July 17, 2025 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording

8:47PM Jul 17, 2025

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Mala Muralidharan

Lucy Howell

Megan Hammond

Jon Haass

Randy Luening

Jason Tamura

Frank Martinez

David Ackerman

Joey Wender

Keywords:

Universal Service Fund

E-Rate

digital equity

cybersecurity pilot

broadband funding

FCC

NTIA

digital inclusion

community colleges

telehealth

rural health

digital opportunity

USDA grants

digital literacy

workforce development.

Joe Okay, so good morning, everybody. I'm still expecting that we will have other people join us this morning, but I wanted to respect Joey joining us this morning, to kind of share with us again. Not Joey, but you know, we've been hearing for how many months now about the good, bad and ugly of what's happening in Washington these days. And you know, he's right in the thick of things there. So I've asked him to join us this morning. Mala, do you want to say anything about joey before I get started?

Oh, I would love to introduce the executive director of Shelby schools, health, libraries, broadband coalition, and he took over from John wind housing. What a find he really stepped into his shoes right away and hit the road running. And Joey has been working with us, with Shelby and with the membership of Shelby in almost all of the issues that we've been discussing. So over to you. Joey.

Joey, where'd you go?

Oh, there you are.

Mala was giving me a beautiful introduction, and then my internet started to bump first.

That wasn't me. Okay, over to you. That's what I was saying when you went offline.

So Joey, did you have anything that you're going to share a PowerPoint or anything, or just kind of talk from the heart.

I'll talk from the heart. And I'm changing my, I'm changing my, my internet connection.

Don't tell me that people have trouble with internet.

It always happens when the meeting is tightly broadband, right? Really,

there's really a great joke there. There we go. Okay, great. I think I should be fine now. Well, look, I want to talk about USF, and then, you know, we can just open it up for conversation. There's good news and bad news, right? I like to say, over the last few months, there's a trifecta of threats that's facing the Universal Service Fund right now, courts, Congress, commission, right all our potential threats to E Rate, to rural health, as well as Lifeline and the High Cost program, we have, at least to now resolved one of them, which is the court challenge. I'm sure folks know that there was a Supreme Court case consumers research that made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court, because there was a circuit split, because the Fifth Circuit disagreed with the six and the 11th Circuit about whether, in fact, the United, the Universal Service Fund, which is a 30 year bipartisan program, was constitutional. We made it all the way through all arguments. We made it all the way to the final decision, and the final decision could not have been better for us, it was a six, three strong decision written by Justice Ilana Kagan, which clearly articulated the principle of when and how Congress can delegate authority From itself to an agency to assess a fee. The court case could not have been clear on that. As well as there was a you know challenge, I'm sure you all know on the private delegation side, which was a really only, there was really two challenges here. One was FCC to excuse me, Congress to FCC, and the next one was FCC to USAC, right? And on both levels, the court was very clear that there was sufficient, at least on the first one, Congress gave sufficient. Direction, scope to the FCC to set the fund up, right? Who's going to benefit? Who's going to pay in, how it's going to work, it's all in Section 254, and then on the second level, the private non delegation issue, the allegation for consumers research was essentially USAC was some rogue, you know, non accountable agency that made massive decisions about people's phone bills and assessing of fees. And the court looked at that and said, No, they're ministerial. They're doing exactly what the FCC asked them to do. There was some there was some discussion about, well, the FCC rarely alters or adjusts What the What USAC comes up with in terms of what the contribution factor should be. And, you know, Kagan says, Yeah, that makes sense, because they're doing exactly what the FCC told them to do. It would be weird if the FCC was constantly revising and tweaking what USAC did. In fact, USAC is just doing what, literally as an accountant would wouldn't it be weird if every year your accountant did your taxes, and you were like, well, that that that is wrong, right? You you would expect to find little to no air with respect to your with respect to your tax preparer, and so that was, that was that was easily dismissed. And so the results of the cases, it's constitutional, and it's not just constitutional, because Ilana Kagan said so Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, and justice Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh signed on in fall. All right, so this is a strong six, three decision, and now everything in there is the law moving forward. And so I think we could rest easy with respect to the core challenge of the Universal Service Fund, before I move on to Congress and the Commission. Steve, anything more you want to talk about with respect to the to the court case?

