 I want to introduce you to our panelists before we do something a little different for the next hour of our time together. So Chike Agu serves as chief executive officer of Everyone On, a national social enterprise dedicated to closing the digital divide. To date, Everyone On has connected almost 200,000 low-income families to the internet and to the opportunity it brings. Next to Chike, we have Steven Renderos, the senior campaign manager at the Center for Media Justice. Steven helps lead CMJ's advocacy and organizing efforts, engaging members of the Media Action Grassroots Network to advocate for affordable prison telephone calls, strong net neutrality rules, and most recently, the expansion of the Lifeline program. Next to Steven, we have Irene Flannery, who is the director of Amarind Critical Infrastructure, a new business line of Amarind created to help tribal nations develop the most critical 21st century infrastructure broadband within their communities. Prior to joining Amarind, Irene served in various senior management positions at the FCC, including most recently as the acting chief of the Office of Native Affairs and Policy. Sneaking in to the second chair is Kevin Martin, just in time, the vice president for Mobile and Global Access Policy at Facebook, where he oversees, among other initiatives, Facebook's connectivity programs and communication regulatory issues. Previously, he serves as chairman and commissioner of the FCC. Finally, but last but not least, as senior counsel and director of Open Internet Policy for the OTI at New America, Sarah Morris leads the policy team's strategic efforts on issues related to broadband access and adoption, online consumer protections, and preserving the open internet, a cause that's near and dear to her heart. And she's also been a great collaborator with us on the community connectivity framework, which I'll share a little bit about later. So we're gonna do something a little different right now to help everyone internalize what it means to be a digital citizen or to not have the same opportunities to be a digital citizen in this economy, in this day and age. Often when we have panels that talk about the importance of broadband access, we start from the perspective of policy, especially since we're here in DC. But today we wanna spend a few minutes thinking about what internet access or the lack thereof means for real people who face significant barriers to consistent and robust internet every day. These challenges are very real and very important in centering our conversation on the best solutions at the local and federal level. So here's what we want you to do. On your seats or at your table, you'll notice these blue cards. On that card is a profile of a person who faces barriers to becoming a digital citizen in the 21st century. So while the people on these cards are fictional, the experiences are very real. I wanna give you a minute to read that card and internalize it as if you were that person. For those of you joining us online, we're gonna put up a digital profile for you too. So I'll give you just 30 seconds at this point to finish reading the card. First off, what was your reaction to reading this profile? If you were this person, how dependent would you be on others for your basic daily needs? What opportunities in society are different for you if you are this person? And what suggestions or solutions would you have? So we're gonna spend 10 minutes now for you to have this conversation in your small groups. For those of you online, we want you to contribute too. So please tweet your reactions, thoughts to hashtag it's personal. We're going to be circulating amongst the audience to listen in on your conversations and hear what you're saying. And they'll reconvene in 10 minutes to kick off the panel. So go for it. I'm so excited to hear all the buzz because that means that it did what it was supposed to do which was to generate some good conversation and some thinking about what it means to be in this situation. So I'm gonna kick off right now just by asking the panelists to give us a little reflection on what were some of the themes that you heard. And I want to start with Steven because I love the theme of your organization which is giving the voiceless a voice or those who are, you're not voiceless you just haven't been heard yet. So I want to start with you on that note. Sure, I appreciate the exercise a lot. I think one of the things that it really encourages us to do is to really think about these issues from the perspective of the peoples who are living it at the front lines. So the story I had was around the homeless veteran and it's a story that I've actually encountered personally myself when I worked in the Twin Cities at an organization there called Main Street Project. We worked with a lot of homeless populations around the issue of Lifeline because they needed access just to a basic telephone, a cell phone. And one of the things that I was struck by in doing that work with them was just how dependent they were on the internet. I mean they had a whole system figured out for which libraries to hit up at what times. They knew which churches provided a computer lab. They knew the worker centers they could go to to get job training, to get help with their resumes. And one of the themes that came up in the little group that I was huddled with was just the role of those anchor institutions like public libraries, how they're changing nowadays. I remember the Center for Media Justice and Magnet worked on a report with the Social Science Research Council. This was back in like 2010 and this issue came up. Like the role of the librarian has now shifted from being a librarian to a job trainer to a person who helps you apply for a job, for government services, for housing. That role, which is like as we know is severely under resourced, is completely changing and there are often times being put in situations to have to support people to do things that they haven't been trained to do. So that's one of the interesting things that has come up for me. We worked on, in the work that we did around the modernization of the Lifeline program at the FCC, which thankfully passed, we helped to gather over 130 stories from people who are living this issue on a day to day basis. And I think as it's been reiterated earlier today, we know that the internet is no longer a luxury, it's very much a necessity. So as I reflect on this, I think part of what I think about is the experience of my mom. Two years ago, I got her an iPhone. And this was a person who like three years ago would always chastise me for being engaged in social media. She hated that I was on Facebook. She hated when I posted a picture of her on Facebook. I can't say that right now. And now, if you were, if I was to probably see her at home right now, the picture I have in my mind is her on the cell phone, just scrolling through her Facebook feed. That's really, I like that. I want to get some quick feedback from other panelists who heard conversations. And I want to go to Irene, given your work with tribal communities, what was, what did you hear in your conversations that you want to bring forth? Well, one of the things that I heard that really resonated was the benefits that have come from the federal subsidies that have been available, and in particular the Universal Service Fund. That's a program that I spent most of my 14 years at the FCC working on. And the benefits that it has provided, not just to tribal communities, but to communities across the country, but the limitations of the Universal Service Fund as we know it today. It's a very large fund. We're approaching $9 billion a year. And in particular, Lifeline has just been, and the tribal, as I'm sure you know, there is a tribal specific component to Lifeline. It's the only one of the four Universal Service Programs that has a tribal specific component. And that was adopted back in 2000 in response to the incredibly low, at the time, telephone penetration rate. It's done amazing things to bring that level up. We're still not anywhere near 100% for phone service, which is I know very hard for most of us to even imagine, you just take phone service, not to mention broadband. But now we're facing the broadband crisis. Lifeline will hopefully make a dent in that. But one of the themes that I heard among folks talking about this story was, is that really enough? Obviously federal funding isn't going to do at all. That just isn't, and that's one of the things that I'm now working for, Amher and Critical Infrastructure, which we hope to be able to advance that ball, not just by helping tribal nations apply and leverage these federal subsidies, because in reality, aside from Lifeline, on the E-rate side, tribal schools and libraries are way underrepresented for a variety of reasons. We hope to change that dynamic. But a number of folks were talking about, is there a need for something bigger, something tribal-specific? The, for example, there are a number of tribally-owned eligible telecommunications carriers. They're able to access the biggest piece of the universal service pie, which is high-cost, Connect America Fund. But they have actually proposed a tribal broadband factor. Should there be an additive factor for carriers receiving, way-to-return carriers receiving high-cost support? They're also in the national broadband plan. The national broadband plan recommended a tribal broadband fund. What would that look like? Would that be a game changer? So that was, I think, the theme that really resonated with me listening to folks chat. I think we'll get into some other policy options shortly, but I want Chika to share a little bit about what you heard, given your work with connecting families across the country. Did this conversation resonate? What have you seen and heard in your work? Sure. I think three things came out of our conversation. I think the first was, was just very apparent how difficult it was for us to put ourselves in the situations of this family. We had a father with a son who lost his job, couldn't afford to have internet anymore, and basically cut it all off. And basically, again, very similar to what Stephen said, mapping his way around libraries, but what does he do during the holidays when they're closed? So this was very difficult for this group, and I imagine others to really think through because our lives are so different. I think secondly, what became clear was that this deepens other social inequalities. He lost his job. How is he supposed to apply for a job when 90% of job applications are online? How is this child supposed to do homework when 90% of homework assignments today are done online? That's actually a requirement in some school districts. And the last thing that came out of our conversations was, we talked about keeping libraries open longer, having more federal subsidies, and in the end, it comes down to a question of will on behalf of entire communities. Is this something important enough for us to expend resources on? And I think that what came out was that this should be a win-win for society. Having people online too that can apply for jobs, do their homework, also not just be creators, consumers, but creators on the internet, so maybe the next great Facebook-like company can come out of a place that we might not think is important for us as a community. And how do we make that case in almost political sense in communities across the country? Sarah or Kevin, do you wanna add anything to those initial observations? Well, I can talk a little bit about, so we had some similar themes come up as other groups. I was in the group over here that had a story about a resident in Brooklyn who was surviving in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. And after Hurricane Sandy, Red Hook, their infrastructure was basically obliterated. There's already, it's already very difficult to get in and out of Red Hook as a matter of geography and transportation resources. And so what actually helped this resident connect and find basic things like electric generators and water during the wake of the storm was a wireless mesh network. And so it's an interesting case study for me as a member of the Open Technology Institute because this was actually one of the networks that we worked on, it's built by the community in Red Hook, but we had worked closely with them as that was happening. And one of the themes that came out of the group that I was talking with was, this really isn't about the storm, this is about the lack of infrastructure and affordable access more broadly and the storm exacerbated that and made that more poignant, but that there's really an even bigger problem with making sure that all communities have robust, affordable internet access. And one of the reasons that the Red Hook, the wireless mesh network was so interesting was that it came around in part because of a lack of investment and affordable broadband adoptions in the community leading up to it. So I think a bigger conversation about how we ensure that there is access in an equitable way across the country and then what we can do to make sure that we're having, as the last panel discussed a lot, really positive adoption outcomes as well. Kevin, any additional thoughts? So I had the rural farmer and the challenges in rural America and I think one of the things that was highlighted by all the different groups was the importance of distinguishing between when the challenges access to infrastructure and when the challenges adoption and that those are very different problems and have to be addressed in a very different way and hopefully we'll talk about some of the policy challenges but they present different opportunities and different challenges and I think most of the people in our groups actually had a hard time as you were talking about identifying maybe with some of the challenges. I personally, I thought it was perfect for me. I grew up actually in rural North Carolina on a dirt road and my address was rural route three North Carolina and it was long distance for us to call other people with the same address. And so I definitely could identify with it and I think one of the things that sometimes is that people lose is actually in those rural communities there's not only a lack of access to infrastructure but actually also the low income aspects of those communities is also extremely high. So I think that they sometimes face a double challenges. I was struck by that as well and some of the conversations I heard folks were talking about the cascading effect of losing that internet access. You lose the access or you don't have it. How do you find out about what you're eligible for? How do you find out about the next opportunity? So it's really, it is that double whammy effect of not having the access and then not being able to get out of that situation. So I will share some of the programs that we worked on at NTIA through the BTOP program. Some of the most popular ones for getting seniors online were Facebook for seniors. That was one of the initial apps that folks found compelling. What are some other, for actually any of the panelists here who work with, directly with communities, what are some of those key adoption strategies that you have found to be effective? And then we can go into the policy because I know the DC policy folks are itching for that discussion. So it's human, you bring up how important it is oftentimes to get Facebook as an on ramp to getting many people online. And Facebook has seen the same experience. And so what we've tried to do is when we look out globally at about the four billion people who are not connected today, they really do break into three categories or buckets. About a billion people live in areas that are lacking of access to infrastructure. Kind of what we're talking about some rural or extreme or remote area. About a billion live in some form of such extreme poverty that without some kind of direct financial subsidization it'll be very difficult to be able to let them have access. But about two billion, about half of the people live within access to a wireless broadband signal. And according to OECD figures have the same range of income that they could subscribe to some form and they choose not to. And many of those peoples it's a combination of an awareness and relevance. What they to understand how it can be an impact for them and understand how to use it is critically important. And so we think that one of the most successful programs that we've seen builds on what you were describing is if we can provide people with access to some of the basics components of the internet even if it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles that that actually can be a good on ramp to getting people understanding. And Facebook is an important component of that. And so we have a program where we work with operators to basically provide a text-based access to services in which we have an open platform that anybody can utilize. And we work with the operators to make sure that it's offered for free on mobile devices, but that it doesn't, it basically you have to agree to strip out your streaming music, your streaming video and any high resolution photos. The very things that use up a lot of data. Because if you did the operator would use up too much data and the operators wouldn't participate. And we've seen this having a tremendous impact in terms of getting people who are in that category, that last bucket, to be able to try to use it in a way that's not as threatening and then in charges and then be able to make that switch over to an adoption pretty quickly. And we see that when what we've seen is that about 45% of the people in a market where we roll that out that try it that are new to the internet become full internet subscribers within about 60 days. That's impressive. Steven, when you were talking about libraries it reminded me of that sort of a classic unfunded mandate that's been given to them. What are some strategies that you've seen in addition to library access programs, adoption programs that have worked in the communities you've served? Sure. I mean I'll pick up on the NTIA thread. One of our member organizations, Media Mobilizing Project was a VTAP recipient and they helped to establish digital literacy centers in different parts of, in Philadelphia. And what they did is they partnered with organizations that already had pre-existing relationships with communities who are offline and then developed a curriculum that catered to those specific communities whether they were predominantly Spanish speaking, low income or people who had never really used the internet at all. And that curriculum I think was really helpful. I actually had a chance to sit into a few of those classes and part of what they did is they took the technology away from it for a second. Like when they started with the people, how do we teach people the principles of how the technology functions that doesn't necessarily rely on you to use the technology so they would do things like using actual folders to teach people like how to store information in certain areas and practice it through workshops. So I found that to be particularly helpful. The other group that comes to mind for me is the Senior Services of America. They have a program where they go out to different communities and they work directly with seniors to use iPads or they bring seniors together to use iPads and just experiment. And what I see is fundamentally important about that is that that social science research council report that I was mentioning earlier, one of the things that we found was that people have difficulties learning under duress. And so if you're experienced with the internet or technology is that you need to do something critically important to your everyday life, you're not gonna learn under those circumstances if it's applying for housing or to complete a homework assignment. Learning happens when the environment is shaped to really cater to you and not make you feel like this ton of pressure. So those are two programs that I would highlight that are great alternatives. Sarah, I know you do a lot of work with grantees. We have in fact MMP. We worked as a subgrantee on that B-top project a few years ago with Media Mobilizing Project in Philadelphia. And I think Kevin mentioned the difference between broadband access and broadband adoption and how these are two separate problems that we really need to solve. And I think at OTI we thought a lot about those problems and we thought about them together and separately in different ways. But with the communities that we've worked with on B-top and through other projects, one of the things that we've seen as being critically important is, as Stephen highlighted, the need for programs and trainings that are community driven. So what is challenging is when Central Office a thousand miles away sends in a digital literacy trainer to some location that is difficult to get to for residents in the community. And what really works is when these digital literacy training programs and spaces for people to get online occur naturally within the community and trusted spaces with people from the community who are known and can help people feel comfortable and safe getting online. And so the community driven aspect is something that I think is really, and that our work with all of these different projects has demonstrated is really important. And those programs are not free unfortunately. No. So perhaps we could talk a little bit about what are some of the policy solutions that can help get more such training programs into the communities. Lifeline is a big deal. I know that many of you worked very closely on that. You maybe can talk a little bit about that, but also what else is there? Is there another big solution out there that we could talk about or come up with? I mean, B-top was a great, there is a problem with resources and when you take a large pot of money and devote it to community infrastructure building and programmatic development, that can make a real difference. Money doesn't solve all problems, right? There's other factors that go into it. And I think we've seen that with the Lifeline program. With Lifeline, we had just historic reforms happen this year and it's personal for me because this is an issue that I have worked on my entire time at New America starting with some reforms in 2011 where this idea, Lifeline has historically provided a subsidy for low income families to get phone access. And so this was a program started in the 80s and it sort of grew over time to include cell phone access, not just landlines. And there's been a push in recent years for families who are eligible for the Lifeline program to have the flexibility to use their Lifeline subsidy for broadband access. A couple years ago, the FCC made it so that you could use your subsidy as a household for bundled access. So if you were buying a phone in broadband or TV in broadband or however you decided to parse it, bundle that subsidy could be used there. But it had not yet modernized the fund to support standalone broadband. And so in March of this year, the FCC voted to modernize the Lifeline program to support standalone broadband, which is really important for families who face cost as a barrier to getting broadband service. That said, in all of these wonderful digital literacy training programs that we talked about still lack support through the Lifeline program or through others. And I think it's, that is in some ways by design, the FCC through its universal service fund can't support everything. And so we need to look to other solutions. And I believe it was on the last panel, Vicki. Katz mentioned the work that HUD was doing with low-income housing in partnership with other companies and organizations. The Connect All initiative that the president announced earlier this year, which includes a component that I will let Karen introduce, but we're a partner on the Community Connectivity Initiative. These are all, I think, important compliments to the programs, particularly those from the FCC that have been designed to mitigate the cost factor. So, Chike, your organization works with ISPs, internet service providers. Kevin, your company has invested interest in having more people adopt these technologies. So not to put either of you on the spot, but what do you think the proper role is for industry to contribute to this, to solving this problem since there are limited resources otherwise? So either one of you go for it. So Facebook, I think that they think that the role was, we do support policy changes that try to end up furthering those kinds of adoption. We were supportive of the lifeline reform. So there's that component. But we think that we have, it's both an important obligation and it's in