Kaleigh Cox, of DxTEL and Fiber Homes, joins us for our first episode of Season 3 on how fiber internet can help you meet your talent and business attraction goals. She also talks about resources for bringing fiber to your area and tapping your local real estate agents to support your strategy.
Can you start us off, Kaleigh, by telling us about you and your company?
I‘m Vice President of Business Development for a company called DxTel. We work with small to mid-sized Internet service providers, most of them in rural or suburban areas or small cities like the ones Livability works with. Specifically, we’re a marketing company, so we provide managed services, like a marketing agency specifically for broadband. But we also have several marketing SaaS platforms and one of those is Fiber Homes. Our goal there is to bridge the gap between the broadband and the real estate industries, and the economic development world … We saw so much talk and chatter within our industry about communities that have broadband. But we want to help relocators find those communities and then find the homes that have fiber Internet.
Why is fiber so important today for communities?
At a high level, you can think of it as electricity 100 years ago, when the U.S. built out the electrical grid for the first time. Imagine if your town or city was one of the first ones to get electricity, how you would leverage that. And so, it’s a very similar story now with Internet access. The reason we have focused on fiber, is it’s — what we call in the industry: future-proof technology. We are just at the tip of the iceberg for the ways it’s going to be leveraged. We have more and more industries using more and more technology, but all of that uses bandwidth. And only fiber has the capacity to grow. As bandwidth demands grow for decades, we’re already hitting kind of bandwidth limits on some of those other technologies, which is why so much focus is on fiber. It’s also much faster. I won’t get too technical, but instead of electromagnetic pulses, it’s light signals. So, you basically have Internet traveling most of the speed of light. It doesn’t have to be boosted over long distances. It’s also more reliable, less susceptible to interference, weather disruptions, things like that. On every front, fiber is the best Internet option.
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Kaleigh [00:00:08]: At a high level, you can think of it as electricity. A hundred years ago, imagine if your city was one of the first ones to get electricity, like how you would leverage that? It’s a very similar story happening now with Internet access. But there is a limiting factor of bandwidth and speed and reliability on every front. Fiber is the best Internet option. If you can get it, that’s what you want. That’s why it’s so important for communities to have it.
Amanda [00:00:40]: That’s the voice of Kaleigh Cox here to kick off season three. Today she shares how fiber Internet can give your community an edge when it comes to talent and business attraction, how you can work toward bringing fiber to your area if you don’t have it, and way more so stay tuned. I’m Amanda Ellis and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber economic development and talent attraction professionals. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com, and with that, let’s jump in. Welcome Kaleigh, to Inside America’s Best Cities. Thank you so much for joining us to be our first guest of season three.
Kaleigh [00:01:18]: I am so honored. Thank you for having me.
Amanda [00:01:22]: We’re super excited to chat with you a bit today about the ins and outs of fiber, how it can support communities with talent attraction, business attraction, which of course is our audience here today, folks in the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development industries. Can you start us off, Kaleigh, by just telling us a little bit about you, what you’re doing, your background, all that good stuff?
Kaleigh [00:01:42]: Sure. I am vice President of Business Development for a company called Dxtel. We work with pretty much small to mid-sized Internet service providers, and most of them are in rural or suburban areas or small cities like the ones Livability works with. Specifically, we’re a marketing company, so we provide managed services, like a marketing agency specifically for broadband. But we also have several marketing SaaS platforms and one of those is fiber homes. And so, our goal there is to kind of bridge the gap between the broadband industry that we serve and the real estate industry and economic development world just because we saw so much talk and chatter within our industry about communities that have broadband. But we want to help relocators and new movers, find those communities and then find the homes that have fiber Internet.
Amanda [00:02:35]: So, anybody can go onto Fiberhomes.com and look up any address right, to see if that property has fiber access. And then it’s also a great resource for real estate folks to be able to point clients to.
Kaleigh [00:02:49]: That’s right. So unbelievably, this didn’t exist before we started doing it. There was no go-to source for finding out what kind of Internet was at a home. It was not in MLS listings. I mean, a few MLS, and just to pause for a second, MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service and that’s where homes are actually put on the market. So, if you’re looking for a home for sale that’s that, you know, data source, that website you’re looking at for that information. So, most of them maybe didn’t mention it at all or just had a simple check yes or no if there’s internet here, which internet can vary widely in speed and reliability. And so that wasn’t even a helpful, it’s not a yes no question. It’s a little more nuanced than that. And so, we started seeing all of these stories in the news about homeowners getting stuck in homes where they couldn’t do their jobs and it’s kind of a nightmare situation. People have become much more aware of it but still didn’t have a way to find out before they got there. Because when you get into these more rural communities and suburban communities, smaller cities, it’s typically not the national provider that has the best service, it’s the local co-op or a smaller family-owned internet provider. And so, we’re basically going door to door to those guys and saying, hey, could you provide us with the addresses where you provide fiber? We will certify those as a fiber home and then we’re going to make that data as available as possible to the real estate industry and to homebuyers. So, like you said, anyone can go to fiberhomes.com and search any address and either just kind of see the initial result or run a full broadband property report. We have additional resources for real estate agents that’s completely free. Their pro portal has extra resources. We have started integrating with more and more MLSs so that we do get this information directly in home listings and then we’re getting into more consumer-facing sites as well. And so, we’re kind of climbing the mountain from a lot of different angles, but the top of the mountain is letting homeowners know before they get there what kind of internet it has and particularly where fiber is.
Amanda [00:04:43]: Yeah, that’s really cool and I’m also surprised that didn’t exist.
Kaleigh [00:04:47]: Yeah, it’s because it’s not an easy source of data to gather because for one thing, many providers don’t want to publicize their addresses and have competitors find that information. And then the big reseller sites that you typically would land on if you searched internet near me, those mostly just work with the national brands. And so, if you’re not in a major city that’s not super helpful, sometimes it may not even have the best internet listed there because it takes going door to door like we’re doing. The FCC does require that’s US government does require internet providers to report, but only at the census block level. And so, if an internet provider connects even one home in a census block, they get to report that they provide service there. And I mean, I could get on a whole side tangent here. It’s a big issue with mapping and especially with broadband funding being rolled out. There’s a lot of opinions on this topic, so I won’t get too detailed here, but they were only having to report at the census block level. So, it’s a helpful starting point. And we use that at fiber homes when we don’t have address-specific data from a provider. It’s a helpful starting point to know who’s in the area, but you’ve got to pick up the phone and find out if they’re at the address. So, it takes going door to door like we’re doing. But because we have been working with the broadband industry for years, we were well positioned to kind of ask for that data and bridge that gap.
Amanda [00:06:10]: So why, from your perspective, Kaleigh, is fiber so important today for communities? I know, I have thoughts on that too, but I want to hear from you first.
Kaleigh [00:06:18]: Well, at a high level, you can kind of think of it as electricity 100 years ago, where the US was building out the electrical grid for the first time. And imagine if your town or city was one of the first ones to get electricity, how you would leverage that? And so, it’s a very similar story happening now with Internet access. The reason we have kind of focused on fiber, it’s obviously in our name, is fiber is really kind of the future proof is what we call it in the industry, the future proof technology. And what that means is the Internet is not very old and we are just, I think, at the tip of the iceberg for the ways that the Internet is going to be leveraged and the way technology is going to be leveraged. There are some industries that have developed really quickly, but there are a lot of industries that are just starting to create things and expand into new technologies. But there is a limiting factor of bandwidth and speed and reliability. We have more and more industries using more and more technology, but all of that uses bandwidth. And only fiber has the capacity to grow. As bandwidth demands grow for decades, we’re already hitting kind of bandwidth limits on some of those other techs, which is why so much focus is on fiber. And so, there’s the bandwidth issue. It’s also much faster. I won’t get too technical, but instead of electromagnetic pulses, it’s light signals. So, you basically have Internet traveling most of the speed of light. It doesn’t have to be boosted over long distances. It’s also more reliable, less susceptible to interference, weather disruptions, things like that. So just on every front, fiber is the best Internet option. If you can get it, that’s what you want. And so that’s why it’s so important for communities to have it because broadband has pretty much become table stakes at this point for attracting businesses to your community. It’s also rapidly becoming table stakes for residents, especially if they are at all educated on this topic and know they need it for their jobs, or they like to game, or they have kids doing homework. And so, you can potentially attract people without fiber, maybe not businesses, but residents without fiber. Now I think that’s going to get harder and harder. I think it’s going to be the communities that have fiber that have a serious leg up in attracting people.
Amanda [00:08:42]: Yeah, agree completely. Especially since there’s more of a focus post-pandemic on people that still work remotely and communities wanting to bring those people in who can work from anywhere. Obviously, you kind of can’t work from anywhere as effectively without the best internet situation. So yeah, it’s a huge leg up for communities and probably if you don’t have it in the coming years will be kind of a non-starter for meeting some of those attraction goals that places have. So, for communities or listeners that want to have this in their communities who don’t already have it, what are some of the approaches they can take or some resources you could point them to?
Kaleigh [00:09:21]: I mean there’s so many ways to go about this. Obviously, you can start by trying to talk to the incumbent or existing internet provider in your area, but they are often not motivated to update their technology if they have no competition. I mean that’s why national providers haven’t updated in a lot of places. They have no competition, so they have no financial motive right to invest a bunch of money improving the technology. People are going to buy their services regardless and so that can be a dead end for a lot of communities. But there are so many ways to bring fiber to your community. You could start recruiting another company that might be interested. All over the country we see telephone and electric cooperatives stepping in. Some of them have been doing it for decades now, some are just now getting into it and getting into fiber internet, I mean, especially cooperatives. They were formed around doing this for electricity or telephone 100 years ago and so they’re repeating that model now with broadband. It could also be, you may have, especially in a smaller area, a local family-owned wireless internet provider that’s applying for grant money and getting into fiber. That could be an option. Or even a privately funded company in a nearby city that’s looking to expand. You could also as a community consider becoming a municipal provider that’s growing in popularity. Again, it varies by state. There’s lots of opinions here, but you could treat it like utility, the way you might water or gas, and then there’s kind of the in-between and that would be a public-private partnership and there’s lots of ways to do that. Maybe you pay a private company to build what we call the middle mile network, kind of the backbone that you own, and then you lease the space to them so that they can build the last mile and be the internet provider for residents and businesses. You might do a profit share model, you might do an open-access network with multiple providers. People have a lot of opinions and so I’m not going to put forth there is no one best for all communities. If you’re looking for a specific resource, lit Communities is a client of ours at Dxtel and they offer some really helpful consulting for communities to help them understand and explore usually the public-private partnership model, that kind of middle-of-the-road option. So, they have this initial stage community assessment that includes a community survey but is a lot more detailed and specific and practical than just survey results. So, if you just are saying hey Kaleigh, please give me someone to call, I would point you to Lit Communities. But if you’re not having fiber, if you’re not down that road yet, just don’t wait any longer. Phase one is kind of education. So, reaching out to other communities you’ve seen, do it, ask which model they did and their experiences and opinions. Go to some broadband industry conferences, start educating yourself on the options, but don’t wait any longer to do it. The time is now for sure.
Amanda [00:12:13]: Well, it sounds like there’s a lot of options. That it’s definitely a possibility for most places, which is a great segue to connected communities. So, this is something that we have partnered up at Livability on with you all. So, can you talk a little bit about what that is? What does connected communities mean for us? How do communities get featured as a connected community?
Kaleigh [00:12:33]: Absolutely. Connected communities on Livability are cities that have fiber internet in most of the city. And so, the idea there is, like I said, we talk a lot in our broadband industry about which areas have fiber. But we wanted to partner with Livability because you already have this audience of relocators, people looking to live, work, visit new cities. We wanted to kind of bring that conversation to your platform so that that audience can identify places with fiber internet in terms of getting your community certified. If you go to Livability.com/Connectedcommunity, there’s some information there, there’s a link to a form we’ll see that come through and then we’ll reach out to schedule a call. But basically, at a high level, we’ll work with you, your internet provider, to confirm that there’s fiber in most of the community. And then from there you get that connected community badge not only on your Livability page, but to use in your community’s marketing and recruitment materials. You get more visibility on Livability for those who are looking specifically for connected communities. So, we have a landing page where you’ll be a feature story. Your feature story can also be tied to your community page or your state page. We can even come and do a video that tells the story of your city with this kind of undercurrent of there’s lots to love about your city. And one of those things is you’ve got the fiber internet people are looking for. So that’s kind of our goal there is that when Livability’s visitors are looking for places to move and they’re exploring a state and they want to see where they can relocate and still have great internet, they’re able to find those much more easily with this connected community program.
Amanda [00:14:14]: Yes, it’s really helping places that have this stand out for it at a time, you know, a lot of places have it, a lot of places still don’t. And I love too that a lot of the places we’ve been spotlighting are our favorite smaller to mid-sized cities that we love to talk about, but especially some on the smaller side. But can you share Kaleigh, what’s one or some of your favorite connected communities to talk about?
Kaleigh [00:14:38]: Yeah, I always love talking about Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. I would just say Wisconsin in general I knew nothing about before I got into this space. I live in South Carolina, but I’ve now traveled to Wisconsin a couple times for broadband conferences. But anyway, Mount Horeb is this small town there and they have a telephone cooperative that’s built out fiber Mount Horeb Telephone cooperative, MHTC. And they participated in fiber homes first, right, so they certified their addresses, but they’ve also gotten their town, Mount Horror certified as a connected community. There’s a story on Livability about them but one really fun thing there is their town kind of part of their personality and their branding is trolls. They have what they call the Troll Way. There’s this whole history on the Mount Horror website if you’re interested on how they got into that. But there’s all these little troll sculptures around town and at businesses and you can do scavenger hunts and there’s a festival and so we actually got on a call with MHTC, the Internet provider and the Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce. They knew each other because it’s a small town, and we learned that about them. And we helped them develop this World’s Friendliest Internet Trolls campaign. And it’s just really cute and fun and it was a way know the chamber of commerce was already going to run ads in nearby cities and print publications and things to market the city. And they used these campaign assets to do that, so that they’re talking about their town with this fun. Little undercurrent of and we have fiber Internet when you get here. It’s a small town with really great Internet. And so, I think it’s just really cool to see how that community has built a unique personality for itself. And then used local partnerships between the Internet provider and the town to talk about that in marketing places they’d already planned to spend money on and just leverage those platforms for this message.
Amanda [00:16:33]: Yeah, it’s so quirky. And I was thinking while you were talking, I was like, why would they call them trolls and not gnomes? And I was like, oh, internet trolls. I got it.
Kaleigh [00:16:42]: Yeah, it was some low-hanging fruit, but we had some fun with the Internet trolls having to work remotely and leaving nice comments on Instagram instead of mean ones. We had some fun with it.
Amanda [00:16:55]: That’s really funny. So, besides the Internet service provider in a community, are there other entities or people that chambers and economic development organizations should be partnering with locally to really leverage fiber more?
Kaleigh [00:17:09]: Yeah, I would say the real estate professionals. I mean, if you’re going to market your community as one with fiber Internet and then someone wants to move to your community, a lot of times one of their first points of contact is going to be the real estate agent they’ve chosen to work with. So that’s who they’re going to then ask, what kind of Internet is here? Can I get it there? If that’s been a deciding factor, and for a very large and growing number of people, it is, they’re going to ask the real estate agents. And because like I talked about, this has not been available data for real estate agents, many of them don’t know how to answer the question. And it’s especially important to understand that the way fiber Internet networks are built, a house on one side of the street may have it and the house across the street may not. And so, you really want to empower real estate agents to answer those questions accurately so that people don’t pick up, move to your town all excited and then get in and find out they have terrible Internet. And so, working directly with those real estate professionals, everything Fiber Homes does is free for the real estate industry. People are always like, well then where did you get your money from? The Internet providers pay to bring these extra tools to the local real estate agents and to provide them with additional resources. So, we do not charge the real estate industry for you know, even if you’re not participating in Fiber Homes currently, you can encourage your real estate agents to go create Fiber Homes pro accounts and at least start pulling. Broadband property reports, which shows what’s been reported to the FCC in the area and then any internet providers that have confirmed address availability at that address. And it’s a simple one-page form that’s branded for the agent. So let them know that this exists. Reach out to the local realtors’ association and have that conversation at the association level. If you need someone to come and do a virtual demo of this and how it works, you can reach out to me at [email protected]. That’s [email protected] We have recorded webinars. I can send you. We can do one live. We can reach out to your Internet provider. There’s lots of options there. And then ultimately our goal would be to get our data into your local MLS. We build those integrations for free. So, we want to get that information into the MLS so that realtors and buyers ultimately don’t have to come to fiberhomes.com and can just see the internet provider and options right in the home listing. So, if you are working for the Chamber, the economic development committee, build relationships with your Internet provider, especially if it’s a local company, and build relationships with that Realtors association because you can all help each other out significantly. And we do offer a ton of resources that are free for you to use towards that end, it seems like.
Amanda [00:19:56]: A lot of communities could really leverage their real estate professionals more. We did another related interview last season. We’ll link up in the show notes, really about how real estate agents a lot of times are these front-facing ambassadors for your community. A lot of times they’re people’s first contacts when they’re trying to get to a place. So those are all really great points and great resources for chambers and places that are just always trying to offer more membership benefits, especially to specific fields or specific people. So, I love that. So, our wrap-up question that we always ask guests so you’re in Columbia, South Carolina, right? That’s right. What is a bucket list item if someone were to visit your city that they should be sure to do?
Kaleigh [00:20:42]: I would say Riverbank Zoo in a heartbeat. I think it’s a top ten zoo in the US. And it is phenomenal in other cities. I’ve been in some well-known zoos and I think ours is much more walkable like. All of the exhibits are much closer to one another. The programs that they do are phenomenal. If you’re local, pretty much everyone locally has an annual membership. And then there’s the zoo itself, which is always doing really cool work, and they’re getting ready to expand even more over the next few years. But you can also cross the river, and our city has some rivers that run right through it, and so you can cross that on a bridge and go up. And there are what was originally the botanical gardens, but they’ve expanded it and now it’s this massive splash pad and treehouse and digging for dinosaur bones. You could spend an entire day in just the zoo part or just the splash pad botanical gardens part, or you can do both in a day. But it’s just the first thing we want to take anyone to when they visit, and it’s something we do at least once a month as a family as well.
Amanda [00:21:51]: Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on today and spending some time to share your expertise and some fun facts too.
Kaleigh [00:21:57]: Thanks so much for having me, Amanda. It was really fun.
Amanda [00:22:03]: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and midsize cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts, you can also learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.
