Recent Broadband News Roundup - Episode 619 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 Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul Minnesota. Hope you enjoyed that breather last week. Wanted to just let you catch up. Had that wonderful episode on the horror of the future of the music labels kicking people off the Internet [00:00:30] when anyone that was attached to a Wi-Fi access point happened to be accused of downloading something. So I hope you caught that conversation, but today we are going to be talking about a little grab bag of topics and I've got in the order of importance, but I won't tell you if it's ascending or descending. Sean Gonsalves, welcome to the show.

Sean Gonsalves (00:53):
Alright, I get mentioned first, but something tells me I might not be number one.

Christopher Mitchell (01:00):
[00:01:00] You're going to be with us the longest on the show. We're going to do this and we're going to kick people off after each major segment. Sean Communications guru for the Institute for Local Self Alliance's Community Broadband Networks team.

Sean Gonsalves (01:12):
I love that title Guru.

Christopher Mitchell (01:15):
Yes, it's way better than the Reverse of UG Ry is also here from the research team. Welcome.

Ry Marcattilio (01:22):
Thank you. Chris. I guess in the middle is the only safe place to be in this group,

Christopher Mitchell (01:27):
Right? You're at least assured [00:01:30] of your status and Ry Marcattilio, we've dropped the McCracken. It just takes too long to say and now I've wasted even more time in explaining that, but we've got Jess, our here joining us too. And Jess, I'm really excited you could join us for this first segment. You do a lot of research for us with the research team and have been focused on the tribal broadband bootcamps and research around tribal networks. But let's start off with asking you why you're in a coffee shop, which doesn't [00:02:00] have the best audio background.

Jessica Auer (02:03):
Yeah, just as you were introducing me, a motorcycle drove by, so I I'm glad you missed that. I am in a coffee shop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina because I was in Nashville, North Carolina about up until a week ago, and it's not a place to be if you want to work, if you want to drink water, if you want to enjoy living right now. So that's why I'm here.

Christopher Mitchell (02:28):
Yes, so you came [00:02:30] out to join us at our retreat right after Helene came by. We wanted to share a little bit of what you went through and I think just give people a little bit of a sense of what happened in Asheville and Western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, but also I think what it's like to be in the middle of that, to be basically kicked back 20 or 30 years telecommunications wise.

Jessica Auer (02:54):
Yeah. Well, thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (02:56):
So let's start with the storm. The storm is approaching and [00:03:00] we all knew that it was going to be a soaker I guess, but at what point, and I'm curious if you were jumping on the Internet or at what point did you realize that this was not going to be just a typical bad storm that you might've experienced before?

Jessica Auer (03:15):
It's a complicated question. I was going to drive to Chapel Hill to visit a friend that Thursday night and Evan was like, my husband was like, you can't, that's stupid. Don't drive through this. And partially, I think as it's Floridian, [00:03:30] you get a little bit a nerd, so some of the weather forecasting, but they were already saying Wednesday, Thursday night, Wednesday we had a bad storm and then they were saying that we were expecting 10 to 15 inches of rain. I know that's a big number, but it's hard for me to envision what that might mean, what it will mean for people to get 10 to 15 inches of rain.

Christopher Mitchell (03:53):
That happened in Minnesota in southern Minnesota and near the Bluffs, which is not most of Minnesota's topography, [00:04:00] but they got 14 inches of rain. And one of the things that I know happened down there, I actually went down there to visit a fiber provider after it happened was that rivers rerouted themselves. It's catastrophic to have that much flooding, particularly in an area with ridges where it can become quite concentrated.

Jessica Auer (04:19):
We woke up Friday morning, we had a bar of cell signal and I actually sent both you Chris and Rise a message saying that we had no power. I wasn't going to work, but we [00:04:30] saw trees down, definitely houses were damaged, cars whatnot. And we walked to a bridge and we saw the river flooding and that was the first time one of the rivers in town flooding. That was sort of the first time that I sort of recognized how had an inkling of how bad this could be. We saw what you might haveve seen on the news. The River Arts District was flooding because of the French Broad River. But something that I mentioned to all of you at the retreat was that because we had no outside information, we had [00:05:00] no access to information. I had no idea of the true scope of the destruction until I was in the Charlotte airport and was able to look at images and read reporting for the first time. That's sort of disorienting experience to be both in the middle of it and also have no sense of the scale of it.