Well, I think Joey, just to further explain that the what the next steps are, I know there's some issue. Maybe we're going to get to this about who's going to pay for the USF, because that seems to be the next big question or big issue?

Yeah, I thought Andy Schwartzman, who's one of the public interest lawyers in DC, put it well, is that the effect of the court case, in many ways, is nothing right? We're we're right back to where we were four years ago when this challenge started. The fun continues. The four programs continue to be funded, and those that benefit continue to be benefited. The hard work is reform, as Steve is acknowledging, Shelby acknowledges that we need reform, particularly on the contribution side, and so what Steve is referring to is it's a fee assessed on people's phone bills on telephony only, but the amount of people using telephone is shrinking. That's why the contribution factor keeps going up every quarter,

so Joey, just excuse me. I'm sure everybody probably understands, but that was contributions only for landlines, which is why they're shrinking.

And now it's time to we need to find more money, right? You've got an eight to $10 billion fund, and you need to find more money, Steady, sustainable, predictable, Monday money. And so the conversation now, and Shelby's in the middle of it, is turning to, Okay, what if you assess a fee on bias, you know, mass market off the shelf? What about enterprise? Again? That's not off the shelf. Those are, you know, specific arrangements between businesses or anchors and internet service providers. And then there's a whole suite of ideas on the edge, whether it's cloud, whether it's, you know, services of software, which is it, right? These are all and then you can get to ADS, right? And then they're all sort of variations of what. So I mean, intellectually, the conversation is becoming, well, what is a telecommunication service? What is transport? What should look like a telecommunication service? What is and then, how do you assess that fee? And so we're going to have the congressional working group will rejoin, or we started to work, hopefully, any day now, they'll open the portal, and that groups like Shelby and others will provide their comments about what the future the fund will look like. You know, for us, a lot of it will be defense. It'll be how important and essential E Rate is to schools and libraries how essential rural health care is to rural health clinics and the people that live in those communities. So part of it is just retelling our story and emphasizing its importance. And then a piece of it will be contribution reform. You know, in the past, we've we've essentially said we're open to other ideas. I don't think Shelby is going to be the one to to drill down and say exactly what it should be. I mean, in the end, we think it should be predictable and sustainable in both an economically and politically viable way. And then finally, you know our our submission, I'm sure. And you know Mala and Steve, you know all this and Randy. There are ways of improving E Rate, right? There are ways to improve era. We had a proceeding, the proceeding under delete, delete, delete, in which we submitted comments. There are problems with pull down menus. There are problems with certain forms, but there are also ways in which we'd like to potentially expand e rates. Right? The cybersecurity pilot is hanging out there. That's clearly a huge need where or supply is totally outstripped demand. So should we be so should we providing more money for cybersecurity? There are some they're going to want to do some more digital equity or digital opportunity programming, potentially in anchors. But again, we're open to these things. Obviously you don't want them to swamp the boat with the core of E Rate, which is, which is the internet connection. Can internet connectivity. And so these are all the things that that Shelby is going to have to debate internally over the next few months before we submit our comment to the Congressional working group, and from there, if you're going to ask me, what happens to that group, the answer is, who knows. They have no legislative mandate. The last time this happened two years ago, the group never came up with a public proposal, whether that was legislative tax or even just principles. Or two years later, we have a different Republican chair, through his doing, is now leader, and it's Deb Fisher, and so we'll, we'll see how far that group can get. And you know, I think it's, let's acknowledge the chances of it becoming law are pretty small, but whatever the group comes up with does become the basis for action whenever a window of opportunity opens.

So I'm sure other people have questions, Joey, but I have two, two questions. One is so that that committee is a not as a bipartisan committee, if I'm not mistaken, and are the folks who are on that committee, quote, friendly.

It is a bipartisan committee. And yes, they are friendly. You know, they have different perspectives, though Democrats and Republicans to different have different perspectives, I will say, though, as a plug for our flying back in, back in April, there is wide agreement with limited but powerful dissension Ted Cruz that you know, f the Universal Service Fund should be a dedicated funding stream, that These programs are important that this is a grand compromise, right? This is not just a rural program. This is rural and urban. You know, you think about E Rate, you think about lifeline. These are programs that benefit urban as well. And so there is a general agreement, I think, minus cruise, that you can't just craft, let's just say, in a rural program, right? Democrats will not go along with it, right? There's a reason why there's a compromise here and Democrats support I mean, I worked for Ed Markey for 10 years, right? I mean, I know all the history, given that he's the author of E Rate. You know, part of the compromise here thinking about E Rate is E Rate benefits urban schools and Urban Libraries and suburban and suburban low low income, suburban schools and libraries. I don't know if there would be a political coalition that would exist for the high cost program if you didn't have E Rate. I mean, just speaking. Very bluntly, that is a that is a that is part of this grand Senate compromise, right? And I think that this working group understands that, you know, the reason why I mentioned Ted Cruz is Ted Cruz has called for his called for subjecting the Universal Service Fund to annual appropriations, which is really at odds with what everyone else is driving towards, which is a source of sustainable, predictable fund, so that schools and libraries and health clinics can predict their their budgets and admittingly, the Congressional appropriations process is broken. I mean, in a perfect world, maybe it would make sense to to subject it to appropriations, but we live in a far from perfect world with respect to congressional appropriations. And that's why I mentioned Chairman Cruz. You know, he very, he, he's, he's got an idea that very few people agree with, and one that we we strongly oppose.

So yes, a second question is the administration, and where are they, and are they mucking around with this? Or they don't care, or they don't, oh, or what. What's your perspective there?

You know, my perspective on the administration is, you know, let's just talk historically for a minute. Couple years ago, Brendan Carr, who was commissioner at the time now, chair, was talking a lot about assessing big tech. He was on a big tech kick, right? He was talking about assessing a fee on big tech with respect to the Universal Service Fund. He was talking about a lot about limiting section 230 which is a separate issue, but affects big tech. 230 is the liability liability shield on websites for essentially, stuff that's posted on the website, and he was talking about removing some of those liability protections. Now this is Brendan a couple years ago. Brendan in 2025 it's a little unclear. It's a lot unclear. He hasn't he has not re articulated these issues in force recently. So to be honest, we don't really know, you know and but, but I will say some of it, Steve is given that the working group is now up and running. I think most of the action is now going to be in Congress, right? The FCC, as we've I know you've all the FCC is limited in what they could do with the funds, and now it depends on who you ask, right? Can they assess a fee on bias under the current statutory regime of the 96 act, most people say probably, can they assess a fee on the edge, on transport, on Cloud, on ads, on that? There's a much more mixed question about whether under the 96 act, they have such authority, right? And so in though, in that case, it really would take action from Congress. And so, you know, in light of cars, response to the court decision, which was, we agree we're pleased, in response to the reformation of the working group, which, again, is that's great, looking forward to hearing their recommendations. I'm a little less worried about the commission taking action in the short run, because I think the focus at this point is on the working group. I think the only thing I was worried about with respect to the Commission, which I should note here, was before Simonton Commissioner Simonton left. He did write an op ed. He published one with Gavin Lux, who was his chief of staff at the time, in which he talked about Dojin the FCC. Then he explicitly name checked the Universal Service Fund and E rates. But I will note he's not Commissioner anymore, and we don't know who the third Republican will be at this point. So that's a big open question. The FCC has not nominated a third Republican. They've also not nominated a second Democrat now that Jeffrey Starks has left, and we could talk about that if you want, but that's, that's the state of play at the Commission at this point.

Other questions or comments for Joey.

This is Mark Goldstein, Joey, hi, not universal service, so maybe you don't have as much. Uh. Uh, insight in your portfolio and actions. But on the digital equity front, yes, two things have happened. You know, the executive branch canceled the entire two and a half billion dollars in, uh, state and federal competitive digital equity grant money that is being challenged in court as having gone beyond the purview of the executive branch. So that's one but another reflection is in the NTIA bead program, where non deployment funding remains up in the air, states were going to be allowed to use excess funding with approvals for digital navigators and devices and all sorts of things. NTIA has actually been soft on saying whether or not that will now be allowed, but my feeling is they're going to come down on the no side, but wanted to on those two digital equity funding issues. Get your perspective.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you for bringing it up. And let me just start by saying Shelby cares a lot about digital equity funding or digital opportunity funding. You know, we've long said that anchor institutions are the places in many ways in which those types of skills and those types of learning happens. And so, you know, the loss of those billions is, to use a legal term of art, is sad. It's very, very, very sad. On the D side, it's a long road, you know, I mean, I think there will be legal challenges, I think there will be a fight, but I think that's a that is a long, tough road to get that money back. You know, even if you win legal challenges, there are so many ways in which an agency can frustrate and prevent the the, you know, the dispensement of funds. So I'm pessimistic, is probably the word I should use about it. That's not to say there will be legal challenges, and there should be, and we stand with our partners at NTIA and elsewhere and all of our anchor institutions, but it's not good on the non deployment side on bead, I think it's yet to be determined at this point, right? I share your I share your fear, right? We've heard, we've if you listen to the words of Lot Nick, I think we should all be afraid. I also think at the same time, states are trying to be as creative as possible. You know, I'm thinking about anchor institutions too, about how they're, I mean, that's deployment, but you know how they're, how they're weaving, how they're weaving in anchors, ensuring that they're receiving, and in the cases they can fiber. And so I don't, I don't put it past states to be as clever as possible. It's clear that since this new PN came out a few months ago, most states are being as aggressive and clever as they possibly can to save as much of their program as possible. But it's hard to know what exactly NTIA is going to say on non deployment, and it's something that we've actually I talked to NTIA yesterday, it's something that we continue to plug and and emphasize within that building.

Thank you. So John, I see I'm sorry. Go ahead mark.

No, just that. Thanks for sharing that. Appreciate it.

So John, I see that you have your hand raised, please, when you ask a question, please introduce yourself. So Joey, you'll know who's speaking. So with that, John, go ahead.

Thanks. John Haas with Embry Riddle, cyber, intelligence and security. And you said that cybersecurity was interesting, supply exceeds demand, and I was curious about that comment. And because I see a like you mentioned that there is a need for it, but where, where is our supply and demand? I didn't quite understand that. So in the in the Great question, John, so in the cybersecurity pilot, which is $200 million that was the supply. The demand was billions. Billions were asked for, right? And so that, though I see

the amount of money compared to what is needed, correct? I see, okay, and the pilot has it shown, is there any report on the success, or we're in the we're midstream on it right now. I think that that, I think that will be informative or instructive for what you know, what changes you make to E Rate. I think that's always been the hard part is you could spend all the E Rate money in cybersecurity, right? There's, there's, yeah, with the. Right? That's the demand, and there's always the tension. Well, you don't want to swamp the boat, right? Where it's important that you write continues to pay for the basic internet connections. But I think the results and proof of the cybersecurity pilot will, I think, underscore the need for more money for cybersecurity, which I think is very important for for all sorts of services that are offered in in schools and libraries around the country. Yep, great. Thanks

for clarifying, sure. So, John, just a comment when you were talking about the demand. So the demand, the Joe is referring to is just those people who applied for that funding. It doesn't come close to as you know, to talking about what the real need is out there in terms of cybersecurity, it's just those people who applied for that funding, if I understand that correctly. Great. Other questions for Joey, so Joey, did I see that? Has Oriole Roth been approved or not been approved

yet? Nope.

So do you want to talk about her a little bit or not?

Sure? You know, I look it's, it's, they. Moved Olivia trustee, who is the third, who is the third Commissioner now on the FCC. That was a high priority for them, because given that Starks and Simonton left, they lost a quorum. And there was all this, if you were watching, there was all this chatter about, what can you do without a quorum? Can you have a special meeting? There were these curialities in the FCC charter, and I said at the time, and I was right, like, he's not going to test them. They're just going to get a third Commissioner. They're going to jam her through and get her done. They did, and so Olivia is a commissioner. When you look over at the NTIA, Ariel Roth is still sitting in the Senate. She's a Ted Cruz staffer. There's been some chatter this week about whether there would be a cloture vote on Ariel Roth this week or next. Your guess is as good as mine.

