Episode: 3244
Title: HPR3244: Interview with Anco Scholte ter Horst CEO of Freedom Internet
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3244/hpr3244.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:36:16

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This is Haka Public Radio episode 3244 for the 7th of January 2021.
Today's show is entitled,
Interview with Uncle Cole to host CEO on Freedom Internet and in part on the series,
Interviews, it is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 70 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summer is called Happy and I have been at once free and open Internet for privacy, security and quality.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Anastom Fair at Ananasthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you are listening to another episode of HPR15.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you are listening to another episode of HHPR Public Radio.
Today we are talking to Uncle from Freedom.nl. How are you doing?
Good, thank you. Good evening.
Well, you're from the Internet Service Provider as opposed to the Freedom.nl team.
Is that correct?
Very correct and as a matter of fact I'm a director of Freedom.nl.
As well. Very good.
When I came to the Netherlands some time ago there was when I asked my tech buddies what the best
Internet Service Provider was at the time and that was access for all.
And over my time period I moved to access for all because I was happy with their service and
their approach. But then there was they got taken over by KPN with the guarantee that they would
be continuing as their own enterprise. And then from that things went pear-shape and
out of all of that Ken Freedom.nl. I wonder could you talk me through the story please of
were you there at the time of access for all starting or?
I started working at X-Frol as head of software development. Later on I was involved in special
projects where we did hosting solutions or all specials for larger clients. How far after?
When did you join? Around 2000. Very good, yeah.
When I left the company in 2004 I decided to pursue my own business. But the team of
X-Frol is a very tight team always has been and always will be if they I guess.
So we kept always in contact and speak to each other regularly. And then in February 2019
everything came to a shocking world changing event. And the CEO of KPN announced that he would
change the strategy of the firm KPN or to what they called a one brand strategy.
Means that the company X-Frol was get rid of.
I remember full disclosure I was working for a planet internet back in the day
and around the same time planet internet and access for all were
brought under the KPN umbrella. And at the time access for all was allowed to
continue on its own whereas planet internet was consumed by the by KPN. And
nine business cards and five months later shows you kind of different job types of changes.
The idea of bringing X-Frol under the KPN umbrella and it was already in 89 and 98, sorry.
It was a very good one because KPN was still looking what this internet thing was.
There was a lot of knowledge within X-Frol. There were crazy nerdy people that they did great things.
And the idea is that you have a company there with people that really know where we're talking
about. Use it as a was like a cooking lab for all kinds of new services out there on this
this probably going to be the big thing called internet.
Yeah and just for people who are not listening, not familiar with the set up in the Netherlands,
KPN is the incumbent telco operator and at the time they realized I guess that the internet
was a thing and that they needed to be involved in it so hence their discussions.
So what made X-Frol such a such a good ISP at the time? What do you think?
Well, I think that there are three factors on it. Four, I always went to technology first.
Technology was a very important part of the company. The heart of the company were
real crazy like hackers geeks that really went the extra mile for the customers on technical
cushions. Special things could be done and in customers. So that makes a difference in the most
ISPs that just have a standard product. Of course there were standard products but a lot of
things could be arranged for customers. I remember one of them. There was this huge
concern about, at that time already, about privacy matters, security matters on the internet,
where is this all going and already played a very active role from the start in ideas about that
and have an actively opinion about it in media. That's already apart from the mainstream ISPs.
For example, that's one of the first things that already came to mind. When those days
people start doing a hosting of websites and there was already a discussion, what can you put
on the website and what you can't and is the provider responsible for content. Those discussions
were already done in the 90s by X-Frol. There are many huge discussions with the Scientology
Church and they really took a firm position in that also with the Pirate Bay and all those,
as it nice be, it was always very actively evolved in those discussions. That's really different
from the main stream providers that just roll in. I just want to sell as much
you know there. Yeah, I'm here. So in that respect, it was turning about technical excellence,
a real idea about security and privacy and the next role in that. Also, always
be sure that they could help the customers to settle. So whether you had a problem with
your Windows machine or in those days fairly peculiar making touch or even not forbid a Linux machine
or whatever, you still were able to get support from from from the role. Also, that was very
different product providers. It took a very efficient in the markets when it sets apart from
the other companies. I noticed when I joined the service that everything was off by default,
all security was on by default. Your phone number wasn't listed. You could run your own services
if you wished. Is this the sort of thing? Yeah, you can, of course, if you're technology, you're allowed
to run your servers. You are allowed to do whatever you want on the internet,
unless you, of course, you have problems on your IP and you get a fixed IP address, for example.
That was something that all the other providers thought why in EarthMain would have anybody a
customer need and fixed IP address? Nobody was doing that, but extra did from the right from day one.
When IPv6 came out, it started supporting full IPv6, I think in 2009 or 2010,
as the only provider in the Netherlands that actually promoted IPv6 as a good way to go forward.
Nobody, no other provider cared at that moment about IPv6. Always looking for those things,
which sets it again apart on technical and took a very different approach to taking
your customers seriously. So then what was the great change? If that was continuing on,
why did they decide to incorporate access for all and then to the greater KPN?
Well, what the maximum in Bera, the CEO at that time when the announcement came,
he was convinced or was convinced he's gone up, but at KPN, it should be the premium brand of KPN,
or that having extra fraud as a premium brand under a KPN umbrella was not a good idea.
