Ft Myers Beach - Good Neighbor

TECH TALK-Why Working Through A Master Agent Beats Calling Your Local ISP

• "Cabo" Jim Schaller • Season 5 • Episode 34

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Think you’ve only got one real internet option and no leverage when things go down? We unpack a better way to buy and manage connectivity, voice, cloud, and AI by partnering with an independent agent backed by master agencies. Ken Johnson from USIT Systems lays out how a single address check can reveal fiber builds on your street, business-class circuits with SLAs, 5G fixed wireless backups, and last‑mile building solutions that pre‑wire condos to avoid messy installs and uneven support.

We get specific about where leverage comes from: a master agent represents thousands of circuits, which changes how carriers respond when you open a ticket. Instead of being one small account, you’re part of a portfolio with escalation muscle. We also walk through outage reality—who gets restored first, how SLAs shift your place in line, and why a business circuit in a home office can be a smart play in storm‑prone areas. From there, we widen the lens to cloud redundancy, comparing multi‑region strategies that fail over between data centers so critical apps stay online when a hyperscaler hiccups.

AI isn’t a buzzword here; it’s a practical toolkit. We cover call routing that sends customers to the right local office, after‑hours secure payments, and voice features embedded in modern phone systems—all scoped to real ROI and usage-based pricing. Different industries need different vendors, so we talk about matching solutions to verticals like dental, medical, churches, and travel agencies, and how an agent can shortlist partners that actually fit your workflows. We close with a candid look at security in an AI era—email, phones, payments—and why layered defenses now sit beside SLAs and redundancy as core business hygiene.

If you’re ready to cut downtime, lower costs, and build a resilient stack without vendor lock‑in, this conversation is your blueprint. Subscribe, share with a colleague who battles outages, and leave a review telling us the one upgrade you want to tackle next.

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Intro/Close:

Welcome to Tech Talk, your go-to guide for making technology work for you. Whether you're running a growing business or just trying to keep things running smoothly at home, we've got IT covered. US IT Systems brings the knowledge, experience, and solutions you need to stay connected, protected, and productive. It's Tech Talk Time. Here's your host, Cabo Jim.

Cabo Jim:

Welcome to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor Podcast Tech Talk, and we have Ken Johnson with us today from US IT Systems. Welcome. Good morning. Yeah. Pleasure to have you on and share your expertise with our listeners and uh all the tech stuff that you know. So uh I think you have a subject picked out today that you wanted to speak about.

Ken Johnson:

Well, yeah, I want to talk about why you use somebody like me, and and there's a lot of us out there, so you know, somebody like me that that has relationships with multiple vendors, and and we can talk specifically about internet service providers, uh, we can talk about uh I uh phone systems, we can talk about uh AI. Uh and and one of my favorite subjects is is of course the cloud. And if you look at my background, you know it's yeah, where is the cloud? Well, it's out there someplace. Uh but we we can have those kind of discussions. But today I'd like to focus on on what an internet service provider is. And and you, for example, called up your local internet service provider and ordered up internet service, and and that's fine, but for a small business, there may be better options and there may be additional options. So I want to talk about the difference between dealing directly with your internet service provider and working with somebody like me that has relationships with what's called a master agent.

Cabo Jim:

And when what does master agent what does that mean? What is that to common folk like me?

Ken Johnson:

Well, a master agency is a company that has arrangements with all the different internet service providers. Now, I don't want to want to say all inclusively because there's oftentimes small regional companies that they don't have relationships with, but there is a lot of relationships out there, and most of the relationships are with the majors, and and every area has what was explained to me years ago is a duopoly. There are ever since Judge Green came along and broke up the bells, anybody that's got enough gray hair to remember that. Well, wait a minute, Jim.

Cabo Jim:

I have no hair, sorry.

