 Great. Thank you, Danielle. Welcome everyone who is with us today and either in YouTube land or here in our committee hearing. We're going to be discussing one of, I think our committee's favorite topics this morning, which is hearing from a small group of communication union districts that are in different stages of development in different parts of Vermont. This. We've got and men wearing who's here representing the Deerfield valleys. Union district we've got Christine hallquist who's representing any K broadband and we've got FX Flynn, who is representing EC fiber. We've been spending a little time. Certainly in the last two years working on CD issues. Most recently this earlier this summer in June this committee supported some appropriations that went through the coronavirus relief fund program. And interested to talk with some of our guests about that this morning. Today we sent our recommendations off to the House of Appropriations Committee. That's going to be a continuing discussion and in the coming weeks. We made a recommendation of $3 million divided between two different programs that would specifically go to support. These, you know, as the as the evolution continues toward stringing fiber and supporting customers in your catchment areas that desperately need better connectivity. So, with our three guests this morning. They are listed on our agenda. I want to change up the order just a little bit. And I would like to hear from Ann and Christine first because the CDs that they're representing are newer in their phase of evolution. And that's a particular interest to our committee. And then we'll turn to FX. And then we have EC fiber, which I'm familiar with, because I'm a customer of EC fiber in Thetford has been around for over a decade now and interested to draw on FX and the work that EC fiber has done, you know, kind of going down this path of evolution and bringing customers directly. So, again, I want to welcome our guests and turn to Ann first to hear from you. And just what I want to let our guests know is we're pretty informal in this committee with the exception of our blue digital hands which people put up if they've got a question so I want to hear your testimony with us and we'll take a few questions and then after all we've heard from all three of you will probably have a little more general conversation in the committee. So welcome and it's good to see your face again. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much Tim and welcome to. I'm glad to be with all of you again. For the record, I am in men wearing I'm the chair of the Deerfield Valley Communication Union District. We are 15 towns in Wyndham and Bennington counties on the southern border of Vermont. We're one of nine CUDs. And I've kind of organized my testimony and bullet points, not a straight out narrative so when you hear it. I don't know if you'll hear going from bullet point to bullet point but it won't be as similar as if I had written it as a narrative, but we're at the point I think where we're ready for some more specific things and that's what I've tried to put in my comments today. So, in a just a general sense, we are now nine CUDs, most of which have been formed this year, building on the success of the original EC fiber. And upon thousands of volunteer hours of our community members have gone into this endeavor that so much has been achieved in such a short time is testimony to the need. Expectations are high for universal access to high speed. The job of the state now is to do all in its power to sustain and strengthen the work needed to accomplish the roll out of fiber to the nearly 70,000 underserved or underserved homes and business in the shortest possible time. The Vermont Public Service Department has estimated the cost of the infrastructure needed to be around 293 million from all sources. The governor's budget proposed to and I have now seen your revised version to them out Tim so I hadn't seen it when I wrote this. The state should go only to CUDs or CUDs and public private partnerships. The primary use of this is to is for the 10% match to unlock up to $4 million in Vita loans to a CUD. The 10 million Vita loans available is enough to begin infrastructure work for two to three CUDs. I recognize that while CUDs have been created as municipal organizations subject to all the laws that govern municipalities including open meaning laws. The need for RFPs, CUDs, unlike all other municipalities operate in a market economy, subject to the rules of that market economy. The state should find a way to level the playing field with our private sector competitors, including but not limited to modifying open meaning laws, targeting, targeting laws and regulations to benefit us finding resources that can be used to unlock yet other resources. If the infrastructure is built and CUDs have become stable entities, there will be one ongoing need for further public investment, and that is to find a way to subsidize rates for eligible subscribers. This is important for true universal service, but also because private providers do not have to carry subsidy costs in their profit and loss statements. There are several specific suggestions from quite a number of different conversations I've been having. Some may be possible for legislative action this session, some may need to be developed for consideration in January when you come back. They're organized in a couple of different categories and I'll just, I won't read them all to you because I will have these to you in writing. But the first is about VEDA loans and the ability to make access to those loans more real in light of the scope of the work that we all have to do. And there's quite a number of suggestions there, for example, allow CUDs to be able to use in-con contributions for the 10% match, that's an example. The second and next is a category that's related to the CARES Act money, the money that needs to be spent very soon. And that is to basically issues around targeting any money that is brought as clawed back from grants that were given to private entities go only to CUDs. And also to be sure that there is clear, clear accountability for the work that is being done by the private providers to extend their reach, which is why we all recognize the need for it. It is coming at a significant cost to a CUD effort. The next category has to do with the connectivity initiatives, the Universal Service Fund, which is ongoing money. And so we would suggest again that you target all of that to CUDs, at least for the period of time until we become viable entities. And that eventually the requirements for service under that fund move from the 25-3 up to 100-100 so that we acknowledge what the realities are of fiber. And then the next and the last category is has to do with poll collection. And that's again a significant amount of work. And it's sort of the first step in rolling out the infrastructure. And one suggestion is, for example, that the state might fund poll collection work and give it out to as interest-free loans to be paid back in five years. This is to CUDs when revenue streams are sufficient, for example. And to perhaps standardize the methods used to collect poll data and how it is maintained. A whole series of very specific ideas that you may be able to roll into some legislation. That's what I understood you were looking for. And thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. And that was helpful. And again, it would be great to have your testimony to Danielle and we'll have that so we can refer to it. I've got a very broad question. And then one thing that you touched on that I want to highlight. I won't say it's a new issue to me, but it's not one that I think has been necessarily highlighted for this committee as a challenge that CUDs face. And maybe an issue that we unpack, you know, maybe in the near term, maybe it's next session. But first, just very generally speaking, with, with now, I guess it's nine CUDs that have been organized around Vermont. My understanding is that there is an association of those CUDs that's meeting that the Department of Public Service is supporting some of that work. And I just wanted to hear about how that organization is, whether coordinating work or sharing best practices or if you could just give us a little background on how CUDs, even though you're focused on one area are working together. Yes, thank you. We do have, which we are now euphemistically calling ourselves be CUDA. You will hear a lot more about us. Communication Union District Association. We have five of the CUDs are created into this, the CUDA organization via a contractual agreement. We are now in the process of doing some of the organizational work that is needed to actually make us a real organization. We're not registered with the Secretary of State yet or any of those other things we don't have bylaws yet but we are working on all of that. It too is going to need some administrative support as our all of our CDs, CUDs rather. And so all of the other newer CUDs that have come online since the first, the original five of us created the CUDA. We're we're also establishing a framework for having them all join us. But in a practical sense, we have been meeting every Monday or every Thursday morning under the August leadership of FX. Thank you, FX. It was instrumental in getting us started. And all of all of us in all of the CDs are participating in those conversations so while we are not totally organized yet with all the CDs in that we are functionally very much organized and have participation on behalf of all of the CUDs. Yeah, that's helpful and you know my my hope is that I mean understanding that the solutions to supporting the connectivity needs of Vermonters is going to be different in different parts of the state. My hope is that that there are best practices developing so that, you know, as even more CUDs develop, we won't be recreating the wheel, you know with every new CUD that starts up that, you know, it's I'm sure it's not, it won't be as simple as there's a cookbook we can pull off the but my hope is that, you know, by the different CUDs working together that we can, you know, we can, you can create, you know, a smoother path to evolution. So thanks for that background and, and again, Christine and fx I'll be interested in your thoughts about that work you know as we get to you on the agenda. The other question I had for you something you flagged in your testimony, but it's not something we've talked much about in this committee, but which I have been in drags about in recent months, which is questions about open meeting loss. And I mean I'm certainly a big supporter of transparency and government. My sense is that there are challenges that CUDs face as public entities as well you're formally your, your municipality. You're also in effect in competition with other private providers of telecom services, and as you kind of lay out your plans and customers that you're going to serve. Potentially and this is my question for you, you know the challenges that that may present as you stand up your business model and your, you know, potentially your competitors see into the work you're doing. And that's what you were referring to when you, you know, mentioned open meeting law issues but if that's something you can expand upon and I'd love to hear from Christine and fx about that when we get to them. The essential policy understanding that is required is the fact that even though we are municipalities, we are the only municipality that is operates in an open market system. And so the focus that I was putting in my testimony about leveling the playing field to overcome some of the advantages that the private providers have had, which obviously have not delivered broadband to all of us and will not and will they may continue to shrink the field but they will never get to all of us. CUDs can get to all of us, but we will require the framework that you folks create in your legislative processes to have a specific agenda of favoring CUDs, at least until a point in history when we become viable operating and entities all over the state, whether one of those elements could possibly be the ability to allow us to do our business in private as the private entities do. And there's mixed feelings in our in the Vecuta organization about whether or not we should stay public and go private. But it is a problem. There's only so much you can do in an executive session in a public framework. And right now we are having we're taking some looks at our beginning first draft of our business plan. And there's some real questions about whether that business plan should be open to the public and all of our competitors to see it. The open meeting laws that govern us say this is a public document. And so how to manage that in a way is a real is a real issue. So the issue isn't just open meeting laws. It's, if you could find a way to ameliorate that that would be great. The real issue is a range of things that will actually benefit our favor, the CUDs operating framework as we go forward or not just our funding framework. Does that make sense. Yep. Thank you. I've got one hand up representative Campbell Scott want to go ahead. Yes, I was just wondering thank you I was just wondering who the five CUDs that are starting the Vecuta organization. Oh, he tested my memory which is getting every year. Yeah, it was easy fiber obviously dearfield valley, the southern Vermont one, the CD fiber and any cake. The usual suspects and what I thought but I just wanted to get. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead Laura. Good morning and thank you for being here. A quick question on with regard to with regards to the open meeting. So, when you all I know that the CUDs I know your CUD I presume most CUDs are talking with the existing providers. Are they telling you what their plans are for the for your region. Are they sharing with you where they're at. And, and their plans for moving forward I mean how is that dynamic playing out. Okay, we've had contact in two ways with that. The first things that we undertook inside our CUD was that we organized sessions with eight or nine different potential vendors, which turned out to have been extraordinarily good learning experience for us about the landscape that was in front of us it's helped us enormously. On the extent to which they thought that we might be their customer, we learned a lot about what was going on inside of them, what their overall organizational goals were, we don't know. The place where we now know very specifically inside our CUD is the list of addresses that the connectivity money is going to permit private providers to expand their services inside our districts. We have street addresses and we can see exactly where they're going. And whether or not where they're going has eligible students for example at those addresses are along that road or not. They don't all. So there's those two ways are the only ways right now that we have access into the inner workings of our computer. Thank you. I'm sorry I was muted mark did you have your hand. Go ahead, Mark. Yeah, hi. Good. Hey, thanks for being here this is going to be a question for for all you folks that are here from representing the CUDs but in your business plan. How are you going about identifying potential customers because I'm sure that must be a huge part of whether or not a business plan is viable, right. So how is that happening. Well, the business plan we just saw the first draft of it a few days ago so I haven't wrapped my head into it completely at this point, but it basically it's by street addresses roads as we roll out our fiber. And we have some assumptions built into that about how many addresses. They're called passings in the technology of the world that we have to have in order to have a viable economic model. And there's an assumption about the percentage of those passings, which are likely to actually subscribe to our service. And managing those two numbers as we actually spend our money to build out the infrastructure is how we get at what I think that your question is, we don't identify specifically as people but it's not an actual serving that goes out to that that street or whatever that says, you know how many of you but okay, well, by everybody's house. Right. Yeah. Okay, thanks. That was a question I have to end thanks for Mark had brought this up yesterday. The interaction is 10 years ago and this was the very early days of EC fiber at town meeting. We just, you know, took the opportunity of having whatever 300 people from Fetford in a room, and people filled out surveys as to, you know what their current telecom services were what their appetite for buying, you know something was but so when you look at a particular road or a particular neighborhood in a town in your catchment area. Do you know, is there a way to identify which addresses are very specifically served, you know they maybe have Comcast they maybe have consolidated. I don't know who their provider is, but through whether it's Department of Public Service data, or maybe work that you've done internally, do you know on this road, there are 10 unserved addresses, or there are. There's currently no opportunity for any of these addresses to receive service we know that this road is on serve that there are 10 houses on this road. And part of our business assumption is that we're going to get four of those houses, if we run fiber at the road. So I'm just