Okay, so we are recording now. Welcome, everybody. Glad to see everybody got some folks we haven't seen in a while, and some new folks. So Leslie, I know you've been here before, but you want to introduce yourself. We have a lot of new folks.
All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Leslie King. I'm a lieutenant colonel in the Arizona Army National Guard. I lead the cyber Joint Task Force on the full time side and the OAC. for that. And we are authorized to tasked with doing vulnerability assessments at all echelons of state government, county, and city town municipality. And also recently, well, almost nine months ago, 10 months ago, do vulnerability assessments for all k 12 public and charter schools in the state of Arizona in an opt in basis. So that's what we do and glad to be here. Sorry, Steve hadn't been able to be here very often, but anything we can do to assist appreciate it? Thank you.
Yeah, of course, Leslie, you have a working relationship with Homeland Security, with Ryan and Homeland Security?
Check. Yeah, Ryan and I work closely together on a couple of different projects. Also. Cybersecurity is all about partnerships. And so we have partnerships with obviously the governor's office of Secretary of State this year is very big for us with election security. So we're assisting in that space. We also work with DPS and FBI. But mostly we're we my reporting is directly only to the tag not to the other agencies.
Yeah, so obviously, you're doing very important stuff these days. While that there was always wild out there, but getting worse.
I don't know if how many people track volt typhoon, but lately, the big thing has been cybersecurity within critical infrastructure. It's been identified that the CCP and the the PLA, the Chinese have been dropping malware inside critical infrastructure, primarily targeting the military, logistical supply chain, but also throughout critical infrastructure. So those are both areas that Ryan and I are highly focused on trying to figure out what's going on and what can we do to maintain the security of the state of Arizona?
My own of course, there's a lot of a lot of activity going on at the federal level. Also, regarding cyber, cyber security.
I'm sure I don't know infrastructure.
Thanks for Thanks. All right.
We hope so no, I've listened in on several of the fact last week there was a huge testimony before the House on Chinese Activity subcommittee, Director Easterly from CISA, General Nakasone, from the Cyber Command, Director Wray from the FBI and Director Coker from the Executive Cyber Advisory Board all testifying before the house on cyber activity. And actually, I don't usually watch those things, because I find them to be extremely boring. But it was actually fairly interesting. There were some important things that were said in that conversation.
Thank you. So right now, as you said that a lot of the focus is on critical infrastructure, but doesn't mean that the rest of the world is not vulnerable. No. Thank you, Leslie. Good. Good to see you. And of course, you want to just say hello. It's good to see you back.
Sure, Steve. Yeah. This is Oris Friesen and I'm Secretary of ATIC and I've been involved in Broadband. We've worked before it was called Broadband . And so I'm, that's my role right now.
Great.
We're glad to have you back Oris. Thank you. Yep. So Judy, do you want to introduce yourself, please. Speaking of federal government. Hi.
I'm Judy Sulltrop and I'm here on behalf of the Senator Mark Kelly's office and you No, and I'm on his state staff. And one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that that the state has broad support at the federal level to try to get this rolled out and make sure that everybody has what they need, and then go do some reporting back to the Senator. So kind of a listen and learn, and I'll try to get you federal updates. I'll make sure we have something for you. And, yeah, just happy to be here and be part of I know, this is a very important group. And so I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
Thank you, Judy. I don't know if you want to say anything or know anything about what's happening with ACP? I mean, who knows what's happening in the Congress these days, but your drums? You
know, I know that the senator, along with some other senators sent a letter he signed a letter of support back, I think it was in November. So I can't give you an update today, because I wasn't prepared. Sorry. There's, you know, with all the border activity and our meeting this week, as centered on border issues. And so yeah, I didn't ask those questions at our all staff meeting, but I will let the group know and maybe see if I can send you an update. If if we haven't, you can get it out to
the group. Sounds good. So while Judy mentioned that about federal updates, I was going to mention it later. But I've mentioned now that I am adding to our agenda, federal updates. And so Drew Garner I don't know if he is on I didn't get a chance to look at the list yet. Whether Drew was online with Benton foundation. But he is a federal policy person with with the Benton Foundation. And so whenever he's whenever he's available, he'll be attending meetings, and he has in the past, and will give us an update, and then Mala, I don't know if you're online yet. Of course, Mala does that pretty regularly. So I want to do a federal section specifically. And of course, we get NTIA updates from from Nicole. But I want to specifically put a section for federal updates. So with that, David, I'm going to I know you've been here before, but I'm going to introduce you and Harry a little bit later. But we're not going to do that right now. Let me see you anybody. Manny good to see you haven't seen you in a long time.
Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, it's been a very busy days and months for us in in the school district. So I think all the directors IT directors at the school districts are feeling it too. But yeah, I'm here, Steve, as always very, very pleasure to be here and hear everyone. Thank you. Awesome. And while we're speaking to schools, Joy, are you still there? Joy Whiting?
Yes, I'm still here.
Oh, you want to say hi.
Yeah, thank you so much. I am Joy Whiting. I'm the Apache County School Superintendent. I appreciate Steven and this team for everything that they have done for Apache County in the schools. And for me personally, and I'm just glad to be here. Sorry, I haven't been here for a long time, I always enjoy learning from this group.
Always glad to have you back. Good to have you back. Joy. Thank you. We have anybody else that's new today. Thanks. So anybody I missed? Okay, well, let's get into the, into the agenda this morning. And just a reminder that after the meeting, if you're so inclined, that we do do kibitzing with colleagues. And so we stop the recording, and just anybody who wants to discuss things or ask questions or share wants to something to share. It's the opportunity to do that. And we might have one person we might have five people might have 10 and might last 10 minutes, it might last an hour. So it's just just really an informal opportunity to discuss some things. So moving on to the agenda this morning. So with the so as I mentioned just that I am going to start the federal updates section in the meeting today. Excuse me, and then let's do any updates with the Broadband office. I know Aaron you're kind of waiting on that chair who else's office online. I think Vanessa is here today. Who else is here? See if there is a phone number that it's causing noise in the background? Yeah, yeah, good.
