[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house and then upload speeds, those are gonna be increasing massively as well. That's almost the beautiful, the most beautiful part of this is for the people that are uploading stuff into the cloud or, or emailing large files and things like that. Um, any of you in video production out there, any of this large data stuff and even gaming that upload speed, changes the game

[00:00:23] Roy Novosel: for it?

[00:00:24] Roy Novosel: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, and that's part of the road at 10 G. When we say 10 G, that's, that's up. That's not, uh, just download speeds and majority of our network is asymmetrical, but we are getting to symmetrical as fast as we can. Mm-hmm. . Um, and majority of all the, um, of all our, uh, utilization is still primarily on the downstream when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home.

[00:00:48] Roy Novosel: There is a lot to know the, we got you covered. This is around

[00:00:53] Eric Goranson: the house. Welcome to the Round the House Show. This is. Talk about everything around your home every single week. Thanks for joining us [00:01:00] today. We're gonna get into some home tech today cuz this is something that is near and dear to my heart because I spent a lot of times with the National Association of Home Builders talking about everything around the interweb.

[00:01:12] Eric Goranson: And we've got, uh, Roy Novosel here from. Comcast, he is VP of Engineering and we're gonna talk about some speed today. Brother,

[00:01:20] Roy Novosel: how are you? I'm doing great, Eric, and I love talking about speed. My favorite topic. Oh,

[00:01:25] Eric Goranson: man, same here. I mean, I, I'm gonna age myself here, you know? Kids will complain about Netflix taking two seconds to to load up, and I'm going, you clearly never had AOL

[00:01:35] Roy Novosel: Yeah, I've never, never had the dial, never had to experience

[00:01:38] Eric Goranson: dial repair, never to experience it. , . So it's awesome. It's awesome. But you guys have been doing something, uh, absolutely amazing. Chasing the speed thing and you know, some companies are sitting there going, this isn't a Comcast Affinity commercial, but you guys are what's supply to my house.

[00:01:54] Eric Goranson: And you know, you guys are not just like, oh, we're gonna bump it up a little. You guys are like going to lightning speed [00:02:00] here and uh, you're headed that direction quickly and I wanted to talk about that today specifically. Yeah, absolutely Eric.

[00:02:06] Roy Novosel: And love to talk about it.

[00:02:08] Eric Goranson: So you guys are working uh, towards that 10 G which is amazing cuz I do a lot of upload, download video, stuff like that.

[00:02:15] Eric Goranson: And I have a super fast thing from you guys, but what you guys are. Are planning to do now here, what? Towards the end of the year and into next year, and I'm talking 2023 and 2024. That, man, you guys are going to lightning. Oh, . Lightning

[00:02:31] Roy Novosel: speed. And there's a lot of terminology confusion out there. Uh oh. Yeah.

[00:02:35] Roy Novosel: For the average, average person, you'll see 5G out there from the cell phone companies and they're we're, we're we're ting 10 G. No, in in cellular, cellular terms, 5G is just fifth generation. Yes. And when we refer to Teng from a Comcast perspective, we're talking 10 gigabit technology. and there we go. And that's 10 gigabit technology.

[00:02:54] Roy Novosel: Eventually all the way to your home, which is just pH, you know, you can go back to the AOL [00:03:00] follow days. The, it's like leagues ahead of that. It's just, it, it's pretty amazing. Just, I mean, I've got, I've been in the industry for so long. Yeah. I've just seen so many changes and it, it's just incredible. The.

[00:03:12] Roy Novosel: The technology leaps that we're taking now are just huge.

[00:03:16] Eric Goranson: Huge. Yeah. I mean, I've got coax cable coming into my house and I've got, uh, you know, one G coming into the house plus, you know Right. Definitely one g to my desktop of download. But you guys are working on download and upload too, similar to what other companies are doing with fiber optic, but you guys are doing it within your own system.

[00:03:32] Roy Novosel: That's correct. So I think that's always been the strength of the, of the industry in particular, Comcast. Yes, we have an incumbent network that we've been maintaining for many, I mean, many, many years. And the, the cool thing about the Our Road to 10 G that we're calling it is essentially we can do a lot of um, uh, I guess you could say green board swaps and we just upgrade our outside.

[00:03:55] Roy Novosel: Outside plant equipment and we're up and running and we'll be rolling towards 10 [00:04:00] G. We don't have to do really expensive construction. We don't have to tear up people's yards. It's essentially equipment swaps in the field and, and, uh, we're up and running. And so that's what's unique about the, about our industry.

[00:04:13] Roy Novosel: We can, we can do this and we can do it at a quicker pace than, uh, any of our competi. Man, that is awesome

[00:04:18] Eric Goranson: because yeah, you guys are just plug and playing some new hardware. No different than what you would typically do with your normal upgrades that you do anyway, right? Yeah,

[00:04:26] Roy Novosel: exactly. Exactly. And not to say that we won't have some light construction here and there, we, we do, um, at, you know, keep an eye on what we call our, our utilization in certain pockets of our.

[00:04:37] Roy Novosel: So we may see a need to do some additional, um, build out. Sure. But it's gonna be, I, I would say far and few between, and you'll just see more of. Uh, more of just, Hey, we're gonna be out here to do the equipment swap. You know, and customers will be down while we do that, but, uh, you know, at the end of the day, they're gonna have the future speeds that they're gonna need at their home.

[00:04:55] Roy Novosel: Um, yeah. And, and it's pretty exciting. It's pretty exciting.

[00:04:58] Eric Goranson: Oh, it's super exciting. And I mean, you're [00:05:00] talking, I mean, we're talking what, like 50 million. Homes and businesses out there that this would affect. So this isn't like a little project . Oh no.

[00:05:07] Roy Novosel: Across the company. Yeah, across the company is gonna be it.