Ken Johnson:

I still remember it. You still remember it, and and what they did was they broke up the bells and they said every area has got to have two suppliers. So what happened is every area ended up with a primary and a secondary supplier. Now, interesting enough, a lot of times the secondary supplier was just a billing agency that had a relationship and bought service from the primary supplier anyway. Well, that's changed over the last uh you know few dozen years. What's happened is the the internet has gotten built out. Uh, there's more and more internet service providers competing, and they all attach to the same backbone one way or another. So a master agent has relationships with all of these service providers, and the sales rep at the master agent that I call up, he can tell me who has the best service, who has the lowest price. And we've got a set of tools that we can use where we put in an address and we can get a list of all the different options that are out there. All of a sudden, now your pricing is in control, and you're in control of those pricing and those pricing options instead of just having to take what the local sales rep walks in and says, Here's your contract, sign here. Yeah, it's what a master agent does for you.

Cabo Jim:

So, are you a master agent for all of these other providers out there, or how does that work?

Ken Johnson:

I I am not a master agent, I am an agent. So I deal with multiple master agencies. One of them is uh a fairly large nationwide, another one is a smaller nationwide, and then I have one out of uh I think it's Orlando or Lake Mary that's an even smaller regional master agency. So each of these master agencies has different relationships, and the smaller regional master agency has a relationship with the same national agency that I have. So it it gets kind of convoluted. You've got to pay attention to what you're doing, and and you've got to understand how the relationships work.

Cabo Jim:

Interesting. So, I mean, obviously, getting internet at home is way different than getting it from a business. I mean, there's all types of different businesses, shapes, and sizes, and their demand for you know, the internet varies on depending on what they're doing. So obviously having a portfolio of people you can go to helps you find the best option for said business, correct?

Ken Johnson:

And and more importantly, it gives me the opportunity to service the customer and provide the customer with the best option or multiple options that they may not even be aware of.

Cabo Jim:

And what kind of options are available out there typically?

Ken Johnson:

Well, you've got um, when I looked up your address, I think you've got four or five different large ISP uh carriers, internet service provider carriers that could service your location there in Fort Myers Beach. And and so you've got multiple large options, and then you've got multiple smaller options. Uh, one of the interesting ones is uh ATT Cellular provides this 5G over-the-air service that you can service your home with a box that you put in the house that talks to talks to the the cellular network and provides internet in your house. Now it's it's an option and it's a great option for people that are not uh on on net is what they call it. They don't have a a wire or a fiber that's running past their house. You've got two or three different copper solutions that run by your house, and you've now got a second fiber option that's coming right down your your uh the the street right in front of you. Yep, down yeah, right between the beach and you.

Cabo Jim:

Yeah, perfect.

Ken Johnson:

And as you sort of as you drive down the street, you know, um going to Coldstone Creamery. Oh, I never do that. As you drive down the street going to Coldstone Creamery, you can see them putting that fiber in the ground, which is your your latest option, which gives you another option into your area. Then there's also a bunch of other options like last mile carriers, and it it gets it gets very convoluted, but you can do a lot of stuff, and you can also buy dark fiber, but yeah.

Cabo Jim:

And most people like like myself think, well, okay, I need internet, there's one provider here, and that's who I have to use, and that's who I have to choose. And I'm I'm stuck with that. But but they have to realize there are other options out there.

Ken Johnson:

Now, now let's say you own a condominium building, or you're the in charge of a condominium building. One of my favorite things to look at is a last mile carrier that will come in and make sure your condominium building and all the units are pre-wired. Since they're pre-wired, they may be pre-wired for fiber, they may be pre-wired with copper, but they they come in and then they put equipment in your equipment room and and they in a common area, and then they manage every unit in the building. So instead of everybody calling up the local internet service provider, and the local internet service provider walking in with a drill bit that's this long and borrowing a hole through your wall and creating an entrance for water and bugs, the everything is pre-wired and maintained and controlled so that your condominium association can protect their property and can protect their customers. Now, that also gives them what's called a service level agreement, and that service level agreement says that that in the event of a of a major storm, that they're gonna be one of the first ones up and running. So generally it's police fire, hospitals, and then businesses that get restored. So I'm sorry, you've got a residential, you're on the bottom of the list. Uh I'm I it's I'm sorry, it's that's the way it is. I mean, police fire and hospitals are on the top of the list during any emergency, and they shouldn't any emergency at all. And and they they've got to be restored as quickly as possible. But residential, hey, you know, if you're without internet for a day or a week, um, I'm sorry, as long as you got food and water, electricity is optional.