So I don't know if that was the invitation to start talking, but I'm gonna start talking. Um, hi, I'm Erin Lorandos. I am the Digital Equity program manager at the Arizona Commerce Authority. And yes, sir, a couple other folks from the Broadband team on the call, I'm just going to do a quick Digital Equity update. And then I believe Sandeep is going to provide our BEAD update for this week. So my update is that not too much has changed since last week, we are still wrapping up the final edits based on our public comment period on the Digital Equity plan. I appreciate everyone in this group who took the time to read that document and provide your feedback from your personal experience as well as your organization's experiences. We did receive quite a few public comments. There were a couple of folks who submitted to comments, and we combined everything together. And I think we ended up at about 43 individual comments. So that's not horrible. That's a good representation across the state good representation of, you know, different organizations. And we were happy with that. And so we are integrating as necessary, the comments changing language where we need to updating, you know, things like the asset inventory, and whatnot. And we're wrapping that all of this week, our plan, our next draft of the plan, the final draft, if you will, is due to NTIA on Monday, however, many people in our office will be traveling to Philadelphia on Monday. So it is our goal to submit it by the end of the day tomorrow. So we can watch the Superbowl as well.
Not only just for the truth, maybe
Maybe that's my personal addition to that part of the comment. But in any case, that is the plan. And so we are we are on track to do that. And then what happens next with the plan is it sits with NTIA for a 45 day curing process, which is similar to what happened with the BEAD proposal where there's still some back and forth with NTIA if there are you know, other comments or suggestions or recommendations that they'd like to make. And then our final plan will be submitted by the end of March. And that's when we also expect to hear more about the the next stage of the process, which is the capacity grant application. And so as we learn more about those next steps, we will of course be sharing that with this group. But I think that that's that's what I've got for today unless there are questions for me.
Any questions for Erin? If not, Sandip, I'm sorry. I missed that you were online. So you're on
no problem said Thank you, Erin for the Digital Equity update. Good morning everyone. This is Sandip Bhowmick state Broadband director. Nothing majorly changed since last week. But I'll still recap what we're working on. The BEAD challenge process map is currently under construction. So we contracted with a company called Sanborn AppGeo they have a platform where it's a cloud based mapping platform where the communities ISPs, nonprofit organization can submit a challenge on our behalf or sorry on on the community's behalf and state will execute it to execute those challenge processes. Currently, we are using the BSL fabric version 3.2. And as well as any existing federal funding data will be implemented there. We will be hosting couple of webinars are from February 28. So we divided the whole group into four different segments. Segments. One is for ISPs. One is for nonprofits. One is for local government, and one is for tribal government. So anyone in this call who are from nonprofits are most welcome to join those webinars because you are eligible to submit HLS Process on behalf of a community. And please let us know I will be able to send you all the information regarding the webinars and that will also be posted on on our website. So feel free to register and participate. So and there will be second set of webinars on month of March that will be specifically related to the tool. So the Sanborn and app geo team will present how to submit challenge using the tool and both of this webinar will be recorded and posted on sei website so that you can access that and you can submit challenge So, those are the major update from the staffing purposes. State Broadband office is currently going through a multiple interview. And we very soon will be finalizing the position of the Community Engagement Manager and senior Broadband Program Manager. And the deputy director position is still open. So if you know someone, please feel free to forward the job, the job description which I posted on last webinar, or reach out to us, we'll send you the job description. And looking forward. That's all I have Steve. Okay,
so Sandip. So I'm sorry, I missed your call last night. And we'd like to No worries, with a couple of things when you may
or may I ask you a quick, quick question.
Yes, sorry, Sandip,
we discovered yesterday that the data, one of the data sources for the challenge process is based on Ookla and M labs data. And it's random data that's picked up from customers using, you know, just doing their own speed tests. The problem we have, and that we discovered yesterday is because we put out so many 10 meg packages during COVID. That that's a that's a lot of the data that's being used for the actual speed for areas. So basically areas that we've got 300 meg coverage in, you know, we're seeing speeds of, you know, 15 Meg, as an average for those areas. How do we, how do we kind of get past that particular problem?
I'm already That's it? That's a great question. Just an FYI, Rory, we are not doing speed modification. Challenge process here in the state. So the 512 phone number, if you can mute yourself, that'd be that'd be great.
Okay, do it. Okay. Now,
I'll just go ahead. Sorry, we are a lot of other states, they are using the historical data from the speed test in this whole challenge process, we are not doing it, we were we are working on the real time speed test data. That means there will be a speed test module which will be published on on the app GIS platform. And any, any any resident here in Arizona citizen here in Arizona can take that test, but there are some requirements in there. So the test should be they need to be connected with hardware with their modem. And they need to take the test from there. So in that case, we can check the full bandwidth, check their IP addresses and everything. And there is a slew of privacy information which is copied in there, they need to agree before they take these tests. They also need to take this test three times in a single day to make sure it's getting counted in the challenge process. I can send you all these modules what we are following but the one you just mentioned that is the historical data from whoopla and M lab. We are not doing that modification here in the state of Arizona.
Real Time Data though, keep in mind that a lot of those plans that were instituted these are like, for example, the $10 plans, but wisps in general. And most ISPs have different tiers of services. So a lot of our customers are still on 25 Meg's they can take tests all day, they're not going to get over 25 Meg. And so that skew even though the area itself might be you know, it's because of what they want to pay for, or have, you know, grandfathered in. We're trying to get everybody to go to 100 meg packages, but even again, that data then still is not going to be accurate even with the test process that you have, because those are the plans that these people are on.
