Interview Date: November 6, 2024
Interviewer: Stewart Schley
Abstract
Andy Parrott, CEO of Vyve Broadband, begins his interview describing recent efforts to rebuild Vyve-owned systems damaged by Hurricane Helene in multiple states. He then describes his start in the industry in Holland, Michigan, and how he fell in love with the industry. He outlines the challenges of deploying digital television and early broadband service where installers had to put networks cards inside customers’ computers. At several points in the interview Parrot discusses leadership, company culture, and sharing best practices. He describes the value of SCTE and NCTI for their educational functions and the unique collaborative nature of the cable industry. Parrott then describes Vyve’s goals to be the best broadband provider in the markets they serve and to exceed customers’ demands, how all of their employees have equity in the business, and the work environment after the pandemic. People and companies mentioned include Bill Spencer, Jeff DeMond, Jerry Kent, Jim Moser, Tony Werner, Charter Communications, Cequel III, Altice USA, Suddenlink, and Mega Broadband.
Interview Transcript
STEWART SCHLEY: Greetings, and welcome to this episode of the Hauser Oral History Series presented by Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center. It’s a very snowy November morning in 2024. I’m seated adjacent to an individual who’s got a 30-plus-year history in cable television, starting with riding shotgun in a technician truck, and now working as the CEO of Vyve Broadband, one of the prominent multiservice providers in the market today, Andy Parrott. Thank you for being with us.
ANDY PARROTT: Thank you, Stewart.
SCHLEY: I know we’re going to talk history, this is an oral history, but I want to whisk you right away into the present because something remarkable has been happening in your life. And it has to do with the trail of destruction levied by Hurricane Helene, which tracks many of your markets in Georgia, the Carolinas. Can you just plop me into your world and tell me what you’ve been doing lately?
PARROTT: Yeah, so last week coming back from Georgia, Helene had had gone through, and I must have done something wrong to upset the gods –
SCHLEY: I’m sorry —
PARROTT: — because it really curved on top of —
SCHLEY: The Vyve Broadband trail.
PARROTT: — a lot of the Vyve Broadband networks, unfortunately, all the way up into Tennessee. So from Georgia to South Carolina to North Carolina, all the way into Tennessee, we had devastation. So for the last 30 days, we’ve been tasked to restore those networks, communicate, obviously, the well-being of our employees, which is the first thing that we go and do. And if needed, we’ll put generators in their homes because we know that our people can’t be out there serving our customers if their own families aren’t being taken care of. So then we go through and we set up camps, war rooms, make sure we have the materials and supplies. And we brought in about 600 incremental technicians, and we’ve replaced over 820 miles of network in the last 30 days so that’s — you know?
SCHLEY: Yeah, yeah.
PARROTT: And if you stretch that out, that’s really going from Chicago all the way down to Dallas and building a network pole-to-pole that whole path.
SCHLEY: And in some cases, Andy, you’re doing it with utility poles that have been felled or are down, so how do you even make the physicality work?
PARROTT: So day one, day two, day three is going in and looking at our 9-1-1 centers, our first responders, our hospitals, cell towers that we’re providing. And our local crews would actually go out, put temporary fiber, and actually attach it to trees.
SCHLEY: Wow.
PARROTT: Lay it up mountainsides as we think of some of the areas and go, “How do we get these facilities on even though there’s no poles, there’s no power?” And there are tactics that are very creative that you would only do in a temporary situation. And understanding when the governor declares a state of emergency, we get to put some of the rules on pause, make sure we have height clearance. But we’re literally attaching or tying temporarily to trees, running it through paths and through mountains. Because if I can’t get the towers back on for our customers, and our customers being in Verizon’s and other carriers in a lot of communities that we’re the incumbent provider in. And then their first responders and their rescue, they lose communication. So how do I get that up for them, how do we get the hospitals up, and 9-1-1, et cetera? So we get very creative, and we prioritize what the most important things that we need to focus on are, and that’s the first 48 hours.
SCHLEY: It’s a good point to make. We’re not just the retail provider of services, but kind of the heartbeat of this infrastructure in some respects.
PARROTT: Correct, nearly a quarter of our business is all commercial businesses, and keeping them up, especially during these times when it becomes — in these devastations, it’s cash only. If we can’t get their credit card machines up, we can do other things to help those communities because ATMs run dry immediately. And some of the hurricanes I’ve worked in the past, one of the first things I’ve had to do was actually go in and deliver cash to our team and sometimes to our families because that’s the only way they’re able to get their supplies that they need.
SCHLEY: You’re the CEO of a pretty large company, what are you personally doing there? I mean, this is something that I presume you could instruct your employees to take care of, right?
PARROTT: So day one, it’s our own team. So everybody that’s on our team is family to us, and we want to make sure that — How are people’s homes, how are their families, what’s happening in there? So the first thing that’s important to me is visit with everyone that’s been impacted. In some scenarios, it’s going home to home. I’ve been in other hurricanes where the roofs are missing on people’s houses, how do we set them up in temp housing? Sometimes, I’ll work to get either temp housing or hotels for families. That’s going to be probably the first priority.
SCHLEY: Okay, physical shelter you’re talking about, just —
PARROTT: Physical shelter, just like the necessities, the basics. And I think that’s super important that the leader is the first one in and preferably the last one out. And then on top of that, setting up war rooms, making sure we have resources, we have the right people, and then bringing people in because you need a lot of help.
SCHLEY: You need a lot of human power.
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: You talked about 600 or so individuals who are working on these projects. How do you corral 600 people to converge in an instance like that?
PARROTT: Well, the benefit of having 30 years, you build really great relationships. I always joke that I’m one degree separated from anybody in this industry —
SCHLEY: That’s probably true.
PARROTT: — if not closer. So reaching out and finding people that have the resources and getting the commitments from them to come in as fast as possible. I’ve had to make phone calls. And the benefit over my integrity is if I call and say, “I need you here,” the paperwork, the PO, the supplies… Like I picked up the phone, called somebody in different states, and go, “I need this cable, I need strand, I need cable, I need lashing wires, I need pieces and parts.” And they go, “I’m going to put it on a truck for you right now. We’ll figure it out it out tomorrow because it’s a Saturday.” I’m calling on Saturday nights, Sunday nights friends that I know can help, and they say, “Andy, we got you.” And they know that my word is greater than a PO on a piece of paper, and we’ll figure it out tomorrow.
SCHLEY: You know what you need, lashing cable and other devices, because
you’ve been doing this a long time, right?
PARROTT: Right.
SCHLEY: So let’s do — I think the work you guys are doing is heroic, but let’s take you back to, I think, 1993. Is that when your cable career started?
PARROTT: Correct, correct. So a young teenager right out of high school. I shared this —
SCHLEY: This is Holland, Michigan?
PARROTT: This is Holland, Michigan. We’ve shared the story in the past. But looking for a summer job, and having a father that was, “You’re not going to take the summer off, son, you’ve –”
SCHLEY: There went that!
PARROTT: A strong work ethic has been passed down to me very well from my father. And he said, “Hey, there’s a place around the corner, the little cable shop has a Help Wanted sign,” and I said, “All right, I’ll head right over there.” And basically sat down and said that “I’m looking for a job,” and I told them everything I think they wanted to hear to me sure I got that job. Because my father’s like, “You better come home with a job,” so I’m like, “Please –”
SCHLEY: Hustle.
PARROTT: “– I’ll hustle for you, I’ll work hard,” and absolutely fell in love with it and — from day one. As you said riding shotgun is — there were no formal training programs at the time, you rode with the most senior tech, and they showed you the ropes and try —
SCHLEY: Are you climbing poles and the whole schmear?
PARROTT: So we’re climbing poles, absolutely. We’re doing things that are — back in the, like I said, ’93, a little bit different than they are today with some of the checks and balances that we have. But I got up there — and I’m going to share a story with you actually that’s pretty funny.
SCHLEY: Do.
PARROTT: They left me alone probably first day or two. And we — there was a project that was converting from beautification around Lake Michigan. And they sent me in there and said, “Andy, your job is to cut down all these service lines from these houses.”
SCHLEY: Lord.
PARROTT: And I said, “Okay,” “And then just roll them up, it’s okay, we’re going to — we’ve got this underground network that we’ve put in.”
SCHLEY: Oh, I see, okay.
PARROTT: Right?
SCHLEY: Okay.
PARROTT: So it’s okay. And they leave me there, they leave me with a ladder, and the tech that was there just drove off and said, “You just go house to house.” The tech comes back that evening, looks at me, and I’m all proud because I think I got every single service line off this house, all the homes along the beach. And he looked at me devastated, he’s like, “What did you do?” I said, “I cut down every service line that you asked me to.” He goes, “Not the phone lines!”
SCHLEY: Oh, no, I knew it. I knew that was coming.
PARROTT: So anyway, it was — you know, I thought, oh, maybe this is going to be a short career for me after all.
SCHLEY: You didn’t get terminated though.
PARROTT: I didn’t get terminated. They go, “I think we’re okay, because I think they’re plan– I think you might have just done them a favor because they’re moving underground as well.” So I was like — and it was a seasonal place, nobody was there, so…
SCHLEY: But there’s a sort of poetry to that story, because in the early days of cable, it was kind of figure it out as you go along, right —
PARROTT: It was, correct.
SCHLEY: — you know?
PARROTT: Yeah, absolutely.
SCHLEY: Yeah, what was the company?
PARROTT: So the company would have been a very early predecessor of Charter. It was CTAC/Cable Michigan, picked up — in I think by ’94, it was acquired by Charter. So when Charter was first starting and being blessed to work under Jerry Kent and be on that path is — that was a brand-new company —
SCHLEY: Yeah, absolutely.
PARROTT: –trying to figure things out as well.
SCHLEY: Oh, I think now the largest video provider, subscription video provider in the country leapfrogging over some other companies. What did you love about it? You said you fell in love with it.
PARROTT: I fell in love with the variety, which I think was great, people. Every moment, it was different, you don’t know what you’re going to walk into when you’re knocking on the door, and you’re there to solve problems. You’re there to either provide a service or remedy an impairment, so you can actually make friends pretty easy with —
SCHLEY: Right, you’re the fixer —
PARROTT: — the community because I’m here. There were moments where people were very upset, and I go, “Respectfully, I’m the guy that’s here to fix it so,” and then you can see it instantly change and go, “You know what, you are that person.”
SCHLEY: I need you, yes.
PARROTT: Yeah, “So why don’t we work together and see if I can get this going for you, and then we can have this conversation?”
SCHLEY: And, Andy, what was our product in 1993, what were you working on?
PARROTT: So it was video only back in ’93, and it was even before a digital video. So this was analog 330 [MHz] systems, 550 at the most, I think was probably the most advanced systems that we had.
SCHLEY: Which gives me, what, 60 or 70 channels?
PARROTT: No, not even that —
SCHLEY: No? Okay.
PARROTT: — not even that. I think when I started, there were 36 channels.
SCHLEY: Okay, okay, sure.
PARROTT: And then filters for HBO.
SCHLEY: Where did you go from there? I know that you earned a couple of degrees, I think in the computer science area, while you were still working, right?
PARROTT: So the fun fact was — is I was enrolled to go to Indiana Wesleyan, and my parents had said, you know, I have to go get my degree. And, at the time, I let my cable company know that I was working for, that I was leaving, and said, “I’d like to come back next summer,” and they’re like, “Andy, you can’t leave, you are — you’re great at this, what if we give you a raise?” “Yeah, no, I can’t do that,” “Or what if we give you a promotion?” “Ah, I really can’t do that.” “All right, what if we pay for your school and you go –”
SCHLEY: Bingo!
PARROTT: “– and study?” I was like — it wasn’t even bingo at that point. Now, he gave me something to think about, but, yeah, probably still not. It wasn’t until I was doing an install, and it was at a mobile home near the office. And I’m drilling through the floor and pushing a line in and looking up and seeing that the customer just had hung up their degree from Indiana Wesleyan, the same school. And we started a conversation about how great was the school. I’m starting– I’ll be there next week basically, I’ve already got my roommate, I got my classes, I’m all in. And, at the point, the customer is like, “Hey, it was great, I love it. How do you like what you’re doing?” “Oh, I love what I do.” He goes, “Are they hiring?” I go, “Matter of fact, they are hiring because I’m leaving,” and he goes, “Well, can I ask what you’re making?” I share what I’m making, and it’s like, “So where do I go to apply?” And I’m just like, it was that moment [snaps fingers] that goes, why would I go away for four years —
SCHLEY: Giving up my path.
PARROTT: — and give up this, just what I believe is going to be a grand career in a great industry? And I’m the youngest person in the — out of the whole crew, and I’m thinking, well, how further ahead in life would I be if I stayed, continued to work, went to school after-hours, weekends, nights, figure everything out? I went home, told my parents, and they said that was the biggest mistake I’d ever make in my life.
SCHLEY: Really, really?
PARROTT: For sure, for sure, yeah. Nobody stays with their first job out of high school, they got to figure out what they want to do in life, let alone what type of degree they want when they go to school. And you’re telling me you’ve got this figured out? This industry hasn’t been out long — hadn’t been around very long, you know.
SCHLEY: Right, cable TV.
PARROTT: Well, yeah, why would you want to limit yourself to something that’s just providing video to customers’ homes?
SCHLEY: But you won the argument.
PARROTT: It took years, yeah, for sure. But ultimately, I think I won my father over not too long ago and said, “Yeah, son, I think you probably made the right choice.”
SCHLEY: Andy, can you describe what that –? You talked about a digital conversion from analog distribution of video signals to digital. What were we doing, what did that mean, and what did it entail from your vantage point?
PARROTT: When you think about the larger the televisions, I mean, they were big tube TVs, there was no flat panels, that didn’t exist.
SCHLEY: True, right.
PARROTT: The quality and the capacity and the ability to compress the video and provide more within the available bandwidth, so we could provide an influx of channels in the same space. We can provide — yeah, there was no high-def at that time, so a digital signal, which was significantly better than anything anybody had seen in the history before it.
SCHLEY: At that point, right.
PARROTT: This is even just before probably — I think before satellite really took off as well, so it was a great product. It provided additional choices, more premiums and features that customers loved. And we were heroes going in and converting customers from an analog signal to a digital signal.
SCHLEY: What did you have to do at the premise level? I needed a new set-top box?
PARROTT: You did have to have a set-top box, and that was it. There was — you know, and like I said, these were DCT2000s, right, Motorola —
SCHLEY: The early generation —
PARROTT: General Instrument back then, I mean, that was a game changer for us.
SCHLEY: And, again, this predated the modem revolution that was still a few years in the future.
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: You went from that operation to where? What was the next career step for you?
PARROTT: Well, from a — obviously from, you know, digging trenches and burying lines and hooking cable up and the lowest rung you can on the ladder. Service tech, system tech, maintenance, headends, just really understanding the business, to being the on-call tech, the ones managing and helping with upgrades, to where you’re working the last one in, first one out or vice versa, first one in, last one out.
SCHLEY: First one in, right.
PARROTT: Always on call and just — so it’s drilled into me, a work ethic that I think continues today. That sometimes, you have to put in those 80-hour weeks, and sometimes you have to do things when there’s a storm and when things happen. But I always also told people, I think it’s like dog years where I get seven years of cable experience in one year for all the different things that we had to do back then. And it’s been extremely beneficial today, because there’s not necessarily any job that’s here in this industry that I haven’t done myself or am not willing to do myself. And that’s been super important to have that understanding.
SCHLEY: It’s one of, interestingly, two management precepts you shared with me in an early — earlier interview. Never ask someone to do a job you aren’t willing to do or haven’t already done yourself, right? What’s behind that thinking?
PARROTT: Oh, the culture right now is “I understand, so I’m going to set you up for success.” So as a leader, and I truly believe that you look at an organization chart, for example, and it’s always like the pyramid where the CEO is on top. And in my world, it’s the triangle is upside down, right? The CEO — it’s the CEO and anybody else works for the person above them.
SCHLEY: Nice, right.
PARROTT: And our job is, in this industry, is we work for the customer, right?
SCHLEY: That’s right.
PARROTT: So either (a) you’re working for the customer, and if you’re not face-to-face, voice-to-voice with the customer, that means you’re working for the person that is face-to-face with the customer.
SCHLEY: So you’re literally inverting that pyramid.
PARROTT: You have to invert it, and we have to give them the tools to be successful. And I always say — and Jerry, Jerry Kent, a great mentor of mine, trained me to say the three most important words to be successful are “I need help.” And getting people to acknowledge and not just, you know, shift the responsibility over or not follow through, pretend that you know what you’re doing is worse than just going, “Hey, I don’t have what I need.”
SCHLEY: Sometimes it’s hard for people to acknowledge that.
PARROTT: It’s extremely hard for people to admit that they need help and be comfortable.
SCHLEY: Suddenlink was the company that I think you migrated to after the Charter experience?
PARROTT: After Charter. So Charter, I got to go on a nice tour from Michigan to Texas through Charter and worked through the rank and files through that whole organization. And then shortly after, Jerry Kent had left Charter. I was given an invite to join a Cequel III, which is still running today.
SCHLEY: That was Jerry’s new company?
PARROTT: That was Jerry’s new company right after Charter. And Jerry was, Arthur Andersen and Cencom, and that whole journey that you guys can see his oral history on this, you know, click the link below.
SCHLEY: Absolutely, yeah.
PARROTT: There is a story about his journey, which is fantastic. So to be one of the original members to join that start-up has been a game changer for me. Because I just really looked at him as a mentor and being able to get the call and join that group —
SCHLEY: Sure.
PARROTT: –and from an early day. And putting all these assets together, going into rural communities has really helped me there with the launch of high-speed data, phone, integrating them together, ultimately creating Suddenlink through multiple acquisitions, 20 percent of Cox at the time when they were publicly traded to give them the capital to go private. We bought about 250,000 subscribers from Charter back then, too, and about seven other small acquisitions, USA Media and —
SCHLEY: Dispersed, Andy, geographically, were they…?
PARROTT: Oh, yes.
SCHLEY: They weren’t — it wasn’t a clustered company.
PARROTT: It was — we had, at one point in time, 800 headends.
SCHLEY: Oh my —
PARROTT: Right, so yes, from Jim Faircloth’s systems in Truckee, California, that taught me how to climb mountains and haul up gear and got a good lesson in cloud dispersions and what happens when the sky changes and you’re doing the digital transition and out there hanging antennas on — actually on a base of a helicopter pad. And I’m climbing this mountain with, I think a local that’s part mountain goat, and realizing I don’t have the oxygen to barely continue.
SCHLEY: Okay, so you found one thing you couldn’t do in the cable business.
PARROTT: Well, I climbed up there, and I — by the time — we had just done that acquisition, and I’m up there in the mountain getting to the top of what’s like Ward Peaks, so I’m more north of 9,000 feet up in the air.
SCHLEY: Wow.
PARROTT: I’m like –you know. And I get up there and I mean, picture this. I’ve got my lunch in one pocket, toilet paper in the other pocket because you’re up there for the entire day. I hate to tell you these stories. And we’re towing equipment to change to the digital transition for off-airs. And I get to the top of the mountain, and I see this shack that’s up on top, and there’s two doors, right? You have a door at the bottom and about 10, 12 feet up is another door, so in case the snow comes in, you’re not trapped, so… And then I get up there, and I see this helicopter pad, and I was like — it takes me minutes to ask like, “Whose helicopter pad?”
SCHLEY: — right.
PARROTT: The guy says to me, and he goes, “Well, boss, that’s your helicopter pad.” So apparently, the FAA —
SCHLEY: And now we’re talking —
PARROTT: — there was an FAA like, where’s our helicopter? Oh, I don’t think you have one of those, so that was it.
SCHLEY: All in the name of serving the ultimate customer, right?
PARROTT: But to be there, and to be boots– I always say I always like coming in with my boots on and being out there learning the products in no matter what capacity or what role I’m in. I love volunteering; I love jumping in.
SCHLEY: I can tell, yeah.
PARROTT: And if you don’t know it, I mean the best way to know it is let me get in there, get my hands on it with you, and then down the road, I can share that. And I think that’s super important.
SCHLEY: Right, and it cultivates, I think, enormous respect for the technician community, you know, —
PARROTT: For sure.
SCHLEY: — in the industry.
PARROTT: — yeah.
SCHLEY: — because you’ve been one, you’ve done it. You mentioned fleetingly, but I want to dig into it a little bit, high-speed modem and telephone service. When those products began to come to the fore, that really changed the character of the cable industry, economically, product set-wise. What was that introductory period like for you?
PARROTT: Well, you were a hero to the community, right? So you think about the technology at the time, 128K was the speeds —
SCHLEY: Oh gosh, I remember —
PARROTT: — you know, 512 I think was the fastest at the time. I’m putting network interface cards in motherboards because they’re —
SCHLEY: Of people’s computers.
PARROTT: So back then you had to take the computer, you had to open it up. You actually had to have your Windows 95 CD disc with the drivers, and then the network card drivers, and ISDN cards that could do I think 10 meg at the time and go, nothing can require more than that. And going, I can’t picture anything being — you’ll have 512, it’s amazing.
SCHLEY: Side by side.
PARROTT: And then just seeing people just, it was like Christmas morning every time you did there. And they went from a dial-up connection to an always-on broadband connection at the time. And remember, a page would load, and you’d sit there —
SCHLEY: Oh, I still have the nightmares.
PARROTT: — your phone’s busy, and you’re just watching, you’re watching like a bit at a time just going across the screen.
SCHLEY: The idea of multimedia was not even conceivable really, video or audio, you know?
PARROTT: Yeah, and technology drives the need for bandwidth at the time, too. So think about Napster —
SCHLEY: Video games —
PARROTT: — these other gaming things that were happening now. And then Netflix when that came out, remember, it was only mailing DVDs.
SCHLEY: I remember.
PARROTT: There was no over the top, there is no — the introduction of that and going, if you don’t have a cable modem, you’re not able to have any of these services.
SCHLEY: Did it just spread like wildfire, word of mouth, embrace of cable modem service?
PARROTT: For sure, oh, absolutely. So first, we went back and we would go to get our A+ certifications on really knowing what we’re doing when we’re opening up people’s PCs and —
SCHLEY: Well, that’s the thing, Andy, that you have to have some degree of faith in your cable guy to let she or him take apart your —
PARROTT: That’s right —
SCHLEY: — IBM PC or whatever —
PARROTT: For sure, it is. Yeah, this is a big investment for them, and we’re in there tearing these things apart. And there’d be a waiting list, I mean, the buzz is so great, and saying, “Unfortunately, it’s going to take us two weeks or more to get you an appointment” because there is limited capacity of the skill set back then.
SCHLEY: And an installation could take a while, right? Hours?
PARROTT: I wouldn’t say hours, but you would allocate some time in the — at the beginning because, you know, especially working on a PC and not having the right driver or asking them, “Hey, do you have the key to your software that you have? Because Windows is asking for your –”
SCHLEY: Stuff happens.
PARROTT: “– your 16-digit key.”
SCHLEY: Right, right.
PARROTT: In order for that driver to be loaded, it was just — you know? And you spent a lot of time with the customer, and then you educated them. Like a lot of them had never used email, you’d set up an email account. You’d have a work order and say, “Ah, I see, I got Stewert, big dog at this –” you know?
SCHLEY: Yeah.
PARROTT: And going, “How do I set this up, what do you want your password to be?” I mean, we would walk them through that process.
SCHLEY: Stuff that today is just secondhand nature —
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: — take it for granted kind of stuff. But you were socializing the customers to a way, a brand-new experience. And what you just mentioned is interesting. You needed a new and different skill set, right, from your own employees?
PARROTT: For sure.
SCHLEY: And how did you make that happen? Either in concert with SCTE, for instance or with the corporate shop, how did you cultivate this new breed, if you will?
PARROTT: Well, I would say two big players, obviously, SCTE and even NCTI. They both adapted quickly. I remember, I think back then, NCTI was really more of the textbook, the learn the process, learn the installation practices. I told Stacey [Slaughter] the other day, I said, “I still –” I said, “I’m an NCTI installer back then and –” you know. But then through SCTE as well, as you know, I’m a huge advocate and champion for them.
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
PARROTT: And how that really changed the industry and changed my involvement because of the challenges that we’re having. And back then in the early ’90s, there’s — just like there are so many — there’s over a thousand private home companies or a thousand cable companies back then, and the challenges that we’re having were limited to my network being three, four other people that I could talk to. And then, all of a sudden, we’re in these settings where you have TCI, you have all these other operators that are in the same bubble and having the same challenges and being able to share best practices and going, “How are you fixing this, and what are you coming across?” So, SCTE, I think, really made the community of the industry come together. And that’s where those 30-year-plus relationships still today —
SCHLEY: Of course.
PARROTT: — of being able to say, “I’m able to reach out to a lot of people, a lot of other operators.” Even though we’ve never worked together, but we’ve partnered together, or we’ve been in chapters, events together and we’ve really gotten to know each other.
SCHLEY: And that’s part of the fabric of the cable business, I think. And you did mention, we had a lot of cable companies around, and we went through various waves of M&A and consolidation, and I think you ended up working with Altice–
PARROTT: That’s right.
SCHLEY: — as they acquired Suddenlink.
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: So when was that, and what was that like?
PARROTT: I believe that was December 2014, with Patrick Drahi coming in and doing the acquisition. So Suddenlink was the first US acquisition.
SCHLEY: And by now, Andy, how big was Suddenlink? Was it a million customers?
PARROTT: Yeah, for sure. It was maybe 1.4 million subscribers. And then coming in and getting to understand just different cultures, working with Portugal labs and learning, working with a lot of, a lot of people that just had different ideas or different practices. Some really allowed us to challenge ourselves. So I would say I’ve learned a lot of good practices, and then there were some that just didn’t work out very well and —
SCHLEY: Maybe we have a better way to do that —
PARROTT: — yeah. And the encouragement is, I think I’m watching what Dennis [Mathew] is doing back at Altice. Today, I’m super, super proud of — you know?
SCHLEY: Yeah.
PARROTT: Because it’s — you know, it’s still kind of your baby when you’ve been —
SCHLEY: Of course —
PARROTT: — part of these things —
SCHLEY: — right.
PARROTT: — and — you know —
SCHLEY: Watching it grow —
PARROTT: — and you watch somebody else operate it and see what they’re doing in some of those communities. And just excited to see a lot of investment back into those markets with some of the changes. But it’s been a unique journey. I spent about four years with Altice USA.
SCHLEY: And that was a different market profile suddenly, right? I mean, suddenly, a little more rural and isolated —
PARROTT: Correct, correct.
SCHLEY: — Altice.
PARROTT: Because six months later, they did the acquisition of Cablevision —
SCHLEY: Oh, that’s right.
PARROTT: — and trying to put Cablevision —
SCHLEY: Right, New York City —
PARROTT: — and yeah, the practices here don’t necessarily apply to rural Texas or out there in northern Arizona, and some of these other challenges that — you know? There was — the word “healthy tension” —
SCHLEY Healthy tension.
PARROTT: — was brought out a lot to try and push and challenge the status quo, which I and many others embraced.
SCHLEY: Are all about it, yeah, yeah.
PARROTT: And let’s go find creative ways to do things differently and —
SCHLEY: Well, I mean, one of the — we talked about the precept of never assign a job you wouldn’t be willing to do or have done. But another principle that you talked about was you manage — you can say it better than I have but — or that I can, but manage so that you can leave your environment and it still works.
PARROTT: Correct, correct.
SCHLEY: What’s that all about?
PARROTT: A great mentor of mine pulled me aside the first time I became a supervisor, and his name is Jim Moser. This was on the side of a highway, he pulls over and he says, “Before we go in, I’ve got to tell you something.” He goes, “Andy, this is going to go against everything you think you know,” and he goes, “You’re going to have to create an environment where you’re not needed in order for you to be successful. Your job is to not work for this team. This team needs to have all the tools and resources and knowledge, and you have to create an environment where they don’t need you. Everything that’s on your plate is being delegated.” He goes, “And you’re there to help coach, mentor, train, support,” and then he goes, “Things will happen, things will go sideways. It’ll go off the rails, and you have to put it back on. But the goal is to always push it, so you’re not locked in and having dependencies that prevent you from going and expanding in your career and doing other things. Otherwise, you’re going to find yourself kind of stuck.” And that resonated, and I think it’s still true in everything I’ve done. It is my job is to allow everybody to do what they need to do, how to do it. I work for you. And my team here at Vyve, they all have my cell number, I don’t have a separate number, I make sure everybody knows how to get a hold of me. And more importantly, the message is, you need something, like I work for you, you don’t work for me, let’s go figure out what you need to do to be successful.
SCHLEY: Do they call you? Do you get those calls?
PARROTT: Oh, yes, I do, yes, I do, yes, I do. And just before we started, I set my phone aside, so I apologize if anybody’s watching this and you’re calling me during this window.
SCHLEY: We’re not available for this 60 minutes.
PARROTT: I will get back to you immediately.
SCHLEY: But it’s such a North Star, that objective. And when Jim Moser taught you that, when was that? I’m just curious.
PARROTT: So this is still early ’90s. So you remember I was still early —
SCHLEY: So that lived with you for a long time.
PARROTT: — in my early twenties, and then carried that throughout. So I’ve been blessed to have just fantastic mentors, and then to build the culture. So one thing I did grab — well, I still have this, and this was [pulls card from pocket] — this is actually from Cequel III and Charter had a version. This is — I’m going to give Jerry Kent and Howard Wood props for what they had, this was their culture card. And I remember reading this as a young technician and going, the things that are on here, being honesty, integrity, family first, and just the knowledge and skills being corporate citizenship. The things that were true back then are still true today. None of these changes. The other thing I love is they would say, “Apply this not just to what you do during the day and at work, but apply this to your life.”
SCHLEY: Nice, yeah.
PARROTT: And it absolutely works. At Vyve, one of the things we do is when we do these — we try and do things that were best practices, and what I love is — Gary Shorman, Travis Kohlrus, we did an acquisition of Eagle Broadband based out of Hays, Kansas. And they had these little challenge coins. [holds it in his hand] It was 100-0, 100 percent responsibility, zero excuses, and we call this out, and on the back, it’s “our community connected.” So these were reminders of just feel it and say you have empowerment, you have 100 percent responsibility, but you also have empowerment. The other thing I love about Vyve is we’ve given every single person equity in the business.
SCHLEY: I did not know that.
PARROTT: Yeah, so everybody is an owner.
SCHLEY: Love it.
PARROTT: Everybody has skin in the game. So we want everybody to be entrepreneurial in their mindset. We want everybody to understand every customer is important to them. Our funds are from private equity that are really coming from pension plans, so, so we use —
SCHLEY: You’re entrusted.
PARROTT: We’re entrusted to make really smart decisions and be fiduciary because it goes to the firemen’s fund, it goes to the teachers’ pensions. You know, there’s not one person sitting in a corner office that’s focusing on that. So we want to make sure that everybody understands, we want to do the right things. We’re in this to take care of the customer because if you don’t take care of them, nothing else matters. We try and keep our decisions as close as possible. That’s why I’m in the field as much as I am.
SCHLEY: Apparently, right.
PARROTT: And we want our leaders to also be there. So there really is — there’s no tower anywhere, there’s no central facility. I’m in one location, everybody on my team is in different parts of the country, and we try and stay as close to the customer as possible.
SCHLEY: And talk about your organization with Vyve. How many people are working for you, how many customers do you serve, whatever metric you think is important?
PARROTT: Yeah, so we serve — we’re in 16 states today — so from the Carolinas in Georgia, from the storms obviously, all the way to California and Washington and a lot of places in between. We’ve got three regions then try and have regional structures that they’re not too far separated from having the teams and having good collaborations and good competition. You know, I stack rank our teams, and —
SCHLEY: Keep them hopping —
PARROTT: — and we smack talk amongst each other in a good, healthy way that we love. And everybody’s super competitive, but they’re competitive to make a difference. So our passings are still going to be less than a million passings, but it’s very rural, in a lot of rural communities, but a lot of campuses like Clemson University and others —
SCHLEY: Okay, nice.
PARROTT: — that are nice, tier-two communities across the country. And on top of that, like I said, we — we’re a data first company. So as you think about video and you analyze —
SCHLEY: Your name is not Vyve Cable, it’s —
PARROTT: It’s Broadband.
SCHLEY: — Vyve Broadband.
PARROTT: That’s right. So we associate ourselves with being the best broadband service choice in any of the communities that we serve.
SCHLEY: But was that, Andy, the precept from the very start?
PARROTT: It was when all this was put together. We embraced it. We said that the video investment is — our crystal ball kind of laid out what’s happening, and we were able to —
SCHLEY: You saw streaming video, for instance —
PARROTT: We did —
SCHLEY: — cord cutting.
PARROTT: — we saw that. We wanted to be the provider of choice. If you want to stream, we make it easy for you. Like you said, you go to our website, and you’ll see that we even have relationships for video solutions that aren’t even our own video solutions —
SCHLEY: I saw it, yes.
PARROTT: — that embrace streaming services, and we’re okay with that for sure.
SCHLEY: The other big sort of epochal transition has been there’s a lot more face-to-face, head-to-head competition in this business.
PARROTT: There is, there is.
SCHLEY: Why, what happened?
PARROTT: Well, there’s going to be, I think, or there is, a third provider that’s coming into these markets to get their share. And so you’re going to have the legacy, telco, Ma Bell, if you will.
SCHLEY: Yeah, right.
PARROTT: You’re going to have the MSO.
SCHLEY: The cable guy.
PARROTT: And now you’ve got this new entrants from the fiber to the home. A lot of money, a lot of grants, as you know.
SCHLEY: Yeah, absolutely.
PARROTT: They’re going out for world broadband connectivity. A lot of private equity that’s being put into it, into the infrastructure funds to be the first to fiber, so there are a lot of tactics there. But I tell our team, we have a lot of fiber as well, and we’re in that game.
SCHLEY: Sure, right.
PARROTT: And we’re very fiber deep across our networks. But if I’m in the market and somebody says to me, “Andy, how do we compete with fiber because they’re talking about symmetrical speeds?”
SCHLEY: You’re talking about fiber all the way to the premise of the customer?
PARROTT: All the way to the house. And we’re doing DOCSIS 3.1, we’re doing mid-splits, we’re doing other things. But I remind our team, I said, “The reason the cable industry wasn’t focused on symmetrical, not because they didn’t have the capacity of the technology, because the customer demand.” So even today, if you’re streaming Zoom and you’re sharing high-def, you’re likely not even getting close to 20 meg. And so I bring this up, and I said, “Like if you went and saw the coolest car in Road & Track, and let’s just say it’s a Corvette ZR1 or whatever, it’s going to have all the specs, and like, yeah, people are really excited about it.” I said, “Show me in any spec sheet on any vehicle how fast those cars go in reverse.”
SCHLEY: I knew you were going to say that.
PARROTT: You knew what I said about that.
SCHLEY: Yeah, yeah.
PARROTT: And it was like, you know, I’ve got six gears of forward, but I only got one gear in reverse —
SCHLEY: You’re talking about the upstream path of the —
PARROTT: — because it’s not needed. And we try and remind people and say, “Really, we just have to be the best. We have to always provide broadband that exceeds the customer’s demand or any device that they have in the house,” which we’re absolutely able to do. We’re at multi-gig. I even have networks that have 8-gig.
SCHLEY: Wow.
PARROTT: So, obviously, a 10-gig solution, but we’re selling 8-gig to provide more than what we’re offering. And customers are like, “Well, why aren’t I seeing a difference between five gig, eight gig?” I’m like, “Nobody can send you anything, you can’t process it, I mean, it’s like, I can give you a Bugatti –”
SCHLEY: — you’re not the throttle point of —
PARROTT: — but that’s not it at all. And we just want to say, let’s have great Wi-Fi. So we embrace mesh networks, I mean, that’s one of our big things that we’re doing is go, let’s have a network that’s always on. Let’s make sure our network exceeds the capacity of anybody’s devices in their house, and let’s have Wi-Fi coverage and features that are greater than — you know. Because that’s ultimately, if I’m having connectivity, it’s not the quality of my connection. It may be that I’m in the corner, I’m in the backyard, I’m in the basement, so we’re really trying to solve that as well in homes and just being the best.
SCHLEY: It’s hard for me to think of what it would take to dislodge me from my trusted provider. I mean, it’s a pretty sticky product, right, you know?
PARROTT: Correct, correct.
SCHLEY: And if you’re doing your job.
PARROTT: If we’re doing our job, and that’s why “our community connected” is on the other side, and that’s why we still have all local stores in our communities. We hire local, we focus on bringing in great people. Over 10 percent of our employees are veterans. I mean there are a lot of things we do intentionally to be a partner in the communities, at the parades, in the chambers. I mean, we —
SCHLEY: So it’s a competitive advantage to be local?
PARROTT: It is, very much, and to be empowered to do things different. Because what the community here needs isn’t necessarily the same needs of the community on the other side of the country, so one size doesn’t fit all. That’s why we also empower our teams to do different packaging, different pricing, different solutions, different technologies based on what the needs and the demands are of those communities.
SCHLEY: What did you see happening in the telecom market in general that made the Vyve opportunity look really compelling to you originally?
PARROTT: The most exciting thing is we believe that we could provide more, so we interconnected it. These were a lot of individual, circuit-provided, back-office solutions where we could come in and lower latency provide bandwidth upgrades. So, at the time of acquisition, there was — you could probably — if I took my shoes off, I could probably count how many gig customers. Over 60 percent of all the customers the last two years straight of all of our connects take a gig or higher.
SCHLEY: Wow.
PARROTT: So we have significantly changed what we’re able to provide, and we’ve invested just millions of dollars in upgrading these networks, upgrading the CPE, providing high-capacity bandwidth into these communities that were, I believe, underserved.
SCHLEY: You talked about still getting plenty of mileage from the DOCSIS infrastructure.
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: Will that last forever, or what’s your view on the path forward?
PARROTT: I believe it will last for the remainder of my career in this industry for sure because with DOCSIS 4, just what we’re doing with DOCSIS 3.1 today with our mid-splits, the ability and the capacity. And then we’ve also partnered with companies like TiVo to take our video off of our network and have a complete IP solution. So if I take all the video off of our network, and I open that up all for bandwidth capacity, I mean we’re in there with —
SCHLEY: You got plenty.
PARROTT: — we’re in there with plenty. And I don’t see anything on the road map today that’s going to exceed the capacity of what our networks can do for the next decade.
SCHLEY: Like multiroom holograms 20 years from now, who knows?
PARROTT: Correct, yeah.
SCHLEY: I mean —
PARROTT: — you put the multiroom hologram, the boxes that you see, some really cool things out there. There is an opportunity, but it’s not — there’s nothing around the corner that I’m seeing that’s going to exceed the capacity of an HFC network.
SCHLEY: What’s fun about what you do besides the —
PARROTT: What’s fun?
SCHLEY: — equity and the paycheck and you’re making a living, but, yeah, what do you love?
PARROTT: I love the relationships.
SCHLEY: For sure.
PARROTT: My best friends, my family are all plugged into this industry in some way, shape, or form. Boy, I was — on my drive over here, Zenita Henderson, if you’re out there, you know, who’s the biggest hugger in the industry —
SCHLEY: And that she is.
PARROTT: — and just getting there and going, “Hey, Andy, you got a minute?” And she’s like, “Oh, thank you so very –” and I go, “Of course, anything I can do to help you,” and just you hear the smile over the phone. Because you just have this network of just thousands of people that are great people to know, great people to partner with. So that gives me a lot of joy.
SCHLEY: I always wondered if that’s perhaps not unique, but very much essential to the cable experience. If you were in the footwear or the shoe industry or you’re in the banking industry, I don’t know if you have that same kind of community, you know?
PARROTT: Oh, I can’t imagine. And people from outside, like Coke’s not calling Pepsi asking for help.
SCHLEY: That’s what I’m talking — that was what I’m getting to.
PARROTT: For sure.
SCHLEY: Right.
PARROTT: But I can pick up the phone. We had a headend burn down at the beginning of the year in Alabama, and I had to change some things that we were using HITS and going — you know. But I had to get some new hardware, we changed some IPs, and it’s like, “Well, you’re going to have to put a process in, you need to do this.” I’m like, “No,” and then being able to like hit up Tony Werner and go —
SCHLEY: Yeah, that’s amazing.
PARROTT: –“Tony, man, I need a favor, I’m stuck,” and it’s on a weekend. It’s like on a Friday night, and it’s at six o’clock at night, and then — and having people just come in and go, “All right, well, I got you some resources, we’re able to get the video and we’re able to change some things.” Otherwise, let’s wait until Monday at best, and I was like, “Help me get –”
SCHLEY: Tony, for those who don’t know, the former president of product and technology from Comcast, a longtime CTO in this business —
PARROTT: That’s right.
SCHLEY: — a big guy in the cable tech space.
PARROTT: For sure.
SCHLEY: You mentioned Tony. I love the story about Jim Moser, I think if I have that right?
PARROTT: Correct.
SCHLEY: Yeah, who else looms large in your vista of influencers?
PARROTT: Oh well, on this current chapter, I got to give Phil Spencer a lot of credit for reaching out to me and saying, “Hey, Andy.” I was still over at Altice, and he goes, “We’re putting something special together, and we’d love for you to be part of this. We’re going back, we pressed hands, we put boots on, we need people to go out and take world broadband and tie it up, what do you say?” And he has been fantastic in preparing me to go from the level I was in to being the CEO today. I wouldn’t be here without him.
SCHLEY: Is Phil the founder and/or chairman of Vyve or –?
PARROTT: He was the founder of Mega Broadband.
SCHLEY: Of Mega, your sort of parent –?
PARROTT: Yeah, yeah. And you talked about Jeff DeMond. I mean, he and Andy Kober probably were the two founders of Vyve. So Vyve was an acquisition back in 2019. And Vyve had just finished doing a rebrand from, I think, James Cable and Allegiance and some others from their acquisitions. And they put it together very well, and we just wanted to piggyback on the brand that they had deployed.
SCHLEY: Sure.
PARROTT: And then take Northland Communications, which was an acquisition of the Eagle Broadband, as I said. We’ve done a few others since then, but we’ve just put it under the Vyve brand at that time.
SCHLEY: Andy, the CEO is — you’re at the top of the food chain. Did you ever worry that you’d lose your boots-on-the-ground connection to the business?
PARROTT: No, no.
SCHLEY: And you haven’t, so —
PARROTT: There is no playbook, you know?
SCHLEY: Okay, okay.
PARROTT: So there’s no — nobody gave me a book and said, “Here’s how to be a CEO.” And I’ve had — like I said, I’ve had great mentors, and I’ve watched great CEOs, and I’ve also watched leaders that weren’t so great.
SCHLEY: Understood.
PARROTT: And you can learn just as much of what not to do, and the benefit is remembering. I always tell people, when I make decisions, I want to put my hard hat on, what would the tech in me, what would the tech support rep think, what would the warehouse think with these decisions? And I empower anybody. I said, “If you’re not understanding a decision or something that we’re rolling out, call me. Let’s talk about it, and I’ll try and get a perspective that I may have missed from you, and you can hopefully get a perspective from the view I have.” But I tell everybody, “I’m sitting in the cheap seats, so think about the stadium and we’re talking about UM and —
SCHLEY: Of course, the big house —
PARROTT: — you take the power up there. Like I’m up against the furthest away, and that’s one of the disadvantages you have is I’m not in the home talking to the customers. I’m not answering the phone talking to people that are looking for service or needing support. So I have to have a dependency, and I have to have a channel of communication where people are comfortable to say, “I think we’re not doing something we — that I believe we could be doing better.”
SCHLEY: Two operational questions. One, how are we, and collectively but your company, handling, you just mentioned customer contact? Do we still have big call centers staffed with a bunch of people, or how does that all work?
PARROTT: [laughs] So in 2019, we had three care centers. We had one in Hays, Kansas, one in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and one in Corsicana, Texas. I was even outsourcing our NOC operations. We were going to stand up a full network operations center as well, so I’m looking for space in early spring of 2020.
SCHLEY: Okay, oh, okay.
PARROTT: And as you know, we also were doing a lot of consolidation. We had just launched a cellphone device that you could answer calls off a computer. We just worked on this new — we just deployed teams, this integration, we put all that together as if there was a crystal ball to say what was just about to come up. And, obviously, the pandemic had hit in spring of 2020, and immediately, and fortunately, we had our — we prepared not because we knew this was coming, but we had the technology in place to where we could send everybody home. Now, the two things you couldn’t get at the beginning of the pandemic was apparently toilet paper and laptop computers.