We wanted to have one strong premium end, which was called KPN, and they believe that they could
just put all the clients from access for all, which is in that time still a separate company
to KPN, and that KPN could do the services that extra did. That's why he said from day one,
well, it's not a problem because nothing will change. That was the trigger for a group of people
consisting of old people, but also current employees of extra roll to sit together and say,
hey, this is a bad idea. You have a SP in the Dutch market, which really sets apart from the
rest from the IPs, premium brand with a very loyal community of users that you're now just wiping
away from the playing field. Those people are not going to KPN, because KPN is not seen,
although it's a large telecom operator in Netherlands, is not seen as same quality and technical
quality leak as extra straw. That's why I actually started, which was called
in an extra-throwman blive, in which translates to extra straw must stay, convinced KPN not to
enter the extra company, keep it in the movie, and have some discussions with the KPN
board, that's time to convince them. It's a bad idea, and I'm also Mr. Ibarra was very interested
at the time at our views, but was not convinced, and really convinced what doesn't matter,
internet is internet, who cares. Very different approach from the quality approach that was there,
from no, no, no, it's not just the internet, it's the whole thing together, there's a community,
there's going the extra mile, there's different services, and you say nothing will change,
but a lot of things will change, a lot of services are now unique to access for all,
will disappear, because KPN cannot or will not copy them to their own systems,
the whole technical setup of the two companies was totally different, and after this action
group really tried to prevent, to solving this example, even tried to buy access for all from
KPN, which also failed, not because they couldn't find funding, because they could find funding
very easily for that, KPN wasn't listening, and even the people within extra themselves,
the employee, the works council, certainly tried to ban this, this, this thing of the company,
tried to even go to court, works council's a little bit like a union for people who are
working for the works council, but they lost, because yeah, in the end, you know, they just said,
yeah, well, KPN in the end is the share role of the company, so they have every right to do
a stupid decision with it, so I remember that last year, it was 19th of September,
full in the morning, the strategy officer of the KPN board, and he told me,
Uncle, we got to do two things, first, you tried to buy access for all, you made a good offer,
but we're going to not go into that, secondly, the works council wants to drag us to court,
let them do, we're moving, we are fully going through with integrating the
extra brand into our own systems, moving the customers over to this integration, and that was for
us a sign, because we had already been investigating for some time, what if indeed extra throne would
disappear, is there still a possibility in the commodity markets of ISPs in the Netherlands
for an independent provider that, again, stands for the privacy matters, security matters, and
quality matters, and we're always a principle, also an extra throne, but below those principles
put them in this era, 2020, is there room in the market for such a provider, which
I try to investigate, came to the conclusion that talking to a lot of people, talking to a lot of
companies, although this is not an easy task, it's a full market out there, it's possible,
we can still do that based on those principles, you can still found a new company and get a new
position in that market, so in November last year we announced that we would start freedom,
we always set to KPN, listen guys, if you really decide to
fill the company access for all, then there will be some people that will go
found a new ISP, whether it be us, whether it be somebody else, there is a void in the market
coming, somebody will do that, and will attract customers straight from your customer base,
they wouldn't believe that, it wasn't, this is me secretly nodding over here,
I'm secretly nodding here in agreement, as soon as I heard access for all was been taken over,
I was going, okay, somebody's going to fork this project, and when they do, I'm there.
Yeah, sure, but the KPN board wouldn't believe it, he said, no, no, no, nobody will take that,
it's just an ad, who cares, they will come, they really didn't believe it in the in-beginning,
and so they were very surprised that we actually did it, but we were still uncertain,
we believed firmly that we could do it, we could pull it off, and we, for the first things we said,
okay, if we start a new company, how are we going to avoid ever this same scenario again,
we do we avoid over by a telco like this, do we set a guarantee or an independency?
What we did, the transition was quite interesting, what could you explain to people how you
kind of went about kickstarting the freedom, the whole thing, the eye freedom.no, and what it was
as well, and how you managed to get that to me. Now, what the, I come to that, the first thing we did
is we said, okay, we don't want any private people to be shareholder, put all the shares into a,
and not for profit organization, we have a, not for profit organization as a shareholder,
so that we avoid all profit maximization issues and things that come to that, and so there's
no trigger to sell shares for profit. So we started with that, and then we said, okay, how we raise
money to start, because it's quite capital intensive. So we said, okay, the best way to do it,
if we are independent, is to let the people see if we can, can have movements going, a crowdfunding
is the way to go. So we announced our, on the fourth of November last year, we announced our
crowdfunding, that we, we need to raise the minimum of one and a quarter million euros,
and at that time, the maximum we could raise was 2.5 million, that was by law,
who are great and unbelief almost, and we saw, the impossible happened, is that we, within three
days, at 2.5 million euros raised, wow, that was really crazy, can, we were sitting and staring
at the screen at a time and looking at what is going on, what is happening, unbelievable,
we were pressing refresh on our, on our profile from the page, every, every 10 seconds, and then
thousands of euros just, it was like a live ticker going, it was incredible. So after the first
day, after 24 hours, we had already raised about over a million euros, awesome, awesome, and it was
on the national news the next day, that we did that, and so it was really, for the Netherlands,
it was real thing, and it was never been a crowdfunding, so fast, done for a net,
Dutch company, it was, it was unbelievable, I think back of those days, still looking
lazy to my screen, is it, what is going on? And for people who are not aware, although the Netherlands
is just definitely top two countries in the world, it has only 15 million people in it, so
to give you some sort of context, yeah, indeed, so in the end, within three days, so we raised
the money 2.5 million, which is still not a lot, but it gave us enough to start, and there were
over 3,000 people chipping in, and we got meals, weeks after that, they, I wanted to chip in money,
I was too late, can I still participate in the crowdfunding, and we said no, not too
more right now, and then maybe in the future, when we do a second round. Second thing we did,
that we said okay, when we did the whole Exxon Mistay Action Committee, we did a petition,
we didn't add what people could, additionally sign a petition to sympathize with our plan,
now we had, at some point, we had 55,000 people sign in the petition,
point it was, we said okay, having a petition sign is one thing that does not really mean
that somebody also had to switch from the platform, so what we said is okay, maybe we can start
something like, and already be one of the first to be there, so we said we created what we
called the founding membership, you pay 50 euros for founding member, you already get your email
address, you've got freedom at the now, which is a great address of course, email address,
and with that email address you get also a free dot now domain name, so you'll never get
that unlocked in by a provider again, because that's something you can keep with you,
because a lot of people are sort of feeling locked in with their provider because of their email
address, just to put in there, sorry, to interrupt you, but you could tell the quality of the
candidates coming to a job interview based on their, if they had an access for all email address,
and a lot of guys are stuck into, after this happened, they were like just in tears that
their access for all internet address would be left back at KPN and they couldn't move.
Yeah, sure, and we, we, we, we, we, we, we talk daily to people,
mainly, and are, are, are, are, are owning us, that if there is not any way we can buy to get the
extra little now addresses alive, or are, we've over to us, and yeah, that's the only thing I
can't do. Oh, badly, I wanted it. So, but back to the founding member thing, so we, we gave
everybody email address, domain name, and the, the idea that you would be first in line to
get a freedom internet connection. And within a couple of days, we had 3,000 people already
paying that 50 euros, and weeks after that, it kept on coming. So for us then, when we saw that,
that went so fast that was really the trigger, okay, now we can start. So in January of this year,
we, we really started to, with some people, started building, creating, building, our
server network, building our software, our order systems, getting contracts in, arranged, and
started really, which is going quite good. Till in March, we had a little problem in this worldwide
thing called Corona, which gave us two problems. It's the first time, because we are the 29th of March,
when a huge launch party planned. Everybody that chipped in a thousand euros or more in the
crowdfunding campaign was allowed to have tickets to our launch party and had a diesel, which is a
very famous concert hall in Amsterdam donated their, their premises to us to give a launch party.
We invited 1500 people to that party, but sadly, it didn't go through, which was real
summer, of course. We had to, to, to invent how we start working together, because if you,
if you're starting a company, you're starting up, you're sitting together, you're brainstorming,
you're designing your company, designing your systems, designing your software, designing
it involves a lot of sitting together and brainstorming, and suddenly everybody was sitting at home.
We had to reinvent how we could work together and get the same bite going on, and I really took
some weeks to get that going again. Those things didn't help, but still we managed to start
starting with the first deliveries of Internet Connections to customers in May of this year.
So, I think still, that's quite, and secondly, we are doing everyday new connections to customers
with IPTV, Internet Connections, quite, of course, with fixed IP address, real challenge IP4
addresses in this world. Everybody can be successful, subnet fixed, and there are all those kinds
of things. How do you sell on top? How can you just explain how the
Dutch market is there with regard to access to the physical metrics?
Yeah, and we have, there's, there's, there are two large telecom operators in the Netherlands.
One is this KPN, they own the whole telephone network that's there in the Netherlands.
So, if you need to deliver Internet over a couple of DSL connections, you have to use KPN.
So, what we can do, we can get into a contract with KPN for access to the layer one part of
their network and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, couple lines.
And they all allowed it. So, they have a wholesale agreement, you can enter with them,
which allows you to enter that network. Don't think it was from the goodness of their heart.
I think they were forced to do that, if I'm not mistaken.
Well, they used to be, to, to get complicated, they used to be a law in the Netherlands that
actually said you have to give third parties access to that network.
Um, but, um, there was a use, uh, a court case in March of this year.
Against the other large operator, which is called a Photofon Zego, and they have
sole rights to the whole cable network.
No, we call it the coax. Is it the same in English?
Yeah, it's the coax. I, uh, currently work for them, full disclosure.
Okay. So they have the sole rights to the whole cable network, and the docs is, uh,
standards and everything. And there was a, uh, the, the, the, um, the ACM,
that's the authority in the Netherlands that looks up, uh, uh, uh, uh, right way of doing business
in, in, in, in, in all kinds of areas. They started, uh, okay, I guess.
Yeah, they started a court case to give also third parties access to that network.
And the thing that nobody expected happens, um, Photofon Zego won.
So they are, we're not allowed, or, we're not obligated to give third, uh, third parties access
to the cable network. The side effect, KPM, was also not
obligated anymore to give, uh, third parties access to the network. But KPM decided to,
keep on doing that because it's a huge business model for them. It's a great way to utilize
their network, uh, more than they could do themselves. So they would continue that.
Those are the large two parties to make things more difficult that we have the Glass Fiber network.
Then we come into a real, almost wild west arena, while we have some large, uh, Glass Fiber
operators, KPM being the largest, um, two million homes in the Netherlands.
Glass Fiber fire their network. Um, and then there are, I believe over 40 different networks
in the Netherlands that deliver a fiber to the home. Um, a lot of locals, small players,
midsize, all kinds, and my, as I'm independent, my goal is to, in the end, to be able to deliver
my, uh, species services from all those networks. But you can understand that you have to then
enter contracts with, with over 40 different fiber to the home operators, um, all with their own
pricing models, with their own APIs for ordering. This is quite a project.
Even, even maintaining the contact information from all these people will be, yeah, just not.
Yeah, so this is, this is a real, um,
Biden market, the fiber market. Uh, what you do see is, uh, there are two large,
KPM is the largest, you see Delta fiber is a quite large one. Um, T-Mobile is getting into that market.
Um, and, uh, a lot of the smaller ones get bought, are being bought up by KPM.
So there, and, but you also see that the, the heat is on, for example, in the Hague.
Uh, what you see there, the T-Mobile decided to do a large area of the Hague, uh, to put a,
a fiber to the home project so they start, uh, into the ground and, uh, put in the fibers.
And KPM said, move over, we're also going to the Hague and now we're fighting in the streets
who's the first and every home ends up with two fibers. Oh, KPM and one of T-Mobile,
the real waste of money. Yeah, considering there are people out in the sticks that probably will
never get us. Yeah. Incredible. Uh, but this is real, what, what, what's happening right now in
the Netherlands is it's the, the, the, the, the, the operands are fighting over who's first
in, in an area to put in the fibers. And if one company says we're going to do CTA,
then the honest, I'm not going to do CTA first and, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's a ridiculous area at
the moment. But, uh, the only positive side we can see of this is that, uh, we expect that, um,
percentage of homes in the Netherlands that also get a fiber connection, uh,
getting it quite high in, uh, in the, in the coming years. Um, I, I need to try carefully with
this question, as you can understand, but do you, do you feel that the fiber business will
impact the cable business at all? Do you think that's going to be a disadvantage than the court
ruling or not? I believe myself, uh, but that has to be seen that, um, I think the cable market
will open up as well for third parties in the, uh, next year. I believe that, again, there's no way
they can keep that network through themselves. So, um, a Liberty Global bluff to prevent
other and Liberty Global being the owner of Photos on Zego. I also keep that network for
themselves. I don't think they can, uh, there are new tech overlords in the making that would force
open access. Um, when that will go, will take, in fact, I don't know, but, um, the auto telecom
noise will really start competing with Photos on, on, on bandwidth and on large and low cost, uh,
broadband connections and fiber. It's going to be an interesting, uh, in the coming two, three years,
will be interesting. What's going to happen then? Before example, and, and what we can do at the
moment, and that is real going on, you see a shift to, uh, uh, larger broadband connections,
we're now delivering one gigabit connections to the homes for 49 years a month. And, yes, and
very happy with us. Oh, you have one. Well, very good. Well, this is for the folks listening,
this is, uh, and I know some of, we've had some horror stories here in HPR from, uh, from, uh,
ISPs in the States. There was a denial of service attack last week, and I called up your,
you guys to see what was going on. And, uh, then I asked, was there anybody available for an
interview? And lo and behold, four days later, we're talking to the CEO of the company. So
that's, that's the level of service you get a freedom not to know.
Sure, that's this, but that is the, the whole idea of our company, you know, we, we're,
we're approachable. And, and, and, and when you talk with, with, uh, one of our people from our
service support team, I'm talking with the support team, you're talking with, uh, Max or Sean,
you know, they're, they're in real people out there with, with knowledge. That's the whole idea.
So, uh, I'm not really happy. I've been, remember that this, uh, D does attack because,
that's not my favorite moments, but, no, these things happen. These things happen. I mean, we,
HPR ourselves were down for six days, but with those that's an RSS feed, so six days later,
they, you have six episodes instead of none, so great. It's, uh, but it's annoying, but
teething problems. So have you had a lot of teething problems in setting up the ISP?
What kind of problems? Teething problems, as in, um, uh, what's the Dutch, uh, word for
teething problems? Just hold on one second. No, there's no one home to do the translation.
Start-up problems. Problems, you didn't expect, uh, you know, oh, yeah, sure. Uh, uh, uh, lots.
That's the whole idea. If you're starting something new, you, we, we, we thought, uh, uh, this,
this will be easy and it takes forever. Um, one of the big issues we had was, uh, which was really a,
there were loads, but this is an example. Um, when we started, one of the service you have to do
is, uh, IPTV. Honestly, IPTV is not my favorite part of being in ISP, because it's a difficult
product. Um, what's kept me in trouble here for 20 years, so yes. Yeah. We had the choice between,
uh, okay, that, are we going to develop ourselves a platform for IPTV,
or go with the content virus on, on rights for, for, and stuff like that. And as a starting
company that would seems like a stretch too far, so we use, we stop looking, okay, why are we
can, is there a company in the Netherlands that we can get the service from? The only company
that were available was, uh, now digital, they, they call NL Plus. And we went into, uh, an agreement
with them, which took ages, uh, fought over their privacy statement. So we ended up rewriting
their privacy statement on the ground up. At the end, they accepted. Um, so it was quite a,
interesting project there already. And, uh, what happened is, uh, that we started out
and the hardware they were shipping out, the, uh, the, the, the, the code hardware, was
the least the worst thing I ever saw. Incredible, uh, uh, crappy. Um, was, was, obviously, uh, slow,
was, was, was not responding in a lot of customers, was, we had a lot of problems with that.
So after a couple of months, we decided, uh, we, we, we talked with, uh, kind of, what's
about is, you guys, this is really, uh, we can't continue with this. So we decided to
stop all the STBs out for a better model. Which, if you're starting out, and this is not a
project you are waiting for, that you have to, uh, uh, switch a couple of thousand, uh, STBs,
out there. So collect the old ones back, send new ones. Um, all these, uh, STBs have
are registered with their MAC address on the line. You have to suffer, activate them when
they're there, deactivate the old ones. It's a kind of project you're not waiting for at that
moment because it doesn't help you in any new way. It's just fixing crap you've been,
we're sending out. But we, we really said, we can't do this. We have to fix it. This is not,
we want, we want to be, so we, we, that's those started errors we made. We should, maybe,
we should have been testing the opening better, but we didn't have much time to test the old STB.
They were, uh, also quite new for us. Um, when we learned from that, that, that was something,
was, I think, our bad biggest, um, failure, fail from 2020. Well, I don't get TV because, uh,
I, I work with it during the day, so I don't need to be doing it at night. So,
I'm sorry for your TV series of lucky yet. IPTV is, it's, it's a difficult thing for an
ISP because, you know, it is, there are so many things that go wrong, can go wrong there.
Yes. Anything goes wrong with just a packet loss can already, uh, sometimes, uh, make,
make, lock in your, on your, on your screen and, uh, people are, uh, on the phone.
