Curt:
If you really want to get kind of to the more technical side, the bigger the bandwidth pipe, the more customers you can serve, right?

Andrea:
Right.

Curt:
So the cell companies use 5, this particular competitor uses 10, and they would use 10 to serve multiple customers. That's the trick, that we're just using an incremental number as a big number. And folks go, "Ooh, 10 gig. Wow."

Andrea:
Welcome to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. Kosciusko Connect is a subsidiary of Kosciusko, REMC. Since 2021, we have been providing lightning fast, reliable fiber to the home, internet service to rural portions of northern Indiana. On Connected Conversations, we talk about fiber, internet, technology, community, and how to navigate the digital world in which we live. I'm your host, Andrea Melton. Thank you for connecting with us today.
Welcome back to another episode of Connected Conversations. We took a break from the podcast for a couple of weeks as we had a lot going on around here at Connect some employees attending work-related conferences and some vacations and things. But we are so glad to be back for this new episode, which we are calling Competitors Tricks Disguised as Treats. And I'm very happy to have Curt Barky, our VP of Technology and Broadband back in the studio for this very revealing episode. Happy Halloween, Curt!

Curt:
Happy Halloween.

Andrea:
Are you a Halloween fan? Are you into it?

Curt:
No, I'm not.

Andrea:
Not overly?

Curt:
No. There's a lot of extra effort there and there's not a lot of time in the day, so I enjoy the lights. We have an employee here, Adam Churchill, who is the, I think it's called Warsaw Light Show on Facebook, and he does the whole animated lights with songs. He does it at Halloween and Christmas and that's pretty cool.

Andrea:
That is so cool. So Adam does that?

Curt:
Yes.

Andrea:
I'm still kind of new, so I'm learning these things as the year goes on.

Curt:
Yeah, so I think you can just look up Warsaw Light Show on Facebook and go out there and it's set to music and the lights dance around in his yard and his neighbor's houses. It's pretty cool.

Andrea:
Fantastic.

Curt:
Yeah.

Andrea:
I am going to be checking that out.

Curt:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Well, Curt here at Kosciusko Connect, of course, we pride ourselves on our quality lightning-fast fiber to the home internet service that we provide. We also pride ourselves on our local customer service, our fair pricing, and our transparency with our customers. But one thing I know to be true is that here at Connect, we kind of get frustrated with false and widespread misleading claims that tend to be made by our quote/unquote "big competitors."
So to start our conversation about competitor tricks disguised as treats, I'm going to start with what was always my personal biggest headache when it came to the big competitor service that I had for many years before I moved here and started working at Kosciusko Connect and got our fabulous fiber internet service. That would be hidden fees and price increases, contract length and early termination fees, and just general customer service issues.
So I used to have to call our competitor every six months like clockwork and basically fight, and scream, and claw my way through the phone tree to speak to someone about why my monthly bill suddenly increased significantly without warning. And it's not like it was a $7 or $11 increase, $20, $30 or $50 all of a sudden. And there could be various reasons for that. Of course, people sign on to a contract and it expires, but sometimes it seemed just to happen for no reason. And I know that that's a common complaint. And while we can't predict the future, I would say when the time comes and we do have to increase the price of our service, I guarantee that we will not do so without letting our customers know in advance-

Curt:
100%.

Andrea:
... That it is happening.

Curt:
I mean, you're in that department that handles that communication with all of our customers and our members. And yeah, we're transparent. You know what we're going to do when we're going to do it, we'll let you know.

Andrea:
Right. And when it comes to our service, so I have some mailers here from some of our competitors when we talk about these contracts that people get themselves into and what the actual details are about the pricing in the contracts compared to what's advertised. This one, for example, internet and popular TV, $50 a month for two years with a one-year contract. But then if you take the time to go to the reverse of the flyer and look at all of the additional terms and everything and small type, it tells you straight out that these other applicable charges are possible and subject to change during and after the term contract. So even if you enter into that contract, they tell you right there that they can still change those terms during the length of your contract. Nothing's a guarantee.

