Forrest Heath

25,000+ days of internet access sold to people and kids like my little buddy here.

@suffiyanmalikk @packyM Time flies when you're having fun tinkering and building infrastructure!

@packyM all the way back in 2020! our team won a competition or something too 😂 this was before i got hired there @forrestheath3 long time!!

Perfect fit. Christian is insanely curious, an excellent communicator, and a great person. He’s the person I ask dumb space questions to, and he introduced me to Forrest Heath and Somos, for which I owe him a big one. Excited to see this guy deploy.

@DanielleFong 100% actually actively building this in Colombia

ok so the deal is if you invest in the data center you are allowed to access the spa that is heated by all of the ai thots

The full conversation from Lightfinders, the @somosinternetco Event during @coltechweek. Intro by me (in Spanish), conversation with @packyM @forrestheath3 Andres Acevedo and Daniel Vázquez from K50 (in English) :) More HQ Somos content in the works! youtube.com/watch?v=CqevtQ…

@pronounced_kyle There's this amazing guy @pronounced_kyle but not sure he's available

I need to hire a unicorn marketer. Someone who can: ‣ grow a YouTube channel from 0 to 100,000 subs ‣ intelligently communicate technical concepts on X ‣ execute an international ad campaign to drive top-of-funnel sales If you are that person (or know them), please DM me!

@IvanBasedFlores @PottsJustin cincosolidos.com Very well known local firm. They do great work.

Men only want one thing and it’s a brutalist hideout just outside Medellín

@PottsJustin I can attest, this is a very accurate sentiment. Only missing a fully capable homelab/workshop with secret entrance.

@ORHEX0 @ahmedshubber25 Come to Colombia

@ahmedshubber25 The real question is whose gone build them like in a factory there in not enough people gone willing to work there with minimum to midd pay rate and more then that the product cost will be too much that can’t compete with other countries .

Maybe I'm crazy, Buts its some cooling cables, a metal fabricated box, copper coils & some low voltage electronics. Some transformers are $15m. Any takers wanna start a startup in this space?

Software creates soft men Soft men create hard times Hard times create hard men Hard men create hardware Hardware creates good times Good times creates software

@sbmcnamara @pronounced_kyle We're doing that too $12 per month for a gig

@pronounced_kyle I watched Netflix streams in good resolution on a 55" screen at my German vacation house on 16Mbit that I am overpaying for. If Columbians are rich enough for $80/month internet - end all aid sent there now! I want ubiquitous adequate CHEAP internet - that is all!

Somos Internet is a Y Combinator startup that lays 2 km of fiber every day in Colombia. They already have 27,000 subscribers — because people want what they offer: 100 Gbps internet connections for just $80/m. How is that possible? Somos is building a new kind of network from the ground up — plugging into transatlantic fiber, building his own backbone, connecting into apartments, and building custom routers that can handle that much throughput. Forrest (@forrestheath3) visited me at my office, and we talked through the technical details. I think you'll love it. HD Version at the link in my bio. Timestamps: 00:00 — Introducing Somos Internet 02:40 — Nobody Understands how Telco Networks Work 03:51 — How to Learn About Telco Anyways 04:53 — How Forrest Won Over the Local Drug Lords 06:50 — The Idea Maze: from Wifi to Fiber 09:25 — What Somos Internet is Building: Enterprise-Grade Fiber to Your Home 12:05 — How Telcos Work Today (and Their Fundamental Flaw) 15:46 — "The Core Innovation of Somos Is..." 17:40 — HOW IT WORKS: A Nested-Ring Topology, Not a Tree 21:43 — An End-to-End Service 23:57 — (Including Routers) 25:00 — How is 100 Gbps per Customer Possible? 31:08 — How They're Cheaper: Switches, not Routers 35:00 — Why Sell a Consumer Service? 39:40 — Why Doesn't Bell Labs Still Exist? (It's the MBAs.) 42:28 — Customer Service is Easier When You Build Everything Yourself 43:37 — Telcos Have Given Up on Innovating 47:46 — How to Build a Team Smart Enough to Execute This Vision 51:41 — Is This a Hard Idea to Pitch a VC? 55:58 — Could Somos Have Started in America, not Colombia? 59:23 — How Did Forrest Learn All of This From Zero? 1:02:36 — What Technical Challenges Are Next For Somos?

@PTrubey @pronounced_kyle Broad strokes pretty on point. Basically boils down to getting as much of the network as possible on switch ASICs and abstracting the higher order network functions x86 based servers out of the clutches of the vendors. And doing a lot of engineering to make redundancy elegant

The interviewer was having a hard time understanding their topology, and I don't blame him, it wasn't explained very well. Sounds like they are using 10G Ethernet from building to building with an Ethernet switching architecture in each building. Normally that would spell disaster, since Ethernet provides no effective isolation between different customers in one building, but since they make their own customer hardware, they can make it work. They also loop their building to building network into a ring, and their (again in-house developed) routers/switches can quickly fail over to sending packets in the opposite direction in the loop should a fiber cut occur. This replicates the SONNET architecture that Telcos used to have for fiber, but never get used down at the individual customer level. This is very smart since the router based fail over protocols are ridiculously complex and still routinely cause Internet outages due to misconfiguration issues. I would very much like to learn more about the details since it sounds like a very innovative Fiber To The Home architecture as compared to the GPON topology that 99% of fiber to the home networks use.

@MamabearK444 @pronounced_kyle @garrytan

@pronounced_kyle @garrytan Does it really work faster?

@drethelin @pronounced_kyle A small glimpse. Transition point from posts to conduit.

@pronounced_kyle is there any video of the daily fiber laying?

@pronounced_kyle @KennethCassel It helped that I was already a massive fanboy and had been watching since @ianbrooke came on and blew my mind with his magic engine.

@KennethCassel Thanks man. It's probably my fav, and definitely my fastest turnaround from meeting someone to demanding that they come on the show hahah

@EffortDefines @pronounced_kyle @oabushagur Traditional telcos do the same thing everywhere. General solution applied to specific problems. Somos and Starlink are applying specific solutions to specific problems (albeit from different ends of the spectrum) both have fundamental cost physic advantages in their niches

@EffortDefines @pronounced_kyle @oabushagur Much in the way you don't hammer in a screw, you won't LEO constellation in an apartment building. Different tools for different use cases. Current Telcos have a big hammer and have peculiar vision impairment that sees the world as a vast sea of nails.

@T0MDISNEY @pronounced_kyle I love the tunnel analogy!

@pronounced_kyle absolutely! I'd previously thought of it as just lower friction copper. a more accurate comparison, especially in terms of the infrastructure build out, might be tunnels.

@Kenanstweets @packyM @pronounced_kyle Cost physics. Satellite is great at giving good capacity over large area but doesn't do well concentrating capacity in dense locations. Our mid-level plan is 2gbps for ~$25 per month. Starlink is an amazing system but different tool for different market.

Forrest is truly exceptional. Before meeting him, I hadn’t even considered that telcos were ripe for Vertical Integrators. Too much infrastructure laid. After meeting him, I’m convinced that they are and that Somos will do it.

@Tykk896 @pronounced_kyle Entry level offering is the cheapest/fastest on the market at $12 for 1Gbps with a wifi 6 router.

@pronounced_kyle I'm curious as to what the user base looks like. Minimum wage is capped at $300/month & most people toil under the informal economy so likely make less than that

@Hastannn @pronounced_kyle Most people are fine with 1-10gbps for now but there is the odd lunatic with a 100G homelab that we're happy to serve. The approach has a pretty linear relationship of speed/cost. super fast at good price or fast (1Gbps) at super cheap price $12.

@mathemba @pronounced_kyle Shoot me a DM!

@pronounced_kyle Working on a WiFi router with an SFP+ port which should be able to do 1GB/10GB and would love an interview with the Somos founders