Aptitude Internet Solutions CEO Cole Smith met with various local entities via a Zoom meeting Friday, the meeting spearheaded by the Meramec Regional Planning Commission.
The Salem News and Phelps County Focus reported in December 2020 that Aptitude Internet Solutions will bring broadband to 13,535 census block groups, all in Missouri, according to documents released with the announcement.
Aptitude Internet Solutions alone will see $24.7 million over the next 10 years, which is their part of the $9 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) distributed over the next decade to bring 5G wireless broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved areas in rural America,
Smith’s presentation included a map indicating what rural areas of the Ozarks is their responsibility through RDOF, as well as what other work they hope to do outside of RDOF, in places like Cole, Gasconade, Pulaski, Phelps, Texas, Shannon, Reynolds, Iron, Washington and Dent counties.
During the Zoom meeting Smith explained the service that his company will be providing in the region.
“Sooner, rather than later, we’d like to bring broadband to the entire area,” he said.
According to Smith, his company received final authorization by the Federal Communications Commission Thursday to begin work.
“We’re going to be able to actually start doing work,” said Smith. “We can move forward with some of the timelines that were waiting on that approval,” he said.
According to Smith, the contract still means a lot of areas in those respective counties will not have service. Smith shared plans to potentially supply that service to the rest of the areas throughout several of the aforementioned counties, including Dent and Phelps. Smith indicated he believes counties should consider utilizing American Rescue Plan Act Funds to achieve more coverage.
“I think (widespread broadband) is the goal for all of us, to build affordable high-speed broadband to the entirety of these counties. This is sort of a strike while the iron is hot situation in my opinion,” said Smith.
“We need to try and get ahead of everyone who is trying to do the same things for a multitude of reasons. If you’re ahead of the curve, you see economic benefits.”
According to Smith, Internet Aptitude will be running fiber-optic cables along power lines.
“This is entirely fiber technology start to finish,” said Smith.
Aptitude Internet Solutions was originally a fixed wireless provider, but according to Smith, they began to notice that usage trends mean faster Internet. They began to transition to fiber-optic internet about four years ago.
“It’s sort of the end-all-be-all of Internet technology, and it’s infinitely scalable,” he said.
Smith did not specifically indicate when installation would begin.
“We would be able to start basically immediately on any of this—it’s the lead time that will be the determining factor on when shovels actually hit the ground,” he said.
One of the biggest limiting factors to actually getting the work started is manufacturing lead times on fiber-optic cable. Lead times mean either an inadequacy in distribution or production compared to the demand of a given product.
“We’re seeing the longest lead times since 1987,” said Smith. One example that Smith gave was lead times on conduit, which according to Smith, typically do not exist. “Now we’re seeing 24 to 30 weeks on just ordering conduit,” he said.
Smith also showed an individual map of Dent that indicated what portion of the county is the Aptitude Internet Solutions portion of RDOF. Aptitude Internet Solutions will service much of the western half of the county. Much of the eastern portion will be done by the Rural Electric Consortium, with the exception of a small part of the county in the Short Bend area that will be serviced by Steelville Telephone Exchange. Other portions of Dent County are open to any provider.
Smith fielded questions from various groups invited to be a part of the call, including Dent County commissioners Darrell Skiles and Wes Mobray, Economic Development Director Sally Burbridge and Assessor Jamie Homeyer.
Burbridge asked Smith what Aptitude Internet Solutions anticipated upload and download speeds would be.
“It’s almost infinitely scalable. However, the current gear we are looking to deploy in this area could potentially be capable of 10 gig up and down to home users,” he said.
“I think that the thing to take away is that we can create a lot of efficiencies by looking to pair ARDOF with ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act). I want to draw attention to that,” said Smith. “There’s a lot of opportunity here to do it all at once.”
Smith believes that manufacturing lead times are only going to get worse.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the bottleneck as extensively as it’s going to be,” he said. According to Smith there may end up being two to three year manufacturing lead times on some of the materials.
The document released Oct. 7 by the FCC regarding RDOF phase 1 can be found at https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-21-1255A2.pdf.