Curt:
Nope.

Andrea:
So absolutely, and I know many people have had their own experiences with poor customer service, and also misleading claims, and advertising and in contract terms when it comes to more technical elements of your internet service, that's where I think you will be very helpful to me in providing some examples about these tricks that are disguised as treats.
And I found a really interesting article. It's on a website called the street.com, which is a technology and digital related information. And so the headline on this article is about a big competitor, one of the big ones, and that it's an internet service designed to mislead customers. And this article was written by Daniel Klein. So I'm quoting this article here. This is nothing that is from my mouth, but I appreciated this description. It starts off, "Imagine if you order a product, it's called the Bacon Triple Mega Burger from a fast food chain restaurant, and they bring you your sandwich and it's a single patty and one little wimpy slice of bacon. So there's nothing triple or mega about it." And any customer who ordered that would be pretty mad. They would not be happy with that sandwich. And that's because people understand all the words in that non-existent cheeseburger's name, bacon, triple mega. But when it comes to phone and internet service, however, most consumers don't actually understand the difference between 4G and 5G wireless networks or that 10G, when it applies to internet service actually means something different altogether.

Curt:
It's technical. It can be hard.

Andrea:
So can we talk about that a little bit when the big competitor advertises their 10 G? So why is that? Why are they not saying what it actually is?

Curt:
Well, I think you have, and I can tell a story too, I just answered a question for Sarah. She had gotten something earlier this week. So we can go back to that about does our internet handle 5G? Which I find is an interesting question. There's a couple of things there, but let's go back to the 10G thing.
So I mean, it kind of ties into the 5G little bit. So you've got all the cellular providers, now the next wave of cell technology is 5G and the speeds, and it's going to be way faster than 4G. And to be completely transparent, like we were talking about, cellular technology is not my area of expertise, but basically, the bigger that number is, the faster that you're going to get that data downloaded to your device. And so I think in this particular instance where you have a competitor saying, "We offer 10G service." I think that's what they're doing. They're correlating that 5G to 10 G, because clearly 10 is bigger than 5.
And you know what? To be honest, we can serve 10G to our customers if we wanted to. However, it's not affordable to the residential consumer, nor does the residential consumer really need that much bandwidth yet today. And in the future, they may with things like A.I. and machine learning and some of this other stuff, but today, 1 to 2 gig home services, which is gigabits per second, is perfectly fine and we will do everything that you need it to do. So I guess another way to talk about this is we're a lot bigger than 10 gig, but we would use a 10 gig connection to serve multiple customers. And so if you really want to get to the more technical side, the bigger the bandwidth pipe, the more customers you can serve right?

Andrea:
Right.

Curt:
So the cell companies use 5, this particular competitor uses 10 and they would use 10 to serve multiple customers. That's the trick that we're just using an incremental number as a big number and folks go, "Ooh, 10 gig. Wow."

Andrea:
When really it is not a reflection of the speed or the power.

Curt:
Correct.

Andrea:
Not related at all.

Curt:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you wanted 10 gig at your house, you're going to pay thousands of dollars a month for something like that, and that's just not feasible for the normal homeowner.

Andrea:
You wanted to show me a commercial that you saw just over the weekend that has to do with this very same topic that we are discussing. So we're going to look at it now. It says, "10 G whole home WiFi." And you see the router and then there's these light waves that are spreading throughout the house and property. And I think there's also a club beat in the background. I'm ready to go to the dance club. And then it says again in neon lights, "10 G whole home WiFi."

Curt:
Yeah. Pretty impressive, huh?

Andrea:
Yeah, it seems like something I'd want, right?