curious on how much intelligence, you have as to, you know how many of those her homes are in served and you know what that looks like. The Department of Public Service does have a list that has identified the nearly 70,000 under an unserved addresses all over the state, and those are available to us to be part of our for our district to be part of our planning process. So to that. So you can see those specific addresses on that on that road. Yes. Yeah, okay. Great. I don't see any other hands up. So I think we'll have effects that you want to chime in. Yes, thank you. I'd like to say that we do have maps now that show where the cable providers are where the fiber providers are. And we also can put points on the map for each of the 911 addresses and code them by the level of service that they have. So it's quite, it's relatively straightforward to visualize broadly where there is the biggest need, where there's the most competition. And you can also do just mathematical tests of what your penetration rate in a particular town would need to be in order to meet the formula that EC fiber uses when it's making a determination about the viability of building out in an area. And, you know, so far it works to plan on connecting all premises everywhere, even in some very rural areas. We're going to be finishing 22 of our original 23 towns this year. And I won't say that every single road is being covered but the roads that are excluded. Essentially, go up into the hills and there are only some seasonal camps. I don't believe that we're leaving out any permanent residences. Great. Thank you for that. And did you want to follow up. Yeah, I just want to back to Mark, Mark's question about surveys I had kind of forgotten we did this but at the beginning of our process, the the original grant to do a feasibility study and the business plan from the Department of Public Service went to a Wyndham Regional Commission. And at the beginning of that process way back in February. Part of that process in developing our feasibility study was an extensive survey of all of the communities in our area. So yes, we did do it. We just did it a long time ago and my adult pated aging brain forgot. February was about 18 years ago. And it was before the pandemic because we all met in a room and planned it out. Great. Well, thank you, and let's turn to Christine now Christine. Welcome back you. I was recalling this morning had provided testimony to our hearing to our committee about a year or so ago. I sense wearing your, your former hat as a an electric utility executive and, you know, kind of the, the connection between our electric utility world and kind of our burgeoning broadband world, if you will, but now you're wearing a new hat you're working with any K broadband. I look forward to hearing your testimony. Thank you and I'm excited to be here and working on this very important issue. Of course, it was an important campaign issue. I, you know, I stand by my premise that if Vermont wants to grow its economy everybody needs to be connected by fiber in the long term. I'll get to that rationale in a moment. But the, you know, for the record, I'm Christine Hulquist. I began working on real broadband issues in 2003, when the Vermont Electric Cooperative Board of Directors asked me, what do we need to do to get every, every one of our members connected. And of course that's been a 17 year passion and problem. And so, but I will say there's, you know, there are 40 electric cooperatives nationwide serving rural areas with even significant less densities in Vermont that have been successful with this. And there's a lot of data available, which I'm very familiar with because I was on the, I was spent 10 years on the advisory committee to the NRE CA for these issues. So anyway, I, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to kind of put my boots where my mouth is, you know, many politicians talk about things but we're going to get this done. In any case broadband, you know, we're like the rest of the CUDs, you know, we're a relatively new organization, probably a little newer than some others. But, you know, I'm quite impressed, I was very impressed the work that this all volunteer group has done on their own. And I'm actually their first contracted employee. So we're, you know, we serve right now we serve 31 towns in the Northeast Kingdom. And we're, you know, we're, we're looking at immediate solutions. We're going to partner with those incumbent providers to try to provide as much wireless as possible. What we want to, our ultimate goal is to get everybody connected in fiber. But of course, as the COVID crisis has taught us we have an immediate problem. We have to be careful in terms of paying attention to our business case, because every time we, you know, connect a wireless customer to an assisting provider, it diminishes the quality of our business case, which is the real problem that we're with telecommunications in the general in this country, you know, it back in 1935, when FDR, actually it was our George Akin from Vermont, who brought this issue to the federal government and actually the first electric pole in the United States was set up in Eden Mills Vermont. And because that, at that time, it was very aware that 56% of America's landmass would probably not get electricity based on the model that we're using in telecommunications. Because what happens is, and this is what we're experiencing today, as you take those higher density areas away and give those to the incumbent providers, the business case becomes increasingly more difficult to serve those last areas. In the NEK, we have some of the most economically challenged residents in the state, and we have some of the least density in the state. So for us, it's a very, very difficult issue that we're dealing with. And I want to talk about why you hear, why you hear the CUD is talking about fiber, why fiber is so important, because as I get back into this, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people saying, Well, why do we need fiber if we've got Starlink and we've got, you know, LTE coming. Well, let me just give you an example. A typical LTE, this is an LTE tower, I'm talking about not 5G, I doubt, a little later I'll explain why 5G won't really be practical for Vermont at all. But a typical LTE tower can transmit 1.4 gigabits per second. That's 1400 megabits per second. That's got to be shared with everybody on that tower. So I'm going to use 4K HD videos as an example. When you go to Netflix today and you go to rent a new video, it's probably going to be 4K HD. 4K HD is 25 megabits per second to run it. And I've got all this in the presentation for you to follow through later, but so that means one tower can have 56 users running those 4K HD videos. Let me tell you, one strand of fiber can handle more than 100 terabytes per second. A terabyte is 1000 gigabytes or a million megabytes. So when I talk about 100 terabytes, this is a, that'll give you 4 million users. That's one strand of fiber less, you know, about the size of human hair that's hanging on our poles. For example, VEC, we've got several hundred miles of fiber and it's 144 strands. But just one of those strands will have a 40 million users, 4 million, I'm sorry, 4 million users, 4 million users versus 56 users on a wireless tower. So that's really gives you the dramatic example of the difference between the wireless and fiber. Now, when we talk, many people talk about the amazing ability of 5G to provide a lot of data. And I want to show you a picture here when I talk about this. So I'm going to share my screen. Oh, I guess I can't share my screen. It says host participant disabled, host disabled participant screen sharing. Okay. Well, anyway, it's in your presentation. I think you're a co-host, Christine, if you've got something you want to pull up. I thought, Danielle, could you check that? Yes, Christine is a co-host. Yeah, I think it might be an idiosyncrasy of my, of my, I run, I run like an, I run Linux, so Linux is probably not letting me do that, but I, but it's in your, it's in your packet, or it's in the presentation. So, if we look at, if we look at existing LTE towers, if, what happens with 5G is 5G gives you a lot more data, but it can't penetrate obstacles like trees and hills. You know, it's, it's, it has one one hundredth the ability to penetrate those obstacles that LTE has, and the distance, you know, it goes from 20 miles down to a third of a mile. And that third of a mile is a, you know, assumes a straight shot. So, you know, you look at LTE, it's going to take, you know, 100 times more towers. And of course we have it, we can't even make the business case for enough towers to cover Vermont already with the LTE. So, just wanted to get clear that the challenge of wireless is, is significant. Oh, there we go. Nice. That yeah, there's the graphic that shows you the difficulty of, of 5G versus LTE and what happens. So, the reason that happens is you go to get more bandwidth using wireless, you have to go up in frequency. As you go up in frequency, you get less ability to penetrate, which means you get need more transmitters and towers. So, these graphics really dramatically show that, that physical difference. So, now let's talk about Starlink. I've heard a number of people talk about Starlink. Starlink is the SpaceX program that's going to put these satellites up in low Earth orbit. So, one Starlink satellite can provide 20 gigabits per second. So, each one of those satellites cost a million dollars. One strand of fiber is equal to 5,000 satellites. Assuming they were dedicated to your territory, right, so they're dedicated one. 5,000 satellites at a million dollars each is five billion dollars. Now, if you, if you take into the consideration that we're all hanging 144 strands, we got a capacity of 720,000 satellites dedicated to our area. So, you know, our state, if we populate the entire state, it's going to be less than one 1,000 of the cost of satellites. So, ultimately, that is why that's, I'm explaining the physics of why we believe you've got to get to fiber at every home. So, we're not going to get there right away. So, which is why we have to work, which is why any broadband is going to partner with existing providers, and it is going to degrade our case over time. But one of the things we want to do also is build up our asset base as much as possible. So, you know, I've already started discussions with partners to talk about, hey, you know, if we provide you the assets for your tower, you can build up a towered area that doesn't quite meet the business case. The nice thing is once we service that area of fiber, we can actually move those wireless assets somewhere else to serve even less penetrated areas. So the wire, building the wireless strategy and moving forward is it, it's not like a sunken investment, we can continue to move those assets around. It is a good strategy and, and, you know, and I, and that, and I think that's, that's been addressed in the telecommunications plan as well as all the discussions that have with you. One of the things we need to do, we're going to look to, and this really gets to what legislation do we need. We're going to be looking for legislation to support us to do, to do what are called the Indefeasible Right of Use IRUs for existing state fiber networks and utility fiber networks from the IRUs are a way that we can count the fiber as an asset. So for example, where are the utilities in the state of run 144 fibers, we might look for an IRU for 12, you know, one tube of those fibers, and then we can count that asset on our books. And it's important for the CUDs to build up their assets because that's how we can leverage funding. And I will tell you, you know, that I've worked nationally with co bank and cooperative finance corporation to cooperative banks that have been funding buildouts at municipals and cooperatives throughout the country and they're running money at 2 and a half percent rate now. So, you know, it's a good time to be building capital. So the immediate problem we have, which is really why we need the help. And by the way, you know, we are also going to be doing some. We plan on construction in the next two years. So we will, you know, we'll want to access Vita funds as well. But again, it's important that we, by hook or my crook can figure out how to build this asset base, which is why I believe it's important for the state to provide their existing assets to the CUDs. And speaking of the CUDs in terms of strengthening the CUDs. I think the CUD is a was a marvelous idea and how to accomplish what we're trying to do. I can't think of a better idea. At this point, I would ask the legislature to do everything you can to strengthen those CUDs. We're all kind of new. And, and we may not have the expertise at this point. I think you should demand us to provide those answers. You put us in place, just like anything else now hold us accountable for getting Vermont to where it needs to be. This is our job. Now what that means by our job, of course, holding us accountable is, I also would like all state and we, you know, we would like all of state grants to be funded through the CUDs. In other words, we'll, we'll work with the partners, the incumbent providers, but at the same time, you know, we talk when Anne Menwering talks about the competitiveness issue. We should operate under open meeting law, and we should provide all this, but the protect, we should provide all this information publicly. However, we also, if we control the purse springs, now, now you and everyone else can look into our tent and see what we're doing. And that becomes a requirement for our partners as well. If you're going to work with us, you got to understand it's, you know, it's, it's the information is going to be public. I got news for you. Vermont's not a gold mine. These incumbent providers are not making, not going to make a killing in Vermont. You know, I had conversations with consolidated three years ago, they said, look, we're not going to build fiber in Vermont because we're going to spend our money in North Carolina, these other states, where there's have the densities make greater sense. So I do believe that we can operate at a public meeting law, as long as we have the advantage of controlling this purse, the purse strings. So, and now, now that gets to the next issue, which gets to the mapping database and the polls and assets, a number of utilities, and I'm in conversation with them. So I don't necessarily want to talk about publicly what those conversations are right now. But a number of those utilities are already doing have already mapped their assets. I will say publicly, I know 60% of Vermont electrical co op polls have been asked that, of course, about 100% of their polls have been done in the GPS system because I started that personally in year 2000. But, but the old data is not good enough. But the new data 60% of their poll data is submit or accuracy and had there's pictures for every poll. But the problem is right now, they you speak now I'll move up to in general because I don't want to just, you know, take shots at my old employer, but that those that some of those utilities want to sell that data. I don't want to make it public and make it available. Well, I would argue that, look, our ratepayers paid for this. We need to, we should, we should demand a public database of all the existing assets and all the existing information. So that first of all, we're not double spending where we don't don't need to. And secondly, that poll day, that poll database needs to be updated in real time as changes occur and they are updated in real time at least in the utility I used to work for, because that's why we set up the whole system. So, you know, I, I think it's very important that we demand that the utilities keep that public and, and can we make the telecom providers keep make it public, probably not because of FCC record, you know, the we just don't have a federal federal jurisdiction to do so. But that said, the telecom data isn't that accurate already, because the telecom haven't gone out GPS their system. They just aren't making those kind of investments the utilities have and are. So, you know, that's a major issue we need help on as well. And I will also tell you that, you know, we with I in the, in the emergency broadband action plan. There's a statement in there that that fiber should be prevented at provided a dollar per strand mile. If we provided fiber at a dollar per strand mile, we could populate, you know, that makes all the business models work. Now what you're going to hear is today, you know, we don't want to, we don't want to cross subsidize telecommunications. But the reality is, I'll tell you what my, my CEO use my CFO used to tell me, Christine, you give me 2% low growth, we don't have to go in for a rate increase. So, so I'm going to make a similar argument to the tax increment financing district. You know, today, as let me also add electric low growth, good electric low growth is directly correlated to economic activity. The economic activity goes up, the load goes up. And, you know, so I want to, I'm not talking about efficiency programs and all that. That's all bad. I'm talking about good local. So I would argue that making investments now helps the electric utilities in the long term, because ultimately that investment, although they may be there may be some level of cross subsidization today. It's a way for itself by the long term low growth that results from the growth in economic activity in Vermont. You know, we change that curve. And of course now, you know, very much. When you talk to real estate agents in Vermont today, but they'll tell you is, yeah, we got a lot of people want to buy homes in Vermont but the first question they ask is, I might, can I get connected. So that, so that's essentially my presentation and I'm happy to take questions. I mean, that was great. I have to tell you that I was kind of chuckling to myself. I, our three guests were witnesses in the Senate Finance Committee earlier this week. And gosh, I think you testified for a couple of hours, and I set my YouTube setting on double time, so I could listen to it twice as quickly. Christine, you have a lot you can you compact a lot that you say in a short amount of time and I had to slow it down I think the 1.25 when you were speaking so I can keep up but that's great information. Mark I see your hand up and then Mike, go ahead Mark. Yeah, thanks. Christina question. Could you elaborate a little bit more when you what you talk, what you're talking about when you're talking controlling the purse strings. Today, of course, when the state issues telecommunication grants, it opens them up to all of the incumbent providers. I would suggest that you require the CUDs to do those RFPs and any money that gets directed to to an area, any state grant money, go to the CUDs. So we can, we can determine our long term business case. Now, what what I'm saying to you is of course we're going to partner with existing providers. Because that is right now the goal is to get as many Vermonters connected as possible. It's really a hierarchy of goals. The first goal get as many Vermonters connected as possible. Then secondary, we have to get to the long term fiber to every premise which will will never happen with the incumbent providers because we just don't have the business case. The other things that I run show that once you get below 12 customers per mile, you can't serve them with the existing models. You've got to use your higher densities your 20 customers for how to fund the lower densities. Typically the the incumbent carriers do their cut off some around 20, but we have areas in, you know, up in Canaan that are for customers per mile. So, ultimately, that's why I would argue you'll never see fiber get to those most rural parts of Vermont, unless we strengthen the CUDs. Did I answer that question for you. Yes, thanks, Christine. Yeah. Go ahead, Mike. Okay, thanks, Christine. That's a lot of good information here. So, I have a couple of questions. First one being, do you have an estimate of the total cost it would take to meet the coverage you'd like to meet Northeast Kingdom? I don't have a total cost at this point but in the emergency broadband action plan they identified a figure, which is about what I've assumed for the state all along which is somewhere, probably somewhere around 350 to 400 million. So you could take, you know, the surface area of the Northeast Kingdom and compared to the rest of the state and probably figure that I think we're about 20% of the state. So I'm guessing about 70 to 80 million dollars. Yeah, but understand, we could get three, we could get two thirds of that funded through Lowood through, you know, CoBac and CFC. You put a good business plan together, you'll get two thirds of it funded through long term financing. I believe this is very appropriate for long term financing because what happens is you're building an infrastructure that's going to last 30 to 40 years. It's not necessary to have everybody pay for that upfront by taking a long term loan, you're actually spreading that cost amongst all the future users as well. So in terms of timeframe, how long would it take you to get to everybody? Well, I would say if we, you know, if cash was not the, that when I say cash is not the issue, I mean, we do this with responsible spending, but doing it, I would say we could get to everybody in five years. Probably 90%, 85% three years or something like that. It's always the last that becomes the most difficult. Okay, so when you were, when you were runner for governor, you were talking about, I guess, utilizing the infrastructure of electric utilities. I'm assuming the fiber lines that they use for connectivity. And I'm wondering, is that, are you figuring that at all? Are you talking about running separate fiber? I think I, so my assumption is, and this is again, we talk about future legislation. The way to drive this is to get the electric utilities to hang the fiber. And we are, because that is, that is the least expensive way to do it. And again, I go back to that argument of, it's to serve the public good. And if you look at the charter of regulated utilities, that's what they're there for. Okay, and so the other thing I just wanted you to want to verify that I understood what you said in your last part of your statement that load growth due to the greater appeal. As a result of having fiber connectivity would result in more electric demand, which will benefit the utilities. Yes, I'll go back to that. What, yeah, to explain that, basically utility has a fixed asset base. And that has to get paid for, whether you have, you know, a million customers or 100,000 customers, you have 100,000 is costing 10 times as much for the asset base, right. So the point is, if you grow, if you grow your customer base, you will increase that's good load. And oh, by the way, if we grow our customer base. And we're seeing that this is why you saw the outages in California when if you read about those, those rolling outages that just happened in California, it was because people were working at home. So, so ultimately people working at home is it increases electric load, but from an environmental standpoint it's better, because people are driving you know I think what if there's anything I learned from this COVID crisis is holy cow, did I waste a lot of time driving my life and I would drive, you know, six and to think that people I was getting paid for this, you know, I would drive six hours round trip for a three hour meeting at Velco and run, you know, how crazy is that. Right. Okay, thanks. That's all the questions I have at this point. Thanks. Scott, you have a question. Yes, thank you. Hello Christine. Just wondering about more detail around getting the electric future of these just during the fire but one of the things that I remember you talking about a couple years ago was using the electric space. And we've heard a lot of pros and cons about that. Could you talk about that a little bit more. So, you know, VEC and then I were personally partners on the north link project years ago, and I look at that project and we, you know our goal for that project was to get as much straight through fiber as possible to our substations we weren't thinking about getting fiber to every home and business. So, you know, I kind of kick myself in the butt for not having that foresight back then. But at the same time, so if I tend to do that over again, here's what we would do. You would have the utilities string what's called all dielectric self supporting fiber and electric space. All dielectric self supporting fiber is fiber that has no metal in it and it's very light. You would put fiber access points, you know, every five poles or so. That would allow local fiber loops for the telecom workers to use and extend that to the last homes. You know, I throw out five poles, it could be 10, could be 20, but every X number of poles you do a fiber drop. It's going to change in the base area density. And then telecom workers work from there on the lower part of the pole. I heard people say because, you know, it's, it's, you really have to explain this default. Say, well, if you put it in the fiber space, we can access it. Of course, you can't then you need the electric utility workers to do that. And actually that may not be a bad thing either, because ultimately, you know that they're out serving the same set of infrastructure. But, you know, to address those concerns, you know and still have to be able to have the telecom workers. So you could you could do a fiber access points. Okay. Interesting. Mike, did you have a follow up. Yeah, just to follow up question when we're talking about the utilities and hanging fiber. We're talking about contracting with the utilities to hang the fiber, as opposed to hang another entity to do it. And the utility should do it. Yeah, sure. Utilities, think about it. They already, they already got them everything in place to hit every, every home in the state. You know, no sense making redundancy. So it wouldn't be a cost to the race to the ratepayers of the utility. It would. The cost will still be worn by the CUDs. So I'm arguing that it. Yes, it should be a cost to the ratepayers. I go back to, that's, that's why I'm trying to change this thinking from say separation of telecommunications and electric, because the two are co dependent on each other. Not only, not only will it create low growth, which will benefit the utilities in the long term benefit all of us through low through lower rates, but I would now let's talk about climate change. You know, we are not going to solve climate change until we get connectivity and device, and I'll use, I'll tell you why. First, let's start with the fact that 80% of our energy use in the United States today comes from fossil fuels. So in order to solve climate change, we got to move our entire system over to electricity. You're trying to fuel that system with sun and wind, you know, and maybe whatever you can get from ocean to other areas. Yes, you got an intermittency problem. I'm going to use an example for you just to really put this out as a stark example. You know, Tesla has these tractor trailer rigs. They have a 500 kilowatt battery plan. That's half a megawatt 500 kilowatt they're going to want to charge it 10 minutes. So 10 minutes means that 500 kilowatt power plant is going to draw three megawatts off the power line. Well the average feeder in the United States is only three megawatts. So, so you know essentially you collapse the line for that one truck. And you've got to have the system set up where you've got and communication with all the devices so that you don't crash the electric system. So, you know, this, you know, you look at the long term vision of solving climate change and are telling me Kelly communication goals, they're intrinsically entwined. Okay, so. So you these contributed all to hanging the fiber. I, well, I don't, you know, I guess we could it just, it just depends what what our goals are. I mean, the money's got to come from somewhere right. And I'd rather not see it come from the tax place. So that gets to the job that you're doing. You know, although I wanted, you know, I had a desire to do the job you're doing. I also have a lot of empathy for what you're doing. Because right now, and it's a lot worse than when I ran two years ago, you know, you're making decisions between health and long term telecommunications investments. You know, I'd rather see those telecommunications investments coming from a different source than the taxpayer pockets. Thanks. Seth Chase, go ahead, Seth. Thank you. I think I heard the first I totally agree utilities are utilities and should work together that. Yes. I think I heard a statement about fiber splices and then I thought I understood what you're saying and then you said something that so I wanted to ask a clarification. When you're talking about every couple of polls are you talking about a splice in the fiber, a loop in the fiber or drop. