Okay, good morning, everybody. Good to see you. And some new faces this morning. So I'd like to start with that with kind of an introduction. Jim, I know you were here before, but do you want to kind of introduce yourself? You're fairly new to participate in with us.
Sure. Happy Tuesday morning, everybody. I'm Jim Craig. I'm the Dean of Visitor Information Technology and hospitality leadership at Pima Community College. Great to be here. And
you have an awesome cybersecurity program and an IT program doing some pretty amazing stuff.
We do we just had some good news to yesterday, we just got our final. A final designation from NSA. We're already in it's a designated program. But now we are a Center of Academic Excellence across the whole college for our our cybersecurity program.
Awesome. But well, when I have to hear more about that, given the future, obviously, I know that a lot of other folks wouldn't know, but know about that. So let's see. Let me change this. Here we go.
Okay, so let's see what else we had a couple this morning. Mitch, I know you've been here but you want to introduce yourself again, please.
Make sure you're there. I know you are going to be on mute.
We got somebody else here. Robin, can you introduce yourself please?
Yes, good morning. Can you hear me?
We can. Hi,
my name is Robin Dumas. I work here at segoe and the Community Development Department and I am just starting to tap into the meetings and learn more about the efforts around broadband access and just helping Sego carry things forward.
Sounds great. Thanks, Robin. Welcome. Thank you. We have anybody else that's new this morning. Thanks. So Shamia Lodge Is that correct pronunciation?
Hi, Steven, thanks for asking. It's actually Shamia Today is my first time and I'm so happy to be here. I work for an organization called adventive technologies. We cover one of the eight populations from NCI broadband perspective, I work for an organization that provides prison technology. Happy to be here, and I'm here to learn
is that a commercial or nonprofit group?
Is a for profit group is commercial business. Okay.
Thank you, welcome. That's everybody that's new today. Did I miss anybody? Okay, well, let's move on. Again, a reminder, if you have not filled out the Google Form, with your contact information, please do so. It just helps to know who's who and how to reach people when how to contact folks and so forth. So I'd really appreciate it if you would, would do that. Again, just a reminder, as after our meeting, that we do do kibitzing with colleagues, which is just an informal session, we stopped the recording and people chat and it might be five minutes, it might be an hour, it could be two people. It could be 10 people we just never know. But it's it's just basically informal. People want to hang out. And then let's see moving on. Of course, I want to thank our sponsors, Bellevue Telecom, group care first health plan Valley of the Sun, United Way and try out wireless Karen Ziegler consulting services, and so forth. So I really appreciate all your support. And moving on. So let's start with some updates from ACA, and we have a lots of folks. And so Karen, I'm gonna let you kick it off and then see where that goes.
Actually, Steve, I'm gonna be the one talking about the ACA. Okay,
good. Okay, perfect. And again, for those who don't know, pro, we just got married and so congratulations. Yes, thank
you so much, Steve. Thank you, everybody. For the ACA. We have just posted the initial proposal Volume Two. Volume Two outlines the long term objectives for deploying broadband and closing the digital divide addressing access, affordability, equity and adoption issues, and enhancing economic growth and job creation, including information that has been developed in the five year action plan. Everybody can access the initial proposal Volume Two through our ACA website, and I will put the link here as soon as I'm done talking, there's three ways that you can submit feedback for us. There's a PDF, as well as emailing that PDF to us and a section below to comment for feedback. The feedback is due by December 6, we still have volume one up on our website with the list of unserved and underserved broadband serviceable locations with the community anchor institutions list as well. And people can still provide any like feedback, if you're wanting if you're wanting to read the the really 300 page document. It is a pretty lengthy one plus the volume two. But of course, we're willing to take any feedback still, and you can email that to us. You
just answered my question about people can still provide input on volume one. Okay.
The only thing is that we don't have a comment section anymore for it, but we will take it via email. Okay. Yeah, that is it. Thank you so much. I'll drop that link here in the chat right away.
Okay, so perfect. Can you just comment quickly that you have several open positions that you're trying that you're looking for people for? Could you just talk about those quickly?
Yes, I will be more than happy to I'm also we also have Aaron laredos. On the call, I actually want to promote that first. Aaron laredos is our new digital equity program manager. We are super excited to have her on board. I know last time, Steve, you were trying to get it out of me to who we have. We have her here. And we are super excited to have her join us and that she's she's already doing an amazing job. She's just been really awesome. And if she wants to give a little introduction, I know a lot of you guys she's joined on the call already. And you guys might know her. But she's been really awesome. So far, and you want to say anything. Thanks
so much for that. I really appreciate that. Yep, I just changed the acronym after my name. That's really the difference. But no, I mean, it's been wonderful. So far, you know, there's a lot obviously to get caught up on. And I'm looking forward to, you know, putting, putting my mark on everything that the ACA is working on. D plan, of course, is my main focus. And if I am slow to respond to emails, it's because I'm reading that 200 page document. And yeah, I'm just excited to still be part of this group. I noticed I'm still listed under the State Library on your last night that I have i i may not be the best person to talk about that anymore. But you can keep my name over on the ACA side.
Thanks. I will take care of that. And
no worries, I will put my new email in the chat, you can probably guess it because it's the same format as everybody is it's just Aaron L at AC commerce.com. And that's I think that's it for me. Thank
you know, and I'll be sending that out to everybody. Now. So it's very exciting to have you in that position. Aaron.
Thank you very, we do have available positions right now. We have the broadband Grants Manager position open, we have a senior Broadband Program Manager position open as well as a community engagement outreach specialist. And I believe those are the all the updates that I have. Oh, and then Steve, I mean, this this one's for you. I feel like you should take leave for this one, the study session that's happening on Volume Two, that will be with Sandeep and Nicole.
Yes, and I was going to talk about that later. But as long as you brought it up, that I think hopefully you've all had received the calendar invite that on November the 27th, at noon to 130. Easy BSN in conjunction with with the governor's office and ACA, we'll be doing what we call in a study session. And we did that on purpose because this is not going to just be a bunch of presentations and hour, an hour and a half of presentations, but really trying to give an overview of the meat potatoes of that plan, and then be able to provide opportunity for discussion or input and so forth. And we'll see how it goes. If we need to do another one, we'll do another one. And once the digital equity plan is released, then we will do some more kind of thing. Learn more workshops once that plan is released. So because we've got some shipper only short deadlines for that But can you just talk about what's the deadline for the digital equity plan that needs to be done by December 21 or so?
I can actually take that if you're okay with it. I'm so sorry. Yeah. So we are working to have that posted by mid December for public comment. And then there will be a 30 day comment period on that, just like with the bead documents, and then after that, then it gets submitted to NTIA. And so yeah, we are we're still, you know, finalizing the draft. And so some of those some of those dates are, are, you know, still pending based on that, but those will be available as soon as possible. And I think it would be great, you know, to have some kind of session like that as well, for the D plan. I agree. Okay.
And what and I believe that you have a deadline for NTIA that you have to have that plan submitted him the correct December something 21st or something.
So it'll be posted for public comment. mid December and I apologize. I don't have the exact date in my mind right now. But then it's 30 days. So it's it's it's January that that it goes to NTIA
Okay, thank you.
I'm similar to the to the bee clan as well, where we have to submit the entire thing by December 27. Then once it's in, it's
okay. Thank you. Well, thanks Perla for being here today. I don't know if you're already you're still online. Do you have anything that you want to add?
Still here see? Nope. I think girls got it.
I think she's bye guys open. She's got it. And Candice, I see your online. Did you want to add anything? Or? Want me to put you on the spot. But Hi, good
morning. No, I think Perla did a great job just kind of sharing where we're at. And we're just really excited Aaron's on board. So
I think they're excited to have you here.
So moving on, as we mentioned that we're going to do this special study session. I did send a calendar invite everybody yesterday, and hope you will, we'll all plan to attend. And let's see. So let's get into we have a couple of presentation, well, what presentation, and so forth. So let's just jump into our presentation this morning. And I want to introduce a man who in this group hardly needs any introduction is Rory Conaway with Tria wireless. And as I said in my note that I sent out that Rory has been a great participant in this task force. He's, he's a sponsor stepped up to be a sponsor of the task force. And he's doing great stuff around the state. I know that there's some folks that would give great testimony to the work that he's been doing. So with that, Rory, I'm going to just turn it over to you and let you do your thing.
Oh, all right. Thanks. See. So just a quick background. And
four, you're gonna need to, you're gonna need to share
maybe yeah, in a minute. Okay, actually accidentally closed, something I was going to share and struggling to get it as quickly as I can. So try and wireless is a, we're a wireless, microwave, terrestrial microwave company, in Phoenix in air across Arizona, we've got infrastructure, everywhere from the Grand Canyon down to New Dallas. And as much as I love the technology, that ends up being boring presentation. So I'm going to take it off to a little bit different area this morning, just so that I think it's important to know not so much what we can do technically, but how does it play in this expanded fiber infrastructure that the government has been funding for the last few years. So triad wireless using terrestrial microwave, we were able to quickly deploy bandwidth through different programs. One of the programs that was sponsored by the superintendents of some of the districts through with myelin eaten from E Rate was the final mile project which when COVID hit, they were able to quickly get the program up, went out to bid for 10 towns or 12 towns and we were able to start deploying those within about four weeks and covering you know, I think total number of covers by 10,000 or 12,000 homes, we did areas as close as Pima and other areas as far as civic Q and, and others where we are able to get bandwidth up to the to the families very quickly. That is the core nature of wireless is rapid deployment capabilities. Since COVID, our technologies have expanded pretty significantly. To me, I need a cop button on this. Zoom. They don't have like they do in radios, radio stations, but over the last few years and starting from so try, it started out in 2003. And we did a lot of municipalities and engineering consulting, we were actually tried wireless engineering. And so we've worked with manufacturers and we say municipalities with specialized projects that, for example, one of the airports that we did video surveillance, which required more required a wireless link infrastructure, they had an airplane that went off the wrong one wrong runway and asked us to design a system so that they when a plane was on the wrong one runway and trying to take off because it ended up crashing, you know that they got an alert to try to catch the pilots. We did things in North Las Vegas where people poured water into one of the the tanks that they had emptied, which is millions of gallons that required a wireless infrastructure across the entire city to put cameras up and other sensors, I think it was 24 tanks or 23 tanks. But and so that was a with Homeland Security. We've done other projects with Air Force One. And where they asked us to do a video surveillance, which again requires backhaul, which is where wireless comes in. So moving forward, the week 2015, we started doing residential and business wireless services across miracle County, the weird, several 1000 customers. And then when COVID hit pretty much every school district in the known area, including City of Phoenix and other areas came to us and asked us to start designing and deploying infrastructure to get to the Get everybody improves, you know, get services to their residences as quickly as possible. The problem with that was it was also simultaneous at the same time, we couldn't get equipment, and because of supply chain issues and so forth. But we added we literally doubled our capacity, or our number of users in about a year and a half to support all of that. Since the final mile projects, which you know, we've talked about several times, we're actually now taking a lot of orders from all of those small towns that didn't have service. And ironically, we're now able to get fiber speeds into many of the towns through through over wireless. internally. What we do is we're very engineering oriented in in the technology area and wireless microwave is turned into a it's almost moving as fast as artificial intelligence is which we'll cover. But what we're seeing in the future with our our system is that the nice part is we don't have some of the limitations that the fiber carriers are placing artificially on their networks. For example we're seeing in fiber deployments in, they're putting data caps monthly data caps on the users, one of the common numbers is 1.25 terabytes, we've been able to avoid that limitation, because we're seeing our average users getting close to 1.25 terabytes, that our peak users are informed five terabyte territories nowadays. The the other part is, in addition to the rapid deployment is that our capital expenditure is usually about 10 to 20% of what fiber is, even with the higher speeds. And what we're probably going to see though with fiber because fiber is many of them are at one gigabit per second, we're pretty sure they're going to eventually get to 10 gigabits per second, although eight gigabit seems to be a stopping point. We're already working with many of our companies in our industry, and there's about 2800 west across the country that are doing hybrid deployments of fiber and wireless. Some of them are looking at 25 gigabits per second right now. Others are looking at even even beyond that. Wireless currently can run between can run up to two gigabits per second we got that deployed in the Buckeye area for example, and Mesa, parts of Mesa, the industry Future we're gonna be in the five to 10 Gig range within the next 18 months, 24 months at the most. So the real question is and what is our what where does wireless stand as wide as fiber gets more gets deployed around more areas? Well, reality is we're not going to get fibre to everybody. We all know that. And I think the current estimate is that the the latest beat funding is about 20% of the households that they want to get to be had a lot of restrictions on what they would allow and wireless. And those restrictions seem to be on a state by state basis, getting thrown out so that the states can more efficiently or try to cover more people than what wireless can do. Wireless is not a line of sight technology anymore, we actually call it near line of sight. And we actually and we have deployments, which are non line of sight. So the remote areas that have high density, tree vegetation, for hills, things like that, we're able to actually work around some of those areas now that with some of the new technologies we have going forward, two things are going to happen. Wireless is going to be used as a backup, which we actually have plans in place. Because if if there is an issue with fiber is a comparison, in many of the remote areas fibers deployed on telephone poles. The reality is the downtime on fiber run a telephone pole is no different than a wireless network. And we're in wireless technologies. And we're getting better. With with redundant infrastructure, we're in the middle of a large rollout. In fact, across the west valley with that capability. The the secondary portion of it is in areas which are fed by fiber, if fiber goes down, and many times for various reasons, whether it's underground or on the poles. In some cases, it could be several days, I live in our Tuki. And we've seen we've seen our networks go down for six, seven days, because to repair a fiber link many times requires permitting processes, and digging up, streets and so forth. And that is a long term process, we've actually had fiber in our company down for three weeks with, with Cox one time for that type of problem. So wireless, we'll have a plate new moving forward with extraction with the newer technologies we were developing. What I want to do is take this slightly off from the fiber concept of of the bandwidth. Everything about this group and every other groups that were involved with is getting high speed connectivity to locations. Many that's being accomplished, the real problem now becomes, you know, what are we doing with that fiber. And this is where the, our role as an ISP is a little bit different than than just the concept of getting bandwidth locations. So what we're running into is, we're seeing a consistent increase in bandwidth utilization. We've got great applications, you've got remote, remote, medical,
obviously, remote learning, and so forth. But what we're also seeing is we're being contacted on projects, we had started to actually stop them remote learning, for example, we learned the hard way that remote learning did not work as well as children in the classroom buying and Countrywide, we're paying that price as our children have actually regressed from previous to COVID. But so we're being asked to come up with different ideas to help subsidize that as not subsidizing financially. But as an ISP, because we're exposed to a lot of different groups with different ideas, we're being asked to help out to find a better way to utilize the bandwidth and the infrastructure that we have. The other thing we're seeing is bandwidth increase is significant on the video surveillance areas. And I have to imagine in my best guess right now 70% of the people here have some kind of ring doorbell or other video surveillance structures that need Remote Connectivity. That's driving a lot of the bandwidth utilization today. The The other thing we're starting to do well, which we do internally and we're starting to see is and we believe this is gonna be a big issue is security. We're having to analyze everything from top to bottom because most people do not have secured infrastructure and there is only limited amount of back end and security from the carriers. So when you throw 100 million computers online with one gigabit per second or more, and they're able to become bought remote buying attack devices. That's a big, big problem, we have had to do some things in the back end, to stop those attacks coming going outward. Most carriers do not do that, especially if you get public IP addresses. So it's one of those questions like that if the dinosaur movie just hit me, Jurassic Park, we know we can do it. The question is, should we do it. And I think that what we're seeing because of the request for increased speeds, that we're doing it, but we're not controlling what's happening on the back end. And that's causing us a lot of headaches internally. We're not a big company, we're less than 30 people. But we have, we have two people that are doing nothing but security in house right now trying to keep control of the network. And people's home computers doing things they shouldn't be doing, that most people aren't even aware of. The so try wireless, like, say as a back end, I mean, as a, as a wireless provider, we're basically a parallel and redundant infrastructure to all the fiber that's being deployed. And in the new areas or more remote areas, we see that you know that that's probably not going to change the cost of fiber getting there's going to be still access it. Good example, that is an area we just did call civic cue, this is beefy, tried extremely remote. And there's, it would cost $12 million to bring fiber into that town. Unless government steps up, it's probably not going to happen, we're going to do it for about $100,000 to get bandwidth into the same town. So it's, so we still have tools that are not available. The last thing that were really the last two things we're really looking at is cloud computing. And the fact that as everything becomes more centralized, more bandwidth has to go across networks, and it has to go faster. And and it has to be more consistent. That's a big area right now, especially if anybody here is using, you know, Google office, for example, that's all online or Microsoft's Office. And that's the direction everybody's moving. The last thing is, and this is the part that nobody's really addressing, yet, at least we haven't seen it is artificial intelligence. Even though conceptually, it's all about central processing and managing data, we're starting to see artificial intelligence connected to more video surveillance. That means the ai ai engines are going are pulling more video data for themselves. For under the learn under the learning process that they're they're being developed. If anybody's following what's going on in that area, you've got new processors just came out from Nvidia, you've got two or three that are coming out through research groups like IBM, that have processors that can crunch things with way less power, which means you're also going to see to start seeing them in IoT devices to help make decisions on site. So I now just finished with the last part about this technology. And the wireless industry is moving extremely fast. Right now even we're involved in projects of development of next generation things. And it's nothing for us to drop one gig out of house anymore. We're pretty much rolling that out across most of our areas, and faster is coming. The real question is the real point that we're seeing as everybody wants it, at this point, nobody's using it. The actual average use of a user over a 24 hour period today is about six megabits per second. So we've over built a massive amount of capacity. And the question is, how do we, you know, do we need to keep building at that level? Or can we look at it more realistically more financially, reasonably to get that cost to use our money better, because we're borrowing money to make this happen? It should be used more efficiently. So we can go after the 100% coverage as opposed to the 20% coverage, which is on the current roadmaps of most states. So that's pretty much it. I mean, I think I've covered everything, but you know, so if anybody has any questions?
Awesome. Any questions for Rory? Questions, comments? Or my
question? On your last point? You talked about over building and current utilization. What do you what's? What's the forecast if you continue that build out? 400% It was Session from a business strategy perspective.
So ironically, after our arnoff was one of the worst funds that that could come out that was previous to be managed by the FCC previous to that was a calf funding, we actually had an area that we have equipment, and we saw funding go to four different or three different groups. And now there's the fourth group that's getting more tax dollars to build that same area. Because the money is coming in through so many different government entities, there's no, even though there are some general rules in place, they're just not being followed. We're over building in areas. And there's two ways to look at it, there's over building a fiber and areas that have wireless, and there's areas that have fiber, and we're actually putting wireless in there for a couple of reasons. But in the areas with the fiber buildouts when they're on tax dollars. The rules were very written very convoluted, and very skewed in the caf and the art of funding structures. Like for example, in art off, you had to be a carrier, you had to be a phone, you also had to provide phones service, or else your area was not considered, you know, covered. Well, that's silly. Most people have voice over IP 90% of us use cell phones, phone service that the residents shouldn't have been a consideration, but it was therefore areas that we covered in many other wireless companies had infrastructure in were over are being over built by fiber. That's just a waste of money. But it is what it is. Many states and actually ironic because honestly, it's one of the best ones because of the, you know, Sandeep and and Karen. And they actually came to us and said, Hey, you guys are in areas that we want to spend money on. Let's talk about it and see what's more reasonable. That's the way to handle it. That's not the way it was handled. Because a lot of nationwide companies, larger companies just went after the money, they didn't care about what happens in the state there, because they have a general plan. So individually, it's not important as long as their large scale plan. Obviously, we're we are only in Arizona. So you know, we care more about the state. And because of that we have more vested interest. For example, we sponsor robotics clubs. I've got programmers that go out there once a week to help the children with learning how learning Python and embedded system programming. So you don't see that from the larger companies. But sorry, I'm getting off topic slightly. But there is a lot of overbuilding, and I think the BT group, you know, the BT funding is being much better managed than what we've seen in the past, but it's a massive waste of money. Ironically, we actually see a lot of opportunity in the areas that have fiber. And we're getting a lot of calls from people that have actually had it because of the monthly caps, the data caps and so forth, that are artificially placed from the carriers. So, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna have a place in this regardless of whether the fiber gets deployed or not. And the other side of the equation is, since our CapEx is so small, it's easier for us it's cheap, much, much cheaper for us to deploy in an area. And we have with a large, large reach. We can you know, it makes financial sense. That helps the mark, does it directly answer your question, or did I skip around it? No, it's fine.
I have one follow up, if I may. Under current deployments that you currently have, where you position yourself from from being the primary provider versus a backup, and your strategic plan, and are the geographical areas of Arizona,
we're both you know, we're seeing we're seeing, we're kind of in the middle, you've got on you got fiber deployments. In those cases, we're primarily a backup with a handful of customers that would here's Israeli, there's some percentage, 5% and 10%. Whoever the incumbent is, they don't like them for whatever reason that they've had to deal with. So those customers we get anyway, on the other on the wireless side, the cell phone companies have gotten have been improving their residential deployments and speeds in their areas. They still have some issues because they're limited on spectrum. And we're seeing, you know, some areas that were great. Other areas, they get under load and they're they're not able to hold the hold the speeds that they need to hold, you know that they're they're selling, but everybody's just getting better. You know, the equipment's getting better. We're, it's going to, they're going to continue to get better. And then the third competitive we have right now Starlink mean literally everybody did their mom to get into the wireless bandwidth market. But we still have a large a lot of rapid deployment processes. construction sites, obviously surprise Buckeye are and surrounding areas are they again, the top five in terms of population growth. I think Buckeye last year added 100, according to the census bureau added 105,000 People surprise is some is pretty close to that. And we expect total deposit probably do the same thing. We're gonna have a place in all of those locations. So excuse me that, you know, we're just gonna be one of other multiple other carriers. Yes. Perfect. Boy,
thank you so much for your presentation. Very informative. Thank you.
Well, in all fairness, I got this last night at about seven o'clock. So I did have a PowerPoint presentation. I mean, I have a lot of them on the system, because I do this in groups. But I didn't have anything formal. I will show one thing though. See, if you don't mind, let me turn to the quick picture. And to give me an idea, let's see here. This, you're
supposed to give away my secret that this was a last minute. Oh, sorry about that. I appreciate you stepping up.
That's all right. So this is a general idea. This is general coverage map of Maricopa, it doesn't include all of our smaller areas around the state. But it's pretty extensive. We've built out a our own backhaul infrastructure to avoid as much fiber as possible. So it's pretty extensive. And we're still I think we've got just to give you an idea, we have five or six towers under construction right now that should be finished next 45 days. So we were not we were not slowing down and opportunities still keeps expanding, as to groups that do need do need services. So
couple questions for Rory. Yeah. One is, what are you using licensed spectrum or unlicensed spectrum? And what band spectrum are you using for your solutions?
The answer that is yes. We use all of that. However, what has happened in Phoenix is if you're using power, GA licenses, for those of you don't know it, the CBR s band is a 3.5 to 3.65 gigahertz, the there are 1510 megahertz channels that we get to share. Eight of them however, have been purchased by various carriers. And that spectrum when I say it's shared, basically when your radio turns on, it talks to a database or and says you can't use the channel in this direction over this area in the idea was to avoid interference. Here's the reality, the database doesn't work. We had CBRs and Phoenix, and in the last 30 days, it just got crunched there is no free spectrum for CB Rs in Phoenix metro area any longer. We've actually just got done pulling down all of our, our our CB RS radios, in remote areas, it's still great and it will continue to work just fine. However, the FCC opened up another 1200 Meg's of spectrum in the six gigahertz band. And we're we have a lot of equipment in those in those bands. But the wireless industry is using 60 gigahertz, 70 gigahertz, 80 gigahertz and obviously all licensed spectrum. So we use everything, whatever works the best in that area. We're very vendor agnostic in that, in that play. The sad part though, is the majority of unlicensed equipment is going to end up moving towards Tirana in the short term, because right now they're the big gun, and they're also the most expensive buy multiples over what we currently use. But if you don't if you're not at least playing in that field, you're going to have some problems. So if anybody wants to talk about that offline, there's there's a lot of stuff going on in that area
when when the the you know the major cellphone providers you know Verizon T Mobile at and either using these 5g Fixed wireless solutions now that households right, so what
Yeah, so rather using their licensed spectrum
Yeah. out. And so how would you compete with them in terms of cost and bandwidth. And, oh,
man, you're letting out my Black Friday special. So we actually have a $50 $50.50 meg package coming out this next week for Black Friday. So that's how we compete with them on the lower end. But we actually have in all of those areas, we have significantly more capacity than that. So like I say, we're we've got up to two gigabits per second in certain areas.
With that the unlicensed wireless and you're, you're doing something different than they are,
they use licensed spectrum that they paid billions of dollars for. But it's very narrow band in the sense that it's, they paid for it in 10 meg sections, there are only allowed, I think up to four in any in any area, two or four channels. And they're very good at making that work efficiently. The reality is, we saw when COVID hit, we saw a 400% increase in bandwidth. If anybody here had cell phones or had Apple phones back when AT and T first came, did the video, video conferencing on the Apple phone and at&t was the only carrier. They that network got crushed. And it took several years for the carriers to get sufficient bandwidth to even had that application win because so many people are now working at home or or remotely learning bandwidth utilization went up 400%, in 30 days, when COVID hit, as soon as everybody got pushed all our bandwidth requirements went nuts. That has not slowed down as a rate in terms of how much bandwidth we delivered today. And we're seeing we used to see 20% increase every year of how much bandwidth we had to provide. We're now seeing 100%. And so I cellphone companies are gonna have a hard, you know, they have they're having a hard time keeping up, they're building out, but they're still going to have a hard time keeping up with bandwidth requirements. With their limited spectrum, basically.
Several you're using unlicensed spectrum that Can you can you deploy that in metro areas with without issues that you
Oh, yeah, we can we can deliver hundreds and we can do two gigabits per second and unlicensed in the middle of Phoenix, and there's
no regulatory controls on that about whether it's unlicensed or now.
Now, but for the This is Mark, but for bead a, they have deemed unlicensed to be unreliable. Are you expecting states to in any way wave that or will the only fixed wireless access funded under bead have to be in licensed spectrum?
Actually, ironically, this there's several states Alabama, Texas, I think Texas all to confirm it, but they're actually opening up on license because it's not unreliable. I mean, Mark, you worked with Tirana, you know, unreliable technology, whether it's licensed or unlicensed at this point, I
absolutely agree. ends on the implementation and quality implementation on unlicensed is fine to me, but we'll be programs
allow for it. We I've been told that some of the states, and I'm getting this from our colleagues that they're basically telling the FCC, you know, stay out of this in that they're allowing the states themselves are going to under some condition. And Karen, you might be able to tell more about this, but there are some loopholes that the states are going to let him use on license. Bottom line. There's not enough spectrum and CBRs is the problem. Not for the speeds for the basic speed 100 Meg, there is not in metro Phoenix but in remote areas. But for Did you know, I really I'm seeing is that states are finding a way around this to be able to use unlicensed spectrum. I
certainly hope so. But even though CBRs is what I would call lightly license the GAA if you don't have a license, but you're just using the allocation servers to get a channel. My understanding was that was considered unlicensed use in CBR s unless you were paying for the next year up.
Actually I think they cleared that Mark I think and as far as I know and look man, you know more about this. The GAA is okay and CBRs gets outside that spectrum that there's having issues.
Okay, that's a surprise. But let's run that one to ground, that would be an important difference.
Yeah, I, I'm under the impression that it's okay to use it. But I might be wrong. I mean, I'm not the I'm not the regulatory expert by any stretch.
But I am hoping there will be the flexibility for states to take exception and allow unlicensed spectrum, you know, with whatever performance requirements applied over it, because it's silly. The way that they have discriminated against unlicensed spectrum in the general bead regulations. Um,
why don't they license this spectrum? That's currently unlicensed. What's the reason they don't,
it's not, it's not subject to auction. It's not, it's not developed in that way. If they they put a big swath of six gigahertz shifts, like for Wi Fi, there's unregulated bandwidth, a 2.5 and a five gigahertz. These are bands that are open and and arguably have brought great public benefit, because your Wi Fi routers don't need licensed spectrum, you know, so there's a there's a balance to be had between that. But the big swath of six gigahertz that Rory refers to is perfect. There is some other activity in there. But it's still a broad swath of broadband capable frequencies that are unlicensed, and that has advantages. So in CBR, s, it's kind of a mixed model, there's a a GA class of service, where you just have to pay $1, or two a month per customer for access to the geographic based services to allocate your channels. But that a surprise, Rory said that's been resolved. My previous exposure had been that that was considered unlicensed, though, if you had paid for priority use. You then had a license classification and CBRs. Now we're just
like, very saying you can deploy these fixed wireless solutions on this unlicensed spectrum to provide very high bandwidth. And at low costs quick deployments. Seems like the federal government should be looking at that licensing of the spectrum more carefully, if they want to be efficient in the way they use this beat money.
Yeah, but if you think about smaller ISPs, can they afford the lawyers and the participation in the very complex licensing that the FCC manages? When you declare a band license, then it's subject to auction. And you need teams of lawyers on your side to participate in those? Sorry, Karen, I think I cut you off, please. Yeah,
sorry, I was just trying to jump in, I think I cut you off mark. I just wanted to just allowed people to go back and look at Volume Two that was just recently posted. It does talk about the different types of technology and the story criteria. And so the state recognizes that fiber is a priority, those are stored as priority projects. However, knowing that we cannot cover the whole state with fiber and that fiber will be cost prohibitive. In a long section of the state, there will be wireless technology, and there is an option for a hybrid solution of licensed and unlicensed. So it is in volume two. So I encourage you all to go take a look at it. And then if you have any questions, I'm not the engineer, but Sandy, I'm sure will be happy to walk you through how the unlicensed and licensed technology works. So
good. So Karen, um, thank you jumped in. I actually just printed it out. I'm getting ready to vary through it. Can you maybe point to where that section is that?
Yes, while they the summary section, sub recipient selection boots multiple criteria is on page about page 50. Well, it's actually a little bit out higher than that. But it is requirements a sub recipient selection process. So I would read through that. And that's how the state is proposing to rate those applications for those applications, you know, when they come in, and then minus project areas have not yet been defined. And those will be defined by the time we open all of this up. So
do you have the flexibility? Like Mark was saying that you have the that CBRs were locked into licensed CBRs on wireless? Theoretically, so D? Are you saying that V now has the flexibility for the state on a state by state basis to be able to look at other technologies if the only option you have?
Yeah, so let me caution by saying this is the proposed Volume Two, it's been submitted to NTIA for a preview, NTIA still has to approve the approach that the state wants to take. So I don't want to say for sure that that's what the final outcome will be. But if you'd likely you've read through the selection criteria, it breaks it into two parts, priority projects, which are fiber, and then the non priority projects. And there will be a cost analysis done on you know, those areas that are just like I said, cost prohibitive to put fiber. And then the state will look at other technologies to serve those areas, because the mandate is to serve those underserved locations.
So here so here's the big question. If you can cover more areas with wireless versus fiber, is a target to get to a higher percentage of coverage? Or is its target to get fiber, and then just fill in where you can't get fiber that go above the threshold numbers that you picked?
So, you know, that's a really good question, where I think we have to wait to see what those applications look like there will be decisions made based on you know, the best solution for the state to give the coverage that we need. We are required to serve those under unserved locations, and then underserved locations. And as I said, the priority is fiber. But there will be a cost threshold line that's drawn based on all the analysis that's done. And then when it starts to bump above that line, they'll look at other alternatives. So it's still very fluid at this time those cost analysis have not been completed. So it's hard to say, you know, how it's going to shake out, you know, that these project areas in the state. And again, NTIA still has to approve this approach for the state.
So but but would you sacrifice funds used for 500 fiber customers to cover 5000 wireless customers?
Probably I can't answer that.
That's, that's what I try. Okay. That's okay. That's, you know, we'll see. All right. Thank you.
Yeah, that's yeah, like I said, That's not my call. But that is something that we would really like for you and others to submit in the comments, because you are the experts in your field. And so when you see things in that volume two, that you think there may be a better approach. Those are the kinds of comments that you know, we're looking for. Honestly,
it's to me, it's a financial calculation, it's number of users versus how much money you have. Anyway, thank you. Always fun to talk to you. A
couple quick things were so the governor's office does have their task force, and infrastructure is one of those teams. If you're not participating in that group, you can still open. So that's might be a good thing for you to bring up some discussion.
Can you forward information on that? I'd love to be on that. That panel, that group. Actually,
it's in. So this is for you and for John Kelly. John, you still there? Oh, you may be gone. But the job positions
are Steve.
So John, you asked about posting those job positions? Well, if you look in the email, the two emails actually I sent this week one announcing this meeting and also on the 21st that you'll find the links to those job positions. And then and then also Rory to your question that that information about the governor's task force. And being able to join that group is also in my email. So you'll find all those links and contacts, and all of that stuff in the emails that I've recently sent out. I
got it. Thank you, sir. You're bad.
So a couple votes. This
is Shemaiah. Are you able to send me that email since I just recently joined the group? I
will make sure that we also get you added to our email list. Okay, so So the other thing is the hash if I can put you on the spot for a minute, and you can choose to not be. But this, you know, you're kind of our AI guide here, particularly in this task force. If you have any thoughts about rotaries comments regarding AI.
Thanks, Steve. No, I don't I it's not because I don't have any comments is because I didn't I was in and out of the room. My volunteers. Okay.
But Rory, that might be somebody that you want to connect with. You
know, I did miss one thing Steve mentioned, it really does from passing. We are working with sun corridor. And we have started rolling out free internet to the Maryvale area. Mostly in one one small area that we're getting ready to expand it out for under their grant for 1000s of families across those areas. In fact, our fliers should be done here in a few days. So and that's that's Derek's project with the Woodson quarter. So yeah, I don't know why I skipped over that. My mistake. I think we actually have 20 active people, but we just did eight more yesterday, and they're scheduling. But I'll tell you one thing for the digital equity people. Here's what we ran into that caught us off guard 80% of the people we talked to did not speak English. That was our first thing. But we have multi language people in in house. The second thing is many people who don't speak English, are asking concerns that we're sharing this information with immigration. That was actually our biggest hurdle to get over. And we're still dealing with with that particular issue. So they're concerned that our data goes, you know, goes to the federal government.
So Rory, one of the things that I'm thinking I was kind of do it maybe the week after Thanksgiving, but maybe we'll wait a little bit is to actually convene a panel of ISPs and broadband providers to have a discussion about two things. One is the role of ISPs and broadband providers in digital inclusion, and what, what some, many of them are like you and others who are doing a lot in that space, and what can or should they be doing? And Mark maybe this is also a discussion for the provider group that you want to one. And related to that is cybersecurity. And what can a chip providers, what are they doing? What can they do? What should they be doing in that space, particularly as it relates to all the all the folks that you're like you were just talking about? So I'm thinking that a panel, because there's people Jenny, Jenny recognized, Jenny's online, and they're doing a lot in the space with digital inclusion, and you and a number of others. And so it's an to my, from my perspective, that's an important issue, and certainly something that we should look at with the digital inclusion plan. So anyway, that's that. So we need to move on because we're running out of time here pretty quickly. By the way, you're still there. He's still there.
She had to leave. Okay.
Cindy, you want to give us a quickie update?
Sure. Good morning, everyone. I'm Cindy Hogan. I'm the chair of the Arizona Digital Inclusion network. We meet we're meeting today at noon. And our topic, let me just pull it up. Our topic for today is we're going to be brainstorming as a group around public awareness, awareness, to be sure that our communities know how important digital inclusion work is. I still believe there are many who do not understand how our society and democracy are being impacted by the digital divide. And we're going to be looking for ideas about plain language ways to present our message. And so I will put if you want to attend that meeting I will put my my email in the chat so that you can call me you can contact me to get the link that's today from 12 to one, and our group meets every other to every other Thursday from 12 to one, so I'll put that all in the chat. Thank you.
Okay, any other different? John, did you have anything that you want to talk about with? With the legislature?
Oh, boy, not really. There's, I've had a lot of meetings with legislators over the last couple of weeks. And the more I know, the less I know. Well, we have an open congressional seat, we have at least one and possibly two members of legislature that want that seat. And one of those is a speaker of the house that can affect the schedule of the legislature, either negatively or positively, depending on your your perspective. I think last week we talked about the Arizona commerce authority is up for renewal. That will be a very hot topic, I discovered that Representative Michael carbone, who was honored last night at the Arizona Technology Council celebration of innovation is legislate or representative of the year will be carrying the bill to sponsor the continuation. He's a he's a fine legislator. Fine, fine, young fine, man. And so he'll be the source of our wisdom on this.
Hey, thanks, John. Mark, I see you put in the chat the telehealth and library session. That's happening today at noon. You want to comment on that at all?
Yes, Kirk on he should speak to that perhaps if
I don't think he was there today. Okay.
Sure. So, Kirk, under the big data southwest banner has a annual though it's moved around for the time of year that occurs. AI and a high performance computing and cloud and broadband related summit. The name varies a little is is outing good year on December 12. This year and all day event. It's Oh sorry. It's on the 13th. In good year, there's a golf tournament option on the 12th. And so there is a discount code for ATI AC and AC BSN for 50% off the I think it's $399. rack rate registration. So it's half off of that. And there will be a breakout session from the main program for a broadband provider convening on site at the conference so late in the afternoon. haven't quite finished arrangements for that.
Thank you all. Righty, any other announcements? Gabby, I know that you and I have had some conversations. You want to just talk briefly about who you are and looking represented. Well, thank
you, Steve. First of all, wonderful coordinator. Hello, everyone. I'm Gabriella Yan as and I work for Mr. Allen keel. Mr. keel is president of Certified Information Security. And if you've heard of Alan keel, and you've received one of my phone calls is pleased to meet you through zoom. And Steve Peters, thank you so much for your wonderful coordinator. Mr. keel, his company he is the designated source for the NIST cybersecurity framework lead implementer. And if you go to the Department of Homeland Security and sis says website, under their cybersecurity career initiatives, type in NIST cybersecurity, and Mr. keel will pop up. And if I if I can answer any of your questions, we'd be happy to do so just my phone number. I'll put it in the chat and my email and I look forward to getting better acquainted.
Great. Thank you, Gabby. And of course there might be somebody that you want to connect with. You're still there, man.
I'm here and absolutely, Steve.
Alrighty, any other announcements today? going once going, so Dave Miller. I didn't get your Introduce yourself. You tell people who you are pleased
that you're still there.
Okay, well, I'm going to stop recording. And if anybody wants to stay online
