Town Talk Church Point
Town Talk Church Point
Church Point's Internet Evolution with LUS Fiber
Curious about how a small town is turning the corner into a digital future? We're thrilled to have Mayor Spanky and Michael Soileau from LUS Fiber on board to unravel the story behind Church Point's internet revolution. Imagine a town where faster internet is not just a luxury but a catalyst for growth, enhancing remote work, boosting property values, and attracting businesses like never before. Michael shares eye-opening progress updates, including successful installations and exciting hints at future video services. With a federal grant focused on rural innovation, this expansion isn’t without its unique hurdles, but it's clear that Church Point is on the brink of a technological renaissance. Mayor Spanky even lightens the mood with a funny tale highlighting the pressing need for this digital leap.
Our conversation doesn't stop there. We spotlight the incredible synergy between LUS Fiber and Church Point, emphasizing the wave of local support and employment opportunities this project has unleashed. The upcoming customer service center promises not just jobs but a beacon of high-quality service right in the heart of town. This collaboration is more than just a tech upgrade—it's about putting Church Point on the map and brightening its future. A heartfelt thank you to Mayor Spanky and the community for their unwavering support. We can’t wait to visit and celebrate this triumph over a good local meal, cherishing the community spirit that made it all possible.
Here we are again. It is another Town Talk podcast. It is Chris, mayor Spanky and a special guest. We have Michael Swallow from LUS Fiber. Mayor Spanky, welcome in and Michael, welcome in and thanks for joining us Hello hello, happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:We're very excited. I think there's a lot of people excited about LUS Fiber in Church Point and an opportunity to really be on the cutting edge of technology, and LUS fiber was able to bring that to town. We'll start with you, mayor Spanky. Explain to us and everyone what LUS fiber means to the town of Church.
Speaker 3:Point.
Speaker 3:Well, there's going to be a huge benefit for Church Point with faster internet means it opens a lot of doors for Church Point.
Speaker 3:When I say that, that means people can move to Church Point, which now, working from home, is a option that a lot of people have, and maybe before our speeds weren't good enough or fast enough to run as many devices as needed to do a workday in the city limits of Church Point, and now that is an option. So with that coming comes more people wanting to be in Church Point, which in turn brings up property values, which in turn brings up families that shop in our stores and taxes into our town. So I mean it's one leg, but it's a mighty big one that can get the ball rolling to a lot of new faces to Church Point or a lot of new opportunities and businesses likewise. Businesses are heavy on internet now and with better internet our businesses are going to have better situations and maybe we can welcome more businesses to the town, being that we don't have any limitations yeah, and one of the first businesses are, I think, the.
Speaker 1:The actual first account signed up was fall seasonals that's right.
Speaker 3:right, that's right. The great pool company of Churchpoint.
Speaker 1:That's it. That's it. And I know what? Was it Right around a month ago, michael, when we officially did the ribbon cutting for LUS and Churchpoint? Was it about a month already, or was it a little bit longer?
Speaker 2:No, it was just about a month ago.
Speaker 1:And I know when we spoke around that time, you had said that October was full of appointments and there were a lot of people that signed up for LUS Fiber. So give us an update on where we are in Church Point with LUS Fiber right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you bet. So we're really excited to say that we've had more than two dozen signups and installs. We've got several businesses online and looking forward to even more.
Speaker 1:When it comes to LUS fiber and services. Now I know people may be familiar maybe with other carriers or maybe with LUS fiber in other parts of Acadiana. Y'all are currently just offering internet service and phone correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct. We're actually testing some new video equipment that I would like to roll out in Church Point. At the appropriate time so I'm thinking in the next 60 to 90 days we'll have that video product ready to go.
Speaker 1:Nice, so that's something that we could get here first. So are we here in an exclusive? Well, it won't be there first.
Speaker 2:It'll simultaneously.
Speaker 1:OK, ok, but you know also. You know we, spakey and I, did another Town Talk podcast whenever we first heard that LUS Fiber was making its way to Church Point, and we may have citizens of Church Point that listened to that podcast Maybe they didn't. I would like for you to explain, michael. How did all this come about? How did LUS Fiber make its way to Church Point? Can you give us a little background?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:What happened is during the pandemic, if you recall, the federal government and the current administration put forward the package for broadband expansion throughout the country, focused exclusively on rural areas of the country.
Speaker 2:At that time, we applied for several different grants and we were awarded the NTIA grant for about $21 million. And what's important to understand is these grants are very specific to actual homes, so we are mandated to build out to very specific homes with this fund, and what that means is some houses have been qualified by the federal government as broadband ready or needing broadband one or the other. So if your house has been qualified as broadband ready and capable of receiving broadband today from another provider, yet your neighbor across the street was not, for whatever reason, then they were probably included in the federal government's funding. And that's why you see some of this what I call Swiss cheese build out that we have to do. But here's the good news is that now that we're there, next year we can start looking at how we expand to different areas that we've built out to, so that everybody gets to enjoy the benefit of fiber.
Speaker 1:And Mayor, I'll come to you with this next question. How excited were you when you found out that LUS fiber could make its way to Churchmore?
Speaker 3:It's static. The thing about it is I told a story at the ribbon cutting that the first one was on a Zoom and when they announced it they were saying they were coming to Church, point. So I'm on this Zoom call and one company is saying that there's really no need, you know. And I'm saying that there is a need and all this good stuff, and right as I'm arguing my point, it starts buffering, my face just gets frozen and it comes back and I just start like hollering, like you see. You see, this is what I'm talking about, you know, and that, I think, was very good for our case. I mean, that wasn't planned. You know me, chris, I'm not that tech savvy. Yeah, I guess that was just. You know the sign from above, you know. But no, it was always something that I thought about. I didn't know if we could get that fast of internet. And then, when this came on my table, it's like oh, we got to not walk towards it, we got to run towards it, yep.
Speaker 1:And Michael, you know, again, you touched on it a little bit and I think some of the questions in town right now are those of well, why does this certain part of town have it and why do others not have it? And that was really based on the map of where you guys could run the lines in this first phase.
Speaker 2:No, it was really based on the map that the government gave us.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then they mandate that, hey, 401 Elm Street needs to be built out, but 402, for whatever reason has access to another broadband provider. Now, I'm not saying it's 100% accurate, it's just the process that they went through in determining the actual funds.
Speaker 1:And if there's someone listening today that maybe their neighbor got it, maybe their cousin got it and they're on this side or they're right outside the city limits or whatever, what should they do if they would like to get services with LUS Fiber? What should they do? Should they go to the website, enter their address?
Speaker 2:It'll come back as not serviceable. We get that list and then what we do is, throughout the next 30 days we look at the list and determine how, why it's not serviceable, how far away from the plant is it, and we can call the customer back and say you know, because I know for me at my home I'm not serviceable, you know.
Speaker 1:But I am, I'm patiently waiting.
Speaker 2:Well, look, there's nothing I want more than to be able to service all of Church, Point. It's just a matter of you know the capital to deploy and being able to do it, but we're working on it as quick as we can.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to ask you about being underground, michael. You know I think that's very important. It's different, you know, now with the services that we have, even electrical, that's above ground, that's all run on with the wiring on the telephone posts and all that stuff. But LUS fiber is different, it's underground. What does that mean for reliability?
Speaker 2:conscious decision to put it underground, because it protects the plant from the storms that you know that we get in this area of Louisiana. You know the rainstorms, the windstorms, the hurricanes, et cetera. And it does two things. One, it provides a level of reliability to the customer, the end user, that wouldn't happen if it was on the line getting whipped around in the wind. Two, it helps us, as a matter of fact, because it limits service calls during these storms. So we're in those areas where there are overground or above ground plant that are going to get ripped off the wire, the telephone poles. We'll be able to pay attention to those and know that church point's okay. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I really think that's huge man. Just that, that reliability of being underground storms, hurricanes, whatever it is still having service when everyone else is out.
