Building Broadband from the Ground Up - Episode 667 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell. I'm at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm speaking with someone that I just actually saw at Matt's ranch in RantananTown in Southern California, Mauricio Rodriguez. Mauricio has been involved in network infrastructure planning and working on variety of projects like this with Native Tribe.

and also has just been working in this space for some time. so welcome Mauricio.

Mauricio Rodriguez (00:45)
Thanks, thanks Chris. Yeah, and it was great seeing you there at the ranch and really collaborating with everyone who would be there. It's always a good event.

Christopher Mitchell (00:53)
Yeah. We met years ago at a different Tribal Broadband Bootcamp also at the ranch, which has changed quite a bit. But it was wonderful to have you back. And as we were talking and as I was kind of looking at your resume, I was just reminded that like, I think there's some interesting topics that we could talk about. So I want to talk a little bit about managing these projects. And I think, you know, there might be some comments that are pretty specific to working on tribal lands. Other comments are pretty much going to be best practice for anyone, I think. So.

Mauricio Rodriguez (01:21)
Absolutely, So specifically for all these projects, I would say that it's important to have some patience, right? These projects aren't done overnight. So I've noticed, it was my case as well at The Tribe, that these projects may start within an IT department, right? And IT projects are very specific. mean, they're sometimes complicated, sometimes lengthy.

But remember, those are kind of indoors, right? You have a controlled environment and we quickly learned that we're dealing with the public now, right? We're dealing with federal agencies. We're dealing with landowners and that's a different conversation, a different way of approaching these projects that, you know, IT folks may not be too familiar with. And, you know, they kind of have to learn to be patient with that process, learn about it, learn how to manage it and...

work through it. So that's one observation I've had. yeah, go Go ahead.

Christopher Mitchell (02:17)
wanna go, before you go on I do wanna ask you about this. So

it struck me recently and then you just reminded me of it. For people who aren't in this business.

I think there's an assumption that IT involves networking. I feel like, like you said, it kind of does. Like inside plant wiring could be related to that. And like IT can be massive projects like electronic records. There's any number of things. Certainly, you know, trying to keep malware and nosy attackers out of a network is like, it's obviously hard, complicated work. But I do feel like there is a divide between telecom.

and IT and a lot of IT people really don't want to deal with telecom and the telecom folks often have a grudge against IT folks. think I might be overstating it a little bit, but there's a divide.

Mauricio Rodriguez (03:01)
I think that's a good general statement. I we all try to get along, right? But I will say that, you know, I started my career in IT and I thought, Hey, it's a network. It's the same thing. No problem. I'll go now work at an ISP. And I found out very quickly that it's very different. Even the way that you think about projects, the way that you think about operating those projects after the fact, after they're implemented, it is very different. It's very different. Even some of the technologies are similar.

⁓ but may not be used in the same way or maybe some additional technologies that you didn't really work with in the network inside the building.

Christopher Mitchell (03:36)
Right. so you were mentioning when you started doing telecom, I feel like you're starting to spiral into areas that you can avoid in IT more often. Dealing with the public with permitting and then federal agencies and things like that. So, but anyway, go back to where you were.

Mauricio Rodriguez (03:55)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, mean, one of the steps, I mean, when you're working outside, right, working to build something that's either in the ground or above ground is land acquisition, right? You want to put up a tower to be able to provide either fixed broadband or have some land so you can put a shelter to house your network equipment to light up that fiber. You've got to work with the community to say, Hey, you know, where is it okay to have that?

And is it aesthetically acceptable to have this shelter here, this tower here? That's really important, right? There's also zoning, right? And land use restrictions. You may talk to the community that may say, Hey, that's a great site. We're on board and everything. When you go to zoning, you find out, well, no, you can't build a tower there. You can't put a shelter there or you can't dig for fiber there because there's some kind of restriction. You've got land lease agreements, right?

