California and Massachusetts' Road to Digital Equity - Episode 609 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:07):
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for a Local Self-Reliance, and I'm back with a voice that you all know and love. Sean Gonsalves. Welcome back to the show, Sean.

Sean Gonsalves (00:25):
Oh, thank you. I hope they love me, but

Christopher Mitchell (00:29):
I mean, I haven't got any complaints.

Sean Gonsalves (00:30):
[00:00:30] Okay, we're going to count that as love.

Christopher Mitchell (00:32):
Yeah, yeah. Sean, what do you do here?

Sean Gonsalves (00:34):
Oh boy. What do I do here besides take up space? I am the Associate Director for Communications, which means I do a bunch of things. It means

Christopher Mitchell (00:44):
You should have had a better answer for that question.

Sean Gonsalves (00:48):
I'm supposed to be the communications guy and it's going to take me five minutes to explain it. I got to get better at this. But Associate Director for Communications for our program, which means really amplifying beyond [00:01:00] folks who come to our website, the work that we do and the issues that we care about. And of course, I also do a lot of writing and editing for CommunityNets.org, our front door, our storehouse of information, and so it entails all of that.

Christopher Mitchell (01:15):
And when I need a pick me up, you're there with your cheery view of the world. However, these, so we're talking about a couple of different things today. It is going to be a little bit seat of the pants, not our usual locked [00:01:30] down and prepared agenda, Sean, for when you and I are chatting. But I do want to note, I mean, as I was preparing for things that we could talk about, I was like, oh, we could talk about Chevron deference. Like, oh, we're talking about that with Gigi. So on Friday, and we could talk about this. Oh, we're going to talk about that on the Connect This show. So sorry, connect this.

Sean Gonsalves (01:51):
That's right.

Christopher Mitchell (01:52):
So as people are listening to this show, you should go back and also listen to the most recent Connect This! episode that would've featured Gigi unless [00:02:00] something horrible happens between now and tomorrow. But we are going to talk about, today we're going to talk a little bit about some of the awards coming out of the State of California news there as the CPUC, the California Public Utilities Commission has begun making awards of how they are going to spend what they call the federal fund account, which is a pretty cool thing that state of California is doing to build more last mile networks really focused on fiber. We're going to talk about also [00:02:30] in California, San Francisco a little bit, and then perhaps elsewhere about apartment buildings and what's going on with low income and what we call MDUs in the biz, multiple dwelling units. And we're going to talk a little bit about Massachusetts and program that is also making awards there that I would say didn't come out exactly the way we expected, and as we looked at the rules, it kind of became clear why that was.

(02:54):
But you're digging deep into that, Sean. So we're going to touch on that and then probably [00:03:00] we'll have more to say about that over time as we learn more. I do want to say as we jump into the fiber fund accounts rule stuff coming out of California that you and I are not an expert on what's going on in California, so we're going to try not to get anything wrong, but I want to have on back on Shayna or someone who's really in the middle of all this that can help us walk through what's going on with these awards. But I think both you and I had a very good reaction to the initial set of awards.

Sean Gonsalves (03:30):
[00:03:30] Oh yeah. I mean, in terms of community broadband networks and proposals, they made out very well in this opening round of these last mile awards, which I hope isn't similar to what I think sometimes the Supreme Court does, which is they start with a couple of things that make people get all happy, and then

Christopher Mitchell (03:52):
Here are the ones we didn't screw up

Sean Gonsalves (03:54):
Before. They lay down the big ones that people are like, what the [00:04:00] Chevron deference?

Christopher Mitchell (04:00):
We've all been reading the Constitution opposite lately for the past 200 some years we've been just reading the Constitution opposite of what it actual says. Thanks a lot. I learned that a few weeks ago. Very useful.

