Join a conversation with Brian Higgins and Laurie Caruso and Learn how to have reliable internet service through a pandemic.
Join a conversation with Brian Higgins and Laurie Caruso and Learn how to have reliable internet service through a pandemic.
Speaker 1:
Broadcasting from Great Gate Studios it's time for Connected with Laurie. Tune in every other Wednesday to learn about the future innovation of technology and advanced tech trends. Here's your host, Laurie Caruso.
Laurie Caruso:
Hi, and welcome to Connected with Laurie. I am your host, Laurie Caruso. I have an amazing man in the studio today, he is incredible at what he does and I wanted to make sure that the audience is introduced to Brian Higgins from Aditum, he's the CEO at Aditum, welcome Brian.
Brian Higgins:
Thank you for having me. Good afternoon.
Laurie Caruso:
Good afternoon. So you're doing some exciting things out there. I have to say when it comes to internet and technology, I would love to hear how you got started with Aditum, tell me a little bit about the approach and what you're doing today.
Brian Higgins:
Well, we got started with Aditum after having sold the ISP that I had founded and ran for many years out in Indiana. I moved out to Connecticut and started running into office buildings that basically didn't have internet. You had 20, 30, 40 office in a single space and DSL or dial up internet. So I started bringing in fiber optic connections to those buildings, building ISPs to those properties and enabling internet service to come into places where the cable companies and other broadband services weren't available yet. That kind of morphed over the years into what we have today is Aditum.
Laurie Caruso:
Well, it's exciting to hear that because I know how difficult it is with technology, trying to get that technology to the building can be super costly. If property owners and tenants, aren't prepared to be able to bring that in, I know that they face challenges. Tell me some of the ways that you're doing that today and how do you overcome the challenges that they usually see out there?
Brian Higgins:
Well, a lot of the challenges are technical that they're cost-effective issues, they are just budgetary or overall deployment capability issues. Building an ISP is not easy, it's technically demanding and you've got a lot of history out there. If people have gone and Google searched, how do I sell internet to my tenants? You're going to see hundreds of posts from over the years where people are like, don't do it, it's too dangerous, it's too complicated. You're going to do it wrong and the general consensus is just don't do it because it's too hard or it's too costly or you're opening yourself up to making mistakes that are going to provide a bad experience.
Brian Higgins:
Historically, that was correct, there was no way for people to do it cost-effectively in a small scale, which is why the big ISP is now kind of run the world. With my background of having ran in ISP and also in the technology space, I've been an IT consultant for 23 years now, merging those two concepts and those two professional traits into one business was kind of a natural thing for me. I took the ISP technology and the ISP infrastructure model and scaled it down into a small scale product that could be resold by resellers and deployed on demand into individual buildings.
Brian Higgins:
So the biggest hurdle to overcome is always been the technology itself. Most of the time, if you wanted to deploy or build an ISP, you need to have a staff with network engineers without Aditum you don't need to have anyone, but a low level technician.
Laurie Caruso:
So that's important given the fact that I would imagine it would be costly, first of all. So it sounds like you actually help with that pain point for the tenants and for the occupants to be able to bring something in and there's going to be some savings there so to speak based on what you're doing.
Brian Higgins:
Yeah. Well almost all the deployments are, it's not just a savings it's actually a profit center. The system is designed so that the building owner can actually turn a profit off of the internet. Not just a year one, or a single time payment, this is ongoing evergreen revenue from the building for the life of the system. So if you deploy the system, you market it to your tenants and your tenants will pay for the internet, just like they're used to paying from whoever they're buying from today. Except you can deliver a better internet service to them because you're bringing in bulk fiber, very high quality, high speed service that far exceeds what they're going to be able to afford on their own and you're giving them access to a small piece of that. That small piece of that very good internet connection that you're buying is better than anything that they're going to purchase independently.
Brian Higgins:
So you're giving them a better product and you're buying it at wholesale prices so you can now give it to them at competitive retail prices. So they're paying generally the same, sometimes even less, than they would have been paying before for a better product. So your tenants get a great experience and you have a revenue source.
Laurie Caruso:
Brian. Wow. That's a powerful message right now, too and I do want to know some of your customers where you're focused on a vertical so to speak. But I'm sure if you're looking at hospitality, commercial, real estate, I mean they're having challenges based on what we're seeing today with COVID and trying to get the tenants back into this space, so to speak. But if they're looking at this and they can create some sort of revenue stream, it more than likely entices because now when the tenants finally do come back, not only do they have an incredible internet provider of system of sorts, because now we're doing Zoom videos, now we're really heavy an intensive on this. We're also looking at this as some sort of revenue back to them, which is very helpful I would imagine right now.
Brian Higgins:
Well, for the commercial space absolutely, for the residential space they need this today. You're spot on, any commercial building this is a way to get people back into the building. It's a way to help make the building a little bit more profitable than it was beforehand, or make up for some lost revenue, because you may have lost some tenants. On the residential space all those people that are working from home that are going to be continuing to work from home for who knows how long, they need that internet connection because of the Zoom meetings, because of the VPN into the office, or just remote desktop or whatever they're doing to enable their work while they're working remotely, they need that connection and they need a low latency, high speed, reliable connection.
Brian Higgins:
One of the big benefits that the building owner can offer to the residential tenants is that fiber access has lower latency than cable access. So you're actually going to give them a significantly better experience working from home on a fiber connection that you were redistributed to your tenants.
Laurie Caruso:
So important and I definitely want to really get into how you were able to pretty much change it up, given the fact once we had our challenges in the beginning of the year, to having everybody heavy in commercial real estate going into their buildings to then changing that to become now I need it at home, I'm in this residence here and if I don't hop on my Zoom call I'm going to have problems myself. I definitely want to get into that.
Laurie Caruso:
We're actually going to take a short break first and we'll get back to that after these messages.
Laurie Caruso:
Welcome back to Connected with Laurie. I am here with Brian Higgins from Aditum. We are going through some really important topics as far as internet providers and how they're doing out there as far as bringing technology to the building. We were just talking about, obviously, the issues that we were seeing in the beginning of the year with the pandemic and how the change of landscape actually happened from where that tenant was working during the day in that commercial real estate property to today when now they're working at home and heavily intensified that wifi network, I'm assuming, and how they are now virtually performing through Zoom, through other aspects and their challenges exist.
Laurie Caruso:
Brian, I'm curious, it had happened fast, how did you deploy quickly? How are you answering the struggles that are out there today?
Brian Higgins:
Well, believe it or not none of our properties had any issues when the big change started happening this year. All the buildings that were deployed were pretty much just status quo in terms of performance. That's because we educate our partners on how to size and design the systems for proper expansion. When all of that shift to work from home occurred, which it was very fast, it was basically everything in three weeks from office to home pretty much nationally, all of those buildings, there was a big spike in usage, but that spike in usage was small enough that it didn't actually affect the sizing of the systems when the partners had deployed them the way we advise. So those tenants, those residents in those buildings suddenly from themselves at home all day working actually fared better in those buildings that had our system then the people who were stuck on the major cable networks.
Brian Higgins:
Where the cable networks were going down all over the country, they were having major issues all the time. We were hearing about it in the news, internet's running slow and problematic, et cetera. Those buildings that had our system in there, we didn't have a single issue reported.
Laurie Caruso:
That's incredible, actually. I have heard, and I've read several instances and times where we don't have internet in our building, it's not working anymore, it's so slow, our speeds are slow we can't even get on our Zoom calls. It's now absolutely getting in the way of our business. I want to know, because it's important for those tenants, for those building owners, that are having challenges, what's the next step to getting in touch with you and how do they do it?
Brian Higgins:
Well, we have a couple of different things on our website. We've got some videos on YouTube, you can go look at for a little more in-depth overview of the system and how it works. On the website, AditumIMS.com, there's a contact form they can fill out to get in touch with us. If they have an IT provider that they currently work with, that IT provider can get in touch with us for them and we'll give that it provider all the technical information they could ever want to know about the system and how to deploy it and what's involved. Then that IT provider will be their go-to person for support and service. So they don't actually need to get a new vendor, they can use whoever they're working with currently, and just add a product into their portfolio.
Laurie Caruso:
Good to know. So it sounds like it's ease of use for the most part too, when there's interest there. Are you for the most part across the country, I mean, can anybody get ahold of you for the most part if they're experiencing these challenges?
Brian Higgins:
Oh, absolutely. We have deployments coast to coast. You can deploy our system anywhere in the United States, we're national.
Laurie Caruso:
Wonderful. So Brian, tell me, your system at Aditum, what are some of the other services and benefits that it actually provides? What are some of the other things that you actually can help tenants and property owners with?
Brian Higgins:
Well, all commercial buildings, whether it be residential or commercial tenants are going to have other services and other things in the building that need connectivity. One of the other benefits of Aditum is that it provides a common IP backbone for the whole property. So that IP backbone, it can be used to feed connectivity to all sorts of things. A lot of bigger buildings are going to have CBRS or data systems for their cellular infrastructure to supplement the connectivity from the cell phone providers. All those types of systems are going to need the internet connections. You're going to have IOT and smart building technologies, your HVAC, smart lighting, anything like that, that the tenants are going to have connectivity on their phone, or maybe just the building management to operate when they're not in the office or in the building. All of those need internet connectivity as well.
Brian Higgins:
Every one of those services normally is being fed by its own separate internet connection in the building, which really just adds up to a lot of additional costs for that property. Whether it's direct to the landlord or being billed through from the vendor by having their own connection in there to feed the system, it just equals a lot more budget for the building. Aditum by offering common IP backbone for the whole building can be the provider for every one of those services, whatever that is and wherever in the property you need it. That offsets the ongoing support cost of Aditum by saving you money off of other infrastructure that you would have otherwise been paying for.
Laurie Caruso:
Wow. That's an important piece that you mentioned for sure, because I know even in hospitality where I do a lot of consulting and everything is on to where they need to have plugin and if they can plug in more so to speak and technology provides that why not have that support on the backbone to be able to do just that. From a cost savings, even from like, just understanding where their inventory is, so it doesn't walk out of the building, you have so many different layers, so to speak, that you can actually help support with. It's critical, especially now, as we're going into the future technologies at the speed of light, so to speak, we need to be able to keep up with that and it sounds like Aditum can do that.
Brian Higgins:
Definitely.
Laurie Caruso:
So anything else that you would like to deliver to the customers out there you currently support? I'm curious about your process and also about what happens once it's installed and what you're doing from a monitoring perspective.
Brian Higgins:
That's a good question. So there's a lot to that. On the installation process, I mean, every, building's a little different, there's kind of a vetting process as to what it's going to take to get the installation, because it is a system that's integrated into the building infrastructure. You are building out infrastructure in your building to support this. That doesn't necessarily mean expensive infrastructure, but it does mean you need to engineer it. So it's going to have some wiring, you're going to have, to have a low voltage contractor come in and do some work in the building, most likely. Not expensive work, at least not in the scale of your building, but it does take some planning. So it's not just a come in today and it's working by the end of the day, though the actual installation of the Aditum system is about five minutes of time. The planning and prep work does take a little bit longer.
Brian Higgins:
So once this is once the system is installed, all you're really looking to do is sign up the tenants and onboard, and that part is very simple. In fact, the landlord or property owners can have their leasing office or their rental support staff or whoever they decide can actually do all of that onboarding themselves if they want, which is a way for the building owner to save a little bit of money and not have their IT support or technical support vendor provide that piece for them, because if they want to do the onboarding of tenants when they move in, it's fully designed in the system to let them.
Laurie Caruso:
Well. I know that property owners, especially today, probably see this as a challenge to obviously bring this in, but it sounds clearly from what you're saying, that it's an easier method, an easier way to do it, even though there might be some disruption to that but from the future perspective, obviously, and clearly it works and it works well because you went through what you did and it's still held up and it held up well. You have a revenue stream potentially coming in for the property owner as well and it solves the pain points because who knows when things are going to change for us and when the dynamic then goes back to the tenant space, occupying the commercial real estate. So it's critical and powerful, especially now too, schools starting. We have kids with students on their devices now, heavily on their devices doing schoolwork in addition to the parents doing their real work there as well. So it's important. It's an important piece to say it's something that needs to happen and you're definitely, at Aditum, the place to go.
Laurie Caruso:
Brian Higgins, it has been a pleasure speaking to you. I've learned so much today and I can't wait to have you back. I'd love to have you back on the podcast to hear how it's going.
Brian Higgins:
Love to be back. Thank you very much Laurie.
Laurie Caruso:
Thank you so much. We'll see you soon.