Beyond the Cable with Brad Randall

It has never been more important for second and third tier internet service providers (ISPs) to educate their customers about the value they bring to the table in communities. That's according to Curtis Dean, the executive director of CBAN, the Community Broadband Action Network. "We as small, local providers need to do a much better job of making sure our customers understand the value t...

Robert Griffin leads broadband initiatives for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and said part of his job is to collect information from vendors, ISPs, and other tribal communities so it can be organized and considered for future deployments. Speaking to Beyond the Cable at Connected America 2026 conference, Griffin said the Choctaw Nation has been applying for broadband-related grants since 2017 and...

Having a homegrown telecom workforce can create opportunity for tribal members in their own communities and potentially could even bring people back who have left if the jobs are permanent. Brandon Dinsmore, a tribal outreach and workforce specialist for Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology (OSUIT), said training telecom specialists in tribal areas can be part of the strategy of keepi...

In June's first episode of the Beyond the Cable podcast, BroadbandOne (BB1) CEO Eric Watko joined host Brad Randall to discuss the rapidly evolving telecommunications landscape. With over 25 years of industry experience dating back to the Nortel days, Watko focused heavily on how capital, community needs, and next-generation technologies are reshaping modern connectivity.

There are no regrets from NOVOS FiBER's chief technology officer, Rob Johnson, at Connected America as he reflected on his company's decision not to participate in the federal government's multi-billion-dollar broadband spend, known as BEAD. Johnson said he knows people in the industry who have quickly turned sour on BEAD once reading the fine print. "States have taken and made th...

Consolidations and network scaling are two key trends among US telecoms in 2026, but both can increase the complexity of operations, as Patricia Kellaghan of Synamedia pointed out during her recent appearance on Beyond the Cable . "Especially in broadband," she said. "What you start to see with these consolidation efforts is operators are inheriting more systems, more vendors, more...

Service providers should begin offering tiered levels of service to customers based on quality of service, according to Robin Olds, a senior business development manager at Cisco Systems . Speaking on our Beyond the Cable podcast at Connected America , Olds said service providers could be doing a lot more, like offering network slicing and lanes of performance traffic across their network that the...

With a playbook adapted for an efficient rollout in the US market, agnoss CEO Christian Breidenbach-Kaack says the level of services agnoss can offer to multi-dwelling units offers clear advantages as a one-stop shop for network design, construction, operation, and maintenance.  The company, which has roots in Germany, is known worldwide for developi. Additionally, the company's name is a play...

In this episode we sit down with representatives of GFiber and KIVO, a dynamic pricing platform for telecom operators from PlektonLabs that won Startup of the Year at Connected America . Both interviews, captured from Connected America, dive into separate topics, including the nature of dynamic pricing, and how it can help telco operators. Tony Byrnes, head of new build expansion for GFiber, also...

Tracy Doaks, the president and CEO of MCNC , says North Carolina has something special with the North Carolina Research and Education Network. Originally from Virginia, Doaks said the network, which is operated and managed by MCNC, gives tremendous benefits to smaller, mid-sized, and minority institutions in North Carolina. She said larger institutions can often afford to have their own networks f...

Smart security systems that protect residential communities are features that should be accessible to residents of all income brackets, according to Sandy Jack, Assa Abloy's VP of strategic relations. Jack made the comments during her recent spot on Beyond the Cable with Brad Randall , a Broadband Communities podcast. "I think that the people that are most underserved, which would be the working f...

Beyond the Cable takes a sneak peek at the agenda for Connected America 2026, which opens next month with a packed two-day program in Texas. Sessions on both days, which reviewed in full on Connected America's website , will highlight a number of topics, including the practical barriers facing deployments: supply chain and labor constraints, regulatory compliance, and the challenge of turning infr...

Maz Khan, the president of Vitalis Smart Communities , says the term smart community is thrown around too loosely nowadays. "Somebody puts up a Nest thermostat and some sort of smart lock and all of a sudden it's a smart community," he said, while appearing on Beyond the Cable as a recent guest. "Well, that's not it." Khan said he believes connectivity is the foundation...

Connectivity is a key part of decision making when renters are considering where to live, according to Elizabeth Parks, the president and CMO of Parks Associates. Parks joined Ilan Eframian, a VP from Xfinity Communities, on Beyond the Cable to discuss some of the insights revealed in recent research by Parks Associates, which closely studies the broadband and multifamily markets.

Requirements asking providers to submit written statements pledging not to take additional subsidies to complete and operate BEAD projects have had a chilling effect, according to Bree Maki, the director of Minnesota's office of broadband development. Maki made the comments in her recent appearance on Beyond the Cable, a Broadband Communities podcast. She said providers using subsidies from the Un...

Ezee Fiber has grown rapidly in recent years, with aggressive expansion efforts in markets like Houston, New Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest. The fiber internet provider's CEO, Matt Marino, recently joined Beyond the Cable — a Broadband Communities podcast — to discuss the company's quickly expanding footprint and talked strategy. Marino said a sense of urgency is incredibly important. ...

Jon Carlson, a senior vice president of business development at Ibex, explains why everyone wins with a healthy ISP ecosystem, not just the corporations. "Yes, success for those tier two and tier three (ISPs) is super important for those organizations, for those companies," he said, appearing on a recent episode of Beyond the Cable. "But it's really super important for the popul...

Christopher Sikora, the CRO of Great Plains Communications (GPC), shares how GPC strategically positioned themselves to lean into a data center-driven marketplace. According to Sikora, factors that have propelled GPC to answer the call of changing connectivity demands include a variety of factors. Listen to the full episode to find out why Sikora says competency, a willingness to think differently...

Trent Edwards, the CEO of TAK Broadband , is worried about the future of the workforce in the telecommunications industry. "We don't do a good job of making sure that the younger generation understands the opportunity within construction," he said. According to Edwards, many hold assumptions that construction work is unpleasant because it requires working outside in many different co...

The telecommunications industry gets a bad reputation as being slow to adapt new technologies. It's one that Abhishek Sandhir, the managing director of Sand Technologies' telecommunications division says is not wholly earned. There's a lag between other industries because of the investment required to fund technological transformations, Sandhir said while speaking to Beyond the Cable a...

James Page, the CEO of Proactive International PR, said era of buildouts by so-called altnets in the United Kingdom has given way to a new chapter, where investors want their money back. Altnets, a shortened term for smaller alternate network providers, remain buoyant in the UK, despite earlier predictions from some that a consolidation doomsday would arrive. "There is still more investment t...

Few have seen the evolution of connectivity in the UK better than Rahul Puri , the CEO of STL. Speaking to Beyond the Cable this fall at Connected Britain , Puri talked about what's next for STL, which he says leads the way as the UK's largest supplier of fiber and data center solutions. "Now we're seeing the next phase of growth, where you're seeing a lot of excitement from h...

ISPs that can't spot what parts of their network are delivering subpar experiences for customers will face higher churn, said Dan Siemon, the CEO and one of the co-founders of Preseem. Siemon, joining the latest episode of Beyond the Cable, said the vast majority of customers will leave after negative experiences.  "Maybe they'll complain once," he said. "But often they'...

Staffing issues have been persistent for the telecom industry, as Heather Moyer, the CEO of HNM Systems, knows all too well. Moyer said she believes the industry at large has a branding problem and needs to adjust to appeal to younger prospects. "We need to kind of rebrand ourselves from kind of the salty crew construction folks to emerging talent and recognizing that we are in a technology i...

Legacy configure price quote (CPQ) systems cause headaches for ISPs, but the right CPQ system can be a game changer for ISPs on the margins. We spoke with Sean Casey, the SVP of product management at CSG, on a recent episode of Beyond the Cable about how the right CPQ solution can make or break an ISP's bottom line. Casey said traditional CPQ systems just don't provide the type of support...