December 12, 2024 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording
4:17PM Dec 13, 2024
Speakers:
Steve Peters
Ilana Lowery
Mark Goldstein
Erin Lorandos
John Kelly
Alexis Susdorf
EJ John
Kelly Krusee
Reid Sharkey
Keywords:
Digital Equity
capacity funding
application window
new website
tribal liaison
election results
broadband investment
workforce training
cybersecurity
non-terrestrial networks
satellite deployment
direct-to-device
state budget
infrastructure funding
telehealth access
No, my son, my son, my dog, seems to need some attention this morning. What side? Why? Come on, wow.
Mine heard it. Heard the conversation about doggos and needed to come join the meeting too.
Sorry about that.
Okay, let's go ahead and get started. We have anybody new who's joining us today? I don't think so.
Alrighty, well, so good morning, everybody. Glad to see you all today.
Gonna get just jump into the agenda. Here got some folks who may need to take off fairly soon today. So first of all, always like to thank our sponsors. Care. First Arizona, Karen Ziegler, Valley telecom. Kajeet and Triad Wireless, we appreciate your support and moving on to the agenda. Excuse me. So let's start with with Erin. Do you want to introduce yourself, Erin, and give us a quick update? And Kelly, hopefully we can hear from you also.
Yeah, definitely. I'll just be real quick and give all the time to Kelly, because I don't really have any updates. My name is Erin lorando, so I'm the Digital Equity program manager in the state broadband office, which is housed within the Arizona Commerce Authority. I get to guide the Digital Equity work here at the state level, which is exciting, but we are still in the process of waiting for final approval from our application for the just over $16 million in capacity funding, which we're anticipating from NTIA. This is the funding that will ultimately help us enact the Digital Equity plan. And so if folks haven't had a chance to look at that, that's available on our website, and I will give it to Kelly.
Okay, good morning Kelly, and drive safely.
Yes, I'm just waiting in line to get on the freeway, so it's perfect timing. Good morning everyone, and thanks, Steve and Erin. My name is Kelly cruci I'm the Community Engagement Manager for the state broadband office. Thanks, as always, for having us. I don't think I've got any new updates since last week. We did send out some email communications earlier this week. If you did not receive that, please put your email in the chat and I know to grab it and put it onto our contact list, but basically announcing that the our new website also, and the date change for the application window. So round one of applications, as you all are probably aware, will now open on January 6, and that is moved back from December 20. So now it will open after the holidays, and we are moving with a date of publishing the final project areas and all of the application guidance by December 23 so I think those are the main updates from our office. We're right now just prepping for that application window, all of the guidance documents, arranging all of our webinars. We will have some webinars for bead applicants to help them understand the portal and answer any technical questions. And we will also be offering weekly office hours, a webinar for Q and A, again, all technical information, nothing about procurement, but just about the application and then the technical aspects of that. So that will be ongoing during the application window as well. And I think that's it for our updates, unless Erin is going to let me know I'm missing anything, but I think that's it.
I really don't think you are. But. Just so you're aware, since you're driving, I put links in the chat to the new website, both the bead and de pages, where you can see all that pre registration and timeline information that Kelly went over to.
Oh, and yes, thank you for that. And we did do a quick little demo earlier this week for the new website, just so you all know, when you go to that website, there are and you click on initiative, and if you go to bead or Digital Equity, there are tabs on the page. So there you can find the webinars. You can find the recordings of all of our webinars, and that demo will be put up on the the webinar tab as well. So pay attention to those tabs on each of the initiative pages, and you'll find all the information you need there.
So Kelly, I think I sent out the notice about the new website, but is there a possibility we haven't if you're going to be here next week, maybe you could do a little demo about the new website.
I will actually not be here next Thursday, but I can send the video out. I can send you the link to video. See, you can definitely share that with everyone. Sure. Okay, yeah, apologies, Thursday next week, but happy to share that video. It's like 20 minutes, and I can make a little guide as far as far as, like, what you know is, at what point in time, you know, the B page is here, de page here. So I'll try and make it very helpful so you don't have to watch all 19 minutes.
Sounds good and and just FYI, what couple of things while we're talking about this is that, of course, next week will be our last week, and our last meeting until January, right Christmas, New Year's and so forth. So we'll be looking at a number of things after the first of the year. But anyway, so Kelly, thank you so much for being here. And Erin, for you to be here, also you've been pretty regularly here with us. We appreciate it.
I just thought of one other thing, actually, if, if I can, and thank you for that. Yes, this is the way I start my Thursdays, and I have for over two years. So thank you so much. Um, so I just wanted to also mention that ACA has filled the tribal liaison position. I am not like introducing the person. We'll get them here, you know, in their time, but I just wanted to let the group know that. So there's a contact, and EJ, in his position, has met our new travel liaison, and we're making those connections, but it's, you know, early days for for that person in their role. So that's that's on the on the future conversations as well.
Sounds good. Thanks. And I also want to remind everybody about two things. One is, you're all receiving my email and my newsletter, and I try to capture everything, every all the announcements and include all the links in my newsletter on a regular basis and second, and of course, along with that, that I do, send out the The recording and chat and all that sort of stuff. But again, if you're if you're interested in capturing anything that was talked about and included in the chat, that you can download the chat. If you go to chat into the chat, and you go to the top, you'll see three dots or three ellipses, and if you click on that, you can download the chat to your computer. So I just want to remind people about that, because sometimes it's hard to keep up with who spoke about what, that sort of thing. So anyway, that's that I haven't checked yet. Nicole, were you online? By chance doesn't sound like it, okay. Well, let's just get into our presentations this morning. Reid, you want to go first or EJ, are you in a hurry? You're going to need to leave? No, I got time. Okay, so let's put Reid on first. Reid is the community broad broadband specialist, research associate at the Benton Institute for broadband and society. And really appreciate Reed being here, since he is actually in the UK with his with his special person. And so appreciate Reed being here, among other things, read, recently released a report talking about the election and and Arizona. So with that read, I'm going to turn it over to you and. And let you do your thing.
Sure. Thank you, Steve.
You need to share anything? No,
I'm good. I'll, I'll drop the link to the article in the in the chat right there. But other than that, I'm, I'm good. Okay, so thanks everyone. And I spoke probably about a month or well, more than a month ago now, yeah, a month and a half ago when I published the first article me and one other writing associate at the bend Institute, Zoe Walker, looked at a few states in the lead up to the election, and looked at how candidates were talking about broadband, what their platforms were, you know, up and down the ballot, whether in close races, or at least, that's how I approached in Arizona, was looking at the close races that were on the ballot in the state. So that ended up being in the first article, Gallego Lake Senate race and then House races in the first, fifth and sixth. I believe in the oh, just the first and sixth, excuse me. And as a result of that first call that I was able to come on and speak someone in the chat. I don't remember who, but I'm thankful pointing out that the second district, I think, during the time of my writing that first article, a poll came out showing that it was a pretty close race between the incumbent Eli crane and Jonathan Nez, and that ended up going for crane, but much closer than, I think originally it was thought to be, much thought to be a much, Much stronger district for Republicans than it ended up being, but I included that race in the follow up article. So this second article, which I posted in the chat is much of a lot of the same information, but a lot of new information as well. Post election, kind of some of the outcomes, and just goes with Benton's overall post election coverage about what election results from the federal, state and local level are going to look like for implementation of some of the larger broadband programs. So I won't make any broad, sweeping predictions about how any of the programs are going to be carried out, how they're going to be affected, if they're going to be affected by the incoming administration and the incoming Congress. But it's worthwhile to note what candidates said, in the run up to the into the to their election, any voting history that they had in their time in Congress or in a state house. So I think it's valuable coverage.
I'll read just just I probably told you this, that I've been basically when we've been talking about doing these updates, but I basically said, what do we know? What do we think we know, and what don't we know? And obviously it's going to be changing from day to day in the next few months.
Yeah, sorry, exactly No, and that's good point. I mean, it's, it's a lot of we were learning what we don't know as we go and yeah, just say that to say I'm not, I'm not smart enough to make any broad predictions or about about what is going to happen, but in terms of Arizona after The election, so yeah, briefly run through the article, and obviously run through the election results, which everyone knows, but at the top, spoke about Gallegos win and his of all of the candidates covered in these races, he has the most articulated positions on broadband and has endorsements to follow it. I think he has endorsements from several labor unions. The IBEW is one of them, and they cite his support and authorship of some broadband provisions in the bead or in the IJ and and other programs, as you know, part of their the reason why they support him other areas where, particularly the Democrats made a. Big part of all of their campaigns in Arizona, I think, was voicing support for tribal investment in broadband. All the candidates I covered especially well, especially Gallego and Jonathan Nez, who was cranes challenger in the second district, made large appeals to thanking and praising the investments of the i, j A in travel, broadband, and, you know, advocating for more. And I think that is a strong, a strong, strong position where you know, some other areas you know, candidates have not made as a clear declarations in terms of the Republican Party. I think we saw this across many states where in especially in House races, where candidates were jumping on some of the more high profile members of the party, their messages attacking the bead and de programs, Ted Cruz, obviously making Many of those tax and the FCC commissioner as well, making some of the or not the commissioner, excuse me, the result, I think, of of those attacks, is yet to be seen. We drew Garner and Kevin tagling have been covering Ted Cruz's letters to NTIA extensively, and are doing a lot of work on understanding what that's going to mean. But it seems especially, especially in Arizona, the House districts covered in this article, they were on board with with those statements, and those members, being Schweickart and siskimami and crane all in various statements, whether it be on X or formal campaign releases attacking the bead and de investments, Schweikert actually probably had the most interesting criticism of the bead program going as far to argue for satellite based Wi Fi mesh networks, which was a new Proposal. He did this on the House floor in September, arguing that bead networks are over subsidizing rural areas, and that satellite services like Starlink could be used to feed receivers and then move that signal through. Know what we would typically think of as like a rural or an urban network, mesh network, to do the same in a rural area from low Earth orbit satellites, and obviously much in representative schweikers opinion, that would be much cheaper than the bead program. Finally, in the second district, which I've hinted at, the upset of Jonathan Nez was avoided by Eli crane. Second District, I think was really interesting. And I'm glad that it was pointed out that it was a closer race than I had initially seen, because it's, you know, massive, the largest in Arizona, going all the way down south of Phoenix, all the way to the northern most parts of the state, which are obviously most rural parts of the state. And I think there's a large going back to the tribal investment piece, there's kind of a large discrepancy in the the views of representative crane and Jonathan nez. Nez making history as the first Native American congressional candidate to advance past the primaries for a house challenger. He made many statements and about his striving for improved infrastructure on tribal lands where Eli crane is far less inclined to make the same the same statements, far less inclined to advocate for infrastructure investments in rural areas and on tribal regions. Like I said, the future of the bead program. Think will largely depend on the choices that these newly elected members make, and if the administration, with what we're hearing, is going to actually take steps to try and claw back or make any sort of changes for states to change the ways that they're planning to implement funding. But in Arizona, in the house, it seems that those concerns and positions are they have won out in the in the close races, the toss up races in the state, whereas Ruben Gallego is the main detractor in this article from those from those positions. And I would just if welcome any questions or takeaways from this that people think I missed, misrepresented things that need to be added, like last time I was really, really pleased with the input that I
that I received.
I Okay, any comments or thoughts for Reid questions?
Read Mark Goldstein, I know we can't make predictions, rightly so. But what do you feel the sympathies might be towards some sort of ACP program coming back under the new Congress and administration.
Yeah, I can't this. This would be a good place for my I mentioned Garner. He's done a lot more work than I have on ACP advocacy. I'm not sure. I think a lot of the smart people that I've been listening to and talking to about ACP and what is going to happen to affordability in the next four years have been turning to the States. I think the advocacy community is looking towards the states, because the federal landscape, at least at this moment, looks shakier in terms of what an investment is going to be possible. So looking to state budgets to see if there's any room or will for new programs at more local levels, as opposed to a national level program.
Thanks. Understand, Ilana,
I don't. I don't even sure that's that's a true question. I hear the same things, and I know that this the state conversation. Obviously, there's a lot more you can there's a lot more freedom for steps to be taken there. Then there's the USF working group that everyone, I think everyone, knows about in Congress, that, you know, says they're going to produce something in the next week. And then, you know, years go by, so I'm not sure if that's going to happen, but I think, yeah, you're right. It could, it could happen, and that would be a way to, you know, not require a entirely new program to be funded or legislated.
So read a couple of things. So I had a note from Mala this morning. She's attending the AGO, she's online, attending the National Conference, talking about what to expect with with the new administration. And she sent me a note that that Alan Davidson, Tia administrator is going to be stepping down. So we know for sure. So we know he's going to be out. We know that the FCC chair is out, and they're going to be and there's a new FCC chair happening, and who knows what? What else to expect? Ilana, you want to ask your question?
I have a lot of questions. Which one
go ahead.
You mean, oh no, Drew, I mean, sorry, read, Yeah, you're good. I have talked to Drew about the USF stuff, and read is right. I mean, the working group is barely a working group anymore, like they're not really doing anything. And. This month. So I don't foresee anything like that coming down the pipe.
Excuse me, Ilana, can you explain what that rookie group is for people who may not know
what Reid was just talking about it. There's a USF reform Working Group Universal Service Fund, which is, you know, it does need to be reformed right now, the funding for it is coming out of landline dollars, which, you know, we all know is kind of stupid at this point, just to be honest. So, yeah, no, I mean the question that I have it in chat, Steve Reed already answered. So we don't know. We don't know, and we can't predict what's going to happen. I do have a question though, about like, looking to the states for something with an ACP like program, I find that to be probably extremely difficult for many states, because, like California, for example, they don't have anything in their budget that says, you know, whatever. And probably neither does Arizona, for that matter. So I find it really interesting that, again, we're in a situation where there's going to be, you know, the have and the have nots, right? Some, some states might be able to do a little something around it, but it's going to take a lot of work, and I don't know that. I just, I just don't see that happening. So I guess my question is, how, how? How can states provide an ACP like benefit to their, you know, to their residents? I just, I just don't, I don't see how that is even possible. It's a nice thing to do if you know, right? Yeah, that's my question. Like, like, do we really think that's gonna happen? I
yeah, I think it's, you know, incredibly unlikely in most states, if not all states. And I think maybe it's just a way to try something new people. If you get move momentum in a, you know, a state house that is a little bit more, you know, willing to take some of those conversations up, maybe it generates a forum for advocacy. But I think you're right, and the only state New York, I think, is the main state that has any sort of program for affordability outside of the bead affordability Prems plans, statewide affordability plan, which I think is under legal scrutiny at the moment, correct? So I think, you know, the solution ultimately has to lie at the federal level. I don't think that's a far reach to say Yeah, and I hope that there's opportunity in the next Congress to make another push now that the program is, you know, lapsed completely so, but yeah, and I that's fair criticism on the on the states, the state suggestion, because budgets are tight as it is, and they're going to become tighter likely. So, yeah, understood.
I'm sorry. Go ahead. Ilana, no, I was going to say Steve Helen asked a question in the chat about Digital Equity and ACP falling under these requirements. And I think the answer is no, Was that correct?
I think so as well.
So a good transition to read. Thank you so much. And there may be more questions, but a good transition. John Kelly, you still there? I Yes, sir. So John, you want to talk about Arizona?
Do I want to talk about Arizona? Sure, I'd love to talk about Arizona. So
I introduce yourself. Sure. John
Kelly, I'm Principal with tri advocates, the government relations consulting firm focused on Arizona. So I read very good analysis on your end. I appreciate both what you said and what you haven't said. That's a great way to present on this. Yeah, we're still figuring it out. Right now, I think the legislators are still figuring out what they want to do. Let's think for the first part about the fiscal situation facing the state, we do not have a huge budget deficit, nor do we have a huge budget surplus. So we're kind of, what I've described in some presentations as man on the budget, kind of, you know, not good, not bad, but not a lot of room for restoring things. Things that a lot of people need. The universities got hurt pretty badly last session. The community colleges got hurt pretty badly last session. Adult Ed got hurt pretty badly last session. There's a lot of need out there, and one of the biggest issues that the legislature is going to face in the first four to six weeks of the session is whether to refer to the ballot an extension of prop 123, which was passed 10 years ago, and that would continue the use of the state land trust fund to provide additional funding for K 12 education. And so the question now is whether that will be just a simple extension that will be sent to the ballot, probably in May, or are there going to be quote, unquote, enhancements to it? We can talk about what enhancements look like. So that's where the focus is. So I'll try to bridge back to what you're thinking about, which is, you know, broadband, ACP, other kinds of things. I think infrastructure has been fairly popular on a bipartisan basis. There's concerns and complaints about how money hasn't come out from the program. There's concerns and complaints about dei requirements in some of these federal programs that you're going to get hear some complaints about but I think if we keep our heads down and focus on delivering infrastructure capability to the rural areas, we're well positioned with key legislators and key areas to be supportive of that. I don't see a lot of expansive things like state level ACP, I think there's some philosophical discussions about whether affordable broadband should replace the need for ACP in time, but, but I do think we still have to continue this process of education, since about 17 of the legislators of the 90 coming in are brand New, have never held office in the legislature before another nine were appointed within the last 12 months, and others have been only there for one term. And this is a brand new situation, but I would remind everybody that we're about 695 days away from the next election, and so the election is already relevant.
Okay, thanks, John. Any questions for John? Any questions for Reid or or John, before we move on?
Hey, this is Alexis EFF. I actually have a question for Reid. Um, you don't want you know, when you and I do a lot of state level work, similar to John, but on the the federal side, you know, it's interesting to hear some of the dynamic that you shared and wrote on, you know, specifically, some of the more conservative voices on this issue. You know, it is equally interesting in getting to my question, we certainly didn't do any assistance with bead as an acronym, right? Some of those words can be really triggering to Republicans, right? So you know, just that, in a basic sense, is, I think, why it heightened equities, right? The evil word of equity, even though, you know, not as evil as some would think. I want my children to understand the value of equity. But so getting to my question, is there any in your conversations like bead is workforce? Bead is, you know, connecting individuals in in workforce situations. Bead is education and connecting students to education opportunities. And these are all Republican dialect, right? They are concerned about the educational gaps. This is a way to address this. They're concerned about America not having workforce this is a way to address it. So just sort of in your research and conversations. Is there any way to pivot to that? Or do you think we're just so deep and bead is bad that that's that's not even possible?
Yeah, and I appreciate your question and that observation, I think it's hard now, because they've those who are, you know, seeking to attack the program have done such, you know, kind of a good job at pushing this message that we've allocated 42 and a half billion dollars, and none of it has been spent, obviously, on its face that, or, you know, to many of us here, that's, it's obvious to us that that's a nonsense argument, because it was never supposed to be spent in three years. You know, it was always. Going to be a decade long investment. But I think that for whatever reason, that message really took hold, and that when I in that I'm sure at least two or three of the places where I cite the Arizona Republican Congress members attacking the program. It's quote tweeting the, I think it's from, I think it's a cruise tweet, but it could be another high ranking Republican, you know, talking about how three years on and not $1 has been spent, or adult, you know, billions of dollars have been spent, but not a shovel has a, you know, broken ground. So I think everything we can do to shift the narrative away from that and talk about how it's not it was never one, it was never going to be done. Now, that's just sort of not how any of this works. And you can ask any expert at any big ISP, but that's just not how, even if they were given free rein, which, you know, they wouldn't build in these rural areas Anyways, if they had free reign, they it wouldn't. It would take longer than than three years if they were able to start digging on day one. But I think you're right shifting towards things like access to telehealth in rural areas, access to e commerce in rural areas. You know, improved workforce training for you know, recently retired veterans who will want to re enter the workforce. Those are all winning messages, as I you know, from where I sit, we just did a report with the Veterans Affairs, their telehealth office, going through all of the state Digital Equity plans and how the state Digital Equity plans are, are treating veterans as a covered population in each state, and kind of the the broad strategies that have come out from those and that you know, focused on the things that you you mentioned, is giving access in rural areas, providing Workforce Solutions, telehealth, you know, and providing solutions to you know, not not just what we typically think of as you know, blue populations, the urban population centers, but also rural residents, and, you know, folks that are typically viewed as, you know, Republican segments of the population. So I think you're right. It's just important that we don't get bogged down by those attacks and say, Hey, this is, you know, every dollar that bead is spending is $1 that wouldn't have been spent by private investment, and that's why this program exists.
Any other questions or comments questions for Reid or John, for that matter. So I want to just comment about a couple of things, and this is my opinion more than anything, but I think that, particularly in today's environment, that I think we have to be looking at, not expecting government to fund Digital Equity programs, except in local government. And I think we need to be looking at, we've got, you know, a few examples, Pima County and others here, who are have stepped up to provide to address some of the Digital Equity issues. But I do think we're going to have to be looking at different options, of not expecting the federal government at this stage indicate to provide a lot of funding. So I do think, and I've said this many times, that we need to look at other sources of funds and create a mechanism in this state to be able to really recruit foundations, corporate funding and so forth to support Digital Equity, if no other reason that the Digital Equity money we're going to get is really very limited, and we need to have sustainability after that money's gone and it's still only going to address a small, limited number, limited research ability to. Address that issue with the state. So I do think that we need to have some other solution to addressing not expecting the federal government to address that. So I'm sorry. Lana, what did you What are you saying?
Well, I'm just, you know from our work as a nonprofit, I can tell you that nonprofits are spread pretty thin, and have been since COVID When they were shifting all of their funding to rapid response, they've not recovered in a lot of areas, and in other areas they've just shifted what they're funding. And so I can tell you, just from the foundations that I deal with, it's a hard it's going to be a hard sell, because they will fund programs. And so if there's a specific program that a specific like nonprofit is suggesting or wanting to do, they might fund that. But it's it's really hard to paint, to paint that broad brush and say, Let's go to foundations and ask them for money for this. Because, I mean, it has to be very specific. Like, it can't just be, quote, unquote, Digital Equity or Digital Inclusion. It's gotta be, you know, they want a specific program to fund, and they want, you know? So it's just, I'm just saying, Steve, I don't know so much about the corporate foundations, you know, but, yeah, the Intels of the world and all of that, they all have corporate foundations, and we could go to them for money, because it makes sense, right? Like, people can't use their people can't use their product if they're not connected. People can't use their products if they're not, you know, computer literate and all of that. So I just, I think that that's a strategy that really has to be thought through before we say, well, let's just go to foundations and have them and have them fund Digital Equity. I don't really think they work that way.
So Well, I would agree Ilana, that we can't just say, well, just give us money for Digital Equity. That we would need to have a clear strategy, just like we theoretically have a Digital Equity plan for the state right now, that we will need to have some kind of a plan specifically outlining what it is that that money would be used for. So I think we've got, in my opinion, that I think we need to, we've got to find some other solution, and we've got to figure it out otherwise, I think that local, particularly the smaller organizations, are really going to struggle trying to to address the Digital Equity issue. Anyway. What else any other comments before we move on? Going once, going twice? Okay, thank you, Reed. Great appreciate you being here. Enjoyed your stay in in the UK with your significant other, and we'll hopefully see you on your available. Yep,
absolutely. Thank you all very much. You bet. So
let's move on to our next update and welcome EJ John, most of you know that he was with the American policy his American policy institute, American Indian policy institute at ASU. I hope I got that right. EJ, and he has now moved on to the governor's office, so I'm going to just turn it over to ej, he's new on the job. He'll tell you that, but he's going to give us a quickie about what his job is going to be. So with that, EJ, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Thank you. Yeah, and really appreciate the presentation and the conversation, really interesting and really informative. But yeah, good morning everyone. My name is EJ, John. A lot of you might have seen me on other meetings and stuff over the last year or so. Used to work at the Indian policy institute, American Indian policy institute, over at ASU, working on tribal broadband, but I moved here to the governor's office on tribal relations. And I'm still working on tribal broadband, but looking at it from kind of a more holistic view of not only the infrastructure, but also how connecting tribal communities contributes to economic development, community development, looking on how that affects workforce and education and health care and things like that, to try and help tribes reach their overall goals of getting more connected to benefit their communities. So to that end, I'm here to help with the broadband office, assist the state broadband office and their efforts to implement the different programs like bead and Digital Equity, and also here to work with some of the tribes that have already reached out to the governor's office about their projects and their initiatives and. Um, yeah, just kind of covering all things tribal broadband and infrastructure and workforce. So a little broader of a view than what I did at a IPA, but I'm still very much focused on broadband and Digital Equity, so I don't have a presentation or any slides or anything. I kind of just wanted to reintroduce myself and let you all know about my new role here. And just want to let you all know that I'm here to help you all out, or you can reach out to me if you have any questions or comments. I think Steve put my contact on the meeting agenda for today, so you can go and reach, reach me there. But yeah, I'm just here to to continue working on connecting tribal communities.
So EJ, what's your perspective on how the tribes are trying to work with and implement bead?
So for tribes, a lot of that is going to depend on kind of the details of how these service areas kind of pan out. And I think pretty much the idea from the state broadband office is going to be that tribes are going to be their own project areas. So under that, tribes will be able to figure out how they want to approach their project areas, whether they want to implement something through their own tribal entity, maybe their own tribal ISP, or work with the outside company to get that done right now, it's just a lot of, you know, educating and communicating with triad communities about how they want to approach that exactly. So trying to get all that work done before all the deadlines coming up too is going to be important. So I think tribes that are kind of already involved in building networks, and who are already working with pots of money that are out there are kind of proactive. So we just want to make sure that all the tribes who are able to participate in these programs, you know, are giving as much leeway, as much notice, and, you know, as much help that we can give them from our office to make sure that they participate.
Okay, any questions or comments for EJ, going once, going twice. Well. EJ, we always appreciate your participation. You are certainly pretty regular, regular when attending our meetings, and hopefully that will be the case again. One thing, EJ, and it's not related specifically to to the Indian community, but the governor has created a workforce Council, and I was trying to find out who is leading that, and how we can get that person to come meet with us. I don't know if that's something you can help with or or not.
Um, I haven't talked with anybody about the workforce Council yet, but I'm sure that I will probably connect with them in the next couple of days or so. So, yeah, once, once I get some more information on that, I can definitely
give you an update. Be great. Hey, Steve. This is John the workforce Council has been around for a long time. There's a well established website with a point of contact, but the innovation under the governor hubs is she's created this workforce cabinet, and
it's they've had, actually, that's what I was referring to.
They've had their first meeting, and Ian O'Grady in the governor's office has presented to groups on where what it is, where it's going, and to give updates. So if you want to, I think Ian might be the best contact for you. Do
you have that contact? John? I do. Can you let's talk offline? If you can maybe help facilitate that, I'd appreciate it absolutely. Sounds good. Okay, so I think we're at a point now of just, are there any questions, comments or other announcements that people have about things coming up? Of course, the holidays are are approaching, but any other comments, thoughts at this point, announcements, events. Don't everybody speak at once.
Uh, Steve Mark Goldstein, one or two things. So last night, I did give my mega satellite deep dive to Jerry Crow's IEEE group. We had about three dozen people online for that, and quite a few from industry and university researchers and others. Was impressed by the attendance. So that deck is available as a PDF to download almost 200 slides. So it's fairly well organized around launch capabilities or broadband or Earth observation or cyber security and space and so on. So the link is in the chat along with a brief description I know you'll probably embed that in the next. Newsletter also, ATIC did hold what I would deem a successful broadband provider working group meeting at Kirk Busch's Big Data southwest AI and data center conference last week. We had about a dozen people in the room and about another eight or 10 online good interaction from Susan Bitter Smith, Doc weddinger, Heather Boyd, Rory Conway, so a good core of some broadband providers representing different industry segments. I do have a recording of that that I'll see about putting up somewhere for post event access.
Thanks, Mark. Mark, do you want to hit any highlights? Any I know there's a lot of stuff, and I know you get into a lot of detail, but if you want to get any highlights about your presentation yesterday, I don't know why I had it in my brain that your presentation was tomorrow instead of yesterday. So I missed, I missed that. I apologize.
Sure. I mean the big transformation and launch capability. In the old days, one satellite would go up on one rocket. And there were years, there were, you know, only handfuls of rocket launches, 10, 1214, years ago. And so satellite deployment was really limited by launch capabilities now with reusable booster stages and other elements, and just an explosion on the commercial side. And the ability for these larger rockets like SpaceX is Falcon nine, and now coming online, they're they're Falcon Heavy. You can send up 60 satellites at once, even a mix of different kinds of satellites, you can send up 20 Starlink and 20 small stats and this and that. So what we're seeing now is close to 10,000 active satellites as of the end of last year, probably 12 or 13,000 the end of this year, predominantly, they're going into Leo, low Earth orbit constellations, Starlink at this point. But project Kuiper, Amazon programs coming online, and there's one web so there's three big players and several other wannabes in the broadband Leo space. But also the parallel trend now is that these LEO satellites are being equipped with vast arrays of small, planar antennas, little round disk antennas on large arrays that can beam five well, that can beam mobile to mobile phones on the planet. We've talked about that in this meeting before. It's more commonly called direct to device, direct to cellular, direct to mobile. And there are several plays. There is Starlink that has their T Mobile partnership and is being authorized for text to be followed by voice and data. There's as T Mobile that is partnered with Verizon and AT and T in the US Vodafone internationally. There's an apple play with a company called global star. So there's four or five efforts at cellular, global cell phone coverage, which will have very limited bandwidth for the data side, but give full text voice and limited data across the planet. So those are a couple highlights, the broadband constellations and the direct to disk capabilities coming online. Great.
Actually, those are pretty important things. So thank you, Mark. Appreciate that. And I'm sorry, did you say that presentation is going to be available somewhere. It's
already available. The link is in the chat. It's on Slide Share. You can download the PDF there with free registration of their site. Sounds
good. Thanks. Mark. Any other announcements? Brian, do you want to make any comments about what Mark was just talking about?
No, I think he pretty well covered it. You know, there's a lot of work going on in the standards, what's broadly known as non terrestrial networks, and that's for supporting direct to device and and, you know, that's, that's definitely the future that we're going to see. 6g has ubiquitous Connect. Video is part of one of its use cases. So integration and interoperability between non terrestrial networks and terrestrial networks is going to be inherent. As far as 6g i think you covered it, right? You know, as far as our company, we, you know, it's, we've we've announced we're working with AST, we've already demonstrated direct to device capabilities. And the good news on that is, it's, it's your regular handset that you have today. It's no special handset needed, no special, you know, antennas or anything needed. It's, it's, it's, it's, direct to the device you have today. So we'll look forward to that over the next several years, as that matures and
apologies. Bryan was a fifth provider AT and T that did speak at the broadband provider Working Group. Sorry you were you were there, no probably. And do appreciate that, Bryan. Thank you. Sure.
And Bryan is with AT and T by the way. Yeah. Okay, anybody have anything else that they want to John Haas, didn't you just have a
say that? Steve, I was there, so I was going to ask John if he wanted to talk about the CISA DHS conference yesterday. Yep,
John. John, are you there? John, are you there? Well, he's there, but not there. Anthony, do you have anything you want to update us on with the State Library? Do you
want to hear about the conference
I was struggling to find the the audio button John has here, yeah, yeah. We did have a great meeting. People flew out from the Fed federal DHS and CISA, and then we had the Arizona group there. So we had about 50 folks representing a lot of different places. Mojave was there local towns, but some people from further away, a lot of good information, and they will be sending out documents. So if anyone is interested, oh, hey, and somebody even got a list of the people already.
Good job. Hey, John.
Oh, thanks. So these were some of the folks, and we have the information about their backgrounds, the of the folks that spoke, so it was, I think, well done, and we enjoyed it. We'll be doing another and we'll do another tabletop exercise in the spring to follow up from what we did in November. Because people are, I think, hungry for knowing what are the resources and how do we use them, and who do we communicate with? So great networking events. And thanks, Ilana for sharing all that information.
So Ilana, do you want to share anything more about what the oh, excuse me, John, do you want to just tell people who you are and where you are
and Oh, sure. So I wear a few hats, but I was the host from Embry Riddle at Aeronautical University, the College of Business, Security and Intelligence, and then started the cyber intelligence and security program now, 12 years ago, if you can believe it,
right? Thanks, John,
right, that's right, the first and only,
yeah, so Steve The so there's also another conference tomorrow, the state of cyber security for Arizona, which I can also talk to but it was yesterday's session that John mentioned was super interesting, obviously, being with common sense. I was there, you know, to listen to folks talking about personal cyber security or cyber hygiene. I mean, there's lots of ways to look at it, but, you know, the one, I think, the one message that was clear with all of those speakers that I put in the in the chat, was that it's really a matter of of human excuse me, it's the human element that is operating and controlling everything that we talk about when we talk about cybersecurity. So the idea of making sure that humans, that individuals, know how to protect themselves, how to protect the data of their their customers, their their their networks, etc, but, but teaching the individual is really what I saw as sort of a theme that went through the the whole the whole day, including hearing from the folks who run. Program that's called no to protect, which is a federal program that DHS runs, I was very interested in it, because the program really underscores the critical role that individual awareness and preparedness play in enhancing, you know, a community security against cyber threats, which ultimately contribute to a safer, digital environment. And so I just thought that was a super interesting session. And then the other session that I was really interested in was the cyber hygiene session that Kelly Hills did, and she talked just a little bit about, you know, the idea that, you know this is, you know, this is not just individual hackers playing around anymore. I mean, there are very organized enterprises that have been created to steal information, to gather data, to get into your network. And then she talked a little bit about some examples with some ransomware groups, you know, being an international crime syndicate that that you know, that they are aware of, you know, and they use ransomware and data theft for, you know, to profit off of. So it was just really interesting. And like I said, there's another event. I don't know if it's still open to people, but tomorrow, the state of Arizona and I'm looking to see if I have a link or something that I could share with everybody, but they are putting on a state of cyber so if I can find my information on that, I will, oh, wait, here it is. So it's the 2024, State of Arizona, cyber Summit, Summit. It's tomorrow, from like 7am to 4pm It's at the Hyatt Regency downtown. But I'm not sure. I think registration might be closed, but I can,
I saw a note about that today that registration is closed, but if somebody wants to attend, I think they can call contact Ryan Murray, about about, oh,
here, I here. I have a link. It's for nagon, so I'll put that in the chat if anybody still wants to go. And then I can also put in the chat an agenda, if anybody's interested, but it looks like it's going to be a full day. Um, Yep, yeah, so I'll put all that in the chat, but that that's, Oh, thanks, John, yeah. The no to protect for Homeland Security is was super, super interesting.
Okay, any other announcements? So two things, Paul, I owe you an apology. We were talking about having you talk today, and saw your note that you could do that next week. So let's definitely plan on that, and let's talk right afterwards, so I can get that nailed down and be done. And then John, maybe there's something you know we talk a lot about that we assume that everybody on this call knows everything they should be doing about cyber security. And so maybe there's some highlights of that conference that you might want to share with this group next week.
Can because the semester is over and I'll have my grades in on Sunday.
So is that a yes? Yes. Okay, so I'll talk with you also, and so we'll plan on you two guys, Paul and John, to do a little presentation tomorrow. I am going to Thursday, reach out to Ruben Gallegos office and see if we can get them to come to our meetings. As you know, we've had great support from Mark Kelly's office, but we need to hear from some of the other folks also. So with that, any other announcements Going once, going twice? Okay, I'm going to stop recording and.