Fiber, Fast Internet & Future-Proof Buildings with Matt Spethman of ALLO

This week on In the CRE Vault, Mike and Marc sit down with Matt Spethman from ALLO Fiber to talk about what it takes to keep Lincoln connected — literally.

Matt’s role is all about community partnerships, getting fiber in the ground, and helping homes and businesses stay ahead of their technology needs. ALLO has been in Lincoln for about 12 years and now serves a major share of the residential market, while also growing its business division through enterprise services, cybersecurity, reliable fiber internet, and local support teams. ALLO promotes 100% fiber home internet, plus business internet, Wi-Fi, connectivity, and managed cybersecurity services.   

We also get a plain-English breakdown of how fiber actually works, why it matters in commercial real estate, and why landlords, tenants, brokers, and developers should talk about utilities early in the lease or building process. Spoiler: planning ahead beats digging later.

Plus, ALLO’s concert series at The Mill kicks off June 3 — because apparently fiber pairs nicely with live music.

To find out more about how Allo can help your business contact Matt at (402) 476-0315.

Thanks for tuning in to In the CRE Vault with Mike and Marc—where we break down commercial real estate without putting you to sleep. Powered by NAI FMA Realty in Lincoln, Nebraska. For more, visit naifmarealty.com. 

Transcript

0:07

Welcome to the podcast in the CRE Vault with Mike and Mark. All right, welcome back to the vault with Mike and Mark. How you doing, brother? I'm doing good, Mikey. How about you? It's hot out today. It is summertime. It's gonna get hot in here. It is hot in here. We uh, you know, we I think we've said this before. We shut the we shut the uh fan down a little bit, but it just gets it gets it makes it a little more intimate though. It is. We hug it out. It's fun. Yeah, it's great. We have a we have a when you brought up the name Matt Speedsman and me a couple days ago, my eyes lit up. Because I just this is like one of the best guys I know. He uh Well, we were gonna have coffee with him to just talk about what NAI and Allo could do to kind of work together um in in what that looks like. And so I said, you know, why don't we just bring him in for a podcast? We got nothing else to talk about. Right. Right. I mean it's true. We're running out of things. Yep. Yeah, for sure. And I just uh I'm gracious that you know Matt was willing to to pop in, but I'll I'll spin the mic over to Matt and just I'll let him share a little bit about what he's doing with Allo and and those kind of things. Talk about how long you've been with Allo. Yeah, yeah, talk about that. Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for having me, first of all. Um been with Allo just over going over two years now and uh came over from Nelnet, was with Nelnet for 25 years and looked for something new and obviously knew about Allo from our relationship that way. But um I'm a strategic partnership uh liaison for for Allo. And um basically what I'm looking for is partnerships within the communities that we're in. Sure. And um working in different ways to try and get our fiber into the ground and how we can help the communities become technically savvy and moving things forward for us, not only for them, but for us, and uh really just striking up partnerships to uh move that forward. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys. For sure. Allo's been in Lincoln for I don't know, 10, 15 years. Yeah, about 12 years. Right? Yeah. And and Allo is it fair to say is just a fiber company. You guys lay lay down the fiber and you sell your sell and selling um information and storage. And and so are are are you guys in every household in Lincoln now? I mean, are are we done with that? We're we're close. We're actually uh shameless plug, June 3rd is our first um concert series for of the year down at the mill. Oh so 6 to 9 p.m. Oh wow come down to the mill on June 3rd, B Street bands plan. Cool. Um, so actually uh Dave Miller, our regional manager, is in that band, so he always kicks off the air with his band. But anyways, um yeah, fiber is is in Lincoln. It's been in Lincoln. We've got about 60% of the market share on the residential side. We do a lot more than just residential, though. We do business um and we offer uh Cloud Voice solutions, obviously internet and data, but also managed IT services. Uh we do a lot for business side, so cybersecurity, things of that nature. So there's a little different play for us on the business side than there is on the residential side. So still building up the business side. We have a lot of businesses that use us, small and medium sized, uh trying to get into the the larger corporate markets. You know, we have you guys are are a client of ours. You guys use us a lot for your elevators and things of that nature to make sure that there's communication going through them. But uh, we want to make sure, you know, there's circuits, there's if they if they need larger connections, if they need to connect offices from city to city, we can do that. So um, so yeah, on the business side, there's there's some other things we can offer. Who is it who would be your main competition? Um, did you so you say 60% market share? Is that just on the residential? That's on the residential side. So how about on the commercial side? How are you guys doing? Commercial side, we're probably 30, 40 percent of Lincoln. So we got a lot of the small, medium-sized businesses, but overall we need to expand into the larger corporate side. So that's kind of where I'm at. And we started this strategic team and enterprise team a couple years ago. That's why I came over. And um, we're we're really honing in on government, education, and