Internet at $25: How Pharr is Making It Work - Episode 624 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Jose Pena (00:07):
It is one of those things where the community has been very receptive because that money stays in their home, they're able to buy more groceries, they're able to use that money for other needs.

Christopher Mitchell (00:18):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in [00:00:30] St. Paul Minnesota, and today I'm excited to be speaking with Jose Pena, the IT Director at the City of Pharr in Texas. Welcome.

Jose Pena (00:39):
Hey. Hello. Thank you for having me. Nice to speak with you again, Chris. And again, I'm here to help any other organizations in the public sector that again, are interested in doing anything. We're here as a resource and yeah, excited to continue growing our network.

Christopher Mitchell (00:57):
I think the last time we had you on, we [00:01:00] had Guillermo Aguiar as well, and I've been continuing to talk with him about other interesting projects that he's working on, but it occurred to me that you guys are really continuing to do well and it would be really great to check in and see how things are. So when I was down there recently, we got to meet more people from Team Pharr, and so I came up with some questions and you decided to come back on, and so I'm excited to check in. [00:01:30] But for those who didn't listen to the first episode, you just tell us a little bit about Pharr and your network.

Jose Pena (01:36):
Definitely. So again, here at the City of Pharr, broadband and Internet access to our community had always been a focal item that our mayor wanted to always help and implement. Since he had gotten elected back in 2017, 2018, the city partnered with our school district and a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and we were able to get our feasibility [00:02:00] study, and we obviously knew that connectivity was an issue. Once the feasibility was done, we started building with the towers, providing Internet to 50 families and as a pilot project, and it worked out and we had brought the families in and trained them and let them know and provided some computers as well to them to, it was something we wanted to continue [00:02:30] pursuing. And we took that same concept. We deployed Internet connectivity to other city parks along as surveillance cameras, emergency call boxes, but then COVID happened. The other one was back in 2019, NDIA published a report on connectivity.

Christopher Mitchell (02:51):
Right, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance.

Jose Pena (02:54):
Correct. And it did highlight that our region had been what we've underserved. [00:03:00] It had the City of Pharr, the number one, and a couple of our neighboring towns, I believe at three and five if I remember correctly. But it's one of those where we knew this is an issue. But like I mentioned, our feasibility study that we had jointly worked on with our school district, we kind of had already had been identified, but again, once COVID happened, we knew that we wanted to provide something because our [00:03:30] mayor knew being a doctor that this was something that's going to probably be long-term. Right. And as we all learned, kids had to go home and do remote schooling and a lot of jobs. We have to figure out how to work from home, and it was something where we needed to do something and we wanted to move forward, and we looked at different options and our mayor was able to get funding for this project working [00:04:00] with our economic development corporation. They were able to fund the start of this project and they wanted a permanent fix. So first of all, working with Brownstone consultants and Guillermo, like you mentioned, and with our engineering firm co friendly and associates, we kind of looked at how big of the scope of a project this was, and it just went from there and secured funding. And we started our project. We started in south [00:04:30] Pharr, our first subscribers came on live in, I believe, June of 22. So we've been serving customers since then.

Christopher Mitchell (04:39):
Yeah, I would say you built pretty rapidly. You are one of the larger cities to have a municipal fiber network that reaches out to all the residents and businesses and what is it, around 80,000 people there, roughly?

Jose Pena (04:52):
Yeah, correct. Total population, about 80,000 rooftops. Were about, I think 24,000 rooftops. [00:05:00] Again, we're in south Texas. We're a border town on the Rio Grande. The city of Pharr owns and operates an international bridge as well. So we do have an industrial kind of sector in south Pharr. Yeah, our build started in south Pharr because south Pharr was really the sector of town that had literally no option for connectivity if they could afford a satellite option, which again was expensive. And [00:05:30] the rest of the other two thirds of our town is based on financial considerations if people could afford Internet or not, and why. Again, we started in south Pharr, but working with our A DC, we did survey our community and we ended up at $25 because we needed something reasonable and again, something that would get our numbers high enough to be able [00:06:00] to fund and sustain the operation. It's been a fun ride. We've had a really good growth spurt between year one. Like I said, those first six months we were growing little by little and obviously as our construction was progressing, but since last year we kind of put it on Turbo Boost and we've been growing double digits month over month, and it's been great to be able to help the community see [00:06:30] a lot of successful stories come out of it.

Christopher Mitchell (06:33):
Yeah. Well, you've passed 10,000 subscribers at this point in the area of south Pharr. I'm guessing you're right around 50%. Take rate, maybe a little bit over it at this point.

Jose Pena (06:45):
Yeah, we're possibly, I think right about 50%, it's about 7,400 homes.

Christopher Mitchell (06:51):
That's remarkable. Two years in change. You've done half the homes. That's significant in [00:07:00] an industry where typically an incumbent might look at 40% of the market after four or five years as a success, so that's a wild success on your part in other areas of the city, it looks like from what we talked about before, you're north of 40%. You're right around that area it looks like, which is in less than two years in many cases, right?

Jose Pena (07:21):
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. We're at 44% actually today. Yeah, citywide. Yeah. Again, we continue to grow and [00:07:30] it's one of those things where we have our staff or our crews working six days a week because the demand is there and our sales team is amazing. So again, our market sector being that we are geographically bound within our city, we can't do a lot of TV or type of advertising, things like that, but stick to social media and our sales team does [00:08:00] door to door campaigns and they target these neighborhoods that we're just opening up and try to talk to parents and attend. For us, our city is big on public and events, which again, we're getting ready for a parade tomorrow to honor veterans, and we recently held a pretty large festival last month, and we're prepping for another large festival come December for [00:08:30] celebrating the holidays. And we're always at our community events, talking to the parents and to the kids. Everybody seems to enjoy the service.

Christopher Mitchell (08:41):
Now when you, well, you already mentioned $25, which is your basic offer for rapid speeds, right? I mean, was it 600 megasecond? I don't want to 500, 500. It's remarkable. And then you have higher plans as well. That is one of the most affordable prices we've seen anywhere. And one of the things [00:09:00] you alluded to I think was you had received rescue plan dollars from the federal government that you applied toward this and you have a partnership with the schools. So how does the partnership with the schools work? Because that's something that also we don't always see.

Jose Pena (09:15):
We started with revenue bonds that the city started this project and what we first anticipated to what the build as construction got going and what it really ended up at the city was also fortunate, [00:09:30] like every other community and county, that rescue plan dollars were able to be allocated to broadband projects. And our city did invest some rescue plan dollars and we were able to fully fund the service for the entire city. And in regards to our school district, so the school district has always been a great partner with our city. We have multiple city school parks that we share and we've built, we have over about 12 [00:10:00] parks and probably half of those are city school parks to add more green space or families to enjoy. We also have built a massive Olympic natatorium that we've now hosted the WAC conference, swimming and diving competitions the past couple of years.

(10:22):
And our university is also a partner in that. But again, that was fully funded by the city and the school. [00:10:30] We built a pretty nice natatorium and many others. We've done many other partnerships with them. So again, the mayor, going back to knowing how legislation works and knowing that ACP was possibly not going to be a long-term solution, they wanted something to continue to help our families. We knew $25 is good, but we really got to help these families. And for anyone who hasn't watched [00:11:00] our original video from maybe now six years ago, if you YouTube City of Pharr Digital Divide, you'll see a YouTube video with a school bus on it. You could kind of see the interviews and the testimonies from teachers and actually from our event that we hosted when we brought them in, we got to interview some families as well and did some training for them.

(11:24):
But working with our school district, they were able to come with an agreement where the school district [00:11:30] does fund the one gig service plan for every student household. And again, in our region, again, we're south Texas. Once you start getting closer to the border, our cell phones go into roaming mode and coverage is not the best. Even with our original carrier that we had here for city operations, I've had to switch to an alternate that's been more reliable, but hotspots haven't been the greatest thing. And some [00:12:00] families, when there's two or three kids in the home, those hotspots really don't support for multiple use. And that really has what really been helping our students and why the school district knew, Hey, we can provide a gigabit service again that'll help mom, that'll help dad, that'll help all the different kids that they need the service to provide a good connection for them to do any of their schoolwork. And for those that are taking online classes for [00:12:30] college as well.