Speaker 2:I think, personally, that's need to experience during some sort of climate storm is, you know, getting frustrated by not having access to internet. And while there will be times, chris, where storms will impact electricity, that after several you know, after several hours and days, it could impact the internet service because of the power outage, but the customer is not having to wait for both the power to come back on and the internet to be replaced right, they're just waiting on the power to be replaced. So there's multiple layers of protection for the customer that we just think are hugely beneficial in this part of the country and it just didn't make sense to go overhead.
Speaker 1:Mayor Spake, do you have any question or comments about that or anything we discussed previously?
Speaker 3:Before we launched we were kind of telling people to go on the website and put in their addresses and lobby their neighbors to where it shows a need for that area. Is that still the case right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Is that still the case right now? Yeah for sure. It does in fact help us understand sort of if we spend X dollars of money in this part of Church Point, we've got 10 customers, or whatever number of customers, to sign up. It just makes it a much better business case for us funds, which is why we were happy to take the federal funds and use them. You know, bring those to Louisiana, use them to deploy to Church Point and enhance our capital plan so that we could do that. But again, I want to give as many people in Church Point services as I possibly can. So the more information I have on who wants it, the better off we are.
Speaker 3:And that's why I tell people to go knocking on their neighbor's doors and politic to get their streets, get their streets covered Because, like I said, just like any business anywhere, if they got one person down one road, action for it and there's 20 down, another one, the one with 20, is going to get looked at a lot quicker. Yep.
Speaker 1:Now, michael, I also wanted to ask you y'all have a beautiful building in town that y'all are opening up as a customer center. There was a rumor that maybe a Bucky's was coming to church. Point whenever that building was put there but uh, but it is an LUS fiber. What are y'all going to call it A customer center? When is that going to open?
Speaker 2:up. Yeah, it'll be the LUS Fiber customer center and you'll be able to. Customers will be able to go in there, or potential customers to take care of their account If they want to upgrade to the new video service we'll be introducing. Whatever the case is, they can pick up the equipment there and take care of all their needs and if you want to sign up as a new customer, you can go there as well. We've got some last-minute renovations that need to happen on it. We've got to get the furniture in there. That's still pending, but I think by the first of the year we're in there and up and running.
Speaker 3:Nice. I was congratulated the other day for getting a Smalls Burgers cross from Mexico. I was like nope, that's LUS, that's LUS that is not.
Speaker 2:We might do that too, though.
Speaker 3:That's right. I would enjoy that too, but the internet comes first, oh man.
Speaker 1:So anything else that you would like to add, michael, any other information that the residents of Church Point need to know about LUS Fiber, anything you want to add?
Speaker 2:I just let them know that, first of all, we appreciate your business and I have to thank Mayor Spanky because he's been such a champion of ours and we just love the opportunity to be in Church Point and serve the customers. So absolutely appreciate the business. And you know, look, we employ local people. You know we are a local company. All of our techs, all of our customer service reps, all of the management team and anybody else involved they're all local to the Acadiana area and we're excited about that and we want to. You know we want to retain that level of local service that so many companies have moved away from. So we're excited to bring some people into the call center, the customer service center, there in Churchport and we'll look forward to being there in person, you know, sometime in January.
Speaker 1:Awesome. What about you, Mayor? Would you like to add anything before we wrap up the podcast?
Speaker 3:I'd just like to say I appreciate all that the US is doing for the town of Churchport. They're putting us on the map and our future is looking very bright in Church Point because of it. So I'd just like to thank Michael and I'd like to thank the mayor and Ms Boulay and everyone else that was so helpful in getting this thing going, and I just want to say I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's a great thing here in the town of Church Point to have that reliable, speedy LUS fiber. So, michael, thanks for taking the time out and talking with us on Town Talk today. I'm sure we'll see you around the way, or maybe we'll see you whenever you open the doors at the customer center.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, mayor Spanky owes me lunch at one of the diners in town.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's right, that is correct.
Speaker 1:Guys, thanks for hanging out on the Town Talk podcast and remember, if you have any questions, you can email us towntalkquestions at gmailcom.