uh enterprise type clients. And and who would be your main competition? I mean, who who would in Lincoln it's it's uh Kinetic, it's Great Plains, uh Spectrum, uh those the the other internet service providers here in town, they do the same thing we do. So I gotta I'm gonna give a shameless plug to Allo. So we love those. This is uh my son has an apartment, it's north, and he's moving in, and Allo's not to the building. Yeah. And or there's something to it. And I go, well, how do we how does he get internet? And you can go through windstream and it was 35 megabytes. I'm like, you can't even like window shop with that. No. So I called Allo and I and this guy comes out. He scared me a little bit. But I loved him dearly. And then I'd run into him at every ace hardware I ever went. It was the coolest thing. And he goes, Oh, we're gonna figure this out. He goes, I'm gonna get this done today. And not only that was huge customer service. Um but since I have had aloe at my house, it has never once gone down zero. So like the reliability of aloe is just I mean, I remember when I had I don't know what I had, spectrum or windstream. I had to reset the router every month. Yeah. So I just had to say that because you're sitting here, it we might want that feedback. No, it's it's awesome. That's reliable, but that's what we strive for, right? Like that's that's what we want. Set it and forget it, and you don't have to mess with it. Exactly. That's exactly what we want. And yeah, and the only reason why you should be calling us is to get a new router to upgrade equipment, yeah, something of that nature to make sure that you're on the next best piece of equipment to get you the the the internet speeds that you need. So for sure. Other thing, other other shameless plugs, you know, we're symmetrical up and down. So you get 500 megs, you're getting 500 meg upload download. So you're not you're not sharing things. We are all fiber. We're not there's no copper, there's no nothing that's gonna take down the fiber type of speed. So you're not going fiber to coax to fiber, so it's it's all fiber when we connect. So um we have a great networking team that that keeps us up and running, and 99% of the time we're we're up. So it's you don't have to worry about it, just like you said. So that's been huge. I just thought I'd say that just because I don't know if anybody's even listening to this. But I gotta say, I've been very pleased just from a residential and commercially, you know, what we've experienced, there just isn't any oh shit, the the service went out. You know, it just doesn't happen with you guys. I'm I'm about half degenerate when it comes to this stuff. But so explain this to me. So so we have so we have fiber in the ground. Let's say I live in a house and and and we have fiber in the ground that just runs just perpendicular to every single house, right? So then if I want to get aloe to inside the house, you guys have to come in and run fiber from there inside the house, correct? Do you guys own that line that goes to the house, or who's responsible for that fiber? You guys do. Yeah. Okay. So but if if something would happen, you could call us, we'll come fix it. Okay. That's that's the other piece of this. It's fully supported by us. Um quick story at a new neighbor. He was moving rose bushes, he was digging. It was actually on National 811 day. Oh, and so I went out and I was like, hey, did you call? I don't see any flags. And he's like, Oh no, and then 20 minutes later, goes right through our fiber coming to our house. So I called Allo, didn't say anything. This was about six months after I moved over, and there was a guy out there in about I'd say about an hour. Oh wow. And he ran a templine, and then a week later they came back and took out the old cut line and dug in, trenched in a new line to my house, and it was done within a week. It was fixed within an hour because of the templine. So it was up and running. Luckily, my neighbor had aloe as well. So I just said, hey, give me your username and password I'm gonna use, which is not secure, right? But but we are still able to, you know, the kids were still gaming, we were still able to stream and stuff like that. So the the service is there, we own that. If something would happen like that, we're gonna come out, we're gonna we have techs on call ready to roll. And that's the other local piece, whether it's residential or business. Very responsive. Everyone is in the town that they work where they live, you know, where where we're at. So we have teams in every community where we're at. And so if something happens, we're there and and we fix it. Because we don't want we don't want you to go without internet. Internet is a key part of everyone's life, right? Oh, yeah. Well, if you got kids, yeah and it's 10 o'clock at night and you hear dad? Yeah, my game, my gaming system just went down. You don't want that. Yeah, you don't want that. So a key uh one piece I want to go back to in your son's apartment. So a a huge thing that I'm working on, so the multi-dwelling unit, MDU side of things, we've got a pretty good handle on Lincoln as far as um being able being in apartment complexes, and we we take our fiber to the unit. So every apartment example is Telegraph. I have a son who lives in the Telegraph. Um basically Telegraph pays us for bulk internet, and that's 500 megs to every unit within their property. Um we give them a uh highly discounted rate, they pay us monthly for that. But what it means is whoever is there has internet when they move in, and when they move out, the next person has it because you don't have to call us, disconnect it, reconnect it. It's just automatically there. We put our equipment in when they build it. So there's an equipment closet within every closet of of every unit. So our routers stay. If something happens to the router, we'll come replace it, we'll fix it. It you know, we're we're wired into the building basically. That's what I want to talk about with you guys from a commercial piece, too, is the value of bringing fiber to commercial real estate and how it can help and move forward businesses that can connect right away. Don't have to call, we're not disrupting a new building site. We're not coming in and breaking up concrete just to run fiber. We're part of the whole build process, things of that nature, excuse me, so that we can basically be a part of the process. Right. So nobody wants dirt moved once you've got it back to where it looks nice and and the building is is ready to roll. So you're kind of like an amenity, if you want to. Right. Exactly. It's already there, right? You can tie into it, no disruption. Yep. We had so I live on an acreage out by Denton, so you guys are not as far to me. You guys are actually just about two blocks to the east of me. So at some point I imagine I'll have Allo. But two blocks is close enough, we should be able to get to the well, yeah. Hopefully you can. So we bought a condo in Hobson down in uh in the Haymarket. Yeah. And it what you just described is exactly the way it is. And I just had to call Allo and they said, no, no, it's all in there. And it was in a closet, and they just they hit a switch and we had instant service. And then when we sold that uh a few years back, it doesn't matter, but um I just called and said, Hey, what do you need from me? And they said nothing. I mean, it was it was that quick. And and and I will say, because I've dealt with Spectrum for for many years. I mean, the customer service with Allo was home run. I mean, just awesome. It was not a 20-minute phone call. If I said it was all of three minutes to set everything up, that's exactly what it was. Yeah, yeah. What's your move in date? What's your move out date? In that scenario, um, we know when to turn it on, when to turn it off. You let us know it's on your schedule. So and there was a billing error one time, and I called real quick, and I think it took all of two minutes to get straightened out. Yeah, second to none. Yeah. I've had my nightmares with other companies. On the business side, too. It's like, oh, we gotta get this in. I'm like, just use allo because they're already here. Yeah. Yeah. So, so on on the commercial side, your goal is to start setting up in in central offices, um, similar to what I just said in the Hobson. So you get a big tall building like the one that we're in, and you guys could easily just run a whole uh set of fiber in the building and in each individual space for ease. Using existing conduit, as long as there's room, yeah, we'd we would run our fiber through there and be able to get to every floor and then span out from there to whatever space is being rented and connect from there. So you know, phones would work, you know, you get your internet, you get your phones. We can sell the suite of services to that business that would be renting that space. So whatever property manager is renting out, we would be able to sell our services from them. I get it. So it's really we call it a preferred marketing agreement. Um it's it's about you have space for rent. Someone comes in to look at that space, they ask about utilities, we're part of that conversation. Allo is what I'm trying to get is fiber is a utility. And and people trying to get people, developers, engineering firms, architecture firms to think of of fiber as a utility so that they're bringing it in early, it's there, we don't have to disrupt. So we're part of the process, basically. That's good. Yeah. And and I think aloe is the most, you know, preferred one. When I'm showing a space, that's the you know, they don't use so much fiber as language. It's is there aloe in the space? Right, yeah right? And I and I think that's the number one question. So your goal more than anything is just to be synonymous instead of using the term fiber, uh aloe is aloe in the in the building. Is aloe in the building. Yeah. Yeah. I think you guys did a great job branding yourself. And it's I think it's your team, you know, which is good. Yeah, just a good group. Just a good group. Yeah. That comes from, you know, our we want to be local. It's one of our core values. Being local is is one, being honest is one. Yep. So we want to make sure, you know, hassle-free. You've already talked about it. So, you know, our core values emanate how we want to be in a community. Totally. And um that that's how we want to do business with with uh partners as well. So it's just kind of runs its course. Well, I think it's great. I love it. And I think I'm excited that you're on this side of it because maybe we can work together. Yeah. Because we haven't seen God. I ran into you at Hillcrest. Yeah, Hillcrest was the last time. We were scantily clad, but it was fun. And I was probably sunburnt because I can't. We were both a little red. We're both a little red, but this could give us an opportunity to at least talk more. Yeah, for sure. So, which is awesome. All right, we want to thank uh Matt for coming in today. It's been really great. Uh, if anyone wants to get a hold of Matt or to find out what Allah can do for your business, his direct line is 402-476-0315. That's 402-476-0315. It's been great. Thanks for uh coming down to the vault, Matt and Mark. Good to see you. Good to see you, brother. We'll see you next time down here. Bye. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of NAHI FMA Realty. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only. NAHI FMA Realty disclaims any liability or responsibility for any individual's use or reliance on the information presented in this podcast.