Christopher Mitchell (05:18):
You had a bar in the morning and I think you weren't able to make phone calls and you weren't able to really access the Internet. You could just basically do texting.

Jessica Auer (05:26):
I had a bar in the morning and this actually happened to a lot of people I talked to in Asheville [00:05:30] and I could get a message out, although I didn't get anything back from anyone for hours and hours, but then it went away and it went away everywhere and a friend walked our house and said, oh, I had a bar over by the bridge. That's actually why we want you to just to get some telephone coverage. When we got there, a few people were on the phone, so somebody was getting through somewhere. There were those pockets that we found where people, I could see people on the phone, but I couldn't get a text through, certainly couldn't get [00:06:00] online, I couldn't make a phone call, anything like that.

Christopher Mitchell (06:02):
I want to ask one other question. I want to see if anyone else has any questions or if I've missed any key topics, but this storm, it messed up the water system, which is usually buried very deep in cities, and so you get a sense of the scale of destruction. I don't know that it's unreasonable to think the airport would've still had telecommunications, but you flew out of Asheville and the airport itself seems to have had no telecommunications.

Jessica Auer (06:26):
This is a confusing thing because in the airport's shop [00:06:30] I was able to use my car to pay for something. So somewhere there was some kind of connection, but at the gates they said their systems were down, they couldn't do anything, they couldn't get online, they couldn't check anything for anyone. It was a very confusing experience. And the way we had to board the plane was they got on the phone and they called somebody in an office and we read out our seed assignment and they checked the manifest and they okayed us and then we just walked through and I guess [00:07:00] they checked us off or something. I don't know how they would've even known, but the connections among facilities at the airport were not there. And I don't know why that was exactly, because there was some sort of connection at some point and some points I should say. But yeah, it was a unique experience for me for sure.

Christopher Mitchell (07:16):
Yeah, so I feel like it is fascinating to me how there's so many things to talk about with this. We are not going to spend the whole show on it, but Sean, what did you want to ask?

Sean Gonsalves (07:24):
It just made me think of a lot of things. I mean, I live in a part of the country, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where [00:07:30] we are both in the path of hurricanes and blizzards, although the weather patterns seem to have changed so that we haven't been getting hit as much as in times past. I've been around with hurricanes where we were without power for two, three weeks, couldn't flush toilets and et cetera, blizzards and all those kinds of things. And so that sense of isolation and devastation, I can relate to some degree, but it makes me think about as it relates to telecommunications, it speaks to sort of the significance of having resilient infrastructure [00:08:00] that can, especially as these kinds of things are going to happen more and more often though it does though not being an engineer. I wonder if what telecommunication infrastructure could really actually survive a kind of catastrophe like we saw in the area in Asheville, North Carolina

Christopher Mitchell (08:18):
Area. Well, the cell towers can, and then I suspect they ran out of backup power, right? I mean

Jessica Auer (08:22):
No, that's not what happened.

Christopher Mitchell (08:24):
Oh, okay.

Jessica Auer (08:24):
Supposedly, supposedly the fiber feeding those towers was destroyed.

Christopher Mitchell (08:28):
So I'm at [00:08:30] a loss then I'm at a loss of how it worked for a while. I mean, presumably you could have had continuing erosion uncovering things and damaging it over time. We'll have to wait for further reports to see if that's substantiated or not. Jess, you're getting that from an official source, I'm guess.

Jessica Auer (08:47):
Yeah, that was from a news article. I mean the thing about being in it is we learned that there was no water and it made no sense what could happen to the water because around us there was tree damage and people were experiencing [00:09:00] awful things, but it didn't compute and cell service was like, how is it possible that cell service goes out completely in an entire region? That's what they are saying, or at least that's what I've read is that fiber connections to the cell towers went down. And I'm sure the power was a contributing factor as well in some places, but that's why it was taking so long to get restored. They couldn't just prioritize the cell towers. It was other things happening.

Ry Marcattilio (09:23):
Ryan, any comments? Just to say that, so I'm in southern Minnesota and we went through that storm that [00:09:30] Chris mentioned. I'm just a few miles downstream of where that river rerouted itself around the dam and dropped that house into the river a couple months ago at the end of June, and we had a couple feet of water in the backyard and a foot of water in the basement for a while, but we had power the whole time and Internet service the whole time. And I can't even imagine the level of magnitude that it drops you into to not only be going through that, but also to be completely cut off from the outside world from any kind of other resources that you might be able to [00:10:00] call in to help.

Christopher Mitchell (10:02):
Well, and then I think the last thing was just also as you are trying to figure out Jess, how to make a decision about coming to join us or not, you have a limited amount of gasoline, no real way to get information on whether you need to conserve it or if you're going to have resolution of this stuff in a few weeks or without that lack of information, it's got to be really killer as you're trying to figure out just what to do over the next few days.

Jessica Auer (10:27):
Yeah, I mean it was definitely one of those [00:10:30] with both trying to get some self service and gas. You would see a line or you would see a crowd and you would just join it because certainly there's something here that you might need and ask why are you here? And they'd be, oh, I can get a signal here. And so you try to get a signal there. I think everybody was stressed and I haven't read too many reports of people flying off the handle or however you want to say it, but I can imagine that that's definitely, it felt easy to do because it was just so no [00:11:00] context and no information and I won't put my public radio station on blast, but I just feel like with no way to hear even in some kinds the broadcast or no way to hear what the county was saying or the city was saying, you just had to ask everybody who you saw what they knew and how they knew it and hope that they had good information, which is not always the case. Definitely some people heard rumors of things and went to check it out and then stood in a line for an [00:11:30] hour where there was actually no actual cash in att m.

Christopher Mitchell (11:34):
Did you dial the FM dial or did you not have a device that could do that? Just out of curiosity. Wait, you're on the prepper continuum, right? Your family is?

Jessica Auer (11:43):
No, I mean we would get in the car and we would turn the car on an hourly basis to catch the news coverage. So we have that. We don't have any other FM who does power radio station. We have solar panels and we [00:12:00] will, I think always kick ourselves for not getting a battery for those solar panels because we would've been in a much better position if we had.

Christopher Mitchell (12:07):
Yeah. Well thank you Jess. There's a bunch of other things. Sean, did you want to wrap up? I am a

Sean Gonsalves (12:11):
Wannabe prepper and listening to this conversation is inspiring me to consider becoming a ham radio

Christopher Mitchell (12:19):
Operator. Yeah, that's one of the things that I do feel like I wonder how many people actually were able to get information and then weren't able to share it. No one really knew that they were there. [00:12:30] Ham radio operators are usually prepared to be relaying information and things like that. So

Jessica Auer (12:35):
I'll just say one last thing is that there is a local radio station and I read coverage of them recently that they've been basically on the air the whole time and how they were getting their information was they had plugged into the ham radio community and where learning things that other people just were not.

Christopher Mitchell (12:51):
Yep. Well, I guess the last thing I would say on that also is Chattanooga I think is prepared for this. I don't remember if we've done an in-depth coverage of it, but one of the things that [00:13:00] they've been doing is moving through the community and setting up kind of regional areas where they have significant off-grid storage. They have presumably supplies people should know to go there where they'd have Wi-Fi and things like that, even if it's not connected to the wider Internet where people could jump and get some local resources and things like that. And so some communities I think are preparing for this and I hope that more take [00:13:30] notice of this and are prepared for it. We saw this in Marin County with fires. We've seen it in a number of other places. It's only going to get worse. We look forward to having you back in Asheville and back on the show, Jess, so good luck and look forward to catching up with you next time.

Jessica Auer (13:48):
Thanks. Bye.

Sean Gonsalves (13:50):
See you Jess.

Christopher Mitchell (13:51):
Our second story is about the Federal Communications Commission and the United States House [00:14:00] Committee on Oversight is decided to play politics by accusing the FCC of possibly playing politics in denying Starlink the award from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, which we've covered a number of times before. And so we wanted to talk briefly about this. I certainly did, and I wanted to drag the two of you into it because I'm so annoyed. Government oversight is a real thing and there's a lot of things that it should [00:14:30] be overseeing, but the idea that Elon Musk, who happens to be a darling of the conservatives right now, seems to be getting a lot of favorable treatment from Republicans in Congress. So I guess I'll just throw it out there and ask, I dunno which one of you wants to take it first, but I'll probably pick on Ry. What do you think about this hearing to ask whether or not the FCC has played politics just to try to screw SpaceX out of this award?

Ry Marcattilio (15:00):
[00:15:00] I guess the first thing to say is that it's interesting timing. So the FCC denied star link's long form application all the way back in August of 2022. So now here we are 26 months later and this thing comes out of the woodwork. It comes right on the heels of Hurricane Helene and the fccs decision to expand lifeline eligibility to Starlink service to try to get some of the folks there and the disaster recovery situation reconnected [00:15:30] to the Internet. But why else are we talking about this right now?

Christopher Mitchell (15:33):
That's one of the things that I had said was I don't know why every airport doesn't have two or three Starling terminals sitting around waiting for an emergency, but it's unrelated to the RDOF award. Sean,

Sean Gonsalves (15:45):
I think having been in print journalism for a couple of decades and then having worked in pr, I don't know if it was Elon himself or he just has a great PR department because the convergence, I think of what [00:16:00] happened in what we just talked about in North Carolina and elsewhere with these hurricanes is kind of like I could imagine some PR person saying, this is a great moment to talk about Starlink as being the answer to connectivity. But all of that sort of plays on, I think the general public's not knowing that Starlink couldn't possibly be the answer. It certainly can be part of the mix, but it's almost like saying, look, we can provide [00:16:30] temporary campers, but that's not the same thing as heaven house. And so

Christopher Mitchell (16:35):
There's one comedian, there was a comedian, I don't remember who it is right now, but he literally makes a joke, which is great, which is the black box on the plane. Why don't they make the whole plane out of the black box? That's literally what we're dealing with right here. Starlink works in this limited situation. Why don't we just have everyone use it because it doesn't work like that. Sorry, I just zucchini you.

Sean Gonsalves (17:00):
[00:17:00] Right. R does have on eat vegetables, so I don't blame you.

Ry Marcattilio (17:06):
I think we can all eat a little more vegetables,

Christopher Mitchell (17:08):
Sean, especially me. Zucchini is a code word we happen to adopt in terms of when we're interrupting each other. What I find interesting about this is that the federal government does discriminate when it comes to Elon Musk overwhelmingly in his favor. The man is in violation of so many laws in the United States and in Europe as well, [00:17:30] and he still is a recipient of billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars for good reason. His rockets are the best I guess, or certainly top of the rockets that are available. But nonetheless, the man brags about violating drug laws and as a contractor to the federal government, you're not to do that in any shape or form. This is very clear. He has violated untold numbers of labor laws and still no matter how many laws he breaks, he [00:18:00] continues to receive contract after contract without much investigation.

(18:03):
He seems to be in violation of numerous consent decrees or other agreements with the Federal Trade Commission among others. And so I will say the federal government overwhelmingly discriminates on the matter of Musk, but it goes in the other direction. Now when it comes to this, the thing that I would've had be fascinated by is if the Federal Communications Commission had decided to give Starlink all of this money short of a billion dollars, but approaching a billion dollars for rural [00:18:30] connectivity. Because what it would mean is that in a lot of rural areas you would have waiting lists to get service. That is the nature of the service today. And I think Starlink is wonderful. It is amazing. If you're on a boat, it's amazing if you're fighting a massive wildfire. It is just wonderful technology that is so important. It's amazing on the battlefield and so important to stop creeping in fascism. So I am not a naysayer, but [00:19:00] at the same time, we need to invest money into technologies that can serve everyone, not just the people who are the quickest to sign up. And that is what is happening right now. Starlink cannot serve everyone on the ground in these rural areas that need service

Sean Gonsalves (19:15):
To say nothing of the fact that it's not exactly cheap to get Starlink.

Christopher Mitchell (19:19):
Right, although it's also not cheap to drop $10,000 on a fiber connection to a rural location. So I'll say that I agree with you Sean, and I'll just also agree that [00:19:30] there's others who would say that other solutions when it comes to the word cheap, it can mean there's different degrees of magnitude,

Sean Gonsalves (19:37):
But I meant as an individual subscriber, even when the infrastructure is in place, it ain't cheap to sign up is what I mean.

Ry Marcattilio (19:43):
Yes. Yeah. The thing I was going to add is Sean and you Chris both mentioned it is there's a difference in scale between providing temporary service to people in a disaster situation in North Carolina and Starlink being able to fulfill the hundreds [00:20:00] of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of locations that it bid for to provide service to under RDOF. Also, to be clear here, the letter that was written by Comer calls this an unlawful clawback of funds by the FCC. To be clear, the RDOF was designed under the last FCC Starlink was allowed to participate in that process in the fall and winter of 2020. Whether Starlink should have been able or should have been allowed to be an initial participant, I think is something that [00:20:30] is worthy of conversation. And then the new FCC went through the established process whereby they said, okay, you applied for these funds, we gave you provisional wins, but then we both acknowledged that you have to go through a long form application process and convince us that you're able to financially and technically meet the commitments that you've made in order to get these precious public funds.

(20:54):
It looked at Starling's long form application from January to August, 2022 and decided that [00:21:00] they couldn't do it. And so it's not as if on a whim they decided we need to really throw on it. Elon Musk.

Christopher Mitchell (21:07):
Yes. I think the same thing would've happened if it was Sean Sal's 300 mile high orbiting platform Internet technology. You got to work on your technology name Sean. That's a terrible name for a service.

Sean Gonsalves (21:21):
Well, if we're going to follow this logic, the name of my LLC would be, trust me bro.

Christopher Mitchell (21:29):
But [00:21:30] I got to say that it's very clear that there is a challenge and time will tell whether or not future Starlink speed tests in aggregate show that it was able to increase capacity as fast as it's adding users to the system. Because we all watched the speed test that Starlink had originally were pretty good. And over the past several years we've watched as they have come down, and I don't think we've really seen them go up significantly, although some people have had really good experiences, [00:22:00] it's still far better Internet access than many people in remote areas can get. However, it's not clear that it meets the standards of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. And as you noted ry, I think it was a really bad decision. You said it was worthy of conversation. It was a bad decision to just let anyone bid. And then the thing was is that in the end you had to prove that you could make it work and they didn't. So last word Ry before you head off.

Ry Marcattilio (22:28):
No, I think it's just it's [00:22:30] emblematic of maybe both the success and failure of RDOF that more than a third of the RDOFF auction wins were placed in default by the FCC after looking at the long form application. Starlink wasn't the only provider that was deemed not able to meet the commitments that it had promised you. And so all of this is happening in a larger context and the idea that the House committee on oversight and accountability has the technical expertise and rigor and [00:23:00] interest perspective in levying an actual fair and faithful look at what's going on here is laughable to me.

Christopher Mitchell (23:10):
Yeah. Ryan, I know you've got to run off to a meeting. I think Jess is going to be there. You're going to want to pay attention. I don't know if she's working today or if she's just hanging out in a coffee shop, so you're going to want to look into that.

Ry Marcattilio (23:20):
I'll see what I can find out.

Christopher Mitchell (23:22):
Alright,

Ry Marcattilio (23:22):
Thanks you guys.

Christopher Mitchell (23:23):
Yeah. Okay, Sean, we got a couple of quick hitters to wrap up the show. First of all, you've covered Destination [00:23:30] Crenshaw in California. We are very excited to see that it has not cleared all of the hurdles, however, it has now been recommended to be funded by the California Public Utility Commission and in some number of weeks will likely be voted on by the commission to be funded. What project is this?

Sean Gonsalves (23:49):
Oh man, I love this project. Destination Crenshaw is part of this nonprofit organization that's really looking to revitalize that whole area in South central Los Angeles. And so it's part [00:24:00] of this overall plan to create what they're calling digital opportunity zone, which also by the way, includes when it's done, will be America's largest open air museum. There's a bunch of murals and pocket parks, et cetera. But they really thought it was really important, particularly after the pandemic, to create this digital opportunity zone and want to build out fiber to thousands of addresses in that particular unserved and underserved part of the city.

Christopher Mitchell (24:29):
And this is in [00:24:30] Los Angeles, just to make sure, I forget if you mentioned that, right?

Sean Gonsalves (24:32):
Yes. Yes. Los Angeles, south central Los Angeles

Christopher Mitchell (24:35):
That's in California now. I think people got Planet Earth Milky Way.

Sean Gonsalves (24:39):
I hope people that are listening to this know that Los Angeles is in California. But at any rate, it's exciting. And for a while as the CPUC, the California Public Utility Commission was round after round giving out grants, and from the first round I was hoping to see Destination Crenshaw be awarded. And as [00:25:00] time went on, I'm like, oh man, please tell me that they're not going to be left in the dust, particularly in a city where this is a huge issue. And lo and behold, here we are, and as you mentioned, they haven't crossed the final hurdle for this 25 million loan to build out Fiber

Christopher Mitchell (25:17):
Loan. It's a full on grant.