That's a great point. Are you can we circle back later on on the site? Of course to set up a meeting with you? Okay,
wonderful. Thank you.
Okay, anything else for Sandy? Sandy, is everybody else? I'm sorry. Go ahead. Who was up?
I just wanted to ask what are we? For the challenge process we'll be using which speed test? Is it the FCC speed test? So Ookla speed test which one?
Michelle, was that you speaking?
That's probably true. Thank you.
Thank you. Go ahead. Okay,
um, the speed test data. I wouldn't call it a speed test data because that would be misrepresentation. On the ACR website on March 1, there will be a speed test module. Yes, it's it's bipolar. So we're integrating the Okhla speed test on the website, and the resident will take the test on real time. All of this data anytime any resident of any citizen of Arizona from a from a household plus spective north from business are taking this test, and it's a three time in one single day, I can send you the notes, or sorry, the guidelines. Once they take this test, it goes to their respective County and the county officials, will Allah accumulate those data at the end of the challenge process and actually submit that to us as a as a full binding challenge? So yes, it's not a direct Okhla test from speed test.net Or somewhere, it will be the module will be posted on our website and the resident need to take the test from there.
Okay, okay. Great. So one more question, when again, will that be posted to your website? So,
Michelle, that will be so the challenge process will open on March 1. So if you go back and look into our volume one, we talked about keeping the challenge process open for 30 days. The the way it's written on volume one right now, the challenge processes for 30 days, 30 days for rebuttal from the ISPs because that we are challenging and is not we, the challenger will challenge an ISP. So they will have a timeframe to rebuttal, this whole challenge. And there is one month time to execute on our side that if it's a valid challenge or a valid rebuttal. Based on the public comment, we change it that a bit. So what we did, we went back to the drawing board, we actually kept the challenge process open for 60 days. So March and April will be the challenge process window. ISPs will have 15 days to rebuttal. So and it's going to be in a rolling in process. That means if you're submitting on a challenge on March 15, that whole challenge process will be rerouted to the ISPs on the same day, basically at the same time automatically. And the ISPs will have 15 days to rebuttal on that whole challenge process will challenge submission. And so if you see from that perspective, March and April, the challenge process will be open from May 1 to May 15. will be the last day to submit the rebuttal of the challenges and may 15 to June 15 would be the would be the state Broadband offices time when we will evaluate the challenge process and finalize that who challenges are valid or which rebuttals are valid. So we tried to make sure in this whole process the community unserved and underserved communities getting maximum amount of time. So if you look into any other state, you will see there are only a handful of state who are allowing 60 Days Challenge 90% of the states are mostly going with 30 Days Challenge. So that was initiated, which it was taken based on the comment from from the community during volume one.
So that's awesome. So expect the tools to be available after March 1 Is what you're saying.
On the day of March 1.
Great, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Sandip, are you going? Do you have your own Google servers that you're going to be using? Are you going to be using the ones that go directly to when you try to make them
hard to hear or?
Sorry, my apologies? Are the UK? Is the state have its own equal server? Or are you going to be using the ones that Ookla directs you to when you do a test?
Yes, we are actually putting we are not using our own server but the app application the app, Dr. Sanborn application we are using that will reroute the speed test to the local server to maximize the speed test so that we are getting as close as possible data from the ISPs.
Okay, so, I mean, obviously, you know, we monitor that pretty heavily, we've even had to put our own servers in. And for this reason, servers vary based on load interrupts your actual abilities, okay, which you know, Okay, wonderful. Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. And, Rory, just Just to add, I mean, it's not like a blind challenge. So one of the challenges or submit a challenge, you will still or ISPs will still have time to rebuttal that challenges and we can go back and forth request additional information from both Challenger and challengers and finalize from there. So state the amount of funding we have we have been clearly instructed by NTIA not to overwhelm in an area where there is an existing connectivity I know that can that can take off areas where where communities probably expecting fiber, but that's how the BEAD funding is going to unfold. And we have been told not to over build in an area where there is an existing connection already.
Yeah, which obviously wasn't followed through but by art offer Caf so that's so wonderful. Okay, well, listen, we'll be looking forward to talking Thank you.
Thank you, Sandip. Mark Goldstein. Good morning.
Good morning, Mark. How are you? Oh, good.
Thank you. My birthday week or month year show. Happy
birthday, Mark,
thank you have
you a great supporter and great friend, we always appreciate that.
Office and everyone just posted a floating set of cakes. So thank you. They're quite a question about enforceable commitments. Are you expecting beyond known grants that have been made to negotiate with providers for a guaranteed deployment in areas where that comprise? If if an ISP comes to you and says, I'm willing to commit contractually to build in an area? Is there a process that would accommodate those as enforceable commitments? Yes.
