Broadband Nation Expo 2024: How broadband connectivity can help individuals become successful in the digital age

On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our live coverage at the Broadband Nation Expo. We talk with two experts about the importance of broadband in many aspects of everyday life. Learn how connectivity is bringing more people together than ever before. 


RELATED LINKS:
Miami Dale College
Eutelsat Oneweb
Jorge Gonzalez, Business Innovation Center, Miami Dale College, Linkedin Profile
Martin Marshall, Senior Sales Engineer Services & Platforms, Eutelstat Oneweb, Linkedin Profile

Transcript

Grant Ahlbrand - Connected Nation (00:07):
Welcome to Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband. From closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds, we'll dive into technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods. This week we are at the Broadband Nation Expo, located at the Gaylord Convention Center just south of Washington dc. On the podcast this week we will be joined by innovators, leaders, and difference makers from the broadband and technology industry. I'm Grant Halland, and this is Connected Nation. I'm Grant Al Brandand, and today we are back in the exhibitor hall for podcast number two of the Broadband Nation Expo. I'm sitting with Jorge Gonzalez, who is the Director of Business Innovation and Technology Center at Miami-Dade College. So Jorge, how has your time at the Broadband Nation Expo been so far?

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (00:55):
Grant, it's been great and thank you for having me here today. It's awesome to connect with so many different people involved in broadband from deployment to people involved in training and staffing and seeing the new technology that's coming out. So it's really important to be a part of this space, especially looking at it from the education side. So Miami Dad College, did you fly in from Miami? I did fly in from Miami. Proud to be born and raised in Miami. I'm an alum of Miami-Dade College, so it's nice to be back. Now. We're one of the largest colleges in the country, over a hundred thousand students, and really proud to be a workforce engine for the entire community.

Grant Ahlbrand - Connected Nation (01:26):
So over a hundred thousand students.

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (01:29):
That's massive.

Grant Ahlbrand - Connected Nation (01:29):
So what kind of blend do you have between online and in-person learning?

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (01:34):
So we are big and we offer a lot of different modalities for students from fully online and asynchronous where people can just learn at their own pace to online live with instructors, to blended where people might have one class in person, one class online to fully in person. And we have eight campuses across Miami-Dade County. So there's really a ton of ways for people to interact with their education at Miami-Dade College.

Grant Ahlbrand - Connected Nation (01:55):
So tell us a little bit more about what your organization at Miami-Dade College does.

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (01:59):
So for the Business Innovation and Technology Center, we're really emblematic of what the college tries to do. So connecting students with industry and practical hands-on experience so they can apply what they're learning in the classroom, working with the companies that they want to have careers with long-term. So whether it's learning about career paths, getting mentorship from individuals in this space and being able to work with the technologies they'll be using in the field so they're not just graduating with a diploma and theoretical know-how they already have that work experience as they further their careers. So I mentioned in the

Grant Ahlbrand (02:28):
First podcast, and it feels like when you walk around an expo like this, you hear a different story from everybody on how they got into the broadband space. So as a professional, how did you get into the broadband space?

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (02:40):
So I got into the broadband space in early 2021. We rewind the tape, we were ready to know that the pandemic was in full effect at that point and everybody was forced to learn from home and work from home. And we knew not everybody in our community could. We had students, as you saw across the country, huddled outside of McDonald's or Starbucks, trying to get that free wifi to learn remotely and that wasn't really right for us. So at that point I was at the Miami Foundation, which is a community foundation in Miami, and I was leading an initiative called Miami Connected. So an initiative really looking at bridging the divide, getting everybody online, access to technology, digital skills, training, and ultimately jobs. So at that point it was great to get in that way and really get involved with community organizations on the ground, having people when everything was shuttered, come to them to use the computers onsite, learn how to use computers to going boots on the ground, going to schools and helping students and families connect with free internet and ultimately looking at the job apart.

(03:36)
So Miami-Dade College has been a part of this from the beginning. We've gotten funding from the NCIA, we've gotten funding from the state as well to support this, the digital skills training, access to technology and workforce. So once I joined Miami-Dade College, having been in the broadband space before, I was happy to continue working in this space now at MDC and knowing that, again, we have eight campuses across the community. So people are used to coming to the college for resources, sometimes not knowing what they're looking for, just know this is a place where I can get solutions. So being a part of it here has really been great.

Grant Ahlbrand(04:06):
So now that we've covered a little bit about the business innovation and Technology Center as the director, what are some of your day-to-Day responsibilities?

Jorge Gonzalez (04:13):
My day-to-Day responsibilities are quite fun. So it might be engaging with students that are having classes there and then coming to us looking for mentorship or career advice. It might be connecting them with our career services, talking to them about the different internship and job opportunities available to them, supporting them as they are on those jobs and doing soft skills, training them as well on the technologies they're using in the field. So if it's digital marketing, they're getting industry certified to do Google ad campaigns to use the Bloomberg terminal if they're going to work in finance, working with faculty as well to incorporate innovative projects into their classrooms. So don't just learn about innovation, run an innovation challenge, working with a company in the community to help solve a real business problem and working with the companies that make this all happen. So being that conduit between industry and academia at the college specifically for business students to interface with them and have them tell us what do they need on the industry side, who are they looking to hire? How should they be trained? And also showing them the great students that we have at Miami-Dade College. And we have people come in and say, we didn't know you had these programs at Miami-Dade College. We didn't know you had this caliber of students. And sometimes they come in looking to hire eight interns and some walk away hiring 23 interns. And that's something that just happened recently. So it, it's neat to have so many different stakeholders that we work with every day and really no two days are the same. Yeah. So I'd imagine

Grant Ahlbrand (05:31):
With organizations such as yourself, challenges are where you get the best ideas. And I mentioned this previously, what are some of the current challenges that your organization's facing and how do you look to combat them?

Jorge Gonzalez (05:46):
So challenges are opportunities for innovation and I think we've done a lot of that. And even looking at our spaces so people are thinking about education differently and looking at it as a way to traditionally was get the diploma and that was it really. Now it's looking at it, yes, that's important, but I also want to be more closely connected to the jobs. How am I sure that the education I'm getting is going to connect me to the jobs? And that's really how spaces like the Business Innovation and Technology Center came to be are AI center as well. So that be spaces where students can learn hands-on, get connected to those jobs. And even geographically or footprint wise, the business Innovation and Technology Center, or BIT center as we call it for short, that used to be the bookstore on campus. So it's Prime Space on the breeze way front and center for everybody to see.

(06:31)
We still have a bookstore and we love it, but now it's in a different space. And the prime space is really for spaces like this that are innovation, innovation oriented, hands-on experience for students, inspirational model to look like if you want to work in finance, it's model to look like a Wall Street firm you want to work in marketing is modeled to look like a Google or meta office. So that's really been how we've responded is saying we know students want something different for their education and we can provide that and it's quality education and that connection to the jobs and to the employers in the community.

Grant Ahlbrand (07:00):
So how important do you think events such as this, the broadband nation expo are to the broadband industry and broadband professionals?

Jorge Gonzalez (07:08):
I think they're extremely important. They're bringing everyone together to solve for something that as we hear a lot, not just at the expo, but really beyond that it's a once in a lifetime shot. We're not going to get this level of funding and focus on broadband and really everything that unlocks because we talk about broadband, laying fiber in the ground is important, getting into the home is important, but it's everything that comes after that. It's being able to work from home, to learn from home, to launch businesses. It could be the difference between a consumer economy and a creator economy. So I think it's important to bring everyone together, and even for us, right, looking at it from the training side and from the workforce development side, talking to the equipment providers and hearing the latest and greatest that they're coming up with. And for us to think about how we can train our students for that, to look at the service providers and the builders and understand what are their focal points, what are they experiencing as challenges that again, training can help support. And even listening to how is artificial intelligence being applied in this space? So we're thinking of long-term, not just building the broadband now, but what are all the jobs that get facilitated because of it after there's internet of things, that's going to be another big one, fixed wireless. So being able to see it 360 is helpful and we hear from the different companies we're engaging with here, it's helpful for them to hear from us. Everybody brings a different perspective. So from education, how we're approaching it as a training provider in partnership with industry.

Grant Ahlbrand (08:27):
So we met yesterday and the one thing that caught your eye was our flyer for our digital works program, and that was our workforce development program in a way. And one thing you're really excited about at Miami-Dade College is you're a workforce development program. So could you tell us a little bit more about that and why are you so excited about it?

Jorge Gonzalez (08:47):
Absolutely. So that's really why we are here. It's what brought me to the broadband nation expo. And we are looking at from the standpoint of Florida has 1.16 billion in beat funding estimates say it's going to lead to about 3,600 jobs, building out broadband. We don't necessarily have that talent right now. And we hear that. So we've been working closely with the state agencies, specifically Florida Commerce, Florida Department of Education, the office of broadband. They've been wonderful partners as well as industry partners. And out of those, Moss Tech really stands out and hearing what are we predicting to come down the pipeline as far as the needs for talent, what does that talent need to look like in terms of skills and what's currently available? And we're hearing there, there're going to going to be gaps not just in Florida but elsewhere. And we're looking to industry and saying, how are you training your people now?

(09:36)
How are you approaching that? What does that look like? Part of it is theoretical, part of it is in the field. You're climbing up a pole because you want to work in the lineman's space or splicing fiber out in the field. And we're looking at bringing that into Miami-Dade College and saying, Hey, we can help be that training provider, we can be that training partner and looking at it in a way that's industry driven, but also aligned with education because a win-win at that point, once we are partnering with the state on leading it, but it becomes available to all the public colleges and universities in the state of Florida, which is wonderful. And as people are working through this, we're going to launch the first component early next year. They will be ready to work in the field and building out broadband, but they're also earning credits towards a higher degree.

(10:19)
So if they walk out of the program, they have 24 credits let's say, and they're already working in the field with one of the companies building out broadband, they might want to come back and continue and get a telecom degree, right, an associate degree. They already have credits towards that. So it's not two different paths, it's really combined and they can continue from there on if they want to move on to construction management. We do want people to have careers in broadband. It's not just a contract to go build out broadband for a few months, whether it's in Florida or somewhere else. Really to see longer term career paths and be able to have this stackable credentials as we say in academia. But really an easy way to transition throughout that. And it's neat to see we're going to have, we're building out a pole farm, we're building out field splicing operations so people are able to put into practice what they are doing and marrying what industry is training them to do as well. So showing industry we can move quickly. Academia really can be a partner and doing that at the state level,

Grant Ahlbrand (11:11):
That's one thing about events such as this and the broadband industry as a whole, that I find awesome. Like I mentioned before, digital works. Digital Works is a job training, like a jobs skills training program. And basically what it is, it's a two day virtual training where they teach students on how to work a remote job. And so that's one sector of the broadband industry where we have to be able to take advantage of the new investment where we can get people to go work from home and be able to work in places they previously couldn't. And like you mentioned is you're training all kinds of people on how to do different jobs in broadband to make sure that connectivity exists for them, be able to do that. So there's so many different organizations here that are working in so many different areas, but every single innovation and every single new person that gets involved in broadband raises the floor for what broadband's potential really is. So I find that to be very exciting. So walking around here, whether it's an innovation that you see a trend or an opportunity coming up the pike, what are you currently most excited about in broadband that you've seen here so far?

Jorge Gonzalez (12:22):
What I'm most excited about is the collaboration taking place. It's easy to operate in silos in any industry and sometimes people just kind of stick to what they do. But now because of the unprecedented investment and really this moment in time that is historical and once in a lifetime for us for people to start figuring out how can we best come together? How can we collaborate and not just compete? So seeing that between federal government, state government, industry, academia, and on the industry side, there's several components. There's the service providers, the people building it out, the people helping to staff it, cybersecurity, customer service. So it's really the whole group coming together and figuring it out. We all want to do this well because it unlocks so much opportunity for all of our communities across the country and how can we do it together? So even yesterday, one of the panels was neat.

(13:08)
You had somebody from the private equity perspective talking about how they make these investments and how they evaluate them. Somebody building out the infrastructure. You had somebody from one of the labor organizations that represents the field technicians all on a panel talking about how can we solve this and do it right, make sure we meet the technical needs, make sure there are the right financial incentives so that this is sustainable beyond just the bead funding that we're all preparing for. And on the worker side as well, how can we support people in these careers, make sure it's safe and make sure they have longer tracks beyond just the infusion of bead funding.

Grant Ahlbrand (13:41):
So what is your number one thing that you would like our listeners to take away from our conversation today?

Jorge Gonzalez (13:48):
Number one thing would be that there are exciting careers in broadband, and that's really huge. There's so many different things you can do in the space. Again, from customer service, the people that have service for the first time and supporting them and making sure to make the most of it and troubleshoot as needed to being in the field and laying down that fiber, that is literally connecting our country to working on the cybersecurity and then making sure everything we deploy is secure. So there's so many different career opportunities and to know that it really is something meaningful as well. You're not just doing a thing, you're building out something that's supporting our whole country. And for people to really explore that and see it might not be the pathway for careers that comes to mind first, but it really is an exciting one. There's a lot of different ways to get involved. So look at your local educational institutions, look to your local companies, keep an eye on what the state is doing, what your local community is doing regarding beat funding. That's really going to be the best way to plug in and support it.

Grant Ahlbrand -(14:41):
So yeah, if you live in the South Florida area, make sure to look up Miami-Dade College. And if you're listening to this podcast, make sure to check the description. We'll include a link to the Business Innovation Technology Center's website as well as Jorge's LinkedIn. So well Jorge, thank you for joining us on the Connect the Nation podcast today.

Jorge Gonzalez - Miami Dale College (14:58):
Grant, thank you for having me.

Grant Ahlbrand (15:00):
I'm Grant Alhbrand. Today we're back in the exhibitor hall at the Broadband Nation Expo. I'm sitting with Martin Marshall, who is the customer sales engineer with Onewe Martin. How has your time been so far at the expo?

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (15:12):
It's been fantastic. It's always great to get together with other professionals from the industry, have a chance to converse, learn new things, learn different projects that they're working on, and understand if there are things that we can learn from them and implement and process on our side as well. So it's a great learning experience and it's a great opportunity to get together face-to-face with others in the industry who you may have just met in passing or on phone calls in the past. So

Grant Ahlbrand (15:43):
Yeah, for sure. And walking around, you see people from all over the place. So where did you come in from?

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (15:47):
Yeah, I came in from Alaska. I live in Anchorage, so little bit of a trip in, but not too bad.

Grant Ahlbrand (15:54):
You didn't have any flight problems or anything? Everything all smooth?

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (15:56):
No flight, flight problems? No. I took a five hour energy before, so my wings were already, I didn't want to impinge on the trademark with the Red Bull guys, but

Grant Ahlbrand (16:04):
Yeah. How long is that flight?

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (16:06):
It's not bad. It's about seven hours total, so it's fairly straightforward.

Grant Ahlbrand (16:11):
Are most of the flights you have to take when you come to the lower 48? Pretty much the same,

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (16:14):
Yeah, pretty much. Seattle is our hub, so every flight out of Alaska kind of goes down to Seattle or one of the other hub cities and then out from there.

Grant Ahlbrand (16:23):
Okay, awesome. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about what your company does.

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (16:28):
Yeah, so we provide low earth orbit satellite connectivity, so high bandwidth, low latency, broadband via satellite, similar to starlink, but we're different. We've got a different focus, a focus more on the business and enterprise segment. So we've built our constellation different than starlink and we focus in on different customers and different business practices. So yeah, it's a great developing kind of market. You've got a lot of new players that are coming into the market and the opportunities, especially at this event where we're talking a lot about bead and connecting the unconnected or underserved satellite as a whole in general, is able to provide connectivity to these locations while we're waiting for fiber to be built or as an alternative to fiber.

Grant Ahlbrand (17:20):
See, that's really fascinating to me. Obviously I'm just a digital marketing guy from college and I do marketing for Connected Nation, so a lot of mine is focused on this promotion of these ideas. And so we have so many experts at our company that are very good at discerning between different ways to connect people, but the goal is the same of needing to connect America and the world as a whole. And I think being able to look at it in low Earth orbit is so fascinating to me. How different is that from what the current status of connecting people is with fiber and everything like that?

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (18:02):
So connectivity today, you really have a limited number of choices. It's traditional terrestrial networks, whether they be old school copper lines, like DSLI was super excited when I was a younger adult and DSL became available in my neighborhood and signing up for that and I was getting three megs per second, and I could now download MP three files off the internet and it wouldn't take hours. So we see a lot of that traditional, albeit advanced connections today to cable providers to if you're in bigger communities where you may have fiber to the home, Google fiber, you've got fiber backhauled for Comcast, et cetera. And so there's just this wide array of connectivity that exists. The problem is when we move out to some of these remote communities, they simply don't have an option. Even old school Copper and DSL may not be available. We run across that a lot in Alaska because obviously we're really remote and very, very disconnected from any kind of infrastructure. And so being able to come in here and talk and share some of the limitations or some of the kind of speed bumps that we face to implement some of these new technologies like Fiber, I think is really beneficial to these companies that are looking at deploying for the state broadband teams that are looking at putting together policy to share some of the funding that we get right now. Again, it's a great form to be able to come together and share.

Grant Ahlbrand (19:42):

Oh yeah, for sure. And with any personal life or professional life, I always love hearing the genesis of an idea or how somebody got to where they're at. So how did you get to be at a position where you're clearly very passionate about what you do? How did you get into the broadband space as a professional?

Martin Marshall (20:01):
So I've always been like a techie guy. I love technology, whatever the latest, greatest thing was. And for me when I was in high school, that was cell phones, they were just coming, this was the old school days of bag phones and flip phones and they didn't do anything but make phone calls. And I got in the industry because it was cool, it was exciting, it was something new. And then the evolution of that. And so I was in the wireless industry for over two decades, and the last half of that time was really spent on emerging technologies, whether it be machine to machine and IOT connectivity to being able to provide remote connectivity similar to what I do today. And that really was that transition point. I was able to keep my excitement about the latest and greatest technology and the development there, but also able to build upon the impact that that technology can have in a real world way to these people who are living in remote areas because they love it, they've been there for generations, but that limits them from being able to take advantage of a lot of the things that

(21:08)
We have on a daily basis. And that's kind of where I've gotten to today. It's transitioned from the love of technology to the passion of trying to share connectivity.

Grant Ahlbrand (21:20):
I'm almost really a little bit similar in my professional life. Obviously I'm only 23, so I'm still pretty young. But when it went to the time of me picking my major to go to college, I always love technology and I love just creating stuff. Obviously I'm not so smart to where I can do the machine type stuff, but that's why I picked digital marketing because all the time there's either a new platform or a new trend or some kind of a new service to get the job done. So whether it's me just using Twitter or Instagram, that's pretty straightforward. But being able to use Adobe Premier Pro to edit podcasts and all kinds of different software to be able to, that's why I love that. So it's pretty similar really. In your position, what are some day-to-day responsibilities that you're required of?

Martin Marshall (22:09):
Yeah, for me, the big thing is understanding our network, our technology, and the implementation of that from a high level technical standpoint. So that way we can go out and I can talk to engineers who are working on fiber and other broadband technologies, understand the implementation and integration between those two very different technologies, right? Satellite versus terrestrial connectivity. But more importantly, I think is being able to go through and translate that into a real world conversation with someone who is outside of that industry to the local residents and community members who don't have broadband today to say, Hey, this is what we're going to do. Because they don't understand the difference between fiber and satellite or cable or whatnot. The reality is they shouldn't have to care. They should only be concerned about connectivity and what they can do now with connectivity. A big portion of my job that I love is being able to act as a translator or kind of an evangelist of what using technology can do to help connect people who don't have connectivity today.

Grant Ahlbrand (23:20):
I honestly think being able to be the middle person to where technology seems so far away, I mean it is, it's low earth orbit, so it seems so far away. But to certain people that aren't familiar with the technology and aren't familiar with how it's done, you are there to fill in all the gaps for them. So I think that is great. So that'll take me into my next question. One thing I think about conferences and expos that is so awesome is as a people can look at challenges and obstacles to get to a certain point. So what are certain challenges and obstacles that your company is facing right now that you're looking to overcome?

Martin Marshall (23:56):
So the biggest thing is, one, understanding what we do. You say satellite and someone who's been around for a long time who has experience with satellite has an image in their mind of the old geostationary orbit satellites where you could get connected. It was slow, latency was really high. So doing any kind of real time application that we take for granted today, being able to have a real time conversation, jump on a Zoom call or a teams meeting, something like that, it just wasn't capable. And so there's this kind of step back when you say satellite. And then the other thing that starlink has been great with his making low earth orbit kind a common thing. People understand, oh, hey, there is that satellite stuff that can kind work, I think for me. And so that's been a really a good balance to drive some conversation to kind of address both sides of that to understand, yes, it's new. Yes, it's different. Yes, it's capable of doing a lot of the things that we want it to do today that it wasn't able to do in the past and really address especially some of these requirements that, for example, bead funding is put around connectivity. I think it's great that there are minimum thresholds. We need to have a minimum experience for everyone, and being able to meet those or exceed those minimum requirements is a huge portion of that user experience.

Grant Ahlbrand (25:34):
And you mentioned previously that your whole life, even back since you were a kid, you've always loved being on the cutting edge of what's next. So what currently, whether it's an innovation or a trend, what are you currently most excited about in broadband and are you working on it already? You might be

Martin Marshall (25:51):
Right? Well, I'm a little bit biased. So yes, satellite connectivity is definitely on that cutting edge. But I think really anything technology related to constantly be pushing that edge. I was just in a session where they were talking about fixed wireless and some of the new technologies that are there and being able to address some of the issues that existed before, you had to have a clear direct line of sight connection and how new technology is minimizing those impacts to where now we can get high speed transmission even though we don't have direct point to point. Then you've got satellite, you've got new advances that are happening in existing technologies, and so it's hard to pick one out, but it's exciting just to see this constant development. There's no stagnation that's happening, there's advancements and new tweaking of technology that's happening all across the board. And to me, that's the exciting part.

Grant Ahlbrand (26:54):
So is there anything that you would like our listeners to take away from the conversation today?

Martin Marshall (27:01):
Yeah, I think the biggest thing, if we had one thing to think about was the focus on providing connectivity. We need to stop focusing in on the connection method, whether it's fiber, whether it's fixed wireless, whether it's community wifi, whatever that is, we need to focus on the connectivity piece, how we get there. That can be different environments, different logistical requirements can impact that, but at the end of the day, we need to focus on connecting that person, giving them access to the internet so that they can be part of our society today. Being able to hold a virtual job, being able to get remote education, and to me, that is the biggest thing. So just that takeaway of let's focus on connectivity, not necessarily the methods of getting there.

Grant Ahlbrand (27:59):
Yeah, that's one thing too. It's one of those knock on effects to where once there's connectivity, no matter how it's done, the follow on from that of being able to work remote and get remote education that will take the local and state and national economy, I think it'll skyrocket. So yeah, if you take anything away from it listeners, it's not how it's done, but the fact that it gets done so well. Martin, thank you for joining us in the Connection podcast today. It was a great conversation. And yeah, thank you.

Martin Marshall - Eutelsat Oneweb (28:33):
Thank you as well, grant.

Grant Ahlbrand (28:40):
And that wraps up our day two coverage from the Broadband Nation Expo. Be sure to stay tuned to our social media as tomorrow. We will be uploading all of the interviews from the VIP event, broadband and Brew. This event, it will be hosted at the Irish Whisper by Vernon Bird Group, Sanborn Geospatial and Connected Nation. I'm Grant Al Brandand. Thanks for listening to Connected Nation. If you like our show and want to know more about us, be sure to head over to connected nation.org or look for the latest episodes of Connected Nation on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Podcast, Pandora, or Spotify.