January 30, 2025 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording

2:21AM Jan 31, 2025

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Mark Goldstein

Erin Lorandos

Shereka Jackson

Mala Muralidharan

PJ Way

Dario Solis

Brenna Leasor

Bill D'Agostino

Gordon Fuller

Connor Osgood

Michael Kendall

Keywords:

Digital Access

Broadband Infrastructure

STEM Program

Autonomous Vehicles

Agricultural Technology

Wireless Connectivity

Data Analytics

AI in Agriculture

Federal Funding

Digital Equity

E-Rate

Rural Broadband

Ag Tech

Water Conservation

Innovation Hub.

Okay, good morning, everybody. Welcome. Glad to see you all again. This morning. We have a fairly interesting, well, we always have an interesting but we have an interesting agenda this morning and lots of information to hear about. So we're going to just go ahead and and get started this morning. First of all, as always, like to thank our sponsors, care first health plan, Karen Ziegler, consulting services, valley, telecom, Kajeet and triad, so appreciate you guys support. So getting that out of the way. Do we have anybody new this morning that I haven't seen yet? Anybody new this morning? That's the wrong site. Let's Get rid of that. I'm

okay, that's better. Okay, again. Anybody new joining us this morning? Okay, if not

Alrighty, so let's get started this morning. First of all, I want to remind you again two things that I tried to capture everything in the newsletter as I send out the chat and and summary and all of that sort of stuff, but and so if you miss any of the links that are talked about in the in the chat or on the meeting this morning. You'll probably find those in my newsletter. In the meantime, if there's something that you heard that is in the chat, you can download the chat. If you go to chat and go to the top, there's three ellipses. You can click on that and download the chat immediately to your computer. And I know it's hard sometimes when people put a lot of links and information in the chat and then trying to keep up with it. So I just wanted to mention that. So moving on. Actually, I'm going to change the agenda just quickly, and want to introduce Shereka, who many of you, of course, know, but she's with future stars, and she's received an on semiconductor foundation stem grant, and so she's always doing great stuff. But Shereka, you want to talk about that so we don't miss you this time. Sure.

So. My name is Shereka Jackson. I am an IT professional by day, and I run future stars Inc, and it's STEM program that provides STEM programming in South Phoenix, in the Maryvale community. And on to my conductor, who's been a sponsor of our program in various ways for the last 10 years, proximately rewarded us a grant for our programming, as well as our 10th annual hands on STEM fair. So we host the largest stem fair in South Phoenix every April the fourth Saturday, April. So it will be on april 26 um from 10 to two, and I will be getting the information sent to Steve to see if any of you all would like to host vendor tables, which have hands on interactive tables for kids to learn from. But with on semiconductor over the years, they've sponsored T shirts. They actually bring volunteers out, and they engage with the students, because it's their their ERG groups, as well as making sure to support the programming that we do through the grant. So we're excited about it, because, like I said, with it being our 10th year, we want it to be bigger, better, and so we are just looking for new, innovative, creative ideas to bring out to the community. For those of you that follow me on LinkedIn, you might have saw that I'm looking for a driverless company. Waymo is saying they're not available. They don't have resources to pay for STEM events, but I think it would be cool for the kids to learn about us. Economy that from that, in that aspect. So I know crews used to be in Arizona, but I'm not sure if there's any new small organizations that have popped up. But if you know of someone, and they would be willing to come out into the community, because we do have over 300 attendees, where our goal of four to 500 this year, and 90% are people of color and youth, so I will drop my info in the chat if you know anybody. Hope that covers it all. Steve,

thanks, Shereka. Any questions for Shereka? She always does great work, does great events. So if you can help her out in any way, please contact her.

Steve, this, this is PJ. I do have something really just for Shereka. Shereka, maybe for autonomous vehicles or autonomous type training. Take a look at just a just a recommendation. Maybe look at vehicles or or companies such as John Deere or case or tractor manufacturers, people that are building or, or even drone companies, they have autonomous they have autonomous drones. So when you have anything that has a form of autonomy that can be mapping a landscape and performing a function, it doesn't have to necessarily be way more test right vehicle road, but there's, yeah, those are, those might be other great ones, because they have, they usually have some financial resources available to

them. Okay, I'll take a look.

Thank you. Oh, one other chip. This is Mark Shereka, Arizona Commerce Authority runs a group called The name may have varied now a little I am Institute for autonomous mobility. There's a woman there, actually, on the ATIC board, not particularly active, Marisa Walker heads the I am Steve, or I can get you her email. We we know her. So she, she would have all the companies involved in that vehicle autonomy as participants in her group. Oh,

that would be great. Thank you. I will shoot you an email as a reminder. Mark,

I actually just offered to connect her in the chat. Sorry. I don't know if you saw that. I can definitely do that. Okay,

that'd be great. Thanks. I'm just now seeing it. Oh, I see Erin

sent it like two seconds before Mark started talking.

So thank you. Thanks. Any other suggestions or or thoughts for Shereka Before we move on. Okay, well, if not, let's jump in Erin, if you want to kind of give us the latest of what's happening with the broadband office. And then later, and then afterwards, we're going to do part five. Many of you have been on the call regularly. Know that we've been doing a session on what we know, what we think we know, and what we don't know about broadband and Digital Inclusion policy changes in Washington, which change from day to day and hour to hour. And Brenna, who is Brenna lesser, who is the tech Policy Council for common sense, keeps up on that she did a presentation last week and give us another update, since things changed a lot since last week. So we'll be getting into that just a couple minutes. But with that, Erin, I'm going to turn it over to you.

