When it comes to broadband, the monopoly system is expensive to build. Rod Hanson, the Chief Executive Officer of Cityside Networks, talks with Carrie Charles about how a wholesale shared digital infrastructure is a cost-effective solution to the problem.
Wholesale shared networks allow other carriers to come and utilize a network, rather than making it specific to a single user or carrier. To learn more about how this solution is used today, check out this exciting episode:
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Welcome to the Future of Shared Digital Infrastructure with Rod Hanson of Cityside Networks
I am thrilled to have Rod Hanson with me. He is the Founder and CEO of Cityside Networks. Rod, thank you so much for joining me.
Carrie, thank you. I appreciate the invitation. I read this every week. I am a faithful audience.
Thank you. That means a lot. I have been excited and waiting for you to be a guest. Here we are. You have been in the industry for a long time in telecom. You have done quite a few different things. I would love to hear more about that journey. I know a part of it but I am sure there’s more.
I don’t usually like to admit how long I have been in the industry but since this is your show, we are going to do true confessions now at this point. I started in the wireless industry in 1992, if you can believe that. I was selling cell phones in Jacksonville, Florida for Cellular One, which was owned by McCaw Cellular back then. I was selling $1,000 Motorola brick phones mostly to businesses. They were a big deal and pretty expensive back then. That’s how I dipped my toes into the industry.
In 1996, I moved over to the development side of the business. I started working for a consulting firm and doing site acquisition work. I moved back to Seattle, which was my hometown. I worked for a company there for a number of years doing site acquisition back in the days. In 1996, it was crazy times. We went from 2 to 8 wireless carriers in each market. Everybody and their brother was building. It was a little like it is now. It was hard to find people. That’s probably why it was so easy for me to get a job right out of the gate. If you could fog a mirror, you could come work in our industry, which is a lot of fun.
We were building new towers all over the country. I worked with VoiceStream, Nextel, Sprint and AT&T. It was all of those guys back in that time. That’s when I fell in love with the industry. I finally found my home. I did that at one point. I went over to AT&T and became their real estate manager for the Pacific Northwest. I worked on their deployments there. In 2001, I left AT&T and started my own company. It’s a company called RealCom Associates based out of Seattle.
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That was a ton of fun. We started out doing site acquisition work. That grew into A&E and all different types of services up and down the West Coast. In 2013, I sold that company to Smartlink. They needed a West Coast presence. We joined forces and that was a great experience. I had an amazing opportunity in 2016 to go over to Crown Castle. I became their Vice President of Small Cells for the Western US. I learned a lot. In November 2020, I left Crown and started thinking about a new business idea. In March 2021, we formed a company called the Cityside Networks, which is what I am doing.
I got to know you when you worked with Crown. It’s so exciting to be able to feature your new company. I do this often to look at some new companies in our industry, “What is going on? Who is disrupting what?” I want to hear more about Cityside Networks. Tell me the story behind it. How was it born? What problems do you solve?
I left Crown and updated my LinkedIn. I received a phone call that same day from a cofounder, Jonathan Restivo. He and I worked together at Smartlink. This was in the middle of COVID. Everything was closed. The only thing that was available was a Starbucks with outdoor seating. He said, “Let’s get together with coffee. I have some ideas.” We sat down. He had a McKinsey consulting report on the evolution of 5G and the challenges. It was all marked up. We started talking about the challenges that we see in the industry.
He and I started having brainstorming sessions. At 3:00 every Monday, we would call each other and spend a couple of hours on the phone, talking through the industry and some of the challenges and looking for some big problems to solve. There are a few. I had read a couple of articles. One was about the digital divide and the lack of broadband in our country. The article said there are 162 million Americans without true broadband internet in this country. That was a big issue. It’s getting a lot of press, especially with COVID.
