 Well, and thanks for joining us for this panel discussion on broadband and inclusion. I am McKenna Kelly, and I am a policy reporter at The Verge. I will be moderating today's conversation, and I am so excited to start introducing our panelists. First, let's bring on Jiji Sohn, who is a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy. We also have Marcos Villar, who is an executive director for Allianza for Progress. We have Omika Makwakwa, who's the head of Africa at the Alliance for Affordable Internet at the World Wide Web Foundation. Lucas Peterzak, the program manager for Next Century Cities, and Joshua Edmonds, the director of digital inclusion for the city of Detroit. I hope everyone's doing well today, and I'm really excited to get into this conversation, especially at such an important time with yesterday's bipartisan infrastructure package, finally, you know, picking up some momentum. And I think I kind of want to start there. I want to get everyone's, you know, initial take on this infrastructure package and how you see this fostering broadband expansion and inclusion across the country. Let's start with Jiji. Hi, everybody. Look, I think we need to know more of the details, but from what I'm hearing, and I just got actually a text from a Hill staffer about five minutes ago, both the provisions that relate to availability of broadband and the provisions that relate to affordability of broadband are pretty darn good. I mean, I think we have to remember this is a bipartisan package. This is Republicans and Democrats both saying that broadband is essential infrastructure, and it must be part of any infrastructure package. That being said, you know, not everything that I and my public interest colleagues will prefer to be in there is in there. But again, from the outline I've seen so far, very good on both the accounts of broadband deployment slash availability and making broadband more affordable for low income folks. Great, and let's move on to Marcos. I think you might be muted. I am, but I'm back. Well, I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. I think that one of the big concerns for me is underserved communities and specifically where I'm from in Orlando. It's the backyard of Disney. And here we have a problem, for example, with more than 10,000 homeless children in our public school system. And, you know, this is gonna, how do we make sure that this trickles down fast enough and effectively enough to make sure that those kids and others that have lack of access, you know, have access and are able to conduct, you know, their homework and their day-to-day with broadband. How about Joshua? How are you feeling about the broadband package? You know, I feel all right. I'm not necessarily going to, you know, be overly enthusiastic about it, but I think that what it actually represents, if we take a step back and contextually look at where we are, you know, looking back even to during the Obama era around the way that we were talking about broadband, you know, obviously connect home was the thing that President Obama was pushing heavily, which was focusing on access to internet and public housing units. Now, the thing is during that time, we also had a BTOP, which were, you know, the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program, where, yeah, there was money that was allocated from the government. And at the time, we thought that was revolutionary funding. But in comparison, it's a drop into what we have with this current infrastructure bill and what we've received from some of the upper funding already. And obviously through the Trump administration, locally, we've been able to beef up our efforts. We've seen local communities do a great job through that, especially last year during the pandemic. And so I think that for us, we're optimistic to see nationally this increased slope as it relates to our conversation on the topic, especially looking at the intersection of, to your point, access and affordability. Usually the affordability piece is what we've been kind of tasked with locally to figure out and we've been robbing Peter to pay Paul for so long that I don't want to get seduced in being so happy because obviously there are certain things in it that we would like to see that aren't there. But at the end of the day, it's a step in the right direction and it's this president's administration's first year. So we'll see what keeps coming for the next years. All right. And Lucas, what about the package for cities? Well, like Josh, you know, I'm optimistic and excited. And I think over the last 18 months, we have seen an increasing number of mayors and county executives who are prioritizing broadband topics and the fact that, you know, we often at next century cities have cities and communities that are just starting on, you know, what does this mean for us? And we have places like Detroit who are a part of our network that have amazing people like Josh at the helm. And the fact that across the spectrum, they're going to be able to address access and affordability because we know that the problems look very different in many communities, but we also see patterns across the country and some cities and, you know, counties are really tackling, there is not the infrastructure here we need, but others say it's here, but people just can't get online. So excited to see the details start to roll out more and to be able to empower these mayors who have been dreaming big dreams and sort of just waiting for the ability to get it done. Right. Onika, any comments on, you know, what's happening on the Hill right now? Wow, great. It's actually great to see this level of investment on broadband period, you know, coming from lower income and middle income countries. The digital divide has been just so huge, but what's most important is really getting our governments to understand that they need to invest in digital development to be able to connect everyone. So I'm hoping we like to copy things that America does. So I'm hoping this is one of those things that will seriously take a look at and recognize that we need to prioritize digital development and investing in infrastructure to be able to bring everyone along. Right. And I kind of want to move into some more broader questions. Thinking of just broadly, you know, what are the opportunities in broadband and digital inclusion and how when we sit down to make these bills, when we sit down to talk about this, you know, what, how should we be thinking about broadband and digital inclusion holistically? Maybe we can ask Josh first. Certainly. OK, so I, oh, man, I'm going to give an answer. It's probably going to be a bit realer. So oftentimes what I'm seeing and I'm putting my money where my mouth is on this because I'll call out federal agencies such as the FCC. I called them out recently as relates to the emergency broadband benefit locally. It's been an incredibly difficult challenge to sign up residents and to get them actually verified in the program. That being said, out of large metro cities, Detroit ranks third on sign-up. So we're not doing a bad job. But again, I think that oftentimes what's missing is folks will say one plus one equals two. We all understand one plus one equals two. It makes sense for all of us. But what people are missing are all the little decimals in between one and two. And those decimals exist at the local level. And so as people are coming up with solutions that make sense to say, yeah, let's have a, and I don't want to keep picking on the emergency broadband benefit, but it makes sense. Let's have a benefit for all qualifying residents of $50 a month off of their internet bill. Great, that makes sense. That framing makes sense to all of us. The problem is when you break it down locally, you see all the various challenges that's going to take to get a resident to go from here to here. And imagine that every single time something is proposed, we all know it makes sense, but those little gaps in between keep getting missing and then us locally put so much pressure on us to deliver, we want to have a permanent broadband subsidy. We want to make our voice heard, but every single time we don't have it heard, we're essentially cut out the equation and then we're expected to make miracles happen off of these great initiatives at the onset that kind of get watered down as you go further down to the local level. Right, and how are you fighting that? What are your team doing to make sure that people get the information they need about the EBB and other programs like that? Well, I mean, we've actually created our own, we have our own local commercial around the emergency broadband benefit. We've stood up our own local call center. We've stood up our own community support network there. Out of our call center, we've been able to dispatch residents, pick up the phone and the reason why we did that was because we saw the long wait times at the onset when the program first rolled out and we're like, no, no, no, no, no one deserves to be on hold for that, especially for a critical resource. And so that was us stopping up. And again, robbing Peter to pay Paul because there was no money put in there for community engagement. And so what we're trying to do our best is the galvanized stakeholders off of goodwill, which that's not sustainable. So that's why you kind of hear us saying again on the funding piece, we can do our best for local philanthropy and local fundraising, but at some point that level of nuance is going to need to penetrate that higher level. And if it does not happen, we're gonna be stuck robbing Peter to pay Paul in perpetuity. Yeah, but if I could just sort of come in here, I think it's really critical to see how much money is in this package for digital inclusion and digital equity efforts. So I think now in our second or third Congress, where we've been trying to get past the Digital Equity Act, which will do several things, including giving those folks on the ground, like Josh, of the resources and the nonprofits in this space, the resources that they need to actually get people online, right? So it's great to have the emergency broadband benefit. My understanding is there's a permanent benefit in the package, in the broadband package. But if you don't, the missing piece, as Josh puts it, is, okay, you've got this great subsidy. Maybe you even have a cable company or a telephone company that's giving low-cost service. But if you can't find that person, and I don't think the companies do a particularly good job of finding those people, if you can't find that person, you can't make sure that they have the skills to use the internet. And we take it for granted, we pop up on our computers, we get on the web, blah, blah, a lot of people don't know how to do that. It's not just a digital literacy problem. In some cases, it's a literacy literacy problem. There are trust issues, right? Is the government gonna spy on me? Is AT&T gonna spy on me? So those folks who are on the ground who can go door to door and say, do you have connectivity? And if you don't, here's how you get it, and what else can I do to make sure you can actually use it? We have to see whether this package includes portions of this Digital Equity Act, which would have provided money for that door to door local service. I agree entirely. This is all about community engagement and getting the word out there. And every city is different. Some cities are very concentrated and it's easier to get to people because they congregate. Now with COVID, we also have distancing and people staying away from each other, not congregating in big numbers. But you have cities like Orlando that are very, very spread out geographically. And if you don't have the ability to go door to door, knock on people and people's doors and get the information out to them, it's sort of a vicious circle, right? That they can't get the information because they don't have the broadband access and they don't know that they could have broadband access if they actually had it available. The last thing I'll say is about 10 years ago, I visited Minneapolis and I don't travel the whole country all the time, but I did have an opportunity to travel to Minneapolis and Minneapolis had broadband for everyone, everywhere. You could go in the city, you could connect to their city's internet signal. And I think that this might be something interesting to look at also is how do we provide, particularly in zip codes that are concentrated with folks that are lower income, maybe start in those sections providing types of broadband distribution that is free for the residents in those zip codes. Right, Onika, and in your line of work, how do we have this conversation of infrastructure and empowerment holistically? I hope it looks like she might have had some internet problems. So honestly, let's go to Lucas. Lucas, if you wanna like get in on this conversation. Yeah, I think the point that everyone has made so far is something that we try to really drill home and it's that, and I think Josh sort of hit on this as well. It's, this looks different everywhere. And you know, in my dream world, every city would have a Josh at the helm who is passionate about this and is on the ground making it happen. But I think something we realize with our cities not every community, you know, regardless of their size is able to have a broadband team or a digital inclusion team that some of these places, you know, they have part-time mayors or part-time city councils and they're working with a city government of four employees who run everything. And I think we have to remember that those people deserve a seat at the table, a real seat at the table, as much as the big cities do. And sort of going beyond this ceremonial coming to these cities and saying, hi, these are our policy proposals, do you sign off on them? And instead walking way back to, I know something someone said in the last panel, even back to the questions and saying, you know, what do we need to be asking? You know, what, we don't want to come to you with proposals just for you to give us your stamp of approval and someone can come forward and say, look, 20 mayors agreed with us. Instead come forward and say, 20, 50, 100 mayors said these are the issues they're facing. So let's develop, you know, policy solutions around that, not around what we want that we think mayors and communities will like. Right, and we're talking about the EBB and of course the EBB, we have it because of the pandemic mostly and you know, the light and the light that that's shown on digital inequity in the country and people not having access to the internet at a time when we're doing this panel virtually right now, right? We're doing work virtually, we're going to school virtually and using COVID as ground zero, how do we ground innovation in these realities and actually solve the problems that we have here? I don't know if maybe we want to go to Gigi first on that? Sure, look, and this is something that Josh and Lucas probably know and Marcos as well. We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories about how cities and states had to scrape by during the pandemic in order to get school kids online in order to get poor people online, unfortunately the FCC has not collected any data on this and they've not collected any data on how well or how not so well of the low cost programs that the broadband providers offered, how they worked. They actually move the needle in getting people online or people still online. So there's a lot we really don't know and a lot of data collection that's still in my opinion needs to be done but you know, talk about ground zero, the cities in particular, I mean, they have stories, among stories, among stories about how they had to scrape together philanthropic money, you know, bag providers, you know, do whatever needed to be done to get folks online and I think that's, you know, that's where you got to start. You have to start with the folks who are actually on the ground and who have the stories about the kids sitting in front of the Taco Bell and, you know, and other folks, you know, sitting in the library parking lot in order to get connectivity or the wifi on school buses. So that's where I would go. We have the folks on the ground. One of the things that I do actually like a lot about the broadband package as far as I know is that the money, $40 billion will go to states which will trickle down to localities for sure. And I think actually the states and the cities that are much better suited than even the federal government to know where the holes are and how they should be filled. So I actually think not all my public and just colleagues agree with me, but I'm actually very high on the states and particularly on the cities and towns