September 19, 2024 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Video 2

9:14PM Sep 21, 2024

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Nicole Umayam

Erin Lorandos

Mala Muralidharan

Henry Goldberg

Heather Floyd

Rickey White

Kelly Mukherjee

Gordon Fuller

Dana Cardenas

Keywords:

connectivity

ntia

work

broadband

communities

arizona

anchor institutions

ricky

gordon

project

resource

technologies

update

process

people

bead

state

program

group

equity

Okay, got the recording going again. Don't know what that was about, but anyway, so I'm going to turn it over to Ricky, and I just want again. Thank you, Ricky, for stepping up last minute. And you know, every time I talk with you, you just blow me away about the kinds of things that you're doing. And if I can steal your thunder for just a second that Ricky is very engaged, particularly with minority communities, and so I think he brings a very interesting perspective. So with that, Ricky, I'm going to turn it over to you

All right. Well, thank you guys so much, and I promise you I will not eat up much of your agenda time this morning, because I'm not in Arizona, and I know I've been on here several times as guest and spoken one time. I just wanted to take a moment to reintroduce myself. My name is Ricky white. I am technically an Alabama native who's had the great fortune of living in several states in the US before coming back home to take a break and retool. And in that retooling process, I feel like I've hit a whole another wind of life in that retooling and in all of the travels that I have to do, there was a constant need of advisory and consulting, and we tried to avoid it like crazy. And I stopped avoiding it right before covid And then during covid, we had the great fortune of being a voice of reason for so many organizations, institutions, government agencies and leaders alike, who were struggling to deal with technology, fast pacing information, especially in the broadband and connectivity space, we advise those who were just dealing with just honestly modernization for their teams and their organization. With all of the information that we take in, we're able to be a little bit more effective to each person down the road. It's one of those life moments that you learn something every day and you go back and apply it. So Blythe and white consultancy, our firm is our biggest focus is going to be operation, technology and strategy. We provide that strategy for states, governments, private companies, institution leaders and higher serving education, higher serving education institutions as well, primarily working with minority serving institutions with the work that we previously did with PBI based groups. In the midst of all of our work, what we have learned is there is a centralized connection between workforce, digital literacy, education and then community, and somewhere in the middle, there's a disconnect in that process during covid, what we really learned is that connectivity allowed us what we needed to do to be educated to work and then have a sense of virtual community. But so many Americans, as you know and as you deal with are faced with issues that don't allow them to be connected, whether you're justice impacted, whether you're rural, whether you're tribal, or if you live in an urban, dense community that has poor connectivity of service. So before I say anything further, let me also pause and say, I do not work for any ISPs. We're not legally contracted by any ISPs, so my statements are from our experience of just taking in loads of information dealing with different groups all over the US, and it's not directed towards any service provider or telecom group. Specifically, what we're talking about is the communities that are still at risk and those that may have been serviced. What we want to do is be able to look at Arizona and say, we understand. You have a plan, you have a map, and you have a group of individuals that care about connectivity to their respective communities. However, within that respective community, what we're learning is a timeline of implementation. And like everyone, we want instant gratification, or we want something done a little bit more. What we found is that digital equity, in this case, was overlooked in many minority or low income communities. Digital equity was also missing in communities that were not classified as minority or low income because you have family households that have means that may have been in a digital desert where connectivity may have been low or not optional, and not many families can have satellite service or other options at such a high rate, what we want is to bridge the connection between higher education and local communities in order to bring the prop. Amount of equity. We need education and connectivity to reach workforce. I'm going to repeat that we need education with connectivity to reach workforce. You can't upskill or train someone if they're not connected. To be educated to go and have their job, get a better job, or even just simply be a part of the job process. If we look at the locations of minority serving institutions, Hispanic Serving Asian and tribal in your state, what we have is pockets of information and pockets of communities that may have minimum access to connectivity, yet communities where you may have more influence in policy or legislative pool may get connectivity first. If we start with working in hubspots, of those campuses, you can use campuses in order to become the hub and spoke model for communities. What we've done in different states, especially here in Alabama, was convene all of the minority serving institutions together to work collectively to bridge the gap in workforce, workforce, telehealth, telemedicine, research, business development through connectivity that allowed the schools themselves that may have had a little bit of fiber coming to their campus to be a hub and spoke model to bring connectivity to the community that it was connected within, but also to take advantage of federal dollars and Federal funding to support those underserved communities. So many organizations do similar and overlapping services, but we believe that these play space organizations have the ability to bridge that gap through equitable solutions that allow the education and access to be made through connectivity. As a parent of a five year old and 18 year old who's in college, it is critical that access to internet. I'm not even going to go on the minimum speed. I'm going to talk about just sheer access to the internet. It's critical to the learning and development of that child and of that household, because we know that without it, families can't do anything. So our goal is to bring simple resources and solutions to communities like yours. We have multinational relationships with Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and Amazon and now Xerox, that will allow us to bring resources to communities that are not necessarily looked at, and that conversation shifted when organizations and institutions stop asking the multinationals for money and we start pulling on their resources. So our goal is to take these resources and support you from a workforce standpoint, support you from an education standpoint through the means of connectivity. So as I told Steve the day on the call, I'm available. Some of my teams are available, and we have it. I love Arizona. It's always baking hot, but I still tell you like I said before you guys, had the best guacamole that I've ever had in my life, downtown in Phoenix. Okay, thank you so much.