Very, absolutely. It's a, it's a, it's a completely different, I know it's just that when I went
from, I don't want to go too much into detail here, but, um, professionally, that's not a good
thing to do. Um, when I went from KPN to, um, to, uh, liberty, the, the DNA in KPN, you really
saw was the, uh, was the telephone, was the cable, was the copper wire, whereas in, uh, liberty,
it was all about the TV, making sure that the TV's, keeps running, keeps running, and, and, and I
think that's a fair thing to say, but I'll get myself in trouble with either company.
Yeah. And if, if you're going to technically, so, of course, already, uh, of difficult,
because you have, to have the TV goes on another VLAN. Yeah. Have a multi-cost stream going on,
um, in our case, uh, VLAN4. Um, but the, uh, your set of boxes also communicating or reading it
on VLAN6, and that whole has to be matched again together, but a complex thing. Yeah. And
there's no toleration for autoges on TV at all from Lucas. The worst part is coming that,
what we see a lot, for example, is, um, a lot of people use these, uh, uh, how do you call them in
English? These, these power over, uh, uh, power things. Yeah. I think, uh, connections in their
houses, in their home. If something there is giving problems with IPTV, then those things,
there are, are, are reliable as can be. Somebody starts drilling in the TV, you know, that,
they're really, you know, nobody knows these things have firmware, you should update and things
like that. Yeah. Yeah. So what sort of, uh, other services do you have gone on? Why did you focus on,
well, you have to focus on TV because it was, um, it's a requirement, I guess, in the package.
Because 50% of our customers wants to have TV, so it was, uh, must have for us. Same as, uh, VoIP.
Um, we were thinking, uh, who is still, uh, using, uh, telephone at home,
anywhere here, mobile there, but a lot of people still do. Also, something we had to do.
Um, so those are, we're like, must have to be a full ISP, must have to implement, although,
uh, it's not very exciting to do, but you will have to do them. Yeah.
Bright and buzzer stuff. Much more exciting is the project I'm working on right now, and
which hopefully will see the light of day coming here. It's, for example, that I, uh, one of the things
I really want to do is, uh, giving all our customers, uh, storage based on next cloud,
open source. Awesome. That's something I, that's far more fun to do. Oh, that's excellent.
About two days later, because I just set up my own cloud instance, but awesome.
Yeah. So, uh, we're really, really, uh, investigating, which is, which is quite complex. Don't,
don't get it. Putting them in the next cloud is one thing, but doing that for thousands of people,
and, uh, with auto, uh, visually, it's, it's a, it's a different story with, uh, storage, uh,
going well. But this is really what we want to do. Using this cloud as, as, with Dutch, uh, storage,
all our customers. That is one of the directions we are thinking of. Can, where, can I go off on
a tangent here, where are your data centers, or how you do in that, or is that confidential, or
no, there's enough confidential. Um, uh, to be honest, when we started, we had no money,
but even before, uh, the crowd fund, but we needed already some service for our website.
So, uh, there was this, this lovely company in an evidence called Bit. There's a data center
company, uh, and they do hosting, which provided us with a rec space, uh, for free. Get started.
Those guys, whoa, that was nice. So that is one of the areas we are, we are, uh, where, where,
we are already based. Then, uh, while we also have, uh, starting out, a very quickly after that,
is a data center in Amsterdam called Nikhev. Um, Nikhev is an important data center to be,
as an ISP, because all people that have, that have a network in the Netherlands are connecting
there, like, one of the places to be. So we have presents in Nikhev. And currently, we are, uh,
expanding our space in other data centers. And we have locations in Amsterdam,
Iceland, which is near Utrecht, and, uh, just above us, them in Warmer fear, which is, um,
uh, we, we have a company here called Selnex in the Netherlands, Selnex owns the old towers,
where, uh, the television antennas used to be, and broadcast antennas, really large towers.
They are converted to data centers, and that's also places where we put stuff at the moment.
I worked in the first job when I came here was on a telecom tower in Hilverson.
Okay. 13 floor. I should have taken that as a sign, but anyway.
Well, we, we now sometimes have meetings on, uh, on the top floor of the, uh, Utrecht, uh,
tower, which is now the Christmas tree, the famous Christmas tree.
Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is, X is an expert view over there.
It's also more, right, yeah. Um, um, yeah, sorry, in the cafe, I spent many, many a nice
in both of those buildings for, okay. Um, so what sort of servers are you running? Why do,
why do you need servers? What, what, what are you doing? Well, um, we were discussing, and what we,
uh, we originally wanted to do is running all on virtual machines on, and it's called, uh, we were,
we are really working a lot with open nebula environment. We want to explore more and more,
of those are, uh, servers are in that, uh, bullet architecture. But, uh, in the end, we still need,
not, we are not ready yet to fully, uh, open nebulaized, or you call that.
So we're still, uh, using servers for our DNS, for our, our, uh, order machines, for our,
uh, for, um, websites and things like that. Those servers are still needed. Uh, what, of course,
all virtualize the proxmarks, uh, style. Mm-hmm. Um, like that, of course, you need space in your
data centers for your, uh, for your core routers, for your subscription management for all the,
all the users for your session terminations. We, we use PPUE for, uh, the session. So we have to
be terminated. Um, all the things you have, uh, they have to be somewhere. Do they, physically,
when you are installing them to customer premises, do you, do you have your own stuff,
your cells, or is that outsourced to the, um, to the people you're renting the lines off?
Now, well, what, all we have to do, like, we, we are responsible for our, our own, uh,
ISP layer three, we have to do that ourselves. So that is all, uh, if I understand your question
right, so all the, the data center work is done by ourselves. Mm-hmm. Sometimes, of course,
we, we hire some people in for extra, uh, hands or extra, uh, brains. Um, but so the, the, the core
of the work is done by ourselves, yeah. So when I'm switching from access for all, for instance,
to, uh, to freedom, then I install the package myself, but there is the option there to have
an installer come in. Those, those people, those are not people from ourselves.