in figuring out what their needs are and filling it with the resources that the federal government's giving them. Right, Marcos, you're talking about Orlando and we're talking about COVID right now and with coronavirus cases spiking, how are we thinking, you know, in Orlando and in Florida about digital inclusion after the pandemic? Yeah, it continues to be a challenge. I don't think that anybody would argue against that. I know that for looking, I've been involved in public education for a long time. I was a teacher in Chicago in my earlier years. Now here in Orlando, we're closely with the Orange County school district and we're hearing, I don't think there are any numbers have been published yet, we're hearing that about 15% or more students were completely disconnected, lost contact with the school system during the period of time that students were studying virtually where the schools were closed. And so that's a huge poll, that's a huge gap and these are some of the concerns that we're looking at and thinking and how much of that is a question of not having access, not having access to broadband that they weren't in fact able to connect. So the schools are opening again, but then now we have this Delta variant that is threatening us again and who knows what's gonna happen next in that sense. But I do think that it's a huge challenge and thankfully these funds are headed our way and we can figure out ways to improve where we failed before. Right and I just wanna welcome Onika back. We had a little bit of an issue with the wifi there but I'm glad you're back to join us for the rest of this conversation and we're talking about coronavirus and inclusion and making sure people are connected and how we move forward in light of the pandemic. I don't know if there's anything you could touch on there too. Great thanks but I guess the first thing would be to say also making sure we have stable electricity which is what happened just a few minutes ago so had to switch to an alternative source quickly but yes, absolutely. I think what has happened with the pandemic is that it has really shown us our existing disparities especially in terms of digital inclusion, the divide in terms of gender as well as in terms of rule of the oven and really emphasized why we need to invest in digital development, not just infrastructure but I believe Gigi mentioned earlier the issue of digital skills making sure that everyone has the digital skills to be able to take advantage of this digital dividends but also making sure that we've got access to affordable devices and that as we open up these funds like the Universal Service Access Funds in the US I believe that's through FCC that we make sure that they are not strictly restricted to investing on infrastructure but can also be utilized for investing on digital skills as well as on affordable devices because the infrastructure alone is not going to enable full participation of all citizens in the digital space. Great and now I mean something that we keep talking about we keep coming back to in this conversation is engaging with the communities on the ground. Josh and Lucas too, let's start with Josh but what do you want the federal government doing? What do you want them talking to you about communicating with you about in order to use this money in the most effective way in order to reach these communities and really have an impact on cities like Detroit and other places. I think the federal government has been doing a pretty decent job of being responsive and I'm not necessarily one that's going to put everything on them when everything's don't go right. I'll be honest, we still have restrictive laws within the state of Michigan around municipal broadband and around community ownership where we as a municipality would like to support much more and have a much more front facing approach to internet providers, especially bringing new ones into our ecosystem. And so as the federal government is allocating a lot of this funding, I think that in Detroit I'm not necessarily as optimistic about how we're gonna be empowered from an infrastructure standpoint strictly because of our state laws that are gonna be prohibiting that. And I think that's another topic of conversation there. But I think from the federal standpoint and Gigi touched on this, data, we need much more longitudinal data as we do this digital divide. I think we're gonna shoot ourselves on the foot if we do not put data at the forefront. As I'm looking at even, we received about $45 million for our funding specifically carved out for digital inclusion. A lot of your other communities across the city have maybe received five to 10 and some haven't received anything. And so I know that in Detroit, we're gonna be building out a data ecosystem, a data repository that's gonna allow us to be able to say, hey, long term, these are what these interventions look like. These are the policy levers we can pull off of this data. What I would like to see happen is that as a federal government is standing up these interventions, there is a real, real focus on the data part of this equation. I don't think that we're talking about that enough. And I think that that data piece, I don't wanna be limiting. Anything that someone's gonna say is like, what about this related to that? I'm gonna say yes and all of it because I don't think there's ever gonna be a shortage of data that we need because we've gone so long without it. Right. And Onika, in your line of work, how are you building relationships with communities to really find out what these issues are on the ground and how to solve these problems? We have found that we have to take an attitude of it takes everyone and that it's not just government, it's not just private sector. It's private sector, it's government, it's civil society as well. It's really important to build with civil society, engaged especially and including at the policy level so that we can avoid pitfalls like building digital centers in areas where women don't feel safe to walk through in areas that people generally don't congregate. So it's really been a strategy for us to create coalitions that are multi-stakeholder, bring them together to really inform the policy process and tell us what it is that they want. A lot of one thing that I hear a lot in the region in Africa in general is nothing for us without us. Meaning that communities want to be an integral part of not just the implementation but the planning process as well as in the policy conversations which we tend to leave civil society out of. They want to be part of those plans so that they can inform them and we know when they're involved that they will actually utilize it. Then it's also just good practice to consult and engage civil society and all other sectors as well. In particular also when you look at the amount of money that's needed for infrastructure in Africa in general to be able to connect the unconnected at the moment it's going to take more than just government. It's going to take private sector investment. So we have the responsibility to create that enabling environment for private sector to be able to invest in digital development. It's going to take multilateral donors. It's going to take government years but we need to be engaging across the board. Right, and Lucas, what are you hearing from cities? What do they want? How do they want to be communicated with to get these problems solved? Yeah, and I think Josh and Onakum both made a phenomenal point and going back to the very first thing that Josh had mentioned is removing the policy and statutory barriers that are standing in the way of local solutions. It's something that next century cities has weighed in on in Ohio recently and last year in Idaho and other states across the country, it's, you know, we have these local leaders who want the funding and want the freedom to pursue these solutions that could help close the divide for them and digitally include as many residents as possible. But oftentimes there are barriers in the way that like Josh mentioned, that don't let them do what they know they can do and be successful at. And I think that's what we've pushed for is the local solutions are going to ultimately be that last piece that fully bridges the divide but every day that passes that, you know, a barrier stands in the way of Detroit doing something or a community in Arizona, that's a day wasted that those local officials can't take the necessary steps to do what Onakum said and include their communities in the planning to be able to figure out, you know, if the best solution is A, but we have to go with B because someone is standing in our way. Well, now we're spending money on something that may do a decent job, but in turn how to sacrifice, you know, what could have been a phenomenal solution. So I think like I mentioned earlier bringing those local leaders into federal conversations and the state conversations, including tribal leaders or urban native leaders in the conversations, bringing them to the table and really asking them, you know, what tools have we not given you yet and what things are continuing to stand in your way? Because until we figure out, you know, what exactly are local communities and municipal leaders? What barriers are they having to tackle on their own? We're not going to get the solutions and the results we're looking for. And I think, you know, specifically to re-emphasize Josh's point, there's never too much data in the world. And we have seen more and more communities undertake it on their own and sort of find their own money for research proposals or, you know, for feasibility studies because it is lacking at the federal level and states have stepped up too, but it's really coming down to people standing in their grocery store, their community center and handing out paper surveys that say, you know, what is your service condition? You know, are you getting speeds that you're paying for? Are you getting good customer service? So looking at those solutions and realizing, you know, it's going to come down to these hyper-local solutions and sort of this ground game if we want to accomplish what we're looking for. Right. Something I think Josh and Lucas, you both mentioned was these barriers, right? And I think something that was in the original infrastructure plan from President Biden was, you know, prioritizing municipal, publicly owned internet access and things like that. And in yesterday's press release from the White House that language was missing. And I'm curious how you feel about, you know, not having this kind of preemption language for these bills, for these, you know, preempting all of these state laws that may give more difficult for states to work, you know, with different like munis and things like that. Well, it's two things. It's not just the preemption, right? Which is disappointing to not see, but you can't really be surprised in a bipartisan bill that it wouldn't be in there. But the second part was actually preferencing for funding those municipal projects in those states in which it is allowed, okay? So it's really a two-part thing that's missing because it would have been really nice. You know, one of the barriers to municipal builds even in those places, those states where it is allowed is the price tag, okay? And sometimes the lack of, you know, availability of capital particularly in the first year or two where you really need that capital. So, you know, we can't necessarily, you know, Chris Mitchell is a great guy with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and he's always complaining to me about why aren't more cities building municipal systems even where they can. And the problem is you see the numbers and you're like, oh my God, there's no way we can afford this. So having that preference for those that could build would have been really, really important. And I'm not surprised given how Republicans feel about municipal community broadband builds to begin with. I'm not surprised it's not there but it is a disappointment. And I'd obviously love to see those restrictions lifted and to see that preference restored. And honestly, I think that it is disappointing because I don't look at municipal broadband as the silver bullet. A lot of people do that. They over-index on the value of it. It is valuable, but at the end of the day I'm looking at that from a standpoint of even if I know that in Michigan we have these restrictive laws in place to prohibit this happening and other states a win for a city anywhere is a win for all of us. And so that's where like if I can illuminate a lesson that's learned I then can use that to say, hey, why aren't we doing that here? Hey, state, if we did this and so like I'm looking at it from that standpoint where it's disappointing but at the same time I'll also say and I know that the municipal broadband folks are getting mad when I say this but at the end of the day if people cannot afford internet access and even from a water standpoint if that is something that people can't afford that we have to get at the root of the digital divide here and at the root of it is it's not going to be bridged by a municipal network being built. It is going to be addressed by a municipal network being built. And so all we local leaders want to do is be able to say, give us more options and power our residents with options. There's a certain digital poverty in this country that no one seems to wanna really articulate what it is. If we are living in most cities and having a duopoly and it's either AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum or whatever I have to work with these people. I don't hate it actually they're actually pretty cool in the ground to work with but at the end of the day our residents need options. And if there is something that's prohibiting our residents from getting those options then that in itself is fostering us further state of digital inequity that we can't get around. Right, I think there is. Oh go ahead. If I could just share a story actually to support this. In South Africa a few years ago we had a city where the mayor wanted to be known as the mayor who brought internet to the city for the most part. And he used his budget to provide public wifi and this is the city of Toronto which is the capital city by the way. And one of the stories from that experiment unfortunately none of I have to run a wifi anymore. But one of the stories that really stayed with me from this was this young boy who was about eight years old at the time and used to be in trouble with his mother all the time because he would walk about three kilometers daily to get to a point where he can tap into the municipality's wifi. And when this boy was interviewed and asked why is it so important for you to go this far and to always be getting in trouble to be online? And his response was simply that he lives in a shack and when he's online he no longer lives in a shack he's got access to more than just his surrounding. And it was just so powerful just to demonstrate how something as simple as giving public access to someone who otherwise would not be able to afford it can have a potential of helping them transform their lives. And how to make it address some of the many other competing social economic issues that cities try to attend to. Great. And then I just wanna put pitch one last question before we start going into the Q and A from everyone. We're here, we're having this conversation but what are we not talking about? If you had to have a conversation with one of these policymakers, one of these leaders and there was like one thing you had to let them know what are we not talking about? I'm seeing Josh's face. He looks like he wants to say something. I, yeah, I smile too much. All right, I guess not. So the thing that I, and I know that, next century cities, national legal cities like a number of folks are doing this to an extent but I think that the conversation needs to be had in the same way that locally here we're doing our best to organize our community for specific objectives and outcomes. There needs to be something with this much money on the table and this much money coming in, we can't repeat the be top failures where people who are spending money in a way that had Republicans scared for a decade. And so this is something where as we're moving forward the conversation really should be had on standardization reporting and data collection. And that sounds so dry. I know it does, but that is so effective and I have a real fear that there are gonna be certain communities that are gonna be spending money on things with unvetted advice because they're gonna be listening to their vendors and spending money on things that aren't really gonna help us move the needle collectively. So I really wanna say that this is a great moment in time but we can't lose sight of the future here and we can't be wasteful of the way that we're thinking about this. And we need to do this in a collaborative and a coalition minded way where we each are taping one step forward at the same time, I get communities are different but at the end of the day the way we bridge the digital divide is gonna be very similar for most of us. And I think that we need to be much more locked step and where we are right now. Right, Marcos, what are we talking about? Can you hear me? Yes. And can you see me because I lost my screen. And I- Oh no, you're all good. Okay, great. Well, I wanna go back to the complication of government and how the different levels work together and so often work against each other. And in the case of Florida specifically we were talking earlier about preemption, how they've preempt and taken away local control from a lot of what can happen in a city or in a county here in Florida. And it seems like at every turn, also monies that are directed from the federal government for a particular purpose or even generated through revenue matters like the Sondowski Fund for affordable housing here in Florida they're tapped and redirected for purposes which they were not set up for. That is happening in Florida is probably happening in other states as well. And that's something that for us is very, very concerning. And there's a way for us to be able to sidetrack or basically put money directly into nonprofits or other forms so that they can get the work done in the cities the way it's necessary. Then that might be a way to look at how we can tap some of those federal funds directly by the cities or the counties or directly by even working together in partnership with nonprofits. Right, right. Now, I wanna make sure we have time to get to all these audience questions. I have one from Jennifer Cooper here asking, is mesh away around state restrictions on municipal broadband? I don't know, anybody, Gigi maybe, somebody can answer this mesh network. I think they're okay in the short term but look everybody needs a connection to their home, okay? A high speed, scalable, affordable connection to their home and mesh networks are good if you need a quick connection but not always the strongest. I don't think that's ultimately the answer. I think it's a short-term answer but not a long-term answer. And if I can get back to the municipal, I agree with Josh. It's not the be all end all for everything but I think we'd all agree on this panel that communities should at least have a choice. And that's what's so maddening about the state laws that prohibit communities from having a choice because in a lot of the areas where they'd like to build the incumbents are not interested in building. So you just have deserts. I mean, when I was at the FCC, we tried to preempt the laws of the state of Tennessee and North Carolina that were prohibiting new builds and also expansions of builds that already happened. And the stories about people who had to couple together DSL and satellite for $300 a month, they begged the cable companies, come, serve us and the telecoms, come and service and they're like, it's not worth it, it's too expensive. So that's what I find the most maddening about these limitations is it doesn't allow for expansion to areas that the incumbents would never serve in a million years. Right, right. I wanna ask one last question here before we start to wrap up. It seems like there's some folks in the comments here who are thinking about just as, I think several people on the panel have, broadband infrastructure is great and we're talking about it and we're finally starting to do something about it. But what about devices and making sure people even have money to get these devices to participate in 21st century economy? Is there anything, are we hearing anything about the bipartisan infrastructure package, having anything to help with devices or how could the FCC or other organizations help people get the devices they need in order to even participate in the 21st century economy? I'll just pose that to everyone. That's from Andy Studsman. I hear it's not in there. I hear it's not in the current package. And some folks like my old organization, public knowledge are pushing back. I'm just gonna say something provocative. I don't understand why in this country where we have device manufacturers like Apple and Microsoft and Dell and others who have more and Google have more money than God, why we even have to rely on the federal government for devices. Maybe I'm just like completely out there but it just seems to me that those companies could easily afford to make sure that every person who cannot afford a device can get a device. Right. Yeah, how do we get these devices into people's hands? I really am curious and I wanna press on this. Is there anything else we could do to make sure? Is there anything local communities can do? Anything that you've seen on the ground that helps get these devices in people's hands? Well, I think there's secondhand devices also. There's a lot of consumerism around devices in the among people and setting up ways to read information and we provide a redistribute used devices, I think is a great idea and I don't see that happening anywhere. Right. Yeah, locally we definitely set up a refurbisher model and network and it works from a sustainability standpoint because you're tapping into existing business processes. So it's great to see there but I think this reads more like Robin Peter to pay Paul Moore, which local communities we've been doing this. So this is no surprise or shock to us. This is us looking at federal grants and then repurposing them saying that they're telehealth to get telehealth-enabled devices to people. And I hate to be that candid but that's exactly how we have to do it. And to Gigi's point, yeah, I agree. Like at some point we had to stop running to the federal government here. While yes, even absent for a lot of this stuff especially in an urban context, at the same time I do recognize that look, this is a one-time cost here. These devices live in a one-time cost. The refurbisher model that we have set up, they can do the tech support piece. So that's already sustainable for us. It's just something where on the device side of the house we're gonna have to keep Robin Peter to pay Paul. We're gonna have to keep philanthropically funding this. Thankfully, philanthropy actually does fund devices more. Internet's hard for them to fund because of that perpetual cost. Hey, $150 for a device? Sure, we'll do that, $250. I think that through the emergency connectivity fund, through the FCC, you're getting people connected through the schools and the libraries. It's not enough, but I also agree with Gigi here and I can't believe I'm saying this and this is being recorded, but I don't believe that Onus actually rests in totality on the federal government. I think that we need to actually be demanding the same level, if not more, from our private companies in this country. Onika, you touched on this as well previously in another question. How do we get these devices in people's hands? Yes, certainly. That's a huge issue for, especially the lower income countries, right? In Africa, for example, a low-cost entry-level smartphone costs similar to a small household appliance like a microwave. So if a family is to make choices, they're less likely to select buying a device for each individual. Yet we tend to be a mobile-fest and sometimes mobile-only continent. So certainly second-hand refurbished devices have come in very helpful. But for us, we've got different priorities, one of them being pushing for local assembly, which is not happening sufficiently in the Global South in general, but also, import duty that is placed on these devices in some countries can go up as high as 20% to 30%. So rolling back the import duty with the understanding that this is a basic need for your community. One of the things that I know South Africa is also talking about is being able to consider an entry-level smartphone as one of the basic household goods. There's kind of like a basket of basic household goods, like millimere soap and those kinds of things. So recalculating that to include an entry-level smartphone and to see where that lands us. So then we are really realistic about affordability because device affordability is actually what has kept 75,000 children out of school during this past year in South Africa because they just simply could not connect from home because of the internet, but also largely because of a lack of devices. Right, and I think that brings us to time. Onika, everyone, thank you so much. This has been such a great discussion and I'm so glad we could all be here to talk about such an important issue and that's gonna close out this panel and I wanna bring it back to Lillian to really close us out here. Thanks, McKenna. What an amazing panel. I'm gonna pick on one quote that I think just exemplifies this whole morning. Nothing for us without us. Nothing says informed and engaged like that. And then I also just wanted to thread a couple of things that I think both panels have really touched on. One, the importance of this local state federal government collaboration. It just seems like if we're not connecting all of those policies across the three layers, we're gonna be missing out on some innovation opportunities. And then lastly, the power of data, not just on the accessibility front in terms of what the public can do with more data at their hands, but also really data to help us understand what inequity looks like and how it manifests in our daily lives. So with that, here's some instructions on the rest of the day. We're gonna take a 15 minute break and at 2 p.m. Eastern, we're gonna transition back. For those of you that are night grantees, if you are registered as a grantee, you'll click on the sessions icon on the left side of your screen and you will find both a communications training and a grants administration training. You're welcome to either and or to toggle back and forth. These will be led by my colleagues, Roshni Nesledge and Vicky Chakko. And there will be great trainings just on how to navigate working with night and continue to partner with us in building more innovative communities. Then at 3 p.m. Eastern, we're gonna click back on the stage icon on the left side of your browser and join the stage, again, for a panel on equitable recovery for public spaces and city planning. And then lastly, at 4 p.m. Eastern, I hope you stay because you'll be able to peruse our expo hall and that's where you'll actually get to meet and greet a lot of the night grantees across the network. Not everyone, but a lot of the night grantees across the network. I would be remiss to not mention in our broadband work, not only do we partner with cities like Detroit, but North Carolina, Charlotte, is doing amazing work around digital inclusion as well. So there's a lot of grantees on this network and the show today. And so I hope that you're able to stay through the day to really check that out. So with that, take a break and then we'll see you shortly.