I Okay. Good morning. Everybody going to go ahead and get started, and I'm sure we'll have other people who will join us. So just quickly, besides Ian, who we're going to hear from in just a little while, do we have anybody else who's new to us today, going once going twice. Okay. Well, if not, we're going to jump into the agenda, because we got lots to talk about, fortunately or unfortunately, as the case might be, so, just quickly what the agenda is going to look like. Excuse me, just a reminder that I try to include almost everything that's included in the chat or Erin the discussions, although I love technology yet. So last week, I went to upload our video, and all my videos in YouTube are all gone, and so I can't figure out what the hell happened. So I'm working on trying to figure that out so I don't have, I didn't have the video uploaded last time. I'm going to probably look for another platform to figure out what's going on with with YouTube. So anyway, but anyway, just want to remind you that in my email I usually try to include anything that was discussed and links and time frames and all that sort of stuff. So I just encourage you to scan through I know nobody reads my whole email, my whole email the whole time, but just to encourage you to at least scan it and see what's important for you, and particularly any events or anything that's coming up. So with that, I'm going to just just jump into this real quickly, and then I promised bill we would get him on early, because he's got a scoot so but Erin, any quick, quick updates from you
this morning. Hi. Good morning everyone. My name is Erin Lorandos. I'm the Digital Equity Program Manager with the Arizona Commerce Authority and the state broadband office. Very, very briefly, because I know we're on a time crunch, we have shared the the requirements for the application for sub grants, which is in lion's share the implementation strategy for our Digital Equity work here in Arizona. So I'll very quickly, in a moment here, drop some links in the chat to where you can find that information. We are hosting two informational sessions. One was this week on Tuesday, and then another one will be upcoming on April 8. The content for those are the same, and we will shortly be posting our video of the session this week, as long, as well as the questions that were asked with answers, so that that content will be repeated on April 8, and in between now and then, you can definitely re familiarize yourself with the Digital Equity plan, which includes the goals and objectives that we are hoping to achieve again with help from our amazing organizations in the state, who are already doing all This work. And so let me know if there's any questions on that. Thank you, Kelly. I appreciate, I appreciate you dropping that link for me, and I'll give my email here momentarily as well. And those are my updates on the de front and thank you Mallory. I appreciate that comment.
Okay, any questions for Erin? Okay, moving on. So Kelly, before you talk about the round one, maybe you or Erin, whoever just wants to get, want to just give a quickie update that Sandip is has moved on, and we will have a new broadband manager at the end of the month. So do you want to comment on that quickly? Sure
I can start with that. My name is Kelly cruci Community Engagement Manager for the state broadband office. I get to work with Erin and as Steve mentioned, Sandip Bhowmick has moved on to the private sector. His last day was last Friday, and we miss him greatly, but we know Exciting things are ahead for us, so his last day was Friday. Our interim director is Keith Watkins, who is our senior vice president for rural economic development, and Keith has been an integral part of the broadband development in the office and at the Arizona Commerce Authority for years, so he works closely with Sandip, so he'll be the interim director until Nick Capozzi will start on March 31 and Nick is a operations and policy advisor at the governor's office, and he has also been an integral part of our broadband and bead plans in the state. So we're very excited to have Nick. He's very knowledgeable. Knows a lot about our programs in the state and what we need, and then also has a lot of knowledge in the government sector as well. So Nick will start March 31 and we are excited to welcome him. And also, as Steve mentioned, the application for round one did close on Friday, and I was hoping to be able to share some specific details, but I have to wait until our newsletter goes out, which will go out next week. I'm hoping for Tuesday or Wednesday, and I hate to commit to a timeline, because I always end up being ahead of myself. So anyway, next week this newsletter will come out. It goes to all of our stakeholders. You should receive that, but I can say a few things. We did get almost 150 applications, which is great, and we're now sorting through those to, you know, start reviewing. So we've got a number of stages that we're now going to go through, but the first thing is reviewing those applications and looking to see, you know what areas are covered, and get an understanding of that, because that will help inform and shape round two of applications. So round one focused on primarily fiber. Round two is for alternative technologies that round two will be June, 3 through July, 3. And I'm trying to keep this quick, Steve, so just keep those dates in mind. I'll plug the link into the website. Next week, I'll be able to dig deeper into details as far as those applications and what's next. Sounds
great. Thanks. Thanks, Kelly. Any questions for Kelly? Okay, well, moving on. I'm going to just jump into our presentations this morning. There is for any of you who follow this stuff. I get emails every several times a day, actually, from broadband breakfast, which is an absolutely great resource to keep up on what's happening? And there is lots happening in regard to broadband, Digital Inclusion in Washington. And so we're going to start with an update on Spectrum. What is it? Why should you care? And what are the key discussions happening in Congress, the FCC and the wireless entry industry, and so with that, I'm going to many of you know, Bill D'Agostino, who's a senior advisor with the wireless infrastructure Association. Bill is attending our meetings pretty regularly. And and Bryan Daly with AT and T wire wireless technology and standards with AT and T and he also attends pretty regularly. And so we're going to start with with Bill. And Bill, if you would introduce, oh, I'm sorry I forgot to mention Ian. It's Ian, right. I don't know why it looked like Lane introduced Ian and who is the Senior Technical and research advisor, also with the wireless infrastructure association. So with Bill, I'm going to turn it over to you. I know you got to see it pretty soon.
Great. Well, Steve, thank you. Good morning, everybody again. I'm Bill D'Agostino. I work with the wireless infrastructure Association. The wireless infrastructure Association represents more than 250 companies across the country that build, own and operate both fiber and wireless. Everything. Okay,
who was that? Somebody needs to mute? I don't know who that was. I think we're okay.