[00:05:11] Roy Novosel: It's pretty monumental and. Um, and I don't know if you follow some of the ongoing, specific to the cable industry, but mm-hmm. we've tested the back office for this already. It, it, it was highly successful. Uh, we have some new equipment that we're putting out in the field that is just pretty amazing that, that achieves that speed.

[00:05:27] Roy Novosel: Um, and so I'm just, I'm just excited about the future because. , you know, we can, we can get 10 G, majority of our customers will get 10 G within the next two or three years. That's, that's pretty amazing. That's faster than I could ever build fibers at a home. Yes. Um, and not that we don't build it, we build it when and when we have an opportunity and it's cost.

[00:05:45] Roy Novosel: Sure we do it, but we have this. Incumbent network. That's just huge. And yeah, you just, it's extremely hard just to say, Hey, I'm gonna rebuild it fiber into the home. So, um, it, it's an expensive venture, let's put it that way, so, oh,

[00:05:58] especially

[00:05:59] Eric Goranson: on that [00:06:00] scale. And, you know, I mean, that's the one thing with the, with the fiber guys, they've been always, you know, I won't say everyone has, but.

[00:06:05] Eric Goranson: If I look at the mailers that show up in my mailbox are the guys that are trying to hit me up all the time. They're always, oh yeah, you can never do that with coax cable. hold my beer. Right. I mean, it's Right. Exactly. Hold my

[00:06:18] Roy Novosel: beer with, with minimal interruptions. So, exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, you know, there, there's, there's trade offs in every architecture, right?

[00:06:25] Roy Novosel: Of course. And, and so you. Coax is, you know, a a lot of folks think about it as old twisted pair or, or, or you know, old wiring, but it's really just a medium of how we get, uh, services to our, to, to our customers and Yep, it's served us well for a very long time and, and they'll continue to do so. And, um, I, I think, you know, when it comes to fiber to the home, we absolutely build our fi, we build fiber to the home as well too.

[00:06:47] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. it's just, you know, when you have an incumbent network, um, that's been out. And we are, we're already servicing customers. How do you do that from a cost effective perspective and get 'em to speeds that they, that they need for the future? And I [00:07:00] think we can do that extremely well and, and get, and get there faster and, And I, and quite honestly, I think the customers of the future don't even think about how it gets delivered.

[00:07:07] Roy Novosel: Um, right. You know? Yeah. Fibers, I guess you could say the flashy marketing term, but at the end of the day, when I talk to some of my neighbors, they don't even think about that. They're like my wifi to work. They just talk about wifi. It's like, Hey, how fast is my wifi gonna be in the home? And, and that's really probably the, the, in their minds, in the customer's minds.

[00:07:26] Roy Novosel: You know, the importance of, of their service just working, right? Yeah. And, and we have to get to 10 G because we got along. Um, we're trying to get 10, 20 years of in front of the customer. Mm-hmm. I think that's one thing that why we were so successful during Covid and. And a lot of folks working from home, you know, we're, I'm pretty proud that we as a company, we, we always try to stay five, 10 years in front of the trends.

[00:07:48] Roy Novosel: And so, you know, we do speed upgrades year after year, uh, and many times. You probably arguably, you know, even though you got one, one gigabits to your home mm-hmm. , um, I'd venture to guess. You probably don't [00:08:00] overutilize that link.

[00:08:00] Eric Goranson: Um, no. I mean, no, I don't overuse it. It's really

[00:08:03] Roy Novosel: about the future, right? Like in, in five years you're gonna need that.

[00:08:06] Roy Novosel: But do you need it now? Maybe. You know, I use a firm amount of it. You have in your home, right?

[00:08:11] Eric Goranson: I think I did a count. I've got like 45 smart home devices in my home because I, I do a lot of, I'm, I'm the, I'm the exception to the rule because I'm testing out all these different things. So I think I've got like five different brands of light switches and I don't, I think almost every light switch has got some kind of, Smart thing, whether it's doing the lamp or the back porch light or whatever.

[00:08:31] Eric Goranson: So it's uh, you know, that, that, that's how I do it cuz I, before I wanted to use it, I wanna test it. I wanna see if that's work. And there's some stuff people have sent me that I'm like, uh, yeah you have a return label. I'm not gonna use this. This is not, you guys need to do a little more testing on this cuz it's not ready

[00:08:46] Roy Novosel: Yeah, exactly. I, I've, uh, I have a lot of devices in my home security cameras. , um, you know, we got, we even have, uh, you know, simple things like my stove. It can be connected. My garage door is connected, so it's, oh yeah, there's a, there's a numerous things, but they don't [00:09:00] eat up a whole lot of bandwidth. The security cameras do, but, um, Yeah, I've got, depends on I'm

[00:09:04] viewing

[00:09:04] Eric Goranson: it.

[00:09:04] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. I've got, uh, two of, uh, two of the Xfinity security cameras on, on my house, as well as I have another system, uh, that I'm playing with by Deep Sentinel that uses a very high speeded connection that, it's super high-fi. They can talk back and forth and so, you know, it's, it's fair amount of bandwidth for a security camera just because it's got live guards.

[00:09:23] Eric Goranson: But it's one of those things that, yeah, it adds up. Going down the list. And then if I'm watching out working in the shop and I got Netflix going on and I mean my cable boxes now, I don't have coax going those cuz I've got the, the wifi version of those. So, you know, it's one of those things that just kind of starts to add up over time.

[00:09:40] Eric Goranson: Yeah,

[00:09:41] Roy Novosel: absolutely. And, you know, beyond speed, um, you know, I think that's what makes us unique in, in, in with our competitors is. Our product set. Um, we're just not here to provide you a pipe and you figure it out, you know, just like security, just like our video platform, our, you know, everything's, I mean, you could, you can pull up your cameras on your tv, I'm [00:10:00] sure.

[00:10:00] Roy Novosel: My, my wife loves it, when she can just pull me up, pull it up on tv, but show me my cameras

[00:10:06] Eric Goranson: and I can do this right now. And. You know, .

[00:10:09] Roy Novosel: So I think that's what's unique, uh, um, and, and, you know, helps our companies stand out in the marketplace. There is a lot of noise out there with competitors and they do talk about speed, but they just don't have the products that work well together.

[00:10:22] Roy Novosel: They typically, you know, rely on third parties to bring. To deliver services. Sometimes they put it on the consumer to go buy their own stuff. Yeah. And, and we bring everything for 'em and, and make it work seamlessly together. And so that's, I think that's really a strength. Strength of Comcast.

[00:10:38] Eric Goranson: Yeah. One of the things I noticed when, when Covid hit I had, I looked really smart cause I decided to start doing my radio show here on podcast from home about four months.

[00:10:48] Eric Goranson: The whole covid thing hit. So I looked like I was really smart. Working from home, I just got lucky, but when it hit, I'm like, Ooh, I'm doing a lot of video work and uploading stuff and, and I was worried about it. And I'm, as soon as they started working, [00:11:00] there's a middle school down the street here, so I was worried about that, taking up bandwidth and it, and at first I'm like, oh, it's working.

[00:11:08] Eric Goranson: Well that was cuz the squirrel did something on the pole up there. It had nothing to do with bandwidth. I went, you know, I'm gonna call and see what's going on. They came out and looked at him, went, yeah, squirrel. Decided to do some damage. Yeah. Can't help, can't help Mother Nature. I mean, that's just gonna happen no matter who.

[00:11:22] Eric Goranson: It's, but it fixed it. And that's one of the things that I always tell people out there is when in doubt get ahold of you guys, cuz it's probably not a, a quote unquote. Problem. It's probably a, a line problem or mother nature problem.

[00:11:36] Roy Novosel: Oh, yeah. I, I think that's probably the most common misconception with folks is.

[00:11:41] Roy Novosel: Yeah, while it is, um, while our network's designed, and all networks are designed, by the way, are majority are all shared bandwidth. Even, even our competitors, even though it's fiber to the home, uh, on some of them, it's still shared bandwidth on the technology. Um, but if you scale the network right, and you have the right amount of planning behind it, You know, utilization is not gonna be the problem.[00:12:00]

[00:12:00] Roy Novosel: Yeah. It's gonna be, yeah. Like, uh, our, our favorite little squirrels, uh, you know, or mother nature coming by and blowing something down and mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . It's got some damage that, um, You know, that we need to find in repair. But, uh, you know, one thing that's, uh, I've seen the evolution in this technology is just amazing visibility to our network.

[00:12:15] Roy Novosel: Um mm-hmm. , and I call it, it's just, it's, it, it makes our network brilliant because the equipment that we're putting out when we swap out equipment and put that 10 G equipment out there mm-hmm. , um, it's IP addressable, we. Some amazing visibility into what our network is doing, how it's performing, uh, without customers calling in, we can detect it and send somebody out there before they even know there's a problem.

[00:12:36] Roy Novosel: And so that's, uh, I think that's really a strength of, of what our company is doing with this technology.

[00:12:41] Eric Goranson: It's great and I wanna talk about the 10 G for just a minute because I know a lot of people are going, okay, my 5G and my phone is fast, but they have no idea what 10 gigabit does for them. , because it's not a relatable thing, right?

[00:12:54] Eric Goranson: It's not like, right. You know, it's a speed that no one has experienced yet before in their, in their home network. So how does that change their [00:13:00] life as far as you know, speed and usage? And of course it's always different. Of course, you're always limited by, you know, how. You can be fast, but how Netflix or Pluto or how anybody else on a streaming platform that you're using, those are, that's now where the, where the bottleneck is versus.

[00:13:16] Eric Goranson: Their connection.

[00:13:17] Roy Novosel: Yeah. Well, I think 10 g or 10 gigabits for the average user is, is essentially it's future-proofing, uh, future-proofing of our network. Of course, there will be folks that will want the, the, um, I guess the brand new shiny object to play with. And we'll order 10 gigabits with it. But for the average user, you know, it could be quite a few years before they feel the need to have that kind of speed.

[00:13:39] Roy Novosel: And so, . Uh, but essentially what 10 Gigabits is, is designed for is, is, uh, I'm sure you've heard about the Internet of things. Mm-hmm. , it's hyperconnected devices. It's everything down to your toaster that you wanna monitor, um, and, and report back. And so you can see status of, and um, and while that seems.

[00:13:56] Roy Novosel: Crazy to some folks. You know, as our, as our world gets more and more [00:14:00] hyper-connected and, and able to, I guess you could say, monitor it or see how it's performing even in, in your own home, if you wanna see how, maybe how your refrigerator is performing with, with, uh, cooling or how much electricity it's using.

[00:14:15] Roy Novosel: All those things help enable that 10 G world. And, and those speeds help support a, a multiple devices. You know, today we got, you know, Netflix, we got streaming, which mm-hmm. and gaming, which does take a, a fair share of bandwidth. Um, but can certain 10 gigabits certainly is, is more than enough, I guess I put it in context.

[00:14:35] Roy Novosel: Um mm-hmm. many of the 5G towers probably have 10 gigabit backbone. So, oh yeah. So if, you know, if it's enough for multiple users on a cell tower, it's gonna be more than enough at

[00:14:44] Eric Goranson: at at your home, right, .

[00:14:46] Roy Novosel: Well, and the, and the, the other

[00:14:46] Eric Goranson: thing that people, um, I just kind of wanna let people know out there, and, and you touched on it, is, you know, we've kind of made everything smart.

[00:14:52] Eric Goranson: That we can inside the house right now. And I say smart with air quotes just because sometimes it's really dumb. And I, I, like I've always [00:15:00] said, I don't want my washing machine to tell me what the weather's gonna be today. I really don't care. But you're gonna see now, and these companies are doing this now, is you're gonna see your, your heat pump that's maybe built by train now talking to your Samsung television and saying, Hey, that's got a temperature sensor in it.

[00:15:16] Eric Goranson: What's the living room temp? Right. Because I have an external air temp in that TV and that kind of thing, where these things now are gonna be interconnected, grabbing data from each other across companies, people that are competitors. Now that stuff's gonna be talking. Maybe your Electrolux range in your Samsung will start talking together.

[00:15:36] Eric Goranson: So that's kind of the next generation of things going. And again, that's just another one of those bandwidth things, especially if you have 30 or 40 devices. And now those are all talking within each other. It's a different world.

[00:15:46] Roy Novosel: Yeah. And, and I think I, I also, uh, look at it as a good thing as far as, I look at it as this, the new check engine light for your devices in your home.

[00:15:54] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. , I, I'd want that trained air conditioning unit to let me know when my fons getting low in the middle of July. Right. Right. And that can [00:16:00] be proactive about getting somebody out there to fix it. Cause you know, the, you know, if you let something go unrepaired for too long, it costs more to fix it the longer it goes.

[00:16:09] Roy Novosel: Yeah. And if you don't, if you don't have visibility to what's going on, You don't know if something's broke until it's catastrophic. Then you're like, ah, geez, now oh yeah. Thousands of dollars to repair this. So that's why I absolutely. Strength as this of this technology. Yep.

[00:16:24] Eric Goranson: No question. No question. I mean, I have the uh, sends home energy monitor in my house, just throwing brand names out there and I can watch and see exactly.

[00:16:32] Eric Goranson: I can look on and go, Hey, did we leave one of the did? Did a kid put a space heater on in a room or something like that? Or did I leave something on in the garage? Cuz I can literally just grab my phone and go, wow, my normal usage right now is high. What am I doing? And right at the same point I can look at it and go, wow, that beer fridge out in the garage, it's 20 years old.

[00:16:50] Eric Goranson: Comparing that to the fridge inside, it might be cost effective for me to go out and get a new fridge cuz I'm wasting a lot of money on that.

[00:16:56] Roy Novosel: Right, right. Exactly. So I think all those, all those things, while, um, some, some [00:17:00] folks might view it as, well, why, why don't I wanna monitor my refrigerator? And when you put it in perspective, it's like, well, wouldn't you want to know if you're.

[00:17:07] Roy Novosel: Refrigerators on the fridge, you know that. Yeah.

[00:17:10] Eric Goranson: It's all of a sudden somebody left the door open or Exactly. You know,

[00:17:13] Roy Novosel: something dumb. 10 thousands of dollars of groceries if you know something's broken on your fridge. So, absolutely.

[00:17:19] Eric Goranson: And then upload speeds, those are gonna be increasing massively as well.

[00:17:23] Eric Goranson: That's almost the beautiful, the most beautiful part of this is for the people that are uploading stuff into the cloud or, or emailing large files and things like that. Um, Any view in video production out there, any of this large data stuff and even gaming that upload speed, changes the game for

[00:17:39] it.

[00:17:40] Roy Novosel: Oh, yeah.

[00:17:40] Roy Novosel: Yeah. And, and and that's part of the road at 10 G. When we say 10 G, that's, that's up and down. That's not, uh, just download speeds. Um, and, and majority of our network is asymmetrical, but we are getting to symmetrical as fast as we can. Mm-hmm. . Um, and, and majority of all the, um, of all our, uh, utilization is still primarily on the downstream.

[00:17:57] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. . Um, we have, um, we do have, uh, plenty of bandwidth on [00:18:00] the upstream, even on our incumbent network. If we went into Covid before we went down this road with 10 and then

[00:18:05] Eric Goranson: upload speeds, those are gonna be increasing massively as well. That's almost the beautiful, the most beautiful part of this is for the people that are uploading stuff into the cloud or, or emailing large files and things like that.

[00:18:18] Eric Goranson: Um, any view in video production out there, any of this large data stuff and even gaming that upload. Changes the game for that.

[00:18:26] Roy Novosel: Oh yeah. Yeah. And, and that's part of the road to 10 G. When we say 10 G, that's, that's up and down. That's not, uh, just download speeds. Um, and, and majority of our network is asymmetrical, but we are getting to symmetrical as fast as we can.

[00:18:37] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. . Um, and, and majority of all the, um, Of all our, uh, utilization is still primarily on the downstream. Um, we have, um, we do have, uh, plenty of bandwidth on the upstream, even on our incumbent network. Cause we went into Covid before we went down this road with Teng, and then network was held up. Holding up just fine.

[00:18:55] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. , um, and, you know, put things in perspective like this conversation we're having just between Yeah. The two of us [00:19:00] is probably, you know, it's not, I don't think it's even high depth, you know, it's probably two or three megabits at a given time and we're, it's not a lot of movement. The more movement to have, the more bandwidth it takes.

[00:19:08] Roy Novosel: Sure. So, you know, I try not to move around, but, um,

[00:19:10] Eric Goranson: as I'm dancing around over here, you can't see me . Exactly.

[00:19:13] Roy Novosel: So even when, uh, I remember I, working from home, my wife and my son were, you know, it's. The, the, the upstream bandwidth that I had in my home was withholding up just fine, even though it wasn't symmetrical.

[00:19:24] Roy Novosel: Speeds. Justin, we're gonna be rolling out a lot of it, um, next year, which will get us that, that high, uh, multi gigabit symmetrical speeds. Yep. So today the upgrades we're doing, uh, I call it a two putt. We're gonna get you the, the next generation of speeds. Um, we've already started offering two gigabits, uh, down and 200 up, uh, to the customers.

[00:19:44] Roy Novosel: We've, we've, uh, uh, we've upgraded already in the network. Nice. But as soon as Doc says four oh is ready for, for the, which is gonna be ready next year. Yeah. By the way, we've already tested some of the equipment in, in live, in our live network in, in different parts of the company. Once we start [00:20:00] rolling out that technology, It's just gonna be a flick of the switch and it'll go from two gigabits down to multi gigabit symmetrical speeds.

[00:20:09] Roy Novosel: It's, it's pretty incredible. And that's exciting. And really what's gonna gate some of, um, you know, these speed offerings is really, What the home can perform, right? We don't wanna oversell thing where a cus consumer feels like they're not getting value for their, for their money. So while we're, we're certainly probably have some really high, high, uh, top speeds.

[00:20:26] Roy Novosel: Um, you know, we also want to make sure that we rightsize it for customers that. You know, may not want it. So.

[00:20:31] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And if you look at like TV technology out there, you know, it seems like, you know, we're getting, every year there's a new TV out, you know, so all of a sudden, you know, that seven 80 p was like, woo.

[00:20:40] Eric Goranson: And then, you know, 10 80 was woo woo. woo. Now it's, 4K is kind of like the new standard. You didn't get the right TV if you didn't get 4k. Right. And then I've had, I've done video shoots where the guy shows up with the eight K camera. And I'm like, okay, I don't have a way to watch that, but that's super cool

[00:20:56] Eric Goranson: But you know, you guys have to size everything because if all of a sudden everybody's [00:21:00] doing a a, a 4K download, That's a lot of data compared to that 10 80 p

[00:21:06] Roy Novosel: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and we have 4K boxes today, so yeah, I have one. Our network, uh, handles, it just, uh, performs brilliantly with those devices.

[00:21:14] Roy Novosel: Yeah. Um, and my favorite ones are the wireless boxes. Um, you know, I have, I have a couple of in my house and I got one right here

[00:21:20] Eric Goranson: four feet away from me. Absolutely. Exactly.

[00:21:22] Roy Novosel: Works. Exactly. And, and it allows so much flexibility to our customers and homeowners where if they wanna put a TV out by the fire pit for the night, watch the game.

[00:21:32] Roy Novosel: You know, they can do that. Uh, even had a unique situation where my neighbor had, um, you know, when they built the house, they put a nail through the, the coax cable in the, in the, in the wall. And the guy was like, Hey, it's probably gonna be two or $300 to have an electrician rear are, and. I just told my neighbor say, just get one of our wireless to boxes.

[00:21:48] Roy Novosel: Don't have to worry about it. Don't pay for the rewire, just. Slap, slap one of these in there and that, you know, it's, um, you know, it's interesting that some of our, uh, customers aren't aware of some of their product sets. We have so many different product sets. Sometimes it's [00:22:00] hard to make sure they're educated on all of 'em.

[00:22:02] Roy Novosel: Um, so, but the, that's, that's what's I think the strength of our company is, is the unique product sites that we have and the flexibility we have in our network. And the options we have for our consumers.

[00:22:11] Eric Goranson: So, yeah, I mean, I've got a, you know, I've got that, that wireless box here in my, in my studio here when I wanna watch the game out in our outdoor kitchen out there.

[00:22:18] Eric Goranson: I don't leave a wireless box out there cause it's in the weather and it's, you know, it's not, yeah, it's not, it's not conditioned space. So I just unplug it outta here real quick. Go out there, plug it in. Beautiful. Yeah, it doesn't know any different, you know, and then, you know, party's over. Cool. Okay. Let's bring it back in and, you we can watch the game out there, whatever else is going on.

[00:22:36] Eric Goranson: And, and it's awesome. But, uh, yeah, that's, I loved it when I moved into this place a couple years ago because I was like, oh man, I gotta run all this coax cuz none of the boxes are in the right. You know, right. It was just everything was wrong and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I just need to make sure I'm running one to my main place for my modem, and that was already there.

[00:22:56] Eric Goranson: Yep. And everything else, it, it saved me hours and [00:23:00] not have to sit there building coax, cable crimpers and doing all that

[00:23:02] Roy Novosel: stuff, so, oh, yeah, absolutely. Yep. Yeah. And it, and and it's easier for a ma a maintained perspective when we just have one device in the home and, and, and a lot of our apps will help consumers, uh, install it for themselves.

[00:23:14] Roy Novosel: We, we have a lot of our devices are self-help. And then, uh, we also, I'm sure you've seen them, our, our pods. So if you have a home that's, uh, that's bigger than normal, you got some dead space. Mm-hmm. , um, the pods help you, help you get, get that interaction. And so it's just, um, and they make it make it easy.

[00:23:29] Roy Novosel: With our app, you just scan the, the QR code. It's just, it's simple. The plug they make, Comcast has made it so simple from, from an app perspective to add things to your network that you want to. and, and seamlessly just get it online and, and move on with your day.

[00:23:45] Eric Goranson: So yeah, I went, uh, wireless, uh, mesh network in my place.

[00:23:48] Eric Goranson: I, I have the pods, but I quit using the pods because I wanted to go with a, a super high speed mesh network. Because out here, for instance, and this is where you have to think about within your home of where you're putting things because maybe [00:24:00] that fireplace gets in the way. And my problem was is this is a 1977 house, so I have foil backed install.

[00:24:07] Eric Goranson: Which is woo-hoo awesome for wifi. And then I've got, you know, exterior wall, fire door, H V a C, laundry between me and my hub. So I went, okay, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna run mesh system. I ran, uh, you know, cat cable out to my garage, hook the mesh into that, and now I've got everything outside on This side of the house is great, but, uh, yeah, at first it was hard to penetrate through the exterior.

[00:24:32] Eric Goranson: And that foil backed insulation works decent for heat, but thanks 1977, that was not the best thing for dealing with. Thanks for the metal barrier there to go through the house. I appreciate it, . That's

[00:24:43] Roy Novosel: right. Yeah. And, and not, you know, not to, uh, beat up on our competitors too much. But, you know, a lot of our, uh, wireless competitors are, are, uh, you know, advertising a lot of at home wireless network.

[00:24:52] Roy Novosel: uh, they could be quite honest that it could be extremely unreliable in the home. When you have different building types, um, you know, nothing's gonna be to wire connection to the home. Um mm-hmm. [00:25:00] Cause I wanna make sure my home is, is, you know, has all the insulation it needs, so I'm not wasting money on energy.

[00:25:05] Roy Novosel: But when you do that, Uh, a lot of that technology that you put in the home to, for your, you know, like you said, the foil back insulation, you know, uh, wireless, uh, RF does not like that. And now , it'll block a signal in a heartbeat. . Oh yeah.

[00:25:19] Eric Goranson: I first started playing with it. I'm like, oh, this was a good idea until now.

[00:25:22] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, okay, what are my options? And I finally just went, okay, I'm running, I'm running a cable out here from the, from the, uh, xFi system and take it out here and just run it out. Let's do it. And, uh, make it high speed, and that way I can run that off there. And then all my exterior stuff has got that.

[00:25:35] Eric Goranson: So I'm outside the envelope of the, of the foil installation, so I can do my other, my outside cameras and all that other stuff can grab it.

[00:25:41] Roy Novosel: No problem. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, as, as a company, we offer 5G on our Xfinity Mobile, but mm-hmm. it's more of a compliment to our service and not a replacement for a wired service into your home.

[00:25:52] Roy Novosel: That it's gonna be hyper-connected with multiple devices in the future. So,

[00:25:56] Eric Goranson: Yeah, you just, it's hard to get that bandwidth off a, off a cell tower compared to [00:26:00] just that hardwired

[00:26:00] Roy Novosel: connection. Yeah. And, and, um, you know, it's, it can be tough to, you know, it's for us planning for our network. We know how many homes could be in a particular network area.

[00:26:10] Roy Novosel: It, it's, um, I don't wanna say fairly simple, but for the most part it makes planning much easier. Um, cell towers can be dynamic. It's whoever's, whoever's in the area that happens to connect up and now, and now their capacity or their network utilization can spike all over the place

[00:26:24] Eric Goranson: based on, oh, it's like going to a sporting event and trying to upload that picture in the middle of the event going, Hey, there's the first down, and you're like, I'll do this from home later,

[00:26:32] Eric Goranson: Yeah,

[00:26:33] Roy Novosel: exactly. That is a perfect example, is a sporting event. . Um, and that, and that's, um, that's the strength of, of our service is, um, you know, that and bringing those services into the home. We're not, we're not gonna be vulnerable to those type of, uh, events that happen. It's funny,

[00:26:47] Eric Goranson: Adam. Yeah. I had a buddy that was looking at going over to that cell tower type, you know, uh, Internet connection and he goes, well, what happens when the power goes out?

[00:26:54] Eric Goranson: I said, okay, man. Let's, let's have an honest this conversation. Yes, the cable goes out with the power comes out sometimes, but [00:27:00] have you ever tried to, to text a picture or get online when the power's out for more than a couple hours in your area? Yeah, everybody's using their phone and I can't even get text messages out of my home just because the local cell tower and I'm on at and t I mean, it's full disclosure, if the power's out for more than an.

[00:27:19] Eric Goranson: Me getting on there using any kind of data, forget about it. It's done. Yes. So it ain't gonna help you man. It ain't gonna help you

[00:27:26] Roy Novosel: Eric, you lemme know if you need help getting on Xfinity, I'm more than happy to help you.

[00:27:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, I gotta do that one these days in full disclosure, I am, I am completely trapped in with those guys right now and, and, uh, I just have a lot of, I I'm gonna have to pay a couple cell phones off cuz Apple's got, Doing my payments on that thing, I'm just gonna have to buy those out and get over there.

[00:27:46] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So you know how it's, it's like alright, I gotta pay a couple grand to get outta that and it's just like, it's been low on my list, but I'm paying too much. I know that right now.

[00:27:53] Roy Novosel: But, uh, network reliability is, is something I'm really proud of because that, that's certainly my wheelhouse. My team [00:28:00] is, um, Not only do we maintain the network, um, we're we're hyper-focused on reliability and, you know, when the power goes out, um, I highly suggest if you have at home I U P S for your modem, right?

[00:28:10] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. something that will last long. Our network will stay on from many hours when, when the power's out. Um, and, and we harden our network with generators and, um, and. Network reliability is extremely important to us. And, and when you have power events, um, you know, I I highly suggest getting a U p s, um, that way your modem stays online.

[00:28:27] Roy Novosel: It should, should always stay online, even when a power event on because of how we harden our network.

[00:28:32] Eric Goranson: That's what I have right now. And it works really well for that cuz uh, you know, and I had a, a situation where it didn't, but we were out for five days and so it was a whole different system of Yeah. You know, everything was down and we had telephone poles down, so it was, you know, it was a, a, a way different problem.

[00:28:45] Eric Goranson: you know, it wasn't just a, wasn't just somebody hit a p a a power pole and it's out for six hours. This was ice storm and it, you know. Yeah. 40 poles down around the neighborhood. So that's kind of a different, different program. Yeah.

[00:28:56] Roy Novosel: Mother Nature thing. Getting at us

[00:28:58] Eric Goranson: again, Eric, so. Exactly. [00:29:00] Exactly. Well, Roy, what do you think of the future here, and maybe not so much with the Comcast Xfinity knee, but what do you see out there in just your opinion uh, on technology?

[00:29:07] Eric Goranson: Where do you see this going in the next, you know, five years or so? I mean, so much is changing and I love what I see.

[00:29:13] Roy Novosel: Yeah, it's. You know, not so much to speed and to Comcast, but I think it's how, um, you know, how AI and, and everything's gonna start interacting with our cars, with our vehicles. Um, and, and you know, sometimes it can be scary to some folks cuz there's privacy concerns with a lot of them.

[00:29:30] Roy Novosel: Those things. Um, you know, at the end of the day, I, you know, I think technology is gonna lead us to a place that's gonna enable people to, to do whatever they're, they're wanting to do in life. And, and, and really, I think technology, the strength of technology, it could not only make us more productive, um, it could, it can save lives.

[00:29:45] Roy Novosel: Um, mm-hmm. , you know, there's, I know that a lot of folks are talking about self-driving vehicles and, and trucks on the road that don't have a driver and they're self-driving. And while the early, early adopters are, are learning along the way, you know, Tesla and a couple other companies [00:30:00] and mm-hmm. testing, self-driving vehicles, you know, there's, there's always gonna be incidents.

[00:30:03] Roy Novosel: Um, That, um, they're gonna have to learn from it. And, and sometimes you try to avoid the most unfortunate ones where somebody dies as a result, but it, those learnings per propelled even further and the technology just gets better and better. And if you think about, um, just let's say look at road incidents.

[00:30:19] Roy Novosel: Yeah. You know, I can see, you know, car accidents just about being a thing of the past when you have the technology that can self-drive. Like in infrared, right? Yeah. You can see infrared, but a car can, yep. So you can drive a park and drive through fog, no problem. It can seem fine. And, and, uh, human eyes are a little limited to that obviously.

[00:30:41] Roy Novosel: So I think things like that, uh, is, is what gets me excited about the future. And, um, you know, the, it's easy to dwell on the negative cuz there's a lot of negative in the news, but there's a lot of positive things happening with technology. That, um, you know, it's gonna solve a lot of things that's been, I guess you could say plaguing humanity for quite some time.

[00:30:59] Roy Novosel: Yeah, I've

[00:30:59] Eric Goranson: got, uh, [00:31:00] I've been some of my smart home stuff uses AI and I, and I love it. It's, um, it works well. And, uh, on your self-driving car note, living in the Portland area here, Oregon. I see sometimes, uh, it's been probably a year, but during Covid I would see it, but Kenworth was testing their, cuz their.

[00:31:16] Eric Goranson: Headquarters and stuff is here in the northwest, of course, and they have a big truck factory here in Portland. So I was seeing them testing their self-driving semi trucks. So I'd see a guy on the right hand side in the passenger seat that had a backup controls, but I'd see a truck drive around with nobody in the driver's seat, and it was like, oh, there's a guy over there.

[00:31:36] Eric Goranson: And they'd said, self-driving truck. They were testing it, but I was like, oh, that's. Wild. Okay. That's a thing. , you know, so Exactly. It's pretty cool. But yeah, you're right. I mean, you think about it, all these things. And you know, another thing, I travel a lot too, and that is one of the things, and to give you guys props as well.

[00:31:53] Eric Goranson: Is, you know, I'll be traveling around and I used to be, and I'm out of town, I'd have to, okay, where's a [00:32:00] McDonald's so I can go grab a wifi or something like that. Yeah, right. To get an email and your network. If I'm in a town where you guys are existing and that's outta your guys' control, but, you know, sometimes you're in a, in a, in a, a different town that doesn't have, you know, maybe they're a, a Cox or whatever out there, some of the other guys out there that are good, but.

[00:32:17] Eric Goranson: I can roll up and go, oh, cool. Hotspot ba. And that works really well. And so it's been handy over the time traveling and sometimes the hotel has a horrible connection, but there's an Xfinity hotspot I can grab. I don't have to mess with it.

[00:32:30] Roy Novosel: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that's one of the trade offs that we have with our incumbent network versus fiber to the home.

[00:32:37] Roy Novosel: Um, because of all those outdoor, we call 'em outdoor aps access points. Mm-hmm. it's essentially outdoor wifi that's pump that, um, you can get as a consumer. Um, you know, the, all those things need to be powered and it's much easier to power those devices on our legacy network than if it was, uh, fiber to the home.

[00:32:54] Roy Novosel: Just because, not that you can't do it, but it just makes it more expensive to do it. Yeah. Um, [00:33:00] and, uh, and so that's, That's one of the things that we, that we get with our network. We just put, uh, some outdoor aps out there and, and I, I see it all the time. I go to restaurants and, and, uh, you know, of course I know what I'm looking at.

[00:33:08] Roy Novosel: I'm like, oh, I got a, got a outdoor AP out here. I can get online on wifi and save on my data plan on, on the other side. So that's,

[00:33:17] Eric Goranson: well, that's what I was doing when I had to send my show out because when we had that ice storm in my area here, I had my show ready to upload to the satellite for all of you guys out there that catch us on the radio.

[00:33:26] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, okay. So I drove across town with my laptop into an area that didn't get the ice storm and just grabbed one of those access points and. Fast went up, got it done, came back and went, that worked. Awesome. And so even in a natural disaster, that was very helpful to me. Cause there's no way I'd, I'd been sitting there at McDonald's for two hours trying to get that done.

[00:33:48] Eric Goranson: So that was, that was handy. And so it's, it's, uh, It's great with that kind of stuff. And you guys too, I mean, I can't imagine dealing with natural disasters like the hurricanes in Florida. You know, you guys are building this network out, but then all of a sudden you get a region [00:34:00] that just gets hammered like that and then you gotta go back and put it back together.

[00:34:03] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And that, you know,

[00:34:04] Roy Novosel: I'm really proud of our, our, our of our technicians that are on the field. Um, they, they are, I, you know, they're the heroes, uh, of our network. Mm-hmm. many times they're out to two in the morning getting fiber cuts from car accidents up, back up and running. They're kind of the, the un unsung heroes.