She's being considered for the NTIA administrator. Correct. So what do we know about her. If you want to comment,

I would just say the pass is Prolog and look at her positions with Ted Cruz, I mean, but it's clear that NTIA is proceeding ahead with bead regardless of whether they have a permanent administrator, right? It's obvious that these decisions are made in Secretary ludnick's office right now. So I think that's part of the reason why there hasn't been the same level of urgency to getting her there, as opposed to Olivia at the FCC, because Brendan simply could not move items without three literally, human beings sitting at a sitting, you know, confirmed human beings sitting at a meeting.

Other Go ahead. Randy,

yeah, yeah, no, thanks, Steve. And Joey knows me. I'm a very enthusiastic Shelby member, which is a wonderful organization. And Joey, I was thinking maybe you could comment, you know, just, just with the, you know, the policy notice, you know, it's had all sorts of implications. But also at a state level, it's really, really hard, you know, for a state to check all the boxes and get stuff done. And, you know, I think one of the things that I observed is in, you know, in June, basically everyone made their announcements. You know, they're put up, put on notice, the unlicensed fixed wireless, and did sort of the handshake there and, and most states are, are, you know, in the process, right right now, in their benefit of the bargain round. But just what can you share with folks in terms of just variations between offices and how they're approaching it, and particularly how they're approaching a compressed timeline. I mean,

I think it's all over the board, right? I mean, I think some states are making no changes and are just saying we're going with what we previously did some states are making some tweaks, like, for instance, you know, decreasing the amount of of anchors that they perceive are eligible based upon the more limited definition. I think some states are having problems because of their state legislature. Right there, there are potential requirements for review and for approval. So I. It's a it's a real there's not a consistent, there's not a consistent response from states.

Other questions for Joey, so Joey, one other question I have, not so much in terms of all this policy stuff, but obviously your big, one of your big focuses is anchor institutions, and so I'm concerned. So the question I have is that I believe that, like you do, that particularly community colleges can play a great role, particularly in digital inclusion, but what I've observed is that many of those community colleges don't have any kind of a strategic plan for that. So they have, you know, this happening here and this happening there, but isn't any clear strategy for where the and as you know, they all have different they all have multiple audiences. They have their students, they have potential students, they have families, families of potential students. Lot of different communities out there. And so I'm wondering what you're seeing in terms of community colleges, because, again, my opinion that they can play a very important role on into the future.

Steve, it's really state by state dependent, right on one can you've got excellent research and education networks like sun corridor and Arizona that play an enormous role. And I've met with Derek, their great Shelby employee, Shelby members that do an incredible job connecting community anchor institutions. There are other awesome, you know, R and E networks in Connecticut and Utah and Ohio and elsewhere. And in some places they don't exist, right? And so i To me it's, it's about working the best place, because obviously they're not K 12, so they're not E Rate eligible. It's working with those research and education networks, and you're lucky, you've got a good one in Arizona.

Other questions or comments for Joey,

I've really enjoyed the chat. I gotta jump here, but Steve, this was great. And I'm also, I'm gonna let Mala do it, because she's better than me. Hop off. Come to anchor nets. It's at the end of October. We have an incredible conference here in DC. Uh, tremendous amount of you know content is king. Mala has never missed one which is which is very telling, and really just hope that folks are able to come out.

Well, thank you very much, Joey. Really appreciate you being here today. Any last questions or comments before the bike begs off and

it is on Halloween, so that's an added attraction that Anca net is is on Halloween night. So we get, we get to wear our costumes, right?

Absolutely.

Okay. Thanks again, Joe. I really appreciate you being here today. Take care. Bye. Now. Okay, so let's get back to our other agendas. And first of all, let me change the view here the gallery. So first of all, do we have anybody new who's joining us today? I don't think so. I think everybody, Jason, haven't seen you for a while?

