Transcript: What Does it Mean to Make Internet Access Inclusive

Hello, hello, everyone. I am so excited to be talking with you today on Friday. We have some really amazing guests to talk with today about the topic. What does it mean to make internet access inclusive? So before I get into introductions, I want to really quick to share with you a little bit about me.

I'm Brittany Campbell Turner, CEO and founder of the Constructor podcast. We've been doing live streams since late last year, every other Friday. The topic today is around really just the focus of how do we level the playing field for internet access? Did you know that in the United States, there are nearly seven million people without access to the internet? That's a pretty large portion of our country's population who's disconnected from all of society.

That's a huge implications for the education and well-being. We're going to be discussing about the problem. We're going to be discussing about the solution. And I think it's just a very important topic for us to understand the true disparity that exists today. So I'm going to introduce our guests for today and then share a little bit from our new sponsor.

So to my right, you'll see we have Michael Trampetti. He started the Trampetti Management Group in 2012. He has a burning passion to empower businesses to break through the ceiling, to reach the next level so that they can scale their business. In his 20 plus years in telecom, he's helped to build the infrastructure that provides coverage for today's wireless network. He has seen all angles of the telecom and construction industry and has managed over 50,000 sites, all 50 states in his career.

The secret to success is providing a system around all parts of the business, including vision, processes, tools, governance, advanced communication, relationship skills, score cards, roles, responsibilities, accountability and structure. So Mike, he really is a true value to this conversation. He's going to come with great perspective. Next, I want to introduce Jeff Galwinski. Jeff Galwinski is currently director of industry organizations for Calix.

He is also the owner and CEO of Mountain Connect LLC, a company facilitating broadband development conferences, which he has one coming up in two months. So we're going to ask you a little bit about Jeff at the end of the episode so you can share more information about that. The conference is in Colorado and in the Great Lakes region. He also serves as board of directors, marketing chair for the Federated Internet Service Provider Association, FISPA. I hope that's the right way to say that.

Marketing and Technology Board Committee for Fiber Broadband Association, Amec Board Committee for the Rural Broadband Association, and Fiber to the Room and 5G for Hospitality Committees for Hospitality Technology Next Generation. And last but not least, we have a second timer. We have Anthony Veri Jr. He is now senior IoT and wireless strategy manager on the wireless innovation and IoT strategy team at Spectrum Charter Communications full time. He has expertise in the smart cities realm, smart buildings realm, IoT and integrated network concepts.

He is a public speaker on smart cities and smart buildings, experienced business development manager with a demonstrated history of driving $10 million a year in sales in IT, IoT, IoT, LTE, and wireless. So with that, we have some really, really top notch fellows here on the call. We're going to enter into the discussion today about but first, before we get into the conversation, we are going to share a little bit about our new sponsor. Our new sponsor is Yes, Your Exceptional Space. For landlords looking for higher margins on your office spaces, creating your own flexible workplace is the answer.

Yes is your partner to deliver the Yes playbook and it is an all in one tool for building a successful flexible workspace brand. This playbook focuses on giving you the tools not just a physical space or environment but a stellar experience. For more information, you can go to hello at yes-spaces.com. So without further ado, let's get into the conversation. Alright so Mike, first and foremost, please share a little bit about yourself and what you're truly, truly focused on today and what you think the problem is, why we even have this internet disparity today.

Well, thank you Brittany for hosting this today. I'm honored to be here with everybody. Congratulations to Anthony on his new role. I know you're going to do great and I also look forward to Jeff's conference that's coming up so thanks for having me. My passion really sits in the operations side of the house.

I really love to help build out the infrastructure across the nation. One of my biggest points was helping build out the small cell network for Sprint with a company called Mobility. We basically went from like 100 people to 1500 in one year to help build out the infrastructure across the US. So I love that side of the house. So we talk about what's driving this whole thing.

I think it kind of comes down to capitalism. When we talk about having to put these networks and the infrastructure in place, it costs a significant amount of money. If we think about the DOT did a study and you're talking a difference between anywhere from $6,600 to $267,000 per mile to put the infrastructure in, that's quite costly. So if you go to these rural areas where there's not a lot of people, these companies don't want to spend that money because there's not a high return investment and that's really what causes the problem.