Sean Gonsalves (04:12):
Yeah, absolutely. But so far, so good. You mentioned a number of cities and we're just now beginning to learn about what these projects will entail, but the city of Oakland, my hometown San Francisco got a $10 million award. I believe Oakland [00:04:30] got 15 million and then a couple of tribes got some. Those

Christopher Mitchell (04:34):
Haven't been announced yet, I think, but I think those are on the docket to be honest. I'm still trying to sort this out. That's what I was a little bit confused with, but it does look like two tribes, one of which we've worked with the tribal broadband bootcamps, folks from Fort Bidwell. It does look like they are soon. I think that'll be the second round

Sean Gonsalves (04:50):
Maybe. I think these may be the recommended awards, and I don't cover the full CPUC commission meetings weekly or monthly or however often they happen. But [00:05:00] I guess I'm assuming that the staff recommendations are almost always followed by the commission vote

Christopher Mitchell (05:06):
In this case. I certainly hope so. I agree with them. The other two that you didn't mention are, I think there might be City of Fremont is another one, and then Pluma Sierra Telecommunications and Electric Cooperative. We've had their head on, I forget if he's CEO or what his title is. We talk with him before. So yeah, Oakland, Fremont City [00:05:30] and County of San Francisco, and then Sierra Plumas got two awards for two different projects. So I think those are the five.

Sean Gonsalves (05:37):
That's right. Well, I

Christopher Mitchell (05:38):
Mean, I just want to start with a little background, which is that this is a big deal. I mean, this is a big deal on multiple fronts. One is we see these cities and in this, I mean Fremont, Oakland and San Francisco have all identified areas where people have really been left behind. This is not because people can't [00:06:00] get Comcast. In some cases, maybe they cannot, in some cases, some parts of the area could get some services, but it's not working for them. And these are cities that are moving forward with a plan to serve them. Now, you just ran down recently. I'm going to jump, but this is related. You just ran down earlier at the beginning of this year, how many cities have built networks? How many of those cities were premier cities in terms of being more than 400,000 people?

Sean Gonsalves (06:28):
I can't think of one actually.

Christopher Mitchell (06:30):
[00:06:30] Yeah, exactly. I mean, the biggest cities were no Chattanooga, Fort Collins, and these are great cities, but they're not what we think of as iconic cities. Oakland, San Francisco are definitely in that list. So in fact, I just started watching this show on Peacock Twisted Metal based on a video game I was familiar with, never heard of before, but in the future it's set partially in San Francisco, at least that's the first half of the first episode. So even after [00:07:00] the apocalypse, San Francisco will still be there. So these are premier cities, and so it's a big deal to see these cities having public ownership and now it's on them to make sure they do a good job. And that's not going to be easy, but that's what I'm trying to say. It's a big deal.

Sean Gonsalves (07:17):
Yeah, no, it certainly is a big deal, and I think it's a fundamental shift because I think a few years back, the idea of a major city doing anything beyond striking some new [00:07:30] cable franchise and hoping for the best and getting a few extra bucks for the local public access channel was about all cities were doing on this run.

Christopher Mitchell (07:40):
The big ones certainly not. So this is a big deal. And I mean, we see also, I don't think they've been announced yet, but the awards from New York, I don't think we're expecting. I don't know. I actually honestly don't know if New York City or Buffalo are going to be getting them. But anyway, it is something we've been looking [00:08:00] for a long time. We've expected, given the amount of need in major cities, they would have to do something aside from hoping the cable company did a better job.

Sean Gonsalves (08:09):
That's right. It's starting to happen.

Christopher Mitchell (08:11):
Yeah. So I mean, it's a big deal. I mean, I feel like as part of this, and there's a theme that we'll run through our conversation. You and I have said it so many times, and maybe we'll just skip right into in Massachusetts and then come back and talk about California with San Francisco in a minute. But this is about as good as [00:08:30] I expected to get. We had Vermont, Maine, California and New York are all putting money significantly into municipal projects. I think when President Biden and his administration came out hard supporting municipal networks, we expected more than that. But it's just three years ago, four years ago, I guess it's more than four years ago now. I was thinking during the Trump administration, it was always infrastructure week [00:09:00] and nothing ever got done prior to that. It didn't seem like municipal networks got a lot of respect nationally, except for occasionally a chairman Wheeler moving forward with it.

(09:10):
But this is a big deal, and I do feel like if Congress hadn't been so held hostage by the cable and telephone companies, maybe it would've worked out better. Perhaps administrators in the Biden administration could have written the rules of BEAD in ways that would've been better. But it's an all right, it's [00:09:30] an all right end if this is about as good as we do, which I think is reasonable to expect. Anyway, that's a long way of saying I don't think we're going to see a bunch of other states giving a lot of money on municipal networks and there's not a lot of other buckets that are coming out from municipal networks.

Sean Gonsalves (09:45):
That's right, and that's certainly true. And by the way, you named a number of states that it's true are making some really major investments in municipal broadband. Ironically, one state that never comes to mind in Tennessee, the electric cooperatives [00:10:00] and some of the munis that do actually exist in a state that's sort of legally hostile to municipal broadband, they man out pretty well. Yes,

Christopher Mitchell (10:10):
Tennessee has at times supported projects two areas that are unserved. So I believe Knoxville's Network received some state funds. The electric cooperatives have certainly done well under that. They're are less in the crosshairs of the big cable and telephone [00:10:30] companies, but Comcast and at and t set the agenda in Tennessee largely. And so despite the fact that that state has some of the best broadband in the nation because of municipal investments, they don't get very much respect from the state, but they haven't been totally shut out. So Sean, when you suggested we should talk a little bit about reminding people that BEAD is not going to go to cities, I was like, people know this.

Sean Gonsalves (10:57):
I don't think they do,

Christopher Mitchell (10:57):
But they don't know this. You're telling me they don't.

Sean Gonsalves (11:00):
[00:11:00] They do not. They do not. And I think where you see it is there are a lot of communities, cities in particular where very committed people are spending and pulling their hair out in the process, all things related to the state BEAD challenge processes and so on and so forth. And there's a lot to be said for why that's important work to be done.

Christopher Mitchell (11:22):
It's important in general. It may also be important in cities, but you're about to talk about specifically in cities,

Sean Gonsalves (11:30):
[00:11:30] Which is that it's good to make sure that we've got the best data available in terms of where there's gaps, where broadband is actually available, where it's quality, et cetera, and all of these kind of things. However, I just caution certain city officials to disabuse themselves of the notion that all that work is going to lead to them getting some kind of big BEAD grant for some project that they have in their city.

Christopher Mitchell (11:58):
They should be tracking it [00:12:00] because they are going to be responsible for fixing it. They should not be tracking it because they think someone is going to write them a check.

Sean Gonsalves (12:08):
And so I think Massachusetts is an example. So I served on the county's ARPA committee and one point that I tried to make that didn't really, I think penetrate was that the rules around how you can spend rescue plan money specifically as it relates to broadband, were much more flexible.

Christopher Mitchell (12:25):
Someone should have made this point over and over again in podcasts ahead of time.

Sean Gonsalves (12:30):
[00:12:30] And so you have all these folks, and I think overall there was a sense of, look, we've got a lot of big problems. This money's got to get out of the door pretty quick. Let's focus on those areas. And the infrastructure bill is coming and BEAD is coming. And even though I'm a communications guy, and I think a lot of people think that I can be pretty persuasive at times, it just didn't persuade enough people to put a significant amount towards broadband projects locally.

Christopher Mitchell (12:57):
And by that I think you mean that they took [00:13:00] a number of places, they took flexible dollars and they started spending them in the areas of the highest remoteness where it was the costliest to get service where it was the most obvious that there was no service available. And now they have funds they can only spend in areas like that, but they've also expended the dollars that they could have used to deal with the kind of problems that we're talking about in Oakland and San Francisco and places like that. The state of California [00:13:30] has been much smarter about this and making sure that they use their more flexible dollars in places that may not be eligible for BEAD

Sean Gonsalves (13:41):
Right now, if I were a governor for the day and had unlimited resources and everything, I would've probably contemplated and ed it to the broadband office and say, I want you to make two different maps, one for rescue plan funded projects and the rest for be, because in that conflation of the two, [00:14:00] and I get it why people will do that, it's sort of like, well, who cares where the money comes from? Let's set up a system of how we're going to award these programs. The problem is that with BEAD in this definition of unserved and underserved where the only thing BEAD cares about is speed tiers and network availability, it doesn't care about quality, it doesn't care about competition, which is what a lot of communities are clamoring for. Particularly communities that are in this Massachusetts Broadband Coalition, [00:14:30] which is an informal group of about 26 different towns, various folks that participate in this group, and I think they're rightly concerned, especially after the state just announced the GAP programs.

(14:43):
They have a gap networks program that was funded with rescue plan dollars, the CPF funds, and the first round of funding just went out. The door was announced $45 million, 37 million of that 45 went to Verizon. And I think a lot of people are going, what? We're talking about 1200 locations [00:15:00] back of the envelope calculations, 30,000 per passing or so. It just feels like a lot of money for such few connections. And there's a number of towns that were thinking about applying for future funding rounds and are now thinking that, look, the field is being tilted to favor the big incumbents. And the reason, going back to my idea, the reason why I want to have two separate maps for rescue plan funded projects and BEAD funded projects is because with rescue plan funded projects, [00:15:30] you can do things like we're going to take into account reliability and affordability in our definition of what is considered to be unserved and underserved, and we're not going to shoehorn everything into the B definition, which is kind of what's happening with all of these programs.

Christopher Mitchell (15:45):
This goes right into what we've embraced at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and which actually California embraced, if you read the document in which they talk about the projects we talked about earlier, Oakland, Fremont, San [00:16:00] Francisco, these are projects in which they were targeting people that are unserved. However, the project can also serve some of the people who are served. And in the documentation, they noted that they were going to allow that because in order to make it feasible and financially viable to serve the more remote and the more impoverished families and households, they needed to be able to serve other areas too in [00:16:30] the vicinity. I've always called for this. I've called for a mix. I've used the word blend, which is I think an important word in this context, which is this is how insurance works. If you say, we're only going to insure the homes that are the most likely to be destroyed by a flood, then that is a terrible business plan.

(16:53):
You got to mix some of the ones that are less likely to, you don't want to have the sort of high risk insurer [00:17:00] and the low risk insurer in healthcare. You got to mix in the healthy people with unhealthy people in order to make sure that the system works. And here we got to mix in some of the places nearby areas that are unserved to make sure a network will pencil out. And that's something that California and the CPUC seem to get in rejecting some of these challenges. It's something that I hope we see from other broadband offices too. But I agree with you. I'm deeply concerned about [00:17:30] the states who, I mean, I think it was political expediency that they didn't want to be seen. If I was to guess about MBI, and I could be wrong because I don't have any evidence on this.

(17:40):
I don't live in Massachusetts like you do, but when I look at what they did, my guess is they were like, well, we don't want to be putting money into Boston and the suburbs in the east or on the case before we resolve problems in the western part of the state, because the people in the western part of the state already think that people in Boston and in the suburbs get everything already. And so as a political dimension, [00:18:00] they knew that the flexible spending was available earlier and BEAD dollars, which are less flexible would be available later. So they said, let's take the flexible dollars and we'll put 'em into the inflexible unserved places. And I understand why that makes sense politically, but I think it is a really bad idea if you're actually trying to solve the problem of making sure everyone in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has decent Internet access.

Sean Gonsalves (18:26):
Right. And so I guess my overall point is that to reiterate, and [00:18:30] again, I don't know that as much as we've said this over and over again, and as much as people that are in this space all the time sort of assume that this is obvious, I don't know that it is for people who are dealing with a multitude of issues all the time and aren't following the minutia of things, which is that BEAD is not designed to create competition. It's not designed to fund projects that are going to be competing with incumbents.

Christopher Mitchell (18:54):
BEAD was not designed by President Biden. The Biden administration talked [00:19:00] about a bunch of objectives including competition and lowering prices through competition and public ownership of networks for those benefits as well. And Congress said, no, we're too busy cashing checks from the big cable and telephone companies to do something that would upset them this greatly, but we're going to send this ambiguous language to the president and his people will have to figure out how they want to sort it out. And they sort it out in ways that I think you and I aren't super thrilled of when it comes to BEAD, but [00:19:30] they did a really great job when it came to the rescue plan. So on average we did all right, and that's where we are. But yeah, I mean, there's going to be, what drives me nuts is that for the next several years, we'll have hearings where they'll pull someone down and be like, why did this create more competition? And it's like, well, because you wouldn't let it,

Sean Gonsalves (19:51):
Right? Why are prices still going up?

Christopher Mitchell (19:54):
But in Massachusetts, I do want to highlight that that's a lot of money going to Verizon, [00:20:00] and it's pretty frustrating, I think, because I've long felt that Verizon is less bad than at t or CenturyLink and some of these other ones. But still, I hate seeing these millions upon tens of millions of dollars going to a company that's going to have a monopoly effectively that we know has a history of raising prices that we know has a history of poor customer service. So it's a bad investment when it could have been better.

Sean Gonsalves (20:27):
One of the things I think that was striking and with some [00:20:30] of the stuff that I was hearing from different folks in various towns who were eyeballing this particular Gap Networks grant program is that one of the requirements is you have to have a 20% match and you could get that waived, but you had to have existing municipal broadband debt, even though they don't say how much they say. It could be sort of any amount. But the problem is, is that the way town meeting works in Massachusetts [00:21:00] is towns make funding decisions in May in the spring. I think a lot of towns felt like, come on, man, this stuff should align. If you were going to be serious about letting municipalities participate, unless the only municipalities you care about are the ones who have already built broadband networks and they're just trying to get a few extra bucks to sort of finish their build out or something, which is actually the case with Greenfield. It was the one municipal broadband project [00:21:30] that did get $750,000. I

Christopher Mitchell (21:33):
Just changed my mic to the correct setting, so sorry for the sudden shift for people. I just realized it was on the wrong mic. Sean should have told me that. It didn't sound great. I assume that you noticed and just wanted to level the playing field so that you didn't feel so intimidated by my voice. That's right. But yeah, so greenfield's one, and there was not a lot of applicants for these awards.

Sean Gonsalves (21:55):
No, there were only six and they awarded four. I think the reason why that there were only six is that [00:22:00] it just speaks to the INE process and the level of difficulty that municipalities have in having the staff and the resources to dot a million in order to qualify for these grants. That's a reality that a lot of municipalities face. And so yeah, there were six applicants. There were four awards. That was round one, round two. The deadline actually was just a few days ago or last week or so, and they're going to be announcing the round two award winners, about a hundred million left in that particular pot. [00:22:30] They'll be announcing the award winners for that in the fall.

Christopher Mitchell (22:33):
Is this shades of what we're fearing regarding BEAD, do you think, in terms of just a lack of ISPs that want to, whether they're municipal or not, that want to go through the hoops?

Sean Gonsalves (22:44):
I think so. Mean, certainly there will be a number of municipalities and even small ISPs that if you thought the requirements for applying for some of these other funds were difficult way till you apply for a BEAD grant.

Christopher Mitchell (22:57):
Yeah. I mean, I'll say that this is hard to predict. [00:23:00] There was a time when we were wondering whether Texas would opt out of the entire BEAD framework and just not take the money, which seems silly in retrospect, but I took that seriously. It seemed like it was a possibility. And so I wonder if, I'll laugh at myself for thinking that ISPs wouldn't take this opportunity, but at the same time, I hear a lot of ISPs proclaiming that they are not going to go after this money because of all the rules. And when I see so few ISPs competing in Massachusetts, there's not a ton of ISPs in Massachusetts, not Iowa [00:23:30] or Minnesota, where we've got this long tradition of independence. But at the same time, I would've thought we would've seen more going for it, and of cities that specifically were just very frustrated at the rules and felt like they were deliberately locked out.

(23:44):
Okay. Let's go back to San Francisco then. So one of the things that MBI is doing that we're keeping an eye on also is they've done this gap network approach, and they are doing an MDU program as well, right? We're about to talk about the apartment buildings in California, [00:24:00] but we're very interested to see what happens with Massachusetts as well as the state of New York who are doing these programs to try to help building owners retrofit their buildings to allow better service inside where the state will have to pay for it. So that's pretty interesting that MBI is doing that, and we're going to keep an eye on that, but San Francisco's been a pioneer of this. And you just recently wrote about it,

Sean Gonsalves (24:24):
Right? I wrote about it because they won an award from, that's the National Association of Telecommunications Officers [00:24:30] and Advisors,

Christopher Mitchell (24:31):
And we're out of time. Yeah,

Sean Gonsalves (24:33):
I know, but they won it for their fiber to the housing program, which is just like it sounds, they're running fiber out to housing, affordable housing units all across the city on the back of their municipality.

Christopher Mitchell (24:50):
Is that right? In the past they, it's been doing the big apartment buildings, yes,

Sean Gonsalves (24:53):
The big apartment buildings. Okay, well, that's what I meant to say. Yeah. Okay. According to the city, we're talking about [00:25:00] 52 different public housing locations across the city. So what their goal is,

Christopher Mitchell (25:04):
These are often, in my experience, these can be campuses of multiple small, multiple triplexes or smaller buildings, or they could be larger units. And also I think people don't always realize this, but a number of these are often specifically for retired and older adults. Correct. So it's not always the case that it's sort of like people like us who happen to be in public housing that [00:25:30] are at our age, who are still able to get out looking for jobs and things like that.

Sean Gonsalves (25:34):
That's right. And the goal is to connect 30,000 affordable housing units across the city. So far, they've connected about 14,000, and then they just recently, the 10 million award that they got from the state is going to help them get to that 30,000, but they were able to do it because they have a municipally owned fiber network that essentially serves public safety facilities, hospitals, libraries, [00:26:00] streetlights, and that kind of thing. So they were leveraging the assets that they have and realized what, we're in a very, very expensive city. It's a much more difficult problem to tackle sort of affordable housing cost, particularly being so close to Silicon Valley and all the money that, and how that jacks up the cost of real estate and housing and so forth. But they said, but we can leverage our assets to try to deliver actually what will be free Internet service for subscribers who [00:26:30] use the service. That I think is very encouraging and something that I think other cities should be looking at. I think Newark is doing something similar. We wrote about recently. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (26:40):
Yeah. Newark's been doing it for a while also, and they've been focused on business as well.

Sean Gonsalves (26:45):
HUD put out a number that I thought was interesting, which was that 46% of families living in public housing do not have high-speed Internet at home or rely solely on smartphones. We're talking about a pretty sizable chunk of folks in [00:27:00] cities across the country. When you think about it, I mean, of course it will vary from city to city, but that's where in cities, the bulk of people who do not have Internet service are in MDUs.

Christopher Mitchell (27:12):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a major issue. Certainly if you're in Detroit or a number of other places, or a lot of Southern California people are either in single family homes or duplex or triplex kind of situations. That is a challenge. But [00:27:30] there's other places where people largely live in apartment buildings, and those are areas where I feel like we can resolve this.

Sean Gonsalves (27:37):
Right. For me, there is a thread that sort of runs through all of this, which is that as we're focusing on metro areas and as people are grappling with all of the various hoops that BEAD requires, I think it's just important for major metros and cities in general, if they're serious about solving these connectivity challenges [00:28:00] in their communities, they should not be hoping that BEAD is going to solve the problem for them. They need to be looking at what places like San Francisco, Newark, Syracuse, all manner of things, whether you're talking about having an open access fiber backbone, that at least creates the seeds for competition and for independent ISPs to come in and leverage that network to extend last mile service, cities are going to have to start thinking in much more expansive and creative and really wrap their minds [00:28:30] around and public-private partnerships and things of that nature. Otherwise, if they're relying on BEAD, I think they're going to be in for a rude awakening.