Sean Gonsalves (25:19):
No, excuse me. I didn't mean to say loan. Yes, a grant exactly, but they've got that final hurdle. But I'm not aware of any recommendations so far that the CPC has made that has been rejected, so I think [00:25:30] this is a really good sign.

Christopher Mitchell (25:31):
Yes, and I think you're right. The larger plan, the destination Crenshaw is working with a company called Plenary that is the partner. They're going to build this open access network. This award will fund a significant amount of construction, I believe, but it's not to the thousands of homes yet. This is the beginning of it, I think, and I think they will stretch it out with additional funds. This will help get to the first tranche of folks.

Sean Gonsalves (25:56):
Yeah, exactly. They're focused initially on [00:26:00] businesses and homes in around that Crenshaw Boulevard district, and this comes as also, I believe what it was about six months or so ago that we link in LA County in to partnership to deliver fixed wireless access to about 275,000 addresses in a more easterly part of Los Angeles. What was interesting to me is how all of these entities and groups were kind of coordinating to make sure that there wasn't an overlap. And so this is great news and I'm looking forward to reaching [00:26:30] out to Jason to do a follow-up to see how excited they are and what the next steps are. Of course, we will have to wait until they get the final official notice, but it looks like they're heading in that direction. And man, what a major win, especially given all of the hard work and advocacy that's gone on with the digital equity la, which destination Crenshaw is a part of, and Cade, I think all of these awards are a real reflection of all of the work that they've done to really, [00:27:00] really center community broadband solutions.

Christopher Mitchell (27:03):
When you're talking about Jason Foster, who's running the destination Crenshaw effort, I think it's exciting and I just give so much credit to people in Los Angeles that are organizing around this Digital Equity LA people working for the county, the city of LA who have made this a priority. They have a plan, they have multiple approaches in order to be figuring out how to address this very expensive challenge [00:27:30] when you're dealing with millions of people who need a network that will actually meet their needs. We're going to move on though the American Association for Public Broadband something, what's up with them?

Sean Gonsalves (27:42):
American Association for Public Broadband. So they've just rolled out this new mentorship program, which I think is just a great resource. This is in addition to a few months ago, they put out the How to Build a Public Broadband Network handbook or guidebook. They did a series of webinars and now they've unveiled [00:28:00] in the past few weeks here, this mentorship program that looks to pair communities that are seriously considering municipal broadband with communities who've successfully done it. And I think that's key because we hear from a lot of communities that are kind of kicking the tires and they're always looking for resources and there's all these questions and there's nothing better I think, than for them to talk directly to communities who have crossed the various challenges and hurdles and navigated this whole thing. Of course, [00:28:30] every state and community has different nuances to this, but it's really important for communities that are really seriously considering to talk to people who've already done it.

(28:41):
That's what this program is. It's this matching program, and so they've got this portal where potential mentees can sign up for mentors, and right now they've got this portal where cities or towns that have successful municipal broadband programs can participate and be a mentor in communities. They're also [00:29:00] looking that are seriously considering this to sign up, and I think that pairing can go a long way and it's sort of part of the AAPB's overall goal to the double the number of municipal networks in the next five years or so. So I think this is a fantastic resource and communities, and there's lots of them that are thinking about municipal broadband would be well advised, I think, to check into this. It's a real way to sort of cut through the noise of these dark money campaigns that are out there and people saying, [00:29:30] oh, this doesn't work, et cetera. There's nothing better than to call up a place like the different communities in Colorado who really knocked the ball out of the park on municipal broadband to talk to people who are doing it day in and day out,

Christopher Mitchell (29:43):
And I highly recommend people join AAPB. The AAPB'S website is a us there is a fee to join, and you know what? To have someone like Gigi advocating for you and to be putting these resources together to [00:30:00] be growing the movement, it's totally reasonable and I hope people will find that in their budgets to support it. We need a serious organization like this to be moving us forward. I worked with Next Century Cities, I don't want to take anything away from them. I think people really should join Next Century Cities too. They are complimentary organizations, so you just can't get away from the fact that we need to have some coordinating folks to bring people together and to learn from, to just make it easier [00:30:30] to collect this information.