My role at WIA is to help prepare the states with the workforce needed to deliver the bead program, and I try to do that through making our curriculum visible and aware for people that are interested in wireless training, telecom training and fiber training programs, also By establishing partnerships through our telecommunications industry registered apprentice program, tirap, for short, and bringing the resources and experience of our member companies to the forefront through things, for example, like our industry intermediary effort that we lead with the Ohio State University and the state of Ohio to help them prepare for all of the challenges of workforce and and broadband deployment. Steve asked us to talk about spectrum today. And so when I think about spectrum, if if fiber is the connective tissue of a telehealth. Com network. Spectrum is clearly the life blood of a wireless network, and, you know, without it, we won't be able to achieve broadband for everyone, because alternate technologies will certainly be necessary to help lower cost and reach areas where we're not able to deliver fiber today, and as you know, that's, you know, as Kelly just described, that's part of the whole phase two effort around the bead program and the applications that have come in. So we're joined today by Ian giot is an expert with the wireless infrastructure Association. Yes, you're an expert and and he dedicates a lot of his time to following what happens in Washington and what we do with spectrum and how we promote it as an industry. So Ian, thank you for putting together the slide deck and being here today.
Great. Thanks, Bill. Let me so I do have some slides. So a couple of housekeeping things. Number one, my microphone is not messed up. I am a brick. I've actually been here 36 years now, they still sound like this. So it really comments on it. The other thing is, W i A, just in full disclosure, a couple of things. Bryan Daley I see is on the agenda. Is on there right now. At&t is a member of the W i A as well. Okay, as of the other operators, towel companies, etc, so, and Bryan and I actually see each other occasionally in DC and stuff. One of my roles at Oh, and finally, I also have, I have a research company called IGR. I've been doing this since 94 and I've known the WIA right since the beginning, actually, so go back quite a way. One of the things I do for the WA is I sit on the FCC Technical Advisory Committee. That is the committee that kind of makes, does assessments and makes recommendations to the FCC on technology. It is the organization that actually came up with the CBRs licensing and structure for that that was all done through the TAC. So the TAC has got a pretty long standing reputation. I represent wa members on that committee, so you'll see some references to that, so just in full disclosure. So I'm going to share my screen here. Can you all see that? Yes, all right, so I won't put it in presentation mode, because it gets kind of gets kind of weird, as we all know. So I'm just gonna, I've got four slide slides here, so I'll go through this, then we can open up for Q and A. So firstly, the cellular network architecture. This is the actually not so simplified view of how the network actually works. So you've got your phone there on the if you look at the diagram there on the left hand side, there, you've got your phone, you've got your home. You could have an apartment building with antennas on them. So if you've got the fixed, 5g fixed wireless home broadband, all the different names that it has, the different providers in your house, that is a wireless connection for broadband. Obviously, your cell phone, we use radio frequency spectrum to connect to the tower. So the tower could be half a mile, quarter mile, it could be a small cell. Could be closer. Mine is there's two actually, one on the back of my house, one at the front, each about a mile away. Connect with spectrum, to the antenna, to the radio, goes through fiver to the processing at the bottom of the tower, and then goes into what we call the 5g core, which does all the processing, all the smarts, that connects out to the internet. So if I were to call bill, then my phone would connect to my cell site, go through the network, out through the into the core, connect to Bill's provider. And in my case, it's AT and T, let's say bills on AT and T as well. Then it would go to him, fine. It knows where Bill is and connects the local cell site, then connects with spectrum to his phone. Okay, so that's how it works. So we call it a wireless network. The joke is, it's only about the last half mile or so is actually wireless. The rest of it is wired. And so, yeah. That's how it works. So when you look at this picture, nothing works without spectrum. Okay? We need that connection to between the phone and the antenna. It is licensed by the FCC. They are the the watchdogs, the keepers of the keys, etc. And over the last since 1982 actually, obviously, the carriers have built up portfolios of spectrum I listed there. We've got 700 megahertz, 850 megahertz, 1700s 2100, megahertz, two and a half gig, 2500 Meg, three to three and a half gig. Those are the licensed bands, and there's multiples within there. We also have unlicensed spectrum, which is what you use for Wi Fi or your garage door opener or Bluetooth. So we have lots of different spectrum out there. The other one you'll be familiar with, and Bill is an old guy like me, and it looks like Steve's an old guy, and I know Bryan is so you remember a car radio where you used to turn the knob to tune the radio, or push a little button, right? And it would jump to 101.5 megahertz, or 90.5 right? Same spectrum, just a different part of the band. So public radio is licensed. Radios stations are lower in the band than cellular. We're up at 700 megahertz and higher. Okay, there's plenty more. There's radar also radio frequency. So there's a lot of spectrum out there. I could have shown you a big picture, didn't want to get complicated. Now the carriers have different bands. They propagate different distances. I'll show you this in a second, and that's important. So a 700 megahertz license or signal will go a lot further through the air than two and a half gig or three gigahertz. That means, if it goes further, you need fewer cells to cover an area, right? But if we get more cells in there, we get more capacity. So the carriers have different spectrum. They put them at different heights on towers. You'll see big towers, small towers. You'll see a tower with lots of antennas up and down it. And as I said, it's all licensed by the FCC. So if we have more spectrum, that means we can have more network capacity, higher speeds, more bandwidth. We can have more conversations. So my phone here, when it's on, when it's working, will take a piece of spectrum, and I get that that's mine while I'm using that connection. So the more spectrum we have, the more connections we can have. It also makes the network more efficient. The bigger the bandwidth we have, the more efficient we can be through lots of physics and engineering and technology. So none of this works without spectrum. And so that's why, you see the carriers, the industry, pay a lot of attention to to what we're going to get. Now, the next one I want to show you, this. This a little physics. It's you guys in Arizona, it's relatively flat, apart from the Grand Canyon. I did rim to rim last September, by the way, it's relatively flat, but it's also very dry. So you don't have many raindrops in the air. When you have raindrops, the RF, the radio frequency signal, hits a raindrop, it disperses. So the way you engineer a network in Arizona, compared to somewhere like Seattle or Alaska, which is very wet, is different. The engineers actually account for things like snow on trees, the amount of moisture in the air, rain drops. They also account for hills, because radio frequency doesn't go through Hills very well. It doesn't go through metal buildings cause problems. So if you look at this, the the the diagram there on the right, you'll see we have something called path loss. So we can have a great signal coming off a tower. But if there's a mountain in the way, or a building, or a wet building, is even worse then the signal is going to degrade, and that's why you can have your phone and you can walk through a downtown area and you can see the signal increase and decrease, or you know you're going to get a drop call at a certain point, things like this, but but raindrops cause a lot of issues. So it's a lot of engineering, a lot of physics, a lot of design goes into the design of networks. Okay, so we want more spectrum, the carry the industry. We've got 5g we're looking at five. Advanced, now and then, 6g towards the end of the decade. Okay? 5g advanced. 5g uses more bandwidth than 4g did we want bigger chunks to be effective? 6g is going to want an even bigger chunk. So to give you an idea, a full channel of 4g LTE was 20 megahertz. That's how big it was. 5g is 100 megahertz. You can put 5g into a 20 megahertz slice, but it doesn't you get some benefit, but not much. Put it into 100 you get a lot of benefits. 6g we're talking about 500 megahertz channels may not get that high, and we'll have to see what happens. So we want more spectrum. The problem is there's no real easy spectrum left in the past. We've had chunks of spectrum that have been underutilized or not utilized very well, we've been able to move a few users out of the way and have those auctions. Okay? So the FCC is the one who's responsible for licensing here. They do conduct auctions of spectrum. The last one we had a few years ago was C band three and a half gig, and raised $81 billion you know. So this is, this is real money. Here we're talking about now a couple of problems. Number one, the FCC right now does not have spectrum authority. It's, it's awarded by Congress due to some things that happened a few years ago, that authority lapsed. So right now, the FCC is actually not legally allowed to run an auction. So if we had some spectrum identified, I'll come to that in a second. The FCC actually couldn't auction it right now, that can be reinstated by Congress. There was discussion is going to happen last year, it didn't happen. There's more discussion will happen this year. It's just a matter of getting it through the process. But the main function there of the FCC is to license the spectrum. They can they can plan a spectrum. They can put all the bones together this. Can't run it. They cannot push the button. The FCC and the NTIA both working to look for new spectrum. There's been plans put out there. It's quite public. We're looking at it for 5g advanced, as I said, in 6g we need some big chunks, as I said, and we're looking at more stuff in the three gigahertz band. There's also the six and seven gigahertz band, and there's other bands as well. There's 12 and 13 gigahertz now, as we go higher like that, remember what I said about the 700 megahertz signal goes further. You get bigger cells. When we get to six and seven gigahertz, we're going to have relatively really small cells. So that means more equipment, or cell sites, etc. So there's benefit. You get more capacity. There's benefits to going higher, but there's also drawbacks to going higher. And you know, it depends what you're trying to do, but the sweet spot right now is around the mid band. About the three gigahertz band is what's deemed most effective or attractive these days, and Bryan may comment on this as well. You can purchase spectrum privately, so dish holds a lot of mid band spectrum, and they won some at auction a few years ago, built a network, etc, if dish decided it wanted to sell some or license some, some license, somebody else to do that. They could do that. They would need permission from the FCC. But that's not an auction. That's a private sale. Also, investors purchased a lot of C band, a lot of the original AWS band as well. And they, they basically raised money, went and bought the spectrum and sit on it and wait until the market demands more, and then they can do a transaction later date, make some money, so that that is a plan that some people have depends on where the spectrum is and things like this. As I said, there's no easy spectrum bands left. Everything today is going to require some form of Spectrum sharing. And I mentioned I sat on the FCC TAC, one of the working groups is called advanced Spectrum sharing, which I sit on. So we have weekly discussions on different ways to share spectrum, different mechanisms, benefits, drawbacks, etc, and we are due to report in September of this year on our recommendations for sharing new spectrum. Okay, now a lot of the spectrum is held by the Department of Defense, CBR. S, if you're familiar with that, was is used by ship born radar. And so there are some sharing mechanisms within the CBRs structure that if a ship is in harbor or some planes coming to land on the ship, it blocks out CBRs in that area while the Navy is using it. So the lot of work went into that sharing mechanism that's probably going to get repurposed in some fashion, same type of mechanisms we'll look at going forward, but, but we don't report until September. There'll then be a comment period, etc, which will run into 2026, and and then, of course, we're going to decide which spectrum we're going to auction at future. So the best case to get new spectrum in the hands of the operators after an auction is probably around 2030 it could be 2029 probably 2030 AT and T is actually stated publicly. They don't expect anything between before 2030 or 2032 so, and they're not unusual. At that time, I was talking to T Mobile a few weeks ago, same thing. So given that we're in the nearly the middle of 2025 here, we've got a lot of steps that we have to go through in order to get that new spectrum in the hands of the carriers, least of which is the FCCs, ability, legal ability, to actually conduct an auction. So that was a very quick I was Bill said 10 minutes, so three or four slides, but any questions that make sense? Anything?
Great job. Any questions for Ian,
I would just Gordon here in Tucson. Just a quick question. Ultra wideband, a big part of the 6g infrastructure as I understand it. How does that fit into this picture?
Yeah, so that's funny, because Ultra wideband is one of the original proposals for 4g actually,
Excuse me, could you stop sharing, please? Oh
yeah, sure. Oh yeah, yeah. So different technologies, different names, the six gigahertz. A lot of it actually was, there was going to be a proposal to have that as licensed. A lot of it actually ended up going to Wi Fi for you said unlicensed, so that there's other bands up there as well as six slash seven gigahertz. But when they say ultra wide band, they're either usually talking to either the size of the channel. We're going to give you the amount of spectrum or the amount of bandwidth that connection can support, right? So if you can get, you know, 20 megs on this, maybe you get a gig, three or 400 Meg type thing. My My parents have the home internet, and initially they would get it. They're one of the first users in their town. Initially they were getting four and 500 megabits per second on that. As more people bought it, it went down to a couple 100 Meg, because there's only so much spectrum and you start, you know, dividing it up. So, so ultra wide band, we've had that name before. I'm sure somebody will come with ultra, ultra wide band, mega white band, bigger white man? Anybody else?
Hey, I take that to be the case, that there's no more questions. So we're going to move on to Bryan. Seem to have a I remove bill going to, hopefully, Brian, yeah,
I don't have a presentation, but I do have some, you know, additional to add to what Ian mentioned. You know, Ian, I both work on the FCC tech. I co chair the 60 working group, but I'm very active in the spectrum sharing working group, as well as Ian mentioned. You know, just to talk a little bit more about the physics, you know, data rates are very important, as well as capacity, as Ian mentioned. And in order to do that, spectrum is, is the key. You know, without spectrum, you don't get capacity, you don't get the high data rates. And that's the challenge that we have ahead of us is, is, where are we going to find that spectrum? What spectrum is going to be available and and how do we effectively utilize that spec? To provide the services to customers, especially broadband services. And when you when you look at that, you know, going back to physics, one of the laws of physics is, in order to get higher data rates, you need more spectrum, more bandwidth, and if you don't have that bandwidth, your data rates are limited. So we have a lot of techniques that we use in the absence of spectrum to try to mimic the availability of spectrum. And it's called carrier aggregation, where we take bits and pieces of spectrum in different bands and aggregate them together so it looks like we have a higher more spectrum available to us than that's actually there and in one contiguous block. And that gives us the ability to to provide higher, higher data rates using the available spectrum that may be bits and pieces from from different portions of the band. The one, the other thing that Ian didn't mention is there's also what's known as millimeter wave spectrum, and this is very high frequency spectrum that is limited in some ways because of the distance that it can cover, but it does offer some additional bandwidth, and this is how, you know, we get some of the higher Data rates that are used, for example, in fixed wireless access, as well as some of the broadband services that are provided to mobile users with 6g there is also talking about going even higher in spectrum, up to sub terahertz and terahertz frequency, which is extremely high frequency, but are very limited in in the distance that it'll cover because of those high bandwidths. So those are some of the other things that we're looking at as we move towards 6g and try to resolve this spectrum desert as as we call it. There. You know, there the reason why we say that spectrum auctions, you know, we won't see any new spectrum till 2030, 32 time frame again, you know, there isn't much spectrum, free spectrum available. And when there is spectrum identified, you usually have incumbents that you have to clear off that spec, clear from that spectrum and provide, you know, abilities to clear that spectrum, Spectrum sharing. You know, as mentioned, we have to look at opportunities in order to share spectrum with other users, whether that be with Department of Defense or other users, and try to figure out ways to intelligently utilize spectrum without interfering with any of the incumbent users. And this includes that, you know, additional techniques such as sensing when there are incumbent users using the band and not transmitting on that band during that time frame, and using more intelligence in the network in order to try to figure out when and where to actually be able to provide that capability. Some of the other areas that we're looking at there is what's known as the C band, which is a sweet spot in the spectrum that provides us, you know, the the the benefits of both capacity as well as coverage. And this is in, you know, the 3.7 to 4.2 gigahertz range. And the FCC currently has an open notice of inquiry on this band, and you know, that's one that we're hopeful for that will be open and available for commercial broadband providers. The other areas that are being looked at is the CBRs there is continuing work in the CBRs band that the FCC is looking at, re banding some of the CBRs band to provide more spectrum available for commercial users. And again, that's something that's being looked at by by the FCC. And finally, the other emerging technology is supplemental, supplemental coverage from space. We've all heard about SpaceX and AST and other companies that are providing direct to cellular device service from satellites. And this is another emerging area which is getting a lot of attention, both from the commercial side as well as the FCC side. And there is, you know, work done looking at how commercial use of satellite systems will supplement the terrestrial based systems. And a lot of the biggest, big questions on there is, what spectrum does it use? Does it use terrestrial. Spectrum interference with terrestrial users. You know, a lot of considerations that have to be brought in. And again, as we evolve towards 6g space covers from space is one of the capabilities that is being looked at for 6g I see we have some questions in the chat, consumer use cases, 5g 4g offer consumer similar services, except for speed. Yeah, that's That's correct, yeah. You know, when we look at 5g you know, certainly there were three use cases, you know, broadband services, you know, speed, massive IoT and ultra low latency communications were the three, three areas that were looked at for 5g so when you look at the differences Between 4g and 5g consumers may see similar services, yes, but they will notice a difference in speed, especially when you're looking at millimeter wave frequencies. And you know, fixed wireless access again, gaining market share while cable is losing share. Fixed wireless access, yes, does have it, it's it's definitely gaining market share, and definitely is is providing service, especially in areas where cable or fiber deployments don't exist. So there is, you know, some further promises. We move to 6g on on fixed wireless access. But again, you know that's looking at some of these frequencies that are higher up in the millimeter wave and potentially terahertz, you know, depending on how technology advances as we move up there. Ian, I'll let you address that question in the chat, if you if you want to add more to that.