Because that means that you have to have people throughout the whole country, which is, uh,
quite costly. Um, so what we do, we have a agreement with a company,
will run a tech, uh, at the moment, and, um, they have a special, um, two of people that are,
authorized by us to do a freedom installs. So if you, if you want to have a store, then, uh,
they will come on the, on the date that the, your line is delivered, they will come to install your,
your, your, uh, emodement router and, and set up your Wi-Fi or your, uh, or your television set.
Um, it's a select group of, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know, guys that are throughout the whole country
and doing those, uh, assignments. And then in the digital center, on the other end of the line,
there's, you need to connect them to the KPN equipment somehow. Yeah, but that is, that is,
that is, that is virtual. That's mostly virtual. Yeah. So that is really done fully out of
many, if you, for example, are switching, let's say from, from access for all to us, these,
that's done, uh, automatically in the night. Um, so your lines will be switched to our, to us,
usually, uh, between midnight and six a.m. in the morning. And, uh, you have a downtime of one or
two minutes. You go off, uh, you were switched and you will, uh, go on again and you just have to
set up the new, uh, PBOE session and you're on our network. I must say, I have taken the whole
deal off and told everybody that there was going to be, uh, you know, basically I was going to have
it three day, but by five past nine, I was back on nine, unfortunately.
It's pretty, it's pretty painless.
Of course, sometimes goes, something goes wrong. It happens. And, uh, but in usually, it's just,
and that's the, uh, that's why I'm glad you, it was amazingly refreshing to pick up the form
and talk to somebody and just go, right, I've done the IPU config. I've done this. I've done the dig,
I checked against your server. Your server is not responding. I'm seeing the logs here and
it just completely bypassed the whole. Have you connected your Windows PC? Have you restarted?
I was talking to a techno on the other side and it was like, okay, there's something going on.
I'll call you back. All right, bye. Then he did follow up, but it was so refreshing.
It's like that ex-famous xkcd comic where the guy has the dream with the secret word.
Well, this is the three. Yeah, we don't, we don't have a, uh, what you, the most, uh, people do is
that they have a first line, second line, third line support. If you're talking to first line,
it's in need, uh, if you try turning it off and on again. Mm-hmm. That level. We decided we don't
do that. So the moment you call, you get someone in line that has the tools, the knowledge, uh,
to help you directly. It's not easy to keep that going. If you're, if your number of customers
are growing, uh, but we still will try to do that, uh, uh, because you want a person that does not
work with a stupid script, but somebody listens to your problem and knows what to do.
Exactly. And I would argue that if you're building a service as reliable as that, then the number
of times you need to phone up is, is minimized so that those people can actually focus on their job.
And it's good to see you've got the RSS feed where you can see your outskirts straight away. So,
I know I'm not to call if there's an issue. Uh, and that's, but, uh, because now, and then,
honestly, we are, we are still far from, from where we want to be. You know, we, what we said,
we want to, um, for, uh, a nine plus out of ten, um, all everything we do. And, uh, we also know
that we're not there yet. So we have still a lot of things to, to, to prove and to, and do better.
And, uh, but we know that and we are working on that. Because we, it's the goal that we want to be
is to get above that nine out of ten, nothing we do. And I think if, uh, we focus quite a lot on
just the technical aspect of what you're trying to do, but to be honest, if you're looking over at
the, you know, the about page, um, it's a lot less about the technical aspects. And there's a lot
more about, um, privacy, data retention. Um, can, can you talk to me more about that, that aspect,
how it seems to be in your DNA. It is protection and security. Where does that come from?
And it's what we believe in. And everybody that works with a company who believes that. So
everything what we do is, uh, how can we make something, uh, privacy by design? So ever,
what everything we do, think about, uh, the basics first, put it down in the right way.
So, uh, the, for example, when we started out, uh, as a farming member, very simple example,
we said, okay, um, people need an email address. And, uh, that's all they have to, uh, fill in the
form with their, uh, uh, thing, but for an email address of a service, do we need to know if somebody
is, is man or male or female? Well, no, we don't. It doesn't really matter. So why ask? You know,
so we don't ask more than is necessary to do the service. Um, we don't like being traced and
tracked and traced on the internet. Uh, so we said, okay, if we, we, we do a newsletter to our
customers, we've got to make sure there's no tracker hidden pixel watts wherever in there.
Don't need that. There are better ways to get connected with your customers, not because you
want to track and trace them. Why? Why are you so passionate about it? Where does that come from?
Come from that. We are a bit fed up with the, with the profiling and, uh, uh, uh, the, the, the,
the need of, of, of companies to know so much about you, uh, which is, uh, sort of data mining,
data rivers, data lakes, putting that and everything, uh, in there, uh, the, the, the, the, the profiling
for, for, for, uh, uh, real time bidding, uh, platforms and, and, and creating super profiles of,
of people, uh, out there, right? We, we're going the wrong way. Um, the internet was never meant to be
a sort of playground for big tech companies that, uh, want to know everything about you and, and,
and, and, and know more about, probably know already before you do with, in which, uh, candidate,
an election you want to go and to go to vote. Um, it's not, uh, what we, where we want to go, we
want to go, uh, in a different direction. I'm not against marketing in any way. Let me be sure,
um, it's about that, but not in the way we are going at that all this data owned by the,
the large technical, uh, corporations going in the direction we don't feel comfortable with.