So to give you an example, the real life example, Mark, so we we had close to 20 out of winner here in Arizona, probably a little bit over that I'm not sure. We only we reached out to each of them separately, we only heard back from three other providers without naming the name. We are currently working with them since last quarter of last year. And we went through what we need to establish those area as an enforceable commitment. They did take some areas of which financially does not make sense for them to deploy Broadband here in Arizona, or already, we deployed Broadband in those areas with our EBD 100 million dollar grant. So they're working with us right now. They're giving us their map, not as you probably know that art of is on census block level, they are giving us their map on the BSL Level, where they are connecting this household. And they're giving us their financial data. They're also giving us their permitting request, what they have requested, after reviewing all of these will be signing in enforceable commitment agreement with them. It's not mandatory, but that actually helps the state bond brand Broadband office to establish this with the community that these are the organizations we're building in this area. And we are not overbuilding using the BEAD money in this area. Because that is definitely I have to communicate that with communities, county supervisor Association counties as well as the cities. So that's our process. So there is a enforceable commitment section in the BEAD guidelines. We are following that, but also adding some of the secret sauces on our site that what document they need to submit before this sign and enforceable commitment agreement with us. Same thing for any private investment. We have some private investment game here in the state to some venture capital firm in Hilah. County. So we are taking off almost three CDs from there, those are going to be fibre to home project. So we are carefully reviewing that and NTIA also released a set of federally funded projects here in the state of Arizona, we are reaching out to them as well to make sure that we're not over building on top of any our US grant or we are not over building on top of any private investment as well as any other federally funded data. As you probably all know that Yavapai county did it for grants and connecting four of their communities with last mile. So we're in coordination with them and reaching out to them to get that map as well. That will not only do that will not only avoid any kind of overbuilding on our state also maximize the Broadband or BEAD funding we have in the state not to mention any apdg project will be taken off, you will see that in the challenge process that will not be considered as part of the BEAD eligible areas. So all these factors are going into this challenge process. Module.
Great, thank you. helpful.
Thank you. Paul Ross, did you want to come up with to put in the chat?
Yeah. Sorry. I was wondering why we're not having our own data collection system like the speed test, but also with some other metrics added to it because it just feels like we should be collecting some other metrics that would be very important for the state. I think Rory make some really valid points in terms of affordability but and the speeds that people are currently signing up for. I know for my household, it's all controlled by budget. So therefore, you know, I've only signed up for a particular level of service and I'm never going to get those 100 Meg's because it's not affordable. And and it's not necessarily what I need right now. So I'm just wondering why we're not doing that because I think I've seen some Other states stand up their own measurement collecting system. And they're sort of added those additional values that they need for their own state to be able to provide a much more detailed view of what the reality is out there.
Oh, well, I'm I'm not exactly. So coming back to Rory's question, I got a quick answer about that. So anyone who's subscribing in your household, but you are your network Rory going, I'm going back to your question. So anyone who's subscribing, 100 meg in your home, but the network is capable of doing one gig, we can actually just send a quick text to our app geo team who were building this network and who will be integrating the speed test actually will have capacity capabilities to extract the data, what is the maximum speed provided to that household, and what exactly we are getting sorry, that erases any kind of concern you have from your site, that what how this speed test is going to be a factor. So if your your network is capable of delivering 300 Mbps in that particular household, we can extract the data from the speed test at what is the maximum amount of speed will be delivered, and what exactly they are getting in their household. So we can we will take the data from what network can deliver not exactly what they are getting in their household level. You
couldn't get that on our networks and deep that we're there's no way for you to get that information from our system. I can see you doing that with the cable providers, and probably the DSL providers, but no wireless provider could give you that information. You could not extract that information remotely. That's not possible.
Okay. I think that's an additional conversation that we have to have with you to make sure that we are integrating that or how we are going to evaluate that data. So we
can help you with we could help you do that. Just you don't have that ability without the company helping you set that up.
Okay, sure. I think that'd be great. If Rory, we can we can do some testing on that end before we open up the challenge process because we don't want to want the mystery presented data on our system when we are executing the challenge process request. Rory, I'll get back to you. Let me go back to Paul's question. So, Paul, the when you're saying that some other states are building their own system, there are states who are building their own system. And there are some states where we're buying the speed test module or the challenge process module off the shelf. There is technically no difference. Some states thought that with the limited font they have, without naming anyone the thought process what I heard from are my other colleagues from different state with the limited funding they have, it would be wise for them to build something in house. However, the state who has close to billion dollars and lot of challenge processes to execute or this based on the state size or number of unserved and underserved household. Most of those states are going with an off the shelf modules which we are doing right now. When it comes to the NTIA guideline, they're following the same exact module what we are following exactly here. We mentioned on volume one, otherwise, NTIA would not approve our volume one that how we are running our challenge process. So I personally don't see any distinction between these two. And the speed test is not only going to be one factor for this whole challenge process is speed test is just one factor out of the total 13 other module not module, data set which can be submitted for for the challenge as well as, as well as the rebuttal. So ISPs and both challenger will have multiple avenues to submit challenge in this process, I would say that the speed test going to be probably the most one of the least important part in this challenge process because we're not using the historical data, because that means misrepresent a lot of the ISPs network upgrade happened in last couple of months. So we are making sure that we are not using that a lot of other states are using that the past 120 days historical speed is data what we are saying that as per the NTIA guideline, resident have to take the three tests in one single day to make it a validated count. Also, in a particular geographical area. 80% of the residents need to take that test before even we take that off from from the map as a BEAD eligible area. So there are multiple back and forth. The ISPs can also submit as a rebuttal a picture of their equipment, what they're surfing what they're using, and when their tower locations are and we can take the areas off. So there is a whole slew of team will be working in this process and we are following the NTIA guideline. So that would be that would be my response to that. And again, going back to developing a separate module, we could have done by ourselves. But with the amount of unserved and underserved population, we have a timeline we have, it was a better decision for us to go ahead and get something off the shelf, which will perform the same way for the other state who are building their model by themselves. Yeah, no, thanks.