Christopher Mitchell (12:31):
And that I have to assume then really helped when the ACP did in fact go away. But did you see any significant drop off from families that had been using the ACP when it was turned off?

Jose Pena (12:44):
We actually did not. And ACP that was around the few months before, about four or five months before our sales team had been onboarded and been working and helping sign up more of our community members [00:13:00] regarding ACP, but we really only ended up at that point to around when the program ended, about 500 subscribers using ACP funds because it was just so much more if they attended our local school district where the majority of our students attend school. Again, they were already getting the service. Some did tap into the ACP and ended up in our highest plan point, but once ACP [00:13:30] went out, there was a very minimal number who did not stay on because literally all the arrests, they just, Hey, we'll stick to the $25 plan. But we had to literally almost no loss of subscribers at that point.

Christopher Mitchell (13:45):
Now what have you heard from some of the people that you've connected and things like that?

Jose Pena (13:51):
Definitely people have been very thankful when we hear the stories, and we do have a few testimonials that our media department [00:14:00] has done some interviews with some subscribers. It's one of those things where the community has been very receptive because that money stays in their home, they're able to buy more groceries, they're able to use that money for other needs in the home. I know one resident who was filmed, he saved over a hundred dollars a month. Another lady, again saved over $80 a month and is now getting it at no cost because she's a parent of [00:14:30] a student that goes to school. And again, we have quite a few of those testimonies from our subscribers. One of the things we actually found out, we did our first net promoter score here a few months ago, I want to say around the August timeframe. And we had a specific question in regards to what was the average savings prior to getting onto our network or if they did not have [00:15:00] a connection before. The highest percentage area was in the 50 to $70 a month in savings, and we ended up scoring an 84 on our new promoter score, which apparently is really good.

Christopher Mitchell (15:14):
Yeah, no, not only is it good, let's assume is if we assume a low, now average you have 10,000 subscribers saving $50 a month on average, that's an extra half million dollars in the community every year. That's a big win in and of itself.

Jose Pena (15:30):
[00:15:30] Definitely, definitely. And again, that was the whole reason why our mayor wanted to pursue this, and he really wanted to help the community grow. He's very big in health, healthcare obviously being his profession and in the education, he knows how that can help families.

Christopher Mitchell (15:52):
I just also, I got that wrong. I you have 10,000 subscribers saving $50 a month on average. That's half a million [00:16:00] dollars a month, which means several. I mean, we're talking about $6 million a year of potential savings in the community. That's really wild. You want to talk about a huge benefit that's way more than most government programs will return to a community.

Jose Pena (16:17):
Exactly. And again, that's one of those things where we always try to go above and beyond being, we're a public entity. Our commitment is to provide a service to the community, [00:16:30] and that's what we instill and look for in all the staff that we onboard, that the customer comes first and whatever it is to resolve their issues as soon as possible, we'll take care of 'em.

Christopher Mitchell (16:43):
Which way to do that math wrong? My brain is really struggling right now.

Jose Pena (16:48):
50 10,000 is 500,000 a month.

Christopher Mitchell (16:51):
Yeah, yeah. It just seems I'm rebelling against it. I have trouble believing it's not much. But, and you're talking [00:17:00] about there's people who are saving $70 and I'm sure there's some who are even saving more than that because there's families out there that are paying $90 a month for a service right now like me.

Jose Pena (17:09):
Definitely. And I'll tell you this, even over half of our user base is on the one gig plan. They're not even on the entry level plan because those that could afford it or those who 50 is still less than what you paid before, which 50 is our one gig [00:17:30] service plan and $25 is our 500 megabits. They opt in for the five gig. And nowadays we even have outdoor mesh devices for people we install in their backyards and their patios. We have mesh devices as well that we provide for them. We provide at no cost, the cybersecurity app controls and the parental controls. And now we actually are offering [00:18:00] bark at no cost, which is the platform that helps families monitor young kids

Christopher Mitchell (18:08):
To make sure that they're not being exposed to harmful content or having potential feelings of harming themselves and other things to watch out for. And that's important.