[00:34:19] Roy Novosel: A lot of folks see the power company out there, but we're a fast follow right behind it to, to repair it. And so, And I could tell you the last windstorm that we went through up here in Washington mm-hmm. , um, we, we got our network up extremely quick. In fact, a lot, many times, um, we were up sometimes even before the power company got back up.

[00:34:37] Roy Novosel: Yep. And so, uh, and, and, uh, we're waiting around for them at wondering whether they're gonna get power back to our main lines so we can get, uh, our, our areas off a generator. But, Um, I, you know, when I monitor some of the, uh, comments on social media, on, on some of our competitors, , they weren't so eloquent.

[00:34:53] Roy Novosel: Eloquent at getting their network back on in a timely fashion, let's put it that way. Um, the company really is serious [00:35:00] about the reliability and when we do have outages and, you know, mother Nature's gonna do her thing, and but. It's all how you respond to it and how quickly you get to it and get, get every, get everybody back online as quick as, and safely as possible.

[00:35:13] Roy Novosel: So

[00:35:14] Eric Goranson: funny you say that. I was gonna, I was gonna, wasn't gonna tell this story but it was funny before we go here, but, uh, I ended up, when we had that big storm, you guys were up and running. It was no big deal. After power kicked on, it was running, it was great. No problems. My neighbor, who is on a competitor network in my area, uh, Can I, I got a meeting today, can I borrow your wifi password?

[00:35:32] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, yeah, man, you're cool. . So he was days later before his fiber was up running. Yes. And so it was days before he had that and he'd already been down for five or six. So it was,

[00:35:44] Roy Novosel: it was brutal. Yeah. And, and, and everything has tradeoffs Eric. Um, yep. You know, while, uh, fiber architecture is, is desirable for sure, sure.

[00:35:51] Roy Novosel: When it gets. To repair. I can tell you that. So,

[00:35:53] Eric Goranson: wow, man. It's like weaving a blanket.

[00:35:55] Roy Novosel: Make sure I could probably, uh, you know, I used to be a tech in the field. That's what I, that's what I started as [00:36:00] industry as, you know, I can, I can splice, coax and have it back up and running and, and little, probably less than 30 minutes.

[00:36:05] Roy Novosel: Uh, fiber takes time.

[00:36:07] Eric Goranson: That's a six hour job. Weaving . Exactly.

[00:36:10] Roy Novosel: Exactly. And depending, and how fiber is, is architected. We, you know, we. Because of how you have to splice it, you have to have slack. And so you have to sometimes, you know, you have to go back hundreds of feet to go find slack just to splice and that can take time.

[00:36:26] Roy Novosel: Yeah. And depending on how big a fiber got cut, it could take, uh, you know, I've seen outages take over eight hours, easy. Mm-hmm. . Um, but if you don't have the workforce, uh, and you don't have the mindset of, Hey, this needs to be fixed. Um, sometimes, uh, our competitors deprioritize certain, uh, repairs and don't get to 'em for a while and, and, and we don't.

[00:36:46] Roy Novosel: Um, yeah, we treat every outage with the seriousness of, you know, we need to get this on within this timeframe, you know, get to it. And the only time we can't get it on, back on quickly is when, um, there's a safety issue. Down power lines. Our, our folks have to [00:37:00] wait for the power company to do their thing, but mm-hmm.

[00:37:02] Roy Novosel: we're a fast follow, we're, we're sitting there, out there on idle waiting for 'em to get done. Like, you done it, you've done it. We wanna work. , can you get that hot power line off the ground for us so we can get, get some work done . Exactly.

[00:37:14] Eric Goranson: That's awesome. Roy, what did we not touch on today? Did we

[00:37:17] Roy Novosel: miss? Well, I think, uh, you know, one thing that's um, is also unique about our company is that our investment in our, in, in our community.

[00:37:24] Roy Novosel: Mm-hmm. I think that's one thing that's, um, a lot of folks don't know a lot about our company, but we invest a lot in, in the Rise program. And, and, and in, in parts of our, uh, community that folks probably just don't know a whole lot about. You know, we have internet essentials, so we provide, uh, high speed internet to a lot of low income families that.

[00:37:42] Roy Novosel: And forward to get online, and especially during covid, we provided so many, um, uh, so many high connections for, for low income families. And that's, that's, um, you know, one thing that I'm really proud of our company for is mm-hmm. is, is their investment in the community. Um, so that's one thing I wanna make sure [00:38:00] that, uh, your u your, um, your listening team knows is that we're invested in the community and, um, it's not, we're not rolling out 10 g just to affluent neighborhoods or where we think we can get the most connects.

[00:38:11] Roy Novosel: This is, we're bringing it to everybody. And that includes communities that, uh, that need our help. And so that's what I'm really proud about with this company is, is an investment in the community.

[00:38:21] Eric Goranson: Amen, brother. Amen. Well, thanks for coming on today. When we get a little closer to rolling this out, I wanna invite you back in and we'll talk a little bit more about the details when, uh, when this goes live across the.

[00:38:31] Roy Novosel: Yeah, Eric, I'd love to come back on when we turn up our first multi gigabits, uh, or first 10 G next year. It, it will be next year. Yep. Um, at least our legacy network. And, and by the way, our, we're already multi gigabits, uh, so much Cool on our. And our fibers of the home networks that we have already deployed.

[00:38:49] Roy Novosel: Nice. So I'd be happy to come back and, and spend some time with you, Eric. We'll

[00:38:53] Eric Goranson: do it. Roy Navel, Comcast Xfinity. Thanks for coming on today, brother.

[00:38:58] Roy Novosel: Thanks, Eric. You have a great one. [00:39:00] You

[00:39:00] Eric Goranson: too, man. I'm Eric G and you've been listening too around the house