our interest for more people to be online, as you said. And so we spend a lot of actually resources and time on this effort. So we actually try to address both, both, if you go back to the buckets that I was talking about for why people aren't online, we have actually programs to address all three. We spend a lot of our resources on our connectivity labs programs, which are looking at ways to lower the cost for bringing access to those extremely remote and rural areas. And so we have large, unmaned aerial vehicles, large drones that we're experimenting with that we'll have two of them up and flying later this year that we'll be able to be providing internet access to those very far remote areas. We spend a lot of resources on experimental unlicensed technologies to be able to do. So we've got a hundred Express Wi-Fi spots in India. We have several in Africa as well. So we spend a lot on the infrastructure experimentation side to try to lower those costs. As I said, as I described, we've got a program that's really designed for the about two billion people around the globe who are not currently subscribing, that they're trying to give them some introduction to it to be able to get them to. And so we think that we do have an obligation and we actually are spending a lot of our efforts and resources on that. Chika, how about you? So let's separate industry and from internet service providers and then kind of the rest of industry, particularly technology. We work with through the Connect Home Initiative, which was talked about through HUD, one of the partner organizations is GitHub, who's been an unbelievable partner on this initiative. And when you ask them why they partner, why are they working to get low income families and kids who live in public housing online? They say, of course, we think this is a public good, but this is a talent search for us. This is very self-interested. We in Silicon Valley nash our teeth about how we don't have enough coders and programmers who look like America and you have out there in the country, people who can't get online and want to become those coders. So let's see, let's try and solve that problem. So I think recognizing that self-interest and investing in many ways, what is that public good is critical for their suffrage, but also for the country. Going to internet service providers, I think one thing that we've seen is, I think, when inter-service providers realize that this is not a burden, not necessarily a charity, but actually something that is good for their business model, in that when you look at surveys of some of our customers, we did a survey of about 20,000 customers who've come through us in 2014. And we wanted to see, are they that different from a market-rate customer? And what we found was a low-income customer actually is less likely to churn off the product, meaning they stay on the internet necessarily longer than we do. And also, they're as likely to pay their bill on time as we are. These are things that, these are myths I think that persist in why certain companies may not try and reach out to those customers. We need those myths to be broken down and for them to realize their own self-interest and push for that. So how do we get in many ways all of the industry to realize their self-interest and invest in that public good, which in many ways is gonna have an ROI for them? That's really interesting and it brings me to a thought, is there a component to this issue that's a new civil right, having digital equity? Anyone wanna take that? Irene? Well, first just from the tribal perspective, you know, I think one of the challenges is understanding that tribal nations are not exactly the same as rural America. You know, there are, we know that there are connectivity challenges across the country, but you take, and no one size fits all, there are 567 federally recognized tribes. So, you know, there are very different circumstances, but by and large, communities are very remote. Providers don't want to serve. They don't want to come. The challenge isn't adoption on most and with most tribal nations. It's access. It's getting the deployment out there, whether that's wireline, whether that's wireless. So, it is, in fact, a civil right. And if we look at tribal nations, the federal government has a trust obligation and a trust responsibility. These are sovereign nations within the United States. And to try to figure out ways to create incentives, and the FCC and other agencies have been trying to do this, but to, so that industry will recognize that there are opportunities. I think a lot of people maybe look at tribal communities and see the impoverishment and see the challenges and say, it's gonna be really expensive to serve. Not really sure it's worth my while. But there are many economic opportunities. If you're ever going to bring robust economic development to any area, whether it's any community, tribal communities in particular, you have to have the infrastructure. So, it's in, I mean, if you just look at universal service in general, the whole purpose of universal service is that we all benefit. All of us sitting here in DC benefit from folks in remote areas on tribal nations and in other parts of rural America. We all benefit from people in living in remote areas having access as well. So, trying to figure out ways to create those incentives so that providers and providers, philanthropic entities, the federal government doesn't just see the challenges but sees the opportunities. And there are partners within tribal nations that are ready, willing and able to jump right in and help to solve this problem. You're right, it's not all about money. Money's important. Money's important. That's critically important, but there's a lot more to it than just money. I was just gonna add, I think it's interesting. We ask this question a lot. Is this a civil right? Is it a public good, a basic necessity? We use a lot of different words and I think no matter what words we use, the conversations this morning in the panel, before in the panel here, make it crystal clear that access to robust, affordable and equitable broadband access is a national imperative. And I think that is true on tribal lands. I think it's true in low income neighborhoods. It's true in rural communities. And so we, as Irene said, we all benefit when we solve this problem for the country as a whole and not just for certain parts. It strikes me that it would be a really interesting economic study to calculate what's the opportunity cost of all of the country not being currently fully connected and leveraging the benefits of the internet, right? That's something that would probably, the number would probably be so huge that folks might not believe it, but I think that would be a really interesting exercise to throw out there. So if there are any economists in the room who wanna take that on, we'll work with you on that. Steven, you had something to add? Yeah, you know, Senator Paul Wellstone used to say we all do better when we all do better. And I think it's important to understand kind of at a base level what we mean when we talk about equity. And so the simple answer to the question is digital equity and use of a right. Yes, equality is different from equity. Equality just means that you have access to the same infrastructure. And there's this beautiful meme that takes an image of three people standing, trying to look over a fence. And one of them is tall, the other one's kinda medium sized, the other one's really short. And it shows that equity means that everybody has access to just the same box to try to get their heads over the fence. But it still means that some people are still covered by the fence. Equity means that you actually prop people up who are at a further disadvantage. So the shortest person actually gets propped up to the same height as a person who's the tallest. And I think we need to look at that earlier question, the poll about like, am I worried about like where the state of education is in terms of like the digital divide? I'm very worried. The stat that like people of color are the majority of the K through 12, like student body, is disconcerting in the sense that the digital divide hits along racial lines as well. Pure research showed that like 72% of whites had access to the internet at home versus 50, 54, and 50 for African-American and Latinos respectively. So we need to think about where we target our efforts to really prop up the people who are at a further disadvantage. I wanna ask a little informal poll, the old fashioned way. I've often thought about how hard it is for policy makers to really understand what it's like to not be connected and to, as we go through our daily lives, really take it so much for granted. So how many of you right now have at least one internet-enabled device on you? Raise your hand. How many have at least two with you right now? Keep your hands up. How many have at least two? How many have at least three? And how many of you have used them in the last two minutes? Okay. So... You're in trouble with people. You're in trouble with people. You're in trouble with people. You're in trouble with people. The question is, we are all part of this fortunate collective that has that access and takes it for granted. So what are some messages that you could send to policy makers, to technologists, to help them understand what it means to not be connected and to really care about solving the problem? I think one thing that I would say is, talk to people who are not connected on a regular basis. The basic user- I used to work in the technology space and when you didn't make a product I was speaking to the customer. And in that case, that's to the low income person. And that's number one. Or the low income person, or the rural person, whoever that person is. And the other thing is, that's not just important for the design of policy, but it's important for the design of implementation. So as we speak about lifeline, which we think it was a historic achievement. The next question is, all right, how is it gonna be designed? If to prove that you are eligible for a lifeline, I have to bring eight pieces of paper showing that I am in this benefit program or that benefit program. Frankly, the office that provides that piece of paper may not be open on a regular basis. I'm frankly... Or only available online. Only available online, which is very true in many communities. Frankly, you might as well have not passed the program. So how do we use that user information just on the policy, creation side or on the implementation side? So it is actually accessible and usable for the folks who actually need it. I like that. Any other thoughts? I would say, look at the great work that FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn is doing. I think she's always consistently demonstrated a willingness to actually go out and hear from people. We brought a delegation of 10 people to Washington, D.C. a couple months ago before the FCC voted on lifeline, including someone who works at everyone on, Jitanya Adams from Charlotte. We had folks who were lifeline recipients, folks who were eligible for lifeline, but weren't online. And she took an hour out of her day to sit down and actually hear from every single one of those people. She went out to Jackson, Mississippi, a couple of weeks after that visit and worked with the person that came as part of the delegation to do a visit with a high school down there. I think it's critically important that leaders demonstrate leadership, not just by enacting policies, but by creating policies based on what they're hearing from the constituencies that are gonna be most affected. I would just add, I think as advocates, we should all try to be more like Stephen and to help the voices of these constituencies and communities be heard. And to really think about them as we're, it is easy to, as someone sitting in D.C., who cares a lot about a lot of different policy issues, tech policy issues, to think I have the best idea on how to fix these. And to forget that my perspective and my vantage point in downtown D.C. may not be reflective of the needs of people all around the country. And so I do feel a responsibility as an advocate to make sure I acknowledge that and to account for it. Irene? I mean, I think I agree with what everybody's saying. There's no substitute for actually being out there and experiencing what a consumer without access experiences. So in the Office of Native Affairs and Policy, our job was both in D.C. but largely in the field. And we made, we had a tribal consultation budget for at least a couple of years and we made a concerted effort to bring commissioners, the chairman and staff members from the bureaus and offices that were writing and drafting the policies so that they could really understand. It's one thing to have somebody come and tell you, yes, well, you know, we had four different carriers and we would take turns with a phone, which is true, to be able to call home at night because somebody might have access. But virtually, none of us, there was never a time when all of us had access. And the culture, kind of changing the culture within federal agencies, within not just federal agencies but all policy makers, one of the things that was a big challenge for us was trying to get folks at the FCC to understand that a tribal consultation budget isn't just a travel budget. It's fundamentally different. And to explain time and time again, why exactly do you need a four-wheel drive vehicle? Well, because they're dirt roads. And that's so foreign to most people sitting in Washington unless you've had that personal experience. And it made a tremendous difference to actually see what's going on on the ground and you come back and the conversations, you could see the conversations starting to evolve. So I really just don't think there's any substitute for experiencing the challenges, even if just for a short period of time, so you really do understand how difficult it is, not just to deal with that without broadband, but without phone, you can't call home. You can't call God forbid you have an accident. And the lack of 911, which is a huge challenge as well. So I'm gonna take moderator's privilege for just a second and talk about some of the strategies that we're pursuing at NTIA through our work with the Broadband Opportunity Council as a way to plant the seed, because I think it's relevant not just for the federal level but for those of you who are working at the state and local level as well, which is to think about how it's so important to integrate these strategies about digital literacy and broadband adoption into the existing funding streams that have life beyond just one shot programs. So I'll give an example. One thing that we're really excited about is that Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration is going to clarify that digital literacy is part of their strategy. So in the past it was not always understood to be the case that that program or others supported digital literacy, but what we're doing with the Broadband Opportunity Council is having the agencies take a hard look at all of their programs and look at ways that they can all support this because it is so integrated into other issues of education, training, access. So for those of you who work at the state and local level, I encourage you to look at where you can infiltrate those programs with these strategies about broadband adoption and digital literacy. So we have just a couple of minutes left. I wanna see if any of the panelists have parting thoughts that they wanna share about the importance of this issue, what we could do differently or better to solve some of these problems. Go for it. I'll start. No, I mean, we just have a couple of minutes left. I think that I obviously agree with a lot of things that were just mentioned by everyone in terms of making sure that they understand the importance of it. I guess I think that as you look out globally, it's not oftentimes the people that we're interacting with most at the commission or at NTIA, you don't appreciate the importance of it. It's actually the other policy makers that, and it gets lost sometimes in the greater prioritization of other issues. And I think that's where the message maybe is most important to bring. It's not often the ones that we're trying to deal with these issues on a day-to-day basis, but it's making sure that the other people who are involved, who are then trying to prioritize a bigger bucket of resources, understand that this has a critical impact on not only people's lives, but on the overall economic development. And that unless we solve that underlying, enabling infrastructure and enabling access, that we'll continue to have both social challenges in terms of the digital divide and economic challenges as well. And so I think that it's emphasizing this as a solution to some of the other problems that are out there as well, that to the other policy makers, I think it would be the most important. I'm not having a interest. Exactly. And so I think that actually is what I would say is the most important. Sure, I would say don't wait for policy. Policy is very important. It's what in the end will bring this over the last mile. But I think about a community we work with, Little Rock, Arkansas, who said we're gonna get our public housing population online with no money, with no resources, and literally it was the stick-tutiveness of the housing authority, the mayor's office, making those private citations. So policy is important, but we cannot wait for that because families can't wait either. Perfect. 15 second lightning round coming. To close out my point on Senator Paul Wellstone's quote, I think we need to really focus on the communities that are most disadvantaged, beginning with tribal communities and working up from there. If we can impact, if we can target those communities first, it will impact the whole. I think keeping the issue at the forefront, that not to kind of sit back, lifeline reform, that's wonderful. It was, it's a major transformation in the program, but there's a lot more to be done. So to kind of keep that on the forefront. There a last word. I just, last word. You have the last words. Oh, okay. I think that just remembering this, the positive and negative sides of the cascading effect, when people lack access to broadband that compounds other challenges in their lives. But when they have access to robust affordable access, that improves their lives and it improves outcomes for all of us. So, wonderful. Please join me in thanking the wonderful panelists for today.