SCHLEY: Okay, I remember those days.
PARROTT: So if you remember that? So we got to a point where it’s like, how are we going to get our agents’ home? So we actually boxed up desktop computers and monitors —
SCHLEY: No way.
PARROTT: And we would drive to people’s homes, and we’d get the ethernet, we’d get them on broadband connections, and we’d actually set home offices up. And then at the time, we just said, “Eventually maybe we’ll come back.” Well, we’ve not done that.
SCHLEY: That’s wild.
PARROTT: So you’d see a lot of companies that — so two of the care centers were on leases, so I let those leases. The other one, I ended up looking at putting a NOC together. So I ended up using the care center —
SCHLEY: Okay, for the NOC?
PARROTT: — in Corsicana for the NOC– and even today, the NOC is virtual. So we are virtually —
SCHLEY: And it works.
PARROTT: And it works extremely well. As I said, our CFO is in one state, I’m in a different state, everybody on the team of ours is remote.
SCHLEY: Okay, I’m glad I asked, and I’m glad you were ahead of the curve a little bit in terms of deciding what to do, you know?
PARROTT: For sure.
SCHLEY: What would you advise– is it still possible to take the career progression you took, literally, these are your words not mine, from the lowest rung on the ladder, to become a CEO of a pretty prominent company?
PARROTT: Absolutely, in fact, we have programs designed for that. So every frontline position has a self-progression program. So we partner with NCTI and SCTE.
SCHLEY: That’s cool.
PARROTT: So every — if you come and join Vyve as a CSR, I have an NCTI program that will also not only advance your career, self-progress you in compensation and title, but it also will earn a degree.
SCHLEY: Wow.
PARROTT: So we partner with NCTI on our customer care, on our dispatch, on our tech support. Then we also partner with SCTE for our field. So our SCTE program is designed to self-progress, give you raises, and allow you a path to become the next CEO.
SCHLEY: And I know that from the day I take or consider the job offer, right? I know that this path exists?
PARROTT: You know that immediately. Here’s this path, and there’s no bias, for the first several steps are all self-initiated. And we pay bonuses, so if you want to study from home, we make that available. And then on completion, we’ll pay you a bonus, we’ll give you a raise, we’ll give you a promotion, and then you can continue to study for the next one.
SCHLEY: I kind of think I know the answer, but why do you do this?
PARROTT: Well, one, I want this industry to be a career as it is for me, right? I think people that come in looking for a job aren’t going to have the same investment than going, “There is an opportunity for me to do it.” Do you want to be in marketing? Great, there’s a path. Do you want to get into legal? There’s a path. You want to get into accounting? What other industry can you do so many different branches by getting your foot in the door and being able to provide that for you?
SCHLEY: I’ve had others at this table make a similar point. That you can choose your own adventure with cable because it is pretty, still, I think, kind of freewheeling, if you will, or not as rigidly defined in some respects.
PARROTT: That’s right.
SCHLEY: You think so?
PARROTT: I know, I know so.
SCHLEY: Yeah?
PARROTT: Yeah.
SCHLEY: Why is this business a good career path for a young person, let’s say, who’s third, fourth year of college and looking for a life, a professional life? What makes this business attractive, would you say?
PARROTT: One, it’s — it has so many, so many different exciting things that’s changing. So if you look at an industry that’s evolved and the things that we did 10 years ago or the things you did 5 years ago, they’re significantly different. So if you want to be part of a journey that’s always evolving, that stays ahead in technology, and actually provides the technology. Think about the pandemic, and you didn’t have broadband.
SCHLEY: Oh, for sure.
PARROTT: Without the cable industry we would have suffered tremendously.
SCHLEY: Absolutely.
PARROTT: And to be on that journey. I mean I shot a video at my front door for our team on just how to greet somebody during the height of that, right?
SCHLEY: Really?
PARROTT: Like how do you service somebody when they’re sheltering in place, they may have a fever –? But I said, “Hey, if you have to, you can leave a cable modem at the door, and we’ll run a cable through their window,” like that. I mean that’s how creative —
SCHLEY: I know.
PARROTT: — right? When everything’s happening —
SCHLEY: You’ve got to be connected
PARROTT: What other industry is out there going, I’m going to make sure that you can do everything you can do at work and do that from home, and give you the connectivity, and find a way to do it without even having to go inside your house? Which were also very unique situations that you look back and go, I can’t believe I’ve done that. But you’re talking to a guy that’s gotten networks on, that is shooting bow and arrows across lakes to run a cable across temporarily and to — you know. I was — there was a day that we took Howard Wood’s plane, actually, because we had to go to all the Home Depots to get all the sandbags and all the parts we could because there is a flood in Missouri. At the exact same time, there was a wildfire in Texas. So I had one headend that was about to burn down.
SCHLEY: Oh my Lord.
PARROTT: We had another headend we just completely wrapped with plastic, and we’re filling sandbags to try and save. I mean this is like on a Tuesday, simultaneously happening. Or I’m climbing a mountain and I’m on the top of a mountain peak, and then I’m in a manhole and — the next day, and you’re out going, I’m under the street here, I’m crawling through this here, I’m over here. So just the variety.
SCHLEY: Well, right.
PARROTT: And I can’t think of another industry that gives you this level of adventure.
SCHLEY: I was actually going to ask that. When you come to work in the morning, do you know what’s ahead in the day or –?
PARROTT: I always — it’s — you know, I got in the industry back when we had beepers, right?
SCHLEY: Beepers.
PARROTT: That was — I was like, I’m a beep away from doing something completely different. And, as you know, we’re one phone call away from doing an audible in the pocket, and it’s very unique.
SCHLEY: Well, what I love about this conversation is the testimony around the vital importance of labor, of humans and technicians. And there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that makes this business run.
PARROTT: Absolutely.
SCHLEY: You have been one of the guys that makes it run. So, it’s been a great hour with Andy Parrott, CEO of Vyve Broadband. Appreciate you taking some time, I know you’ve got a lot of phone calls probably waiting on your cellular device.
PARROTT: Absolutely, absolutely.
SCHLEY: But good luck with that, and thank you for joining us.
PARROTT: Thank you, Stewart.
SCHLEY: Thank you for tuning in to the Oral History Series from Syndeo Institute at the Cable Center. See you down the road.
PARROTT: See you.
