July 10, 2025 AZBSN Digital Access Task Force Recording

2:29AM Jul 11, 2025

Speakers:

Steve Peters

Erin Lorandos

Paul Ross

Henry Goldberg

Vaughn Croft

Mitch Gorsen

David Krassa

Karla Morales

Bill D'Agostino

Randy Luening

Frank Martinez

Michael Kendall

Mike Rohrbach

Matt Coomes

Joseph Franell

Max Ivankovich

Skye Downing

Greg Wilson

Keywords:

Broadband access

digital inclusion

fiber optics

wireless ISPs

spectrum auction

unlicensed fixed wireless

broadband policy

infrastructure funding

digital divide

rural broadband

technology neutrality

affordability

state broadband offices

digital opportunity

cybersecurity.

I think I'm now combobulated. So good morning, everybody. Thank you. Those of you who showed up early and on time, thank you for being here early and on time, and want to go ahead and get started. So we have a few people, I think, who are new or that we've never really heard from. So Mike, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself again and just kind of give people a two minute overview of who you are and what you

do. Okay? Thank you very much. Really appreciate being part of it. I chair an organization with the letter CC, Lac. We are a research and development organization having developed an important information system app in which we track the activity of pairs of individuals, young people, who are instructing adults how to use technology in exchange for the creation of a conversation between generations. We're finding that more and more people recognize that this isolation that the digital world has created has also been a problem that is a mental health problem for the youth and an addiction that is now prevalent, and we feel that sea lag is one of the few organizations that we have seen that is actually dealing with the problem, rather than just saying, Oh, it's really awful. How much they the kids are concentrating. We hope that in our area, here in Tucson, we can find some partner organizations that are youth driven give us access to your youth, and let us begin a process locally of engaging and tracking those activity with qualitative data that we collect in the system. Thank you.

So Mike, you're actually in southern Arizona, aren't you? You're not in Tucson. Are

you? I am in Tucson. I upgraded from Bisbee.

Oh, interesting. I've known Mike for 30 some odd years, and he has been yelling about broadband, lack of availability of broadband, and being a long term advocate for the resources of of young people. So thank you, Mike. Let's see who else we got the who else is new here today. So Mike, you were home here last time. Mike Coombs, but you want to just tell people quickly who you are. Matt Coons, I'm sorry,

yes, yes, thank you. I'm with Ackerman Consulting Group and like, like, like you mentioned we've been here before and shared a little bit about our broadband Technical Assistance Grant and that we got. But we're we're serving Arizona and really working to drive and build that, that bridge with the the gap between rural communities and broadband. So thanks for having us, and it's always interesting to hear what everybody's doing to really work on that collectively. And I do want to give a quick shout out to Erin's message in the chat. I had not heard the 3030 rule, but I think I have to agree with her, so that's a good one as well.

Yeah, I love the comments you guys made. I am almost in wilderness here, actually, before I move on. So those of you who may have joined a couple minutes late, so as you know, I am on vacation. I am on a lake in Minnesota, and this cabin, I'm in a cabin that is over 100 years old, has no heating and no air conditioning, which most of the time we didn't need. And today it is raining and low as 67 when I woke up this morning, and it is now eight. Well, it'll be a high of 84 later today. So just to make you all jealous, so that's enough of that, right? I saw you shaking your head. Rick, let's see who else do we have? Joseph, you want to remind people again who you are? Yeah,

Joe, yeah, Joe frenell, with rural prosperity partners, we're actually part of the Ackerman team with that broadband technical assistance grant from the USDA. And we're a technical assistance firm. We're actually based out of Oregon, but doing work. In Arizona with the Ackerman group, right? So thank you.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Joseph and David, you're here again. I'm not going to ask you to introduce yourself again, but, but I did make see you. Maximilian, can you introduce yourself? Who are you? Please? Yeah, good

morning. So my name is Max Ivankovich. I'm the director of market planning and development for Wired fiber, and so our goal is to bring a more cost effective, reliable, faster broadband connection to greater Tucson.

Great. So glad. Glad to see you. Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, you bet. And anybody else that's new that I've missed. Well, I know she's not new, but Carla, it's good to see you. We don't see you very often.

Good morning, everyone. My apologies. Yes, it's been hectic, and it's going to continue to be hectic, but happy to be here this morning.

Well, I know you're you're very busy between the tech Council and being a governing board member for Pima Community College, and God knows what else you're engaged in. So appreciate

all the things, all the fun things.

Okay, sky, you have your hand raised.

Yeah. Just as a newbie. Hello, everyone. My name is Sky Downing, and I am pleased to have been invited by Steve to join you all in this meeting. I am the Deputy Director of Digital lift, formerly known as community Tech Network or CTN, and for those of you who are not familiar with what we do, digital lift believes that digital access is foundational for health opportunity and connected communities, and we partner with organizations across all sectors to deliver multilingual, community rooted Digital training programs that uplift individuals and strengthen systems. So our mission is to transform lives through digital access, education and empowerment, and we envision a world like all of you, where everyone can thrive through connectivity.

Great thanks, sky, and we're going to schedule sky. I should have done this weeks ago. So apologize, sky, but we're going to schedule sky to actually do a more in depth overview of the work that they're doing. So if did I miss anybody? That's new today.

You know what? Steve, good morning. Steve, go

ahead. I'm sorry. Who was, who was that? Somebody had a question there.

Hi, Steve. Just wanted to chime in as well. This is Greg Wilson with Pima Community College, and I'm a twin meeting, so I had to join join by phone. So good morning to everybody.

Well, good morning, Steve. What I was going to tell you we were so perfectly in sync, I was going to say I believe Pima Community College is on the line as well. So thank you, Greg, for joining. I'm glad that you're here.

Thank you, Carla, yeah, hey, Greg, long time. No, see, I know you're busy.

Yes, good to be back.

Yeah. So Greg, why don't you just take a couple of minutes and tell people you know what you're doing, you know who you are, what you're doing, and all the amazing stuff that's happening.

Sure. Well, like sky, right, Carla and all of us at the college, our mission is to help transform lives as well. And for those of you I haven't met yet, I am the Dean of Applied Technology, and that covers quite a few programs, including automation and robotics, aviation, for those of you who will be joining us tomorrow for the aerospace and defense gathering, as well as welding, machining, automotive, I could go on, but really just work with our faculty and Staff again to prepare students for either careers in industry, but we'll also be starting some entrepreneurship classes this fall. So for those students who want to start their own business, we do that too, and then, of course, we do a great job upskilling employees who are already working in industry. So glad to join again. It's been a long time. Steve, I went back through emails, so glad to just listen in and contribute

where we can. It has been a long time, and it's good to good to hear from you. He and I also, like many of you, go back, I don't know, probably 2030, years. Greg,

at least 20. Yes, yeah,

long time. And the new facility that you have, I haven't is pretty awesome, so I need to come back and kind of check out what's happening. You were just getting going at the time last time I was down there.

Actually, I'll offer to you and the group if you have not been. To the downtown campus. We give tours sometimes daily, but certainly we could set up a time for those of you who have not seen the Center of Excellence in Applied Technology, we'd be happy to show it off.

They also have an amazing automotive facility too. So Erin, you have your hand raised.

Yes. Hello everyone. Good morning. I was also on vacation last week, Steve, so I'm a little jealous of you that you're still on vacation. I need to say hi to everybody. My name is Erin Lorandos. I am giving an update today. I am no longer with the Arizona Commerce Authority as of the end of June. So I just wanted to say this to this group, since a lot of you probably have my Commerce Authority email address, if you email that one now, you're not going to get me. I don't have a new one to share with you yet, because I am resistant to put my personal information out there. But currently the phone number that you probably have for me, which I'll put in the chat still works. So if anyone needs to speak to me about anything, that's probably the best, I probably won't answer because I'm getting a lot of spam on that now, after being on the website for two years. But I just wanted to let everybody know that if you get bounces from my Commerce Authority email, that's why.

Thank Thank you. Erin, anybody else knew that I've missed this morning? Okay? Well, if not, let's let's move on. Excuse me, so we will not be having a briefing from the broadband office, as you know, they are in the process of evaluating their applications and their application process, and so they can't speak publicly at the moment, so we will not hear from them today. Anybody want to say anything about the that they know that's going on with the broadband office this morning? I take that to be a no. So we're going to hear in just a couple of minutes from Randy, leaning who, those of you who have been attending our meetings regularly. He is one of those people who attends very regularly. And I, you know, I got to tell you, every once in a while, I have an opportunity to really get to know some of the people who participate in these meetings, and I get blown away with people like Randy, who is doing, who is so knowledgeable about what's happening around the country, and even in the last two weeks, lots of stuff is happening. And so it's going to be good to hear from Randy in just a little while. Lucy, Are you online? Lucy, how I take that to be a no, okay, just a reminder for those of you who may have forgotten, and I try to include it in all my emails. But Paul Ross, who is on this call did an amazing video, AZ broadband closing the digital divide. If you have not seen that video, or you want to share it, please do it. It's just really awesome. Paul, you want to say anything more about the video? Again,

it's getting a little old right now, but I might have to do an update in the in the next six months or so, but it's just celebrates what we're all collectively trying to do to help Arizona, and whether it's pushing connectivity via fiber or fixed wireless or whatever means, and also power, it's all tied to workforce, and it's tied for the betterment of our community, really, in a way, it's our efforts for nation building within Arizona. Okay?

Thank you, Paul. And just a reminder, although I'm not sure if they still need it, but we had a request from Senator Kelly's office, they are trying to be an advocate for us, particularly now with the digital, Digital Inclusion related issues, and so they are asking people to send them. Judy Sol trip, who is the northern Arizona outreach and constituent services coordinator for his office has asked that we send them stories of how the cuts, particularly to bead at this point, and and DEA and DEA the Digital Equity Act funding has impacted your organization. We're not looking necessarily for individuals, but more for organizations, and how it's impacted your organization, your plans, and how that will impact your constituents. So even though you know we're moving on at the federal level, and you'll hear that from Randy, from Randy later, but it's not too late to send that information. Information. Okay, so moving on. So I think we're going to jump the agenda a little bit and Mala, do you want? Mala, you online? Mala, are you there? I guess she's not there. Holly, are you here? New and Anthony, are you here? Oh, yes, we're not going to hear from the State Library, but I do want to tell you that hopefully we are all confirmed the next few weeks, next week, assuming that we're all confirmed with him, that Joey Wender, who is the new executive director for Shelby, the school's health and libraries broadband coalition, Will is scheduled to be with us next week. Joey has been hanging out in Washington quite a bit. Probably he lives, I don't know if he lives there or not, but he's hanging out in Washington, following all the stuff that's happening for broadband, Digital Inclusion and so forth. And so if anybody knows what's happening, besides Randy, who's online here, Joey would be that guy. So hopefully he will be here next week, some future things. I had actually had hope to have Ryan Murray here, who's the Deputy Director for the Arizona Department of Homeland Security and the state chief information security officer, and I was hoping to have him here this morning, and then he told me he had to be done by 830 so I just decided we would reschedule him, but he is engaged in a lot of really great cybersecurity initiatives, and he's pretty well connected with most of the cybersecurity organizations in the state, and there's a lot of activity going on. So I was hoping Ryan could would be here to kind of give us an update on what's happening in cybersecurity and and then also I'll be meeting this week or next week, I'm sorry, with Carlos Contreras, who is the head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and he is going to hopefully give us a presentation in the next few weeks to kind of give us an update on what's happening in workforce development in Arizona. He's another one of those guys that who knows a lot, knows a lot about what's happening, particularly in the workforce area. So hopefully he will be on the agenda in the near future. And then next thing it, confused me that we had planned to do several months ago is to do a panel on public networks, not not municipal networks, but public, publicly owned networks. Uh, Gigi Sohn, who many of you know, is the executive director of the American Association of Public broadband, and right now is a pretty important time, and seems to be a big movement or the development of public networks. And so we will be trying to do a panel with her and Randy and a couple of other people. And so I hope to get that that actually may be a special meeting, rather than using just our meeting time. So those are a couple of things that are on the agenda and will be coming up soon. So any other comments, questions or comments about that before I move on? So Michael Kendall, I see you were online. Did you have anything with from the Department of Education that you'd like to share this morning?

Yes, good morning, Steve and yes. Michael Kendall, I'm the project manager for Arizona Department of Education. I helped to administrate the broadband expansion program and a number of infrastructure projects we have going on, but things have been relatively quiet for us, Steve, just given the state of what has happened in our in our environment, the last few weeks, couple months, our focus has been we had several projects that were for completion dates into June, and So that's but as far as new work going forward, I'm just like all the rest of us, Steve, just sitting and waiting. Okay,

thanks, Michael. Any questions for Michael? So Mike so frank Martinez, do you have you want to follow up from our discussion yesterday? Anything that you need or want from people i

Hello, not not at the minute. I think maybe in a future meeting, I might have something to inquire about, but not right now.

Sounds good, sure. And David krassler, we haven't seen you in a while. I don't think Do you want to just say hello? Yeah. Hey, David, are you there? Okay, moving on. Oh, so I'm sorry. So Mitch gorsen, welcome again. Mitch. Mitch is with Cisco. He's been with us before, and you just want to give us a quickie intro, and then we'll schedule you for a presentation again in the future.

Hello, Steve with Cisco Systems, as you know, we are the network equipment and cybersecurity service provider to multiple state and local government agencies and universities, colleges and more throughout Arizona. Thanks for including me.

You bet Glad to have you with us. Mitch, so anything else before we move on to hearing from Randy this morning? So if not, I'm going to turn it over to Randy leaning I've learned Randy getting your name right. Who is the founder of the broadband toolkit, and as I mentioned earlier, Randy is incredible. Is Yeah, I will allow you to share. No, I'm going to stop sharing and let you share. And Randy is incredibly tuned in to what's happening at the federal level with a number of states and so forth. And so I know he's been here before, he's talked a lot, but he's got a lot to give us updates. As I said, I can't, couldn't even keep track of all the things that have happened in the last couple of weeks while I've been on vacation. So anyway, Randy, with that, I'm going to turn it over to you. You might want to again, just do a quickie what the broadband toolkit is.

Okay? Yeah, you bet. So our, you know, our role in the industry is we do a lot of analytics. So when people are investing in broadband, we have resources that, you know, say, here's where you can, you know, that are uncovered. And so we provide, provide a lot of the analytics. And as sort of part of that, too, it's important to be current on policy, because policy often kind of drives the analytics, and so that's, that's where, that's kind of what motivates a lot of my engagement and interest at the at the policy level. And what I put together today is actually, you know, this has been, to say that this has been an eventful few weeks, is an understatement. You know, it's been, you know, very, very consequential. And so what I did is I put together a few slides that I thought would be, would be helpful to folks. And let me just ask, can everyone see the is, is it sharing? Okay, yes. Okay, good. Okay. So what I did is, and I'm going to drop this into the into the chat when I'm I'm done as a PDF, so it's got all the links. So if you don't get those, they'll they'll be coming your way momentarily. So one of the things I thought I'd start with is just a little bit of recommended reading. So everyone has heard a lot about the restructuring policy notice that came out on June 6. There are a couple other related documents that are worth reading that come from the NTIA they came out with what they call the understanding the bead restructuring policy notice, and it's basically a PowerPoint tutorial on a lot of the implications of the of the policy change. And then there's a and actually, I think that a lot of state broadband offices did webinars on it, and I think the ACA did, I'm not absolutely positive. I think, I think that's the case. And then there's another document called the bead final proposal guidance. And this is not designed for ordinary people. It's mainly for state broadband offices. But if you're, if you're, you know, trying to sort of understand the details of the policy. There's a lot of great stuff in it. And a couple years ago, there was a notice that came out under the original bead NOFO. So this basically replaces and updates it if, or at least updates it, if that makes sense. And so the next thing I thought might be helpful is just a quick vignette on timing. So the, you know, the notice dropped on June 6, and basically it triggered a 90 day window where a bunch of things need to happen and so, and this is sort of just a, you know, a simplified. Version of it. So basically, 14 days after the notice, the NTIA committed to state offices that they would give a tabulation of sort of rescinded federal funding. So this is companies that perhaps had art off awards and and and dropped out or drew new maps, or stuff like that, so that this is important to state offices in redrawing their maps, there's also a process where states need to notify unlicensed fixed wireless providers that they're essentially have a right to have their locations removed from the map if, if they're, you know, if they're of unserved and underserved, if they're providing qualifying service and meet certain criteria. So that's played out in June and and it's sort of a a notice and response process. And about 45 out of 50 states have completed that either in June or early July and so, and then it basically, in August, there's a 14 day required, you know, public comment period, and then the notice needs to be filed by September 4. So basically, July, you know, plus or minus a little bit, is the month to run the benefit of the bargain round. And so that's, so, that's sort of a timeline, you know, in a snapshot, Randy,

maybe you're going to get to this, but can you just explain a little more about the bargain round, please? Oh, yeah, absolutely,

absolutely. Yeah. No. Thanks. Thanks, Steve, so the Yeah. So basically, the, you know, all of the state broadband offices have, you know, done their sub grantee allocation processes and had a number had provisional awardees. So part, part of the requirement of the restructuring Policy Act is that states, you know, open that again forbidding for new categories of of players. And so this is, you know, specifically, you know, technologies that were excluded, other than fiber, to to a large extent, that were excluded or, or at least minimized in the earlier rounds. So, so, and within Arizona, they just opened the window for that. And I think it runs for what, two to three weeks or so. It is very quick. And typically, in most states, people who pre registered Ford originally remain registered. And can, you know, update the update, update their filing, or keep it similar, and then new new entrant, new parties can participate as well. Yeah, yeah, and then the other thing that's this happened is there's been a flurry of interesting letters. I'd put it that way, on sort of policy notice topics. So Wispa, the wireless ISP Association, sent a letter to the NTIA talking about several states had had indicated that they wanted to have a testing requirement for wireless ISPs, and so they were sort of pushing back against that. And they also indicated a few things that where they wanted the NTIA to provide clarification. And actually the NTIA did. So that was, that's actually a really helpful letter to read and has some interesting detail. There was also a letter from a group of senators to the Commerce Department and from the NTCA that kind of largely represents fiber interests to the NTIA. And there was also an interview with Gary Bolton and the FDA and FCC commissioner Gomez, who basically made some arguments about how the ground is still tilted towards fiber. So those were good discussions, and then very late breaking news, just this morning, like an hour and a half ago, Gary Bolton sent a letter to all of the membership of fiber broadband Association. And you'll probably see reporting on this today, because it's, it's pretty interesting, but there's been a lot of analysts, you know, going through the, you know, the one big, one big, beautiful Bill Act, which just, just passed. And, you know, we when we see it reported in the news, we see a lot of stuff on, on Medicaid, and a lot of stuff on, you know, just all sorts of provisions one, but one of the things that is important in terms of the dollar figures is actually some of the tax provisions for corporations that are particularly beneficial to capital intensive industries, and fiber is one of them. And so, so, so basically, you know, there's been a bunch of analysts, and then he sent a letter to the membership. And so basically, the the view is that this is going to very substantially benefit the. Cash flow of a lot of fiber operators. So you've got companies that were struggling and, you know, some negative people sort of having problems recently. So so that'll that'll reverse that. So in an environment where the fiber industry has taken a lot of hits, it's a really interesting and, you know, perspective, so, so What? What? So there are a couple things in the policy notice that are, are particularly consequential. And I wanted to step through a few of these, and mainly focusing on a few things on the unlicensed side that people may or may not know. So in Appendix A, you know, it lays out a set of requirements for unlicensed fixed wireless providers, and it talks about managing interference and planning capacity and managing the impact of weather, among other things. So, so I wanted to unpack a few things that I think are interesting most of us, when we think about a a wireless ISP, this is sort of what we picture. It's a a point to multi point antenna on a tower or a building pointing to a home. And this is sort of what it looks like, and they provide internet service. What's interesting is, there's a whole nother category of of wireless broadband providers that are not as obvious. And here are three different products. The one on the left is from AT and T the one in the middle is from T Mobile. The one on the right is from Verizon. And basically what they do is they use the cellular network. So something that's been, you know, built decades ago to provide fixed services, and so they file with the FCC, not only as mobile providers, but also as fixed providers. And those of you who watched the Super Bowl or watched it in 2022 or 2023 or 2024 would have seen the the T Mobile super, Super Bowl commercials, and you can see in the background, there's this little box. And basically they're trying to compete with cable, you know? And so the argument is, forget about all the complexity of installation and drilling holes. You know, just walk into the store, get this box, plug it in, and you're up and going. And these tend to be services that sort of underperform, say cable or and certainly under perform fiber and are often not qualifying broadband because of the performance thresholds. Although sometimes they're they're very good as well. It depends, but, but they they're offered at a lower price point. So it's an interesting sort of piece in the market. And this is, this is a slide that may be overwhelming, but actually it's a very simple message that basically, if you look at the filing of these firms as mobile operators, you get sort of this colored Gestalt, sort of picture here of lots of dust particles, and basically each of the bright spots is where a sell side is located. And what I've done in this image is I've juxtaposed on top of the mobile, you know, filing, sort of the fixed filing, which is the olive colored, larger hexagons. And you'll see that what these companies do, and this is all T Mobile data, but if you look at AT and T or Verizon, it's pretty much the same. And if you change geographies, it's also pretty much the same, but basically what they do is they offer the fixed service in in areas where they've got really high quality and 5g coverage, and they don't offer it elsewhere, but, but this is a huge and growing segment within within the industry, and you'll see when, when you look at the, you know, the quarterly reports of of, you know, the large mobile providers, you'll see them talk about this as well. So this is a picture of something the FCC issued, and is one of the few snapshots that we have into broadband adoption, okay, as opposed to coverage. Most of what the you know, the FCC is broadband Site Reports is, you know, who covers each geography, but this, these are numbers that represent the number of people that have taken out their wallet and bought a particular service. And so we've got all the traditional, all all the traditional fixed broadband providers here you've got mobile providers where, you know, pretty much every man, woman and child has a smartphone, and you've got hot spots and other stuff. You also have fixed wireless broken out into two segments, and, you know, and basically they're labeled here as live. Licensed and unlicensed. But if you dig into the data, you know The first group is is overwhelmingly, probably 90% you know, cellular providers who are providing service using the architecture I just described. And then the unlicensed are pretty much all traditional wisps. And there are some traditional wisps that have have used license. But what's interesting here, in the license component, this has grown by its quadrupled in size over a two year period. So very, very consequential growth. And again, you'll see this reported by CEOs of mobile providers as well. It's something that they're they're interested in. So, so having understood that, if we step back and say, what are the strengths and weaknesses and pros and cons of different

a wireless architectures, and are they able sort of to deliver the goods, you know? And that's an important question. So a wisp architecture. Basically what they do is they start with a set of elevated sites, and they do what's called a view shed analysis, where you basically say, What can I see? You know, line of sight from those sites, you know. And there's many locations, but it's not all of them. And then if someone requests service that they'll often look up to see if they have line of sight or near line of sight, and then, and then, if they do, they'll attempt an installation. And not all of those succeed. Okay, so, so you know, there's some issues there on the cellular architecture. Basically they have, you know, companies have deployed sites over a period of decades. So, you know, the the coverage footprint is there, but they offer a service only in areas where they have a very high signal quality. So it's so that's sort of interesting. And they also, you and I think this is true pretty much each of the companies, and they're pretty upfront about this in describing how the services is provisioned, is they give priority to mobile customers, and in the situation where the network is overloaded, they'll throttle back the fixed user. So on the one hand, the fixed user gets an inexpensive service, which, for many is good enough at the same time, though, it's, it's doesn't have the guarantees that a wired service would have. So that's a mouthful. So anyway, here, here are just a couple other quick things on, on, on pieces that the policy notice discusses. One is they talk about interference, and you know, the need to mitigate interference risk. So here are five different types of sort of interference or spectrum related risks. And what's interesting is some relate to unlicensed providers. Others actually relate to licensed providers. So you know, in a if you're unlicensed, someone could just light up an emitter and impact your service, and you couldn't control that. And so that's definitely a risk. It's not probably an over overwhelming risk, though. So so it's another is just the general rise in a noise floor, and this is something that affects unlicensed and licensed, but is manageable. Two issues that affect licensed providers, in particular CBRs. One is CBRs band is, you know, the primary user in the band are naval radar and radio telescopes, and so if a naval a naval vessel comes into port and turns on their radar, it could actually shut down nearby CBRs systems. And so that's a that. That's a big deal. And then Congress is also talking about auctioning the spectrum. So those are all considerations when we think about how the different technologies fit together. The other piece is weather risk and and, you know, a lot of the state broadband, you know, discussions ask people to respond, how they how they will, you know, manage weather risk. And the idea is that rain causes attenuation of in radio signals. And so that's something that actually I would put in a category of not particularly impactful, simply because most of the bands that are used for both licensed and unlicensed are sort of in, you know, C band or lower frequency, and they tend to not be greatly impacted, and just to, just to, and they're actually things that can be, you know, you can, you can design for in your engineering setup. So the way providers usually think about things is the world is broken into what are called itu rain. Stages. And so they represent the amount of precipitation an area gets during the most intense period. And so, so, sort of the way an engineering driven firm would approach things, and any kind of wireless ISP should be doing this is they'll say, you know, what kind of availability do I want to have relative to weather? Do I want to do I want it to be 99.9% or 99.99 or 99.999 and so in the the latter case, it's like five nines of reliability means you'll have five minutes a year of weather related outage. So you can design into that. And so there's a methodology for all of that, so that's just as an approach. So anyway, that those are all my slides, and I wanted to get through them, and I suspect there may be a question or two, because I know I zipped through that. But anyway, I thought, hopefully those are some interesting things to think about on, on a policy front.

Well, Randy, can you talk a little bit about the issue of, excuse me, the auctioning, the auction of spectrum coming up, or what the issue is with that instead? Oh,

absolutely, yeah. So this is, and actually, this is something that I haven't followed. I followed closely early on, but I haven't as recently. But basic, basically, the FCC, you know, over a period of decades, has been given auction authority by Congress to, you know, to auction off, you know, pieces of spectrum and what? And there are actually two, two reasons for that. One is, it's a way of getting spectrum into the hands of the public to use, and they used to, what they used to do is, you know, what people would call beauty contests, where companies would say you should give it to me, because, you know, I'm a great company, and this happened around the world and and it was very, very political, and didn't, you know, and wasn't a great way to allocate spectrum. And pretty much, since the about the year, 2000 auctions have become the dominant mechanism for getting policy into the hands, and specifically with CBRs right now, there's the there's the kind of a it's called GAA, but it's essentially similar to unlicensed. And then there's, you know, there's other allocations people have at a county level which are purchased and owned. But basically the, you know, the FCC has been or in Congress has been thinking about re auctioning all of this stuff, you know, with a larger geographic area, and I believe, a higher power threshold. And so basically, it would raise a lot of money for the federal government, but it would also mean the people that are currently using it might be left, left in the dark. So I don't, I don't think any decision has been made, but that's it basically represents just a a risk, you know, to to any to people who are using CBRs today that that that could happen.

So Randy, part of the argument, if I understand correctly, is the use of the funds that are raised by the auction that I think a lot of folks would like to see that money being used for technology related, broadband related issues, and instead, it looks like it's going to go into the government's funds.

Yeah, yeah. So, and so, good question. So I'm not, and I'm not as personally as conversion, I sort of dropped out of of closely monitoring that. Yeah, maybe a month or two ago,

Bill, I don't know if I don't mean to put you on the spot. I know we're going to hear from you guys in a couple of weeks. But do you have anything that you want to add to that?

Well, I think part of it is that Congress needed to reauthorize the ability to to allow the FCC to do the auctioning. So there's, there's a couple of things in motion there.

Okay, thanks, Bill. Okay. Any questions for Randy? Anything else Randy that you want to add?

Got a

question for me? Steve, go ahead comment. I'm short. I've got the T Mobile box at my house, and I had to go that route because I was being served by Centrelink by my hard wire, and I was lucky to get two or 300 kilobytes. Now I'm up way up in the megabyte range, so it's doing well, but I like that map you showed Steve or Randy that you showed that shows where the concentrations are and depending on where you are from that tower. So I'm sure

it's been a. Really popular service. And I think it is, what's interesting is it's easy for those of us in the industry to think, well, if you don't have 100 down, 20 up, you know, you have nothing. It's worthless, you know. But actually, for the American consumer, there are, you know, a lot of people who are reasonably happy with something in the middle. And also, there are people have just absolutely fantastic service with these kind of, kind of services. And also in an era where, you know, the affordable connectivity plan has run out of money and been sunset, you know, they're offering it a very at a very modest price point. So that's, that's a really nice thing for, you know, for a segment of, you know, for price sensitive consumers.

So Randy Mark was saying at the ATSC meeting that these cellular services are not eligible for bead funding because they don't guarantee the 120 is that right?

I think in general, that's probably the case. And I think the way that these are, so what's interesting though, is, you know, if someone has, you know, these are, are just categorized by the FCC as licensed fixed wireless so, you know, so, so cellular services are one thing, but the these are licensed fixed wireless offerings by cellular companies, so they're filed differently. So for instance, if an area, if a location, is served by license fixed wireless, then it's off the map in terms of unserved or underserved. So, and that's been the case since the beginning of of bead but of course, it's, it's geared towards the performance. So, you know? So, the ones that would be off the map would be areas where they are delivering 100 down, 20 up, or representing that on the map, which is maybe a minority of the locations. But in some cases they are, you know.

So it gets confusing, because if they're taking them off the map where they are delivering it. How to how do we know that they couldn't deliver it in these the 120 and in the locations that are meant to be served by bead? Why are they excluding them when they could deliver 120 in some of those locations?

Yeah, yeah, no. So let me just maybe I misstated so. So basically where they are delivering service, then those locations are not considered uncertain. Then you know they're getting I understand that

point. Yeah. But what about why are they being excluded from bead funding when they could deliver 120 in various guaranteed 120 in certain locations. I don't understand why,

yeah, and I'm not and I guess so this is what's interesting. I'm not sure if you know this, so that I'm not sure that they did. They are, like, I think in technology neutral everything should be allowed. I'm not sure. Like, I'm not sure, though, what, you know, what, like, most of the discussion recently has been around unlicensed and so this is where, you know, what I think is really interesting about, about just the, you know, the way the the wireless community is being treated in, in the New Rules is, is, to me, there's not a particularly meaningful distinction between licensed and unlicensed, even though there's, there's some you know, you know, because they, because you could operate either way, but, but architecturally, their architecture does matter. And even within the architecture, a cellular operator could change their policy and said, say, we will consistently deliver 120 100 down, 20 up and but many, many file on that basis. And I think they I haven't seen a lot of challenges in the media where people say, hey, you know, but, but gee, I'm getting throttled. And it may, it may be that I'm not sure what percentage of of users do get throttled or but that hasn't really, from what I've seen, been a big topic of public discussion.

So what you're saying is you're still not clear on whether they're excluded or not excluded.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen anything saying that they're excluded. But also I haven't seen wireless providers, you know, rushing in and saying, You Can I, because I think, I guess what I would say is they're participating pretty happily as it is, you know. And, yeah, but, but, and a lot of them do file for 120 down, 20 up. And so that means that those locations would be off the bead map, and but we've all the fresh numbers are out on that. So I, like all of our tools, will show you know where people are and and where that's the case, but, but you.

Okay, so it's still, from your point of view, it's still somewhat of an unsettled question that they haven't clarified this one.

It is, yeah, so, so it's a subtle reason to have a fiber preference that both with both the wisp architecture and the 4g 5g architecture both fall short, but for different reasons, you know, in some instances, so, so, so I would say that that's sort of an argument for, you know, the people who want to be fiber first, you could, could dig in a little bit more deeply and into that.

Yeah, seems like it's going to be personally, it seems like to me, there's going to be a lot of confusion about what's acceptable. And it's not going to this. When the NTIA gets these final proposals are going to have a lot of issues.

So Randy, a couple of things. So David Krystal, and I don't know if I'm pronouncing your last name correctly, David, but you put a comment in the chat you want to just share with share people, share with people about that.

What you got was just mentioning, we've had an effort of CR CBRs and Mesa we're partner with. I forgot the name of the nonprofit, but basically we built the towers, and we have a nonprofit that received the grant, and they buy off equipment from companies that are just lifecycling, and the nonprofit will go out and distribute that equipment to the homes. And so our towers were provide just really good, really normal, basic what you get that at the library, internet to those families, and they're able to get internet in their homes when you look at the maps of where the fiver folks don't go and where there's the most need you know, looking at like free or reduced lunch or low income housing, those maps always overlap in our experience, so it's really disappointing to always hear fiber first, and that all This money is going to get people connected when we already know the people that give fiber don't want to be in those locations. And there's other areas that could benefit from something so easily, because this is also the densely populated areas you know you're looking at, like the downtown area of a town, that you're not going to have a lot of obstructions going into it. When you're going with, like a millimeter wave, or doing a CBRs, you know, anything over the air, that there's just so many other options out there, right? Like, for people to still be disconnected, because somebody in the 80s said that fibers got to be the end all be all,

yeah, no, that's a great point. And what's interesting is the ease of deployment of wireless, you know, is one of the things that makes it really appealing. Like even the 4g 5g solutions, and I know, in like, you know, and also even with Wisp architecture, but mainly with ag and sort of the CBRs based solutions are similar. You can hand someone a device, and they can be up and running in lightning speed and with a lot less infrastructure investment. So that's definitely the positive aspect.

Yeah, and our partners compute up, I just put in the link on there, which I'm sure a lot of people here are familiar

with. Paul, you got a question or comment? Yeah,

I was just going to say, when it comes to fiber, is fantastic. And a lot of things, everything's connected by fiber at some point, you know, in the background, the backbones are all fiber. And even with the high speed wireless now you can get amazing backbones, you know, 2040 gig backbones that are transmitting all this data. I was part of a project that helps sort up a number of towers running a CBRs private LTE network. And we learned a lot going through that whole process. So some of what I just saw in terms of the cell diagrams and everything very, very familiar, having done a lot of that work. But when you look at where our schools are, for instance, and I'll say this, if you get up around 80 feet in the Phoenix area, for instance, you've got line of sight nearly to every. Everything in the local community area, and so it's well within the the range for point to point, point to multi point, very easily. And based on some of my initial data and and work, about 143 sites across Phoenix would cover about 90% of those student populations of all the schools wirelessly. The other thing that I want to just remind people about that is fiber is fantastic, but it comes with a price tag, and the end consumer might not be able to afford the service that is being delivered across the fiber and so affordability becomes a major issue. I mean, I would love to have fiber, but I'd also don't want to have the 100 to $200 bill that goes with it, right per month. To be frank, I'm quite happy with my little Century Link plan because it's affordable. But yes, fiber is fantastic. I just came back from a broadband Summit Conference, and obviously fiber was very big. They're talking about nd use Browns as well as greenfield development work, so, but I think there's a space for everybody in this area. It's just, how do we find that space that still delivers a good service, but also make sure that it is

affordable? Yeah? And I think Paul, what you said in terms of affordability is is actually important to underscore just that you know, you can easily have a situation where everyone has gold plated fiber service. This not affordable, right? And that doesn't move the needle. And so yeah, for many consumers, and also private networks, you know, all of the wireless wireless solutions are very impactful. And particularly, what's nice too, is when you have a world where you've got a multiple competing solutions, that's also good too, you know, like, even if you've got areas that that have fiber, you know, if you have lower priced wireless, let's say that you know that price competition and service competition is beneficial.

Okay? So Randy, couple of quick things. First of all, do you want to make any comments about? I mean, I know that we have, we have a lot more states, but we imagine

the volume.

Hold on, just a second.

Sorry about that. So So Randy, obviously, we have a lot more states, but can you give a kind of a quickie, General, what's happening with the states in terms of, now that the all these broadband requirements have changed, and all that sort of stuff, how they're doing with getting their plans together and stuff?

Yeah, no, it's it's really interesting. There are some sites that sort of track what's happening at the state broadband office level. And what I'm finding is a lot of those sites are not even current because things are just moving so quickly. So I guess the one data point that I'm, you know, aware of is that most have put out their notices for unlicensed fixed wireless providers. And you know that that sort of reciprocal process has has completed the loop. And you know, I think maybe a third of states, or a significant number have, you know, either started or about to start their their benefit of the bargain round, but, but, but a lot of it is just happening so fast that it's hard to keep track of other other than the fact that they'll pretty much need to to meet the timelines within within July. So, you know, ordered to to land to finish by end of July or early August.

Thanks, Randy. So, so one last thing, and Randy, I know that infrastructure is kind of your bailiwick. Do you have any comments or thoughts about the Digital Inclusion and where, what's happening with that at those Oh, yeah, no,

yeah. So one of the, one of the things that was, again, sort of a disappointment to people, is that, you know, there used to be, there was an allowance under the original NOFO for non infrastructure funds. So basically, if the state has used up all of their, you know, has served all of their unserved and underserved, and they could use the additional funds for other things. So basically, in the the restructuring notice, they basically the NTIA kind of pulled back on that a little bit, but said, We will decide. Later. So one recommendation that I've heard from people is that when states file their plans, you know, if you've got money left on the table, which you know is often the case, be very explicit that you want to use this for, you know, for digital opportunity type stuff, and, you know, build that into your plan to discourage it from going back to Treasury. Basically

any other questions for Randy? Okay, so before we end for today, any other announcements, comments, thoughts that people have. I I guess that means that's a no, okay, well, I'm going to stop recording. And as you know, we do have kibitzing for anybody who wants to just stay online and chat for a while, and if not, we'll be done for today. So anyway, thank you all for being here and we will thank.