You've got to have an agreement, a contract that says, yes, you may use that land and potentially pay a monthly fee for the use of that land. And then, you know, it's what I think is great for the community projects is that you're working with the community to do something for the community. So I think that, you know, landowners, mean, maybe even zoning boards or land use boards may be a little bit more flexible with the community projects.

because they know that it's going to benefit directly those members of the community and even those that are even providing that land, which does happen, for example, in tribal areas. There may be an area that's ranch land or farmland and the community member, the tribal members says, hey, this is a benefit for the community. I'll let the tribe use a little section of that land for the telecom project.

and that works very well.

Christopher Mitchell (05:46)
I you've stated it in a summary way in some ways. I don't know if you had to deal with this, I imagine you can imagine a situation where you feel like, okay, at the beginning of a project, this will be a somewhat straightforward project. Okay, so I need to make sure that I have community consent.

I'm going to announce these meetings. I'm going to advertise them ahead of time. I'm going to find the stakeholders and make sure they're aware of it. And then you go through that and then you get to the point where you're like, all right, we've settled on this location. Only then you find out that some people didn't pay attention to the first meeting. And they have a lot of power. And they want you to change the decision. And that's the sort of thing that I expect. That's where the messiness, I'm guessing, really starts to come in, right?

Mauricio Rodriguez (06:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, this is true. And that did happen to us, on, on many an occasion. and really, you know, they're an anecdote, right? There was one project or one site, I should say one site within the whole project where we had two years of different stakeholders and community review and everything else. then, you know, right when we were about to really contract out to have it built.

Um, it's discovered that there's a huge water main directly under where we're about to put a 60 foot deep hole for a tower or, Hey, no, you know what? That area there actually is in a 10 year plan for a transportation project. We're not doing anything now, but in six years, we're going to break ground. And so you kind of have to think, well, okay, if I put something there, um, and spend all that money and make the investment once six years, I'm going to to tear it down.

Christopher Mitchell (06:53)
Hahaha

Mauricio Rodriguez (07:15)
to make space for a roadway or whatever it is. So yeah, these things do come up sometimes late because people either don't pay attention or don't realize that there's a connection between those two projects, right? And that does happen, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (07:30)
Yeah, I you I struggle to sometimes assemble the ingredients for a recipe. So it's not surprising to me that someone's not thinking about what's going to happen in six years ahead.

Mauricio Rodriguez (07:38)
Right, it's true, it's true, it's true.

Christopher Mitchell (07:40)
So we're going to talk a little bit about some of the standards that you feel like would be helpful to have people adhere to.

So what kind of like environmental and historic preservation issues have you had to deal with? And I don't mean to say that like it's like an imposition. I mean, like it's a responsibility is what it comes down to.

Mauricio Rodriguez (07:56)
So.

It's not. It is.

It is absolutely. is absolutely. Especially working with tribes, right? Tribes, from one perspective, have a cultural and historic interest in preserving their ecosystems and their lands. And also, I mean, that's one way that they protect their sovereignty, right? Is to be able to say, we are stewards of the land that we have.

and we can protect it properly. So it's important for many communities to ensure that the environmental and historic requirements are met. some challenges that we have specifically in Florida, probably not in desert states, but in wet states like ours, everything is wetlands, right? I mean, wherever you go, there is some kind of wetland ecosystem and you really can't disturb those, right? Those are not, it's not appropriate to...

disturb those and there are protections for those. And some areas, the land is just not stable enough, right? There's underground voids that may be filled with water or just an empty space that could end up being like a sinkhole or, so you really can't build there, right? So you really have to be careful about making sure that your environmental review is done correctly, your surveying is done correctly so that when you build it,

It's there for a long time. It's there for a long time. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (09:12)
Right.

One of the

things that we talk about at the Tribal Broadband Bootcamps is based on experiences from Merit Network in Michigan, where they talked about when they initially were doing a massive project, they had thought they would save time on the environmental review by narrowing it and only doing the environmental review for the areas they expected to be. And then they found that when they hit something that required them to change, they were suddenly leaving the constraints of the environmental review and they learned. And now they do a very wide environment

Mauricio Rodriguez (09:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Very true.

Christopher Mitchell (09:42)
to make sure if they have to make an adjustment along their course, they would still be within that area of environmental review. So you don't have to stop everything and go back to review.

Mauricio Rodriguez (09:51)
Yeah. And you know, we, we tried to do that. or we have tried in Florida to do that. It's easier in urban areas and suburban areas, right? They're already disturbed. It's pretty much known what's there. It's kind of a cursory review.

Christopher Mitchell (10:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mauricio Rodriguez (10:06)
out where we were building for the tribes, it's everglades, It's technically not swamp, but we call it swamp, right? It's wild land out there. It's virgin land. It's difficult. mean, there are narrow corridors of not wetlands and environmentally available areas. So you have to know where those are. GIS is super important for that, right?

getting all that information in maps and drawing so you can look at these spaces and say, right, I need to get from A to Z, what's my conduit or path to get through there and really working to keep within that, Within some margin, right? You're not gonna get a two foot clearance. You might get 20 feet and have to move within those 20 feet.

but it's still a bit limited because of the environment. Yeah, yeah. And then of course there's the state historic preservation and tribal historic preservation. You know, those organizations will want to look around in the sites that you're building in to make sure that there aren't any kind of ⁓ sites there or assets or activity or from previous.

activity that was at that site or even artifacts and protect those. and those could maybe later we'll talk about the challenges in construction, right? So they'll do their review, but during construction you may dig and now find something that's there either remains or artifacts. and that's a hard stop right there, right? You, you do not keep going. You call in those folks. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (11:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Right, so then?

And I was going to say in some areas where they might be expecting that you could hit that sort of thing, they may actually have a monitor on site at that point if it's high likelihood, I think.

Mauricio Rodriguez (11:48)
Absolutely.

Absolutely,

absolutely. Yeah. And there are areas like that, like, you know, if there are any cemeteries, mean, even close by a hundred, 200 feet near a cemetery, or any kind of a burial ground, they're going to want to be there just to make sure that those activities didn't extend outside of what they know. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (12:09)
Mm hmm.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we find is that you don't always know who you're dealing with and the contractors, right? You maybe know the contractor, you don't necessarily know the subs, you don't know who's going to be there that day. And so sometimes people do things either accidentally or intentionally inappropriate. You never know.

Mauricio Rodriguez (12:28)
Yeah, you have to monitor, you have to monitor what's going on, you know, as far as those construction activities. You know, the contractors, they have a role, right? And at the end of the day, they're a business and they want to build it so that they get paid, right? So you do have to kind of trust but verify what they're up to. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (12:49)
It's helpful to have 20 years of experience to know the backgrounds of all of them. It's harder if you're

newer.

Mauricio Rodriguez (12:54)
It is

harder. It is harder. know, what I found is that those individuals working in the state historic preservation offices and the tribal historic offices are very knowledgeable about, you know, those topics. Absolutely. You know, I think we'll talk about maybe design criteria later and specifications and the standards. That's the other part of it, right, where you as a organization

kind of running this kind of broadband project, you've got to have on the front end, kind of a very specific description of what you want built. But then as it's being built, trust but verify, you've got to make sure that they're building it to your specification.

Christopher Mitchell (13:38)
Yeah, I like to say that your mention of people in the offices might have that knowledge. It's always helpful to figure out who has what knowledge and then, you know, grab a drink, happy hour or coffee, you know, it's always good to have a relationship with people to say, hey, you know, I see you're working with this team. You got any background? And it's not necessarily like, are they terrible criminals? It could be just be, do have any tips of like working with these folks? Like, what are they like? No. So before we get to standards, anything else? We're going to move into standards in a second.

Mauricio Rodriguez (13:46)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah,

You know, there's so much that goes into the construction, the pre-construction and construction. I'll just mention a couple like the federal clearances ⁓ for towers, the FAA, right, the Federal Aviation Administration and the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. They have some very specific processes that you have to follow to be able to.

Christopher Mitchell (14:10)
Yes.

Mauricio Rodriguez (14:26)
be approved for a new tower site. And that varies depending on how tall the tower is, how close it is to an airport, that kind of thing. But the environmental reviews and what's called the NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act, review is very important for that. It's a key aspect of getting those clearances easily.

Christopher Mitchell (14:46)
Mm hmm. And then there might be just others that you may not be aware of. I want to talk with Travis about a friend he built across Minneapolis. I think he said at one point that he thinks he dealt with 32 different permitting authorities, you know, got near the airport and suddenly he's dealing with the Air Force and he's like, Really? The Air Force?

Mauricio Rodriguez (15:02)
Yeah,

no, it's true. It's true. Once you start looking at what permits are needed or what clearances are needed, they tend to kind of pop up and crop up. by the way, don't forget this one. By the way, don't forget that one. If you're near a canal or in our case, a canal or maybe a dam or something, you might need the Army Corps of Engineers, right? These things do do happen. But I would say, you know,

A good way to handle that is to ensure that you work with individuals that have done this kind of work in the geographic area where you're doing the work, right? Don't bring in somebody from across the country or, you know, within the state is probably good enough, if possible within your county or neighboring counties, because there are very specific things that are encountered in different areas.

the desert versus Florida versus California versus Maine, right? Very, different environments.

Christopher Mitchell (15:58)
And similarly, a telecom attorney is helpful. You might have a really good general attorney. A telecom attorney is pretty helpful.

Mauricio Rodriguez (16:05)
Yes, yes indeed. We've learned that as well. You know, of course any organization has their internal business attorneys, things like contracts, agreements and everything. Once you start working with the FCC, once you start looking at, right, I want to become an Internet provider and how do I do that properly and have all the records required to be able to even bill customers, then you really do need an expert in those areas to guide you properly and put the right.

controls and governance in place to make that happen.

Christopher Mitchell (16:34)
So there's a lot of steps that go into actually getting the projects, getting through them. One of the things that I feel like helps succeed as you're doing this is to have processes and standards. This is something that I've talked with the folks that were down at Brownstone Consulting who helped to build the FAR network in Texas.

in particular, Guillermo Aguilar. And he talked about just like having standards and like having a way that the organization does things. So what's been your experience along those lines?

Mauricio Rodriguez (17:08)
Well, when you don't have standards, I say that when you don't have standards, the contractors and engineers and whomever is involved in designing and building will do things however they feel is the right way, which may be okay. There's many ways to do things that are correct. But if you're doing a small project, if you're doing one side or one little build, it's probably okay. If you're trying to that in scale, maybe

a larger geographic area, multiple fiber builds, multiple areas where you're going to be providing service. Now you really want those standards. And, you know, one of the big reasons is when you're operating this network, you want to be able to quickly understand if there's an issue with the network, a failure, a problem, and quickly have solutions for fixing that, that issue, right? If it's a fiber cut, let's say.

You you use the same fiber, the same kind of conduit, know, everything is exactly the same everywhere. So you have that in stock and you just say, okay, well, the people that we dispatch to fix that, just grab the supplies, go, and they know how to work with those materials. They know how to work with that fiber. And there are no surprises. There are no five different ways of doing things. There's that one way. You know, and if you're starting from scratch, right, it's the best time to do that.

Because I think what happens often is that networks and organizations grow organically and maybe the first project was done one way and they learned from it and the next project is done another way and they learn from that. And you end up with this kind of hodgepodge of different ways of doing things. So that's, I think, one long-term important reason for those standards. In the short term, you want to be able to clearly communicate to the engineers of record and the designers.

what you would like built. And that documentation also ends up going to the contractor and says, okay, you've got these plans, great, but here are more detailed specifications on how we want built, or how we want things built. The methods that you use to splice the fiber, the way we want those splice cases to look, right? excuse me. You know, all those kinds of standards are important so that

Christopher Mitchell (19:10)
Yeah, next.

Mauricio Rodriguez (19:22)
when you go into the field and inspect because it's important to go out and inspect and look at something and say well that's not the way we wanted it done well you can they'll come back and say well we didn't know you wanted it done a different way why didn't you tell us well no we did tell you we gave you the standards document now what have we learned they don't read it they don't look at it right so you go in the field

Christopher Mitchell (19:42)
you

Right, this seems like the classic ⁓ band,

or the Van Halen or someone, classic band where they said that the contract where they wanted a bowl and they wanted ⁓ full of ⁓ &Ms and all the green ones had to be removed. And that way, it was just a way for them to look and when they got in there to know if they read the contract and took it seriously or not. ⁓ And so...

Mauricio Rodriguez (19:55)
yeah, there you go.

Okay, that's

clever.

Christopher Mitchell (20:07)
Yeah, no,

I've always loved that story. ⁓ I mean, for people to know one of my favorite examples of this is you might tell the contractor, all right, we want ⁓ in this area, we have miles and miles of fiber, and we want it all at 40 inches below ground. And if you have to come up within 20 inches of the surface, you can do that for 10 feet here or there. But if you exceed this distance, then you need to come back to us for approval and, and all that. It's like those are the sorts of things that go into those documents.

Mauricio Rodriguez (20:25)
Okay, yeah.

Sure, sure.

Sure,

absolutely, absolutely. you know, if you don't communicate that upfront, it's not in and really that those standards become part of the contract. They become an exhibit on the contract. If you don't have that, you have nothing to stand on, right? Because you never told them you wanted it done that way. And you're not going to have much of leverage to basically have them go back and fix it at their cost, which is really where and then it becomes a little bit of a negotiation. You might look at it and go, OK, well, you didn't let us know, but

Christopher Mitchell (20:53)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mauricio Rodriguez (21:01)
it's okay the way you did it. But if they didn't and it's really a big difference from what you need, you're going to have to ask them to redo it. They're going to push back and it's going to get contentious and that's okay because that's what you asked them to do in the way that you wanted them to do it and you're the customer. So I wouldn't be shy about that either about, you know, claiming when the things that are done aren't done properly and asking that they'd be done properly.

Christopher Mitchell (21:28)
So in our Tribal Broadband Bootcamp booklet that we distribute, we have a link to the merits, terms, and conditions that they use. So it's a good place to start if people are interested. I can always share that around. But some of the different networks would share that with people if you're just getting started.

Mauricio Rodriguez (21:44)
That's great. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. I have a funny anecdote as well. So, you know, when we're you're building these tower sites, right? You want to get fiber to them. But, you know, in some areas it's difficult, right? Because of ⁓ terrain, sometimes it's the time it's going to take. So sometimes you do what's called a point to point microwave link, right? A wireless link between the tower sites to get service to the next tower over or

Christopher Mitchell (21:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. I

mean, just let me ask you this is realistic. like, I feel like people don't understand time at all. And I'm not going to get into like Einstein here or anything. like, but like if you're if you're responsible for getting a project out and like, let's just say you have to get through like one of those narrow corridors that are 20 feet long, like you said, you might not be able to do it certain times a year. You might have to be waiting for like for the for permitting. And you in the meantime, you could get your tower up and you could like. And so if you're like, well, in two years, we'll have fiber there.

Mauricio Rodriguez (22:12)
Go ahead. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (22:40)
but I need something before then, I'm gonna set up microwave ahead of time. So there's a variety of reasons why you might do this as well to stage things.

Mauricio Rodriguez (22:47)
So

absolutely, yeah, there's the cost involved. There's the permitting, as you mentioned. Maybe, yeah, you don't have budget for, I don't know, somewhere around $300,000 a linear mile to build down that corridor. But for a lot less, you could get wireless. Pros and cons, right? One of the big pros is time.

Christopher Mitchell (23:00)
Right.

Right. And it's really, I mean, it's pretty solid. I mean, at that point for those kinds of links, you're not gonna, it's not like you're, it's not like you're your home wifi network where you wander a little bit around the house and you have worse signal, right? Like, this is pretty solid stuff.

Mauricio Rodriguez (23:17)
Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah,

they're pretty tall up. So they're kind of over all the tree canopy and over anything that would be in the way. Right. And that's actually the anecdote. So how do you figure out that there's nothing in the way? Right. Florida's flat. So we don't have mountains. We don't have anything. But we have lots of trees. have exactly we have lots of trees and sometimes very dense wooded areas. Right. So what did we opt for?

Christopher Mitchell (23:36)
binoculars.

And

also, like, I do feel like it's sort of like, well, you just get up and look, well, okay, there's actually this thing called the curvature of the earth. And so like, you don't know, like, you know, exactly how far you're the further apart you go, the more that like the 20 foot tree can get in the way of 250 foot towers.

Mauricio Rodriguez (23:50)
Thanks.

Correct. Correct. Yeah. So, you know, if you're 10 miles in between, that curvature is going to, you know, cost some difficulties. If you're maybe a mile or two, maybe not so much, but certainly the links we were looking at were like 15 miles, right? So yeah, the curvature issue was an issue. So, you know, there's some maps and some surveying that you can do and records that you can look at. But what did we opt for? It's like, well, we're in 2025.

Christopher Mitchell (24:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mauricio Rodriguez (24:29)
Let's get a company to fly a drone between these two sites. Yeah, fly a drone between these two sites. had, you know, LIDAR and they had video and pictures and everything. It was so high tech, right? So this guy went out there. He was flying, you know, the drones between towers and taking great pictures and videos and all the... Yeah. So in this case, we had some towers and in other cases we knew that where they were going to be.

Christopher Mitchell (24:31)
I was thinking that. Yeah, that's great.

So you already had the towers at this point.

Mauricio Rodriguez (24:59)
Right. Because we were already far ahead on the permitting and the clearances and the design. So we kind of knew where they were going to be already. So we said, all right, well, you know, we need to make sure that we can get that microwave link between those two sites. Let's do the drone flight. Great data. This guy came in from the Carolinas and we warned him, hey, this is not like the mountains in the Carolinas. This is the Everglades. You're going to encounter wildlife. Be careful. Right. Be careful.

Christopher Mitchell (25:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mauricio Rodriguez (25:24)
And he was doing great. The last day he was like focused on his, you know, control panel thing and looking at the video and everything. And he didn't really kind of wasn't aware of his surroundings. And ⁓ when he looks over at one point, he was right next to him. There's a coral snake. I don't know if you're familiar with those, but they're pretty venomous. They're one of the more venomous. And this guy freaked out. He ran to his car, locked himself in there, sent us pictures. You know, it is funny now, but.

Christopher Mitchell (25:40)
wow.

Yes.

Mauricio Rodriguez (25:51)
It wasn't funny at that point, but yeah, mean, these, these, these things are things we encounter when we work out in the field, right? You just almost never know what you're going to encounter. And over time you kind of become more familiar with your surroundings and become more aware of what you could encounter and you're ready for it. But this guy was not ready for a coral snake to slither up to him.

Christopher Mitchell (26:14)
No, no, mean, I'm not a fan

of snakes. live in Minnesota and like, we only have nice snakes around here.

Mauricio Rodriguez (26:18)
Garden snakes of the garden variety, right?

Christopher Mitchell (26:20)
Right. Yeah,

no pythons, no super venomous ones.

Mauricio Rodriguez (26:24)
We have pythons

too, but those leave you alone.

Christopher Mitchell (26:27)
Yeah, though that reminds me of you probably have that issue. I don't know, maybe less so perhaps in the winter in. Well, it's the same thing we were talking. We did an event with Tohono O’odham and they have the cabinets and there's always that question then of like, if you're opening the cabinet up, what are you going to find inside? Because if it was cold in the desert, it's warm in the cabinet. So.

Mauricio Rodriguez (26:49)
Well,

it's typically warm here in Florida, but yeah, our team that goes out there and works on kind of the smaller cabinets that are on the side of the road, they'll kind of like knock on it, hit it with a stick, kick it a little bit, open it, and then a snake might pop out and slither away. I one time, when I first started in this outdoor job, remember I was working IT inside data centers, right? And okay, now I'm outside.

I said, why is this generator cover open? Let me close the generator cover. It's like this close to me, right? I close it and there's this huge hornet right in front of my face. And I said, all right, that's probably why nobody touched that. Cause they knew that if they touched that there was going to be something there that wasn't nice. Nothing happened, but that was my first, you know, real learning about, hey, when you're out there, kind of be careful with those things.

Christopher Mitchell (27:41)
Yeah, these are the things that I feel like when you're learning about the field, they don't always tell you. ⁓ If you go out to drink afterwards, sometimes you'll get those stories. So again, we have that sort of social time.

Mauricio Rodriguez (27:45)
They don't.

Yeah. And then you don't believe him. Yeah.

And then you don't believe him. You're like, that doesn't really happen.

Christopher Mitchell (27:56)
Right. Is there anything else you've learned along the way that you'd want to share in terms of these projects and what people should think about as they're getting into them or just having some compassion for those who are in them?

Mauricio Rodriguez (28:07)
For sure. For sure. You know, I, I've learned that there are some ways to make it better, like really partner with validated experts. And when I say validated, really get references, talk to their customers, get vendors that have worked on similar projects. For example, if they've built a data center somewhere or they build data centers and all of a sudden they say, yeah, but it's kind of the same thing as running fiery in the ground. It's not, it's not. So.

Christopher Mitchell (28:33)
Blinky

lights and fiber, what's the big deal?

Mauricio Rodriguez (28:35)
Exactly. So, you know, get some references and make sure that they've done projects very similar or the same as what, you're, you're working on, ⁓ practical timelines too. So the community, your stakeholders are going to get very impatient if you over promise and under deliver. Right. So working with your experts, working with your vendors, having talked to the community, the

regulatory agencies really put a conservative plan in place. You know, I think for the most part, the community networks may not be for profit, which is typically what drives these aggressive timelines is, you know, the time to market to make money. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (29:17)
Right,

although often the nonprofits still have budgets to desperately try to keep.

Mauricio Rodriguez (29:20)
They, you have budgets,

you have budgets, you can't squander the budgets. and you've got to keep your vendors and contractors in check and keep them on the timeline, which is another reason to have that timeline. You establish that timeline. Like I like to say, you, you plan the work and then you work the plan. All right. but you have to have that plan. You have to have that plan and it has to be, realistic.

Christopher Mitchell (29:37)
I like that.

Mauricio Rodriguez (29:44)
right? Based on what experts tell you is necessary to, you know, accomplish all those steps and milestones. And then, you know, as you're doing the work, keep the community informed, celebrate those wins, right? Hey, we got this done. Hey, we got that done. We're 30 % in 40 % in that keeps people interested, involved, motivated, inspired on these great things that are coming. If you don't keep them in the loop, they'll kind of either forget about it.

Or they'll think you've done nothing where you've been working on permitting for two years. Right. ⁓ you know, that kind of thing. And I would say, look, you know, every project has its challenges. Nothing goes perfectly. Don't take any of this as, my God, we're, you know, launching rockets here into space and we're not right. We're building broadband. It's all terrestrial, right? It's all here, you know, on the earth. it's been done so many times over. And I think, you know, at any.

motivated community leader can make this happen. Right. don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of it at all. and just really just make sure that you surround yourself with the right people that will guide you the right way and are, and have an interest in ensuring that your project is a benefit to the community is a benefit long-term, to bring all those things that the community, that the broadband can bring to the community.

Christopher Mitchell (31:02)
Excellent. Well, Mauricio, thank you ⁓ for your time once again. And I look forward to catching up with you at a future Tribal Broadband Bootcamp or perhaps somewhere else fun.

Mauricio Rodriguez (31:12)
Excellent, Chris. Thanks so much.