Ear To Ear Podcast | EPISODE 5: POTS Line Replacement

Transcript:

 

Introduction (00:00):

You're listening to Ear to Ear by Altaworx a podcast for all things telecom.

Forrest (00:05):

All right. Glad to have you here today. Thanks for joining the Ear to Ear podcast by Altaworx, where we talk about all things telecom, and we have an absolute expert here who's been in the industry. She's only 20, but she's been in the industry for 19 years. Right. That's all right, Jaime. Yep. Okay. So Jaime Rawden, who is our VP of product, is here at, in the podcast studio, and we're gonna talk about, some more history about telecom, some different aspects of products but also focus on a couple of different product lines. So, Jaime, tell me about how you got started in telecom.

Jaime (00:43):

So, I got started because I was working for a produce broker. Um, just started a new job just getting my feet wet. And that produce broker had a split in their business. The owner was actually invested in a telecom company, so they had to downsize, and he said, Hey, I've got an open position in the technology company. Would you like to try to get that job? I said, well, I'll try. I'm gonna <laugh>, I've gotta have a job, <laugh>. So, that's really how I got started. I had no experience.

Forrest (01:18):

So I gotta pause you for a second. What is a produce broker? I mean, I've, I've heard of stockbrokers and I just, I don't even know what a produce broker is.

Jaime (01:24):

So they really, they just go out, they buy a bunch of produce, they buy it in bulk, break it down, put it on different trucks, and then send it all over the country. Okay. So then they have buyers mm-hmm and it's just a whole negotiation. So my job in that company was commission. Hmm. So I balanced all of the trucks on what the products were how many miles we had to pay for the drivers and, all the expenses that came out of it, and then paid out commission to the brokers.

Forrest (01:52):

So that prepared you for telecom commissions at a later date?

Jaime (01:55):

Yes, it did. Okay. I had no idea. Yeah.

Forrest (01:57):

Interesting. I did not know that. Okay. So, the owner invested in a technology company mm-hmm and you split off and sounds like you went and worked for them. Tell me more about that. Well,

Jaime (02:08):

That's where I met Ricky. Okay. Um, Ricky was the Gulf Coast salesperson, and I really just became his, do whatever you do, whatever he says So I did a lot of the paperwork he taught me how a home telephone worked how cell phones worked I had no clue I just went around my whole life using the things and not knowing why they worked.

Forrest (02:34):

Did you know at the time that he didn't know how they worked either? No.

Jaime (02:37):

<laugh> Okay.

Forrest (02:38):

<laugh>, because it's interesting that both of you came from the food business because he was in the food business Yeah. Before as well. So, interesting. Um, so you're working with Ricky at this other company, and then, you know, how did you guys end up creating auto

Jaime (02:52):

Works? Yeah, so a couple years later, he was positioned to start his own company. I'm just gonna say it like that. Um, and he asked me to come with him and help him get off the ground. So I was comfortable with what we were doing, and he let me work from home and I was pregnant with my second child, so it just made perfect sense to me. I'd only seen him two or three times in the two years I've been working for him. So working remote was not really a problem.

Forrest (03:21):

Interesting. So, so tell me about that really bad customer that you had. Uh mm-hmm. that Ricky had come across and he had to service for a nber of years. <laugh>. Yeah.

Jaime (03:30):

We, we probably shouldn't talk about that. <laugh>.

Forrest (03:34):

So, in all seriousness, I was a customer of Altaworx before Altaworx was a thing. So Jaime helped me for years, and she got to listen to my rants and raves when at and t wouldn't do something right or there was a problem with something. So Jaime got to know me as a customer. We, that's how we started our relationship, probably 18, 19 years ago, a long time ago. And, so I'm glad you didn't hold any of that against me.

Jaime (03:57):

Not at all. Uh, as a matter of fact, you had me digging into things that I didn't understand <laugh>. Yeah. So you helped me expand my knowledge on telecom.