Yeah, so, so the it's interesting when you look at only about g, the reason LTE for G Long Term Evolution is what it stands for. The joke in the industry was long term employment, but the reason it was successful is the smartphone came out at the same time, roughly, and then Uber ways, we had location based services with good bandwidth based on those and a good user interface. We get a 5g what's happened with my phone is, well, it's got faster I can. I take it for granted now, but I can get a high definition video on this right. I can watch Netflix and YouTube in phenomenal quality. Also, the industry has kind of latched onto this. So if you go to a website today, any website is pretty unusual. There's not video right on the home page. You think about the New York Times or something like that. You know, there's video right in there. So if you go onto your phone, that's using a lot more bandwidth. So what you find is the use of bandwidth today on a mobile phone, actually, a lot of it is video driven, and it's high quality video. We kind of take it for granted, but that was a big step for the industry. Take that with 5g now you put in things like, as Bryan mentioned, the lower latency, that's the almost jitter, right? So gaming, augmented reality, virtual reality type applications were designed 5g was designed to support those. What we don't have for that is, I'll say a good user interface. I'll say an affordable user interface. So we have glasses, but things like the goggles that Apple was trying to sell for three and a half $1,000 didn't really take off, etc, etc. So in 's, we're still with this interface. Other things are coming out there. I'll give you one example. There's another thing Bryan didn't mention. It's called Private G is literally where you have your own network. It could be using CBRs spectrum. You could license spectrum from the carrier. You can license it from Bryan, actually. So you could be a hospital with a private network, and there are applications, for example, where an ambulance is heading towards the emergency room, and when it gets four or 510, blocks away from the hospital, the doctor in the emergency room can connect to the ambulance and triage the patient remotely with video, etc, etc, get the vitals, so that can save a lot of time they know the emergency room knows what, who's coming in and what the situation is right. This has been deployed now when you do that. Yeah, you don't really want some teenagers sitting there playing video games, taking all the bandwidth, right? You want to dedicate the bandwidth to that ambulance, and that's called Network slicing, which is another part of 5g which is now starting to get deployed, so that ambulance will get priority on that spectrum, to maintain that connection, to have a good quality connection, AT and T has first net, which provides priority services to emergency services, etc. That's on a separate chunk of spectrum, but it's a dedicated service, same type of thing. So there's a lot of different aspects to this. So so
we're going to need to move on pretty quickly, but a couple of things I think I saw recently that the SEC wants to take charge of of selling spectrum. And so anybody want to comment on that, or anything else about what the discussions going on in Congress and or the FCC regarding all this stuff
in terms of selling spectrum, they
wanted to manage the auction?
Yeah? Well, they want their auction authority back. Yeah, that's, that's what that discussion is. There's actually, I think it was Chairman car Brendan car, the new chairman the FCC, said, yes, we want to get going. We've got AWS three to re auction. That was some spectrum that came back to the FCC. We are going to move forward with that. That was really his impetus to Congress to give me my Spectrum authority back, please. And because right now they can't legally do that. So I, and there was this, in all honesty, Steve, I've kind of stopped looking at the bills that could use spectrum authority. I'm kind of at the point, like, when you get it, we can discuss it, but until then, it's kind of like, you know, I'm going to get thinner and better looking and in better shape next year. When it happens, I'll let you know it's come like that, you know,
yeah. But to the to the contrary for, you know, Spectrum auctioning authority again, you have to have spectrum to auction before you can do that. And so what? What spectrum would they auction off? You know, that's the other question.
Okay, any other quick questions for for Ian or Bryan,
I might jump in Gordon, Tucson. I've been pioneering, trailblazing, really augmented reality, and I'm really interested in spatial computing, and what an extension that'll be for, certainly, wireless infrastructure. That's where the ultra wideband comes in for radar connectivity and Spatial Mapping. How do you see community based cooperative systems developing like that. Do we all have to wait till 2030 and let the telcos bring it in, or could we get ahead of the game and start evolving systems like you spoke of with the hospital?
Well, okay, that's a big question. So you today can go and buy CBRs devices that use the three and a half gig band. You can I had a CBRs network in my office for a while trying it out. So communities have done that. You You can go and put radios up on polls, etc, etc, and build a network. It will be some, it depends what you buy. It would be for g based. It'll be 5g based. And you can build your own private network and legally do that, and come organizations, you know, universities, hospitals, cities have all done that. You can also, if there's a specific technology you want to try, you can go petition the FCC for an experimental license. Usually there's a vendor sitting behind that, and things like this. And that's been done, that was done originally some of the millimeter wave technologies and things like this. So there's different ways to accomplish it. There's also the unlicensed bands, of course, you know, putting Wi Fi out there and things like that. But yeah, you can. There's, there's lots of ways to get this accomplished, depending exactly what you want to do. It depends on how big the area is, depends on who else is in there, living, working, potential interference, etc, etc, and the FCC doesn't take interference lightly. It's interference is a major, major issue for the carriers. That's what limits performance and services, basically interference. So. So, but there's, yeah, depending on what exactly you're trying to do, you mentioned augmented reality. You know, a connection will support goggles with virtual reality glasses with augmented reality. There are plenty of examples out there in industrial settings with, you know, a technician wearing goggles looking at a piece of equipment, and they see all the connections that have to be made. It augments what they're actually seeing. Nokia has done a lot with this, actually in different settings. So, yeah, so lots of ways to do it.
We need to move on, because I want to make sure we hear from Reed lots of other stuff happening in Washington regarding broadband and so forth. So. Ian, thank you very much, Bryan, thank you and Bill. Hey, yeah, Billy, looks like you're still online. So appreciate you guys being here today. Great job. Thanks, Bill and Bryan. Thank you guys. So with that.
So with that, I want to introduce Reid Sharkey Reed's been here before, and lots of stuff happening in Washington these days. And of course, one of the things that people want to know about, one of the big discussions, is bead and future bead and all that kind of good stuff. So with that read, I'm going to just turn it over to you and and,
yeah, absolutely, yeah. So thanks. Thanks for having me, Steve, thanks for being here, everyone. And great job. Ian and Bill and Bryan really enjoyed that presentation. Learned a lot myself. So, yeah, well, I'll start with start with bead, and think probably will stay there for the majority of this, and I'm happy to have this be a conversation. So stop me at any point if you have thoughts or questions about anything. So last time I spoke with the group was two weeks ago, which and only had a few minutes towards the end of the session, but I think maybe that's sort of a blessing, and sorry, I'll reintroduce myself. Reid char key with the Benton Institute, I run our community engagement programs and assist drew Garner our policy, policy director on our state coalition, work and assist on some of the federal coverage as well. So yeah, last last time, I think maybe it's sort of a blessing that we didn't get through everything because in the following week, with the hearing at the the Communications and Technology hearing and the speed to bead act being introduced, there is just a lot that happened. So I'm glad that we can dive into those things a little bit deeper now that we know a little bit more about the new Congress's thoughts on bead and some of the Secretary ludnicks Thoughts on bead as well through that commerce and technology, communications and technology hearing and the speed to beat act. So I'll start by just plugging a couple of things that we published following the commerce hearing or communications hearing. One is my colleague drew Garner's framing of the hearing before it took place, and the other is our executive editor, Kevin tagling did a summary of the hearing. So both of those are great resources for understanding exactly what took place in the in the hearing, but I want to spend most of my time talking about the speed to beat Act, which was introduced by Richard Hudson, Representative from North Carolina, because I think we can learn a lot from the speed to beat act, whether or not it gets a hearing or, you know, is passed, I think it's a good way to see the way that the new Congress is thinking about the bead program, and, by extension, the way that the Commerce Department is seeing the bead program and perhaps some changes that they want to make. So I'll run through the things that speed to bead would effectively do, and all of the these. I'll place one more link in the chat, which is our summary of the. Uh, the bill. So all of these things are in that summary, if you want more in depth coverage. So the bill would do a number of things. First, would remove the word equity from bead, making it broadband access and deployment. And many of you will note some irony there that many federal and state officials have been touting bead without equity is bad over the past few years. So there's some irony in there and removing the equity, so that's the first thing it does, and then moving into more of the regulatory changes, unused bead funds, if this bill passed, would return to Treasury, rather than being reallocated to states based on original allocation, the original allocation formula. So if a state ended up with money after they did their deployment, and then any non deployment uses of their funds. The original program and current rules state that that money is then reallocated to states, probably particularly Western states like Arizona, who might the thought is, might not have quite enough money to reach all of their unser and underserved locations. This bill, if passed, would change that and re just all of that money, regardless of any remaining addresses throughout the country, in states where money is left over after non deployment, that money just goes straight back to the Treasury. So that's their first sort of cost saving change in the in the bill next ISPs would be permitted to remove locations from a state's proposed service area if the location would unreasonably increase costs or is otherwise necessary to remove important to know that some states already allow this flexibility, but if the bill went through, then all states would be able would be required to give ISPs that option next, the bill would eliminate some bead award conditions, so regulatory conditions that awardees have to follow. So diversity equity, inclusion, inclusion requirements, workforce and job quality requirements, infrastructure resiliency, like climate change resiliency and network management requirements, so like data caps and any open access requirements for some networks next, the bill would expand the role of non fiber technologies, especially low Earth orbit satellite and unlicensed fixed wireless, and it would loosen the affordability requirements of the bead program. So like I said, the bill could get a hearing soon, but it's notable that Secretary lupnick has said that he'll reform the bead program in ways similar to the speed for bead act, and in some ways, maybe go further to cut some of the regulatory provisions of the act of the program rather. So that was quick, quick hit on what is in there, and I know it's a lot, so I'll pause if anyone has thoughts or questions on the speed for bead Act.
Read. Mark Goldstein, good morning. Hey, Mark. So as to the currently ineligible technologies, satellite, unlicensed, wireless, terrestrially and so on. What's your take on whether they'll simply, you know, demand the take states rejigger their Scoring Matrix and criteria versus forcing some sort of gross reset in the program that requires states to redo their no foes and maybe volume twos to comply and takes another year?
Yeah, no, I think we are reading of this. If this, this bill were to go through, would be that it states would, I don't, I don't think we see a way that states would be able to not have to rewrite some of those plans.