Questions, comments, thoughts, okay, well, Ricky, thank you so much for for being here, and hopefully one day. And Aaron, maybe you can take this back to broadband office that I think he brings a whole there's a lot of stuff he didn't even cover today, of work he's doing with broadband offices and and with NTIA and so forth and so, it would be really good to have more further conversation with him about how he can work with Arizona. I think he brings a very unique perspective. Hi there. This is,

this is Dana Cardenas, a Sarah star. I do have a question for Ricky in in the different areas that you're currently working, I heard you speak of working directly with justice involved individuals. Are you working with any county jails or any docs to provide that connectivity currently for education, workforce reentry and reintegration programs,

so we wrote up an initial white paper and a strategy plan to reduce recidivism with. With broadband connectivity, tapping into the need that correctional facilities or jails also legally qualify for infrastructure to bring that service to them. What we've been trying to do in the past month and a half has been partnering with Department of Justice, and we working with two states that I can't say their names right now with their DLCs to be able to bring that level of connectivity. We found two great partners that has the tablets and resources we have also segwayed in four, two year institutions and three, four year institutions that will provide education support for them with Department of Justice and Department of Education, and then on top of that, we're working on a final way to do some micro credentialing and certifications for individuals so we can move faster outside of red tape. What we learn is that every state and every community has his own level of politics, so the minute we get past the politics of who gets the credit, we literally have 19 resources that can drop down and connect that location instantly. Even when it comes to installation where service may not be available, it's not respectfully, it's not hard to install access points into cinder block facilities. Most low income houses and housing projects are cinder blocks, and most schools still have cinder blocks around them.

So Ricky, I'm sorry, go ahead. Dana,

I just put my email in the chat. I'd like to talk to you offline about some alternative solutions. So that would be amazing. Okay, no

problem. I'm

going to be in the chat. Reply to everyone as well. Thank you. Steve, so

So Ricky, how do institutions deal with the fact that security? It's not just the security that we all talk about, but when you're in a penal institution, the issues are completely different, I shouldn't say completely different, but do require a lot of issues about who can have access to who and who they can communicate with, and so forth. We have any thoughts about that?

Yes, so one of the companies that we work with has over 600,000 tablets across, I believe, 48 different Department of Correction facilities throughout the United States, and their tablet has an ecosystem of learning, family based communication, development and education and but they have developed the cyber security needs behind it. So it's critical that even though you can bring connectivity to a justice impacted individual that may be behind bars, that you've gotta have the cyber security and some of those firewalls set up, there are less than two companies, two or three companies in the US who has that infrastructure. And one of the things that we wanted to cut that barrier down was, once you get service to the facility, you either have the certified device or you have the certified firewall that helps support individuals that can be behind that system in order to operate from our side, what we did was bring partners into the ecosystem so it's certified and vetted. Therefore, if you're within the ecosystem, you can provide what was one of the groups. It was, it was, it was health and wellness. So they were providing things about how to grow gardens and health and eating, and they came with a micro certification. So when you have that ecosystem, you can deploy a learning management system at LMS that individuals can use, that can track their progress, and it helps them build almost a digital resume. And there's a micro credentialing company through EBSCO, that we work with as well, who has a system. So there is an immediate way to do it. It's just you only have two or three people who have the the proper clearance to get through those firewalls. That meets DOJ and Doc protocols.

Other questions for Ricky. Well, Ricky, thank you again for stepping up last minute. It's amazing the kind of work that you're doing, and I think it would be great Erin, if we could figure out how to get Ricky engaged in in Arizona, it brings a wealth of resources to to the table. And with that, Ricky, thank you again. Really appreciate you being here this morning. And now let's go back to Erin. Erin, you want to kind of give us an update what's happening with the broadband office? Sure

thing. Thank you so much. Hi everyone. My name is Erin lorandos. I am the digital equity program manager at the Arizona commerce authority for folks who may be unaware, the ACA is administering both the bead and digital Equity Act funding here in Arizona. So. We've got both sides of the coin, the infrastructure piece and also the digital equity piece. Most of the updates this week are on that infrastructure side. Folks probably saw an email earlier this week from us that the the project area maps and for being open for market sounding will will happen this coming Monday. If you didn't get that email, let me know, and I can definitely forward it to you. All of that is going to happen through that broadband Navigator site that we used for our challenge process. So if you're already registered in that then you should be good to go. But if not, that is the next step that you'll need to take, and you can do that through our website. I just dropped a link to the main broadband site page from ACA in the chat, if you navigate down to the bead page, and then under that drop down the challenge process, and then under that link accessing the challenge portal, that'll get you to the right spot. Let me give you a direct link to that as soon as it loads. Here we go. This is the page that I'm leaving in the chat right now that'll take you right to the the challenge Process Portal, and that's where you'll need to register for an account to to see the the maps the market sounding will be open for 45 days. That basically allows potential applicants in the bead program to see the project areas ahead of time and provide us any feedback that you might have. And then we are still on track to open the the application process for the bead funding later this year. The exact date, I believe, is still a little bit open, just based on the, you know, changes that might come from, from the market sounding, but it should be late November, early December, and also on the main broadband page, you can click into see upcoming events and webinars. We do have plans for for group specific in person forums, basically for ISPs, for local governments, and then for our tribal contacts, tribal governments and tribal ISPs, and that information will be shared there soon. Let's see on the de side, not a lot to update. We're still working through getting our allocation here in the state, and once we have that, we'll be able to share timelines for the digital equity sub grants and the work that will be coming from that. So happy to take any questions that folks might have, and if I don't know, I will play the librarian card, and I will find out, and I'll give you all my contact information on the chat if you don't have that as

well. Erin, I don't think Kelly Kersey is on the call today. She, no,

she's in Portland, so yeah, she's with the rest of the team.

Okay, any questions for Aaron? Okay, well, if not, let's move on to Nicole. I have a

I have a question Steve Aaron does for this broadband navigator portal where the project areas are displayed. Is it only available for ISPs and communities to look at or to register for? Or can any individual look at these project areas?

You can take a look, but the information is going to be for potential applicants. So there, you know that will be part of that process, and it's not posted yet. I just want to make that clear. They they will be there on Monday, on the 23rd

but you have to register to look at the project areas. Is that what you're saying? You

need an account. Yeah, you need an account on that page to to be able to access it fully.

So Can any individual open an account? Or does it have to be a you can

be it really is meant for for people who are going to be applying, though. So you know when, if you if a random person off the street registers for an account and their information doesn't align with either a local government, an ISP, tribal government, etcetera, that's eligible, um, you know the that that's part of the process. You can register, but it, it's really not meant for people off, off the street, if you will.

I see okay, but Erin, I I understand that as the broadband office is working on their state Broadband Map, which is listing out assets and eligible bsls That once those project areas are finalized, they're actually going to be adding that as a layer on their public facing broadband access map. This part of market sounding is the engagement with potential applicants and the feedback from the. Um, from all eligible entities. But in if you read through Arizona's that they're actually doing like three different drafts of these project areas. The one that'll be released on September 23 is draft one. Here's where we think the 65 ish project areas are going to lay. And then after that, 45 days of feedback, they may adjust those project areas, repost that to open round one, which is then available for applicants to to bid on those particular project areas. And if necessary, round two, with revised project areas that would pick up any locations that may have been missed or need to go out to be rebid and renegotiated.

So Nicole, could you introduce yourself real quickly, and it's a good segue to you. Give us any other updates that you might have, let's

slide in. Yep, I'm Nicole umayam. I'm the federal program officer for Arizona. I work for NTIA, and I get to work with the broadband office, and as their grant administrator for the bead and digital equity funding. We do have a few, quite a few updates. I'm carrying down a little bit here. But one of the key things is the NTIA is competitive digital equity grant. Those applications are also due this Monday by 11:59pm Eastern Time. The NTIA has hosted a series of informational webinars about this grant and how to put together applications and types of projects that are eligible. That final one was held on on the 10th but we've got all those recordings that are up online that you can go through as you may be preparing your applications. NTIA also released a fact sheet on the progress of all of our broadband and digital equity funding. So this includes the tribal broadband connectivity program, you may remember, the BIT Program and middle mile actions, and just a kind of a status update for for people in general, about where we're at throughout the nation in different broadband deployment projects. And earlier this year, the GAO released a report of recommendations on addressing legislative barriers for broadband programs in particular, really looking at the NTIA broadband projects in particular, and NTIA recently released a report that includes some of those status updates, as well as lengthy descriptions of the things we're doing as a federal agency to address some of these barriers quarterly amongst our federal partners and follow the letter of the law of the NOFO to make sure that we are meeting the intent of Congress as we're building this out. There is a resource that we also recently released which is really interesting for potential applicants, or just people who are, you know, following along in this journey, and this is all on the bead obligations for sub grantees in deploying the networks. So these are the technology requirements, cyber security requirements, the deployment requirements and financial requirements. These are already listed in the NOFO, but this resource just goes into a little bit more detail as applicants are kind of getting prepared to submit things before we see that that RFP process open with the state, so it gets you a little bit more time to to prepare. And finally, so different federal agency, but the FCC, by statute, they conduct an annual assessment on advanced telecommunications for all of America, and they have, right now, open a comment session for their 18th inquiry on the state of broadband in The US, and those comments are due October 7, so it's a good place for you to engage and to go on the record with the status of of what that build out looks like, or or issues here in Arizona, got a lot of links for all of these. I'm going to drop in. But if there's, there's other questions we can take them. I know the beat process can seem unwieldy. You know, maybe you tuned in for last week for the congressional hearing about the status and the rollout of the beat process. That was kind of an interesting one. There's some, some write ups that i. Saw last week. I mean out to not sure if anyone was able to catch those.

Thank you for mentioning that the congressional hearings. Do we have any sense of where that's going and what what they're trying to get to, and how much of that is posturing for the election.

I mean, there, you know, the I think the ire that I certainly empathize with is that, hey, this, this program was approved November 2021 why have we not seen any dollars go to deploying networks since then? And really, NTIA is even slightly ahead of that timeline, because we are following the explicit instructions that are written in the bipartisan infrastructure law that was passed and developed by Congress. So even if and really one of the biggest delays there was the requirement to use the FCC and availability map, which took a year and a half to develop for states, you know, for us to be able to make those state allocations based on availability and need, we were also compelled to go through the bead five year plan process as well as The initial proposal process to make sure that we are making appropriate use of taxpayer money. So even with, even if NTIA was able to distribute funds immediately based on that timeline, there's still a three year runway before we even get to this point. So in many regards, we're we're really right on time. But I certainly sympathize with the fact that you know, why don't we get shovels in the ground sooner? Why can't people benefit from this immediately? There were other other complaints about you know, why was NTIA unable to just cut chips to states and territories immediately for deployment and trust that you know, and allow states to run, run their own operations. That's just simply not how the the law was written, that where this funding did have to be distributed in ways that were specified by by Congress. So it does feel a little odd for you know that to be brought up at this point, when it was a bill created by Congress, by this by this law, to then ask, Hey, why did, why did Congress write the rules this way that are then implemented? But I think it's great that there's, there's always a lot of discussion. We know that broadband access is, you know, continues to be a bipartisan issue, very popular amongst members of Congress. So you know where there may be concerns about the upcoming election and what that means for the program we've we've had nothing but support of you know of the intent of this bill, which is to connect every every American household, I don't know. I'm curious what, Heather, if you had other thoughts about about how that went?

Well for me, I was looking at it from the ISP standpoint, and particularly small ISPs project areas are a concern for us, matching funds at times, and for us, actually, the low cost is extremely it's a barrier. I mean, I have about three people per square mile in my service territory, so I don't have that bulk of population to help offset costs. So from our perspective, that's where the things we were watching and to see if Congress was attentive to that, or if this is going to be more skewed, and the larger providers are the ones that are going to be building up. The networks

didn't hear a lot of people advocating for affordability for smaller ISPs. It was sort of a lot of the concerns that this, you know that low cost, that the low cost availability requirement, is a form of rate regulation, which is just simply not the case here. I think that is worth raising.

Yeah, we're looking at it long and hard, and to be honest, I can't say right now, if my management's going to go forward, I feel my guess. I would say 5050, the barriers might be too, too large for us to overcome.

The state broadband offices. Do have some tools that they'd be able to work with to try to make make their within their own NOFO that they develop to to make available, sorry, affordability more feasible, but that's something that we'd have to work out with the broadband with the broadband office on a case by case basis, and

we've had some discussions. We have very good communication with the broadband office.

So Nicole, if I'm not mistaken, I wanted one of the other issues that seems to be emerging is use of alternative technologies. You know, there, obviously there was a focus would be on, excuse me, feeling a little sick today, on fiber, and now people are saying, well, maybe we need to be looking at other options. Do you have any comments about that?

Yes, so we do have an alternative technologies fact sheet that was recently made available for all broadband broadband offices and eligible entities. And there certainly is a fiber preference that's baked into bead to ensure that, you know, we're making it the most future forward investments. But the program has always allowed for alternative technologies for states to be to maximize their allocation, to reach every single household that they are required to serve. So that has always been the case, and we know that, especially in a large rural state like Arizona, that that will be necessary to be able to stretch that $993 million to reach every single household that has always been contemplated, and certainly fiber, you know, you know the ranking system. If you look in Arizona's Volume Two, they have a ranking system for priority broadband projects which are fiber led, as well as non priority fiber projects, which are all of these alternative technologies. And they go through a, you know, a series to assess each project based on the viability. And you know how much it makes sense in terms of dollars, dollars and cents for those project areas. One interesting thing about Arizona's Volume Two is that they actually allow for applicants to sort of mix technologies if it's going to be appropriate for that project area, for for maximizing the award. So if you have a an area that will be served mostly by fiber, but you identify some locations that would require alternative technologies, you're, you know, that's an option that Arizona was pretty smart about to put forth for for round one. So there are, you know, it is absolutely going to take a blend of different types of of broadband to be able to serve every household you know, we I know. Sandy says that you know their calculations of what fiber to every single household. You know that changes based, you know, based on the information that they get in a given week. But a billion dollars is not enough to to meet all that means. So it is going to take a few different a few different approaches.

Thank you, Nicole. Any other questions or comments for Nicole? Okay, let's move on. Mala, do you have anything that you want to share this morning?

Yes, absolutely. The Cyber Security window, pilot project FCC, pilot project window opened this Tuesday, September 17. It is the first application window. There are going to be two windows. The first is an intent to participate in the pilot program that started on that opened up on September 17 and will close on November 1, 1159, of course, ESD, this first window requires the filing of form 484, part one and and that's the form that serves as your initial screening mechanism. So it needs to show why you're applying, what you're applying for, and who are the participants in it. That means you can apply singly as a school or a library, but also as a consortium, who is part of your Consortium, and things like that, but you don't need to detail the exact technologies that you're going to use. This is just an intent and Thank. Like, what your proposed plan is, just an outline of the plan, your proposed costs of what you think it's going to take for you to do this. How are you what are the metrics that you're going to use for evaluation? Any supporting documents that you have, all of those are an important part of this first part of the application from this FCC will shortlist those that are eligible, or they picked for part two. And part two will be the regular application process, similar to what E Rate follows. It will go through the form 470 which is the the RFP method, the competitive bidding process, etc, etc, and follow all of those e rate processes for the application to go through. So anyone who's interested in applying. Let me know. I'm trying to keep track of those who are applying, because this is going to be a pilot project, just like the NTIA is competitive bidding. You know, it's not that everybody is going to get it, and they're going to be a selection of a few that would get it in each state. So I would like to put you in touch with each other, so that you can, you know, apply together as a consortium, or share your thoughts on what works best. So let me know if that's of interest to you. The the other, the only other thing I'd like to mention, or two other things I'd like to mention, one is that the E Rate administrative window opens in another, oh, it opens today, actually, and that administrative window means you can update your data on, on on your portal, at this means you can update your addresses, you can update the students. You can the number of students. You can update the square footage and all the and especially, who's going to be your lead administrator for the program, who else has access to the portal. All of those details can be updated by the applicant now, if, when the application, when window, the administrative window use usually closes, when the application window opens. So until that time, you have time to update your data, and then once they lock it down, then you won't be able to do it yourself. That is, the applicant won't be able to do it themselves. They will have to do it through the customer service portal or call the customer service to get any of those updates in. So this is a good time to review that and to make sure you update it. The last thing I'd like to talk about is the Wi Fi hotspots, E Rate program. We did have a meeting with USAC, I went to the program yesterday to Dallas, and we had the updates. And one of the questions, of course, the main questions that people had was whether they should apply for it as category one or two. Category one is internet access. Category Two is internal connections within the the anchor institution, the high the Wi Fi hotspot device is a recurring internet service, so it is eligible. In category one, there is a funding cap, though pre discounted funding cap of $90 per hotspot device, and $15 per month per line for the service itself. And also, there is a requirement that if the hotspot is loaned out and not in use for 90 days, then the service provider has to disconnect it. So, you know, it behooves the library or the school that is loaning it out to let the customers know that it has to be in use. Otherwise it's it will be disconnected. So also, they USAC does not encourage you to apply to have a box full of them to loan out whenever you want they want you to be sure that you order or you apply for as many as you think you will need maybe a 5% extra spare inventory, but not, not a lot more than that. So do they the hotspots have to be compliant with SIPA? Yes, they do. If they are going to be used on a device that is owned by the anchor institution, if you're they're going to use it on their own device, they don't have to be super compliant. So any questions? Back to you, Steve,

okay, yeah, thank you. Mala, so a couple of quick things. Kelly, are you still? There you are. Kelly, So Kelly, can you take just two minutes because we're running out of time, and we'll spend some more time in the future about what you included on AZ one specifically relating to anchor institutions. I think we have not spent nearly enough time talking about the role of anchor institutions. So you want to just take a minute please,

sure, yeah, let me know if there's a particular direction you'd like me to take, happy to drop in the link. If you haven't visited as one, it's AZ dash one. Dot info is the website, and we have an Arizona Broadband Map there, where we've tried to show different types of community anchor institutions, like where hives are located. Those are community tech centers being opened up across the valley. And we also have libraries, schools, medical facilities. If there are other community anchor institutions that you'd like us to add, happy to have a conversation with you about what might be useful for you. We also recently added a layer of covered populations as that is an important insight for a lot of the programming bead and digital equity. And so now you can actually click on the covered populations layer, and then if you click by census track, you're actually able to get insights by that census track of the breakdown by percentage of each of those covered populations. So if anyone wants help on it, please feel free to reach out to me happy to have a one on one zoom conversation with you. We can actually look at the maps together just to meet the needs of your own organization. So thank you, Steve,

thank you, Kelly. I'd love to have a conversation at another time and another meeting about anchor institutions. I've been talking with Pima Community College here, for example, and saying, Well, they've got different pieces of digital inclusion, kinds of things happening. I don't I can't seem to find where there's a strategic plan for digital inclusion. So if you look at their overall goals, and I'm sure this is probably true with many of the other community colleges, that their overall girl goals talk about equity and inclusion, not digital equity and inclusion. And so I I am a big believer that we need to do much more in working with the anchor institutions, and I think we've done my personal opinion, I'd love to have a conversation, more of a conversation about that in the future. And with that one last thing, Gordon, I see you're you're still online. And Gordon, if you remember that we talked about some time ago about putting you on the agenda for October the second to talk about the needs of the visually impaired. And so Gordon is really awesome in being able to articulate the needs of that population. So Gordon, you have anything you want to add to that, and then we'll plan on October two for you to really get in depth on what you see as some challenges initially. Well, thank

you. Thank you, Steve. Actually, the the challenge you posed to me was to have some deaf folks showing up, uh, reaching out to the deaf community. Yep, I did. You know, it's one of those things where I'm going to have to double down on that effort, because it's a hard, harder group to reach than I had envisioned. I thought if I hit, hit the people at the State Independent Living Council, who have their senior members of the disability community appointed by the governor, and they have oversight on all the federally funded programs and and institutions as peer based organizations and advocates, so they're a good group, but the deaf members of that group haven't reached back to me and I've explained what we're about, and so I'm kind of hoping to see that, you know, pick up a bit. Decades ago, at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind, I trained a group of deaf kids to be our television. Crew, and it was very effective. Afterwards, the teachers sort of told me they were glad I took those kids, because those are the worst kids they had. So I'm kind of a little bit gun shy about, you know, I explained to them well, they just weren't challenged clearly, because they were the best crew I ever had, you know. So I was a little bit irritated, you know, to say so I'm not always are always the best way to go. So it's been how's it going for the digital inclusion of people with disabilities? Because they're not an easy group. Just think of the old folks who don't want to be disabled. Thank you very much. They just don't walk so good anymore. So, you know, it's a challenge to think of how we're going to embrace these groups. And you know, so far, all of these things have kind of focused in on technology and certainly the federal rules and the challenge of administrating these things. But you know, just on the ground, how are people supposed to get this benefit, and how are we going to help them do that? And that's still out there, and I'm still concerned. Thanks for the time. Well,

thanks Gordon, and we don't want to get into that discussion today, because that is obviously a lengthy conversation, but let's talk about whether you think we can get something together by the second, or if I need to go to plan B. So I'll be Reach, reach out to you shortly and figure out how we do that. But I do think, and you basically touched on this, it's a difficult population to reach, to engage into service, and it certainly has been one of the areas that is included in our planning, but, but whether we have a clear path in that, I could be mistaken, and Erin, you maybe can talk more to That, Nicole, about how we're going about trying to address the needs of particularly officially.

So I'll just one last thing. I'd say they're not difficult. We're difficult. We haven't made our society has not made a good effort here. That's all I'm saying. Oh,

okay, well, we're going to get into more of that when we do another update. Gordon, we're running out of time today. Aaron, I don't know if you want to make any comments about that or not, or we can wait until we do this with Gordon in the future.

Just briefly, I had the Express honor of presenting in front of AZ silk about a week and a half ago, and it was a wonderful experience. And I was so happy that they invited me into their space. And I think that that's kind of key, right? Like, maybe, maybe, like Gordon just said, we as a society are the ones who need to make the effort to be engaged instead of the other way around, right? So we're doing our best, from the de perspective in the state broadband office, and I know we have a long way to go, and it's been wonderful to have guidance along that path of where we need to be.

Yeah, well, Gordon is a great resource and advocate, so we definitely want to tap into his capabilities. So anything else, I'm sorry, go ahead.

This is Dana. I just was wondering if Gordon had reached out to the Valley Center of the Deaf isa put the link to their website in the chat just in my previous positions, I actually previously worked for the city of Tempe, and they were actually a really good resource. And there are quite a few housing communities for the Deaf, and I know that they do every everything that they do. You know, they actually need that capability. Now, here in the Phoenix metro area, they have connectivity, but in our outlying areas is where they struggled, and I think that might be a good resource. I put the link in the chat. I don't think the same director I was

reading your classes

in the background. There,

someone has an open mic, but they were a really good resource. And again, they have the list of all the housing to meet the needs here in the Maricopa County area. So there are quite a few housing specifically for them, and they have educational resources through those housing but the Outlanders are the ones, but they could get you in contact with them, and I did put the link for their website in the chat. If Gordon would like to maybe follow up and see if that might be a good lead or a resource. Yeah.

Dana, can you with please?

I'm sorry, repeat.

Who were you with? Dana,

Sarah star technologies. Again, just as my experience in a previous roles with the City of Tempe, they were a really good resource for me. I currently now work for Sarah star technologies. Okay,

okay. And I thank Thank you.

Thank you for that.

If you need anything, reach out. I did put my my email in the chat.

Wonderful. Speaking of chats, as I always try to remind people probably should have at the beginning of meeting, but you can download the chat. If you go to chat at the top, there's three ellipses, and if you click on those, you can download the chat to your computer. As you know, I do send out the chat after the meeting, maybe a little slower now because I'm on vacation, but I will try to get all of that information out to everybody, like I always do. So anything else for the good of the order before we end for today, going once, going twice. Okay, thank you all. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Reminder, no meeting next week, so we'll see you in a couple of weeks by now you.