Sounds of the Summit: Upcoming trends in digital inclusion and how one ISP is revolutionizing local connectivity

On this episode of Connected Nation, we continue our live coverage at the Broadband Communities Summit West conference. We talk with the Executive VP of Digital Inclusion for Connected Nation, about trends that are happening within the digital inclusion space.

Plus we talk with a leader from Further Reach about how the company started as a project at UC Berkeley, and has now become a sustainable ISP for local homes.

Recommended Links:
Heather Gate Linkedin
Tamir Scheinok Linkedin
Further Reach website

Past Broadband Communities Summit West episodes:
Sounds of the Summit: Episode #1
Sounds from the Summit: Why 100% connectivity is a moving target in the Sunflower State

Chapters

• 1:19 Heather Gate introduction
• 2:02 New digital equity grants
• 4:05 Partnerships that make rural broadband deployment work
• 6:46 What's the next big thing in broadband
• 8:40 Tamir Scheinok intro and what Further Reach is
• 10:16 Broadband pre COVID 19
• 12:00 The advantages of smaller ISPs
• 14:25 Building infrastructure that can weather the storm

Transcript

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (00:07):
This is Connected Nation, an award-winning podcast focused on all things broadband from closing the digital divide to improving your internet speeds. We talk technology topics that impact all of us, our families, and our neighborhoods. On this episode of Connected Nation, I continue our coverage from the broadband community, summit West taking place in San Diego, California. On this episode, we talk with the executive Vice President of Digital Inclusion for Connected Nation, Heather Gate, about trends that are happening within the digital inclusion space. Plus we talk with a leader for further reach about how the company started as a project at uc, Berkeley, and has now become a sustainable ISP for local homes. I'm Jessica Denson, and this is Connected Nation. I am standing in the San Diego Convention Center, and I have found one of my favorite people to interview at these conferences. Heather Gate, who is the Executive Vice President of Digital Inclusion for Connected Nation. Hi Heather.

Heather Gate, Connected Nation (01:06):
Hi Jessica. How are you?

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (01:08):
I'm good. How are you doing? Good. I love it when I get to see you. I always see you at conferences, even though we work together. I never see you phrase, you're running around the world, it seems like. How are things going?

Heather Gate, Connected Nation (01:19):
Everything's going really well. It's been a very busy fall for us speaking at conferences and actually helping to bridge the digital divide. As you know, we've had over 60,000 people trained recently through our various programs, so I'm really excited. It's a really exciting time for us right now.

Jessica Denson (01:39):
Connected Nation, I would be correct in saying that Connect Nation is a leader when it comes to digital equity and digital inclusion issues. You sit on an FEC committee for it. We do work with many, many organizations for it. And there was a big push recently to put out digital equity programs for the grants, right?

Heather Gate (01:59):
Yes, yes, yes.

Jessica Denson (02:01):
Talk about those grants.

Heather Gate (02:02):
Yes. As you know, as part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, 2.75 billion were appropriated for digital equity, and part of that money is that 1.25 was reserved for the digital equity competitive grant program. And this funding provided opportunities for community organizations and various coalitions to actually apply for funding, which would go towards projects that to help people adopt broadband. Because as you know, a lot of the money and a lot of the conversation today is about the infrastructure side of things. Well, once that infrastructure is deployed, we want to make sure that people have the skills and the tools to use these tools meaningfully, because as somebody always says, bead without equity just spells bad.

Jessica Denson (02:57):
Oh, that BI. You got it. I love it. Yes. So are there any things new that are coming in this space that you see, I know where you do a lot of training with older adults and immigrants and that type of thing, but are there any new trends emerging in this space?

Heather Gate (03:14):
Yeah, I think when it comes to bridging the digital divide, it changes all the time. As new technologies arise, as new tools and new skills are needed, things are always evolving. And right now, the big thing is ai. One of the challenges we need to address is how do we address this AI within the digital equity space? Because at the end of the day, if AI is taking over every single thing that we do, communications to deployment, to marketing, to business, we want to make sure that as we train people to use internet, they also understand ai, the power behind it and the Danger behind it and the danger.

Jessica Denson (03:59):
Yeah. So you're on a panel today. What are you talking about? On this panel?

Heather Gate (04:05):
I'll be talking about partnerships that make rural broadband deployment work,

Jessica Denson (04:11):
And what are some of those kinds of partnerships?

Heather Gate (04:13):
Okay. So throughout our 24 year history, one of the things that we've believed in is empowering communities. And part of it is helping communities in broadband planning. Part of broadband planning for us begins with creating a local T-Mobile coalition. And so we believe that those coalitions is what makes broadband planning work. Because what we do is we're bringing together providers, community leaders, and people from various sectors to work together because broadband related issues are not for one entity to address. Everybody has a role to play. And so it is built into our model at Connected Nation that this work begins with a community team. And so my role on this panel is to talk about connected nations experience, helping communities with broadband planning, beginning with helping them create a broadband team. And we, as you know, have been working on a program that we call the Connected Community Engagement Program. It really, it is what helps communities work because one, the benefit of that program is we're bringing together people that typically probably don't talk to each other, right. And we are helping educate them to get buy-in about the benefit of broadband because if you're economic development, you need broadband. If you're in agriculture, you need broadband. So

Jessica Denson (05:43):
Bringing people to schools, hospitals, all of it.

Heather Gate (05:45):
Exactly.

Jessica Denson (05:45):
And it's such a huge issue. It's not just a one party can fix this, one person can do it. It takes many.

Heather Gate (05:52):
Exactly. Exactly. And so part of having those broadband teams, again, think of some of the barriers that you'll hear being talked about today, like permitting right of way. Well, the idea of having a broadband team is that people are able to have those conversations of a provider will say, A barrier to me deploying is, I don't know the process for permitting. What do I need to do? And so bringing them together allows them to create a strategy for minimizing those barriers to broadband deployment in those communities.

Jessica Denson (06:31):
So before I let you go, what's the next big thing then that, or where do you see the next year, two years developing in this space? Are we going to start to see progress next year, both in digital equity and just broadband in general?

Heather Gate (06:46):
Yes. Digital equity, the competitive digital equity grants, according to the NTIA, they will begin announcing the awards in the winter of 2024, which is a couple of days before Christmas. And so next year we hopefully will start to see some action when it comes to digital equity. We will also start to see some action when it comes to digital equity planning and capacity building with the funding that's going directly to the states. And so in some states, they may subgrant to other entities, so we'll see a lot of activity to advance digital equity. We'll also see a lot of states begin to finalize or even launch their grant provider grant applications for bead. And so I think the next five years are going to be very exciting for us to see those high cost areas finally getting the attention they need when it comes to infrastructure.

Jessica Denson (07:47):
Awesome. Well, Heather Gate, executive Vice President for Digital Inclusion of Connect Nation. Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure talking with

Heather Gate (07:53):
You and seeing you. Thank you. I am very excited. Congratulations on all the success of the podcast. Thanks. Excited to see more and excited to continue to work with you on this. Yeah, thank you so much.

Jessica Denson (08:07):
Thank you.

Heather Gate (08:07):
Bye-Bye.

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (08:08):
I am standing at the Broadband Community Summit West Conference. It's happening in San Diego, October 30th and 31st. And I'm standing with Tamir Schock, who is the COO and CFO of further reach, and we just wrapped a panel together on the digitization, which is a word I have a hard time with digitization of rural America. You did a great job.

Tamir Scheinok, Further Reach (08:32):
Thank you very much. Thanks for organizing.

Jessica Denson, Connected Nation (08:33):
Yeah. Talk about further reach and what further reach is, and the area that you guys cover

Tamir Scheinok, Further Reach (08:40):
Further Reach started as a research project in 2013 to test methods for providing connectivity, affordable, reliable, et cetera, in very rural Mendocino County. So as the Crows fly, we're about 150 miles from Silicon Valley, but it's a very remote area. There was no telecommunications at the time other than high Earth orbit satellites.

Jessica Denson (09:03):
I think it's interesting that you mentioned Silicon Valley, which I feel like you kind of did on purpose, just so people realize that just because you say you're near Silicon Valley or that they think all of California is connected, right?

Tamir Scheinok (09:16):
I would've thought so too. So I bought a house in the community, and I had lived in Oakland, and I was shocked about I couldn't go off for the weekend and work, which I guess was feature not a buck at the time, but there was literally no connectivity there. Friday night would come and the lines that were there were so bad that they were basically unusable.

Jessica Denson (09:39):
So you were just isolated, essentially,

Tamir Scheinok (09:41):
Totally isolated. The community was starving. There was no economic development. All the young people were moving out. You couldn't rent houses. And then Covid happened, and suddenly the few people that did live there had a real challenge. And we were pretty active in getting students connected and made sure that the online classroom could continue.

Jessica Denson (10:02):
Yeah, it's interesting you talk about pre covid. People forget, people didn't think that broadband was a necessity, and then you really learn that's not the case.

Tamir Scheinok (10:12):
Well, COVID was certainly

Jessica Denson (10:15):
A catalyst,

Tamir Scheinok (10:16):
Tested that a lot. But we hear regularly from people, from young people that are staying in the community now. The communities economic situation has improved. These little towns on the coast were completely dependent on tourists that would drive through, and now there's actual burgeoning economic development. We like to think of it as a little part of the innovation that's happening in Northern California. There's lots of really interesting businesses that are there now, people that are world leaders in salvia, and all kinds of interesting things are happening on the coast now.

Jessica Denson (10:51):
So further reach. What is the future of Further Reach? What is your hope? What do you hope the company goes, and where do you hope it develops?

Tamir Scheinok (10:59):
So we are, we hire in the community. We live in the community. We're about the community, and we believe in the ability for a very small provider to completely outgun what the duopoly in the rest of America is able to provide. We love getting to know our customers and the situations that people have on their ranches and their homes and their outbuildings, et cetera, are really very, very different than just 50 miles away in Santa Rosa. So we want to stay hyper-local. We want to continue to do an excellent job. We're going to grow slowly, and hopefully we're going to weather the bead storm here for us.

Jessica Denson (11:39):
That for me, has been one of the biggest lessons is working at Connected Nation is learning the role of smaller ISPs, internet service providers that just cater to a smaller community. They know the people they're working with. They may be your family and friends, so you really have to answer to them. Is that right?

Tamir Scheinok (11:59):
Well, and I mean, it was stated earlier on one of the stages here that the access is only the first part for us. So I mean, people don't realize that 60% of our service calls have nothing to do with our service. It's 65-year-old work at home therapists can't get their printer connected, and there's no Geek Squad to come out and go and help them. And so we would love to just provide internet and to wash our hands of all the rest of it, but we'll get in there and we'll help them with their printer. We'll help them with their surveillance cameras, all the different things that they might need. And that's a really important part of the equation as well.

Jessica Denson (12:38):
So with Bead, what are some, and we talked about this on the panel, what are some frustrations and also some good things about it that are happening right now? The good and bad and the ugly?

Tamir Scheinok (12:51):
So being here, it's actually surprising to me to hear as much conversation as there has been about the progress that fix wireless providers have provided. And it's important to also call out that I understand that 10 years ago, the fixed wireless industry was not doing a great job. It was not adequate, but all technologies, it's improving in terms of capacities, reduced latencies, liabilities, even in the suburban context, things like Tyrana, which are a real step function in terms of what's possible. So I'm happy to hear that, at least in Arkansas, that there's, in Kansas, I guess there's a real appetite to understand and not try to step on the private investments that are there. I'm afraid. I don't think that's the case in California. I kind of have a renewed hope that I'm going to go find that out better and introduce myself to the people in California more, and with a social mission to connect rural communities. How could I not be happy that there's a lot of money being spent to solve this problem? My biggest concern is going to solve the problem in the wrong way for the community that we're in.

Jessica Denson (14:12):
Yeah. You mentioned one of the big issues with you is also making things where they can weather the storm, so to speak, and not just be up on telephone poles. Right? You want to expand upon that a little?

Tamir Scheinok (14:25):
Yeah. The thing about being 150 miles from Silicon Valley, so we're 45 minutes from Santa Rosa, and people in Santa Rosa, 45 miles away are surprised to learn that the power is out as often as it is in our community. People in the area certainly know about the local utilities problem with telephone poles and power distribution on them. The utility shuts them off now in the fall when it gets windy out because they start fires.

(15:01)
It's been a real problem. California, there was some discussion in the last conversation about the Undergrounding project. That is not going to happen in the rural communities. It just can't. It's just way too expensive. An underground fiber would be a great solution, but it's vastly more expensive, particularly in sparsely populated areas. So one really, and this is part of the research project, it's to look at how to actually provide reliable service in these communities. And it's maybe a little bit more important than even in suburban context because it's not just about getting to schools. The fire is burning over the hill, the cell phone towers are out. Your only means to know whether an evacuation order comes down is going to be the internet that further reach provides. If that's strung up on cable and those same going through that area that's burning, you're not going to have internet. And so the solution is not just to not be on telephone poles, it's to have layers of redundancy and hardening that are appropriate and specifically designed for the conditions that are local to the community.

Jessica Denson (16:07):
It's interesting when you put it from a safety point of view, how important it's, yeah. So final thoughts. Where would you like to be in two or three years from now?

Tamir Scheinok (16:16):
Continuing to do the great work We are. We want to keep our NPS score high. That's very important to us.

Jessica Denson (16:21):
Well, Tamir, thank you so much for joining us on the panel and joining us on the podcast.

Tamir Scheinok (16:25):
Thanks for having me.

Jessica Denson (16:27):
On the next episode of Connected Nation, we'll continue our coverage from the Broadband Community Summit West taking place in San Diego, California. I'm Jessica Denson. Thanks for listening to Connected Nation. If you like our show and want to know more about us, head to connected nation.org or look for the latest episodes on iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Podcast, Pandora, or Spotify.