Jose Pena (18:21):
We're now offering that at no cost through a grant that we were funded for three years and we want to continue [00:18:30] being another asset that can help our families continue to stay safe online as well.

Christopher Mitchell (18:36):
Whenever someone tells me that, I assume they're a caic shop,

Jose Pena (18:40):
Yes, we truly are and very happy, very happily, and we are continuing to expand different service offerings that we're working on and hopefully rolling out in the near future in regards to those benefits we offer our residents.

Christopher Mitchell (18:56):
Now, let's talk about when things go wrong because at [00:19:00] one of the events I was at with some of the folks from your staff, she mentioned that what is the single largest reason that you are rolling repair trucks?

Jose Pena (19:12):
Apparently we do get some fiber cuts. They're in the yards, and we do tend to have a lot of pets here in the city of Pharr, and they like to dig and they like to chew on these cables. But again, it's one of those where again, we try to repair these as quickly as possible, [00:19:30] put these drop cables within conduit and avoid any feature issue. But we get all sort of calls. And a lot of 'em is because we look both what was the reason for the truck row and then the actual resolution. A lot of 'em, we do a lot of education. We will go out and we'll help a resident if they're having issues connecting their cameras to our network. We now have digital navigators who were actually [00:20:00] going and doing education and teaching our families about anything that they need any help with in technology. And that's another resource that we're able to get from our grant that Methodist Healthcare Ministries was very gracious to award the city, and we've been able to provide another community service

Christopher Mitchell (20:24):
And that allows you to actually send people into the home. So you're not requiring people to come out to a classroom. [00:20:30] You're able to do a one-on-one or one with the family instruction actually inside the home.

Jose Pena (20:35):
Correct. Yeah. So that's one of those things. We actually will be hopefully here this next month in December, we're going to now start our community training classes. So again, that's part of our digital equity training program that we're able to get funded and we're going to be having our trainer and our navigators teaching in a classroom in our community centers [00:21:00] computer skills, and it'll be a multi-session classes that we progress and give 'em certificates that'd say complete different courses in digital literacy, but they're going to end up getting a laptop as well. So we do have 600 laptops to give out this year and actually a thousand more for the next couple years to keep families coming in and taking our trainings. But again, since our navigators are [00:21:30] currently here, they've done close to 200 home visits since they've been onboarded, helping our families with any technology issue inside the home.

Christopher Mitchell (21:41):
I think your calendar has probably been pretty busy with people coming to ask you how you did it, what they can learn from you and things like that. But I think we're starting to see in the region, no one's really quite replicating what you're doing, but it seems like other governments are paying attention and starting to figure out what [00:22:00] they can do. Right.

Jose Pena (22:01):
And that's a wonderful thing. The more communities start and counties, municipal governments start helping the community, we can provide lower cost programs again, where we also have access to grant opportunities to be able to provide additional services on top of that, like I've mentioned. But again, we're here to serve our community and that's kind of what we want help out and [00:22:30] keep our residents satisfied and again, try to implement and adopt new programs to continue having them with us.

Christopher Mitchell (22:40):
So in terms of what comes next, I feel like if I remember correctly, you've really focused on the single family homes and now I think you're turning attention more to the apartment buildings. You've already done several, but I think you're working on actually the city's building a new one. Why don't you walk me through where you've been on the apartment buildings [00:23:00] and what's next?

Jose Pena (23:01):
So again, our network, like you just mentioned, was trying to address all our residential areas, and we are in several apartments, but more of the standard duplex and quadplex type of single story. Maybe some are two stories, but we weren't really in MDUs. So the city, we do have a housing authority and they actually do have five MDU complexes within the [00:23:30] city. Two of 'em are the hotel style and the other three, and there are each a hundred units each. The other three are more look like town homes where they're two story, but it's a single unit and they actually are building a brand new housing complex as well. So we are working with our housing authority and being able to go in there and service their units and their properties to now start building our programs [00:24:00] in regards to how we can continue to serve now. Yeah, we're excited to go into this new phase and be able to help more of these families that obviously do have a need and we can provide 'em a good service

Christopher Mitchell (24:16):
Where there's existing buildings. Are you able to tap into wiring or is that presenting a challenge

Jose Pena (24:21):
Today? These other five, they're like townhomes. So we are able to get ats, so we're going to be [00:24:30] running fiber all into those. So right now in regards to the funds that the city has reserved for this project, we're going to be able to do all fiber into their units.

Christopher Mitchell (24:41):
And that's what you're planning for the new one that's being built right as well?

Jose Pena (24:44):
Correct. That will be fiber all into each of those units and the complex is about 80 units.

Christopher Mitchell (24:51):
And then you mentioned the hotel style one. How are you wiring that?

Jose Pena (24:56):
One is where hopefully we'll be looking at [00:25:00] different alternatives because again, that's a different type of deployment. We are looking at either low profile fibers that could be run along the corners of the ceilings. We've also considered ethernet runs just due to the durability and not being able to put conduit or fiber within conduit like we could in [00:25:30] a new build. But those are our next options to start looking at these properties and what's the best method of to get in there. But again, we do want to provide individual service to each resident so that again, they can control the experience for their kids and anybody else that needs to use a service within their home.

Christopher Mitchell (25:53):
And then the business community I think as well is where you're also turning some focus. So how is that working out so Pharr?

Jose Pena (25:59):
Yeah, definitely. [00:26:00] So again, our priority had always been our residential customers, and I think we've done a pretty good job and now we're going to be transitioning over to our commercial sector. So again, we've been growing our team internally trying to look at the resources we need, and right now we're going to be reaching out and helping our small businesses as well. We've run small businesses and in enterprise [00:26:30] customers in let's say pilot to trial 'em out. And we've actually had no issues with 'em. They've had a service for over a year, and now we're at the point where we're start transitioning our marketing resources and our sales team to now go in and help our business community.

Christopher Mitchell (26:50):
Excellent. Is there anything else you want to share about the network that we didn't touch on?

Jose Pena (26:54):
I'd say it's just very thankful for these organizations and like Methodist [00:27:00] Healthcare Ministries who've been able to help the city to continue its mission to be able to, now again, we started with providing a service, right? But now being able to introduce the educational component and the device access by now being able to teach our families and then be able to give laptops out to them. We're very excited to start this new chapter come next month and open our doors for these training sessions. They also funded [00:27:30] internship program for us, so we currently have 10 dual enrollment high school students working with us, and some are doing cybersecurity with our staff, some are doing customer service, others are doing more of the hands-on type of work. But we're able to provide this experience for our dual enrollment students pursuing their associates degree degree at our local college while they're [00:28:00] in high school, and hopefully using this as a good experience for them to continue their careers after they graduate.

Christopher Mitchell (28:08):
Yeah, I met some of the folks who I think may be interested in the next round of internships, so it is an exciting opportunity. I hope other municipal ISPs will be thinking about that as well.

Jose Pena (28:19):
Yep. We have five more opening up in January and actually another five next January. So that was, again, this grant was very helpful for [00:28:30] us.

Christopher Mitchell (28:31):
Yes. Thank you so much for taking some more time and being an inspiration for a network that I think works to connect everyone in the community, making sure it's available and truly accessible to those who may not be able to afford any of the alternatives and to give them a great experience. It's just a wonderful story.

Jose Pena (28:49):
Thank you again. We're excited here for this next chapter at the City of Pharr, and we're here as a reference for anybody who's interested in learning how to build a [00:29:00] network and we'll help out anybody.

Ry Marcattilio (29:03):
Awesome. We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at community networks. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter. The handle is at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ISR, including Building Local Power, local [00:29:30] Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments.