November 14, 2024 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Video

10:24PM Nov 14, 2024

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Ilana Lowery

Nicole Umayam

Mark Goldstein

Erin Lorandos

Mala Muralidharan

Henry Goldberg

Milan Eaton

Frank Martinez

Lola Flores

Keywords:

new sponsors

cyber security event

AZ BSN newsletter

broadband office updates

market sounding process

pre-registration period

digital equity funding

bead application window

unserved households

election impact

FCC change

E-Rate program

digital inclusion

mapping services

internet exchange points

And start the meeting. Good morning. Everybody. Glad to see glad to see you all here this morning. So want to go ahead and and get started. Do we have anybody who's new to us today?

I am new. I have not attended a session here before, and

I apologize about my

slight tardiness. Now. Who is that? My name is Lola. I

am here from Brander Group. We

are a local IT consulting firm. We primarily specialize in IPv four brokerage services as well

as other IT solutions.

Oh, great. Well, welcome you. Okay, anybody else who's new to our group today? Okay, now, let me do this. Okay, so again, I always want to thank our sponsors, care first, health plan, Karen Ziegler, consulting services, valley, telecom, Kajeet and triad. So thank you guys again for your for your support. So a couple of things about the agenda this morning, as I was just mentioning I have to be at a cyber security event at nine o'clock on the other side of town, so I do want to end the meeting by nine o'clock, if we can make that happen. So anyway, just wanted to bring you up to date about that, and then let's go ahead and just get started with the meeting, just, just a reminder. Well, two reminders. One is that you all are getting my AZ BSN newsletter, and I want to remind you I know that people get lots of emails, and like myself, don't get to read everything, but I want to remind you that most of the stuff that's that's mentioned and announced at our meetings that I provide that link in my newsletter. So if I so you find it easy to find related to that is that I do send out that after the meeting, the transcript and the chat. But if you're interested, if you've heard somebody and you want to know, how do I contact them? When they put information in the chat that you can download the chat to your computer. If you go to chat, and you go to the top, there's three ellipses, and if you click on that, I'll say, say to this computer, and you're welcome to save the chat. It makes it a lot easier, and trying to write down stuff and so forth. So I wanted to to mention that. So with that, Erin, you, let me turn it over to you and give us a quick update on what's happened with with the broadband office. Please. Sure thing. Thanks

so much. My name is Erin Lorandos. I'm the digital equity program manager at the Arizona commerce authority. For folks who may not know, the state broadband office, which is housed there at ACA, is administering both the bead and digital equity funding here in the state. So updates, as far as we are concerned, we have closed the market sounding process that was an opportunity for our our stakeholders and local governments and ISPs to review our proposed project areas for the bead funding distribution and provide their feedback on that. That process wrapped up last week. Now I think it was about a week ago, and we have moved into a pre registration period where eligible entities for that bead funding. So this is the infrastructure internet build out can pre register in our system so that they're ready for the upcoming rounds of applications, those application will basically be based on those project areas. ISPs and other eligible entities can let us know that they are interested in building out in a certain project area and provide us with their bid for that area. So that window for the first round of applications will open on December 20, and so just over a month from now. And so in the interim, this gives people an opportunity to do that pre registration process and get ready to go. If folks are interested in that information. I'm going to drop the link to the bead website through the commerce authority, information about pre registration and everything that's happened up until this point is available there. If you have any questions about any of this, I encourage you to reach out to our our broadband office email, which is broadband at AZ commerce.com and I'll put that in the chat momentarily. Uh, that goes to everybody on the team. So it's the it's the most efficient way to get a hold of anyone in the state broadband office. On the digital equity side of things, there isn't a lot to update this group on. We are still working through our our back and forth, caring conversation with the federal government and NIST to get our funding approved, we are anticipating, hopefully, fingers crossed, all the fingers and all the toes, and maybe some of our eyes are crossed, that we will have that approval by the end of this year, so that we can move into the next phases, which is basically running a sub grant process and working with some state partners to enact the goals and objectives in our digital equity plan, which is also available on our website. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer otherwise, those are that's all the news that's fit to print from the state broadband office.

Thank you. Erin. Any questions for Erin?

Yes, Erin, I have a question on after you've finished this market sounding period for the bead project areas, are you going to be posting the project I mean, you finished the market sounding period, are you going to be posting the finalized project areas on the website for everyone to see. Or is that only available to eligible entities?

Nope. You can see that through the through the website. The you know the market sounding just wrapped up. So what's there right now is still based on those, those but by the time the application window opens, those maps will be updated if there were any changes, and honestly, I'm not deep enough in that side of it to know if there were changes, but they'll be posted.

So they'll be posted by the time the application process opens on the

right, yep, because the ISPs or other eligible entities will be basically selecting the project areas as part of their application, so that that information will be up there. Okay, okay,

I'd add that the state is required to post the results of the challenge process, which is the final determinations of the dust is settled, what is unserved and eligible for bead and what is those CSV files you see the draft ones that were submitted now the finalized versions will be posted prior to opening the round one application portal, as I understand it, the final project areas are going to be available within the application portal that you need to be registered eligible entity to see those but I believe that the state Broadband Map that's in progress is going to overlay The project areas with other other information about ongoing projects and permitting areas to build. You know, the super map, so there will be, there will be a sense of what bead eligible areas are ongoing.

You know, how, how many households are eligible after the challenge process in Arizona.

We're still waiting for that piece to be approved.

Yeah. So at the Yeah, so at the time of the middle after the challenge process, it, and we're talking May, May 15. Now that was 174,299 74,299 locations. But that number has changed as Arizona has been revising it based on incoming data and differences in federal enforcement data. So right now it's looking like around 180,000 locations, but none of that is confirmed and finalized until until NTIA accepts the challenge process data efficiently.

So those are the total of the unserved and underserved households. It doesn't include community anchor institutions, right, correct. Okay, because it seems to be a lot lower than what they were talking about earlier. So the challenge process, because it seemed, if I remember, it was more like 300,000 households originally. So has it gone down a lot from

you? May, you may be talking about the the numbers from the allocation. So this is where now, a year and a half ago, so the the number of unserved households that went into the calculations for what states and territories would receive, that's one point in time set of data. And then there's the results of this. States, challenge process, which refined that data, got provider input on what's actually served and unserved. And then we're now at kind of a third point in time, look of, you know, things that are incorporating additional funding that's covering certain households. So, you know, we can't really say what that flow looks like, but I'm definitely interested in seeing that trend hindering as well. So I think in a couple of weeks here, we'll be able to tell that story a little

better. Okay. Thank you.

Nicole, can you two things? First of all, can you just remind people who you are, and then any other updates, anything else that you need to talk about?

Sure, good morning. I'm Nicole Umayam. I'm the federal program officer for Arizona with NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Live and work in Phoenix. Have a business here and get to support Arizona on broadband or federal broadband deployment projects. I don't work for the ACA, but I work with them and administer their funds.

Haven't been

able to join recently because it's sort of a bad time, but did want to just give a couple of of updates from our end. You know, a little bit of, you know, a little bit of commotion over the past couple of weeks, but ultimately, with bead, if you're wondering about what the election impact looks like, you know, for us, it's head down and continue to deal with the heavy workloads that we have at this time, getting all the states through, nothing really changes for us over the next two months. We We know that by the end of next year, every single bead dollar is going to be allocated to states, you know, as a result of submitting those final proposals. So there's really no concern about any clawbacks or significant changes to key parts of the bead program, because all that is is codified in the law. Actually, three years ago tomorrow is the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law. And so, you know, NTIA has been developed the NOFO, and it's been implementing the program as such. We, you know, the Department of Commerce, where NTIA sits, as well as other departments, have been working on transition documents since, since the early summer, because it's known that there's going to be an administration change one way or another. So all of that has been, you know, kind of prepared and at the ready, because the the Trump, what's called their agency review team. They are not federal employees, yet, they only have access to the publicly available information. But as soon as, you know, as soon as January takes place, there's kind of a more in depth review of how agencies and programs are working, and a lot of support for for the transition. In January, you know, there will be a nomination of a new Secretary of Commerce that tends to happen relatively quickly, like with Secretary Raimundo. She was nominated at the end of January and confirmed in March. I'm not sure if we see that type of turnaround. You know, in 2025 or not, the most consequential nomination for bead is the Assistant Secretary that's currently Alan Davidson, but I understand that those nominations happen after all of the secretaries are in place, and then they go through a Senate and House confirmation as well, so not likely until end of the summer, when we would know who the assistant secretary is. That's the person who signs off on all the final bead and digital equity elements for these for these broadband programs, we NTIA is just going to continue celebrating some of the wins that we do have. We have at this moment, we have 55 of the 56 initial proposals approved. Texas is the last one that we expect to be rolling out here in the next couple of days. And a few days ago, we announced the first tribal broadband connectivity program, round two Award, which is very exciting news, and that goes to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands for some connectivity there. So things are still moving. Our existing programs are still moving. There's not really a lot of. Of a lot, a lot of hand wringing about major impacts to bead of course, NTIA did make, you know, certain policy decisions in developing the NOFO and our guidance for some you know, some of that stuff, and it's possible that there are smaller elements that could be impacted by a new administration. You know, there's been a lot of talk about affordability and a low cost option. And, you know, use of satellite seems to be more and more popular as well, though we could see some some changes in how NTIA allows for flexibility from states in those areas, but nothing major in terms of how the program is going to be, going to be implemented, as far as me, and if you get to see my face around still, that's that's on track. You know, there's some, there's talk about, you know, the Trump Schedule F stuff or replacing, you know, replacing federal employees. Like it or not, we are Schedule B, so we are all term appointed for the purposes of the ACA program, so our positions are as stable as I can be promised at this point. For the digital Equity Act program. You know, I know people are wondering about, you know, is that, is that going to be targeted? NTIA is required by the statute to roll those out by fiscal year. We know that those, those those allocations are already noted the 300 million for fiscal years 2023, through 2026 and those are not they will not require additional approval to release those sets of funds through the fiscal year. Other than that, I can't really speak to when the other capacity grants are going to be announced, because those are in progress.

There. I'm going to put a link to the Department of Education, education leader, AI Toolkit, which just came out and pretty cool to check out and in last month, USDA announced the reconnect, five awards that are coming to different areas, including Arizona. So I'll post that as well. So

Okay, anything else, Nicole,

unless we have questions.

Okay, any questions for Nicole? Okay, well, well, thank you, Nicole. This is obviously interesting times, and just to follow up on what you were just talking about yesterday, Shelby had a great webinar on broadband policy after the election, what to expect from Congress and the next administration. Of course, everything is speculation at this point. Do people FCC will probably have a new a new chair, and so be lots of changes still, still to come that we all don't know about. I was just talking with Ilana before the meeting, and I do plan to do some kind of a session. First of all, as soon as I get the link to the recording of that webinar, I will send it out to you again. Everybody's just in speculation mode at this point, as new appointments are being made and so forth. But I will send it out. I thought it was a great, a great webinar. And then, as I was saying that, I will after, probably after the first of the year, we got the holidays, new appointments are happening and all kinds of stuff. So hopefully we'll have a better feel after the first of the year about vacations are for broadband and technology related issues. So hope to be able to do some kind of a good panel with people who follow Washington to give us a good update about that, so that'll probably be, I'm sorry. Somebody have a comment?

No, we're listening to the Arizona I'm sorry,

either on not muted. So that's, that's what we're hearing, is a someone who's calling in on a phone, okay.

Okay, moving on as So Erin, do we have any more new. About a tribal liaison manager, is that still open? As far as you know,

no changes to report on any of the open positions. Okay?

Thank you. So just a couple of quick updates about some future programs. So I am going to be working on a workforce development panel. It's a lot of discussion about workforce development at this point, so hope to be able to get that updated in the meantime, next week, I have confirmed a an Assistant Fire Chief from Tucson fire who is going to be here to talk about I mentioned this before shared information, but the Tucson Fire Department is partnering with the public safety communications department and MD alley telehealth to implement a telehealth program within The 911 system. So if I understand correctly, somebody calls 911, they'll do an assessment if they're which they always do, of course, but they'll do an assessment about whether or not they need to dispatch fire or police. Are people have medical issue of some kind, they can connect them directly to a doctor and do a help telehealth call and talking with the deputy chief yesterday, it's a really awesome program, and they anticipate that they will save hundreds of calls, dispatching fire engines and police and everything to calls that don't require that kind of a response. So he's very interested in not only looking at where there's some partnerships with people here in Arizona, but also to share what they're doing, and maybe there's some replication in other communities. It's certainly consistent. Of course, I've talked to them about Mala and their work they're doing in the Arizona telemedicine program and so forth, but they're very interested in being able to share that information with other people in the state. I think it's a very interesting program and concept. So moving on quickly, and then we'll get to our presentation this morning. Mala, can

I ask you one quick question? Are you planning on, you know, in the past, you had tried to organize that public broadband networks forum, and you mentioned also organizing a panel on low cost broadband solutions and so on digital equity, long term funding. Are those still things you're looking at organizing? Yeah, I

would like to do that, Henry. So probably after the first of the year, I'm going to look at what kinds of programs, what we want to do. Obviously, with the holidays coming up, we're obviously not making being on Thanksgiving or Christmas, and so we only have a couple weeks to do some of those things. But yes, the answer is yes, I would still like to do that. Okay, okay. Mala, do you have any quick updates? Yes,

I'd be very, very quick. I know that you were at the webinar yesterday, the and you know that there are lots of speculations on changes, but one important change that we, I'm tracking is FCC change of guard from Jessica Rosen warsal to perhaps it's going to be Brendan car, and that will change the it will change the balance of power at FCC, which means that those who had voted against, you know the Wi Fi on school busses and hot spots may, you know those programs, may not see the light of day, or maybe, you know, in seen in a different format, cyber security pilot was the third program that Jessica Rosen wars had put forward. The pilot program was highly, highly oversubscribed, with 3.7 billion in applications to the 200 million. That was that the grant called for. So there are lots there's going to be lots of challenges for them on how they select and who the recipients are going to be. But this is, this is only part one of the application process. Part Two of the application process is the real application. They're going to shift from this group and pick those who will be asked to do a more in depth application. The only other thing I'd like to draw your attention to is the E Rate trend 2024 Trends report. I'll put the link in the chat. I think it's a. A good for this group to look at the trend report. This is done by funds of learning every year, and some of the things that they have talked about is the resilience of the E Rate program and the need for it to continue the they talked about cyber security, and they've asked many of the applicants in the survey actually wanted a redundant network as well, because of the internet out outages and the disruption to critical educational activities. So that's, again, one of those things that came up surfaced up in the survey and expanding E Rate to E rates off campus connectivity going beyond the hot spots and the Wi Fi on school busses. So I'll stop there and give it back to you. Steve, can

you just introduce yourself please?

Sorry, he's so sorry. I'm Mala I'm the State E Rate coordinator for public libraries, and I work at the State Library. Thank

you, Mylan. Do you have anything else you want to add about E Rate at the moment?

Yeah, one of the reasons we got in trouble with the supreme court right now, and a couple of lawsuits that are going on is because they the current FCC has expanded the reach of the program. The program says it's for, you know, schools and libraries, and it's for in classroom, support of learning. And what they did was, now they're expanding it to school busses, which I can see school busses being part of the classroom, because kids can do homework on a school bus. And then they expanded to hot spots, loaner hot spots for students to check out, to take home, and for libraries to check out. And when they get to that point, they really, they really overstepped. And so that put them now, they're they're on the docket at the Supreme Court. If they're not careful, having this type of visibility will kill the E Rate program altogether. So by overstepping, you know the the intent of the program, and it's a bad thing. So hopefully the FCC can fix this very easily by saying, Okay, we're going to go back to our roots, back to where, you know, when mansion and the group created the program in 96 we're supporting schools and libraries and learning inside those facilities. And if they do that, the Supreme Court will hear the will no longer hear the case, the lawsuits that are going on and get dropped, and the program, hopefully will fly under the radar and be safe. So we're going to wait and see. It's kind of a it's not a good time at the moment. And

of course, one of the big issues hanging out there is the future of USF, which is the primary funder for E Rate

Exactly, exactly, and whether USF is a tax or is it a fee. So and allowing that USF tax to be decided by USAC is where they're getting in trouble with the Supreme Court, because, as we know, only Congress can dictate taxes, not They. They can't, and that responsibility off to another organization, so the FCC can easily fix the problem. And Commissioner Rosenworcel refused to take on that as a as being a problem. Uh, Brendan car. Last conversation I had with him was probably last month. He's more than willing to take on that and wreck it and deal with it. So he's it can be fixed. It can be fixed very easily. And matter of fact, I can fix it, and I'm not the smartest person in the world, so I'm sure that they can fix it. And I'm hoping that they will. I'm hoping Cooler heads prevail.

And of course, there is still and of course, don't know whether it'll continue or not, is the bipartisan, bicameral committee studying the USF. And, of course, who knows what's going to happen now?

Yeah, and USF is continually losing money because, you know, internet is not taxed, or there's not a fee on internet, as they call it. It's actually a tax, but they call it a fee. So and we have more and more voice lines that we're losing every day, and everyone's going to, you know, internet, voice over, IP, so it's, um, they have to find a way to fund USF so that we can keep these the rural health care and the high risk and the E Rate program funded for the long term.

Bio, I just want to remind people quickly about how where USF funding comes from.

USF, if you look at your telephone bill at home, you'll see a universal service fee, and that fee is a. A small tax, or small fee, as it's called, which comes from every telephone user in the country. Arizona has an ausp in Arizona universal service fee, and that fee is used to support rural telephone facilities where there's not a return on investment high enough for some of the rural telcos to be able to support providing telephone services to, let's say, hackberry, Arizona. So you know, having a proper telephone line out there is expensive, and maintaining it's expensive. So the Arizona, the Ausf is formed, and vendors can apply for that fund to utilize that money to maintain those rural networks where the cost of maintaining it is higher than the cost they're going to receive from that 30 or $40 a month per line. And the Ausf is where we received the money eight years ago to provide the state match program for the Broadband Program in Arizona, we took $8 million of debt and used it to fund the Broadband Program. So a USF. USF funding is very important for funding all these little projects, and people in Arizona never noticed the tax. We went from point 01 cents to point, eight cents or to eight cents per line. And you know, no one ever complained after the program was over, they dropped the tax back down to point. Oh, one. Everyone's happy we have broadband built. We have 100 and $50 million of the broadband built schools and libraries all over the state. So it's a it's a great thing if property used and managed, and that's the key,

right? But, of course, but of course, the number of landlines keeps decreasing and threatening. That as a sole funding source for USAC. So the program really needs reinvention to, you know, potentially broaden its contribution vectors, if it's to really continue exactly Mark What

sense is only, only tax landline phone revenues. For that, I mean cell phone revenues. Why shouldn't they be taxed at the very minimum? And then I'll

think about Henry. 20 years ago, we had everyone had a self, had a telephone at their house. So times have changed. It's time for us to revamp that system. And Mark is right, those landlines are are going away at a fast rate, which means the cost of maintaining those remaining lines is even higher. So we have to, they have to revamp the USF system completely.

Okay, I don't want to. We, this is going to be an important issue that's going to continue to have discussions at the federal level and so forth. And so we'll, we'll pick this up again in the future, but I do want to get to our presentation this morning. Thank you, my one so let's move on. Frank Mark, I want to introduce Frank Martinez, who's the Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for connected nation. Frank, I'm going to turn it over to you. Do you have anything that you want to to share? I

Yes,

can you hear me? Yes, sure. Can Okay.

There you are. I made my phone here, yeah, hey, Erin, I see your little note there, yeah, they've been Yeah. So I looked at the attendee list here, and I probably haven't met most of you. I've met a few of you, but not all of you. Steve, do I just share my screen here. Let's see. I'm trying to that's not going to work either. Give me a second. Where do I Okay, here we go. Here. Okay, try that. There you go. You see the presentation there. Okay, alright. So let's see. Let me start by saying that I'm from Window Rock, Arizona, up northeast on the Navajo reservation. And my father's side tons from nearby ship rock, and my mother's size from kind of the south side of the reservation area. And about two years ago, I joined this company called ConnectED nation. Prior to that, I had worked for a pretty large fortune 50 company in the technology sector. I have an engineering background, and I was doing chip design and things related to that, but got involved in digital inclusion and. And source the tail end of my my time at this big company, and got in touch with connected nation, and they asked me to, since I'm based here in the in the valley, work with them to bring some of their capabilities to some of the tribal nations. So I'm based here in Arizona. My focus is tribal communities, but I also get involved in some of the other aspects of connected nations work, and I'll explain what some of those things are here. I went to school at Arizona State and grad school at Cornell, so let me just step through here real quick and tell you about connected nation. Like many of you here on this call, connected nation is focused on closing the digital divide, and for over 20 years, the company has is a nonprofit. We're a 501, c3, the company is based out of Kentucky, but does work across the entire country, and the focus is really on many of the same things you all are involved in, in increasing access, getting more people to use the technology, making it, you know, more affordable, or finding solutions to address affordability and usage of technology. And, you know, like all of you, we want everyone to be connected, and that's the mission of the organization. As you as you probably all have your approach to, you know, sort of encapsulating what the digital divide is, and the approach to it for us, it's really about access, adoption and use. And you know, in terms of access, it is the connectivity what? And we're connected connection technology agnostic, whether it's fiber or, you know, any other wireless technology. So fixed line and wireless and all the forms therein, we get involved in those particular aspects, in terms of adoption. You know, this is just

going to ask you on the on the access piece, you get involved in connectivity. What do you mean by getting involved in connectivity?

I'll show you on the next the next slide. Yeah, just bear with me there. Sorry, Henry, yeah. And then in terms of adoption, you know, we, you know, I think, I think one of the challenges is helping people not just get access, but helping them understand what it can do for them, how it can transform, you know, many of their livelihoods, you know, whether it's economically or in terms of, you know, education, health care and other areas, and then in in terms of usage, it says here that, you know, helping people get skills and having, having them have access to the right applications. I used to work for her, I'm not going to mention the company, but we had digital inclusion programs in 70 countries. We had 200 different programs, and we did them at a national level, with with the heads of state of many countries around the world. And in those programs that we did, one of the biggest problems was content. And so when, when I refer to applications, I'm not just talking about, you know, I got this really great app that does this particular thing for me or this particular software. But I think, you know, one of the things that I don't want to, you know, I try not to lose sight of, is some of the cultural and language related issues when it comes to content and applications. So this is very comprehensive in terms of how we view skills, not the skills, but the applications that people use with the technology. This is kind of the core slide of what I wanted to present on this call. And by the way, Steve, I didn't mention just thanks for letting me go through this. I'm not trying to do a sales pitch here. We can do that separate. For anyone who wants to, you know, contact me separately and talk about partnering or any other things related to that. But I do want to, you know, let you all know, where are the areas that we get involved. We don't do network installs. We don't get involved downstream. We're really kind of more upstream in terms of the, you know, infrastructure as it relates to to broadband, you know, planning and strategy, but we also get involved further downstream when it comes to, you know, adoption and use. So in terms of these five areas, one of the big, one of the big things that we do is we get involved in policy and planning. You know, whether it's, you know, with the particular, you know, bead initiatives that are going on at the state level or even at the local level, we get involved with. You know, what are those policies that are going to affect? You know, communities, states and so on. We work with at the state, local and tribal level, and engage at those levels. You know, across the country, we do Industry Research and Outreach to service provider community for a whole bunch of different reasons to support those programs and implementation of the programs, the second area is on grant strategy and implementation. I mean, it's a big thing, you know, that a lot of states are, you know, preparing for right now as they get set to on, you know, sort of roll out their bead plans and programs. And so when it comes to designing, you know how grants are administered, and you know how communities can access particular funds and develop a funding strategy, we get involved in those particular aspects. We also get involved further downstream in the programs in terms of monitoring and compliance. And one of the things that that connect people probably don't realize about connected nation is we do a lot of outside plant audits and infrastructure field validation. So we have an engineering team that has done, you know, very detailed layered maps for many states. And if any of you are interested in seeing some of that, I can share that separately, but imagine layer one all the way to seven, you know, the whole infrastructure and the different types of technologies of the network that is across an entire state. We have a GIS team and others who've mapped out these things and and then when it comes to the validation component, you know, going beyond speed test, we have engineers that go out and do propagation analysis and other kinds of on site validation and provide and collect the data that's required to, you know, validate and confirm that particular technology is either there or not. And then on the digital equity and inclusion we have, you know, several of our people are involved actually at the FCC as part of the CDC, in steering committees that work at that federal level, but also we get involved at the, you know, not just at the federal level, but but state and local level and tribal level, To help communities do needs assessments, asset assessments. You know, program assessments. Develop Digital Inclusion plans. We do stakeholder engagement, community engagement, on the ground and with communities. And one of the other things that we do is we have partners, Partner Programs for digital inclusion. Just to give you one example, one of the big programs that we have right now is with a large carrier service provider that we it's, it's called teens teach tech. And this is something that's really one of, probably one of the more amazing programs for me personally, is you bring teens into communities to connect with elders, and they teach the elders how to use the technology, and for the tribal communities, this has been a really great way to connect and build a bridge between generations, and We have programs that we're implementing now across the entire country, where we've, we have the content, we have the training materials, and then we, you know, incentivize the teens, where the teens can, either themselves or through community groups, earn money and earn credits as part of that, You know, collaboration and engagement. And the teens can teach veterans, they can teach elders. They can teach, you know, a different range of people who are currently not connected to the digital, you know, economy. Was there a question there?

Presentation on Monday, I'm working on a guy. He hasn't responded yet. He's a drug addict

that cleaned up. Okay,

I sent him an email,

I think, to

call, left a message on his phone, but he hasn't

responded yet.

Okay, have you got somebody? Okay, sorry about that, Frank,

yeah, for the record, since you're recording that was not connected nation, I want to make sure that that's clear. The other thing that that I wanted to mention is that I'm going to jump over to the mapping and analysis part of this. We're. We've done a lot of broadband mapping. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, the outside plant audits and things related to that, we've we've done connected nations, done a lot of mapping and analysis for different states across the country. And if you're interested in some of those things, I can share that again, separately, we have some of that online, or I can share their information on it. I know that there's FCC broadband maps, and they've come a long way, but there are some states and communities that you know still want to map their communities and even add more enhanced maps that you know kind of get into the security space where you have to, you know, protect the data and information that's collected so those aren't necessarily public, but we do get involved at a very granular level in terms of providing mapping services and doing research around that, and assisting states and local communities with that type of work and and then On the internet exchange points. This is something that we've got involved in over the past two to three years, and we're partnering with one of the leaders in developing carrier hotels, peering networks. And from my understanding of this, and I'm not the expert on this, we have a team that's closely involved in driving this. I mean, I know a little bit about it from an, you know, from a technical standpoint, but my understanding is that there's 13 states in the country that don't have, you know, internet exchange points. What connected nation is trying to do is basically build resiliency and redundancy between the back hall and last mile, and do this in the middle mile, and bring carrier neutral internet exchange points to basically improve the reliability, the resiliency of the overall internet. And as data and content moves out closer to the edge, and as you get into some of the AI and quantum space of computing and start driving huge, high speed transactions across the network, this is going to become even more important. So we're partnering with states, with universities and other communities to bring these types of carrier neutral internet exchange points into different locations across the country, and we do that through partner organizations. So I'm going to go to the next slide here, just as this kind of a brag sheet of some of the things that you know, just collectively that we've been involved in is we've been involved, you know, with, with grants, federal broadband grants, administration, administration, we do things with or it says, Here it says, internet enabled devices. We, again, through partners and other organizations, we've distributed and deployed over 60,000 types of computers, devices, sometimes refurb, sometimes new, sometimes, you know, their iPads, sometimes their desktops. Have a whole range of different types of technologies. We have a fairly robust adult learner digital skills training program called Digital Works, and trained over 95,000 adult learners across the United States. We've mapped at least 40% of the entire US in terms of broadband connectivity and from the field validation work over 250,000 miles verified one state. We met the entire state, completely top to bottom and and then we've been involved in that type of work in 17 states. And I'll leave it at that and see if there's any questions for me.

Questions for Frank.

I'll put my email. I'll put my email in the in the chat, in case somebody wants to talk

separately. Hey, Steve, I have a question for Frank. Frank, this is Ilana Lowery with Common Sense Media. I put this in the chat directly to you. But Did you by any chance submit a proposal for the NDIA net Inclusion Conference that's coming up next May, because the teens teach tech is a sounds like a great program, and one that, you know other people should hear about.

So, yes, we put a proposal in, you know, I think their window for, yeah,

yeah, I'm on the review committee, and I didn't, I was not given yours to review. So that's why I was asking if you, if you sent one in, yeah,

we did. We did send one in. And I. And you know, I can, if you're interested in I can send that, I can get that and get that sent to you if you're interested, or you can ask the review committee. But yes, we, we did submit a proposal that has to do with generational, oh, connectivity, generations, basically, yeah, because that's yeah, that's, that's, I think that's going to be a really important, hopefully we'll get selected. But you know, I'm not, I'm not privy to those conversations. Well,

I am so, so, yeah, I just, I think, I think the work that you're doing is, is just great, and would love to talk more, but some other time, yeah, for

sure, definitely. Let's, let's get some time to do that. I'll put my my contact in the in the chat, or Steve will put it into the notes too. And

Frank, while we're talking about the net Inclusion Conference that they are looking for sponsors. So if you haven't seen that, and that is in my newsletter with the link to be able to sign up as a sponsor.

Okay, well, definitely follow up on that too. Then, Thanks,

Brian, can you stop sharing please?

Yeah, Hey, Steve, one more thing, since I'm on that, I'm on the sponsorship committee for the conference. If anybody on the call is interested, and you want to reach out to me directly, that's great, and I can connect you with the folks at NTIA who could go through that. There's different levels of sponsorship. Some are, you know, really designed for nonprofits, and then, of course, there's others, you know, for larger corporations and whatnot. But if anybody's interested, they can reach out to me.

Thank you, Ilana, I'm also on the planning committee for that conference. Oh, I missed enough for meetings, but I am. I think Erin is not sure who else on this call is, but anyway, so that's it. That is a big and important conference, and it's very exciting that it's going to be Erin, Arizona, so please go ahead and register. Okay, anything else, anything else, for the good of the order, if not, I'm going to end the meeting so I can hit the road here. I guess not. I.