So then you take the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund that has $20 billion but the FCC comes back and says you need over $80 billion. So I think there's this big disconnect and I actually can't wait to hear Jeff because there's also the demand aspect which I know he'll talk about. There's the cost implementation that what's the government going to do versus the corporate side. I think there's a lack of knowledge on the government side about understanding for the future of what we need and helping fund that and then also understand the timeline.

We're talking about six years to get this implemented. That demand is going to change with that. So I'll pass it on to everybody else but I'm Mike and I'm done speaking. Thank you. Thanks for that quick introduction, Mike, and your thoughts about what it's driven by, this problem that we have for Internet access.

Jeff, please share a little bit about yourself and what you're truly, truly focused on and also your perspective on the problem. Thank you, Brittany. So right now I'm focused on driving value for CalEx through our strategic partners from an industry association perspective with respect to thought leadership. And so I think because I also own a conference that I've had for just about a decade now, I kind of look at the industry a little bit differently because the content I have to push at Mountain Connect sometimes can be a little controversial.

So in the question you asked, I think one of the things I'm a little concerned about is that we still don't have an equitable strategy as a country to solve this problem. So a good example is the state of Ohio right now is voting on a bill which will remove the ability for municipalities to offer broadband services going forward. Now I would argue that that favors certainly incumbent providers and protects their market share. But there are issues in this country where this isn't just a rural issue because I think you can look around any big city and find pockets that have amazing infrastructure going through them and around them but are unserved because of economics, right?

It's a question of demographics. Then there are communities where they only have perhaps one or two providers in terms of choice. They have more of a monopolistic control over the market. And this thing that Ohio is doing right now with legislation, I think is a really poor shows you that we're not moving forward with the same cadence for everybody. We still have Ohio, if they pass this bill in Ohio, it will be the 18th state that will restrict municipal broadband.

And the bill goes further to suggest that they can't use federal funds to build infrastructure unless it's an unserved area. So I think it's a really poor decision and we have a lot of work to do, which is why I think during the pandemic you saw something that was highlighted that perhaps wasn't as highlighted on a national stage and that was digital equity, right? So what are we doing with kids? A really good example of an education, but a really good example is the city of Austin who, you know, if you go back four or five years when Google announced that they're coming in Austin, they actually forced Time Warner and AT&T to upgrade their infrastructure, right?

Just because they anticipated the loss of market share. But isn't it interesting that during the pandemic, the major the main school district, the city of Austin had to deploy school buses and use them as Wi-Fi hotspots. So clearly even in a city like Austin, we still have a lot of work to do. And what I fear is that where technology innovation has taken the conversation, we're going to create an even bigger divide and we could talk about that later. But thank you.

Yeah, thank you for that perspective, Jeff. You know, to your point, given that I'm in Wisconsin and there are lots of people living where I'm employed, there's been a ton of conversation, particularly in Milwaukee, about the divide across different socioeconomic levels, black and brown people in the city of Milwaukee, just having just no access to Internet and not able to actually join class for school. So an expectation for education was out there that, yeah, you should be able to join through the Internet. That wasn't there for a lot of people.

And to your point about these hotspots, like the school buses being hotspots, even in the areas that are built up to have the proper infrastructure, there's still that disparity there. So there's definitely to your point, we can definitely dig into that topic that you just shared. There's the increase of technology, but it's building a huge divide. And yeah, we're going to dig into that for sure. So without further ado, Anthony, please share a little bit about yourself and what you think the problem is.

Well, thank you for having me on. It's great to be on here, especially with everybody on the stage that I'm here with. It's good to see you guys again. So I came from a background of IT and communications, started more on the wired side, then traversed over into wireless communications back several years ago. And that's where my experience came with working with all the vendors in wireless from radio manufacturers, antenna manufacturers, tower companies, cabling companies, and so forth.

So understanding how to build reliable and available networks was always critical and our aim. And then seeing how with 5G more so than 4G LTE, with 5G, when the carriers are building out the networks, they have to build more towers or more radios that are closer together because the shorter distance that these higher frequency radios communicate on. So as they're doing this, they're laying more fiber and coax. And a lot of these are in our top 50 cities in the US. And how can there be areas in these major cities without access to great internet?

It still comes down to economics where these carriers don't want to give fiber to the home or just even cable to the home because there's no return on investment there. And even though they're running the fiber, the coax to the towers for 5G in the small cells, it still comes down on their books to economics. So it's unfortunate that sometimes there's fiber right on the telephone poles or right underground from where people live and they still don't have any good internet options and may only get maybe 15 megabits per second for their internet speed.

