hear cla on that one. But then I had this, I had this one teacher who’s like, oh, you know, this part has a bass clarinet.
You’re gonna play the bass clarinet now. And I’m like, this is, is, it’s not even cool. Like the saxophone was cool, you know, but like the bass clarinet very uncool. You know, it’s like, how do you take like one of the worst. Like from like a nerd element, one of like, already like the nerdiest things you could come up with and then make it even worse.
Bass clarinet, you know, like,
Oliver Maxwell: ’cause the older you get, the nerdy things turn cool. Right. Otherwise
Max Clark: well,
Oliver Maxwell: we wouldn’t be cool.
Max Clark: yeah,
Oliver Maxwell: So, I don’t know.
Max Clark: But, but,
Oliver Maxwell: the bass clarinet and play a little tune. I think that was pretty badass. So,
Max Clark: well, I, I, I have two clarinets and I have two sons, and so I’ve kind of like, we’re gonna try to, like, do, we force them into clarinet? They’re doing piano lessons right now. I played piano for most of my life as well. I haven’t played [03:00] in 15 years, but like, I was, you know, I can still like, kind of keep, you know, like remember, you know, and I’ve had these moments.
Yeah. So I’ve had these moments where like, I should start playing again. You know, this would be fun. Um,
Oliver Maxwell: old are your sons?
Max Clark: seven and eight.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah. Prime. To
Max Clark: Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: an instrument.
Max Clark: Well, no, I mean, like, we’re, we’re very like the, like the antithesis of, of, um, is that the right word? Of tiger parents where it’s like they almost have to beg us to do something now.
’cause like everything we, you know, it’s like you try to make your kid play sports and then they, they hate sports. So, um, but, uh, I’ve always wanted to play guitar. My brother did guitar for a while and I could never really understand like, like the strumming, especially on an electric guitar. ’cause it’s not like plucking.
I always want to like, pluck the key. It’s like, but like you can, you can do this or you can like touch here and, or you can like finger and like all create some sounds.
Oliver Maxwell: I, it, it’s, you know, the guitar is, is like the easiest instrument to [04:00] learn three chords and play like a, it’s even easier than piano to do a, the most basic songs, but to do something that sounds a little complex, it, the, the, the, you know what I mean? The difficulty or curve is like that and it, yeah.
Max Clark: And then you watch, you watch stuff with like Tom Moreo and he is like talking about how like, oh, I had this guitar and like randomly it had this switch on it where you could like pick, you could like change the front and back pickup. And then I figured out randomly I was in a guitar lesson with a kid and like I could turn the front pickup off and then strum it this way and it made this crazy noise and it was like, wow, that’s kind of cool.
So I recorded it and then of course it becomes like a, the major riff for, you know, bulls on parade or I forget which song it was. You know, it’s like, and you’re like, and it’s just like randomly the dude just like messing around with a guitar one day teaching some kid how to play and he is like, oh, that was pretty cool.
I should record this. And like show the guys.
Oliver Maxwell: I, uh, la Last thing I’ll say about the matter. This is something that no one else would ever get to see or hear, um, until at least I’m dead. [05:00] have a voice recorder app on my phone like many of us do. don’t know what it is about long drives, but they get the creative juices flowing, and then I
Max Clark: Yeah. Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: an idea or a riff stuck in my head. And the recordings sound just like this. Okay, so. Uh, we’ll start out like, nah, nah. And they’re so embarrassing and like, they don’t make any sense. But I’ve got like a
Max Clark: Okay.
Oliver Maxwell: of these.
Max Clark: Okay. There’s a YouTube video that when we’re done, you’re gonna have to go find. And it was from a talk show, and it is the guy that did the theme song for the NBA.
Oliver Maxwell: Oh
Max Clark: And he literally has the recording of him calling his answering machine and being like, and it goes like this. And he is like, doing what you just did. And, and, and he, so the, the, the interview with him is like, you know, I, I guess he’s like famous for doing lots of [06:00] stuff, but one of the things is the NBA theme song, right?
The cut in. And so it starts with him talking about calling his answering machine and doing exactly that. And then, and he goes, and then it turns into this and he’s got his band, you know, this like stand, you know, on stage and he plays it. Right. And of course, you know the song ’cause it’s like massively, you know, that recording has made this guy tens of millions of dollars.
Right. You know, and it’s, and he had the, and the answering machine recording. So yeah, don’t, don’t literally just YouTube like NBA theme song, whatever. And you’re gonna, and it’s like the record and the, and the, and the, it’s gotta be like nineties or something. ’cause it’s like, like very mic Michael Boltons, you know, like long hair, the cost, you know, the, like what people were wearing.
But, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s incredible. It is like such a like, quintessential piece of like, this is how it actually works. You know, kind of set up.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: I was sent, [07:00] um, three different examples. Large healthcare, customer, retail, financial services, institution and prison data and voice services provider. Are you versed in all three of these
Oliver Maxwell: versed. Yeah, I’m, yeah,
Max Clark: for, for just absolute uniqueness of quality?
I think I’d like to talk about prison voice
Oliver Maxwell: a hundred percent.
Max Clark: data invoice services provider.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: Okay. Because, you know, not to like, not to like talk smack about like retail financial services or large healthcare because they’re valid. But like how many times do we get to talk? By the way, I had a, I had a prison voice service, like payphone company.
Like we can we, I I, years ago. Yeah. So we can, this, they were printing cash. Like there was two, there were two companies I stumbled into as a, as an IT consultant. Like back when you like, show up and like fix computers for people. Um, one was, this one, I’m trying to remember their name. They were on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica.[08:00] Um, and I found out that they literally had the payphones in the California Department of Corrections system was all them. And um, and then the other company did um, ATM machines and they had like thousands of ATM machines and they were like, real claim to fame was like state fairs or like renaissance fairs, you know, where you, we’d like, and it’d be like $8 ATM fee, you know, kind of stuff.
And, and it was really funny ’cause you’d go onto the one floor where it was like all the workers, you know, like where I would end up, you know, like, and it was just like, like, um, like this boiler room kind of environment where like people were just like sitting on top of each other and then you go up a floor to the executive floor and it was like marble floors and like statues and like gold leafing.
And it was like this really hilarious kind of like surf and kingdom kind of like perception in the company. But, um. You know, um, it, yeah, it was, it was great. [09:00] Okay. Prison. Prison. It is. Let us, um, let me do this. Okay.
Um, any questions for me? I mean, we’re, we’re recording, but any questions for me before we get started? Um, this isn’t Gonzo ambush journalism. If you realize you said something that was bad, just say it. You know, we, we do a marking kind of thing and, um, and yeah. I haven’t recorded on this one, but you recording on your side.
I’m recording on my side, so if like, my video gets weird, don’t worry about it. ’cause your, your browser is recording. Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: Um,
Max Clark: Um, it’s not so obvious on this one. The other one’s really obvious. It’ll show you the recording. When we finish recording, just hang out. We’re gonna make sure that the recording completely uploads, um, off your browser.
But, but yeah, if the, if the connection gets weird, don’t worry about it. Because it’s doing a local recording, so like we get high quality on each side.
Oliver Maxwell: I would just say, um, I, you know, I, [10:00] I watched some other, um, podcasts you did with different, you know, different folks, different types of people, and I would just say, you know, I’m not a technical person, not a technical resource. I’m very much, um, know, a on the sort of business development side of things, I’m out.
Max Clark: Okay.
Oliver Maxwell: new partners and customers. I mean, I can tell you for example, that, you know, the, the routers that we provision for our customers are ad trans. I couldn’t tell you much more than that. Just,
Max Clark: I just made a note, make sure to ask lots of technical questions. Okay.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah, exactly. But what, what I can speak to is, you know, and, and this may, may be content for the, you know, actual recording, but my background, you know, I came from Polaris. I worked there for three years. and you know, one of the things that kind of jumped out at me about a p Xnet, when I was kind of looking around, I sort of snuck into the back office and saw that there weren’t any open commission inquiries that [11:00] immediately caught my eye when I was looking around.
I was like, okay, at least they pay on time. Right? Which you’d think is, what do you call that? Um, table stakes, but it’s not,
Max Clark: Mm.
Oliver Maxwell: in,
Max Clark: Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: as you know. but you know, my, my side is really more on the. Uh, trying to, you know, enable advisors and get the best data out there that I can and connect with the right ones that see the value and can pass that on to their customers.
And that, that’s, that’s more what I do. I’m like, I’m like the business development guy out looking for the right agents and the right customers.
Max Clark: Well, let’s not focus on that too much because we’re gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pepper you with, uh, tons of tons, tons of nerd questions, and then, uh. We will, we’ll, we’ll make our way through it. Okay. So let’s get going. Um, okay. So, uh, where do I wanna start with this? So, I mean, Oliver, obviously we share a name, which is just makes us awesome to begin with, right?
Except, except I go by Maxwell. And your last name is Maxwell. And as complete, [12:00] you know, the root of Maxwell, have you ever dug into this, where the name comes from?
Oliver Maxwell: all right, let’s see if we read the right thing or if I read the right thing. I, I’ve heard that it’s a, comes from supposedly maus whale, some guy named maus had a Well, is that what you’ve read up?
Max Clark: So, James Clerk Maxwell married into Noblety and is the second most important physicist that has lived. So, you know, Newton and Newton’s equations, and you know Einstein because of course they’re popularized. But, um, basically, um, James Clark Maxwell figured out what to do with electricity before electricity existed.
And is the foundational physicist that then, like, modern physics gets built on top of.
Oliver Maxwell: cool.
Max Clark: it’s, it’s, uh, so
Oliver Maxwell: years.
Max Clark: yeah, I, I, uh, I told you I wouldn’t make it a, a nerd conversation, but see, we’ve already started, I tricked you.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: Um, the, there’s a [13:00] lot in, in the world of, of, of network and voice business, like traditional telephony, right?
Um, there’s lots of different places we talk about. And, and, and I think for a lot of people, this kind of goes into the background, right? Like, these are things that need to be installed and, and not really thought of. I don’t like this intro. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do this a little differently. Uh, see, we just do this.
It didn’t happen. It’s completely over. Okay. Um, from a network and voice services integrator and provider, we, we, you touched lots of different industries. Um, we talked about a few different ones. You know, traditional segments that people would think about, you know, healthcare, financial services, retail.
And I’m actually excited to talk about this one ’cause this is a little different. And this is, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna lead it up to that. I’m not gonna say anything more and I’m gonna let you intro and provide a little background. Um, so I don’t steal your thunder here at all.
Oliver Maxwell: So is one, one of my favorite customers to talk about. ’cause like you said, it’s a little off the beaten path in terms of what you’d think of for traditional verticals [14:00] that we all like to talk about. But this one is a prison voice and data services provider, um, across the United States. Um, this company has close to 600 locations now. Um, so it’s a, a pretty big, uh, customer of ours. And, uh, they, you know, this one is one that came to us through an advisor, uh, years ago. Uh, they brought it to us and we, uh, sort of slowly started earning their trust. Um, they had some circuits with, uh, direct agreements with carriers.
They had some with other aggregators, but, uh, what they were really having trouble with is you might, you, you could probably guess, and maybe you’ve noticed this before, but tend to be in the middle of nowhere. Uh, you know, you’re always driving down a country road and you’re like, oh, that’s where the prison is, the federal prison is, or whatever. Um, so a lot of these were just really hard to get service to, and part of the [15:00] reason we started getting a few of these wind here and there, sort of inching in the door, was were going to the trouble of getting agreements with these very small, rural
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: carriers out in, you know, in the desert in Nevada or wherever it is that it may be. Um, so that was kind of what started the whole thing and started the Dominoes started sort of tumbling after that because after we did a, a good job with those, they were like, all right, well, why don’t you take a crack at some of the little more, the more mainstream, you know, carriers and Lex that we’re all more, a little more familiar with. Um, and then, uh, fast forward, I think, you know, I think the first one was about eight years ago, uh, that we’re now working with, uh, close to half of those sites and we’re winning more and more as they come. Um, the other ones are just still on contract or whatever it is, may be, but pretty great now.
They, they call us, they tell us, uh, where the new one’s gonna be, and we send them the contract and, and [16:00] we are getting that turned around and usually starting off the project management within a week of when they send us the quote. so it’s really awesome, uh, customer story, but what’s even more interesting about it is the. What happens when things don’t go well? So, uh, a lot of people don’t realize this ’cause a lot of our images of prisons and jails are kind of the stuff we see from movies from 30, 40 years ago, right? But, uh, modern prisons really, prisoners pretty much run off of iPad type technology, right? Prisoners have and they use that for all of their communications, for their entertainment, um, education. All of that comes through basically an iPad for a prisoner. And that’s also where a lot of their, uh, you know, if you’re good behavior, rewards, all that sort of system comes from this [17:00] technology. So, um, one of the things this customer told us was like, no, you, you gotta understand when circuits go down, uh, riots can happen. This.
Max Clark: Oh, geez.
Oliver Maxwell: Because they’re, they need an outlet, you know, just like any person would. And all of a sudden you’re cut off from people, but then all of a sudden you have no entertainment or technology or communication You know, things can go south fast. So that it is just kind of fun. ’cause you don’t think, we love to say in telecom, like, oh, it’s telecom.
We’re not saving lives or whatever and may not be saving lives here, but we may be stopping riots, which is pretty fun. That, that that’s what reliable technology.
Max Clark: that is that, I mean, that probably is saving lives though, right?
Oliver Maxwell: I just don’t wanna stretch.
Max Clark: I mean, I don’t know what the rate on riot to, like physical injury is, but it feels like it’s, it, it, it, I mean, again, going back to like the movie connotation, right? Not to like, like, you know, you know, I mean. Yeah, there’s probably a direct correlation between physical bodily injury.
Right.
Oliver Maxwell: there is. And that, you know, so that, that’s kind [18:00] of a cool thing that, know, most people wouldn’t think of. It’s not a traditional business you’d think of, but that’s a large. You know, fiber customer that needs reliability, they need uptime. Um, and so when we can go and give them type one circuits, that’s what’s, you know, earned us the business over the years.
Max Clark: Um, Oliver, what is an aggregator?
Oliver Maxwell: An aggregator. I probably the easiest way to describe it would be like a wholesaler, right? So as, as an aggregator, um, we contracts with around 200, uh, carriers across the US and Canada. And what we are seeking to do is essentially buy those circuits from the carriers of the world. That at and t’s, frontiers, spectrums, all of these.
And the smaller ones. We got Paul Bunion cable out in Minnesota. Love to give them a shout out. but know, we, our job is to, you know, buy those wholesale right in bulk. We get a, um, a [19:00] discount, and then we try to, um, you know. Really our goal is to deliver a better customer service experience, um, to whoever’s buying the circuit.
So especially in case now, single circuits, of course we can do it. Where we really tend to shine is when got a customer with multiple locations, much like, um, this prison services customer where they’ve got, you know, 500 plus locations across the us. We like to be able to give it all to them on one bill. we like to be able to, um, if they want, we can flat rate the pricing. So it really makes it easier on their accounting team to see if there’s any irregularities when it’s the exact same price for all 500 locations. Um, and then just have, generally have a better experience for the customer. If, if instead of 500 bills you have one, instead of having, know, in their case, 30 plus carriers to call or more, uh, you know, instead of. Having to deal with [20:00] that. They have one number to call for support. a single project manager who handles all, you know, the entire project and sites. That’s, that’s generally gonna be a, a much better experience for the customer.
Max Clark: I feel like there’s two main pathways for a company into working with an aggregator, and you mentioned both of ’em, right? The first one is, uh, density and complexity of carrier relationships. You know, if you’re a single site. Customer any ever done in circuits, you have two, three carriers are interacting with.
If you’re a single region customer, you know, company, and you’re only exist inside of one footprint of one phone company and one cable company, maybe you, you know, even though you have multiple circuits, you have two relationships you’re carrying on a major, you know, on a, on a big basis. But when companies cross into this line where you start talking about dozens of locations, hundreds of locations, right?
Now you get into this first issue we brought up, which is just the complexity of relationships. And, and, you know, I’ve been doing this for so [21:00] long, I forget, like just actually figuring out who’s the cable company for this address that I’ve never actually been to personally, like, I don’t know who the Cape, so just, just actually even, you know, Paul Bunion, you know, in Minnesota, right?
Like if, if you’re, you know, in Miami, Florida, you have no idea who that is, right? Or how to find them. Um. So I, you know, I, I find, so it’s like, that seems like the first major pathway, um, second major pathway. You know, you talk about Bill, you know, billing and financial complexity, right? Again, um, and, and sometimes this falls on the IT team or the telecom team, or they have to manage the invoices and deal with these things.
But inevitably it ends up as a finance load
Oliver Maxwell: Yes.
Max Clark: where I’ve talked with enough finance teams where it’s, they’re almost actually a lot of times they’re willing to spend more money to reduce workload on their finance team. Just because, oh, you know, if you’re getting 500 invoices that you have to correlate, evaluate, do, do we even have this location [22:00] still?
Are we paying for something that we’ve stopped using? Like, you know, and, and, and there’s a disconnection there. How much in, you know, and, and then I, I think when you started talking about this, in the case of these prison locations of rural locations and places where if you just called up a, um. Call up the phone company, called up the cable company and said, I have this location that you, I need service at.
I think people don’t realize this until they do it the first time. If it’s not passing other doors, the financial reality of that company then going out and lighting that location for you, you might, if you’re talking to the wrong person, there’s gonna say, no thank you. Right? Like, we’re not even gonna give you a price.
Right. So, um, h how specifically for, for the prisons, I wanna, I wanna keep it there. Like how, like how much of this was, we’ve got a sprawling network that we need to managed differently. How much of it was we just need help getting service in the first place? ’cause we just don’t know to talk. I mean, like [23:00] what, like what pushed them over the edge to say, look, we wanna do something different here.
Oliver Maxwell: I, I really think it was more of the latter. I mean, I think,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: initially, and, and it, the, our foot in the door and, you know, our, um, advisor’s foot in the door with this was the hard to reach locations. It was the, the tough and, and just like you described, they think, okay, ah, well, you know, it’s in so I’ll call Cox and Lumen, for example.
But if they
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: it, who can? And it, that’s when it starts getting tricky. You start working with providers who maybe have like 10 people in one office, you know, and it, they can be harder to get a hold of, to coordinate projects with, to get realistic timelines with. As with this, um, prison services company, as you can imagine, he’s got his own contracts, right?
So
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: once they, he gets them to sign on the dotted line to provide the prison, right, to provide his, uh, services to. [24:00] Give the prisoners voice data, you know, calling services, whatever it may be, educational services, usually is then on a pretty tight timeline to get service into the building to start delivering. so the longer those get delayed and missed, that’s revenue. He’s not making it can get penalized for not meeting his end of the deal.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: that was the foot in the door. It was, can you get these hard to reach places that other people can’t After that, think it, you know, what kept it, what took us from just the fringe locations to of them, you know, the, the ones that are e more mainstream was the, the consolidation, the ease, as you said on the finance team.
The ease on, um, IT team, because o one thing that we’ve run into a lot that is really interesting is that people aren’t always getting type one circuits even when they think they are. Uh, that’s a big, big
Max Clark: Tell, tell, tell me more, Oliver.
Oliver Maxwell: So, [25:00] um, know, it, it’s not always, it is typically not advertised. If, if, in that former example, if you go to Nevada and Lumen says, sure, yeah, we can do a, we can quote you here, and you get the quote and sure, maybe it’s a little high, And for the average non, you know, telecom or wholesale person, you might not think twice. Okay, well instead of, you know, a thousand for a gig, it’s 1600, it’s 1600 because they’re buying it from this rural carrier. And then you’re getting a type two connection. And this is, it’s, it’s bad for anyone, but we like to say at a PX one of our mantras is is the killer of applications. And people in in tech know this, right? So when you have a type two circuit, you’re getting more latency. It’s just a fact of life. That fiber optic, it may be, it may travel at the speed of light, but when you have to run it over two networks instead of one, you’re adding latency. you’re adding packet loss. [26:00] And when your whole business, especially like that of a prison service, you know, internet and phone service provider, when you’re, it completely relies on those applications running well and not having a lot of latency.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: to get a type one circuit. Uh,
Max Clark: I wanna dig into this more, you know, let’s talk about type one versus type two and aggregation specifically, because from a network design standpoint, um, first off, for clarity, you’re the star type one versus type two differences. What are you actually buying?
Oliver Maxwell: Sure. So the way, the way I, you know, like to explain it just on the most basic level that a even a salesperson such as myself can understand is one just means that the ISP in the last mile are the same provider.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm. The physical connection that goes into the location is owned by the ISP. Okay.
Oliver Maxwell: when you have a, a type two connection, uh, for example, it means the, the last mile and the ISP are different. [27:00] So the, when they, when we say last mile, we mean quite literally, it may not be a mile, but the last bit of fiber that is running from the business to, you know what the, the network is a different, company than
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: selling you the internet service. So that means all, that means that type two really has to run over. Two networks and type three, three, and so, you know, so on. And then type one just means everything’s right? It’s always gonna, it’s the same last mile and the same ISP. So a P xnet, uh, it’s kind of one of the, our sort of founding tenets, I guess.
Uh, you know, about 15 years ago we kind of made a decision to we’re not gonna deal with type twos. Not that the demand wasn’t there, people, you know, still like to have everything in one carrier or whatever. There’s reasons people use them, but found it wasn’t worth the hassle. It wasn’t worth the trouble tickets we were
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: Um, [28:00] so that’s, that’s kind of one of our standouts is that we only quote and sell type ones. If we can’t get a type one, we’ll no bid it. Um, so that’s, that’s type one or nutshell and why we’re such big proponents of it. And you know, gonna be like I, uh, you know, this. Prison services company across all these different states. goal is to get a type one for every single site and keep the latency low, keep the riots from happening keep everyone happy.
Max Clark: There’s, um, there’s so many different business models in telecom, right? So we have a last model provider. We talk about type one circuits. Typically, you know, a last mile provider is gonna be one of three types of entities. It can be a phone company, it’s gonna be a cable company. Um, it could be, um, you know, thanks to deregulation, it could be a, um, a competitive local exchange carrier.
It could be a CEC that’s actually pulling infrastructure around and putting stuff on poles, or putting stuff in the ground. Or it could be the power company, right? And then [29:00] in the type two world, not to say that like type two by default is bad. There’s a lot of, um, you know, network services providers, resellers, aggregators, you know, however they want to classify themselves that exist by popping a market.
It and then buying circuits from last mile providers. And they get technical, you know, they have an in an I and then they’re buying uni or tail circuits into locations, and the customer’s perceiving the network build as being that, that provider’s ip, right? ’cause they don’t see the underlying transport from a, from a customer standpoint and from a, like a determination, you know?
’cause if a PX is going out to market and buying a type A tier, a type one, you know, they’re, you’re buying internet access at a wholesale basis, right? You’re going to at and t Verizon Lumen, and you’re going to Cox, Comcast, charter, et cetera. The customer then sees IP addresses from at and t. They see I, they see a network path from Comcast.
They see, you know, they see that network because that’s the [30:00] network that they’re using. This turns into a conversation a lot of times of like. Well, back to the beginning part of it, I, I already have a at t sales rep calling me. Why shouldn’t I just do business with at and t? It’s at and t’s network. Like how, how does this not add cost complexity and, and time delay to them to go through an A PX to then, you know, end up purchasing an at and t service or a Comcast service or a Cox service.
Oliver Maxwell: a very fair question. I mean, I think d and now first I’ll, I’ll just say, you know, of all the people that buy circuits and resell them, uh, aggregators, other, you know, sort of aggregator s companies, they don’t all do it the same way. Um, some competitors, and for their own reasons and sometimes very good reasons, they do run it over their own network after they, right.
So they’ll take that at and t. And then they run it back over their network and then for a very, or maybe they have some managed [31:00] services, some, know, different things they’re doing with the, the circuit, right.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: as far as if you’re just a customer, you know, and you’re sitting back here thinking, well, yeah, I’ve got, I’m talking to the at and t rep.
Why our, really more of a, a customer service model that we’re trying to improve upon. pretty much. If I can’t do better than at and t’s number, if your circuit go, goes down and a PX can’t do better than that, we should probably all just go jump off a bridge. that’s not to, you know, speak ill of what is one of the greatest, you know, and largest networks in terms of their actual infrastructure.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: think most people can relate that if you’ve got the service at home, at your business, we’ve all had the situation where it is really hard. I. To get an outage fixed. It is really hard to get a real person on the phone that actually cares and wants to get it up and running. So we try, you [32:00] know, we’re generally told that we’re pretty competitive price wise in terms of us versus getting a direct, uh, now it depends on the carrier, right?
Just like how, for example, um, A TSD has to go out and negotiate with all the 400 of their suppliers and what their rates and everything are gonna be. An aggregator has to do the same thing. Uh,
Max Clark: Hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: you know, we work hard to build the relationship and the volume over the years with, for example, at and t so that we get the maximum wholesale discount rates we can.
And so we can provide the most, you know, the most cost effective or cost efficient quote to our customers. really it’s a combination of providing, layering on better service, better project management, that, uh, from. An a or an agent or a consultant’s perspective, that you’ll actually get paid on time and that our commissions are accurate and that we’re very much channel focused. But for the customer, it’s really just who, who am I calling? Who am I picking up the phone? Who’s actually got, [33:00] you know, looking out for me? You know, uh, who’s got proactive monitoring built in so that if something goes out in the middle of the night, they’re already on it, working on getting it fixed. are the sort of things that we’re trying to do to make sure it’s an infinitely better experience for the end user customer. That is, even if we’re in the ballpark in terms of price, it’s gonna end up being less cost for them. Just like we were talking about. If, if. If it’s $20 cheaper a month, um, but it goes down once a month you’re constantly having billing issues it’s creating a strain on your IT and you know, your staff, it’s not really $20 a month, less.
It’s, a different way of looking at cost savings. Right.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: that’s primarily why we can stay in business and why we continue to grow is we just give a better experience and allow them to run their business.
Max Clark: If you’re not in the business of telecom, telecom is usually a, it’s not something the average company’s [34:00] thinking about. Right? It becomes like a cost line item, you know? Now in case of, you know, this a, a prison service provider, right? They’re in the business of telecom, right? You’ve got a team that has come up delivering telecom, managing telecom circuits, like this is a savvy telecom customer.
Um. There’s major price point differences between, uh, dedicated services and broadband based services. But I mean, again, if you’re, if you’re delivering internet to a, you know, multi-thousand user installation, you’re not buying broadband, you know, cable modem circuits to deliver these things. So in terms of like scale, immediately I go, okay, 500 locations, a thousand dollars a location on average.
You know, this is a $500,000 a month, $6 million a year telecom budget. I know that number spitball, it’s probably higher. Some sites are gonna be lower than you have done in circuits. I mean, so, you know, from like a, from like a, a range, you know, immediately go, this is somewhere between like, you know, five and $10 million a year of a telecom.
Right? And, and, [35:00] um, I have no knowledge of what it really is, obviously. But I mean, just like, like my, you know, the way the brain works, uh, I, I go immediately with your, if this is your core expense of the business, you become very sophisticated at delivering and understanding this service. So it, it tells me, like, besides your comment earlier about like.
Have you ever interacted with a phone company for service and support like, you know, people And, and if you’ve ever, ever interacted with a phone company for technical service or billing support, you never want to interact with a phone company again for tech. I mean, we do all day long and I don’t want to deal with it.
Right. Um, but, but the point is, is like, this is a very savvy customer. This isn’t like your like average mid-market enterprise. It’s got, you know, a dozen locations. This is a very savvy telecom buyer. How is it that they weren’t able to get the phone company to deliver service to a rural location? And, and you were like, like, what’s, what’s the disconnect there?
And, and this is a big, this is a big point for a lot of people, right? Like, like how come [36:00] you were able to do it and they couldn’t?
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah, I think, I think part of it, you know, I, I wish I could tell you we had some secret magic, uh, that enables us to do that, but I think it’s mainly due to specialization. Um, you know, I think most aggregators, they’re very much in this companies, right? That the whole point is to, it’s part of why it’s sort of in the word aggregator, right?
You’re
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: a bunch of different kinds of services together, and a PX is a little unique in that we really just want to do. One thing exceptionally well, and that’s dedicated type one fiber internet. I think that’s why we’re winning with customers like this where they, they already have all their own applications very specialized for this environment, right?
They, have their own, know, voice applications and services and software that they’re running through this, this fiber pipe. But even though, like you said, they are sophisticated, we do all day [37:00] at a p xnet is dig and find provi fiber providers, build relationships with them and project manage them. I think it’s just that specialization. It’s, it’s as simple as if you do something a lot and work hard at it, you’ll get good at it. And that’s what we’ve done. It’s getting to be, we’re, we’re, you know, trying to be the go-to person for fiber internet for that reason. So, yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, these companies know and, or, you know. It’s, it goes to show it’s tough even for them, right? Just
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: I mean, it’s, it’s never easy. So it’s, it’s not that, uh, it’s effortless over here. Of course, a lot of these are very tough and we’re fighting with them. tricky thing about the, um, prison service company is, as you can imagine, the access is very tricky too. Can you imagine? Well, it’s, you, you, it’s,
Max Clark: You know, you know where I immediately go to with that one. Oh my goodness. That’s such a good point. Um. [38:00] I, I, I, I won’t, I won’t call ’em out by name. I’ll just say it’s a phone company. We have one phone company that we work with all the time for access circuits or internet circuits. Right? You know, ma, there’s three major phone companies in the United States.
Like, just pick your poison. And, and we, I literally, as part of our installation sheet, we literally tell the customer, a tech will show up randomly to install the service without notice. Like, you’re not gonna know when they’re coming. They’re just gonna show up. A truck’s just gonna be there and be like, Hey, we’re here to install our circuit.
I, I wished there’s nothing I can do about it. Right? Like, it’s just gonna happen. And for the most, for the most part, we, you know, we, we, we, we. You know, our, our process, we make sure we try to front end this as much as possible. Do we have cell phone numbers? Do we know who local contacts are? Do we have building property management in place?
Do you have a security console number? You know, like, because when you get that phone call, you wanna be like, okay, somebody will be there really soon to let you in to go do this work. ’cause otherwise you get rolled, you know, and you lose days. But like the visual of like [39:00] a a, a dude in a hard hat showing up in a prison at the prison gate and being like, I’m here to install your fiber.
And then being like, you’re not on the list.
Oliver Maxwell: our, this is our daily
Max Clark: Oh. Oh, it’s so funny.
Oliver Maxwell: the time. I mean, being one of,
Max Clark: Oh.
Oliver Maxwell: a, a very large customer of ours, I, I love, like, you know, when I’m sending, like, we have like a pending installs meeting, you know, we’re talking about the different ones and it’s like, tech showed up but said he couldn’t get, you know, things like that we’re, that is part of our challenge too, and that’s part of why this customer likes us is because we have learned to anticipate that. So it’s a, yeah. Otherwise
Max Clark: It, it
Oliver Maxwell: things can go haywire very quickly.
Max Clark: in all, in all fairness, you know, again, to the tech showing up, most of them are contracted third parties. They don’t even work for the carrier. Right. They just get an address. They don’t know what the address is. You know, there’s some, there’s some dude in a truck. It’s like, oh, go to this street now.
And they’re just looking at their like, dispatch software on their tablet. Right? And they [40:00] like, roll up to a prison. Sorry, you’re not getting in.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah. So that,
Max Clark: Oh
Oliver Maxwell: a big part of it. And that’s that, you know, having a, I think even though of course happen, mistakes happen, like you said, a lot of them are contracted out. That’s just the reality of the industry, least the
Max Clark: f.
Oliver Maxwell: we can in somewhat anticipate that it, it’s another thing, it’s like if we’re gonna go to another carrier, we gotta, they gotta learn all this over again.
Max Clark: I, I, uh, I have a client and, uh, I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t realize this, but like federal installations, sublease space out to like custom like commercial businesses. And, and I have a client and they, um, they’re an architecture firm, architecture and engineering firm, and they lease a like part of a floor from the Federal Reserve.
If you wanna get into the building, you need to have a background check done for you by the Federal Reserve before you can go and be like, be there. And you’re like, you’re like, oh, and you need to bring [41:00] tools in. By the way, you’re going into the Federal Reserve, what’s the first thing you have to do? You have to walk through a metal detector with your tools.
You wanna do wiring work? What do you need for wiring work? You need knives. What can you not bring into the building knives? You know, like how do you cut cable? Right? And, and it’s such like a. Uh, you, you know, like, until you’ve been through that, it’s like such a, it’s a, it’s a funny disconnect that you don’t really like.
Oh, yeah. You know, like,
Oliver Maxwell: I didn’t bring my airplane safe tools with me today.
Max Clark: yeah, exactly. Right. Like, um, you know, and, and it opens up all sorts of weird problems where it’s like, you know, if, if you’re doing low voltage work, um, you, you know, and you have a subcontractor that had a DUI or, you know, some other, you know, charge and then all of a sudden, like, I, I mean, again, we’ve seen all sorts of weird stuff come outta this, you know, it’s just, it’s stuff that you don’t think about very often at all.
[42:00] Um, the, I, I mean, wow. Yeah. I’m at the prison. I can’t install your circuit.
Oliver Maxwell: I’m telling you, man, this is a daily thing. but yeah, it, and, and you know, getting them to reschedule effectively, especially when they’re out in the middle of nowhere. Our, our PMs stay busy and they’re very good. Thank God.
Max Clark: It’s, um, you know, in this case you said that the, the, the foot in the door and, and the initial problem was like, we have locations that we just cannot convince anybody to service, right? So you end up getting a phone call that says, okay, we have a location we can service and can you do it? And, and obviously the answer was yes, and you got it installed and they said, okay, great.
You know, here’s another impossible location that we can’t service. And you’re like, okay, we figured this one out too. And then there’s probably like a third and fourth, and then you get into a conversation of, Hey, we’ve got, you know, 600 locations, [43:00] how. How, what does that like takeover then look like of saying we’ve now, we’ve got like the hard locations with you and this process was great.
You know, there’s gonna be like some, some, like, hopefully, I would imagine for you some tip over that says like, let’s you know, how do you win the rest of the business? And so what does that takeover look like with existing relationships, existing circuits, they’re billing. Do these stay alone? Do they come over, um, you know, things that are currently running?
You know, usually like, there’s like a do not harm. Do no harm, do not touch them, leave them alone. Don’t change what’s working, you know, kind of mentality.
Oliver Maxwell: I think I, that’s, that’s true. And, and you know, there is a A the, as a less sophisticated, uh, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Mentality to overcome. Sometimes I think what it, what it was is, you know, the, the, that tipping point, like you said of okay, we’ve, you build the relationship with the [44:00] client to the point where you’re like, okay, we’ve done these n on impossible ones for you.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: that’s not all we do. That’s that, that, that may be a specialty of ours, not something we can do. But we can also do the more, you know, the easier ones just as well. And I, you know, I think just the nature of relationships is that once you, if you help somebody out, they wanna help you out back.
Right. And,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: it’s very. You know, it’s very much relationship driven at, at, with, with our company and with this client in particular. I think also one of the things that they started to realize, even as you said, even though they’re pretty sophisticated, there were instances of them getting type twos, uh, when they thought they were getting type ones. And
Max Clark: Yep. If I had a dollar for every time.
Oliver Maxwell: And then the trust starts to erode between them and, and these [45:00] other, other carriers and their other vendor, other vendors they’re using. And then as long as we can maintain that and they know that that’s our, those are our table stakes, um, that it will always be type one, then it, it kind of just evolves that way.
If, if we can do
Max Clark: It is
Oliver Maxwell: give it implemented and, and installed quickly and the services stay up and it doesn’t make and break his contracts and it doesn’t have to pay back, you know, it payback for outages. Um. That, that wins us more business over time.
Max Clark: there, there’s, I wanna talk about this type two issue for a second.
Oliver Maxwell: I.
Max Clark: Um, a couple things that I rant about a lot, you know, one of them is, is this like marketing term garbage phraseology that happens, and I’ll pick on Verizon for a second. Verizon is a product Fios, and Fios just means internet. And the problem, I mean, and like the Verizon definition files just means internet.
It could be [46:00] DSL, copper based. It could be, you know, fiber broadband. Like there’s, there’s a big variety in that product. And, and this, you know, you talk about like the type two, like you’re getting type two and you don’t realize it. And the problem here becomes like, I come, I come to a carrier and ask for pricing, and they come back and they tell us it’s, you know, your example, it’s 1600, 7,000.
Like, okay, whatever. It’s a rural location. Maybe there’s additional build costs that goes, that went into this one, the financial model, and then they order it from somebody else and you don’t know, right? Like, that’s for most even what’s, what’s wild, even doing this professionally, if you’re asking even the right question to the wrong person, you don’t get that information back.
You don’t find out until you’re so deep into provisioning or after post installation that this actually happened. And there’s, there’s a couple issues that come out with this one. The first one being I. Did you intend to order that circuit type two or did you understand that you were layering on a, a, another relationship that causes a support issue down the road or billing [47:00] issue down the road.
But what I see more, that’s really the problem with this is I already have a circuit from that other provider and I was looking for redundancy. I talked to you ’cause I wanted redundant infrastructure and you promised me redundant infrastructure and then you delivered me redundant infrastructure over the same physical infrastructure as my existing circuit and now I have no redundancy.
Oliver Maxwell: It’s,
Max Clark: And you go back to the carrier and like, Hey, I can’t use this. And they’re like, sorry, you signed a contract, it’s installed. Deal with it, you know.
Oliver Maxwell: it’s a, it’s a, it is, um, a major problem and it’s something even working at the TSD level that I didn’t realize exactly how much it was happening. Um, we have one client, a different client, but vein, you know, a la large multi-location, client across many states and what tipped them off their IT person was savvy enough. had, were working with a different aggregator and they had what was supposed to be a and a backup circuit that were diverse entry, [48:00] everything, I mean. Different ends of the building, that’s what they were sold on. then when they had an outage, both circuits went out and it’s like the IT guy could do basic math and was like, something’s not adding up.
Right.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: So, um, you know, interesting phenomenon I’ve seen is that sometimes will buy redundant circuits from other resellers. So it would be as if, you know, know, if I said, okay, well we’ve got our primary here from DIA from Comcast, and then our backup is from aggregator,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: different aggregator. Uh, and then you gotta fi that they don’t have their own network, so it’s
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: another Comcast
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: Um, so it, it, there is a bit of a veil, right? A bit of a shroud behind it that, um, if you’re not, if you don’t ask the right questions, and you’re right, and to your point, the right person. Who’s [49:00] got the knowledge or, and, you know, and the honesty to give you the
Max Clark: Well, and, and on and, and really the issue is if you’re, I, I wanna, I don’t wanna put this in like a demeaning standpoint. If you’re an average company or customer, it’s not about being an average company or a customer. ’cause you just don’t have access. You could be a very large company. You could be a, you know, and you’re, you’re interacting with a team and the team you need to interact with, you don’t have direct access to because they don’t give direct access to customers for this team.
And the way the circuit gets provisioned, it’s like, oh, we have to deliver a circuit to this address. What’s the cheapest and fastest way to deliver a circuit to this address? Oh, this other provider is already there. Let’s just use them and deliver a circuit to this address. And, um, and then you’re like, whoa, wait a minute.
Like. Yeah, that wasn’t what we wanted. Uh, we talked about riots for, for a little bit, but you mentioned something else that was interesting to me, which was contractual obligations and the SLA. Right Now, um, in this [50:00] case, you, you, you’re in this like cascading problem, right? Where it’s prison service provider con, you know, prison, which really means state contract with the state to deliver service with contractual obligations and requirements, right?
Uptime, availability, speed, installation, timeline, whatever. You know, usually a mix of those things, right? Like, and then that comes down to your customers prison service provider. So now they have to meet these obligations with their customer that gets passed to you, which then in turn gets passed to the carrier for installations, right?
There’s like four layers in that onion. Um, the. Y you know, knowing how infrastructure providers actually deliver service from like quoting to actual installation. There’s like another four layers that people don’t even think about that like is going on in this. That’s a really big stack to [51:00] manage.
Oliver Maxwell: it is. And you bring up a good point. I mean, there one thing that I haven’t yet mentioned that is Im important about this specific customer. And you’re the way, you, the way you just described that, and ease immediately lends itself to, okay, well how are you reduce that issue?
Instead of just adding to it with another
Max Clark: mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: Right. That’s, what follows. Right. So one thing like, and even though we are DIA specialist, that is. I mean, that’s probably about 85% of what we sell here at AP Xnet. Um, we do have a pretty advanced circuit monitoring solution that this customer, this prison service customer uses heavily. Um, which is a proactive solution. we have a couple different flavors, like a proactive and reactive, but in this case, they use the proactive. And, um, what that means is that if the circuit goes down for whatever reason, R knock 24 7, 3 x 365, US based knock gets notified [52:00] and we go after it to get it back up as quickly as we can. Um, another kind of interesting thing, and, and one thing that’s, you know, you were asking earlier, how do you tip the scales, right? What’s helping win more
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: over? Um, this, our monitoring platform also also allows us to monitor other carrier circuits. So. We have, you know, let’s say we started with, 20 and we’ve got all our a PX circuits that they can view in their portal, nice in a row, then they can see the other 580, um, with other various carriers if they’re willing to pay, you know, a small per circuit, uh, fee. And that’s what they did. So they’re able to see which circuits are in the most reliable, which ones are staying up, which ones are going down, and then how to, what their response and times are like and what it’s, what, uh, the effectiveness of getting them back up is like. if you can, know, if sure we’re, we are an extra layer in a sense, [53:00] but if you can contribute to fixing the problem instead of just being another roadblock, then you can be an asset.
And, and that’s what we’re trying to do for them.
Max Clark: There’s one infrastructure provider, we’ll keep ’em nameless, um, near and dear to my heart, and they actually do proactive monitoring on their, on their circuits. Now, it’s impossible to get the now contacts changed once they go live with this provider. You know, so whoever’s on the order is a technical contact.
That person’s always gonna be the technical notification. If the circuit goes down, you can’t get a change. It’s amazing. Uh, but in their case, if a circuit goes offline, you get an email notification, Hey, your circuit’s down power, basically confirm you have power, you know, which is a, a really common issue.
You know, when you’re dealing, when you’re talking about, you know,
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: hundreds of thousands of locations, right? Millions of locations. And, but what’s amazing about this process for me is their support system. We’ll not let you open a ticket until four hours have [54:00] elapsed. Of an outage,
Oliver Maxwell: Mm. That’s interesting.
Max Clark: right? So you can get an alert from them.
You can validate it that it’s offline and it’s not power related, but you can’t actually open a ticket to start processing a repair until after four hours. And, and again, if you’re, you know, an average customer, you know, I don’t care how big you are, if you’re the average, if you’re a customer of this organization, which you, you know, probably half the country is right until you’ve had an outage, you try to get fixed.
It’s like, great, your SLA says it has a four hour meantime to repair a respond, not repair, um, for a fiber based circuit. But if you can’t even open a ticket until four hours after the outage, even if you get alerted to at 1:00 AM in the morning, you know, you gotta wait four hours and then you’ve got four hours and then you’ve got whatever your repair time on it, you know, you’re, you’re sitting on.
You know, a day outage that [55:00] shouldn’t have been like, that’s frustrating the first time you experience it.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the, oh, well, it’s probably just something that’ll be easily resolved and we’re gonna make you wait four hours to make sure it’s not that before we take any action. Yeah. That’s, that’s tough. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, as you can imagine with our knock every, a lot of the Uh, out there have, maybe not that exact policy, but where you can’t, let’s, you might be able to open a ticket, but you can’t escalate it until X amount of time
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: and so on.
Max Clark: Yep.
Oliver Maxwell: the good thing is the ticket on our end at least, is open and we are pursuing it. Right. So you, you, we’ve got someone bulldogging it as soon as the ticket’s opened. Not, uh, we don’t, you know, we don’t have a multi-hour policy waiting before we try and take action really. But it, it [56:00] is, what you described is definitely pretty common with carriers who aren’t really willing to lift a finger until a certain amount of time has elapsed and, or escalate it to an emergency level beyond like, you know, they’ll have all these different levels of oh, level one, level two, level three, level four tickets and, and
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: I bless our engineers for being able to navigate all that.
Max Clark: Uh, you talked a little bit about like customer profile for a p Xnet earlier, which is, you know, what is, I mean obviously in this case like 500 plus locations, you know, great. But like on average, like what, where do you tip over and where does a company tip over that it makes sense to start working with a company like yours?
Oliver Maxwell: You know, interestingly, we we’re, we’re a hundred percent channel, so we, we only get the opportunities that our, our advisors bring us. Right.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: as you could probably imagine, of them are one sites. That is you know, if you took [57:00] the average, it would be a little more than that. I mean, the average number of arms people have is less than two.
Right. But,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: uh, overall, we’re mostly getting single sites. And, you know, I think part of the reason for. Our, our success and, and having, you know, our a growing reputation is that we do try to take care of those one site customers really well. As I said, it, it totally depends on the carrier, who we have the best relationship with, who, know, if we can get really aggressive with the wholesale rates, it’s, it depends. Um,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: but really the tip over is more instead of the number of sites, it’s more of the number of carriers in my, in my opinion,
Max Clark: Okay.
Oliver Maxwell: know, once, once we start stretching into three plus carriers for one customer, even if it’s just three sites, you know, you often get these when you have like, mean, we’ve had thing like, uh, maybe it’s a, a doc, you know, doctor’s office or, you know, I’m just trying to think of the different [58:00] law offices for example. They maybe, maybe they’re smaller, you know, and they, but they need, they’re still DIA customers that need reliable internet. But once you start getting into that three plus carrier kind of environment. Where it starts to become a strain to keep from the accounting and IT perspective. That’s where we can probably provide the most value,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: for that single site customer.
We’re still, you know, we’re still able to give a lot better service and project management generally, you know, than, than the average carrier. But they’ll get the most, the most out of us. It’ll be the most mutualistic if they have multiple carriers, I would say.
Max Clark: I come back to, you know, my, my simple view of this is if you’ve never done circuit provisioning or support with a phone company, you don’t really understand why you never want to do circuit provisioning and support with the phone company. You know, I was, I was, um, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and one of the things that I hate the [59:00] most, that I see a lot is this like promised timeline.
And inevitably what happens and what I see with our clients is, uh, you know, the IT department is usually the last to know of something happening. Oh, we’ve signed a lease for an office space. And we’re moving into it in 30 days, by the way, we need internet and, and we need, we need to have everything provisioned in the next 30 days.
And, and so, you know, I try to help, we try to help our clients get ahead of this, right? You know, bring us in, you know, get involved with site selection, right? Find out what buildings, you know, make sure the office manager and the powers of be, know that you’re there to be a resource of like, which buildings to evaluate, you know?
And then, and then at least we can provide a data point before you sign a lease.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: Easy installation. Really hard installation. Cheap internet. Really expensive internet. Okay, do you really like that building? That’s gonna be really hard to install and really expensive. Okay, fine. Just give yourself six months, you know?
But at [01:00:00] least, at least there’s like a, a dialogue that can occur. Um, but the thing I hate so much to see all the time is like, you get these. You know, how long is it gonna take to install this circuit? I mean, I could tell you on average this company that you’re gonna use over the last however many circuits that were provisioned with them, that we saw personally, this is the rolling average in your market.
But until you sign the order and somebody goes out, like you have no idea.
Oliver Maxwell: Right. It’s an unknown what, lovely pole permits await you and, and, and other such things. So you
Max Clark: I, I had,
Oliver Maxwell: Go ahead.
Max Clark: I had, I had one, and it was an agriculture company. Um, they, they, they, um, when I say agriculture, they were agriculture supply company and they, um, so if you needed fertilizer, like, like because you were a farmer, like you needed like tons of fertilizer, like this is who you purchased it from. And, um, they had one location.
They were trying to get fiber to. And, um, they didn’t find out until the installation was running [01:01:00] that because the telephone pole was in the pa was, was alongside of trees. They needed the arborist from the city to be present when the po, the fiber was being pulled. And there were two arborists in the city that could do this.
One was on leave, so there was only one available. That one was scheduled for nine months.
Oliver Maxwell: my gosh. That is, that is one I have not heard before. The
Max Clark: It,
Oliver Maxwell: city arborist.
Max Clark: it, um, it, it, it stands out, right? Because then what do you say? Like, how long is it gonna take? And I, and I try to tell people this a lot, which is like, if anybody’s promising you a timeline for installation, like I can promise that we will get this as quickly as possible. But unless you’re ordering service from a provider that has capacity in the building that you’re actually in at that moment, that all they have to do is plug a cable in and run it.
But now even that’s getting complicated with riser management company, actually. Good, good segue. Riser management companies, like if you’re installing service into a building. It’s not just about getting service to that location, it’s also getting [01:02:00] service to where the customer is inside of that location.
Multi-tenant buildings means, you know, usually basement info and then a suite up on top of the floor. Some carriers will do the voltage extensions will actually extend the DAC. Some carriers won’t install, extend the dmar. Now some buildings have riser management companies that want to talk to the carrier and figure out how much they can charge the carrier and what the carrier will pay them to run the cable.
Some buildings don’t have riser management companies. How do you navigate this for your customer?
Oliver Maxwell: That’s, that is, you know, the, pretty much a huge focus of our project management team, and they’re very good at it. I mean, of the cool things about our process that makes my life a lot easier is we sell a deal at a PX once, as soon as the customer signs the dotted line, our project managers, we give them a 24 sla, our SLA.
So we say, okay, you got 24 hours to reach out to the customer to start the process, but it usually happens within one to two hours. [01:03:00] So that is something we’ve commonly heard complaints about. It’s like, yeah, I didn’t get a PM assigned until two weeks after.
Max Clark: Usually,
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah. So,
Max Clark: well, I mean this is part of the process. People don’t understand average. Average duration. Let’s talk about it specifics. Average duration is seven to 10 days for order acceptance. You sign the order, you give it to the carrier, right? It’s seven to 10 days before they go through credit check, order acceptance, order booking, right, and goes into the system for PM assignment, and it could be another week after that, before the PM actually gets assigned and hits their SLA trigger to reach out to you.
So you’ve got two weeks in time that just is just like a black hole before the project even starts.
Oliver Maxwell: So that, that of why I, you know, we’re able to, it, the small parts that make up the hole, right? In the sense that we can get a jump on that, we’ve got a much better shot at navigating this ecosystem you’re ta that you’re talking about and getting in the order in it on time. Um, so [01:04:00] you know, they get signed.
They usually, first thing they do is they call the customer and basically for info gathering, right? They’re like, all right, this is what I know. Help us, you know, get the rest of the information we need. And that’s where a lot of questions like those get asked. Like, Hey, do you, you know, what’s, you know, we’re usually gonna have a little, our salespeople are pretty savvy, they’re gonna get a lot of this info up front,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: asking things like, okay, yeah, is an extension gonna be required?
Um, we know, luckily from working with all the, you know, all these carriers, we generally know, it’s a brand new carrier you know, we haven’t gotten all our due diligence completely flushed out with after many orders, we are usually gonna know, okay, this one will extend and this one won’t, or this one will in certain situations.
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: Um, so it, it really boils down to management expertise and a buffer zone. quick enough about getting started, that gives you that extra couple week buffer where you can navigate who the riser management company is and or
Max Clark: [01:05:00] Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: gonna get it up there. And some cases, getting the cust telling the customer, Hey, look. gonna have to hire someone to come and do this extension, you know, and, and then we’ll, we’ll help you navigate that too. Well, you know, if it’s someone that we’ve partnered with or someone, you know, so there’s a lot of that. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s never cookie cutter. It’s for each individual project you’ve got, the PMs have to dig in and figure out how to get it done. So it’s just, again, a lot of expertise, a lot of practice. ’cause that’s what the PMs do all day, is trying to get, you know, various fiber projects installed.
Max Clark: Yeah. Y yeah, because just DAC extensions become very complicated for people. And again, if you’re dealing with remote locations, like, like, let’s just talk, I’m, let’s talk about the easiest one, right? Like, you’re just across the country, you know, you’re based in LA and you’ve got an install in New York going on that now you need to get a, [01:06:00] you don’t, you don’t know who the people on the ground are.
You know, it’s a new, it’s a new project, right? So how, you know, selection of DM A C extension becomes a problem for an IT team that they have to resolve that they a lot of times who do, who do you call? You know, in Minnesota for a, for a DAC extension, if you’ve never dealt with it before, uh, how, at what point is that being communicated to the customer?
Like, is that part of the circuit selection? Like, are you telling people like, Hey, there’s these four tier one provider, you know, we can get circuits from these four locate, you know, three people and you know what, I guess what level of granularity are you getting into with that at that point? Like, this one’s gonna extend, this one’s not gonna extend this one we like, but they won’t extend.
But we can, but we already have a company that’ll do the extension for you, which is gonna cost us much money. Um
Oliver Maxwell: this is happening very much upfront. This starts with sa, our sales team or
Max Clark: mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: management team when they’re savvy enough and, and do this enough to know. I mean, they, they don’t, they [01:07:00] want to, things to install and bill and and commission just as quickly as anyone, right? So they’re, they’re smart enough to go, like, you know, I, and I know this because I’ve, you know, shadowed a lot of my channel managers.
I’ve, you know, helped fill in for them, you know, learn kind of what they do if all else is equal, right? Let’s say you’re talking about, a customer in New York City, right? In a 50th floor of a building, one of the first things they’re gonna be thinking about is, okay, what, getting service to the building is fine and dandy. What about to the 50th floor?
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: our, with the wholesale relationships we’ve, we’ve developed, they anticipate that too. know, the carriers do. So if we’re working with, I’ll just use an exam, you know, someone we might work with a lot in New York, uh, Crown Castle for example. You know, our, our wholesale manager there that we work with to get quotes. This is someone who can absolutely [01:08:00] anticipate that, yeah, is what’s gonna need to be done. And they’ll specify this includes, you know, to the 50th floor, which will or will not require instruction that’s including the price and so on and so forth. And this is the timeline that we estimate that that’ll take. So we’re starting right out the gate. It’s
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: project managers that hash out the details.
Max Clark: Now, for a prison, you’ve got a whole level. I mean, you’ve got the, the MPO. You know, designated telco de, you know, location, right? That stuff is coming into the prison. And then you’ve probably got preferred providers that actually are authorized to do work inside of the prison, right? Because you can’t just like show up and be in a common co, you know, like a hallway with like a ladder and a, and a hard hat, you know?
Right. Like a little bit of coordination has to go into that. Um, how much are you taking on, how much does a PX take on for that? How much, I mean, [01:09:00] you know, where, where do, where, where do these lines kind of like, I’m just curious where they start and stop for you with your customer. Like, are you guys just getting into the building for them?
Are you helping them extend farther into the building at this point? Is that they’re taking it on? Is that there’s a third party that then you’re coordinating with the customer and this third party to do this stuff?
Oliver Maxwell: am, I will say, because I’m, I’m not usually involved in the installation part of those, I’m not the
Max Clark: Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: well versed on that. What I do know that this company, because that, that’s their, their specialty, usually we’re, we’re getting it you know, to the mpo and then they’re taking it from there.
The, the
Max Clark: Right.
Oliver Maxwell: actually providing the services, because they’re, they have a closer relationship with the state, like with the state prisons, with, you know, the, they, they have their own contractors and, and, uh, you know, people that they bring into. Actually run it to where it needs to go. so that we’re usually our challenge is just figuring out [01:10:00] who to, who will even get it out there in the first place.
It’s usually once we can get it there, it’s usually the, the customer themselves that is like, all right, we can take with it, take it and run with it from here.
Max Clark: Well, I mean, so. What is the measurement of success and failure for a project with a prison, right? Like, is it, um, how, I mean, we, we talk about installation, like can they even get it installed? Installation timelines of uptime availability. Like, like, you know, when you’re going back and you’re sitting in a, a, a review meeting with your customer and you’re going through and you’re talking about, you know, 10 sites, 50 sites, a hundred sites, whatever the list is, and you’re kind of working down the list of like, you know, there’s install and then there’s, then there’s like post install, like ongoing, you know, what, what is that, that’s being tracked, that, that is, that makes or breaks the relationship or makes and breaks their relationship and their contracts, um, with these states.
Oliver Maxwell: You know, it, depending on if you’re talking about the kind of the, the process or [01:11:00] result that occurs from it, you know, at a, at a, at the most simple level with all the different carriers they’ve worked with, our measure of success is that they continue to bring us new circuits, you know, and new
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: Right. That it, it kind of, and that that speaks for itself. Right. for them, what we’re told time and time again is that. Your cir, you’re able to get to the hard places. circuits stay up because they’re, and they understand, of course, you know, the type one that,
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: reliable. They’re DIA, so it’s about as reliable as you can get in terms of internet delivery and
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: bar barring, you know, a, some sort of physical occurrence, like a, you know, we love to use the backhoe because it actually happens.
Max Clark: Oh, all the time still, which is amazing.
Oliver Maxwell: I don’t know where all these backhoes come from, but that, those are kind of our, our simple measurements. It’s like, [01:12:00] that’s what they tell us we’re doing. Right. it shows itself through their, know, continuing business and winning circuits from
Max Clark: I.
Oliver Maxwell: other vendors. But it’s just getting a tough one and keeping it up and running because it’s type one. when it does go down, you know, it’s, does it happen often? No, but when it does, having that. Proactive monitoring to make sure that someone on our engineering team in the US is on it and showing updates regularly. At least they have some peace of mind knowing that someone’s working on it. It’s not just sitting out in the ether. Um, those, those are, I mean, it’s, it’s not complicated, but if you can do all those things, will win you the business.
Max Clark: The internet is the fourth utility network is the fourth, you know, is the fourth utility, right? Electricity, gas, power, water. Right. Um, sorry, electricity, water, gas, internet for companies. Right. So that’s why I say it’s the fourth utility. It’s, um, [01:13:00] but for a lot of, you know, for actually for a lot, I think for most it’s like, it should just work.
I don’t wanna think about it. What’s the fastest I can get for the cheapest thing possible. Right. You know, it’s not, it’s not really necessarily like, you know, the evaluation is, is very different. It’s like, oh, okay, these guys are cheaper, let’s just go with them usually. Right. Um, what’s something that you wish more companies understood about internet and circuit delivery?
That would, I mean, effectively, it would make their lives better in the process of, you know, of that.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah, I would say, you know, it, it goes back to a little bit of what we talked about before, but one is just know what you’re getting. It, it, it unfortunately is not the most, always the most transparent thing, just as you described with how the, you call it, like the marketing garbage that you get from a lot of the, the
Max Clark: Mm-hmm.
Oliver Maxwell: and that you don’t always know [01:14:00] what you’re, what, yeah.
What does Fios mean? It can mean a lot of things. That’s a great point. You know, knowing what you’re actually getting, knowing. it’s coming from and what nature of the delivery is. Is it something that’s gonna be affected by weather? You know, is is it wireless and requires a clear or a fixed wireless and requires a clear line of sight? Is it, you know, copper in the ground that gets affected by rain and bad weather? just knowing,
Max Clark: All real examples.
Oliver Maxwell: knowing what you’re actually getting and where it’s coming from. That’s kind of the base level. Like if, if more customers understood that, it would prevent some of the pitfalls they run into. We, we have a lot of customers who, maybe they have many locations, but they operate independently and it’s the branch manager who is in
Max Clark: Oh,
Oliver Maxwell: of sourcing the internet, not like a centralized IT team. We have won those types of [01:15:00] customers over when they’ve realized that this. You know, cheapest internet I could get that was gonna keep my budget low has actually caused major issues. Because when the internet goes down, we’ve had to send everyone home, uh, for the day. And that worth? Is that, was that worth, you know, the a month instead of maybe 300 a month?
Like you, knowing that just because, you know, uh, something is less expensive on a monthly basis, does not mean it’s gonna result in less expense. is important for customers to know about their, their internet services?
Max Clark: I’m such another good example, you know, don’t, don’t delegate or abdicate responsibility for critical utility services to somebody that has no background or experience running them. Right? Because I mean, they just, I mean, the branch [01:16:00] examples, it’s uh. It is unfortunate. It happens all the time. These are all real world.
I mean, the whole like rain fade for fixed RF is a thing, you know, like, does your provider it? Look, I love fixed rf. Like, like it’s one of my favorite things ever. If you’re using somebody to do an installation that doesn’t know how to do a rain fade calculation based on the geography of where you’re installing the circuit, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah.
Max Clark: Like it’s, it’s you, you know, a co a water, water intrusion into copper never happened how many times? All the time. Like, I mean, the amount of circuits I’ve seen going back, you know, 30 years of T ones or you know, a box on the side of the street had like a, you know, was hit by a car and was never replaced and now had like a, you know, you know, rain could penetrate and then every time it rains it was like, it was like, I can remember this.
I can, with a very large, large company, they just knew every time it rained they were gonna lose service to a building. Like it was just a thing, oh, it’s raining, that building’s going down, you know, like.
Oliver Maxwell: I am just imagining some guy who is like, oh, my knee is hurting. [01:17:00] Time to go home means the rain’s coming, the
Max Clark: Yes.
Oliver Maxwell: down. Yeah.
Max Clark: It’s basically what it was. And, and the crazy part about it was they knew exactly where it was that was causing a problem, but they couldn’t get the phone company to fix it. You know, like there was, they just, you know, and again, direct customer of the phone company had no, like large and sizeable, but just didn’t have access to the right people to get anything changed.
And, um,
Oliver Maxwell: you don’t know and you’re, you’re, you know, you’re calling into the, main support number, it can be diff it’s difficult. And
Max Clark: yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: and that’s not to, that’s the thing about, you know, the industry, it’s, this is not the point is not to say, oh, the customer doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Or it’s just that, it’s kind of crazy how much expertise and, and just dogged nature it takes deal with these companies sometimes. And that’s when it’s nice to, someone that has been through many rounds [01:18:00] with them in the ring. Uh, not to present it as combative. ’cause it’s usually not. But
Max Clark: Yeah.
Oliver Maxwell: is a problem, they know, all right, this is what we have to do to solve it.
Max Clark: No, Oliver, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah,
Max Clark: It’s very excellent chatting.
Oliver Maxwell: Yeah. Thanks Max. Good to be here.