I mean, so Paul, I'm gonna cut off the discussion, because we have other things to cover today. But Sandip, one of the things that I want to talk to you about offline, we talked last time about doing a study session like we did. I know you mentioned that the that you're planning on doing some webinars on this issue. But I would like for us to talk about doing a study session like we did last time, obviously, as you can see, there's a lot of things people want to talk about. So I just want to get on to the things because we have other things to cover today. So
I see a question from Mala 80% of the resident doesn't need to take the speed test on the same day, we can post the challenge process guideline here. What I'm saying that at the end of the 60 day period, the 80% of the resident need to take to take that area or from the BEAD challenge process, they don't need to take it at same time or same day or something like that. And all of these was conveyed to CSA and the counties. And we are working directly with links of cities and the cities so that they can encourage their resident to take this test. Again, going back, Paul, I think you will be eligible to sit on those challenge process webinars. Because you are from a nonprofit organization, I can send you the link, I think it would be great to have you there. So that we can discuss and clarify a lot of this question. That would be a step by step process. Like we will start from what the challenge processes, how the modules were being set up, and what data we are collecting in this process. And we can go from there. So Paul, happy to have you there on the nonprofit challenge process webinar. And Rory would love to get back to you. On on the on the topic you just mentioned. Your your right, we can actually collect that data from cable fiber or any kind of give, like hardware connectivity, but it would be hard for us to collect that data from the wisp side. So I would like to see that how we can work on how we can find out a solution that will work for both not only your ISP, or any other web service here in Arizona, and we are not getting the data or reviewing the data, which is a sort of mysteries representation. So right if that's okay, I'll send you a meeting request and we'll go from there.
And I'm going to as soon as we get the dates for those webinars that I will post them got the note yesterday, but the dates? I don't know if the dates were posted in the times. Sandy? Yeah, got
it. Oh, sorry. Good, show, Maggie.
I think Maggie, I was saying the same thing. Maggie already send out an email, save the date, that doesn't have any zoom link yet, because we are still creating it. But once the Zoom links are finalized, I'll send you an email long with the Zoom links. My only request to all of you here will be please participate in to your designated web link up sorry, webinar. With designated webinar admins, if you are an ISP, or if you're on the local government site or nonprofit site, please sign up for that. The challenge process submission process is exactly same for everyone. But there is still a little bit tweak between all of this particular group. So it would be easy for you to understand the process and it's easy for us to make sure that we are providing the right information.
So Steve, Maggie has announced the dates but not the times in the mess.
Yes. So I did include that in my notice that went out yesterday. And I will soon as we get that information. I will post okay, we need to move on a Sandip, thank you for being here. When you get a chance next day or so give me a call back and hopefully we can chat for a little bit. We
can talk about this whole day right, Steve? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Move on. Let's move on. And I want to just get into our resource highlight today. The city of Mesa is wired and wireless Broadband initiatives, including their free public Wi Fi project. And we do have with us today David Krassa. So is that how you pronounce your name David? Awesome Krassa, Project Manager for the Public Wi Fi project in Mesa, and Harry Meier who's the deputy CIO, for innovation. So I'm going to turn it over to them. And they are very passionate about their wireless solution. So with that, I'm going to turn it over, I'll stop sharing if you guys need to share something.
Sure thing, I'll just kick it off a little bit. That, you know, I'm not gonna just talk about wireless, we really wanted to step back and talk about the big picture of Digital Equity and Broadband penetration in urban setting. And a lot of these conversations center around just getting connectivity to places and people who have who have never seen a wire before. But the in the urban setting, we have very different challenges. You know, we have incumbent providers that have been here for years, we have, you know, even going back pre pandemic, we we had of fairly good penetration of, of high speed, connectivity. But when our current mayor started office, this was, you know, going back pre pandemic, one of the first things he said was, we want to make sure that Broadband was ubiquitous throughout the city. And he approached the IT department looking for what we were doing about it. And we had already commissioned studies, and we're ahead of that game. And that just lit a fire under us and let us run with it. And then when the pandemic hit, and some federal funds started coming down, we've, we're primed and ready. So I wanted to do a little presentation, I'll try to go quick. There's, there's a lot to share of all the different things and approaches that Mesa has been taking. And hopefully, as you'll see, we've taken a holistic Smart City approach of cooperation across our city departments, and with the public and with the private sector and the nonprofits to just try to get everybody connected. So with that, try to share here
works. Everybody seen that? Yeah. All right. So this was the outlook in 2020. We talk a lot about maps, and I will I maps will be prominent, my presentation here today. But mapping was one of the first things we went to where is the need. And so I have a all star team of GIS folks that just were quickly able to turn data into nice representations of what the challenge really was. And so the first thing we noticed was there's a definite band of need through the center of the city. We you know, so what you're seeing here is layers of the CDBG. Housing and Urban Development, low medium, moderate income, census tracts from going back to 2015. A, the layer of Mesa Public Schools, family internet need done from surveys at the peak of the pandemic lockdowns in 2020 and US Community Survey, census data from 2017. That was I think, one of the first times they really asked the question of us communities out there internet access. So you can see you know, there's a pretty clear density of families in need from the from the school surveys going across the this is mostly the western end of Mesa, our downtown areas in the center there. The blue dots are where we had Wi Fi at the time, and this was during the pandemic we quickly cooperated with between our IT and transportation departments. The tree inspriation department had some connectivity out to traffic signals where they put Wi Fi hotspots just for their technicians to have connectivity while they worked on traffic signals. So we lit those up with public access. So we had, we had Wi Fi at those traffic signal intersections, not a great spot to have free Wi Fi. But it was something again, it was pandemic, we people tried everything. But the hash areas are where the US Community Survey said greater than 25% of the population was reporting, they had no access. Now, that wasn't necessarily the case of availability of access, there was pretty good penetration from Cox and CenturyLink into those areas. We had wisps that were, were providing access, but we were still seeing the families reporting. So that's where the challenge comes in an urban setting is even though you are built out, why are those families still not not getting access? So first thing we looked at was a same thing everybody looks at is the fiber. So the the thought was, you know, like with all of these conversations, can we get more connectivity more fiber into these areas, improve what we've got, and increase the competition. So again, it was all the way up through our mayor and city council. We're very keen on this. Try a short video here. But you will see that it was really considered a priority.
threat. So absolutely, it has become a central part of our day to day lives. Here in Mesa, we want to make sure that everybody has access to that they're all
of the city of Mesa is to provide infrastructure for our citizens to have water pipes and electric districts, all of those things that it's impossible for you to go out on your own and provide and Broadband is clearly one of those services. So if we acknowledge that truth, and we invest in getting that fiber, to your to your front door, and to your business's front door, that's going to make that that service very affordable.
So what we're trying to do is figure out how we can engage in a public private partnership, if that's not feasible for the city of Mesa to spend over half a billion dollars putting fiber, every business at home and Mason's the reason for the RFI the request for information, see who might be interested in coming into the city of Mesa and partnering by
putting the RFI out there, we kind of listed some goals that we had, and some questions that we had. And we did have a very robust response from the private sector, to the point where again, we feel like probably through a combination of providers, that there is enough interest in Mesa, there's enough demand for fiber related services, the private sector will again over a number of years be able to get it everywhere.
Too big. But we're taken on this fiber, every home and business in the 35th largest city in the country is it's like a moonshot. Right. And so other communities are watching maze. And I feel like yeah, it's a it's aggressive. It's ambitious. But can we do it? Yes, we absolutely can.
So, that was the beginning of this. We put out an RFI that asked the private sector, what it would take to get fibre to every home and business in the city. And a few of the things that came back were ease of, of deployment. And what were the barriers to getting that fiber to every home. We did our own study, and I think it was mentioned there it was, you know, over half a billion dollars, I think the the estimate came in at about over 650 $650 million to get fiber to every home and business in the city. And we went in naively at the beginning thinking we have conduit already we've got you know 1000s of fiber miles already for public safety and transportation and, and information technology resources that the city owns. How hard could it be to get that that last mile? Put pretty hard but as it turns out, so we started asking the private sector, what would it take what what are the barriers for you and the The answer came back, that it came to the permitting the, the, the difficulty of getting that last mile of getting to that those homes getting into the right of way, the process itself is just expensive cutting into the road. What's one of the, the topics that came up was and one of the potential solutions was allowing for different ways of, of putting that fiber under the road. And you'll see that as you see here, the the response was very good. Where we went from the two incumbents, we actually added on for one dropped out because it's just too much competition at this point. And so, now, we we are settled right now with with five different companies actively providing fiber optic internet to to city households, starting on the west end and moving east. So the first piece was micro trenching. So we are in Arizona in the Central Valley, here we are not in an area that has earthquakes or very deep frost lines, where micro trenching becomes a concern, you can do a short cut into the road, just go just go slightly beneath where we will need to grind to repave that road later. And you can lay the fiber right there. The process, I simplify it, but the process is essentially a big cutting blade, the ditch which it's not, not highly complicated to do micro trenching. So this lowers the cost of entry. And but the other part of it was with our Right Of Way group that we needed to staff up and give a lot of help to those companies that are doing this work. So we we did just that we staffed up we introduced a way to pay an extra fees to get quicker service, and the companies jumped in. So they're still going like hotcakes. This this right of way management group is we had to move them to bigger offices. It's been nonstop for them since this started. We also I mentioned the conduits. So we have a lot of we've run a utility for decades. So we've got a lot of old conduit that's not in use right now. We make use of that for economic development benefit, you know, letting companies know if they want to move a tech business to Mesa, if there's no fiber to where they're at right now. We can help make it happen. We can talk to the ISPs. We can lease out sections of conduit, make it so that they don't even have to cut into the road. This was one of the chief resources that kicked off our Elliot technology corridor, where we now have Apple, Google, Facebook meta. There's the data centers that popped up left and right down there. So this is a another thing that's also run through our our right of way management and through our City actually has a real estate office, where will we get revenue back from leasing this conduit. And then we get to the free Wi Fi. So despite getting all of the the connectivity to people through the private sector and through the making sure that we're out of the private sectors way and letting them get the connectivity in and in a competitive way to the most community possible. There's still people who are going to fall through that those cracks. So we kicked off, we had already kicked off pre pandemic a expansion of our free Wi Fi around the downtown square mile. And that was just under a lifecycle. We we've we have had free Wi Fi around our downtown going back over a decade. But we were already expanding it when the pandemic hit. So with ARPA funds, we've just turbocharged that I mentioned the spots all around the city. A lot of those are those traffic signal intersections where they just happen to have Wi Fi already. That we've put on The at Mesa is the SSID that you'll see if you around or downtown or near one of these. And that's just available. And this map is available on our website as well. This map is actually not even up to date this there's a, as dense as this is around the downtown, it's even denser today. We also undertook a more directed approach of putting up CBRs private cellular towers. We talked to our partners in at Cox and the other municipalities and our radio system reps. Motorola ended up being the provider in this this case. And again, the city had a lot of resources already, we had towers, the public schools partnered with us and offered real estate, and we threw up cell towers. So right now we've got 15 of these live the yellow dots around this map. And there's a few spots on this map where you can see there's a a flower of signal with no.in the middle, that's where we are projecting a another tower that will fill this in. So there is I believe, six remaining to go. The one here on the east side, he's actually already live, that map just hasn't updated yet. There's a one here at a fire station that's, that's being outfitted as we speak. The an old cable America tower, down here on Main in southern, Southern and Mesa that we'll be able to. Yes, yeah, the towers on this map are the CBRs installations. And few city parks will be the last three that go up, Parks just have a whole lot more extra regulations around the aesthetics. So they're taking a little bit of extra time and scrutiny. So those are going to be the the mono palm style cell towers that have the palm fronds that are in the three parks. So this network is currently operational and has I think last time I checked close to 4000 households connected. And the way that we've achieved those numbers is through nonprofit partnership. So the next slide, copy dopt. So copy dopt is a nonprofit that primarily historically worked in computer recycling. So they would collect old computers from corporations and governments, refurbish them and redistribute them to the community, sell some parts on the open market to make ends meet and, and get laptops into the community.
They in the pandemic got a private grant of $35 million from Santander corporation to stand up networks in, I believe, five US cities. They did this in Dallas and Atlanta, and Mesa was their third. And the reason why it's a couple of reasons why they picked Mesa one we had a Santander site here. So they there was a little bit of a synergy with their their corporate sponsor. But also, they were in talks with Motorola down in Texas, around the Dallas area. And we had already stood up the CBRs network here. So they were actually approaching cities looking to build their own CBRs network. And we had already started so we signed a partnership with copy doc to they actually added some hardware to our cell towers to double the speed and capacity. So that we can get 50 megabits signal from those those towers and they work directly with the schools and the community to to distribute those laptops, distribute CBRs routers along with them. They will do ACA signups but you know, that being what it is they their goal is really on the Digital Equity front, get the connectivity to the people however it can come and if they're falling through the cracks for whatever reason, here's their CPS CBRs router. And like I said they found 1000s of people in our community that that had a need for that. So they're, they're still going. And we've had a ton of success working with them. They're running workshops along with Mesa Public Schools as well to do the digital literacy. That, you know, it covers the whole gamut of the Digital Equity conversation. We're going to skip the video on that one. So back to the Wi Fi, we are well actually, almost to the Wi Fi. The next one I'll we call middle mile, it's really that next to last mile. So one of the technologies that came up prominently as we tried to deploy Wi Fi into these communities is that, you know, getting fiber to each and every spot where you want to put a Wi Fi hotspot is not feasible. Just, you know, connecting one light pole with fiber can cost, you know, five digits easily. And that just wasn't sustainable. When we looked at wireless technologies to get that, that backhaul to the to the Wi Fi, we found this newer technology was a research from Facebook that found its way into the private sector. It's called Terra graph. It's a millimeter wave technology that beams, the 60 gigahertz signal about a football field length, point to point. But it is it creates a layer two mesh between those those devices. So it will self heal route around failures. And it's multi gigabit. So we are currently purchasing we're in procurement for the what will be the first large scale deployment of Broadband luminaire streetlights in the world. So what you're seeing here, these dots represent Terragraph enabled streetlights. So they will actually have this 60 gigahertz, multi gigabit radio that will shoot 360 degrees inside the light head of a streetlight. We're planning to deploy over 340 of these across this this swath of of central mesa. And that will enable that that middle mile from where we have the fiber to where we want to put the the Wi Fi, it also serves other purpose, we can do direct to home with this and give a gigabit signal to the to the households we're not going down there yet, we've we know that there is plenty of of work to be done on the Fiber Front and with with fixed households connectivity. So the city is mostly focusing on the wireless side of the things to catch the people who are falling through the cracks of a fixed connectivity from the private sector. So with the with this, this network will be able to not only backhaul the Wi Fi, but also provide access for public safety for cameras. And at intersections in parks. We have a real time crime center that can actively you know, pull up cameras in the during a 911 incident and get eyes on the scene before even they're able to dispatch fire or police to a location. So this will enable a lot of those functions with that high speed, middle mile. And then lastly, the Wi Fi. As you see that's it's very similar. This is the deployment that we're working on right now. The area in the middle here, just center and north of the the map of dots is the area that's already done. That's our downtown. So this is if you remember back from the the first map, this is that swath of red where we had all those families reporting they didn't have connectivity. Well, it'll be there on the street. If they for whatever reason they can't get it into their home or or can't afford it or are moving around. Don't have a fixed address where they can sign up for a service from the private sector. It's there on the street if they need it. And that's that's really the key here is to create this multi layered and Net have access to get catch as many people as possible who aren't able to get their sick Lou is actually the the technology inside the telegraph. So that the first square mile that we deployed with the telegraph middle mile, we used SIG Lu as the hardware and it's a little barrel style device that has the 360 degree antennas in it. And that will, it is the same device. What we then did was partner with Philips Lighting, now known as signifie. And they actually embedded the SIG Lu, equivalent to their end 367 distribution node, they embedded it in the streetlight itself, so it's much more aesthetically easy on the eyes, you don't see you know, wires going into this barrel sitting on your pole. They also have the connectivity coming right out of the light. So there's less, less work to deploy our streetlights team can mount it. And then later on our Wi Fi team comes by and just plugs a wire into it to power and light up the the Wi Fi AP. So that's that's the various things that we're doing. And with that, I will open it for more questions.
Harry, I hope sorry, Harry, I just sent you a message. Okay, sorry. Thank you. My apologies. Go ahead.
Yeah, I was I was gonna ask a question about the fiber deployment. You said you have five fiber companies in Mesa deploying fiber to the premise. Are you using like an open access network model where these fiber companies can all deploy? We're not these five nor are they competing in different areas or how is this working?
They are all competing and for good and bad. I will say that it is. The market is correcting itself in that in that regard. So when we first did this RFI, and opened up the micro trenching, we got think six different providers that were interested, including the incumbents. The one that was actually engaging with us the most was sci fi networks. And they are they're famous for micro trenching, I believe they've got several cities in California they've already done. In fact, those were some of the demo sites that we took our engineers to to see what the differences would be with micro, trenching and sci fi dropped out. It was just too much competition for them. As soon as I think it was when at&t got got involved, that's when sci fi dropped out. ubiquity, one of the other ones that is actively laying fiber, they are a neutral host provider. So that's the closest thing we've got to a to an open access. We do have private neutral hosts. ubiquity is a neutral host. They had two ISPs that were running with them Ting and fiber first. Now, Ting has dropped out. So those, again, it's almost too much competition at this point. But it is it's wild to watch. But are they are they competing like they they are they can't deploy fiber to the same households, right? Or they can. It's not as simple. I'm not an engineer to tell you what the logistics are. But we do have in the engineering standards, the ability to run multiple micro trenches down the same street, they will have to bore under one another to get into the same household. But and we already have incumbents that are in those households. So yeah, there is there is definite competition to sign up those houses and we're seeing the private sector kind of shake itself out that way.
So yeah, it just seems to me like it's an interesting important question about whether you should use an open access network model and deploy fiber once and let the service providers lease that fiber rather than having them try to deploy their own fibers to the same households. Different times and
yeah, you know, a lot of other cities have seen good success with open access networks where Yeah, you get you get one you know, one strand or what a couple of strands into a household, and then you create the maybe a publicly held neutral host that sublets that to the different providers. It is a it's a mesa is a more conservative city with, you know, more free market air to our, our legislation. So there there was a desire to simply open it up and let the market figure it out. It's, it's a little chaotic, I will, I will freely admit that. Like I said, our right away management group is heads down work 24/7 right now. And we are seeing some of the the the the ISPs drop out of the race, just because of the competition. But it is it's going as well as we could hope. We've seen just anecdotally, in the neighborhoods where we have now Google and ubiquity have lit up customers. Na TNT as well. Cox has lowered their prices upwards of 30%. And it, it is a competition. It's just the way that you're supposed to be. And it's a level playing field for all of those private providers.
We got to wrap up, we're about out of time. And then also Amala. See, you're still online, you have anything you want to do an update. But Harry, thank you very much. No, thank you if you can, if you want to share your presentation, send it to me, and I can share it with folks after the meeting.
See, Steve, very quickly, very, very quickly. You know, I know there was some talk about I mean, there is a lot of talk about adding cybersecurity and ACP and Wi Fi on school buses to E Rate. You know, while I have no opposition to that, I just want to be one want to let us be cautious of the fact that there is a limited amount of money available in the E Rate part. You know, we're just like, right, currently it is $4.76 billion available. Without the USF base being expanded, it's going to become more and more of an issue, you know, and we're going to spread it out thin, we're going to have to go back to the old ways of, you know, providing connected with you based on discount percentages. You know, and that's, you know, with all that's happening, I don't think that's a good idea. But it's not a sustainable option to have, you know, ACP also be a part of it. I think, you know, much as I love the program and advocating for it, I think we need to find another source. So that's one thing I wanted to say. But also, you know, that we've received in, you know, hotspot letter mixed signups or mixed reactions for the hotspot lending program, through E Rate, although it is a well established program, competitive bidding, requiring requiring applicants to pay their discount to cheer. It safeguards against wasteful spending. But just as we saw now, I think remote learning should be technology neutral. hotspot signals are not often strong enough to support remote learning. They're not the best of technologies to use for video streaming. And if you have multiple kids in the family, multiple users in the same household, the hotspots are not gonna, you know, make it happen. So, you know, I listened with interest, a Holy Spirit to Harry's presentation, I think we need to follow something like that the technology neutral solution rather than hotspot lending. Additionally, hotspot lending is a lending program. It's a loan for program. It's not something that the children get to keep or the families get to keep. And there's a lot of hurdles and record keeping. You know, who's got the hotspots, when did they return and how long do they keep it how are we going to track it? And usage of it? Is it getting used efficiently? Who tracks the usage? Is it going to be the service provider or the loan? are at the schools or libraries, and how long do they keep all that records to mean, it's a mess, it's it's such a mess that many of our libraries did not participate in the hotspot hotspot lending program. And I agree that if it goes through erase, it has to follow all those rules. And we don't need to have that record keeping burden. But if we deployed or followed Mason's example, you know, I think it would be a lot easier and less burdensome on the patrons are going to use it as they just they have a burden of trying to learn and adopt the usage. While you and I would not be without internet access, we may go without, you know, going out for dinner or something like that. But you know, for those who are struggling to put food on the table, internet at high speeds, even if it is available at your doorstep, is not an option. You know? So that's my soapbox. I'll shut up there. And
then can you remind me about so the ERate can theoretically cannot serve outside of the schools or libraries, but can a municipality commit their own funds and connect to any ERate network to be able to expand extend out to, to the community,
they can, but it needs to be cost allocated out, you know, so the cost of trenching and all that has been already taken care of by eRate to the anchor institutions. So they don't need to use I mean, they can use the the existing conduits, and trenches to put their own fiber if they need to. So they say when the trenching costs and things like that, you know, construction costs. But you know, if there is any new construction, and they that is going to happen, they do need to cost allocator because it will allow only four anchor institutions. And then the cost of recording. You know, it's not just the cost of one time installation is the recurring monthly costs that you pay for the service, which needs to be taken care of that era takes care of for anchor institution.
Okay, thank you. Any questions for Mala? We're kind of out of time for today. Any particular questions or comments before we end, and we will stay online if anybody wants to Kibbutz but any final or any additional announcements anybody needs to make before we end? going once going twice, so Mala I would like to have a conversation with you. We've got some thoughts that I've been playing with and wanted to chat with you.
Absolutely no problem with
that. So Harry, thank you very much. Good, good presentation. I think you sparked an actually going to want to talk with you also about what's kind of running through my brain at the moment. So with that, I'm going to stop recording