So I agree with Mike and Jeff here. It does come down to economics and it's unfortunate that some of these laws are in place, especially even though there's good and bad sides of capitalism. But then you see laws passed to prevent some capitalism or for some admirable opportunities to bring affordable internet access to people. It's hard to see why legislation would be thought of to even come up with that. So I'll stop there.

My name's Anthony. Well, so just to push back a little bit, it's not hard to imagine why this legislation exists. One of the problems, so there's in my mind, two fundamental problems, right, or challenges. One, we have seen for the past decade plus where incumbent providers have dictated a lot of legislation. They have a lot of influence.

If you ever been to a state capitol during in session for legislation and just watch CenturyLink or say AT&T, they have like packs of lawyers who move from one room to the other. It's very difficult for rural communities or for those who need help to combat that, right? The other problem is, I think, is oversight. So we have a lot of money coming into this space. So Mike mentioned Ardov.

At some point, the new infrastructure plan is going to be approved on some level. So we don't know the exact amount of money, but it will be a lot of money. So the question is, does that money get facilitated by the federal government? Does it get then given to the states, which have to interpret the rules before they give it to the communities? Or is it a joint effort, right?

But the problem has always been is that the FCC, for example, does not have enough oversight with any FCC to make sure that the projects they're funding are actually being delivered on the promises made when the money was awarded. And that's been a problem that you can go back to the beat top days. And we have a lot of examples where a lot of those projects failed. And a lot of it was due to lack of oversight. And I would tend to agree with you.

I mean, even if you consider, for example, even Ardov, the challenge with that is consider Maryland. Maryland has really low speeds. And the point we're making is 40% of the African-American population doesn't really have coverage. So not only did they get their lowest on the amount of funds they got compared to other states, you have this big issue. And so you're right.

I mean, it needs to be some kind of aspect. I almost think about like the interstate highway. The problem is that that was just one thing. No one really controlled the minor roads. And that's what we have to do.

I mean, something that's pretty bold is, OK, you could give somebody the entire state. But you're right. From the economic standpoint, they're going to go after where people are paying money. But if you say, hey, you've got the entire state, but you've got to provide coverage, that's one way to drive the equity component. Be like, hey, you have to provide coverage to all these areas or some kind of balance.

OK, if you're going to have this territory, it has to be the entire territory. And that's part of the challenge, too. Yeah. I feel as though there probably is another hour worth of us talking about the problem. But I do want to start transitioning to what might be some of the solutions that you guys see.

And I know we're touching on a little bit already. But let's be a little bit more specific. Just given your experience, Mike, in this space to your east, again, you just started solutioning. What is that major network expectation if they're going to provide infrastructure in one main line? I'd love for you to expound on if that's the solution that you think is the right way or if you think there are other things that maybe small wins here earlier can take place in order to start cracking at that solution to provide more equity.

Well, part of the challenge is a little bit what Anthony talked about is as we use so much data, we need more and more towers out there, which you'll see on light poles, which is small cells. And they're even putting systems inside people's houses to project out the internet, etc., or the Wi-Fi. So the challenge is, I think you have to, what we talked about is the FCC or some governing body has to step in and regulate to make sure that everybody gets a fair and equitable standpoint about coverage.

Because if you don't, then to the point is you're going to have wasteful spending. So it's either at a state level. So consider like the DOT. I mean, the DOT has seven districts. I would consider breaking that up into smaller areas for state.

But then if you pass it down to the state, think about, look what happened with the pandemic. Every state had a different way of handling it. And we don't want to get into political standpoint, but I think the federal government, the FCC has to step in and put some kind of governance in place of how to do this with kind of the states and get the states to buy in that has some sort of structure to pass down that that could be a rulebook that everybody follows.

But then they're going to ask, where's the money come from? And I'm going to ask Jeff or Anthony what their thoughts are. So yeah, so maybe it's talking to our state legislators. I'm thinking like, what can we do at the ground level? To your point, yeah, it's figuring out how to speak to that to this layers of the governing bodies, right?

And figuring out how to push the needle where it actually has some impact. So, yeah, that's interesting here. Consider, for example, when we go for a permit, this is the challenge. It's one one aspect of it. There are over 10000 jurisdiction across the US and each one has differences of what they want in regards to submittal.

So that's just one challenge. Now you now consider like Chicago. If I open up the ground in downtown Chicago, I have to pay a $15000 fee on top of all the construction. So there's challenges for cost that also come into play in how we handle all this. So it's it.

I don't think it's just one thing. Yeah. Great. Jeff, please share it. Share your thoughts.

I know you have the car like a conference dedicated to. Well, so one thing, the FCC is acquiesce regulation of the industry. So they did that a couple of years ago. So unfortunately, that that's not going to happen. It's you know, that I know you want to talk about solutions.

Solutions are difficult because, you know, there's ideally if we could, we'd develop a solution that could work for multiple communities, if not all of them. But that's not based on what Mike just said. That's not really realistic. And therein lies the challenge in the industry itself is realism, setting the right kind of expectations. And then, you know, going back to to local efforts, it's always a challenge to work with local governments if for no other reason, lack of education.

The fact that for a lot of elected officials, it's a revolving door. So once you start down a road of educating, you might find that you have to start that process over again, because now you have new people to deal with. And, you know, the other solution is to find local champions who can help evangelize the solution. But that's not easy either. So, you know, there aren't a lot of easy answers to the questions you're asking, unfortunately.

I mean, there are a lot of barriers in place. I think you still listed out a few. So we're going to document those. Yeah, go ahead, Mike. So I would like to talk to all of you, because I would agree with what you're saying, Jeff.

It is a challenge. But if we go back, you're right. The government, the FCC is most likely going to do anything. But if you take it state by state, the state can do a better job to say, here's what we need to do. Now, to what Jeff's saying is, I know this did work.

So when we were trying to roll out, so the challenge when we were dealing with the last company I was with, we were trying to work with two different rule sets. You had utility versus power and kind of there's different regulations in regard to that. So what we did is we actually hired officials that worked at the governing before that would go and be the representatives to help us to kind of bring that together. So the challenge would be, if you worked at the state, to Jeff's point is you would need to have these people that would go to jurisdictions, et cetera.

And once you have kind of the bill and all that in place, you would have to have those people that would go to the education. That's what we did. We started doing education tours. Hey, this is why you need small cells in your city to provide the coverage. And we were basically salespeople and it worked.

So it can work and it can be super helpful. Thanks for that, Mike, to validate the stuff that Jeff was sharing, even though he was saying it was really hard. Anthony, your thoughts. So I think the technology and the solutions have been here and available. And it's always been what makes financial sense for businesses to entertain the option.

And when it was not entertained, that's where the FCC and the government and states have thrown in money to incentivize companies to build out their network infrastructure to provide connectivity to areas that were underserved or not served at all. So like Jeff's event, Mountain Connect, WISP-A-PALUSA is and WISP America, that's WISP for Wireless Internet Service Providers. These are people who have for decades been bringing wireless Internet connectivity to rural America and underserved areas. And what better than someone living in a community that's unserved to be able to build a business and provide connectivity to their community?

So I think if we could stimulate that grassroots growth of wireless Internet service providers, I mean, it's been going on. I think that is probably the best way to give money to the small people and the small businesses to provide better connectivity in rural America. In urban areas, there's a lot of competition and it's legalities and permitting are more difficult and more pricey. So that's my thought on this problem that we've it's nothing new. We've had this problem for years, but because of the pandemic, it obviously has thrown more light and more urgency on this.

So just throwing this out there, is SpaceX a solution? So do you want the politically correct answer? No, not really. So I would say that they're just like fixed wireless providers. They're relevant until they're not.

And there is a play for SpaceX. The problem I have is that the federal government, quite frankly, right now, through Ardoff, for example, is funding the concept. And what I remember, these are taxpayer dollars. Why are we funding a concept that has not been proven at scale? And scale is very important in this discussion.

Because we have given them a lot of money to build out a conceptual solution. So I don't know enough about SpaceX. I'll come in. But I just want to challenge that. And I want to because if we think about like NASA and the GPS both started from government funding, right?

So I guess, Mike, and I'm just asking because I don't know enough about it. I haven't studied enough about SpaceX. How would you respond to that question then? Well, I think you're right. I'm not arguing that.

What I'm arguing is I'll go back to what some Anthony said. There are providers today who could have used that money, who are actually local and could have built infrastructure. Instead, we're subsidizing a product that has not been proven. I'm not suggesting it won't work. But it still hasn't been proven at scale.

But it still hasn't been proven at scale. And let's be honest, it's satellite. It's going to have issues. Yeah, and I guess the way I kind of got attuned, I was hearing an argument the other day about, I can't remember what it was, but this exact thing. Sometimes you just have to expect you're going to lose money.

I mean, if we consider kind of what happened with the pandemic, right? We went to six different people and said, hey, you know, we're going to give you money to do this. I think the same thing has to do is I would rather gamble on a solution that may work, even if it's not just with one company, a couple of companies, right? To gamble on it. That if I know it may be the way of the future.

Well, again, I would really like to make sure that if we're going to have this conversation, that we must not forget there are utilities, co-ops and fixed wireless providers who are local and could have built infrastructure. But that money went elsewhere. And I understand what you're saying, but I don't. This is not a replacement for those two services, not at all. And if we're looking long term, that's not a good long term solution.

It is in very rural, unserved areas until other monies can be brought in to build the infrastructure that could be built to serve them. But I don't think there's a reason for that service in the United States, especially the amount of money that's coming into the space anymore. When you think about it over the last two years and then what's coming with the infrastructure bill, you're talking over a hundred billion dollars of subsidy funding. And we as a government have wasted enough money in telecom over the last decade plus with subsidy monies where projects have failed or they have not delivered on the promise.

And we have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers. So to what Jeff's talking about here, it's a great point because no matter how much money you're throwing at satellite, you're not going to change physics and the engineering concepts of radio frequency transmission. And those are obstacles that we with everything we have today and everything that we know in engineering and science today, we can't overcome those as far as distance radio propagation. And this is how our data travels is on radio waves through wireless. So with those satellites, even if they're in low orbit, they're still traveling much further than a lot of our wireless communications that we have available to us on the ground with fixed wireless.

So to Jeff's point, that's a lot of taxpayer money that we're throwing at. As you said, satellite can serve a market, rural areas, but to get the speeds that people are looking for today, it's not uncommon for people to have 500 megabit, a gig to the home. I know that's overkill right now. Nobody is really using a gig at their home or even 500 megabit per gig. But when you have, let's say you had a family of four and they're all on video conferences, two parents are working from home on video, you have smart TVs, tablets, cell phones, your home's connected.

Yes, it does get up to four or 500 pretty quickly. But for the majority of people, there's a lot of people who are suffering from a lack of access to satellite. So this is where the focus has been is trying to catch up the unserved and underserved. So for context, Anthony, can you share what can come on? Like what can you get with 25 megabits per second?

So you could definitely watch in-stream Netflix on YouTube. Maybe two TVs and use your tablet and use your cell phone. And it's probably about it without suffering some latency issues with stuff. You could probably do some general emailing from a computer, but then it stops at the end of the day. So you really have to look at what are you using as far as devices and what applications you're using.

And the best thing is, is that we hear from the customers or the people who are unserved, but we're not hearing enough from them. And part of the reason is, is that we're not hearing enough from them. And part of the reason is, is because they're not connected well and they don't know where to turn and fill out surveys. So we know that they have poor internet usage. I mean, it's great that I get an email asking me how fast is my speed.

I'm served. I'm more than well served. So you don't need to hear from me. So these surveys, where are they? Going out or even if it's an online area, you put in a website, fill out your information of what internet speed you had.

This is what the government and some agencies have tried to do to find out what areas of the U.S. are underserved. And Jeff and I have talked in the past about this. I think Mike may have too with us with the U.S. and the U.S.

and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. And the Internet Service Providers fill out these forms to say how much internet they're providing in certain census blocks.

There's nothing that validates that that information is even remotely true. So those just have to be submitted. I believe it's twice a year. And I think that's a good way to do it. And I think that's a good way to do it.

And I think that's a good way to do it. Right. So until that gets fixed, so we're not we're not looking at advertised speeds rather than actual speeds, then it'll continue to be a problem and a challenge. But I think I would add a couple other things that that we need to be focused on going forward. And that is the removal of data caps, especially in terms of where technology is taking things.

When I moved to Fort Collins from Durango, I had to sign up with Comcast Anthony. No charter here, but I got pretty mad at you. I had a gig by 50. So one gig up or sorry, one gig down, 50 megabits per second up. But because we do everything over the top in my house, we were going over the data cap that Comcast had set up.

So it was two terabytes a month or two terabytes a month. Because we're constantly going over that, I was paying instead of paying 70, I was paying $140 a month. Now, maybe I'm fortunate that I could absorb that. But there are a lot of people aren't. And that's the way we should be looking at that.

Right. Data caps need to go away for another reason. And that's because where technology innovation is going and will be delivered over the top of networks, data consumption is going to go through the roof. So if data caps do not advance forward to meet what's coming from a technology perspective, then we could see some folks with huge Internet bells. But it isn't.

I mean, that is a minute problem. I understand what you're saying, but I think if people don't even have the right coverage, then they're never going to hit the cap. It's interesting about, for example, when Anthony was talking, I think it was wasteful spending. And I think it comes back to kind of what you're talking about here is we really need to make sure we have the right kind of governance in place. To your point, hey, data usage, how do we do that?

I know, for example, with me, I mean, they did increase mine because of the pandemic. But then you also, to Anthony, your point is OK. If they have to fill that out, that's not right. You're allowing them to answer their own questions. So how do we, for example, something like a census, create a governing body that's the census aspect of going out and identifying, especially if we know these areas are really under coverage, how do we handle that?

And being able to identify that and then holding people accountable. I mean, you think about it kind of like with cars. OK, hey, you know, it needs to be X amount of miles per gallon. Well, how can we do it for that? But we can't do it for this.

It would be, I guess, my question to the panel. Lack of oversight again. Lack of oversight and not enforcing. How important is data? Data is so important and just about everything we do today.

But here it's very important to have accurate data. So prior to Ardov, here's something interesting that if I were charter servant, sorry to pick on Anthony, charter servant of rural community and in a census block where there were 50 homes, very large census block, Anthony was serving three homes in that census block. Well, Anthony, Anthony would then report back to the FCC and suggest that he's he's providing speeds that may not match actually what he's delivering. And that furthermore, that entire census block was served when in fact it wasn't.

That was only recently changed with Ardov, right? So the whole so you can't a whole census block has to be served. Right. You can't just serve a fraction of that census block and then ignore the rest of it. Yeah, you can say I'm serving this block and that's the end of sentence.

You don't have to say how much if it's if it's served at the adequate levels or not. To your point, that's a really interesting what you're describing. Yeah, the issue is for the other people living in a census block, they could go on served. And the SEC would not allocate any subsidy funding because that census block was served, considered served. Sorry, but even even considered just, you know, having just normal coverage.

What does it always say? Well, this will be your this is your potential max coverage that you'll have at home. Yeah, up to there you go. Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, legally.

Yeah, it's up to and, you know, Anthony, I'm so worried you're going to get fired. I'm a poor guy. We're like picking on on. But no, I mean, at the end of the day, you're right. It's up to and but there's that's also super hard to control, too, right?

You can't guarantee you're going to get X amount of speed. And so even if you do this kind of surveying aspect, what are you going to do? Go one day and who knows they may have had, you know, a site may have been down or a line may have been cut. Right. How do you know that?

And then it's not simple as knocking on a door, I guess, would because there's challenges with that, with with the execution of of the data. I don't know, Anthony, if you can. Yeah, I mean, there's no simple answers, unfortunately, to solve these problems. And some of the data that's been out there for the past couple of years makes it even more convoluted where they're saying up to 80 percent of the world's population are going to live in large cities. So if you're unserved or not served at all, it's almost going to force you to move closer to a major metropolitan area for all benefits of life, for shopping, for transportation, for connectivity, for.

So I think it was Jeff, it might have been you, Mike, that mentioned we're going to just always need more and more bandwidth. And we already see what's coming down the line with augmented reality, virtual reality, telemedicine, more connected education for our kids and for students and universities and so forth. So the bandwidth for video, for air and VR and more connected wearables in all our industries and health care is going to put more burden on our network that is providing bandwidth. So this isn't a problem that's going to go away.

It's almost like poverty and homelessness and hunger. These are things that have been around for hundreds of years. And this is just a new utility that we're going to have problems and deal with these problems on an ongoing basis. Yeah. Well, I think if nothing else today, we've done a good job of explaining the problem and we've done a good job of talking about different issues that we've been dealing with.

We've been explaining the problem and we've done a good job of talking about different ways to solution, but it's not going to be done in one day. What I do, what I do want to do, what I do want to do is open it up. I know we have a couple people watching, watching, whether it be on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on Periscope, or what have you. But we also have a listener here in Clubhouse. So I just wanted to open it up.

If you'd like to put your questions in the chat in this live stream, go ahead and put your question there for any one of the guests that we have on the show. And then also, Nick, you're here in the room. If you have any questions for the group here, we'd love to hear from you. Even if it's just a comment as well, we'd love to hear from you. All right.

So we'll wait here for a couple moments for questions to come in. But I think, I think, you know, Anthony, you, you mentioned a few sources whereby we're going to need more bandwidth specifically for like you mentioned the VR, the AR, you know, is, are there other things that we should be watching out for from from your perspective on just you, Anthony, but the entire panel. As far as broadband consumption to be careful of or to prepare for. Sorry. Go ahead.

Well, I think Anthony started that conversation. It's a really good dialogue because I've been, I've been trying to hammer home this last six months in the industry itself that we need to give more visibility to what's coming from a technology innovation perspective because technology innovation companies don't care. Where what the state of broadband is right there going to continue to innovate. The problem, the challenge there is that when those applications are ready to to for consumer use, only a small part, a small portion of the of our of the people are going to be able to use these, so we're going to have laggards and adoption and laggards and use.

So we're going to have the haves and the have nots. And if we don't address this address what's coming, because really at the end of the day we're talking about the impact of video quality. So in a RVR it's eight came beyond 360 degree retinal video content cloud gaming. It came beyond cloud gaming. It came beyond video streaming diagnostics telehealth immersive teleconferencing.

It came beyond 4K 8K and beyond video cameras. And from my perspective, we should be looking at this from aggregate use perspective, not not a one off application so you know as well as I do we're going to be somehow a bunch of houses. We're going to have people using different applications all at the same time. And what impact will that have on how we design, build and deliver broadband going forward. So another key component is going to be edge computing but that's a whole nother sort of conversation but that will help reduce latency across networks to so you can enjoy.

So one of the things, interestingly enough with VR. If you have a, if you're using a VR application over a high latency high jitter network. It can actually cause vertigo. Just know that. No.

Yeah, so I mean, this is another reason why we need to need to address this now and talk about it, talk about what are the future impacts. So Jeff, where does the liability fall with the vertigo on the ISP, or the technology the VR manufacturer, but that's a whole nother can of worms. Well since you work for a big company. Oh, man. You could take the fit.

It's always been a challenge attacking me even though I work at an insurance company talking about liability. I have nothing to do with the insurance side of the business, by the way, but it is an interesting question because this will be a great. I think across the spectrum no pun intended but think about autonomous vehicles and the liability there who is liable. But, but even the autonomous vehicles we talked about. That's all the IoT infrastructure you need which is what Anthony was talking about, is you need more and more small cells, you know, you know, streets and everything for that to happen.

And so, you know, if you don't have, you think about, you know, rural areas like far line. If I have an autonomous vehicle I need to make sure that that that that car that's driving right is connecting back to some, you know, you know, it should be okay I mean the pole, hopefully the site there, but you're going to need more and more infrastructure to support that. So, yeah, if you think about the decisions that have to be made in milliseconds. It's quite astounding. Actually, if you.

Let's just say for example there's an accident, I'll give you two examples, there's an accident, and you're coming around a bend. You're, you know a lot of decisions have to be made really quickly. Right. In order for you coming around that bend not to get involved that accident. So, the other example is what do you do in the mountains.

By the way, since I live out in Colorado. What do you do about weather. How do you chain up commercial vehicles and when do you make a decision to do that, how do you do that. So Jeff, that's a great question and this is why people don't understand that we have had the technology to build upon, not fully as we've seen new technologies always arising and new communication protocols and revisions of connectivity keep coming out, but for Over 10 years we've been working on autonomous vehicles, but there are millions of variables to be able to account for.

So as we started, we tackled, maybe 50 variables, and every year it's more and more and more. But as you bring up questions, we have to account for every single variable. Otherwise, there's a chance for a major disaster that can affect human life. So we're still a ways off, even though we see Teslas driving on highways by themselves and people sleeping behind a wheel and so forth. But to be able to accommodate for every variable of incentive if something fell down in the middle of the road, got hit by lightning, a street pole, where there's a pothole or there's black ice on the road or there's high winds.