You know, it means that you already have a false starting life. For example, in the Netherlands,
if you, if you're a child and, and you're being born and you go to, uh, a primary school,
when you go to your third, fourth grade, your, uh, what is it? You're, you're five years old,
six years old. You get a Gmail account because the schools work with Gmail and, and, uh, uh,
a whole, uh, Google suite, uh, uh, and they're already starts Fenderlock in. So, and the, the,
the whole, those Google don't, does not need cookies or whatever they have. Login service and they
can start already making a beautiful profile of your, uh, coming life. Don't think that's the way
we want to go with, with this, with this world. Yeah, but you're really business. You should
look at the opportunities, but this sort of information gives you in order to increase shareholder
value. Uh, you don't have shareholders forgot about that. Again, that's exactly the reason why we
don't have them because the, the whole idea of shareholder value, we want to eliminate because we
said, okay, the whole idea of shareholder value and maximizing profit prives the idea that you
need to collect those data to monetize it. And we said, okay, we, we, we don't need, of course,
we have to have, we have to be profitable. We, you can't run the business and grow the business
if you're not profitable, but, um, not at cost of everything. So we don't monetize data. We don't
collect profiles from you. There are other ways and better ways and much more, uh, ideas to
do it in an alternative way. Uh, and sometimes that means that if you start advertising,
we have to sort of go 10 years back in time. We had discussions, okay, what if I want to
banner on your page with, with, with our company? And I just want to pay, uh, uh, uh, uh,
when you click on it, I'll pay for it, for the, for the click, but I don't want you to
build a profile of, uh, uh, that page. People look at you if you're, if you're from, some
subs from, from another world, because this is the standard nowadays. Because I don't want that
standard. I want the, I want to be creative again. Interestingly enough, we can have the Dutch,
uh, company called STERL, which is responsible for the advertisements on the public channels.
Yeah, yeah. And what they did is, they said, okay, that's all profiling. What we did in the past,
we stopped all the profiling. We quit. We don't do it anymore. And, uh, interestingly enough,
that when they stopped profiling and, and, and just doing a bit more, yeah, almost old-fashioned way
of displaying, uh, ads, um, success rates, the conversion rates of those ads went up. So, yeah,
it's, you, you can't do without. So what we want to try to see, and I, I'll, I'll be honest with you,
I don't have the answer on all, all the questions yet. How can we do all this advertising without, uh,
profiling? Uh, it's, it's, it's an investigation that is unknown. The fact that you even need to
discuss this is, is just a sad series of affairs that you can't advertise without tracking. It's just,
exactly. So what we said, okay, we don't have the answer on everything, but let's investigate it.
And if we find a way to do it in another way, then we also show, let us also show people,
this is how we did it. This is how you can also can do it. And that other, also, people can also,
work with that. And, um, hopefully, we, we, we, we, we, we get some things in motion.
So looking at your page here, you're talking about fundamentally against undermining, uh,
undermining the professional secrecy of lawyers and journalists. You're, uh, want to open
infrastructure. You want, uh, data retention. You're happy to discuss data retention laws.
You want to stop building lute calls into encrypted software. You're talking about e-regulation.
Uh, you're talking about supporting stopping fake news, uh, preventing internet surveillance.
You want DNS over us as H or over, uh, HTTPS. Uh, you don't want, uh, used data going to the, uh,
this, this is more like, um, uh, I, I'm coming from the free open source software, uh,
side of things. This is, this is sort of stuff that we've been pushing for years.
It's actually refreshing to talk to a business person that gets this. And
how come, yeah, he's actually got, and I'm, I'm so used to arguing the other way now.
I feel I'm talking to somebody who's, uh, more, uh, more of a with, with these sort of things.
But what other, um, it's, it's just sad that we need this stuff. And how has the reaction been
from other businesses or other CEOs that you talk to are with COVID? Is that not a thing?
Well, well, all kinds of different ways, uh, a lot of people looking at us, uh, as this new
hit on the block and, and see if they make it. And if we make it, then, uh, maybe, uh, they've got a
point. Yeah, uh, the purpose of the party. So we, we, we have to do these things. But I see,
I see in the whole, uh, uh, society in, in political, but also with people, I see that there's,
a year of, uh, data collection doing things out of way, open source. It's getting more and more
accepted. I'm a great example. For example, when in a Netherlands, we started the description on
a Corona app. Yes. Yes. Which started out with a, uh, a few companies presenting something
which failed tremendously. And then with a few companies, a few organizations, we put up a, uh,
manifest, uh, which translates to save against the Corona, which outlined a few points that if
you want to do this in the proper way, sort of points, these are steps you have to take in
consideration. And open source is one of them, uh, privacy, but it's one of them. There are,
there are, what are the, what are so long lists? And what happened actually is that the, uh,
our government said, hmm, that's a good idea. Let's, uh, uh, talk to the community of, uh,
hackers and coders, people that put on this manifest. Let's see if we can build something
together, completely open sourced, deeply privacy by design, and, uh, see if that can work. And
the government really did. So, yeah, we have a Corona app now, which is the source code is in GitHub.
Uh, it's open for everybody to see. Um, we were asked to host the website around it. Uh, they
involve all the credit casters actually and said, okay, let's see if we can do better. So,
at first time you see a sort of, uh, from the government promoted open source project. And
that is refreshing actually. Yes, it is. Which opens an old world of new possibilities.
I'm, I'm really hoping that in the years to come that the government sees now, and I, I, I,
what I see in my, my discussions with them that they are more and more, okay, with open,
open source developments against the, the, all the, yeah, classic suppliers, they already
paid for years, huge amount of money with, with all kinds of vendor lock-in issues.
And they now see that there is another solution. Is not only crappy
Oh, where? What can be really good open source solutions?
Well, it's, yeah, it's a good start. Let's, let's hope it continues. We're not there yet.
No, that's for sure. The Netherlands is not an open source in Irvana. Alas.