I just realized that my name didn't update too many instances of zoom, so I do apologize for that. I will do that shortly, but my name is Erin Lorandos, and I am the Digital Equity program manager in the state broadband office, which is housed in ACA, um, and on the bead side of things, folks are probably aware that the round one application window is open, which is why I'm the only one who comes right Now, because the rest of the team is on radio silence during the application window. The application window has been extended. Originally, the due date was next week, and it has been extended by 30 days. So the deadline is now March 7 the subsequent dates, and all of the deadlines and all of that will be updated on the website, probably within the next couple of days, up to a week. Just takes a little bit of time to get the the website updated, of course, but I wanted to let folks know that we did decide to extend that that first round of applications to to to a full two months. Other than that, I don't have a lot to update. I'm sure that you know, folks have been following the news, so everything is a little bit unsure right now, just in general. And I won't go into detail there, because, of course, we have other experts to talk about that. But all of that to say. Today there may be, you know, a little bit of a pause or a little bit of a delay in the de program as a result, just because of that news breaking. You know, we might hold off for a day or two longer than we expected to to moving into those next steps. But everything that is public knowledge is on the

last year, Erin, or I did. We're not hearing you. Me too. We all did. I think Steve,

her audio just went really, really faint, like the lowest volume you could possibly have. Okay, now it's gone.

Okay, well, we'll go ahead and move on, and then maybe Erin will be back with us. That's that damn broadband

grim Lyn and her machine.

Okay, so let's move on. Nicole, I don't believe you're online today. Are you all right? Well, let's move on to, as I mentioned, that Brenna is here with us again this morning. And Brenna, you want to kind of, kind of give us the latest lay of the land and what's happening in Washington? Yes,

I will.

Yeah, I will. I will do my best for those who don't know me, as Steve said, Bryan Lisa tech Policy Council with Common Sense Media. So I'm kind of switching up the format to do to start with what we don't know, since that seems to be the biggest bucket, as Erin was talking about the federal funding freeze, just to give a short play by play, essentially, the trip administration OMB released a memo saying that they were freezing federal aid and grants. This obviously sowed chaos and confusion, people not knowing which programs impacted. Then they released a clarification saying which programs or which programs it would not impact, which essentially just caused more confusion. They got sued and paused the program, and then shortly thereafter, rescinded the memo, and then the administration's press secretary said that even though the memo was rescinded, that the policy would still be at effect. So essentially, nobody knows what's going on with this. My best guess is that now the policy targeting ij, like programs Deia, all of that is still intended to be implemented, but maybe it is not so cut and dry, which makes it arguably more difficult to know which programs are going to be impacted, because It seems to be up to the administrations and the President Trump's discretion on what falls in this and what doesn't. So who knows? My best guess would be that maybe programs like USF wouldn't be impacted by a pause, because it's not funded by discretionary funding, because it's funded by the contributions. But again, who knows? But it seems to be a general consensus that programs like bead and especially the Digital Equity Act, given the title, would probably be impacted at some point by this. But there's been a lot of there's been many states and attorneys general that have sued the Trump administration because saying that they don't have the authority to do this, because obviously Congress has the power of the purse, so the administration doesn't have the ability to subvert the law that is passed by Congress. So who knows what will end up? This will end up coming to hopefully we'll be able to give another update in the next few weeks, but that's my best guess for now, going to what we think we know, sort of the Senate Commerce Committee yesterday held the Commerce Secretary of Commerce confirmation hearing for the nominee, let Nick and he was primarily asked a lot about supply chain security, implementing tariffs. Bead came up a lot in the hearing, specifically from Republicans largely come saying that bead was, you know, hadn't connected anyone yet, and it was going too slow. The non use of non deployment funds was alluded to quite a few times by Senator Thune saying that like asking the nominee, can you guarantee that? You know, all funds under bead will be used for infrastructure, infrastructure, and they seem to agree on that. So that does create, you know, some concern with some states that have quite large buckets of non deployment funds that they were planning to use for, you know, devices getting people connected, digital skills, like things like that. So again, not exactly sure how that will, how that will play out, but for considering the the memo was rescinded during his hearing, his answers were, in my personal, professional opinion, relatively non committal. It's hard to know you know how much he does actually know what, what his actual opinions are and what he actually does not know. When asked about how he would if certain programs like bead will be impacted by the pause, he said he would, you know, I need to get confirmed and then look at the documents. I can't say right now whether that's true, I have no idea. But he was, didn't seem to, you know, confirm or deny the impact to any specific program, and in terms of what we know, small bucket, but SEC chair car had acted on, or trying to think of the Word, essentially had had acted on, the bulk billing issue that was up last Congress, saying that, essentially that landlords and those who control like ma multiple dwelling units can enforce bulk bulk billing on their residents. And then lastly, Cruz, Senator Cruz and several other senators had released guidance, or a memo saying that they plan to use the Congressional Review Act on sec, off campus, like home, hot spots for students and the bus Wi Fi orders, so we have to wait and see what that turns out to be, but it looks like those programs are likely to get a good bit of criticism or scrutiny. So not the most uplifting update, but that's kind of the current state of play from from my perspective, if anyone has any specific questions I can try to try to answer, I'd be happy to but Ronna,

have you heard anything more about the the USF committee that was meeting, or is meeting or not meeting, or we

have not heard pretty much anything on USF, as of late, my best guess would be that Democrats might be slow to do anything on USF, because if they know that, like The program would be changed in ways that they wouldn't want it to be changed. They might not want to make any changes at all. So obviously the contribution and distribution issue, the financial viability of the program, I think, is kind of under under question. But Senator Cruz has said that he would like USF to be funded by appropriations, which is essentially just a way to mix the program entirely, because we all know how yearly appropriations go, or at least, you know, decimate the funding that's available for it. There's been conversations around how to widen the contribution base by, you know, implementing a fee that's paid by like internet platforms, so like the companies that sit on top of the internet, like social media, Netflix, those types of things, but again, kind of up in the air. So not sure that's something that we're hoping that we'll have some movement, even just to know if they are moving forward with it or not, kind of what the status of it is, but I haven't heard anything of late. But hopefully we'll connect with Senator lupins office and kind of see what they're what's

the status of the court case.

I think it is supposed to they're supposed to rule on the constitutionality of USF sometime this summer, which I would assume they would potentially wait until that you know that answer is available if they wanted to Congress. Could you know explicitly say they could pass an update to us that, saying that they, the FCC and USAC explicitly has the authority to to collect funding for the program. But again, if they don't, if they don't choose to like do anything to the program, make any changes. I. Um, they might not do anything until they have to. So Supreme Court rules that the programs unconstitutional, then they might be forced into doing something to protect like programs like be rape.

Okay, thanks, Brenda. Any questions or comments for Brenna before we move on? Um?

Brenda Mark Gold seen high the I understood that a policy advisor to Senator Cruz was being tapped to fill Brendan Carter's Commissioner seat. Is that? Is that true? And then what is the process and timeline for a confirmation there.

So the, I think the person you might be thinking of, there were a couple names that were brought up the the latest and greatest that I've heard is Olivia trustee is being taxed to fill the seat by ex chair Rosen. Morsel, um, so I haven't heard anything past that, of like, when she will be, you know, added to the FCC, or, like, formally confirmed, um, and then as well. I don't know if she was as close with I'm trying to remember, I don't think she was Senator cruises aid, okay, I think she was potentially wicker, but I don't know as much background about her, but I know some of my colleagues at Common Sense have said that, like they were, like, pleasantly surprised with her name being floated. They think she's a she's a good pick and has a lot of experience in telecom, so hopefully that would be fine, at least for like the Digital Equity community writ large. But the the other name is Ariel Roth, who is she was a cruise commerce staffer, and she's being was nominated to run NTIA, which is a little bit more concerning considering her, her likely opinions on programs like the Digital Equity Act, obviously said Senator Cruz, a few months ago, had released that letter saying that the it was unconstitutional and like, the program was essentially racist because it, you Know, allowed the targeting for like racial and ethnic minorities as one of the covered populations, so in all likelihood, she probably wrote the letter. So that's why it's a bit concerning that she seems to be kind of in the weeds to that level, so to be determined, but I'm not sure if her confirmation has been scheduled, or anything as well. I assume they're going like top down. So starting with the

and are those both Senate confirmations that are needed for FCC commissioner and NTIA, I assume assistant director, or whatever that is it. Are those Senate confirmations?

I believe the NTIA is, I honestly don't remember if the FCC, I can double check and let you

know. I mean, no, no problem. Thank you. Thank you. No problem. Brenna,

is there more than one Commissioner that's going to be replaced on the FCC

at some point. I believe so, because I think Commissioner Starks had announced that he was going to leave at some point in the next few months. But I only think, I think the Olivia trustee has been the only name floated for the current like vacancy. But I'm not sure when, when that would happen.

I thought I saw somewhere, if my memory serves me correctly, that there was four positions that may be replaced at some point. But no, yeah, over

the course of the administration, maybe, I'm not sure when everyone's like, times are up and if that's what they're referring to, but I'm not sure I could. I could look into that as well. Should be easy to find,

yep, but it would maintain a split of three Republican and two Democrats. Steve, and no matter you know, if a Democrat leaves, a Democrat will replace them. I believe that balance, yes, yeah, that balance will be maintained. Of three to two, is that

required? Mark, I think so

that's my understanding as well.

Yeah, any other questions or comments for Brenna before we move on? Thanks, Brenna. Appreciate you being here again and keeping us up to date and the latest and greatest. No problem. Yeah, happy to help or maybe not greatest but latest. That?

Yeah, exactly.

So while we're kind of talking about this stuff, Mala, you want to share any of your thoughts. I'm sure you have a lot of feelings about all this stuff. Are you here today? Mala, I guess she's not here. Okay, so let's move on. We have several things to several kind of presentations this morning. First is some of those of you who've been here before have heard a little bit about Connor Osgood and the work he's doing and UMA but he's going to give us a more detailed overview. He is the Ag Tech Program Manager with the University of Arizona's Yuma Center for Excellence in desert agriculture. And I got to tell you, I've been hearing amazing things about what they're doing down there. So with that, Connor, I'm going to stop sharing and I'm going to turn it over to you to to give this kind of real overview of what you're doing. Okay, thanks,

Steve, yeah, happy to, happy to share on the work that we're doing. And thank you for the opportunity to to give my presentation here. Let me just figure out more of a teams guy. So I'm trying to figure out how to share my screen here. See, let me know if you can see my presentation here.

Select window. Okay, there we go.

Yep, all right, so you can see the PowerPoint there.

Well, you started screen sharing.

There you go. Okay, gotta put I've got like, three monitors here, so that's gotta pick one of them. Okay, we're good, yep. All right, wonderful, wonderful. All right, yeah. Good morning everybody. Um, thank you for the introduction, Steve. Yes, I'm Connor Osgood on the as mentioned on the Ag Tech Program Manager for why Seta, we like to use the acronym because Yuma, Center for Excellence in desert agriculture, is is quite a mouthful, and we're a part of the University of Arizona here in in Yuma, Arizona. So I'll explain a little bit more about our organization as a whole and what we do shortly here, and just a little bit of brief background on on myself. I'm an ag guy, you know, for most of my career that's gone into recently has gone into, you know, broadband and and technology and the technology side of things. So, so I'm going to keep my presentation a little bit high level and just kind of explain the applications of of technology and agriculture and why they require wireless broadband, especially in our area, which is a which is a rural agricultural community. So with that, also I've been on the I've been on the job, so to speak, since early November, and it's been a, been a pretty interesting experience for me, just jumping into the pool with both feet, learning about learning about broadband and learning about all the different technologies that are associated with it. Before that, I was driving tractors, you know, helping manage a research farm for about five years. So it's been, it's been a big transition for me, and it's been a pleasant one, though, for sure, getting to learn a lot of new things, and especially through meetings, meetings like this, just kind of opening up a lot of opening up, opening up my eyes to a lot of different things that are going on. So with that, why are we talking about agriculture and Arizona? You know, a lot of people don't associate Arizona with an agricultural being an agricultural state, but we do have a 23 roughly $23 billion agricultural economy here in the state. So it is an important part of our economy. And anybody who grew up with a public education in the state, like I did, you probably learned about Arizona's five C's of three of those being, you know, agricultural products, citrus, cattle and cotton. And there's really a lot more agricultural products that we produce than just those three and a lot of the stuff that we grow gets exported to to other countries. So because of how much sunlight and we we get down here in Yuma, we get something like 350 days of full sunlight, you know, zero clouds, or something to that effect, every year. So we at year round. Sunshine are as we know, our our our winters are mild and and because we have irrigation here, because we have irrigation down here, we can pretty much grow year round. So that enables. Us multiple cropping cycles, unlike in other parts of the country, where you plant once, and then you're, you know, you grow over the summer, and then the winter comes and you wait, wait till spring. So Yuma in particular, we are known as the winter lettuce capital of the world. We produce pretty much 90% of all the lettuce, at least for one half the year. But we grow a lot of other things, like melons, cotton, durum wheat, which is used for pasta. A lot of the wheat that we that gets grown here and just across the border in northern Mexico gets exported for making pasta in places as far away as Italy, a friend. We also grow me jewel dates. A friend of mine in Tokyo, Japan, actually bought a carton of dates over there that said, you know, grown in, grown in Yuma, Arizona. So I thought that was pretty, pretty, pretty interesting. But Yuma in particular, you know, most people know it as, most people know it as the place that you drive through when you're going to San Diego, and you stop for gas and maybe go to Subway, but there's really an intense economy down here, $4 billion a year. We've calculated in a couple different ways. So there's a lot, a lot, a lot of agricultural activity going on on down here, and it's an important contributor to the state's overall GDP. So a little bit about the university. The university does have a footprint down here. We offer 20 degrees in mostly industry related stuff for the local community, AG, engineering, technology and that kind of thing. There's a couple of different organizations affiliated with the university. We've got the university itself. We've got the university Ag Center, which is the part of the experimental station system. We've got Cooperative Extension. And then, of course, we've got why Seta, which what we are is a private, a public, private research, a p3 a public, private partnership, and we get 0% funding through the university. So all of the funding that we have is through our Board of investors, our board of directors, you know, which are our key stakeholders here locally. So that translates into local farmers and production companies, chemical companies, and so we are tasked with basically trying to solve big, a big challenges that immediately face our local, you know, industry here. So we want to come up with solutions. Well, you know, solutions to some of the biggest challenges here in in Yuma as it relates to desert agriculture. And just if you view our website here, which is desert ag solutions.org, you can see that we've done a couple of different major projects, including a COVID testing lab, a lot of a six year project, six year long project with increasing irrigation efficiency. We're working on some soil health stuff, plant disease management, ag technology, food safety. So we're going after the big things, basically, rather than, you know, rather than research for research sake. Nothing wrong with that, but we're definitely an applied research group that is directly, yeah,

did we lose you? Connor, I think we lost you.

Think with it, Steve, he doesn't seem to be in the room anymore. Yeah, well, let's go on with some things, and hopefully he will rejoin us here shortly. So a couple of things. Shereka was just sending you a note that caterpillar has a major operation both here in Tucson and down in Southern, southern Arizona. And Melissa Hall, excuse me. Melissa Hall is Bryan Carter's project manager, and her husband works for Caterpillar, and he's attended a number of our meetings. He they are very engaged in autonomous vehicle development, and so I'll try to put you in touch with them also. So while we're waiting to see if Connor will rejoin us, Mala I see that you are here now, would you want to kind of give us what your latest thoughts might be.

Sorry for being late. There's so much happening. I know I don't know where to begin, but I think the first thing is about the hot spot lending which Senator Cruz is putting a kibosh in. To and it's mainly because when e rate was first conceived, it was thought of to be a program within the schools and libraries. And this the hotspot lending takes it outside the school premise or the library premise. The counter argument to that is that, where is learning happening? Now, you know, especially at post pandemic, the learning is happening at home. A lot of kids are going are doing home schooling. A lot of kids need to work in partnership with other children with other schools, and they do need the access at home. The second objection from him was also because it's going to be unsupervised. And he does not mean you know his views on supervised and unsupervised. You know, kids access to the internet. So that's that's a huge issue that we're dealing with. Of course, you know, Shelby and others have put in a, put in their own views about this to them, and let's see what happens right now, from day to day, we don't know what's going to happen. You know, are we going to get funded? Are we not getting funded? What's happening is, is a huge, big thing. So that's what I'm waiting to hear back on. In the meanwhile, there's lots going on with the E Rate itself and the application process, our state master contracts are in place, and we will have them out by tomorrow, that's the end of the week, is when they are going to sign the master contract. So anyone who needs to use the state master contract. Anyone who is not doing their own RFPs for telecommunication can use the state master contracts, and they are available both for Category One, that is the internet connections, and they are available for Category Two through the Mojave educational Consortium. Both are master contracts, and both can be used by schools and libraries and, of course, by anyone else who wants to use them. I don't know what I missed. I don't know what else was discussed, so I'll leave it there. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer

any questions for Mala Going once, going twice? Okay, so while we're talking about libraries, what when we talk talk about education, Michael Kendall is joining us today. He is their new broadband project manager, and so Michael, you want to kind of give us an update. What's happening with Department of Ed?

Yeah, certainly good morning. Everyone. Don't have a lot to update this week. We did have a some activity, or with a couple of applications, we signed off for funding approval for for for two schools, for, for Winslow and agrifria and so some some good activity there. Also we are. We're working to set up a meeting with Mala and the folks at the Navajo Library District. They've reached out to us with some questions, some process questions, and they have a project that is kind of on hold, and we're going to try to assist them. So we're working to to schedule, schedule that meeting. Now, otherwise, I don't have a lot for or updates for the team on with respect to broadband, e rate than the rest. That's that's about it.

Okay? Thank you, Michael. You're welcome. Glad to have you joining us and getting some updates from Department of Ed. So any questions for Michael, if not, let's move to PJ. PJ way, PJ want to introduce yourself, and Pj is doing a lot of work. We had a good conversation about AI, and he's very engaged in a number of AI initiatives. And so PJ want to kind of give us an update.

Absolutely Good morning, Steve, thank you so much. I appreciate it, and I appreciate everybody's conversations here today. Always, always great topics and good information to hear what's happening around the state. Oh, Connor, good. I'm glad to see you're back. I was actually looking at my phone. I'm like, I'm going to try and text him, let him know he's dropped. Yeah,

no apologies there. Everybody, uh, technical difficulties. Here something with my multi monitor display, and you know how it goes. So sorry about that.

Nobody ever has technical difficulties. Connor, right? That

just, yeah, of course, of course, not.

You only knew somebody is trying to solve those technical difficulties in the new area, right?

Yeah.

Goodness No. And I want to say thank you also thanks Connor. And I don't know, Steve, do you want to

come back to Connor? Or do you want Connor? Yeah, let's go back to Connor, and then we'll come back to you. PJ that's

perfect. All right, thanks. Perfect,

perfect. All right, yeah, once again, sorry everybody for that interruption. Let me now that I'm working off of one machine, one monitor here, let me see if I can figure out how to share again. Alright, can we see the presentation? Yep. Okay, great. Alright, moving along. So as I was, I think, in the middle of mentioning why CETA, yeah, we're a really unique organization that basically we're collaborating. Our job is to collaborate between the university and local industry here in Yuma, Arizona to help increase the economic productivity of farming down here, which, as I mentioned previously, is a really, a really big deal down here. We grow a lot of lettuce. We grow a lot of broccoli and cauliflower, melons, all sorts of stuff down here. So we're working on just a small number of very large, high impact problems that our farmers, our growers, our local industry here, they directly want solved. So the things that the problems that we work on are kind of guided by input from local industry. So impact is kind of the name of the game for us. We want to do we want to do a few things, and we want to do the things that have the biggest impact on our industry. So this is just kind of a drone shot of of one of our big successes as of late. This was actually my, my first day on the job. Was this conference that we had, which is the desert difference, a showcase of tech opportunity. AG, tech opportunities for growing in the desert. It's a conference that we've been doing annually for a couple of years now, where technology vendors from AG, technology vendors and manufacturers from around the country can come here show off their equipment in action, to to local farmers and other demonstrators and that kind of thing. We always have a really good, really large turnout with this with this event. So it provides a great opportunity for networking and business development here locally, and you can see some of the, this is from back in November, some of the different types of machines that that are being demonstrated to to the local groups here. And So agriculture is, agriculture is basically going undergoing another revolution right now, which is, we're seeing the introduction of robotic, you know, autonomous tractors, robotic equipment, drones, AI. I mean, just, just like every other aspect of life, you know, AI is kind of getting, you know, coming into the fold, basically, to automate some of the mundane stuff, automate some of the things that require a lot of manual input. And agriculture is certainly one of those things here in vegetable country, it requires a lot of manual labor to grow these crops a lot, and the cost of that labor is not going down anytime soon. It's about $20 an hour for for h2 a labor here, and that we use H to a labor for, for everything from from weeding the fields to thinning plants, thinning the crop after they've been seated, so we thin them down to the correct density. So there's just a lot of manual labor. You see a lot of busses full of these labor crews going down the, you know, up and down the streets all day. And so that has become a really big economic burden for the farmers here. The other reason for, and so that creates the the desire for, for autom automation and mechanization of some of these tasks. The other thing too is there's a lot more ever increasing, you know, emphasis on resource use consciousness. We want to basically be able to grow more, grow more crop, using less less water, or using the water that we have, that we are using, you know, using it more efficiently, using the fertilizer more efficiently, trying to reduce our pesticide usage, that kind of thing. So there's, there's a number of ways that there's a number of opportunities for technology to to help improve productivity in agriculture. But what does that have to do with broadband? Well, at the moment, you know the way that things have been. Done is that we've got a lot of these things, like these robot weeders, for example, in the previous slide, a lot of them have onboard computers that are using AI to take pictures of the ground as the tractor drives through the field, and it'll identify a weed versus and separate that from, you know, the lettuce and it actually can actuate a little sprayer or some other implement to kill the weed and not kill the lettuce plant. And so for the moment, the those implements, those pieces of machinery, have onboard computers, you know, the GPU deck of GPUs and that kind of thing that can do all those calculations and run the AI models. But in the future, we anticipate to see farmers having essentially swarms of these machines, whether they're drones or robotic leaders, automated harvesters. We anticipate to see swarms of these machines operating in the field in in in sync with one another, and so that'll require these machines to talk to each other. And that'll, of course, require wireless, wireless connectivity, because we can't, we can't hook an Ethernet cable up to everything, and expect, expect that not to get tangled up. So realistically, we're going to need to have the ability to upload large amounts of data to the cloud or an Edge server, so that as these AI models get more and more advanced and require more and more data and processing power that can be done in real time. Another technology that we anticipate seeing a lot more of is these precision analytics, where using advanced drone or satellite imagery, growers and crop advisors, which is a big part of our industry out here, are consultants. Crop consultants. They can essentially be out in the field with an iPad, looking at, looking at, you know, a map of the field that they're standing in and in real time, they can get recommendations on, say, fertilizer use or irrigation based on sensor information, and, you know, the predictive analytics that will be performed by the AI model so that they can make recommendations that are, you know, guided by guided by the AI and machine learning that they can do that in real time. So rather than having to collect the data in the field, where we currently have no or limited connection to the internet,

and then in taking that back to the office, processing the data, and then, you know, days later, coming back and saying, oh, you should apply this much fertilizer. What have you we want to be able to we want these guys to be able to make these recommendations, make decisions in the field using the data that was just collected. Because the one thing about the agricultural system down here is that the machine does not stop. I mean, the system is the agriculture production system down here is just constantly going. They do not miss a beat. And so things, whether it's technology, you know, data tech, data analysis technology, or actual physical machines. You know, things will just have to work always and at any time. And going to need to work right now. And if they break, we're, you know, these companies that make this equipment are going to need to come down here and be able to fix it right away. So I've already talked a little bit about this, but just kind of as a classic example of ag tech use, down here in the in the Yuma area, is the lettuce thinning. Here is a lettuce thinning and weeding. So here's an example of what some of those machines would look like. And as you can see, hopefully in that top right picture, those little dark spots on the ground, that is where the computer has gone through and basically decided to spray every, you know, every one out of or spray a number of plants to leave of lettuce plants with an herbicide, so that it kills those plants, and then it leaves One One lettuce plant every one foot. So we intentionally over seed the lettuce, and we kill most of them, and then we save one for every foot, so we get guaranteed a full field of plants at a certain planting density, and that maintains profitability. But again, this is a lot of this has been traditionally done. Most it has been traditionally done by by hand labor crews using, using hose. So you usually get about 15 to a crew of 15 to 30 workers out there getting paid $20 an hour. And you know, the cost aside the there's issues with labor availability too. And COVID really, really brought that out, where, even if you had the money to pay for, for these, these work crews, it's up to them to decide whether they want to come to your farm or not. So there were plenty of instances where we just couldn't get labor. So there's labor cost and availability issues in addition to, you know, of course, everybody wants to use less less pesticide and less. Or less of everything. So in these kind of systems, rather than just spraying the whole field for weeds, it's we're using AI systems to identify just the weed itself and spray only the weed, instead of blanketing the entire field with with herbicide. So another example of applications for ag tech wireless. Ag tech is installing these widespread, wide field sensor networks across the growers fields so that we don't have to drive out to these rural, remote areas every day and and go check ourselves if the you know how dry the soil is or how wet the soil is, there's a number of different of instruments that can measure the amount of water in the soil. And so the idea is to create these, these widespread networks with lots of little sensors that are all plugged in wirelessly to the cloud, and a farmer can basically view that information, view the status of their field at any given point in time, you know, from their iPad or their computer in their office or at home or something like that. There's just a little funny cartoon about why we you know, the reality of why we need everything to be wireless. So how are we going to get there? How are we going to make this work? So how are we going to get wireless connectivity to to the rural area of of the rural areas that a lot of these farms exist in, because, you know, Yuma is outside of the city itself. Yuma is quite a rural area with very limited access to to broadband internet. I believe the statistics that I've heard is that at least until recently, up to 45% of people here locally did not in the county, did not have access to high speed broadband internet. That's one figure that I've heard kicked around. So in 2021 the city was awarded, and PJ, you can correct me on this if I'm wrong, but it was awarded $30 million in in funding through the American relief project act ARPA funds for COVID 19 to build a middle mile fiber optic network that runs through pretty much all the inhabited areas of Yuma county. And it's been a really great project for the for the county as a whole, because we've we've now got aloe fiber from Nebraska that has built the majority of this middle mile network, which is to serve residential and business addresses here across the valley. And so they're bringing high speed internet where we previously had kind of older, older technologies supplying internet to everybody's houses. So now we can. We're upgrading everybody, you know, we're giving all the residents and businesses the the ability to upgrade to to much, much faster connections, thanks to aloe. And that's created a lot of jobs locally. I know that my neighborhood, you know, recently got we had the excavation crews going through there and digging up. And I know a lot of people have become employed by by Aloe fiber. So this has been a really great project to kind of advance the broadband infrastructure of Yuma. And so part of that is that working off of an NSF grant, why Seta and the county and a couple of other key partners are working on building a wireless network that will be devoted just for agricultural use. And this is just a kind of a conceptual idea of what that would look like that we're still working on the placement of the towers, these wireless towers, but the idea is that we want to cover all the agricultural area in Yuma with wireless access to wireless broadband and other wireless technologies. And that way that'll enable all this autonomous, autonomous farming and access to the cloud for for data analytics and so forth. So the so we're going to place about 27 of these towers throughout the throughout the irrigated agricultural area of Yuma, and each one of these are going to each one of these towers are going to correct connect directly to that middle mile fiber optic backbone, directly with its own fiber optic links, so that It can have a high bandwidth to each tower. And of course, these fiber optic cables have multiple strands of fiber in them. So on each tower, we can support numerous different radio different transmission devices, so everything from from low frequency radios to do things like just, you know, routinely collect small amounts of data to from from sensors in the field to really high frequency Wi Fi kind of stuff, and everything in between. So what we're doing is we're designing this system of towers to to a concept, not a specific technology. And we anticipate that once these towers are built. We're going to have the whole alphabet soup, the whole zoo of broadband and wireless technologies on there, everything from simple radio systems to hopefully long distance Wi Fi and everything in between. We've got, because a number of these different ag technologies that we we've already that have already been in development for for years now. They all a lot of them use different, different systems. Some of them run off of LTE. Some of them run off of satellite guidance. Some of them just use Laura Wan, you know, low frequency radio type stuff. So we want to be able to accommodate all, all those technologies, and so having the multi strand fiber optic cable on each one of these transmission towers will enable that without competing for bandwidth. So another part of this is here at the university, Ag Center, Experiment Station, we've we part of the grant is, part of the NSF grant is that we've got the funds to build, and we we have built a wireless test bed system for novel ag technologies. We've created a small Well, we've created a wireless network here that covers the research farm. This isn't the full picture of the research farm. It's just shows you where the the nodes and the transmission towers are but it provides, currently, it provides Wi Fi and CBRs across the entire research farm. And so part of my job is to attract,

attract innovative ag tech companies to really want to come to Yuma, because currently they're either operating out of the Midwest or they're operating out of Salinas, California, and neither of those places have the climate that Yuma has. We have an extremely harsh climate here, and yet we managed to be extremely productive agriculturally. And so there's this kind of failure to recognize that, on behalf of the some of the Ag tech companies here, where they not here, but some of the Ag tech companies, when they come here, is that they've they fine tune their machines to work in these other places where the weather is a little fairer, the ground isn't as, you know, clumpy and all these things. And then when they get here, they realize that, you know, it's a totally different set of rules growing, growing in the extreme desert here. So we want to offer them a space at a an innovation hub, so to speak, where they can come and test their equipment in real world desert conditions. Because the the idea is that if your technology can survive Yuma agriculture, it can probably survive anywhere. And we really, we really anticipate Yuma becoming part of the so called Silicon Valley of ag technology is at least what we hope. So. We're really working hard to attract a lot of a lot of these businesses to to Yuma, to expand their operations to Yuma, perhaps consider headquartering here. Just in general, there's a huge demand for for ag technology throughout the throughout the throughout the industry here, a lot of these farmers have already gone and purchased, you know, drones and some of the and have been paying for some of these services, like, like the automated thinning and weeding and so farmers, you know, are always ahead of the curve. I mean, they're always innovators that are creative people, and they're always looking for new solutions. So they've been well on their way doing investigations into ag tech themselves. And the one thing that we hear pretty much ubiquitously is that, you know, for these things, for this stuff, to really work for us as an industry, we need wireless connectivity. And so that is, that's kind of the main, the main impetus behind building this wireless network of this network of towers here to deliver wireless broadband to to those growers that are already experimenting with technology and and wanting to get into it, and wanting to have everything be connected and remotely accessible. So the other thing too is that we're hoping that that with the introduction of all this technology and the new wireless broadband system, you know, we're going to need an increasingly sophisticated we're going to need a workforce with, you know, increasingly sophisticated skill set to be able to operate these systems, to be able to fix things when they break, to troubleshoot things. Because as, as I mentioned before, the the machine, the agricultural machine here, does not stop. I mean, you you've got, if something breaks down, you as the manufacturer, you know, your service guy has, like, 24 hours to get it working again, otherwise the farmers just going to keep on going. So, so we anticipate that there's going to be a lot of job creation, especially job creation and upskilling, as a result of, you know, more and more of these tech. Technologies coming here to the valley, to the to the valley. So with that, I I'm going to conclude my presentation with that. Like I said, I just wanted to keep it kind of high level. You know, one thing that I could use some some help from the public on, or from this group on, is, is understanding a little bit more about different types of transmission technologies that that could be placed on these towers. You know, I've looked at, we've looked at a number of different things like, you know, LTE and again, Wi Fi and LoRaWAN and, you know, the whole alphabet soup. But this is a, this is an area that I really have been kind of researching more into, is, what are some of these upcoming long range transmission devices that we can hopefully carry a high amount of bandwidth at low latency across large distances with so I would love to hear if anybody has anything novel or something, some technology that they that they know of, That Could you know, eventually be put on one of our towers to or all the towers to, to help increase the spread of of broadband in our across our rural agricultural area. So if anybody has any comments or suggestions or anything like that, please feel free to to reach out to me. My contact information is there on the slide. And I encourage you to visit our website as well, which is desert, ag solutions.org, and you can learn a little bit more about some of the projects that we do here at y CETA. So with that, I thank you all.

Thank you Connor, awesome, awesome stuff.

Alright, and sorry again for the technical troubles earlier. It happens,

we all know that. Appreciate it. So anybody want to jump in quickly with Connor and share your thoughts?

Okay, Connor, this is Bill D'Agostino with the wireless infrastructure Association. Have you started to evaluate the Private Networking aspects around CBRs?

So we're, I know that we're in talks with, with a number of different contractors, for, for, for what, for, who's going to operate the network, the water network. Let me back up. There's really two projects here. We've got the wireless test bed at the at the farm, and then we've got this whole valley wide project with the with the multiple towers that'll cover the whole county. So our end of the deal, and along with the the county and a couple of other partners, is we're building the towers themselves. And then once, once the towers are built and routed up with, with the fiber optic, the technologies that go on that tower will be operated by but, you know, by a network. Whoever's manufacturing and wants to put their their radios on that tower, they're going to be responsible for operating it. So we don't, we don't want them to hand us a box of radios and say, you know, hey, go have fun. So, but we are in, we are in talks with a number of of different network operators, so to speak, and exploring different technologies.

Okay, I have something we can talk about offline, a company I can connect you with.

Perfect thank you. Okay, hey, confidence.

Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'm

so sorry. This is Gordon Fuller, Tucson. We have gifts for you, good sir, and we were okay. We're gonna ask Steve if he'd be so kind as to put your slide back up again, Steve, slide overlaid years and we didn't get a chance to capture it. Let

me see if I can share that again. Sure. Which slide did you want to see? The the one with your contact information on it? Everything? Can you see it now?

Me, no, not at all.

Okay,

I can. So I don't know if others can or not, but

forgive me, it was a joke. I'm a blind guy. You see so

forgot Good, good point.

Okay, some of us got it. Gordon, fair

enough, walked right in. Walked right into my

sight gag. Yep.

So kind Connor, we're going to move on here. So PJ hopefully we can delay your update to another maybe next week. Or if you don't mind,

no, I don't mind at all. And honestly, Connor did a fantastic job talking about IoT stuff and and where, when it talks about AI, where it fits, how it fits, and that's just, I mean, Connor, you did a great job. You demonstrate also the depth of what AI provides. The conversations that I was hoping to have would also be able to talk a little bit about, or at least planting Bugs, bugs in people's ear with Where does AI fit inside of our government agencies, people with their proper use cases? Are they? Are we. Training one another. Are we doing the right things? So yeah, I'm. I look forward to the conversation, happy to do that next time. And if I could real quick add to Connor, to Bill and others, just to help. If you don't mind, Connor, I'll just share a little bit about the so the connectivity piece, the towers are under construction by the county. The county is awarded a contract to ex squared, who is going to be doing installation for the towers once those towers are erected. I'm working on a relationship right now, so it's a bi directional relationship with the university. So the county has kind of that p3 partnership that Connor mentioned, so that our agricultural community can leverage the technology put all of their data back to the university for research purposes, and the county can then grab the materials and data that it requires for federal agency reporting back to the federal agencies, giving an anonymity to the farmers in the community. And what's actually happening, we just know we're getting trusted data from a trusted source, and we can provide that information back to the powers that be when they're asking for reports.

Perfect. Thank you

so Connor, well, I realize this is a totally different industry, but Caterpillar, actually. Well, they have an office, an RD here in Tucson, but they also have a autonomous vehicle test bed in Green Valley, and so I'm sure they have to deal with a lot of these same issues, even though it's more it's related to mining versus agriculture. But if you're interested in talking to them, actually one of their people had been participating in in our meetings. His wife is a project manager with Brian Carter over at the U of A and if you think you might have an interest in that, I'd be glad to put you in touch with him. Yeah,

absolutely no. I appreciate that. I think that there's a lot more similarity between, between the those kind of technologies, and then there and agriculture, then then there aren't, you know, there's a lot of overlap between with what we're doing. You know, we as an agriculture technology, like you said, mining technology. I've seen some of the videos of the wireless, you know, or driverless dump trucks and things like that, and, you know, of course, defense and military and that kind of stuff. So I think there's a lot of overlap with these technologies in across these different industries. So yeah, I'd love, love to learn more about that for sure.

Contact information for you, please. Thank you. Steve, very

quickly. Connor, I just sent you an email. I don't know how much guys are interacting with the ASU teams, but we have a kind of small army of people working on different types of technologies that apply to that. So just reply to my email. Maybe we can have an initial conversation in which you can present basically the same deck of slides and then talk to different people that are working in that area

here, perfect. Yeah, no, I absolutely will. Thank you. Thank you for reaching out and

Connor Gordon fuller again, Tucson, I just wanted to say I put in the chat a link to Sim table, which is a simulation sand table system we have that works with autonomous camera platforms on ridge lines in six Western states and one,

I'll check it out. Thank you.

So a couple of other quick things. Bryan Daley, are you still online? So you're still connected? Are you there? And Mark, are you still Yes, so I'm sorry

had to get off mute. Yes, I'm here. So Bryan,

do you have any thoughts about, you know, the work that they're doing? And, yeah,

actually, I've already emailed Carter. Want to, want to sync up with him. So definitely.

And Mark, are you still online? Yeah. Yeah. So Mark, I don't know if you want to share, not today, but if you want to share with Connor, the presentation you've done recently on different technologies and so forth.

My most recent was focused on satellite. Is that what you're talking about? That I did for yes in December. Yes, I can quickly get a link to that in the in the chat to give me a moment.

Okay, Steve, Steve, if I could, if I could jump in real quick. Hey, Connor.

Connor, just, just to help you out, if you don't mind, there are probably some specs for people that may be interested in what the radio technology can serve and all the all the interest that may be out there, there are going to be some specs that have to be identified because performance, as Connor pointed out, when you're doing laser weeding, there can't be delays the equipment, there can't be delay. In the technology, the speed has to be very, very versatile, with standing high temperatures, lots of weather, so whatever it looks like, just have that in mind that it's this is not a one size fits all radio solution. This is indeed a very specific ag industry requirement. And the focus for the grant that's that's helping fund this is on, as Connor pointed out, the amount of crop we can produce with the same amount of water. We're trying to look at water conservation as one of their primary efforts. But there are a ton of other fits, as Connor points out, when it comes down to the autonomous tractors drones. But the decisions have to be some of these tractors. And correct me if I'm wrong, Connor, I've seen one just recently. It's now traveling about five miles an hour to do its process. Yeah, something's moving at the speed of five miles an hour. It's having to make decisions quickly. So if radios are are not capable, make sure you're vetting it out before you go putting a presentation together of what is possible with your equipment, just throwing it out there to save you a bunch of influx. Connor, because I can tell you, I've had hundreds of of emails from different people from around the world with technology that just it's not going to work. I mean, so yeah, probably, probably kind of, you know, if it's possible, anybody can try and also reach out to me. I can try and help with that kind of that to dump any workload on you, but if I can help you in any way with the radio technology, because in the end, the infrastructure is going to be fiber connected up to the radio. The challenge is going to be last mile. The county is not interested in owning the last mile equipment or the radios, and neither are the ag industry leaders. That's That's where the the opportunity exists for the right providers, right

well said, well said,

Okay, anything else for Connor, anything else for the good of the order, okay? Well, as you all know, those of you who have been around with us for a while that we're at that point where we stop recording.