Sean Gonsalves (30:31):
You're right. There is a fee to become a member of AAPB and all of the benefits that go with that. However, for the mentorship program, you don't have to become a paying member to participate,

Christopher Mitchell (30:42):
But if you're going to get tens of thousands of dollars of benefit, you should really pony up. I'm going to leave it there.

Sean Gonsalves (30:47):
That's right.

Christopher Mitchell (30:48):
Lastly, Vermont, we haven't talked about Vermont long enough time. We got to bring it up again. What's up with Vermont?

Sean Gonsalves (30:55):
We love Vermont just because they've really centered community broadband and they're going gangbusters. [00:31:00] I mean, in the next few years, Vermont is going to be covered with fiber to the home networks largely because of following this particular model. But one thing that they're doing because they're well aware of something that we don't talk a lot about, but is definitely an issue, which is that all of these fiber networks are being built all over the country and on the horizon is a massive labor shortage in terms of the people that are going to be building these networks. And so Vermont, once again, with great foresight with Christine Halquist and company over there at the Vermont Community [00:31:30] Broadband Board, they've established two fiber optic apprenticeship programs. One is a more regional one, but there's another one that's a statewide program that is, and it's not just an apprenticeship program where it's like, Hey, shadow this worker for a day for free. They're actually paying people, and Sirtex, which is a fiber builder in the New England area, is already signed up to participate. They're looking to fill their ranks.

Christopher Mitchell (31:57):
Yeah, Sirtex has worked with a municipal broadband in a [00:32:00] number of cases. I know.

Sean Gonsalves (32:01):
Yeah, they're terrific on that. I think this is just fabulous that it's sort of, how does DN say it feed two birds with one stone or there's all these multiple wins?

Christopher Mitchell (32:12):
I don't think she says that. I don't think birds can fly if you put stones in their stomach, man.

Sean Gonsalves (32:18):
Oh, you're right. It's not kill two birds with one stone. It's feed two birds with one seed. So anyway, I like that. I like that. It's better than killing birds, feeding them. It's better,

Christopher Mitchell (32:30):
[00:32:30] But also don't feed 'em rocks.

Sean Gonsalves (32:31):
That's right. And don't feed them rocks or Alka Seltzer. Anyhow, I think what's cool about this is that telecom companies in the area really benefit from this in terms of looking to fill their ranks as folks retire, as they're going to need to ramp up a building. And also the labor force itself where they're opening up jobs, where people in that community can be working on building the networks that are going to be providing this connectivity. So it's a really cool program [00:33:00] that's just getting underway, and Vermont is really a model in so many different ways. So it's just exciting to see that not only are they focused on the ins and outs of the communication union districts and how you fund them, but also on how you actually build a workforce to carry out and execute.

Christopher Mitchell (33:20):
What I find entertaining is this was going to be, I think it'll be successful, and as it works, nobody will really notice. That's [00:33:30] the thing about these sorts of programs is that they're going to be helpful. We have a significant challenge as we have retirements and people move into other careers or whatever, but Vermont as they work through this and people just take it for granted that they've got their fiber networks and that it wasn't a problem. So

Sean Gonsalves (33:48):
You're exactly right, and I mean actually it's true of all infrastructure and a lot of government. It's like when it works, nobody noticed. The only time people notice these things is when something breaks down or it's not working

Christopher Mitchell (34:00):
[00:34:00] When you have a massive flood that takes away your water and then they're like, oh, you won't have water again in October, and you're like, wait a minute, how is this possible? Just fix it. Oh, it's going to be a lot of fricking work to get it back and then to balance the water and make sure it doesn't make you sick. I mean, it's all kinds of work.

Sean Gonsalves (34:17):
When you're good at infrastructure, it's kind of like being a good referee in a sport. It's like nobody notices that you're doing your job only when you make a bad call that everybody's like, fire this person.

Christopher Mitchell (34:29):
And sometimes they say [00:34:30] that when you make the right call.

Sean Gonsalves (34:31):
Yeah, that's right.

Christopher Mitchell (34:33):
Alright, Sean, great to catch up with you. Thanks for bringing in some stories today. Wonderful to have you on again.

Sean Gonsalves (34:40):
For sure. Alright, take care, man.

Ry Marcattilio (34:42):
We have transcripts 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 Community nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter, [00:35:00] 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 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 [00:35:30] Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative.