Equity in Infrastructure Development: The Digital Divide

great great that looks good um so welcome everybody and thank you for joining us i am david lescher i'm the editor at cal matters and for those of you who don't know us we are a non-profit nonpartisan statewide news organization we started six years ago with a mission to raise public awareness about all of the major issues in california so this event is part of a series the cal matters is co-hosting with the milken institute about the future of work and today we're going to talk about the internet and access to high-speed broadband more than ever we saw during the pandemic that the internet has become an essential tool for businesses and employers and employers and employees and and consumers and schools and students we do not all however have equal access to the internet so if it's essential there's growing attention and concern about those who can be left behind if we're not adequately connected so your cal matters host and moderator today will be jackie botts jackie covers the economy and inequality at cal matters as part of our california divide project it's an unprecedented media collaboration with cal matters reporters embedded at newspapers throughout the state covering the issues of poverty and inequality we are committed account matters to being a trusted source of information on these and many other major california issues so i encourage you to visit visit us at calmatters.org to subscribe to our daily newsletter and to help support this free source of quality information by making a donation finally i want to thank a tremendous group of panelists for helping us with this discussion today i really look forward to what we're going to hear and i want to thank our co-hosts at the milken institute and now i'd like to introduce uh our co-host matt horton thanks dave um as dave mentioned i'm matt horton i'm director at the milton institute's california center the milton institute is also a nonpartisan nonprofit economic policy think tank and we're as dave mentioned really excited uh to be partnering with cal matters on this future of work uh forum series and especially today's program which aims to explore opportunities to enhance equity and opportunity really at the intersection of workforce and infrastructure development um as dave mentioned the coca-19 pandemic has not only exposed great social and economic weaknesses across the across the state and accelerating future work trends but has also highlighted really significant deficits in our infrastructure housing and other workforce development areas that have really exacerbated some inequalities and inequities over time you know we think and through our work we to realize a full recovery will um require leaders to think about new ways to invest and collaborate to mitigate these inequities and also retool the state's economic development framework from the bottom up that promotes equity and facilitates regional competitiveness you know things like enhancing access to and facilitating better access and development of broadband infrastructure so this conversation today is is really exciting and and thanks again to all of our panelists as they've mentioned so um with further ado i'd like to turn it over to jackie and thanks again to her for um and her reporting diligence here and helping to bring this conversation together thanks thanks again great thanks uh my name is jackie botts and i cover economic inequality for cal matters in the california divide i'm very excited to be moderating this panel today and thrilled to welcome you all to our panel event um as dave and matt said the divide in who has internet and who doesn't um it has been studied for years but it was thrust into the spotlight by the pandemic as students and workers businesses doctors suddenly had to shift online and a whole lot actually happened very quickly in the last year to try to close these existing divides most visibly in mass efforts by schools and non-profits major telecoms companies to get children connected to laptops and devices and the internet at home a lot also happened in sacramento and dc and we've really seen um unprecedented efforts to try to fundamentally change and accelerate how the state gets californians connected whether they live in eastern sierras where no internet service provider has laid down cables uh or maybe they live just miles from silicon valley but they can't afford a fast enough internet connection for studying or working from home and at the same time the pandemic has accelerated all sorts of shifts in how we work for office workers a high speed internet connection turned their kitchen our living room or bedroom into an office many moved to places that cost less because they could and doctors offices have adapted to telemedicine we saw brick and mortar restaurants and shops upgrade their technology because going online was their only option for surviving the pandemic and in most cases work is not going to go back to the way it operated before we've seen a shift to automation displaced many low-wage workers who will now be searching in a job market that increasingly values candidates with higher education in digital skills and crucially a laptop and home internet connection so that's the backdrop for our chat today we will be talking about what the digital divide actually looks like how the pandemic changed how businesses and workers use the internet the billions of dollars the state plans to spend what more needs to be done to make california's broadband infrastructure accessible and equitable it's a lot to cover but we have an excellent panel of experts here to make it happen um and you know i also want to acknowledge that this panel is is skewed uh you know it's mostly white we're well educated we're mostly living in urban areas in fact our panel is skewed in many of the ways that internet access is skewed we represent groups who disproportionately have access to the internet and given that this webinar is happening online and during the workday probably our audience skews that way too so panelists um i challenge us to consider all of californians and the californians who do not have the access to come to a webinar like this today as you answer questions be aware of our blind spots and with no further ado i would love to introduce our expert panelists so we have michael anderson founder and ceo of clientworks inc nevada city-based i.t services company connecting businesses to high-speed internet he is forming a non-profit broadband utility in that area called northern sierra broadband we have sunny right nick peak president and ceo of the california emerging technology fund a statewide nonprofit foundation whose mission is to close the digital divide alexandra rosen senior director of venture forward an initiative by the web services company godaddy to study and support micro businesses and entrepreneurs and carolyn mcintyre president of the california cable and telecommunications association the industry's largest such association representing many of the biggest broadband providers in the state and so the plan today is that we're going to spend the next 30 to 40 minutes in a panel discussion which i will moderate and then we'll open the floor to audience questions so be sure to write questions for our panelists in the q a if you put them in the chat i might not see them but if you put them in the q a box i will and i will try to get your questions answered we're going to have about 40 minutes for the q a as well because we really want to make sure that we take the time to get your questions in front of these great panelists and let's kick it off i'd like to start by talking about the current state of high speed broadband access in california and obstacles to access according to a report last december from the california broadband council 23 of california housing units home to about 8.4 million residents did not have home broadband subscriptions in 2019. um sunny i would love for you to lay the basis for this conversation by sharing what does your organization organization's research and surveys show about what defines adequate access to the internet and who is missing out on high-speed access to the internet in california thank you jackie and what a pleasure it is to join you and david lesher matt horton um cal matters and the milken institute in this conversation today along with my panelists the uh definition of what is adequate from the perspective of the california emerging technology fund is whatever any resident needs to be able to participate daily in the the commerce of california do school education remotely visit your doctor with telemedicine that speed has continued to increase the demand for having 13 million households or trying to have 13 million households online simultaneously jury during the pandemic shelter in place has driven upward the need to invest in improving our infrastructure you cited the numbers from the california broadband council uh we know from our own research that we have uh literally that eight million households or it's actually individuals who are not online two million households who are digitally disadvantaged um the the 2021 statewide survey on broadband adoption that we did with the university of southern california showed we have made real progress and we now have nine percent of californians not connected at all and six percent who are connected with a smartphone only that's still two million households in california we know that the the digital divide is just another manifestation of the economic divide the california emerging technology fund was directed to be established by the california public utilities commission in 2005 to close the digital divide which truly got spotlighted during the pandemic it actually revealed what we call a digital cliff individuals who are not connected had no access are not connected adequately literally we're falling off the cliff into deeper poverty and greater isolation and so the investments made this year by the governor and the legislature by the federal government are really historic i want to acknowledge that one of the pioneers in this whole area is the chair of our board dr barbara o'connor who's in your audience today professor of communications and and politics at uh meredith at sac state and she has long said you have to focus on people getting them online so the real issue is not just the technology although it's necessary we have to actually tackle poverty get to the root of concentrated persistent poverty which is rooted in systemic racism if we're really going to close the digital divide and have everybody able to participate in the digital world sunny i'm gonna jump in there and ask you um what do you know what do we know about the main barriers to access in california well you need to have infrastructure and that infrastructure has to be adequate so there were a lot of school kids who got hot spots and who still couldn't get online or sustain that connection because the underlying infrastructure in their neighborhood either a remote rural community or are a very high poverty urban area simply wasn't it adequate but beyond that the barriers to low-income households overcoming the um the digital divide barrier is first of all cost so that means not only the cost of the service to connect to the internet but the cost of a computing device until google gives us a chip that we can put in our finger and either stick in a socket or hold up in the air we still we still have to have a device and then it is digital literacy you have to know how to use the technology or you're not going to invest in it and it's relevant so the outreach by community based organizations who are the trusted messengers uh and none of the isps are trusted by low-income households that's where we spend all of our time all of our work is in low-income households with people who are not online today that outreach in language and culture is essential to overcoming the digital divide for those who are not online today thanks sonny um carolyn i want to ask you a little bit more about the infrastructure side of this before the pandemic what was the existing system in place in california to incentivize internet providers to expand access specifically in rural areas with limited infrastructure existing right thank you um and thank you for having me today um as a panelist i'm pleased to to join this group um the let me state that we do um ccta does in fact represent some of the largest internet providers in the state of california and we do provide a very robust service proud that the companies were able to literally step up overnight and um take on the added usage of the uh that was caused by the pandemic on the internet um but to your point um we don't serve every area of the state of california there are some areas where the companies have not uh deployed their network into those areas many of them are rural areas sparsely populated areas uh you do tend to have some infrastructure in those areas that are provided by other isps or um the telephone companies that have upgraded their networks in order to provide broadband service but in those cases um it may not be adequate you did ask the question about what is considered adequate there is a technical definition which i don't want to spend too much time talking about technical uh capabilities but it is based on a speed on on the broadband network being able to provide a service at a particular speed all of our member companies here at ccta are capable of doing that but to sunny's point made earlier um if you don't have the actual infrastructure in the area the many devices that were suddenly made available uh by providers being willing to donate hot spots will do you no good you have to have a network uh to um to to link into um the member companies spend billions of dollars each year in california and elsewhere upgrading their networks and expanding their networks but to your point there are still areas that lack connectivity so um we also do recognize that there is a digital divide in that there are households in california that actually are capable of getting broadband service um but as sonny made the point earlier you often have other barriers that have kept them from getting connected that may be cost that may be digital literacy that may be non-english speaking households so in order to ultimately reach those populations you're not only going to have to have a robust network in place you're going to have to have the programs that ensure connectivity for those populations that may need greater assistance thanks carolyn um i want to talk now about how the pandemic changed how businesses large and small use the internet and i want to take it also to michael a good segue from what carolyn was just talking about who lives in nevada county many parts of which are unserved by major telecoms company give us a view on the ground tell us about what the state of internet access in nevada county where you work looks like and during the pandemic did you see more businesses move online relocate to places with internet change how they use the internet what have you seen uh well thank you jackie and uh thank you for the invitation to be on this panel um yes so nevada county is a mixture of of somewhat urban centers like grass valley nevada city and truckee and then very rural areas where the density is extremely low and there's really nothing but satellite or maybe cell service uh to answer your question about how um businesses responded uh interestingly enough we actually had a little bit of a head start on that because of the psps um the public safety power shutoffs that happened in 2019 that gave us a real heads up on what happens when the infrastructure is not adequate for business and so we had to respond to that um before the pandemic so in some ways we were a little bit um prepared um maybe just to the point of being emotionally prepared for the for the hardship um uh it wasn't uh that easy to solve the the problems um specifically i think uh carolyn and sonny mentioned that that um you know they would pass out the school districts in in our area they passed out 2000 hot spots and without any kind of um improvement of the of the cell tower infrastructure so you know when i said to the superintendents what you know how how's that going to work you know the back haul is still not there um and sure enough uh the the the towers crashed and the kids couldn't get online and they ended up having it in the car and driving to the school and sitting in the parking lot and doing their homework um connected to a uh a hot spot there um as far as the businesses were concerned you know it was sort of a double whammy because we're undergoing a transformation in business right now where um services are increasingly online the cloud is we've talked about the cloud for a decade or more but really the cloud has just taken off since probably around 2017 2018 it's just um so important to have that presence to be able to put your files there um for business continuity um to be able to um have your um your applications move out of the server closet and into the cloud most vendors are moving their applications there so so our businesses are um just really hungry for better broadband and and it's important that we uh um that we quantify what broadband is um both in terms of the infrastructure and also what it is we're trying to get out of that infrastructure so the infrastructure is wireless and wireline satellite dsl copper coax fiber and then what we're trying to get out of that it's not just speed and also speed has another component to it which is um the um latency the how how fast the ones and zeros move back and forth between uh the source and the and the target but um there's also reliability and there's price so you take those three items and you kind of make a metric a matrix out of that and you can get um you know if you have a really fast download but it's not reliable it doesn't really help you so um that's kind of an overview of how we responded it was catches catch can and uh you know we were they talked about the recovery um you know as we proceeded through the pandemic being k-shaped um the technology firms ours and that many others we uh took off we've been so busy since june of 2020 i could you know barely catch a breath and uh we have more employees than we've ever had so we're very lucky but it's been also very stressful and uh yeah so that's why um uh i i was interested in attending or being part of this panel because uh you know this is this is an issue that's not going to get solved right away and uh it's kind of an all hands on deck everybody needs to be aware of it and be part of the solution thanks michael um i want to ask you a question i also am seeing that some people are asking questions in the chat go ahead and put your questions in the q a because i won't see them unless they're in the q and a function of zoom a follow follow-up question michael i'm wondering if you can share any examples of how people in your area clients of yours were able to weather that transition online um what did it take to get online for some of these folks especially if they were in areas with how that high-speed affordable and reliable internet that you just outlined for us well it uh you know we reached out to to um comcast grass valley nevada city are our comcast territory so those city centers have been comcast customers for quite some time so we reached out to the comcast representatives and asked how they could help us at t has really stepped up their game in some ways that their fiber product is is suddenly becoming a lot more robust than it was before and uh but then they're also getting rid of dsl so one of the reasons that we put our broadband utility together is because uh working uh in a con a fashion of coopetation we're getting a t backhaul to serve neighborhoods with fiber builds um and and they're they're not going to do the last mile so they're asking us to do it and uh so everybody wins on that one and uh we see more of that model um um happening and and i think that's important you said how are businesses responding obviously everybody at first was at home and so boy you know you have rural areas where let's say somebody works in downtown grass valley and they're fine but now they're working from home and all they have is a hot spot and the latency is bad the tower's crashing and they can't do it so a lot of them would have to come in they would have to again sit in a parking lot somewhere and try to work from the parking lot and uh it was um everybody had their own kind of cobbled together solution and one of the things is we started adding redundancy to a lot of our customers we would have two circuits so if one didn't work then there was a failover so we had started installing a lot of equipment that could do that automatically it wouldn't have to be a manual cut over so those are some of the things that we were doing to respond to this thanks michael um so i want to that that's an on the ground view i want to zoom out a little bit and ask alex with ventureforward to tell us a little bit about your study at ventureford and what you've observed about which californians are turning to the internet to start their own businesses during the pandemic absolutely such a pleasure to be here it's a privilege to be on this panel and kind of share the research that godaddy has been doing around what we call the everyday entrepreneur so we know small businesses are the backbone of america in a lot of ways and crucial to the economies local economies and national economy and what godaddy realized is that we have all this data we can look into and that is businesses that have an online presence so obviously broadband is essential to this is whether they have a website or whether they actually do e-commerce online the venture forward initiative looks at 20 million of these across the nation about three and a half million in california alone of what we call the micro business and about nine out of ten of them have uh ten or less employees about six out of ten um are our individuals they're just self-employed and all of them are online and so they turn to it for revenue and you know everything that you said earlier on jackie or the pandemic really accelerated these businesses turning to online and as michael said that online presence became more and more essential and what we thought is that actually about two-thirds said the website helped them and seven to ten percent said that depending on what part of the country we're talking about said their revenue actually went up during the pandemic due to an online presence so when there is uh broadband adoption not just access but the knowing and knowledge of how to use it and create a website presence and engage in online commerce there was the ability to actually pivot shift operations increase marketing and to your question of who turned to it we actually saw since pandemic that 17 of micro businesses that we surveyed began since the pandemic since march 2020 so during this time a couple things one is that areas that had more broadband have more micro businesses areas that have more broadband micro businesses saw lower unemployment throughout the pandemic this is because people didn't have to let their employees go because they could shift online and service other markets or as on consumer spending moved online there was a supply and demand meeting there meaning everyone had to have broadband for that to happen um there was also the fact that people who were laid off of those who started new businesses at the higher population or higher propensity of people who don't have college degrees or are black or female entrepreneurs those who might have greater job barriers or more or face greater economic inequity were the ones we saw start more micro businesses in this last year and on average about one twenty percent would otherwise be considered unemployed um as of reported and one and four actually gross income over four thousand a month so when we say what's the value of the jobs created by these tiny little businesses who might otherwise not be trapped it's actually pretty significant and they make a big contribution to the economy and again it comes back to that we know that it's the presence the ability to access and use the broadband that's available to them that makes this possible great thanks alex and i think i'll ask you a follow-up question too because your team recently published a study along with the milken institute our co-host today titled exploring the role of micro businesses and economic growth and recovery for u.s cities so right on point for a conversation what have you found about how micro businesses factor into economic recovery in california and the role of internet access and that i love it it was such a pleasure for us to partner with milken because we've been such huge fans of their best performing studies index that they've published and which looks specifically at how cities perform in order to be able to compare them in outcomes like job and wage growth high tech and actually this was the first year they added housing and broadband as part of the things to consider when measuring a city's performance but high tech is not necessarily the everyday entrepreneur so when we talk about the micro businesses godaddy looks at can be the mom-and-pop shop it could be a service provider online so low-tech as well and so together we it was a pleasure to collaborate because we recognized the ability to complement the bpc the best performing cities index with the micro businesses and we found one that they really agree around the importance of broadband the areas that score high on bpc index are the ones who have the highest micro businesses and micro business density in their areas we also saw that um the first step to increasing micro businesses is definitely for broadband but it's important to have those policies and programs in place a lot of times there might be we work a lot with cities and there might be available programs but people don't know how to take advantage of them so we did see together that broadband leads more micro businesses micro businesses lead to lower unemployment they lead to job creation there's two jobs created for one everyday entrepreneur and economic resiliency overall so we see them as essential in the community for both the diversity as well as for as the great resignation is going on right now and people choose to do something else even as well allowing people to um contribute economically and self-actualize while also helping um their local economies stay afloat thanks so much alex that's great um i want to talk now about all of the money that's about to flow uh through california and into broadband investment so this was really the year that the california legislature as well as the biden administration made broadband infrastructure a huge priority um in california a deal was made that invest six billion dollars um into broadband broadband infrastructure and that includes a few different elements that i'm going to go over very quickly and i'm going to ask our panelists to share more about it but this includes grants to pay for the construction of underserved areas where speeds are too slow it includes a fund to help local non-profits and education agencies cities counties utilities finance broadband projects at low interest separate from the traditional internet service providers and it also puts money into developing a state-run open access middle mile network what does that mean you can sort of think of this as a sort of public information highway and from that highway um small roads will branch out to people's homes but the idea here is that the state will be spending money to develop out this open access highway that internet service providers can access to build their private roads to people's homes um sonny i would love for you to share in your eyes what are the most important elements of california's new plan in terms of closing disparities in broadband access across rural versus urban divides across wealth divides across racial thank you jackie so i think first and foremost we want to commend the governor and the legislature for agreeing on a very significant investment they actually originally agreed on 7 billion which is about the right number and then negotiated somehow down to six um at the federal level we recommended a hundred billion that is what uh president biden started with they've now negotiated down is still significant money as alex very eloquently laid out you get a higher return on investment in internet infrastructure than anything else and i am a fan of investing in all infrastructure including workforce training so there is a lot of money on the table however it is a real question about how to use it cost effectively and immediately and so i think we want to i just want to comment on a few things michael is a great entrepreneur in nevada county nevada county for 20 years has been a hotbed of leadership on broadband steve monaghan is their cio who is sort of trailblazed there they have a tremendous amount of middle mile and they still have the problem of getting to last mile and so unless last mile is the driver of middle mile investment we're still not going to get to where we need to be as soon as possible as alex said you get a lot of innovation uh if people are online uh creativity that we never really envisioned and a contribution back to the economy uh carolyn mcintyre is one of the most powerful people in the capital i keep trying to get carolyn uh and her members to join us in proactive uh you know implementation of programs not only to build the infrastructure but to get people online that's what the california emerging technology fund is really advocating and the legislature has that framework it's now an implementation matter uh jackie a good example is the california department of technology is responsible for the middle mile they have 3.25 billion dollars and they have the legislature in their wisdom authorized a third party administrator the agreement has been signed with scenic scenic runs the network that connects all the higher education and research institutions and now k-12 and libraries scenic knows what they're doing we are really counseling however scenic focus on that last mile put out a request for partnership to all the private sector we have said to in the immediate future before we get to the end of 2021 to know which of those isps which of carolyn's members uh also att verizon t-mobile uh are going to a frontier be a part of the solution because that will accelerate us getting to the people who need to be connected middle mile does not get us the last mile household online it does not get us necessarily the local um uh anchor institutions you have to focus on the goal or any you know any roads going to get us there we don't know where we're going so that's what i would i would say uh jackie is so important and and this might it might have sounded obvious or superficial but we are in danger of wasting a whole lot of money if we do not focus on that last mile consumer getting the infrastructure that everybody has just said is needed thanks sonny um so it sounds like that's sort of a big area that is up in the air right now and you're you're pushing the legislature and people who make decisions here um to prioritize this last minute last mile driven we are jackie and it's worth noting that i have not talked to any legislator or a member of the administration who doesn't agree with what i just said they said of course we want to get to the last mile the middle mile investment was intended to help support competition to get infrastructure where it's not you heard michael very uh you know eloquently described you can have a whole lot of hot spots out there but if you didn't improve the tower you don't have the what we call back hall the ability to get the traffic back into the network it has to go hand in hand however in focusing on that last mile and working very uh intensely with the internet service providers who want to be a part of the solution that's now executive leadership i also want to hasten to say that is it it needs to be ceo to ceo our governor needs to talk to the ceos of all of the isps and say this is the time if you want to do business in california to become our partner if not we welcome your your investment go do your own uh network as you choose to but uh we are going to subsidize and and expedite those companies who are willing to get every californian online thanks sonny um carolyn i i'd love to hear um your response to that idea of step down or step up or step aside and also would like you to um talk to me a little bit you you've written an op-ed for cal matters on the issue of this open access middle mile aspect of this plan talk to me about what you and the people who you represent are looking for in this broadband plan absolutely um sunny has made very clear to us um that the industry needs to step up or step aside and we are hoping that our recent conversations in partnership with cetf and some of the government organizations that are also focused in this space i will demonstrate that we are prepared to do that um in order to solve california's connectivity issue deployment issue it is going to take a public private partnership sunny pointed out that the 3.25 billion dollars is going to be spent on an open access middle mile network middle mile provides you nothing without the last bio connectivity what we were advocating for in the legislature is that there be a greater link between the deployment of the middle mile and the last mile um ideally you will either deploy them together or you will know that you have her providers that are prepared to step in and provide that last mile connectivity and clearly it is not automatic just because the highway is there doesn't mean that the providers are actually going to come there i think has been anticipated a possible role for local government if local government wants to step up and provide that last mile connectivity the legislature and the governor has made the funding available for them to be able to do that so it is in fact going to take a partnership between government and the private sector in order to get this done correctly the public utilities commission has had the california advanced services fund program in existence by statute since 2007. we are no closer to meeting the state's goal of getting all of the households connected than we were in 2007 even though at least 600 million dollars has been spent on efforts um to do that the cpuc now has a federal funding account that's a part of the program that will make an additional two billion dollars available where our hope is that they will use that funding to provide for last mile connectivity grants for last mile connectivity but until the rules are done until those priorities are set through the regulatory process we won't know that we this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we have here with this significant amount of funding and it's really important that the priorities are set correctly and that the funding goes to those areas that have the greatest need um in terms of getting families and households connected thanks carolyn um michael you uh are someone who has actually been working to create a non-profit network in your region um and this is um a phenomenon a form of providing internet that is emphasized in this six billion dollar investment so talk to us about what that looks like and how this plan how this um six billion dollar california broadband plan affects your project um what's your view on how um that program will make a difference uh in terms of broadband access in rural areas like yours okay sure um uh in the nsp 156 um it is outlined that there is such a thing called a rural exchange point um and that's that's a play on the ixp which is an internet exchange point and that's actually the physical bridge between middle mile and last mile so this is in my view probably the most important part of this legislation because these new rural exchange points or rxps will be deployed throughout rural california and they will provide an additional um pop or point of presence for last mile um providers to connect to the greater internet um you know so the thing about getting um blast mile it there's a there's a number of issues the investment is probably the best biggest thing because you know at the end of the day it has to pencil and you know i i've looked at this for for years and wondered you know why why doesn't uh comcast build over there or why does an att build over there and it it comes down to um the rate of return and how many years that will pay off so it's just a it's just math and the the problem is is that um you know we we build houses and we pay them off in 30 years but a lot of infrastructure is expected to pay for itself in three five or ten years and it's just that doesn't work it you know the amount of money that the subscribers are going to pay does not does not cover that so we have to look at this as the fourth utility after you know water sewer energy and then broadband broadband is a requirement it's no longer something that's just nice to have you have to have it so we need to look at the investment side a lot more realistically that's the first thing the second thing is when we talk about open access you know that's a an interesting word because it's it's got a lot of interpretation it's open to interpretation the way i look at it is uh when we talk about blast mile the the actual physical wires to to a home or or wireless um that uh infrastructure is a transport mechanism so you really you only need one i mean how many driveways do you have to your house you don't have five you have one and so if i look on the polls right outside my office here there's uh three different broadband providers out there so that's just kind of how it's been in the united states for quite a long time 100 years and that's not going to change so so we have to accommodate that and and i like to look at it in terms of of getting everybody to the table our nevada county economic resource council we're actually having a meeting uh in the coming weeks with as many of the providers as we can which is really hard to do getting all those cats in one room and talking about you know how do we work together and how do we not you know create new monopolies how do we um again find that that fine line to the goal of coopetation so that we're actually working together to get the last mile done that's that's what it really comes down to and that's a community-based um uh motivation the community needs to be involved with that and they need to be able to have access to all of the you know both the um the large providers and also providers um that are just getting started like our non-profit but um we can talk about open access maybe a little bit further uh later i don't want to go on too long but it's a really interesting concept and it kind of changes the the entire characteristic of how broadband is is delivered jackie if i could add what michael has just talked about in nevada county and i said they had been on the cutting edge they are getting all the providers together they're also doing a county-wide environmental impact report ctf is providing a grant to nevada county to add to it nevada county took a lot of their cares money they also put it out in grants for the internet and what we are hoping by uh our grant to the california or from the california emerging technology fund in nevada county is that that programmatic eir will in fact be a model for the rest of the state we think there needs to be a statewide one but that's what goes on in nevada county they have uh they see our business council that's working closely with the county it's all about that kind of cooperation or cooperative uh approach that michael talked about thank you thank you um michael and thank you sonny for that follow-up um i want to ask another question of alex again zooming out a little bit um beyond getting a strong fiber network to people's homes you mentioned this earlier that you've researched what business owners actually need beyond that connection to succeed in the online business world so um what is that what else is needed beyond that internet connection and what needs to be a part of this discussion beyond that internet connection great question we have found it's really not only the access it's the usage of it and the ability to move it forward and what impacts that usage is digital literacy as sonny had mentioned its help with marketing is the number one thing across the board every demographic says they need help with technical assistance and managing that website it can be very intimidating for people and they will try to outsource it and pay lots of money they're pulling from personal savings and so help with marketing and understanding that and then as i mentioned dipping into personal savings because a lot of times these tiny businesses aren't serviced by big banks they um access the capital that's the other piece we saw that um when the stimulus was given out multiple times after each time the new york times article did around small businesses and we looked specifically at micro businesses each time it came out the number of micro businesses jumped particularly in areas that had for example higher black populations that micro businesses can be more agile because it'll only be one to ten people and they can take that stimulus and with half of the entrepreneurs needing less than five thousand dollars to get started turn it into a micro business or grow their micro business so um we see it if we're trying to build an inclusive economy feeding the needs of these entrepreneurs and helping them with marketing and capital on top of the table stakes that is broadband is key thank you so in addition to building out infrastructure we need to be talking about the other resources that people need to succeed online and there's also the question that we brought up earlier sunny you talked about affordability and the need for people to be able to afford their internet connection even if it already if there's many options in their neighborhood um i want to talk and i'd like to ask um sunny and carolyn to weigh in on this is does the new california state plan address the issue of affordability and given that internet service providers often do charge rates that many low-income families can't afford for their higher speed options what do you see as the solution a plan does address affordability in that it acknowledges it it actually gives responsibility to uh go biz to convene and work with the internet service providers the california department of education uh so to pin the tail on this donkey this california emerging technology fund to be involved when that plan was written what we did not know is that the federal government would step up so let's take for example the emergency broadband benefit program that was in the reconciliation act uh in december of 2020 it's 3.2 billion dollars nationwide and at this point a little over 5.7 million households have signed up it's really under utilized in california we've just uh cleared in this last week 700 000 households it's 2 million that is to the target there's not been a concerted focus to get people to sign up for ebb there is a successor program in the infrastructure bill passed by the senate sitting in the house of representatives and that provides uh ebb fifty dollars a month subsidy and um then successor will be thirty dollars a month we think there has to be absolutely affordable offers we see etf have negotiated many affordable offers with the internet service providers they are in the marketplace today but they have to be advertised jackie we found with the study that usc did for us in our statewide survey this past year that literally only 24 of the people who are eligible for those affordable offers are aware of them and a smaller percentage has signed up there was a question from carlos saying well how do you get cbo's involved it needs to be a matter of policy for actual partnerships between the companies and the community organizations that are the trusted messengers we are very very happy that pew charitable trust has partnered with ctf and usc to actually look at what is the most efficient model for affordability but i i hasten to say that we need the offer it either has to be subsidized by government or the offer has to be 15 a month or so that people will actually pay about 20. um we at cetf think it should be a matter of procurement the state of california says if you're doing business with the state as a vendor or with any other public agency that we subsidize such as all the school districts then you the internet service provider needs to provide an affordable offer that's a pretty aggressive position but we know it's absolutely legal contractually so um you need to have an offer that is is affordable or a subsidy that will get to the quality uh internet service there has to be the internet um digital literacy that is that is for you know trained uh individuals to use it we know how to do that in about six hours so that people actually can improve their lives we'd even do it online have trained thousands of families in the last year online and lastly there has to be a device that goes home as we sit here today although school districts and isps made a huge effort to get everybody who was in school a device to go home and hot spots as we've talked about there is still almost amnesia where school districts are not in low-income communities sending a computing device home as they do a textbook and there's not information being distributed by schools around the ebb offer we've got to step up and it has to be the leadership from the state of california to do it so we couldn't agree with sunny moore on that jackie i'm pleased to say that all of ccta's members offer a reduced cost broadband service um to low-income communities price ranges from ten dollars a month to uh just less than twenty dollars per month um one of the challenges that we have faced is reaching the communities identifying those households and those families that actually need to take advantage of the service we do reach out to our community partners and work with them to attempt to identify some of these populations but we also rely largely on the schools who knows who these individuals are in fact this year ccta sponsored legislation that is pending on the governor's desk that would actually allow the state department of technology working with and on behalf of local education agencies to provide for reduced cost broadband service to low-income families it is just another tool in the state's toolbox that could be utilized in order to reach these populations again the schools know who these families are and are best yeah are best positioned to identify them and work with us and the state of california or cetf or other community partners in getting those individuals connected we are surprised also as sonny pointed out that the emergency broadband program that's been funded at the federal level has so few subscribers at this point we would have expected that given the pandemic and the light that has been shown shine on um the problem that we've had would have a greater take rate part of that is just getting the word out to those communities the schools the social service agencies all have a role in assisting us in doing this yes and you know i michael talked about a public safety power shutoff right and guess what all of the industrial utilities do and also the public utilities such as mud they send all customers to a website to find out if you're going to be shut off and we just said two million people are connected to the internet so we the whole notion of equity in even public safety depends on the internet however the best database of low-income households that all qualify for the emergency broadband benefit program who all could qualify for carolyn's affordable offers from her members from a t from frontier from uh you know that are off that are in the marketplace the best database is from the power companies the investor owned utilities they know me by name if i am signed up for their care program the subsidy to get affordable electricity the affordable gas carolyn's members might want to miss me and avoid my neighborhood because there's not enough return on investment from me and my neighbors but she doesn't know be my name we need to have the investor on utilities reach out to every one of their care customers every county has cal fresh uh recipients that's a huge database that is automatically qualified and then as carol instead all of the kids who are qualifying for the national school lunch program their parents should be getting a notification immediately from their school district then we can actually get everyone online that letter by the way should say and here is your community-based organization that you can contact for digital literacy training if you need that assistance that is all pretty doable thank you all this has been a great conversation so far we have covered so many different topics in a short time and we're keep on doing that but now i'm going to start sending you audience questions which we have many lined up and i encourage the audience to keep on putting them in the q a where there are questions that are similar i will try to combine them and get as many of these questions answered as possible the first question comes from daphne macklin what approaches would be most effective in assuring internet access and equipment access for people who are disabled and people who speak minority languages well i want to i want to give a shout out to the california foundation of independent living centers the world institute on disability um the center for assess assistive technology cfilc has 23 centers for independent living throughout california we need to work with those organizations who know how to reach the the community with disabilities and so that's essential cfilc is a major partner so as with with cetf uh you go the the issue about with people with disabilities jackie is exactly those who speak a certain language you'd have to do the outreach in that language and in culture so it's that partnership between government and the companies and the community that has to be in place thank you sonny would anyone else like to weigh in on that question uh yeah i'll i'll uh weigh in on that um in nevada county one of our clients is a non-profit um by the name of freed and they've been doing um work with the disability community for over two decades and uh so i have some personal our team has personal experience helping folks um during the pandemic and during psps with access to broadband and that was working with dragon natural speaking or setting up chromebooks and getting those deployed and doing some some basic training on how to get access to certain resources a lot of folks were trying to get jobs and we were able to show them you know help them with those resources in partnership with freed so we've been really lucky in nevada county to have that organization that does that kind of outreach and it's just been amazing to see how lives are transformed when when these folks are able to you know pretty much do micro businesses and other things online that they might not be able to do in person let's applaud michael that's exactly what needs to happen everywhere um there's a question here for carolyn that i'd like to ask um from scott dowell how does your organization view local municipalities providing open access infrastructure to their communities is there an opportunity for the municipalities and isps to work together to provide fast gigabyte speed reliable and low cost to our communities absolutely as i mentioned earlier the governor's legislation does in fact make additional funding available in anticipation of local governments also providing some last mile broadband connectivity one of the things that i was going to mention earlier in response to a comment michael made is uh with regards to sparsely populated areas and whether or not an open access net network is actually necessary and what does it mean in providing service to an area a business has to make a determination that not only is it economic to make the investment in the area will you have a market that will enable you to continue to operate and maintain the network having an open access middle mile suggests that maybe you're going to invite multiple providers in a consideration that is very important in that scenario is how many providers can one area actually support when you take into consideration the fact that ongoing operations and maintenance costs is going to be absolutely necessary in those cases that may be a greater role for local governments or for local governments to partner with an internet service provider in order to provide the subsidized service the ongoing maintenance that is going to be necessary for the network so we have absolutely no problem working with government um for municipal networks especially in those cases where there's no service there because it's hard to make a business case to support ongoing operations thank you carolyn um this next question i'm gonna first send to michael i'd love to hear your view on this and then see if anyone else wants to weigh in will new technologies like 5g help close the digital divide at high speed in rural areas well um in some circles in nevada county 5g is a dirty word there's a lot of controversy about that i've um been involved in some uh local um ordinances to to um work on that problem and uh yeah you get people that that really really want it and then you have others that are worried about you know um i won't get into the details of what their issues are but having to do with you know alleged health effects and and what have you so the thing about 5g is that's actually another one of those words that that kind of describes lots of different things there's actually different bandwidths involved with 5g but what it comes down to i think what's really important for people to understand regarding wireless and wire line is that they are not competitive they're actually complementary we are going to need both uh going forward we need um wireless for mobility and for um convenience and then we need wire line for you know solid infrastructure you know i when i um i'm looking at um what the broadband um world looks like in 2030 2040 2050 um you know the speeds that we're going to require at that point actually wireless will no longer be able to to address those because because the laws of physics say you know sorry starling's going to be good probably until about 2035 and then the speeds are not going to be enough for it to be the solution and we get a lot of those questions like you know is starling is that the one that's going to solve all the problems no starling is not going to solve all the problems what's going to solve the problem is everybody working together all of the providers doing what they can to not um not try to you know knock out the the other folks and and to and to work um cooperatively and that's what open access does open access the way i look at it is open access is a common transport and then what you have is you just divide up broadband into three areas you have the transport which you really only need one and then you have operations and maintenance and that can be um um contracted out to anybody you know att comcast your local municipality um your local wireless provider and then you have services on top of that those all need to be separate uh in my opinion and and when you have the services open to everybody then you don't just have one data plan from one provider you have you know 10 data plans or 50 data plans to choose from and there are models of this ammon idaho is the poster child for open access but real open access is so go take a look at what what's happened in idaho and how they're able to offer multiple data plans from multiple providers and that's where the competition that's where the free market really needs to shine is at that layer and also at the operations and maintenance layer but but as far as the infrastructure is concerned let's get everybody a good wireless solution and a good wireline solution which is fiber for the future and then we're going to have broadband that will make us the united states be globally competitive would anyone else like to weigh in on this question about 5g or anything else that michael said want to say he's right on and with 5g um that technology and he's right there's various parts of the spectrum that are used and referred to that still needs fiber backhaul within about a thousand feet of their small cells so it's not only that we need the combination of wireline and wireless which is by definition in statute in california law high-speed internet access is what we define as broadband so the combination but even for 5g you have to have both available in order for the end user to be able to benefit from 5g thanks honey um and you know it's important i think that uh michael brought up the point about competition the issue of competition is um commonly comes up when we're talking about broadband accessing critics of the traditional internet service provider model argue that major isps will fight competition and are able to charge higher prices for a premium service that many low-income families can afford so people in that camp celebrated the emphasis in the state budget and abide in administration plan um on government nonprofit and co-op based broadband they saw that as potentially increasing competition and lowering prices and carolyn wanted to hear your thought on that on that aspect of unaffordability and that aspect of these plans well i will say in california competition does exist maybe not to the level that some would like to see it but um most areas of the state that have robust broadband also have more than one provider to choose from but to the extent that you want to use government funding in order to create additional competition i think you need to appropriately prioritize by first making sure that those areas that don't have service or that don't have what's been determined to be adequate service to make sure that we are prioritizing those unserved areas first so that we get all californians connected before being focused to deploy a network just to create competition with internet service providers and as i've indicated before while price of the service is often raised as an issue we do offer programs that are intended to allow all californians to get connected thanks carolyn um okay i'm gonna move back to audience questions um tim g asks is there accurate mapping of available connectivity either wireless or hardwired with area access and speeds um the state does have an extensive broadband mapping program um i am copying and pasting the link into our chat hopefully that person can follow that link but i'm curious if anyone else would like to weigh in on the degree to which this is enough in the way of research and mapping around access i think california has the best uh map of broadband in of any state it truly does our california public utilities commission has done a very good job there a lot of folks want the internet service providers to provide even more information and and i'm i'm not in that column i actually want to get the internet service providers into partnerships and then at that point you'd have to disclose everything of course subject to nda the non-disclosure agreement but in order to work with let's say scenic or the california department of technology or the public utilities commission or with a local government that's the point where then you get into the granular information about who can go where remember step up or step aside is really the mode that we need to be in and it's at that point you start talking the very uh necessary specifics of where are you and what can you do that's most cost effective for the public and i think in in general um there is a thought that we do need better mapping in fact the fcc passed and approved the broadband data act to require isps to report certain information with regards to areas that are served and at what speed to the fcc that will help to inform their mapping the california public utilities commission um also does some mapping as sunny pointed out um however we still have um some pretty significant holes in gaps um legislation that was passed this year um waiting on the governor's desk to be signed sb-28 by uh senator caballero does in fact allow the cpuc to collect granular data from internet service providers to be used for broadband mapping however the data is only to be collected from those internet service providers that happen to also have a diff cup franchise or a franchise to provide cable service so so our members cctas members um that will result in significant holes being left in whatever is developed as a result of that information so we believe that particular approach is flawed one thing we do with venture forward research is we look down to the zip code level of broadband access and broadband subscription and then layer it with where we see micro business presence and when we work with pity like with los angeles we show them you know is this how do we identify areas of opportunity where you can get more people online because we have found if you hold all things constant more micro businesses and don't mean to sound like broken records does lead to higher median incomes in the community does lead to more jobs and lower unemployment does lead to eig's way of measuring economic resilience and prosperity so we know this is a good thing so we look at one is there a relationship and there always is mapping it to be able for cities and city planners and state planners to look at and plan where to deploy programs because there are those gaps there's those gaps of why that broadband not being taken advantage of why might there be access but not adoption or if there's adoption why are we not seeing certain incomes go up or certain jobs being created we wanted the other and part of the milken paper we collaborated on we looked at fresno and fresno was very high in best performing city huge agricultural economy but there's also low broadband adoption there's also high housing costs and when we look there's one zip code in there that had very high micro business count that had higher broadband and so that's one where we have a takeaway to the city of you can diversify your economy so maybe you're not a one industry city if you open up the opportunity for more micro businesses there to contribute alex thank you and i think that the next question that i see here from an audience member um i'm gonna ask you to follow up on what you just said so um let's see we have we have i'm gonna combine two questions for you um one is what types of micro businesses have we seen grow the other one asks how should californians be taught about the benefits of broadband it's not taught in schools how do we educate households with senior citizens should help providers be responsible for teaching households how to use telemedicine um and and i'll also customize a question for you there alex about um teaching them about using the internet for business i'll ask the others to also weigh in on those other questions great questions um so i'll go and order asks uh so what in terms of industries we saw it was really interesting we had some great reports on our website i'll put into chat godaddy.com ventureforward we do reports annually and biannually where you could see industry trends and throughout the pandemic the industries that picked up in terms of traffic and their starts very much varied as you can imagine at first when people were shelter in place there's a lot of home projects all those kind of the home goods boating camping all those really went up in terms of where people were spending money a lot of professional services at first went down entertainment went up so there's different trends but as it continued as people you know replay or if they had the privilege to choose where they work and they reprioritize how they spend their time or if they had to find supplemental income we saw different industry trends come up so um it does vary city by city um so portland for example has more entertainment arts just detroit some other cities have more professional services as i mentioned um health so it really um kind of depends and ebbs and flows so that's not a straightforward answer but it's kind of the trending we're seeing um and then as far as where that should come from one of the questions we ask when we survey these micro businesses to try to get to know the people behind the numbers is how do they want their government to communicate with them because this is just constantly comes up of local city officials or companies say we want to help but it's like we need to help the people wanting to help because there's just this lack of connection between the opportunity or the resource and those picking it up and again while i'm not trying to duck the question it does seem to become very context oriented if we're talking about particular demographics there could be a distrust or there's just a lack of actual common language in order to get adoption around certain low-income populations or certain different demographics there have to be different approaches if it's a stay-at-home mom who left the workforce now it's a different approach so there's a lot of programs for senior citizens which i i think are amazing in helping them cross the digital divide especially during the horrible isolation they have had to experience a shelter in place and living alone so again not ducking it but it's a little bit of a we have to take it a custom audience by custom audience because each one needs a tailored approach thank you and would anyone else like to weigh in on this question of educating people about the benefits of internet in these various aspects of life health providers schools educating households with senior citizens when i talked about the three barriers to uh households getting online particularly low-income households so it's cost it is also digital literacy the third and these are the three categories that john horrigan has identified over the years and john is now at the benton institute the third is a category he calls relevant so what uh alex means and you were talking jackie for a lot of seniors being able to remain independent and in their home is why they will adopt the internet in fact there's less than one percent of the californians say they don't want to be online they tend to be older and as soon as you say well how about telehealth they want to be online so the relevance piece comes from their health care provider talking to them enabling them a device for low-income seniors who are on medicaid uh portion of medicare should be automatic that's relevance that will get people to connect and then they're referred let's say by their health care provider to a community organization that can do the digital literacy training it's that match-up that we need in terms of relevance thank you um i'm realizing that we're coming to the end of our um time here and i haven't gotten to a lot of these great questions here so i apologize to anyone who i wasn't able to spotlight your question i do want to ask one um final question and then we'll um close up this question um is for caroline i'm going to ask it also to michael um so i'd like both of you to weigh in here um government-owned networks this person says have a spotty track record across the country with delays and issues covering costs as ccta president carolyn you've seen how the private sector builds networks what do you think are the most important factors to guarantee that this multi-billion dollar investment actually connects people to internet and doesn't get stuck in perpetual development one of the biggest challenges that the members of ccta have is actually being able to obtain the necessary permits in order to deploy the network we definitely need to figure out how to be much more efficient in issuing permits i think earlier someone mentioned a regional model where they're looking to kind of adopt a standardized approach for permitting um but permitting is often an issue that we experience both at the state and federal level that holds up development i have um one member company that has literally been attempting to obtain the necessary permits to build and expand upon a network for 10 years i have another one that is actively engaged in deploying but there are certain parts of the state that they are they have been caught up for a couple of years and not been able to obtain their permit so permitting is definitely one of the challenges that stops the companies from being able to deploy a network into an area to get households connected or to upgrade a network in some cases so permitting is definitely one of the the bigger challenges so sunny mentioned that there was a partnership between cetf and nevada county which really is trailblazing and just a fantastic program and i i i agree with sonny that that if we can get that uh export it out to the other counties in california that that would um address the some of the problems that carolyn's mentioned which are real and uh so there does have to be a more regional approach and a better way of getting infrastructure built that doesn't get held up by um some of the um the the right-minded maybe environmental uh considerations and other considerations that really broadband because it's underground uh just doesn't have that much of a concern so uh and as far as um you know we talked about municipal owned i think there's a broader category actually which is um uh democratically um uh accountable which that's that's a better term for what we're looking at here and as a matter of fact um there's like i think uh there's an organization out of minnesota called ilsr um institute of uh i can't remember what what that all stands for but anyways they um they facilitate cooperatives or work with cooperatives and and it's really interesting if you look at the broadband cooperatives in the united states there's about 300 of them and they're mostly in the midwest they're mostly in red states so there is a open adoption of these types of models and they're usually bolted on to either agricultural co-ops or electrical co-ops that historically were developed you know in early part of the 20th century and then when we got towards the end of the 20th century there are people in the community that said hey you know it's infrastructure but thank you somebody just posted it to in in the chat the institute for local self-reliance um they've been a a big supporter of cooperative broadband in the united states and uh there's actually one in the state of california and that's the plume of sierra electrical co-op and telecommunications co-op up in plune of sierra county and ironically the reason that's there is because pg e the density is so low that pgd wasn't interested in building there in the 1930s so they put together their own electrical co-op and now they have a broadband co-op and there are areas up there with branches you know 10 20 50 hundred acres and they have gig speeds so it can be done great thank you thank you for that context michael um so again i have to apologize to all of the wonderful question askers who i was unable to reach your questions um but we are coming to the end of our time here um so thank you thank you everyone for a really wonderful discussion um and i um thank you all to our audience for joining us today and asking great questions i also um encourage everyone to look out for news on our um final webinar event that will be coming up in this series with the milton institute in cal matters exploring the future of work and i hope that you all have an excellent rest of your day thank you thank you thank you very much

Channel: Milken Institute

Views: 423

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Milken, Institute

Id: M4yiAWKv9Yo

Length: 86min 7sec (5167 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021