Cabo Jim:

Yeah, exactly. Opening those businesses that help support us are important.

Ken Johnson:

That's the key. Now, another piece of buying from a master agent, you buy your business service from the local internet service provider, you're one of 10,000, 50,000 customers. If you're buying from a master agent, that master agent may control and be responsible for 15,000, 20,000 customers in your area. So now that master agency, you know, the the guy like me, the agent, calls up the master agency and says, Hey, Kabbawabo Jim, Good Neighbor Podcast is down. He's got a business circuit. Uh, can you do anything to help get him up and running quickly? He's got some activity going on and and you know, trying to keep the neighborhood informed as to what's available out there. And so now the master agency will call up the internet service provider. So all of a sudden, Good Neighbor Podcast, instead of being one of 10,000, 15,000 customers out of service, they now become one of a thousand customers that belong to that master agency, and that master agency has leverage to help you get up and running faster. So it's it's it's all about the leverage and the service level agreement that you get. For example, here in my location, I have a business internet circuit. Why do I have a business internet circuit in a residential building? Because my office is here in a residential building, but I get priority to get up and running and operational. And with the police station that's sitting just down the road from me, they're gonna get the police station up and running, they're gonna get the fire department two blocks over, and then they're gonna get my circuit up and running, and then everybody else around me comes flowing in with the business circuits, and then behind that is the residential circuits. Interesting. Leverage leverage and service service level agreement.

Cabo Jim:

Yep, better customer service at the end of the day. So and and because you work with these master agencies, you have access to other resources for businesses, correct?

Ken Johnson:

Many, many, many resources. Um, everybody talks about cloud services, and and with the recent AWS um servers in what was that, Philadelphia that went down, went down hard and brought all kinds of problems. I mean, I I work with a cloud service provider that has a location in Atlanta, a location in Orlando, and a location in Las Vegas. So if one location goes down, they get handover. And so it's very interesting to see what's out there in order to do that. I'm surprised that AWS did not have redundancy on that in that uh service. I'm thinking Amazon. Oh my, they're the big monster out there. Yeah, I'm thinking, you know, Microsoft with Azure is a big monster out there, and it's surprising to me that when a system goes down, that they don't just have instant failover like some of the other vendors that we deal with.

Cabo Jim:

You would think, right?

Ken Johnson:

You would think, but well, bigger.

Cabo Jim:

Well, I this has all been very informative, you know. Uh there's a lot of lot of information out there that people aren't aware of the technology, especially as it continues to change on a daily basis. Um sharing your knowledge with that.

Ken Johnson:

So since you brought that knowledge base up, let's talk about AI for just a couple of seconds. All right. Small business typically does not have access to huge resources. Working through a master agency, I can call up that master agency and I can say, hey, I've got a good neighbor podcast in Fort Myers Beach, and he needs to implement some AI in his environment instruction. Um who have you got that could help me? And that master agent will pull from 400 resources that they have, and that master agent will pair me with two or three different resources that I can bring to my good neighbor, Jim Schaller, with Good Neighbor Podcast, and they'll watch a couple of your podcasts, they'll make suggestions, they'll talk about phone systems, they'll talk about AI implementation for phone systems, they'll they'll talk about um AI implementation for video, they'll talk about they'll talk about, and they'll give you maybe 10-15 different options that you can look at. Is there a charge for that? No, there's no charge for it because you're dealing with the master agent, and the master agent gets paid when they pair a company to an end user like Jim Schaller.

Cabo Jim:

Interesting.

Ken Johnson:

And like you mentioned, AI is just it's a huge it's huge, it's huge, and there's and we can do a whole podcast on AI because there's so many different levels of AI and there's so many different types of AI. AI is this huge blanket term, yeah. It's like saying uh a Kleenex, but yeah, you've got facial tissues that come in a square box, you got facial tissues that come in a rectangular box, you got facial tissues that come in little packets that you put in your pocket or your purse. So it you know, AI is this blanket term, but there's so many parts and pieces, and you've got to understand the different parts and pieces before you can even bring something to the party. I mean, you use um uh a phone switch on on your computer that gives you access to nationwide and international calling that um that I've I set up for you. And and that phone switch has a whole series of AI tools that can be implemented into it. And and if you wanted to investigate that, we could certainly investigate that. Now, is there a charge for doing it after it's implemented? Yes, there's a usage charge. So there's there's pros and cons to it, but you've got to investigate the the cost versus the gain. What does it save you? Small medical clinics, huge, huge, huge option. Anybody that takes money, huge options to be able to process credit cards over the phone without ever talking to a person. You can get your bill paid at two o'clock in the morning using AI. I'm working right now with a travel agency out of Illinois. Matter of fact, out of Rockford, Illinois, part of our old neighborhoods from days gone by. And it's a travel agency that has locations downtown Chicago. Uh, they've got one in my hometown of Oswego, Illinois. They've got one in Rockford, they've got one in Addison's, they've got travel agency offices all over. When somebody calls in, pairing that user with the right office in order to be able to do the the work and have somebody local to work with is huge, is absolutely huge. So we're we're looking at that entire operation and being able to implement entire AI spread across all their locations.

Cabo Jim:

And it's good to have that that support of a master agency. Like you said, there's so many different ways AI can be implemented in a business, but understanding what best benefits you as a business and helps you, you know, be more successful and and keep more money uh is important as well, too.

Ken Johnson:

Absolutely. And it's all about making your operation more efficient, more cost effective, and keeping your profits in your pocket. You can call up the local internet service provider and say, I want phone and internet. Well, that internet service provider is going to sell you internet phones and put them on your desk, but do they have all the tools? Is there a better provider that can plug into the same internet, the same network? Is there a provider that services your industry specifically? Is there a provider that works very, very well with churches? Is there a provider that works really well with dental offices, but not medical offices? That there's so many parts and pieces, and there's thousands of providers out there, and you've got to take a look at what fits where.

Cabo Jim:

I love it. I love it. I think there's so much that we can touch on, you know, during this tech talk. And I think we've got a lot of future episodes already that we've we've kind of mentioned today that we can uh tap into. So I'm excited about that. AI being one of them. But uh any last words for for today? Um enjoy the beach. I love the if I have to, okay. I mean, you you gotta enjoy the beach. That's that's why we live here in paradise to be able to do that. And uh I let Ken take care of your tech while while you're at the beach.

Ken Johnson:

There you go. Uh and and I I like uh to to give you one last word is AI has changed the scope of security for your email, for your phones, for everything. I will ask you, please, please, please, just be safe out there because the internet is not a safe place to play. Be careful.

Cabo Jim:

There's there's bad people out there everywhere. So, yes, definitely. Well, Ken, it's been a pleasure. You're a lot of security. Thank you. There you go. Yep. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for being such a good neighbor, and uh, I guess we'll see you next time here on Tech Talk, okay? Very good. I look forward to it. All right, thanks.

Intro/Close:

That's it for this episode of Tech Talk, where we've got IT covered so you can keep life and business running smoothly. Remember, whether it's cybersecurity, cloud solutions, or just keeping your tech trouble free, USIT Systems is here to help. Visit us online at USITSystems.com or give us a call at 407-753-4499. Stay safe, stay connected, and we'll catch you on the next Tech Talk.