So even those that have accepted, you know, the round one applications, everything would go to go to hell. I
think so. I mean, because if, if the application, or the round one that has already gone through, or even, like in Louisiana's case, the the whole sub grantee selection process is complete, and then in two other states. Right as well the the sub grantees selection process would then not have been following the correct guidelines if this bill were to be passed. So would they would have to redo everything, I think is our reading, which is not, not, not what we're hoping for, because and not consistent, regardless of problems with the program, we want this deployment to start taking not consistent with the word speed for their Yeah, inefficiency and all these things,
is there an intermediate position where they might set the high cost threshold lower to kind of force more alternative technology choices instead of this gross reset. Or I've heard some discussion of that. Yeah,
that's interesting. I don't know a ton about how that would work. The i Our position sort of broadly, and that's a good segue into the and I see some questions in the chat, so I'll get to those as well. We are drew Garner and I, well, mostly drew runs a coalition called State connections, which is a coalition of state legislators throughout the country, and they drafted a bill, or a letter, rather, to Secretary lutnic To effectively say, don't mess with this program. With all of this work has gone into it, we recognize that there are parts of the program that we would welcome some changes to. However, this top down approach that the speed for beat Act would do, and potentially some actions that from the NTIA would do, would require, like you said, complete rewrites of plans. What would be better is to allow for states to get waivers to some of these things that so some of those provisions in the speed for beat act, you could imagine a world where those are all drafted waivers, or having a template waiver for states to file with the NTIA to get approved, and then they can change that part of their program without having to rewrite the entire plan, and it can take place on a state by state basis, rather than forcing the entire country to effectively throw out a year plus of work, maybe more than a year plus maybe more like Three years. So I'll post that letter in the chat, and there is a link for if you have regulatory commissioners, if there's anyone on the call, or state legislators you have contacts in the state with we'd love for them to read that and consider signing on. There's a link on that PDF to go to a form where you can provide your information and sign on to the letter and but there, I think the timeline for that is by the end of the week. So short turnaround. Does that answer your question mark?
Sure it still leaves me uncertain, as I'm sure it does you about how messy this is going to get, but sure. Thank you.
Yep, I appreciate it. So Reid, if I've been saying lately that I don't think there's been any push to do away with bead, it's just looking at changes to bead in my right, correct,
though, there is a question in the chat about Digital Equity grants, the tribal ones and the pending state ones, and that gets the national competitive Digital Equity grants. Could you speak to how those may be treated going forward?
Yeah, I think we're in a place like we were in a couple a couple weeks ago, with bead in regard to Digital Equity, where sort of there are a lot of worst case scenarios swirling for people, but we don't exactly know what action the administration or Congress would take there. I think in a lot of cases, people think that I've heard that it would be easier for there to be freezes and rollbacks on the Digital Equity programs. But like we noted last time I was here, Erin gave a great update. And then today again, on the they're moving forward with their grants at the state so at a state level, I think the states are treating it like, you know, as the. Should largely is, it's the law, and the only thing to do is move forward at a federal level. I know that they are not meeting the competitive grant recipients, those who were recommended to receive funding for the Federally run program. There have been, there's been very little movement in getting that paperwork for just, I think just only maybe three organizations received their forms to file and start receiving the funding. So I think Mala your question, the Federal run programs, where the competitive grant program and then the tribal grants that were due in early February I'm not familiar with, so I won't speak to those, but if they're federally run, I would think that they're on less sturdy ground than a state grant.
Okay? They, yeah, the tribal ones were, they're federally, they're they go directly through NTIA, much more like the competitive grant, but they were a specific dollar amount that was held aside for tribes specifically, or tribal entities to apply for. And so I know they said in the NOFO that those weren't going to be they would do it on a rolling basis, starting in the summer. So it's not like we're, you know, expecting anything yet, but I know they have been mentioned many times as it would be fairly easy, easy pickings if they're looking to hold back money. So right,
okay, yeah, that's a good highlight. I'll keep my ear out for anything on that. So appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks. I see Randolph with a question about the extremely high cost threshold. Do you see coming back into the oh, sorry, it is arguably a good mechanism for making decision about technologies. Do you see this coming back into the foreground? Also, what states with large build areas where the cost per location may vary widely within a single building area, single build area? Yeah, I think, I think the high cost threshold will for a lot of states. It wouldn't come into play until the later rounds anyways, right? So I know, I think there maybe were a few that were doing it right at the start, starting their their wave one with high cost areas. But I think a lot of the ones that I'm familiar with, I work a lot with, a lot of communities in Illinois, and their program is they're starting with hard to serve areas. You have to include a certain amount of hard to serve areas in wave one, but you're they weren't requiring that threshold to be they hadn't calculated the threshold yet. Obviously, the threshold comes later in the in the waves, but I think, I think that will be important if the if that guidance, if the speed for bead Act, or things like it passed, I think the threshold would become less important, because there would be more lenience on just giving it to the alternative, giving Money the alternative technologies, regardless of any high cost
threshold. Can I, can I restate my my question just the newest way? One of the really interesting things, if you go back and read the NOFO, you know, sort of my impression there is that every state, you know, just in writing their you know, two volumes, would say, here's the dollar figure, and that would apply, and then they would presumably hire an economist to go figure out the cost of everything and and then, you know, locations would be allocated that way, the way most, I think almost every state has done it, is, they've, you know, is, is it comes into play in the in, instance of market failure, where you basically don't get bitters For fiber only. And what's interesting is, particularly, particularly in states where you've got large, diverse build areas, you know, where it's not just, you know, very dense or very rural, and you know, Arizona is an example of that, you know, you you really don't have an accurate calculation of the, you know, of the marginal cost of each location because it's all bundled together. And so to me, that that sort of mutes what, at least I thought was a pretty good economic model that the NTIA put together for choosing technologies. So anyway, I'm just wondering in the, you know, in the new administration and the new philosophy, if that might. You know, something more explicit might, might, you know, come back into focus?
Sure, yeah, I mean, that that would be a positive thing. I think you're right, but I haven't heard anything like that. And I, to be frank, hadn't, because the threshold has been implemented, you know, in the ways that you said, like using as a market failure device, and only figuring out the calculation after a few waves of applications is way different than having, you know, an economist go in and figure it out beforehand, which would provide a lot more clarity. Yeah, I appreciate that. Sorry.
I think one of the other issues is taxation, taxing broadband providers, right? Where is that at this point?
Yeah, I think that that there are a couple bills that had the the I think that's in the speed for bead Act to allow for to allow for providers to not be taxed on their awards. I believe that's in speed for bead it's been in almost every piece of legislation that has been proposed to change the bead program. It's fairly popular. I it hasn't, it hasn't changed yet. There you go. Broadband grant, tax treatment act. Thank you, Mala that. And that's one of the things, like I said in our letter, I think there's a footnote that we the state connections legislators said we would welcome some changes to bead, and I think one of those that they note is reducing the tax burden on awards.
So in the couple of minutes, we have left a couple of things read. You might want to comment that you guys have a newsletter, and people can sign up for that newsletter. Yeah, that regular updates on what's happening. So you might just want to mention that real quickly.
Yeah, thank you. All of those links that I've shared, you can find at benton.org/headlines and you can also go there to sign up for our daily newsletter, and also some other breaking press updates, press releases and larger pieces of research that men Institute provides.
So appreciate that. And then the last thing for me is if you want to just quickly comment, so we have a new FCC chair. We have a new administrator for NTIA. We have a new, I'm not sure what her title is, with USDA, and I'm not sure who else. And then, of course, we have new leadership in Congress with and so I don't know if you want to make any brief comments about any of that.
No, I really the only, the only thing on the on the horizon, I think, that I would highlight, is Ariel Roth's confirmation hearing that was scheduled for today, but postponed. So we don't have a date, but I think there was some indication that this was going to take place a lot later, you know, some months down the line. But it seems that she's going to have a confirmation hearing in the next few weeks, and
you want to just tell people who she is. And sorry, yeah, she Ariel
Roth is the nominee for the NTIA Tia, a former Ted Cruz staffer.
Okay, any other questions for Reid?
So Reid just on the speed for bead act. Did did you say that? Did they say anything in there about the priority for fiber in the change to the bead program. Did they say that fiber is not necessarily a priority or not? Did they say anything about that? The
Yeah, I mean, the the action in, effect, removes the prior the fiber priority in
the bead program. Okay, well, that would obviously change everything. So, right? And this speed for bead act that you're talking about, is this something that is, I mean, you said this representative, Hudson from North Carolina, introduced this thing. Is this endorsed by a number of people or so?
Yeah, I think it's unclear whether there's no, not been a hearing on it. It hasn't had floor time yet there, I not, don't believe there's. Floor time scheduled for it yet, but Secretary lutnic has expressed similar beliefs, if not more, costs cutting sorts of changes to the peat program, right?
I've heard them say and make comments like that. So
we kind of use a flushing out of those positions,
right? So is this the only act or bill that's being proposed at this point, or are there other ones
on the bead program? This is the the main, the main package. The other one is the the tax change that Mala dropped in the chat from uh Jared Senator Morgan from Kansas.
Okay, any other questions for Reid, we're basically right out of time. So, but any other questions quickly for Reid before we and and read. Do you have anything else that you want to add? No,
I'll let me just put my email in the chat, in case anyone is interested in following up about anything. But I really appreciate everyone's time and look forward to going back sometimes I
appreciate you coming back again. Reid, you obviously have your, got, your your on top of what's happening in Washington to the best this morning, if it's changed, but, but as of earlier today, you used to have a pretty good idea of what's happening, and we just have to really and then, of course, then it's going to come back to Arizona. And then the question is, what's Arizona going to do? So thank you. Anybody else? Mala, do you want to have anything that you want to add or chime in real quickly?
Just one quick thing that FCC has actually increased the dollar amount that is available for E rate this year by 2.4% so we had 4.9 before, and it's five point something, 5.06 I think so that the application process is is going, is ongoing, and the deadline is March 26 and that is the reason why I want to alert everyone please apply for as much as you want. There is as much as you need, because there is more money available.
And Mala Do you want to comment quickly about, I guess, is the court's rule that they are disallowing Wi Fi on busses.
The Wi Fi on busses has not been under discussion, but hot spots has been under discussion, actually, that's what I meant. Thank you. Yeah, the hot spots, Senator Thune actually introduced, well, it was introduced even earlier by Senator Cruz about not have lending hot spots if they did not pay attention to the eyes on eyes on board act. So you know, they're all interconnected. The eyes on board is to restrict the usage of social media by students that are borrowing hot spots and the hot spots themselves. There is discussion about not allowing it to go through the E Rate program, because e rate was meant for on premise use both libraries and school on premise. And this the counter argument is that learning does not happen just in schools and libraries anymore. Learning happens everywhere and even at home, the homeschoolers, etc. So there's lots of discussion going on there. They were supposed to have a CRA Congressional Review Act hearing this week, but because there is so much on the floor that they can, they have to get to this might not get space and time. So if that is postponed, it would be postponed beyond March 24 because there's a recess in between. So that's where we are at on the hotspot lending.
Thanks Mala, anybody have anything else that they want to contribute before we end we're right just a little bit past our ending time, if not again. Reid, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it, and I think we're done for today. Anybody wants to stay in chat? You're welcome. To do that, and if not, we'll probably stop the.