Christopher Mitchell (28:38):
One of the things that we've seen is, even two years ago, it seemed to me that major cities, Chicago, Oakland, Houston, I think their digital equity strategy was being run by often a very capable but young person who was there for one or two years on a fellowship [00:29:00] in the mayor's office, not from a person that commanded respect from a permanent position, who had a place in the hierarchy, and this is what cities need. If I was a philanthropist, which I have no danger of becoming anytime soon, I

Sean Gonsalves (29:20):
Was going to say, did you win a lottery that I don't know

Christopher Mitchell (29:22):
About? I've been thinking a lot about this. And the city came to me and they were like, Hey, we'd love to partner on some broadband stuff. And I'd [00:29:30] be like, cool, who do you got working on it? And they're like, oh, we found this person and we think they're okay, and they're going to be with us for nine more months. I would be like, oh, you're really committed to this, but you want to have someone, the cities need someone somewhere that has some authority to actually be, at the very least developing plans around this. And I'll say, and I don't want to single out any cities. There's a few that come to mind though. There are cities that have taken telecommunications more seriously over [00:30:00] the years. They've had better franchise agreements, they've put money into those offices. I can't see a difference for those cities being better served.

(30:09):
I think that if we were, to be honest, much from a political point of view, I'm looking around sometimes and I'm like, what does it look like when Republicans run a place entirely? Versus when Democrats run a place entirely and regardless of who you are, I think you're like, wow, they're still not solving a lot of the problems they talk about all the time, even when there's not another [00:30:30] party that's shutting them down. Well, in these major cities, the cities have had the authority often to make investments, to develop plans, and some of 'em don't even have plans really. They're constantly in the position of thinking about making a plan or convening a coalition, and the coalition is there to collate. I don't know. They're not actually coalition.

(30:54):
I mean, some of these places have, Seattle's done more, right? Seattle's a place that has put money into telecom over [00:31:00] the years. Their franchising office and whatnot takes it seriously. And they've done some good things on Internet access, but there's other cities that I'm like, what are they doing? They're not taking it more seriously than other cities, but they have people that are paid to be doing this sort of thing. And I just feel like if I lived in one of those cities, wait a minute, I think I am deeply frustrated with the city of St. Paul and the city of Minneapolis for not taking this seriously, but they're not doing anything. [00:31:30] And I feel like, and the mayors know they're not going to get thrown out of office for it, but cities have to take it seriously. That has to change. And no amount of my whining or eding is going to actually change that unless the city really starts to take it seriously. But we're starting to see that now, I think.

Sean Gonsalves (31:50):
So I think it's becoming more apparent, although I do think that sort of the default, I don't know if you want to call this human nature or whatever, but it's like people in these positions, [00:32:00] elected positions, usually fairly well paid by comparison. Not comparing 'em to Wall Street or something, but fairly. But these are people who all have, they take Internet access for granted. It's one of those things where it's like, well, everybody has Internet access if they want it or whatever. And so it's sort of a classic, to me problem of it doesn't affect me and it doesn't seem like it would be affecting anybody else. And to the extent that it does, we can just do charity type stuff and [00:32:30] try to piece things together and do some kind of device program and offer classes and stuff like that and pat ourselves on the back and call it a day.

Christopher Mitchell (32:40):
Yeah, no, that's the thing. And that's where I do think of this as an emergency, but I don't see cities treating it. It's an emergency. I see cities treating it. It's something that like, oh, we should get to that sometime.

Sean Gonsalves (32:53):
Right? And in fairness, I mean granted any community, but particularly large cities, you're grappling with a ton of [00:33:00] really serious issues that require real serious resources and budgeting in terms of the public mind and in the voting mind. But

Christopher Mitchell (33:08):
Lemme push back on you, Sean, and people are listening to this show. They got through our ramblings. Let's give 'em a little bit of bonus. I think this is going to be a bonus. You're a little bit older than I am. You lived through the period where cities didn't have budgets for the past 10 years. Cities have been loaded in comparison. No city is ever going to feel like, oh, I can make all the investments I want to make, but [00:33:30] cities are growing and they're able to borrow, and they just got a record amount of money from the federal government. I can't handle, and I'm not talking about Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or West, but a lot of cities are playing pretending they can't do anything. They're putting money into sports stadiums. They're always doing that. This is a time when I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. And so I dunno how you react to that, but you know what it was like when cities didn't have money? You're

Sean Gonsalves (33:59):
Right. [00:34:00] Except that in terms of the agenda and the things that are considered issues, like whether it's crime or transportation or the cost of housing or the cost of childcare, it's like all of those issues kind of Trump broadband to the point where broadband is an afterthought in comparison to some of these other issues

Christopher Mitchell (34:18):
And go back and listen to, I mean, you can find it easily on the national level, but it is fascinating to me the extent to which people talk about an urgency about an issue, and you can hear it every four years, that same [00:34:30] urgency. And I'll bet if you go to property tax hearings every two years at the city, you could just replay what they said 20 years ago today. And it is amazing to me because broadband's a problem we can solve. We're going to be arguing about crime, and we're going to be arguing about education in 20 years. I can guarantee you that. I sure hope we're not argue about broadband in the same way in 20 years.

Sean Gonsalves (34:53):
I would hope not. And especially for the sake of those who've been caught on the wrong side of the digital divide, because with AI and all this other stuff [00:35:00] coming, I mean, I think the implications of being on the wrong side of the digital divide get exponentially worse to the extent that folks who have been locked out get locked out, particularly at a time when this stuff has really taken off.

Christopher Mitchell (35:14):
And I'll just say one last thing about that too, which I feel like the more I think about it, the more I feel like one of the big fallouts from that is just this sign that you're growing up. Nobody cares about me. Society doesn't care about me. They want me policed. They want to make sure [00:35:30] I'm not causing a problem. And when you're going home from school and that most kids go home to having Internet access and you go home and there's nothing there for you, it's a message. Whereas I feel like if you were still going home to a single parent household and you still had a lot of insecurity in your life, but at least you have the escape of being able to talk to your friends and communicate and play games or whatever. I think that there's a serious part of development that changes because you are correctly [00:36:00] reading the signs that society does not value you.

Sean Gonsalves (36:03):
Yeah. I mean, hard to argue that. So going to be, I think we're going to at least have work to do in this space for the foreseeable future. I do not see this problem being solved on the horizon.

Christopher Mitchell (36:15):
No, but I mean, if we had a 10 year plan, I'd sure love to work on something else. In my professional career, I'm not wed to doing this work forever. Yeah, it would be nice to, I mean, I would say that over the next [00:36:30] six to 10 years, it would be possible to largely solve this issue. Who knows? I mean, there's broader issues. If there's a massive war between the US and China, alright, it is probably not going to happen. But at the same time, if we see the same kind of relative peace and prosperity that we've experienced for a while, it's embarrassing that we haven't done it and we could get it done. So I don't want to harp on, I don't want to keep going off on different tangents. People got to get their next show up. That's right. Because you're a podcast guy now. So let's leave with [00:37:00] what's one of your favorite new podcast shows, Mr. New Podcaster?

Sean Gonsalves (37:03):
Oh man, there's so many. I'm like all over the place. Was it the gist that you sent me? I really like

Christopher Mitchell (37:09):
It. Yeah. Mike Pesca.

Sean Gonsalves (37:10):
Yep. The gist. Mike Pesca. The Bulwark podcast has been interesting.

Christopher Mitchell (37:16):
Yeah, I'm a fan of those guys. You have some Oakland Warriors podcasts in there? You know

Sean Gonsalves (37:20):
What? I haven't done any sports podcasts yet. I feel like I get enough sporting news as it is, and with social media also, really, I [00:37:30] really am enjoying deep questions with Cal Newport. That's a great podcast.

Christopher Mitchell (37:34):
You recommend that. I haven't gotten to it yet.

Sean Gonsalves (37:36):
There's so many out there. So I feel like that now that I've dove into podcast and audiobooks, I've just been on a tear and I'm loving it. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (37:45):
Awesome. Well, Sean, I appreciate you coming on with me, and it's nice to be on my mic and feeling like I'm superior again. Again.

Sean Gonsalves (37:55):
That's right. For sure.

Christopher Mitchell (37:56):
Alright, thank you so much. Alright,

Sean Gonsalves (37:58):
Take care.

Ry Marcattilio (37:59):
We have transcripts [00:38:00] for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at communitynets. Follow communitynets.org stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere [00:38:30] you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Commons.