Curt:
Yeah, absolutely. And when we're talking about this topic about tricks or treats, and when I saw this and you told me that this was the topic that we were going to be discussing today, this is perfect for that because there is truth in what they say, but there is also not truth in what they say. And to get a little technical, but not too terribly technical, when I first saw that, I was like, "Okay, so this particular company says that you can have 10 gig whole home WiFi. What does that actually mean?" I think for the regular consumer, they're going to look at that and they're going to say, "Well, I can have 10 gig speeds throughout my home. And-"

Andrea:
Absolutely that is what that commercial indicates to me, 10 gigs WiFi in my home.

Curt:
And you have to dig deeper on these things and you have to kind of know what you're talking about. And they're relying on the fact that either A, you're not going to dig deeper or the average consumer is not going to understand what it is that they're talking about in their ad. And so what it really means is on the back of that device that they are selling is a WAN port, WAN stands for wide area network. And that's what any service provider connects into to give you that connected service inside your home, whether that's through your network with cabling or through WiFi. And so that's where that 10G comes from in this particular instance is that device can consume 10 gigs worth of internet service or bandwidth, which here again, we talked about earlier, most people aren't going to either need 10 gig residential customers aren't going to need that. Right?

Andrea:
Right.

Curt:
And so that's the issue. So they're saying, "10 gig." Which is true, but it's not 10 gig WiFi in the home. So the device can consume that, but it's not necessarily propagating that out on the WiFi. It is a WiFi 7 device. It is the latest and greatest that is available out there. But with all WiFi, and even with our devices, you need to make sure that your devices are compatible with WiFi 7, WiFi 6, whatever the case may be. And that's a whole nother topic on why WiFi is good or bad and the devices that make that work and how that goes. But in general, you need to have a device that's compatible with the speed that you're having to gain those speeds that, that WiFi is doing. And so just as a whole, this ad is very much-

Andrea:
A trick.

Curt:
... A trick. And it's Halloween weekend you describe the flashing neon lights, they are purple, a very traditional Halloween color. And so when I saw that, it frustrates me that companies do this for those dollars and it's not a cheap product. It is extremely expensive. Most residential customers are not going to be able to afford something like this. And I don't know, it made me mad this weekend. It was like this is a perfect example of a big company using their marketing power to confuse consumers into something that they don't necessarily need. And that's not what we do here.

Andrea:
Nope. It sure isn't. And that's why we're here delivering the message and kind of unveiling that and hopefully informing our customers and listeners.

Curt:
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Andrea:
So when we think about other tricks that competitors use, but maybe describe as treats, data caps and overage fees come up. Some providers may offer what appears to be a high speed plan, but then impose data caps and then if users go over that, they might have extra charges on their bill or their speeds are slowed. Can you talk about that?

Curt:
Sure. So well, first of all, we don't have any data caps for us. So I'm trying to think of a good simplistic way to explain this, right? So everything uses data. So whether that's 1 meg, 2 meg, 3 meg up to whatever, and I think that's just a ploy to get more money from the customer, because if you've designed your system appropriately, you should be able to handle what your customers want to do, which we have. And that's the beauty of what fiber is compared to copper. There is no threshold there for what we do. If we tell you you're going to get a gig outside of the technology limitations, you're going to get that, you're get that gig or that 500 or that 100, whatever the case may be. And so that's just another way to get some more money in their pocket to serve you. And it's frustrating.

Andrea:
Yes. So I also read that providers might exaggerate their coverage maps, a lot of circumstances where they indicate service availability in areas where they actually have limited infrastructure and it can leave, especially rural customers underserved. Is that something that you know to be happening?

Curt:
Oh yeah. So I mean, a lot of this broadband funding that's coming out is based on FCC maps, the Federal Communications Commission, and we're new to this. So here again, full disclosure, we're learning as we go, but my indication is, is that everything is done by a census block or a census block group. Well, if that company can provide you one customer in that block or that block group, then that whole block or block group is served with that particular speed.
So that's the trick. And then when you call in for service, they're going to go, "Yeah, no, we don't have service there." And most consumers aren't going to know about the FCC block. We know about things like that because we have to report that and I'll give the FCC a little bit of credit. They're trying to fix that. They're trying to make it so that you're actually servicing address points with that block or block group. But that's kind of the trick there. And it becomes extremely frustrating when we're going to go for funding to fund something.
If you go look at Indiana or just do a Google search for, FCC broadband map, you'll see that it shows that the majority of the United States is covered. But we all know as broadband service providers that that's not necessarily the case. And what is that level of service that the FCC has set as a standard?
So ours is accurate. We follow the rules, we say, "This is what we're serving in these areas." And if it's not, then we correct it the next time that we upload that data. Because that is something that we have to do on the regular with the FCC.

Andrea:
Very good. Very informative. Good to know. All right, Curt, do you have any other examples or things you'd like to talk about it when it comes to competitor tricks disguised as treats?

Curt:
Well, I think we've covered the big ones, right? We've talked about the 10G trick, the pricing tricks. Nobody likes to be surprised by that. And I guess we will go back to that story that I had mentioned earlier about the 10G. And I think sometimes companies try to confuse consumers so that they can get your dollar. I mean, I saw something on Instagram last night where they were trying to make a bag of candy corn look extremely healthy for you, and just by changing some wording. And none of it was false. It was all real stuff. And I think these big folks, these big giants as they were, try to do that.
And so in this particular example, we had a customer or a potential customer email in and one to know if our internet could handle 5G. Well, there's two kinds of 5G. There's the cellular 5G that we get on our cell phones in certain areas in the county, and then there's five gigahertz, which is a WiFi technology on those routers. And so the question was is, "Does your internet handle 5G?" And I'm not too sure how I'm supposed to answer that because Well, yeah, it does handle 5G. If you've got a phone and you've tied it into your internet at your house to make phone calls, it's not really 5G, but it's that 5G is on your phone. So yeah, sure, we can help you make those phone calls to have those connections.
Or are you talking about the 5 gigahertz radio frequency that delivers WiFi throughout your home with our router. It's not the consumer's fault. They're not technology people. All they really know is are they going to take care of us, and is the price good? And is the service going to be reliable? Which we do very well, like all three of those.
So you just got to maybe educate yourself and do some research or even email us, or call us, and we'll try to walk you through that. But in all those instances, yes, we do support 5G, but I think in the correct answer to that is our router does do 5G. We'll get those speeds on 5G, but there are some limitations. That's why you have the 2.4. We could get into a whole nother podcast on that technology side of things. But yeah, it's just, I don't know. We're here in the community and I think that provides a level of trust for those consumers in this community. And me as a consumer, I would much rather purchase locally. I would much rather deal with local. I would much rather have my business supported by folks that care. Because from my standpoint, one of the most rewarding things for me is the fact that we get to do this for the community. Yes, we've got bills to pay, 100%, everybody does, but we're here to take care of you, and we're not going to do these tricks and these treats, and we're not going to try to scare you into these long-term contracts or any of this other stuff. We do what's right for the customer. We do what's right for the business, and we do that, and I feel we'll be pretty successful.

Andrea:
I agree. I'm glad we don't do those things as an employee and as a consumer. I think everybody who works here is proud to work here and for an internet service provider who is not throwing out all those elaborate tricks.
So great conversation, and thanks for coming in again. I appreciate it. And we'll definitely have to do some more podcasting in the future and dive into some of those technical aspects that we can share with our listeners, subscribers, and hopefully educate them and me as well.

Curt:
I love doing it. It's a good way to get our message out without having to type up paragraphs of text, right? I enjoy this methodology of knowledge sharing and talking about what it is that we do.

Andrea:
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much, and again, happy Halloween.

Curt:
Happy Halloween.

Andrea:
Until next time.
You've been listening to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. From all of us at Kosciusko Connect, thank you for connecting with us today.