Forrest (04:06):

Very Cool. So what kind of different roles have you played? I know you, you started out working with Ricky and kind of helping him build the business and, you know, doing the things that probably he didn't want to do. I, I know that's probably a lot of it. So that

Jaime (04:18):

Was most of it. Yeah. Paperwork was not really his thing. Yeah. The details are not his thing. It's still

Forrest (04:22):

Not

Jaime (04:23):

Yeah. <laugh>. Yeah, <laugh>. It's true. Um, project management was really where I started just managing everything that he sold mm-hmm. from the paperwork to get the orders placed to installation and making sure the customer was satisfied mm-hmm. Um, and then I had to do some tier one support Yep. Um, and be the liaison to the carriers to make sure that everything that was installed was working as it should if there were any issues in that, you know, support the client through that. Even had to do a few programming of phones, which was really interesting, since I just thought you plugged them in and they worked. Um, that was not the case. Yeah. Learned that, also did commissions worked with our agents at the time to help them come up with solutions. So it was really just an evolution of learning for me, and it's always been that way.

Forrest (05:15):

And with the, commissions, I mean, that was, you were getting commissions from other carriers and then processing those and repaying them. Yes,

Jaime (05:24):

Yes.

Forrest (05:25):

Okay. Very cool. That's right. All right. Um, so what do you like about the industry? What are the things that, you know, you, you were drawn to it, obviously out of a need for a job, but you stayed in it for a long time. So what do you like about the industry?

Jaime (05:41):

I love that it's always changing there's always something new to learn. You know, whether it's a new product or a better way to accomplish a goal, you know, and being the advocate for the client, you know, we can stay on top of the technology because that's our focus, that's our business model. So if we do our part in that, they get to focus on their business and doing what they love.

Forrest (06:06):

Yeah. Well, and, a lot of companies focus on technology and not how you can use that technology to have an impact on a business. And so it's neat that the way you guys have operated from the beginning was always about how can you have a positive impact, even though that may not have been defined as a, as a focus of the company. That's really how it got started. Absolutely. It's, it's not about selling something cool. It's about how you can use technology to benefit a business and make it better. So, so, we talked about you starting the business with Ricky and, and how you did what he said. And, so talk to me about how the things were with his fishing trips. You know, did you, did he fish a lot while you were working with him? Or how did that work?

Jaime (06:48):

It was mandatory. Yeah. Um, so Ricky is an excellent salesperson. Uh, he did, such a good job that he would work for about three weeks and then I would beg him to go take a fishing trip for a week so that I could get caught up mm-hmm. with all of the orders and the processing and the installs Yeah. That he had, that he had sold. So that was kind of our thing. Um, he would work for three weeks and I'd say, time to go <laugh>,

Forrest (07:15):

Go away. He would get all caught up. He could get offline, stop selling,

Jaime (07:18):

Please.

Forrest (07:19):

Yes. Did you ever have to buy 'em any fishing lures to as an incentive, or you had to tell him? Just tell him, Joe.

Jaime (07:24):

Just, I think it's time for our fishing trip.

Forrest (07:25):

Okay. Yeah. Little, little subtle hint. I think it's time for you to leave for a little while, <laugh>. That's right. Yeah. So, so looking back, over the years and, and the different roles you've had and different experiences you've had, what would you have done differently if there is anything?

Jaime (07:40):

I definitely would've moved to Fairhope sooner.

Forrest (07:43):

. So what convinced you to move to Fairhope?

 

Jaime (07:46):

I love the community. Yeah. Um, it's just a beautiful town, love water. Um, but I also enjoy being with the company, the people here. Yeah. Um, and I, I miss that a lot. Yeah. You know, working from home and raising my babies at home and, you know, I might have worked weird hours or whenever I had to work, but at the end of the day, being in an office and being able to talk to other people about the problems and the issues face-to-face was really something that I missed. Yeah. So it was good to be back in the office. 

Forrest (08:20):

Water cooler conversations definitely, make a difference They do in the office. So,

Jaime (08:26):

And it's about relationships again, and what you can learn from other people. Yeah. Everybody have, has different experiences. Yeah. And to be able to collaborate and learn from other people's experiences just make us all better.

Forrest (08:39):

So what are the other things that you, you, thinking back from a business standpoint that you, you would've done differently if you knew more, if you knew what you knew today, what would you have done differently?

Jaime (08:47):

Yeah. I think residual commission and seeing that residual commission was so important mm-hmm. to where we were going as a business. You know, we were really addicted to the upfront payments from the carriers. And that just kept us rolling. That kept Ricky selling more and more each month, which was great. We needed that. Yeah. Needed

Forrest (09:10):

The cash. Yeah.

Jaime (09:10):

Um, but the residual commission seemed insignificant at the time because it was so small. Um, but at the end of the day, when we went through that transition from upfront commission to residual, it was tough you know, I, I wish we could have been more prepared for that transition.

Forrest (09:27):

Yeah. Yeah. And then we transitioned from commission to, you know, being a wholesaler and reselling services. So, I know that I, I've heard you and Lydia talk about stories about the two different companies that we were running simultaneously and, and basically the wholesale company that was buying and selling services on the, the paper was taking money from the commission's business and talk about the fun in that process.

Jaime (09:54):

Fun <laugh>, I'm not sure that's the right word for it. Yeah. It was complex. Yeah. Uh, we did a lot of maneuvering, through that time, just back and forth trying to understand, make sure that everyone, had what they needed. But we were also working with those agents and saying, Hey guys, let's talk about residual commissions because we weren't that company before. Yeah. Yeah. So getting them on board and helping them understand residual commission was, it was great. Yeah. Uh, we had some people that jped on board really quickly and we had some that didn't. Yeah. Um, but that's how we were able to move forward.

Forrest (10:32):

Yeah. It's interesting cuz you know, the company was in the position of earning commissions so that the carrier was almost our boss, and now it, it's changed to we're the boss cuz the agents are getting commission from us. So it's almost a role reversal that took place over a period of time.

Jaime (10:50):

Yeah. Being the client of those carriers Yeah. Is a much better position than where we were before.

Forrest (10:57):

Yeah. It's interesting. That was one of the conversations. I probably shared it with you when I left my previous company that I came to work for that I left to come to work here. You know, that was one of the reservations that one of the people in my office told me, said, Hey, you know, what happens if, if at and t changes their policy around, you know, revenue that you have at this new company. And I said, they can't cuz we're the customer <laugh>. If they're commissions, then commissions can change, but when you're the customer and buying product at wholesale, then you, they can't change it. You know, they can stop selling you certain things, but they can't change what you were making on the previous stuff. So

Jaime (11:31):

Yeah. It was a complete change Yeah. In the company and the way that we operated. Yeah. So that was a, that was a blow

Forrest (11:38):

<laugh>. So one of the things that you learned in that process, moving from upfront to residual business,

Jaime (11:45):

Um, we had the ability to be so much more than just an agent. We were a good agent mm-hmm but this was a whole new world of technology and new products and services. We could really get into being a true advocate for our clients, not just passing support issues through to the carriers. Yeah. We got to be that interface with them. We got to build the long term relationships. Yeah. And, you know, taxation and compliance was probably our biggest hurdle. Yeah. How so? It, the legalities of it mm-hmm , just very complex and understanding those things enough to be able to talk to other people about them Yeah. Was difficult. Yeah. It was just something we hadn't had to deal with before as an agent. You know, us second and fcc, those were all companies. Um, we didn't have to deal with them at all. The bigger

Forrest (12:45):

Carriers, you were rude from them. Yeah.

Jaime (12:47):

So it was brand new. Um, so much responsibility mm-hmm. and, we got through it. We made some mistakes along the way, but we learned from them. Yeah.

Forrest (12:58):

Yeah. I remember when I first started here working with you on usac, you and I had some, some hair pulling that we did dealing with the government trying to figure out that

Jaime (13:06):

Was about the time mm-hmm. that we were trying to dig in and learn all that. Yeah. And it was just an enormous amount of information. Yeah.

Forrest (13:14):

Yeah. I remember we overestimated the amount of money that we were supposed to pay. So then, and then we underestimated one year. So it was just a, it definitely is a, a challenge to manage that compliance, but that's part of the reason why you've got to make sure that you're working with somebody that understands it and, and have the backing of of a compliance company too. So, well, let's shift o over to product. And I wanna talk a little bit about POTS today. And we're not talking about pots and pans, we're talking about POTS in the telecommunications industry. So what exactly is a pots? Because I was, I was working with a, a billing platform company earlier this week and Ricky was and I were in the meeting and he mentioned POTS and several of the guys looked at us like, what, what is a pots <laugh>? And so Ricky of course took 20 minutes to explain it, but I'm gonna have you do it a little bit quicker. Okay. So talk to me about

Jaime (14:03):

Pots. So it's plain old telephone service. Yeah. So it is your traditional analog line that your grandmother had in her house. Um, it is the old fax machines just that single copper line that goes in to do what you need it to do to communicate.

Forrest (14:22):

Yeah. So my in-laws, they live in a small town and, I've been married for 25 years, so it's been a while. But when we first got married, and for the longest time they still had the old frontier phone on the wall that they had been paying rent for. And it was like, you know, two or three bucks a month that they'd been paying for 20 some odd years. Cause back in the old days, the carriers would rent you the piece of equipment. Yeah. And that piece of equipment would be on your wall. And they got rid of it, I don't know about probably 10 years ago, but it blew me away that I walked in and they still had the carry, like the

Jaime (14:58):

Rotary.

Forrest (14:59):

It was rotary. It was absolutely rotary. And so, you know, there there's different videos where people will pull out a rotary phone and ask the teenagers to dial a nber and they can't do it. Brandon, my son, he's 20 and he can do it because he used to use a rotary phone to dial home to call us. Yeah. But yeah, rotary phone, you think about POTS and rotary phone, that's how old this technology is. Yes, it is. It is old. Um, so, so why, why are we talking about POTS today? I mean, what is, what is the reason around people having discussions around POTS today?

Jaime (15:30):

Well, like you said, it's old Um, it's been in the ground for a really long time. Yeah. And it's deteriorating. Yeah. And it is not cost effective for us to be able to go out and repair that when we can put fiber in the ground. Right. Um, so, you know, as of August of this past year, 2022, carriers are no longer selling pots lines. Right. It's not a technology that they want to support. Um, the maintenance and the upkeep is just not cost effective. Yeah. So this is led to them dropping the services. So there's some services that are no longer gonna be offered. Now what they're doing is they're increasing the monthly cost of those. So you may be seeing some increases in your billing and that's really just a push to say, Hey, you need to move to something else. That's

Forrest (16:20):

That. I don't wanna do it price.

Jaime (16:21):

Yes, exactly. Um, so we've got, you know, millions of these old analog pots lines that are out there that are no longer gonna be supported. Now most people think, you know, if it works, why would you change it? But at the end of the day, if it stops working when it, when it stops working, yeah. No one's gonna know how to fix

Forrest (16:42):

It. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's interesting. You know, we're talking about elevator lines, modem lines, fax machines. Uh, I was talking to a client the other day and asked them how many pots lines they had and they said, well, we don't, we don't, I don't, I don't think so. We have any, and I said, do you have any phone lines for elevator? Well, yeah, we got two elevators. How about an alarm? Yep. We got an alarm. How about faxing? Yeah, we got some. I said, you've got pots lines. They

Jaime (17:05):

Don't

Forrest (17:06):

Realize it. They, they've just been paying the bill for years and years and years and its been ticking up over time. Uh, you know, we've come across some, some customers in Georgia and other states where they're paying upwards of 150 to $200 a pots line, which is crazy because, and you probably remember it, but Ricky routed it off Wednesday when we were in this meeting, somebody, we were talking about cost of pass lines. And he said, I remember there were $32 and 53 cents or whatever it was. Do you remember what it that nber was?

Jaime (17:33):

We had $25 at one point in time. Okay. We were doing dsl. Okay. We could do the all for less. Yeah. Okay. And it was $25 a line. Okay. Now you were buying DSL with it. Yeah. So it was like a combo package.

Forrest (17:43):

Yeah. But yeah, he, he, he rattled it off like exactly to the penny on what it was. Yeah. I was like, okay. Wow. I didn't know that. All right. But anyway, they, they were less expensive. They're in the 30, they were in the thirties, 20 fives, 30, $40 especially

Jaime (17:55):

Area calling. Yeah. That

Forrest (17:56):

Was, yeah. I mean, we've got clients that are paying 90 and 95, a hundred dollars for a POTS line and it's just, it's insane. Um, so to get rid of these pots lines, you gotta replace it with something else. So what, what's the solution out there to replace these pots lines? Yeah,

Jaime (18:10):

So the replacement, is you can do a couple of different things. You can go in and you can rip out all your infrastructure and you can build out, you know, new infrastructure to support those phone lines Um, but there's also LTE POTS line replacement, which is a great solution. You don't have to have a wired connection necessarily. Um, there are some solutions that really want you to have a wired connection. Um, but you can have just an LTE SIM card connection and run your alarm lines, run your fax lines off of that LTE POTS replacement. I mean, that's really what it was created for to replace this copper.

Forrest (18:56):

So for lte, for, for those who don't understand what LTE is, cuz you see that term and not necessarily understand what is LTE that connectivity when it it, it's that like cell phones or something. Or cell

Jaime (19:07):

Phones. Okay. Yeah. If you think about the towers that you see mm-hmm 4G lte, technology that your cell phone runs off of. Um, there is 5G out there, but what we're focusing on for this and what you would need to support, voice LTE is fine.

Forrest (19:24):

Yeah. So there's, lots of different solutions out there for POTS line replacement. One is to be able to use lte mm-hmm. and that that's a good way to do it. Um, alright. We'll talk about the benefits of, of replacing your pots lines. So if you're getting rid of your pots lines, you know, obviously you need to get rid of it from the technological standpoint, but what are some other benefits of replacing POTS lines with the newer technology?

Jaime (19:46):

Yeah, so definitely reduce your expenses. So if you're paying upwards of a hundred dollars for, you know, a POTS line today, you're definitely gonna see a huge reduction. Um, so expenses, it's easy and it's fast to deploy these LTE solutions and just go in and have that replaced really quickly. There's no, infrastructure that has to be changed. Um, and then you can use a battery backup, so you've gotta fail over in there in case there's an outage. So that's one of the things that's really important when you're talking about alarm lines and elevator lines. You've gotta have some kind of backup to make sure that those are always on. Yeah. So that maintains the service in case of an outage. Yep. Um, you have increased uptime. Um, you know, LTE is more reliable than traditional pots lines. Yeah. Um, and then improved support and monitoring

Forrest (20:42):

So you can monitor those pots, line the replacements and make sure that the sim cards online and working and operating. So

Jaime (20:48):

That's right. You even sent a notification that says when it's offline Yeah. If something happens, somebody accidentally unplugs it.

Forrest (20:53):

Yeah. I still don't understand, you know, I'm not in the government, so I, I'm, I can't make decisions like this, but I still don't understand why, you know, elevators still require a phone line because how many people walk into an elevator that don't already have a cell phone. I mean, it's just, it's very rare that you'd come across somebody that didn't have a cell phone. So I guess it's for that one, one in a million case where somebody gets stuck in the elevator and they don't have a cell phone, but when does that happen? So anyway. All right. Well, talk to me about, staying on the pots lines, because pots lines are one product set that runs on copper. Gimme some examples of some other products that are out there that may still be on copper.

Jaime (21:33):

Sure. So there's T one s that are out there they may be bonded. So you think of a T one as a 1.54 mm-hmm internet connection, but there's bonded ones as well So if you see a three mag or you know, something greater than that, it could just be bonded T one s and then prs prs are primary rate issd n no, that doesn't really mean anything to anybody, but it's basically a T1 that has a bunch of voice channels on it. and that's what it does. It just carries that voice across it. Um, dsl mm-hmm the old dsl, those are runoff copper. Yeah. Um, then you have channelized voice, which is like a, a sit trunk mm-hmm that can be running off of a t1, but you know, if you have SIP service, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're running on fiber. So you need to make sure that what's supporting that SIP service is already migrated over to fiber. And if it's not start taken steps to get it migrated over to Fiber.

Forrest (22:25):

So you're gonna have basically what's called SIP trunks that are out there mm-hmm. And they may not be running, they may be running on the internet, but they're running on old internet, which is copper internet. Exactly. Yeah. So I know you remember the horror that we dealt with, with the T one s that we had at, at the old office that I worked for. But you know, it, it was just a pain in the in the something, I'm not gonna say it, but it was a pain when, you know, the weather would be bad. It would be, you know, puddles of rain around these boxes that we would have. And I remember having to call you and get you to open support tickets with at and t to get our T one s working. And that's

Jaime (23:01):

A great point too. Yeah. You know, the LTE is not affected by the weather. It's

Forrest (23:04):

Not Yeah.

Jaime (23:05):

So, you know, unless there is a hurricane or something coming through that knocks out the towers Yeah. You know, that that's really not a concern. Yeah.

Forrest (23:14):

When you talk about the weather. Well, but even then, that's one of the things that, you know, we've had experience with geo geographic regions like South Louisiana after one of the hurricanes knocked out all of AT&T's wired and cellular towers because all the cellular towers were supported by AT&T's wired infrastructure. Yeah. And so even if you had a POTS line replacement that was on at and t, you could swap that SIM card or have a,  dual sim card device that slips over to Verizon to have that secondary carrier.

Jaime (23:42):

Yeah. Because Verizon was up and running.

Forrest (23:43):

Verizon was up and running during time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, alright, well let's, let's move on a little bit to, talk about something, another acronym. Telecommunications has lots of acronyms. <laugh>. Yes. IoT. What, what is IoT?

Jaime (23:58):

So IoT is Internet of things And it can be anything from a monitor in your window for your alarm system or on your door if you, if you have a beep when you open your door at home. Yep. That's probably got an I oT sensor in it. Yep. Um, it can be a medical monitoring, device. There's, it, it's everywhere. It's in our cars. Um, it's in our, it's in our pets. Yeah. And there's our pets are even getting chipped

Forrest (24:37):

<laugh>, aren't there ankle bracelets that you know, if you're, if you commit a crime and you're being

Jaime (24:42):

Monitored, you trying to stay away from those, but

Forrest (24:44):

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that, that, that they can be, have some cards in them too.

Jaime (24:48):

<laugh>. Yeah. There's it, it's everywhere. Yeah. And, and it creates efficiencies in the things that we're doing. So, in our everyday lives. So it's, it's going to continue to grow. We're gonna hear more and more about new ways that we can integrate with these things. Um, and these monitors, you know, temperature monitors even in the, like for fast food restaurants or in grocery stores Yeah. So you know exactly if there's a problem with the temperature because it's gonna alert you. And that's super important because, you know, you may not have to have somebody co go out and physically inspect a building all the time. If you've got a monitor in there, that's gonna tell you.

Forrest (25:26):

Right. Yeah. I'm even thinking about, one of the solutions that we came across, I think you worked on it with respect to the, the car business. So there was a car business that was basically set up using IoT, it's a traditional used car business, but they had set up GPS tracking with really low bandwidth and they only wanted to ping that car and know was it like once a day or something? Once a day. And, and what they were looking at was where that car spent a lot of time, like long periods of time mm-hmm so that if they needed to go pick up that car, if the somebody person stopped paying their bill. So if you want talk

Jaime (26:10):

More about that. Yeah. That was, that was a really interesting, company. Yeah. So really their model was, you know, if you didn't have good credit, you could still come get a car from them. Right. And they would finance it for you, but if you didn't make that payment, they were right on top of you to get that car so they didn't have to try to track you down or hire somebody else to go do it, a bounty hunter or whatever. Yeah. Um, they knew where you were Yeah. And where you stayed and, and that was part of the deal. Yeah.

Forrest (26:36):

I thought it was interesting that cuz when you think about asset tracking, you think about a constant ping. Yeah. But they only wanted to know where car sat on a regular basis, the two or three spots, whether it was at work or mom's house or girlfriend's house or whatever. And so they were able to get that solution down really inexpensively. I can't, do you remember what the, the size megabyte plan was? I mean, it was, it was, it was in the kilobytes. It wasn't even in the megabytes. It was really, really small.

Jaime (27:01):

Yeah. It was, I wanna say it was like 60 cents or something.

Forrest (27:05):

Yeah, yeah. You know, so that

Jaime (27:06):

We ended up working with them on, it was just very, very minimal and gave them what they needed and it really reduced their risk.

Forrest (27:13):

Correct. So they created a business around being able to monitor those vehicles and be able to go get 'em when they wanted to So really neat. So, so talking about IoT, there's a lot of ways you can use 'em. Smart vending machines you know, horse tracking is another one. You know, we've, we've worked with a client on, what does it mean for a private network with IoT? What does that work?

Jaime (27:34):

So private network really is just, if you can, if you can create a network that is private and secure, then your data is can be secured. So basically it's just staying off of the public internet.

 

Forrest (27:51):

So is there a, a separate path that that device goes over through the cellular network or is it go to like a VPN connection? How does that work?

 

Jaime (28:00):

It's kind of like that. Yeah. It's called an ap n mm-hmm. Um, and the APN directs where that traffic goes. Okay. So it's really data that's transmitted from that device over a secure, private connection, or network to be routed back to the client's destination of choice. So let's just say you're doing credit card processing. Wouldn't you want your credit card to stay off the public internet and be on a protected network that went straight from your device to the processor? That's the kind of things that we're talking about. This is really gonna help, a lot of different industries cut down on all of this cyber hacking. 

 

Forrest (28:45):

What about some other things you can do with a private network? So are there, are there ways to control the traffic and manipulate the traffic?

 

Jaime (28:51):

Yeah. So not only do you get to tell the traffic where to go, you get to decide how quickly you want to get the information. Okay. So you can really strip it down to a very small throughput speed so that you use less data, to transmit that traffic. And then you get, you, you don't spend as much. So it's really up to you how quickly you need to get the information. Like with a credit card processor, you want that to go pretty quick, but it's really small amounts of data. So if you had a three megabyte throughput speed, you're gonna get it just as quickly as if you had a full lte. Yeah.

 

Forrest (29:30):

Very cool. Are there any things you can do with private network from a filtering standpoint?

 

Jaime (29:35):

There are. So yeah, this is really important, especially when we're talking about schools, medical, you want the people who are out in the field, you wanna protect your children from some of those sites, that you do not ever want them to see, honestly. But, you can, you can go in and you can whitelist where you want them to go it's, it's just like a firewall. Yeah. Really if you think about like a firewall. So if you want all your traffic to go to one place or if you wanna get to that place and say, okay, this computer can go out to the internet, but they can't see these particular sites

 

Forrest (30:13):

Like YouTube or

 

Jaime (30:14):

Right. Streaming

 

Forrest (30:15):

Services,

 

Jaime (30:16):

You can Netflix. Yeah. Or you know, Hulu, whatever. Yeah. Whatever it is that you're trying to keep them away from. Um, this also allows them to just have a device that works within the ranges of what they're supposed to be doing with it. Yeah.

 

Forrest (30:29):

Keep employees from using the hotspot to, you know, have Netflix,

 

Jaime (30:34):

Their children in the backseat. Yeah. Whatever.

 

Forrest (30:36):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what are some other use cases? Uh, for private networks?

 

 

Jaime (30:40):

Yeah, I see a lot, you know, medical equipment I think that's a really good one because you can, protect your HIPAA information, from going over the public internet. You can credit card processing is still a really good one. Um, but then even legal information, I think that's something that we're gonna see more and more of, over the private network. Um, those docents are, you know, contained sensitive information. Yeah. And the more that we can pull, that information off of the public internet, the better off we're gonna be. Yeah.

Forrest (31:20):

Yeah. I think we've kind of covered how it works and the different use cases and why it's important. So let's talk about some of the benefits of having a private network.

 

Jaime (31:31):

Yeah. So it's really easy, to get set up and to build a private network.

 

Forrest (31:37):

Um, so you don't have to run a bunch of wires or anything.

 

Jaime (31:39):

You don't have to run a bunch of wires. It's all in the cloud. Yeah. <laugh>. Um, so you can quickly and easily get one set up. You can manage it, very easily. There are cloud management portals mm-hmm. that you can use to monitor your sims to look at the usage, to be able to do activation deactivation. Um, you can even get really creative and, lower your overall cost based on how you're buying data from the carriers. Um, we have seen the optimization algorithms mm-hmm so that you can lower your overall cost. So there's a lot of new up and coming things that are going to help with the financial aspect, and the cost that has to go into these type of IoT private networks.

 

Forrest (32:30):

Yeah. It still interests me that I come across people that don't understand some of the technology that's available. Private networks, just mobility rate plans pots line replacement there. Everybody is still just doing things the way they've done 'em because it works to your point. And there's a lot of ways that you can change how you, the technology that you use to make your business more efficient, but also to make it more secure. So Yeah.

 

Jaime (32:55):

And it really all goes back to education you know, and if you go back to where we started the business, it was about us keeping up with the technology so that our end clients could focus on their business. Yeah. So we have to educate them in what those changes are and remind them, Hey, we've got, we've got you on this, you don't have to worry about this piece of it. Um, but the more and more things change and how quickly they change, there's more security risks. Yeah. So this private network is gonna answer a lot of those concerns.

 

Forrest (33:25):

Yeah. Okay. Anything else you wanna share or get? Uh, we've talked about private networks, we've talked at pots line replacement. Um, any word, other words of wisdom before we depart today?

 

Jaime (33:39):

Words of wisdom. Um,

 

Forrest (33:43):

Don't eat yellow snow. That's not one of, of 'em. Don't

 

Jaime (33:45):

<laugh>. That's good. <laugh>. Yeah, it's good. That's a good one. Um, just find someone that you trust, to work with you on technology. Yeah. I think that's one of the most important things. Build a relationship with a technology company that can help you make those decisions

 

Forrest (34:03):

And not somebody who's just trying to sell you something. That's right. Yeah. I was talking to somebody earlier that this week about sales and sales. A lot of people think sales is selling ice to Eskimos mm-hmm and it's not, it's actually figuring out how to solve a problem for a client and how to make a positive impact on them. And if you're just focused on your product, I think it was Bob Nichols that said to, to an , was it to a, a lumberjack every tree is an axe or every axe is a tree or whatever. You know, if you, if you are only focused on the product and not how it can have a positive impact, then you're gonna miss the mark. So yeah. Okay. I love that. Well, thanks for today. Thanks for coming out. We enjoy, thanks for having me. Enjoy. We hope everybody got something good outta this and look forward to talking to you next episode.