What other services did you have access for all that you're thinking of migrating over and
hot other services over there? Are you thinking of not migrating over if you had all the time
of money in the world? Yeah, it's difficult. Okay, we, we're not, we're, of course,
different companies. And it gives us the luxury also doing things a bit differently. Yeah,
yeah. One of the things I'm not sure about is, is shared web hosting, for example,
difficult product. I don't know what to do with that. No margins as well. No margin. A lot of work,
a lot of potential issues with nowadays, everybody wants to have
wordpress and stalls on it, which you have to monitor for,
if there's any, any zero day thing. It's quite what I do like is virtual machines. So I'm
more leaning to virtual machines than to
uh, classic shared web hosting. Some darker containers are you talking VMs? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, darker. I find that more interesting. How when I don't know, but that's that's uh,
yeah, I think that that is where the way we go. Um, is it you? The point of things we probably
will never start doing, but you never know for sure is, uh, use net. Yeah. How so why?
Exist roles are very famous on their new Zilla server. Yeah, exactly.
But honestly, if I look at the amount of work we have to, and the resource we have to put in,
we'll do that with a good latency and retention, sorry. And, um, and amount of people that are
asking for it, now we have lots of more to do. And is that not legal risks associated with that,
given that in fairness, the main use case for having access is gone, and there is no another use case.
There are, I think there are a lot of, uh, available new service out there that can do a better
retention than we ever can do. Yeah. Because they're specialized in it. And that's really, um,
but again, you never know, maybe we decide one day, okay, maybe it's a good idea. I never know.
Who decides there? We as a team, we decide as a team. In the end, of course, uh, it's my final call,
but it's quite democratic. And as a team, I mean that everybody's involved in, in the things like,
what we have a lot of projects going on. And we score every project, internal project,
different parameters that can be, uh, uh, does it bring extra customers? Does it, uh, give operational
externancy? Does it, uh, set apart from the rest as an exclusively thing? Does it, uh, it's cost
effective? Does there are a list of parameters we score every project? And the whole company is from,
from support desk to finance, to development, to, uh, system, uh, DevOps and from management
is involved in scoring. And it's the total scoring that sets the priority. Many people are employed
by, well, we were now at 18 people. That's quite a small operation for such, uh, impressive
company. Uh, yeah. Uh, and if, if, uh, I, if thing goes as planned, as I see at, at the moment,
you go to the 30 people about the end of next year. Excellent. Excellent.
Has your, um, has your attention to personal, to privacy, uh, brought in, um, other companies,
specifically, or, or not yet? Has there been, has any, uh, companies with a freedom bent,
decided to pick your services just because, uh, of the guarantees or privacy that they could
come to expect? We have companies that, uh, are customer, if you mean that. Yeah.
Because of these things and because of, for example, what we said, if, uh, we, we, uh, we guarantee
that in our, uh, if you get email services from us, that we score what we call 100% on the, uh,
uh, standards. There's a, there's a, uh, uh, group of, uh, uh, testing site here in
Netherlands called internet and internet.nl, which you can test your email server or your
web server or your, or your, your connection with, if it's fully compliant with all the standards
out there, how we said from day one, okay, we make sure that everything is 100% scoring.
So there are companies that said, uh, we want to make sure that our email, for example, is safe,
safe, as can be, and chose us for that reason, right? Um, so, uh, we already want to know,
warps with, uh, because we were the first fighter in the Netherlands that also does,
consumers as, as businesses that scored a triple perfect 100% score on these standards.
There's no other ISP in the Netherlands, but at the moment, does, does that?
And how are you heading towards profitability? Have you got a lot of customers coming on board?
How many customers are you heading towards profitability and where you able to convert the,
the 10,000 customers? Uh, we, we, uh, as, as we, as we look at our plan, which is, although it
changed a lot since Corona, but in the end, if you look at the,
outcome, it doesn't really change a lot. Um, we expect to be profitable in 2022.
Well, cool. Let's hope that continues for you.
Yeah, but, but, but if we look now and everything seems, okay,
for us this way, this year was, uh, lost making because we had to invest a lot of money in
building up the whole thing. Um, next year will be, uh, also, uh, uh,
lost making, but on a very small scale and to the dizzy ice,
how then we are profitable. So, thank you, man. I'm very looking forward to the future.
I think it's a positive future for us. Well, I sincerely hope so on us. I, uh, I'm sure that, uh,
OHM are those events in the Netherlands. You were planning on attending, but not going to be able to
would be nice to meet up and, uh, discuss some of these things with you in, uh, in,
over a pint. That's like a great plan when it's possible. Exactly.
Yeah, maybe really looking forward to the pint somewhere.
Yeah, right now, we just look too great, because we, uh, we, uh,
postpone this interview, so we could watch the country being put into a yes and other lockdown.
Yep. We're looking forward to, uh, going out again and, uh, where are you in a pint somewhere?
Are you based, uh, in the one place or are you virtual teams at the stage?
Uh, the company is based in Amsterdam. Yeah.
Myself, I'm living near the Hague. Uh, so, uh, what's us, we're spending, uh, quite some time, uh,
at home again in the coming weeks. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
So, um, I don't know if I've, uh, if I've missed anything, um, there's anything that you
want to, want to share with the, with the folks here.
No, I'm, I'm, uh, thanks for the time, uh, and, uh, and, uh, the, the opportunity to have this talk,
very much. I think we went to it very quite thoroughly.
Um, yeah, and obviously if there's anybody in the Netherlands still on other ISPs,
you should switch immediately if that's true. Um, but that's saying, absolutely, absolutely.
Well, with that, I'll leave you to, uh, what, what remains of the evening and thank you very much for, uh,
the interview. Have a good evening.
June and tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio.
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