About that same time, I read an article that Japan had deployed a total of 700,000 5G sites at the end of 2020. We were well below 100,000 at that particular time. That struck me as a big problem as well. My time at Crown taught me that deploying 5G infrastructure was slow and very expensive. Part of the issue was, when we were in markets where Crown had fiber, it was faster and less expensive. We started talking about, “Maybe it’s the carts before the horse with 5G. Maybe you need to have that infrastructure in place. That is what gives you the green light to be able to do all these other things.”
At the same time, I have heard a lot of things about smart cities and how everyone talks but it’s not being deployed. It’s not being deployed because it’s too expensive. It’s too expensive because the underlying infrastructure doesn’t exist. All of these things kept coming around. We felt like the solution was to look at a city and then start with the needs of the city and the people within that city, understanding all of these different things that are going on. It felt to us that fiber to the home and premises should be the starting point and focus there, “How do you bring fiber past every home down every street?”
If you can figure out how to do that, the rest of it becomes much easier. We are focusing on building a shared infrastructure, where we build the fiber throughout the city and sign up our customers. It would be an ISP or Internet Service Provider. They sign a long-term lease on that fiber. As time goes on, it opens up and we bring on another ISP. People are invited in to play. That foundation allows us to build 5G smart cities, edge data centers and all those other great things that we know are coming, but it’s done on a consolidated shared network.
Cityside takes a holistic approach. Tell me more about what that means. How does it benefit everyone, consumers, businesses and government?
The holistic approach is a matter of looking at it again from the cities’ and citizens’ approach rather than from a single-user approach. Traditionally, especially on the wireless side, Verizon has a building plan. They go into a city. They build many small cells and cell sites. It’s specifically for their needs, which is great. AT&T, T-Mobile and Dish are all doing the same thing, but they are not coordinated in any way. The infrastructure on the tower business is shared. In the fiber and small cell business, typically, it’s not.
Crown Castle is very much into that business, but by and large, it’s being done separately with that single user in mind. What we are looking at is, “From the city and citizen’s perspective, how do we consolidate all those needs and look 30 years out? What should that look like? What would be the most effective and efficient way to deploy the network?” That’s the approach we are taking.
Let’s look 30 years out. What does this digital city of the future look like?
You can google that. There are some interesting YouTube videos about the future. I am certainly not a futurist. What I see quite frankly is that you have got the need for the bandwidth for so many different ways. You have got fiber to the home and business. 5G wireless needs high-speed connectivity. You have got Edge data centers and computing to be able to get low latency and data closer to the user. You have got all types of smart city applications that are waiting in the wings for the infrastructure to be built.
You have to break down old models and replace them with more efficient ones.
To truly enable autonomous vehicles, it’s cars that only drive by themselves but also know where the other vehicles are. They know well that there’s a point where red lights or stop signs will not be needed because they will time it and go straight. You won’t slow down. There are many things that nobody has thought of yet because the infrastructure is not there. The city of the future is digital and the foundation is fiber, which is why we are focusing there first.
What are the challenges with broadband? How do we solve this? Everywhere you look, there seems to be a challenge.
It’s a number of things. First and foremost, it’s cost. It’s so expensive to build. The way we do that in our system is everybody is doing their own thing. We are coming from a legacy of monopolies where the phone company built a single-purpose network on a monopoly. The funny part about that is if you think about it, it’s a little like if I want to buy internet in my home, I have two choices. I have the cable company and the local phone company. If I want anything faster than 25 megabits per second, I only have one choice and that’s the cable company.
If I wanted to buy a product from Verizon Fios, which is available on the East Coast, it doesn’t come to my house. I look at it similarly to as if we were to build. I heard a smart person who used this analogy one time. In the United States, it’s like, “If you wanted to drive a Ford vehicle, Ford would build all their own roads. As long as Ford’s road came to your house, you could buy a Ford. If you wanted to buy a Chevy, then Chevy would have to build a separate road to come to your house.” That’s the craziness of how our networks are deployed. What we are looking to do is a wholesale shared network that would allow other carriers to come on and utilize the network.
It sounds like a smart idea to me.
It’s something that’s being done in Europe. I wish I could say I was original. I’m not even by a long shot. It’s being deployed in Northern Europe and parts of England. It’s becoming a very popular model. We are starting to see it emerge in the United States.
When you start a company, sometimes you run into this roadblock of the way it’s always been done. That’s an uphill battle sometimes. It’s the story of disruptive technologies. You are telling the story. You are convincing people, even though it’s like, “This is the way we have always done it.” You want to paint that picture so they see things differently. What mountains do you have to climb to make the Cityside vision a reality?
It’s like anything when you are in a relatively new concept. The biggest challenge is two-fold. The ecosystem is not yet in place. When you think about ISPs, most ISPs are connected to the network. Therefore, that’s usually the case, at least in terms of larger-scale players that are capable of signing long-term agreements, like what we are looking for and dealing with our customers. Having an ISP that doesn’t feel like they have to build is a new concept in the United States. That partnership is still a new concept. The ecosystem is still developing. That’s one area.
Secondly, like anything else, the industries get a bit entrenched in their own systems. It’s a change of attitude. It’s a change to where an AT&T, for instance, can work and say, “Maybe in this market, it might make sense for me to not build and deploy all this capital. Maybe it would make more sense for us to partner with an infrastructure owner like they do on the tower business.” Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember when we were out doing site acquisition. AT&T, Verizon and all the carriers didn’t share towers. It was a no-no.
I remember submitting a co-location application on behalf of Nextel to AT&T. It was a $100,000 application fee non-refundable. There was no guarantee that they would accept it. Fast forward now and that’s the model. It makes sense for towers to be shared. You have got the Crown Castles and the American Towers of the world out there doing that. That ecosystem now exists. We are in that early stage in the whole concept of open access.
You talked about the digital divide. I know this is a hot topic. We hear about it and everything we read about these days. To bridge the digital divide, what needs to happen to make this possible? What is in the way of getting there? Is it going to happen?
It’s maybe one of the most exciting things about what we are doing. First and foremost, you have got to break down old models because we have spent an inordinate amount of money building out these networks. Often, what happens is we keep building in the same places. We don’t build in areas that are not served. That’s being driven primarily by economics and an old model.
My analogy about the Ford roads is some of those Ford roads are dirt roads. They keep repaving other roads, but they have never brought pavement to these first roads. That’s the case with broadband. What is exciting about that though is the infrastructure bill that’s on the table. It has been a complete resurgence of interest in building it out. Both private and public interests are fully aligned that we need to go ahead and make this investment. That’s super exciting.
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When you think about it, I feel like there are three things that you have got to be able to do to break it down. One is people have to have access to it, which means we have got to build it. It’s got to get to their homes. That’s got to happen and it’s happening. The second thing is we have got to find a way to make it affordable so that people can afford it. Not everybody can afford a gigabit of symmetrical service at $100 a month. That technology is game-changing for folks.
The whole affordability piece is a big one. That is where the Federal, state and local governments can help with that. There are some good programs to do that. Thirdly, people need to know how to use it. Just because you have it and can afford it doesn’t mean you can leverage it to better your life. Education, training and digital literacy are the third pieces of this. At that point, it becomes pretty game-changing.
I can remember many things that I have purchased or software pieces of technology that I never learned how to use. I had this thing that was supposedly going to make my life much easier, and I never learned how to use it. I was too busy. That’s very well said and intuitive. Rod, you have got some experience in workforce development with RealCom. You get the pain that we are feeling. With the push for broadband, fiber and deployment of 5G networks, every telecom company in the US is bursting at the seams with projects.
We have a workforce crisis. It’s very difficult to find people simply in our industry. You add that on top of the fact that it’s difficult for anyone to find people in this country with the labor shortage that we are facing. I would like to hear your perspective. We can’t solve this in five minutes or maybe we can. We will give it a shot. How do we solve this? How are companies going to get the people they need to grow? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel here for us?
Back in 1996, that was the issue. You couldn’t find people because this is a brand-new industry. It didn’t exist to the level it does now. People were coming in from all different walks of life. A lot of people come from the military. Folks are coming in from the real estate background, legal and other types of construction. I am fortunate enough that I got to watch that. Now, we are more established. We are trying to add.
The number one thing you want to be thinking about that I think about is, first and foremost, make sure you keep the back door closed. You don’t want to be bringing in talent and lose talent at the same time. That helps you from a recruiting perspective. The key is creating an environment where people feel appreciated and they are part of a great team. It’s super clear with how they contribute. What the goals are of the company and then how they can contribute to those goals create a much more positive environment.
I have been lucky enough to work in some highly functional teams. There is a buzz. You walk in and there’s this positive energy. People are busy and they are working. It’s very contagious. First and foremost, create an environment where people want to be and stay. People don’t use the word fun enough, in my opinion. I believe that it’s important that you create an environment that’s fun. I don’t mean forced fun. My old boss at Crown used to joke around with that. He goes, “Folks, now it’s time for some forced fun.”
I am talking about creating an environment where people are excited and they are having fun. It’s okay to celebrate your wins and not feel threatened if things don’t go perfect because rarely do they. The number one for me is creating that environment. That creates a magnet for people because this industry is a big and small industry. People know each other in this industry and network. You build a reputation where it’s a great place to work and recruiting becomes much easier.
Beyond that, a lot of people have talked about this. Once you have that established, you need to create paths for people for their careers through training, development and mentorship. Those are things that allow people not only to get into the industry but to create a career path within that industry so that people stay and they invite other talented people from wherever they come from. There’s no magic bullet. My experience has been that if you can create that environment, it becomes a much easier place. We are a super exciting industry. It’s more exciting than it has ever been. People should want to come in and be a part of it. What is important is to become a talent magnet.
Create an environment where people feel appreciated by a great team.
What excites you about the future in Cityside Networks and your vision? What lights you up and gets you to jump out of that every day?
I love our industry. In 1996, it was when I felt like I was home. With all the dysfunction and craziness of our industry, somehow I fit in and it’s great. We are one big dysfunctional family. I enjoy what we do. What excites me is that the industry is evolving very quickly in a positive way. The convergence of wireline and wireless is happening. Big Tech is converging as well. All of these things are finally becoming integrated. To be a part of that is exciting. When I look at the economic and social transformation that is possible, there is an ability to transform people’s lives through this. It’s something that keeps me excited and motivated.
Where can we learn more about Cityside Networks?
You can go on the website, CitysideNetworks.com. You are also welcome to ping me on LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn. I occasionally post on there. I would love to hear from folks that have any questions or anything we can help with. If you are an ISP, please reach out. That would be fantastic. That’s the easiest thing. I have been around the industry for a long time. It’s a big network of folks. Feel free to reach out.
Rod, I appreciate you coming to the show. I have no doubt in my mind that your company is going to be a huge success. It lights me up to hear you talk about the way that your technology and ideas can make a difference, not just in broadband but in people’s lives. You said it. You are doing something that can transform people’s lives and it feels good. Thank you for starting the company, Cityside Networks, stepping out there, being the entrepreneur that you are and taking a risk. I have no doubt this is going to happen. Thank you for being on the show.
Carrie, thank you for this show. It’s a unique opportunity to listen to some talented people and bring us all together as an industry. I appreciate you doing this. You do a great job.
Thank you, Rod. Take care.
Important Links
- Cityside Networks
- Jonathan Restivo – LinkedIn
- LinkedIn – Rod Hanson
About Rod Hanson
Rod Hanson is the Chief Executive Officer of Cityside Networks. Rod has 25 + years experience leading large teams to design, build, and operate commercial networks for wireless service providers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and Crown Castle.
He has managed capital budgets in excess of $1billion, deployed more than 8,000 Small Cells and associated fiber and was the sole founder and CEO of RealCom Associates, LLC, a successful wireless services business for 12 years before selling to Smartlink in 2013. From 2016 to 2020, he was the Vice President and General Manager of Small Cells for the West Region of Crown Castle before starting Cityside Networks in March of 2021. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Washington.
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