So the car has to be able to account for all these variables, even if it's not connected to a small cell or a cellular network. It has to have in-car computing and sensing on its own to be able to use in rural America or when you're outside connectivity of a cellular network and so forth. There's a lot of innovation still being done there, and I'm working on some of that right now to help build out the connectivity and to overcome all these variables and all the different types of technology that could be implemented.

But obviously you don't want to do overkill. Otherwise, these cars are going to be priced out of the purchasing targeted area for people. You don't want to have a vehicle that has lidar, radar, thermal imaging cameras and other sensors in them. And then a common sedan is going to be $250,000. Well, my only...

That's my advice. Work faster. Okay, so my counter to that is, but you're okay driving on the street with millions of people that could be angry, could be drunk, etc. And that's okay. So what is any different from us being okay driving as humans when we don't pay attention?

Imagine you're on the thing and you're like this and driving. What's the difference? We'll figure it out. We will figure it out, but I think it's control, right? Control is always going to be an issue, right?

Back to the governance question. What's that? Back to the governance question. Yeah, that's control. And most likely I'm going to be liable and my insurance company is going to jack up the rates, right, because it's my car and I'm going to have to pay.

So on to Brittany. Well, I mean, to your points, right? Like, there's the question of these companies who are creating autonomous vehicles, you know, even back to the virtual reality XR, right? Like, and the vertical comment that you made, Jeff, what maybe there's some opportunities for them working with the government legislature of saying, okay, we need these things for our products to be successful. You know, maybe there's that gap of the public private partnership model.

I don't know. I'm just throwing brainstorming solutions out there at this moment in time. But maybe there's that gap when we're talking about education as a solution that could fill that gap. Yeah, but I think Anthony's right. This is an evolving space.

And I don't think we're at a place now where you can trust the fact that I would not fall asleep behind the wheel of any Tesla. I don't care if it was Kevlar aligned, I wouldn't do that. But but see, there goes, that's a good indication of trust and control, right? I don't trust the safety. And I would feel more comfortable if I had control.

And I think that's that's gonna be a huge hurdle to overcome. And by the way, what do you do with how do you how do you manage autonomous cars with older cars that are on the road that don't have sensors or their classic cars that people are not going to get used to? What do you do about that? So many, so many things. Another what if.

Yeah, our next panel, our next panel will be the panel. Don't worry, we're all recorded and streaming. So you have everything on record here. I do want to thank all of you. We're coming down to the to the top of the next hour.

This has been such an engaging conversation. I want to thank each one of you. Thank you for your contribution and just elevating the awareness level of the problem that exists today. I think a lot of people are just totally unaware that this is even a problem in the first place. So the fact that you're socializing and doing this, I do want to give you Jeff an opportunity to play a role in this.

I don't know if you're ready with a spiel, but I won't give a spiel. But before I talk about just one thing, I wish more people in this country were aware of how such programs work, where their tax dollars are going, because I think if we could raise awareness there and educate people that there would be a bigger outcry. They understood how their taxpayer dollars either are working for them or not working for them. I think that might be helpful to change the dynamic. So thank you for allowing me to talk a little bit about the And for those who aren't unfamiliar with that area, it's right over the hill from Breckenridge at 9300 feet in elevation.

So it's not a bad place to be in August. We have a very diverse agenda. So please review that, especially after this weekend, because I'm going to have a very short presentation. I'm going to have it updated at mountainconnect.org. Awesome.

Thank you for sharing that. Mountainconnect.org, guys. Check it out. Any one of you have any last comments you want to share with the audience here before we wrap? I'll just say I'll be able to make it out to see Jeff at Mountain Connect since home office now is in Greenwood Village, Colorado, not too far from there.

And I'll be out in July and August. So if you guys want to come see Jeff and I, check out Mountain Connect. Mike, any last words for you? Nope. This is a great discussion with the panelists and it was great to be here.

Thank you. Great. Well, with that, I do want to just share some last words about our sponsor. We want to thank Yes, Your Exceptional Space for sponsoring today's show. For more information about your exceptional space, download their paper by clicking the Get Started button at yes-spaces.com.

If you want to learn more about Constructor, you can go to Brittany Campbell Turner on YouTube and digest our content there. Also, you can go to Constructor.com. We have podcasts from topics all the way from real estate to facilities management, architecture, construction, smart cities, blockchain, the whole gamut. So that being said, we appreciate all of you, those who are watching in the audience, and thank you to all the panelists once again. Thank you.

Thank you.