Yeah, I apologize. What my video is not coming up. I apologize been well, if anyone's been following, wired, been extremely busy the past two to three months, getting our office, our market stood up down there in Tucson and very excited that we'll have fiber lit here in the next 30 days. And working to you know with we have our agreements. Oro Valley, Sarita, we have agreements that we acquired through contera within Pima and a couple others. Those ones don't allow us to expand, really, but that's what I've been doing. And Max is on here as well, and super excited about how we're going to, you know, impact the bottom line for consumers in our in in the market, to help them get, you know, some prices that they probably should been getting a while ago, and then also getting really good internet from us. And so we're been, that's why I've been busy. Apologize for that long, long story, but just been,

I haven't seen you since tech, tech nerds unite. I. Oh,

person, you're right. Oh and saying that we are working with Joe to sponsor the next one down there. So we're excited about that. Yeah. Just love being our little, small local company growing here in Arizona and having fun.

So just, just for all of you who probably don't know that tech nerds unite, is local? Is an IT coordinating? Not a coordinating group, just a sharing group. It's a fun group. They have a great time. Get a lot of people show up, and it's just really strictly sharing, collaborating so forth. It's one of the best mixers that I've attended. Just really informal and having a good time.

Oh, look at and Max put in the chat the link. Yeah, it's, that's what I enjoyed about it. Steve, you hit the nail on the head. It's just really great place to collaborate and have a good time. Yeah,

great. Thanks. Jason and Lucy, you want to give us an update on what's happening with our healthcare group.

You were reading my mind as I was putting that in the chat. I know you were going to do that, Lucy, I'm sorry, and I'm sorry for missing the board meeting in last week's meeting. I was out of town, but so there is a health and education task force meeting today, at three o'clock to 4pm I put the link in the chat, which is basically a calendar link, and it's got a couple different ways that you can come in, either just the via zoom, or you can go ahead and get a little free membership and then come into our portal and virtual boardroom, but we're trying to make it really easy. We kick this off in April. We are towards the seventh, eighth session. We did not have one on July 3, so I feel like it's been a while, but lots of activity happening surrounding getting pilots up at with telehealth, with the libraries focusing on some rural health success projects, and really kind of focusing on disability issues as well. We will be launching a live broadcast coming up here, starting in August, which will be a nice platform to bring these voices in, and for us to be able to start communicating some of these issues to the general public, you know, because I think that we all kind of understand a lot of things, but we need to start, like putting it out there, so that other people understand The critical issues, I think really, from the two big updates that I'll just share with this group, is I'm happy to report that doctor RICHARD CARMONA, who's a 17th Surgeon General of the United States, many of you may or may not know him personally, because he's here in Tucson, has agreed to come on board as an executive advisor to force for health. And so it kind of puts another layer of Executive Advisory over what we can actually do as a community to work together, to make sure that our schools and, you know, healthcare are are working more together and where digital connectivity plays in that digital connectivity is plays everywhere. And the other thing that I'll just announce is that we have recently partnered with a group called the world wide association of disaster emergency medicine. And it was just interesting, as we were forming that that relationship, that the Kerrville right, the flooding and everything was happening in the backdrop in Texas. And so just whenever there's systems of communication, that is where digital connectivity play in or out, right, there's disabilities in or out. So we're just excited to continue to bring high level expertise to the table and see what we can continue to work on. And we will be extending it beyond the 10 week session. We are originally just going to kick this off, see how the pilot goes from April to July 31 but we'll go ahead and continue to extend a bi weekly task force meeting. So if you click on that link, and then you click on the calendar and you add it to your calendar, either Google or Outlook, it'll go ahead and add it to your your invite calendar to get it on your your deal. So that's my update, and looking forward to hosting anybody that shows up today at three.

Sounds great. Then thanks, Lucy, and thanks for your work and leadership and making this happen.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for the opportunity. Really appreciate that.

Megan, I see you're on. Do you want to say anything about what's the latest with the State Library?

I'm happy to let Mala give the update. There's, we're just, we're, yeah, we're just planning some new we're exploring expanding some digital literacy software to some County Library. Across the state and looking at other ways we can continue to support digital, you know, digital inclusion without our navigators for now.

Okay, Mama, you have any other updates that you want to share? I know there's other stuff besides what Joey touched on, anything else that you're going to talk about,

not, not really. I put two links on the in the chat, both of which Joey touched on. One was Andrew Schwartz Schwartzman explanation of the USF decision. It's really, it's a beautiful explanation, if I may say so, he has summarized it really well. That's the link is there for us to read. And he also touched upon the revival of the USF reforms Working Group and Senator luhans. And I put that in the chat as well. So if anyone wants to keep up to date with that, that's where it's going to be posted. In the meanwhile, I am still continuing to work on our E Rate, you know, Pia request, such as request for the program the for the people who have applied if they had any questions on their applications, or if they needed to understand anything, and that takes up a lot of time, because whenever, when they ask a question, it requires a little bit of research to see who applied for what and why, and why are they asking this question, does it not meet with the requirements and rules? So that's taking up time to work on that, and it is. We've got about 11 waves of funding so far. Received a commitment of about 20, 23 million. I think we applied totally for a little less than 100 million this year. So that's what's happening with E Rate. The other thing that we touched that there was a question about was the cybersecurity pilot program? They did have an application withdrawal window, which was on the withdrawal date was on July 1. That was the deadline set by FCC to permit pilot participants to voluntarily withdraw from the program without any questions asked. And you know, we know that there was a huge demand for it, but there were still 17 people from the 17 applicants from the whole of the country who withdrew their application, and partly it is because they found that, I wouldn't say they had other monies that they could use. They found that this was inadequate. They didn't want to do any half measures as far as cybersecurity was concerned, and so they, many of them, were looking for other sources of funding, which I hope they found, but we don't know yet what FCC is going to do about the money that was that these 17 people had applied for whether they are going to distribute it among the rest of the applicants that who had applied, or whether they're going to open a second window for application. So we don't know yet, but the current application window for those this was a pilot program where you had to apply first be pre approved, and then the ones who were pre approved had to submit a more detailed application. The more detailed application window closes on September 15 for those who had been pre selected. So that's what I wanted to add. Other than that, I think Joey covered a lot of ground, and they were good questions for him. Back to you, Steve,

John, are you still online? John Haas, I'm not seeing him. I think he must have dropped off bill. You know, I know that you and I have chatted, and I know you really didn't want to speak much today about what's happening and with the wireless issues, but anything that you do want to comment on, and then we'll arrange for you to you and your. Folks to come in a future time.

Well, I'm working on getting some information. Just wanted to kind of high level, give an update on w i A's perspective on the, you know, legislation has passed with the big, beautiful bill. So we're pulling that together, and also just a little more information on workforce and how the impacts of the bead reductions, you know are potentially could impact that I should have something that I can share next week. I think,

Okay, thanks, Bill. Anybody else have anything that they want to share this morning,

Steve, this is Mark and one funding note, and we did talk about this in past meetings, the initial version, or versions of the big, beautiful bills, zeroed out USDA grant funding, but towards the very end of the process, $95 million I believe, was the figure was restored in what ended up being the approved in it and signed bill for USDA, that'll be split across three grant programs, I think of the 95 million distance learning and telehealth got the biggest share. 40 million. Reconnect got 30 or 35 which is very small for the reconnect program. The one reconnect grant I won for a client was $26 million that's for a large program that's a small amount, and then Community Connect got 20 or 25 million, and that's for single communities under $5 million so somewhere between four and eight competitive grants, I would guess. So my guess is that around the end of the year, early next year, we will see rounds of USCA grant opportunities in those three funds, phase in,

and if I remember correctly, Mark, they basically have said no. Dei,

well, that seems to be the drum beat these days. Yes.

In, and I've had four different I've had four different conversations in the last week about dei and just baby out with bath water. The the disability space has been just decimated by this also. So like people seem to just assume dei is more like skin color, you know, maybe gender, but it's just really atrocious. What? What? I just had a meeting yesterday with the Arizona health and PE Association. I mean, the PE teachers and the health teachers across the state are just decimated. Um, the president of that association is with adaptive PE, and it's just so I know that Kelly and others on this call were looking for specific stories. You know, when funding gets taken away, at how it impacts that so anyways, you brought up Dei, and now, when I hear Dei, I have to throw in disability space very loudly. I'm committed to kind of sharing that message across people.

And we saw Joey quickly shift from the word digital equity to digital opportunity. So I caught that we're all having to re couch our language a little to avoid the you know, hammer effect on dei in certain ways.

You know, it's a kind of a coincidence that when we created this task force, dei was not the end of the big thing at that point, but we did recognize the importance of it. But if you notice, we named this task force digital access rather than digital and so many respects, we were ahead of the head of the game here. But to Mark's point that we really need to have that dialog about so how are what's the language we're going to use if we're going to try to avoid all the political issues that are going on at this point in time, at least, how it would relate to Arizona. You know, we whether we're going to impact federal issues is another issue, but here in Arizona that we need to see if we can come up with a language that we can all agree to and support so that we can move ahead. And so I do think that that's an important dialog that maybe we need to have at a future meeting.

And even when Lucy said digital inclusion, I think the word inclusion is tainted a little in the DEI equation, and the word a lot and the word op. Opportunity is a bit cleaner, and it's you know that digital opportunity plays better in today's language. Steve, but you're right. We, we need to adapt

anybody else. Kelly, you have anything you want to I know you always want to do your head.

Hi Steve. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Kelly Mukerjee from ASU enterprise technology supporting CIO love gonic, for anyone who's not familiar with the as one web portal, we welcome you to check it out. I just put the link in the chat, and we have free interactive broadband maps, which could help with grant writing or justifying your your needs. If there's anything in there that you'd like to see. I also welcome conversations, as we still have our grant with Maricopa County, we could possibly work together on iterating on our maps to help your needs. So please feel free to reach out and connect if you'd like to learn more. Plus we have a storytelling hub, so we invite you to check it out, read our stories. There are great stories from this community right here, and we continue to look for more community impact stories so we can share the good news out with the community. So happy to meet with you. Please connect.

Thanks. Kelly and David. I see David Ackerman, I see you're online. You want to give us any quick updates on what you might be doing here in Arizona regarding your resource and and grant consulting.

Yeah, absolutely. Hey, Steve, how's it going? Hey everybody. We are still looking for people to

assist me, David, can you just introduce yourself real quickly? Yeah,

absolutely. David. David Ackerman, CEO of Ackerman Consulting Group. We are helping out ISPs and communities throughout Arizona with applications special, especially bead. Right now for any kind of federal and state funding, we got an award, BTA award from USDA to do exactly that. I'm happy to send out more information. I know Steve has our packet as well. So anyone who is looking for any assistance with applications regarding broadband, especially bead, please reach out and I'll throw my info in the chat again. Thanks, Steve. Hey, thanks, David

and Frank, I'm going to put you on on the spot. You had contacted me a couple weeks ago about some information. Are you still needing some stuff or not yet?

Steve, thanks. Frank Martinez, connected nation was asking Steve for some thoughts on an upcoming event that is related to tribal broadband, but I think I got what I need right now. Steve, if I need to reach out to anybody, I'll contact people directly.

Okay, sounds good. Okay, anybody have anything else before we end for today? Going once, going twice? Well, I'm going to end the meeting. I think we may have done our chatting for today, but I'm going to keep leave it open for just a little while, just a reminder, and I will, hopefully I've been having some computer issues, as I mentioned earlier, but theoretically, I'll be able to save the chat and everything. But if you want the chat, you can go to chat at the very top, there's three ellipses, and if you click on that, you can save the chat to your computer. So just try to remind, remember to remind people about that. Oh, one last thing. So I am meeting next week with Carlos Contreras, who is head of the Office of Economic Opportunity for the state of Arizona, and we're going to be talking with him about meeting with this task force, about if anybody knows about what's happening in workforce development, as so many things happening, but if anybody's got a kind of a big picture about that, will be him. So I'm going to meet with him next week and talk about, you know more about what we're doing, and then look at him coming to meet with the task force sometime in the next couple of weeks. Okay, anything else I think we are done for today. Thank you all.

Thank you very much. You.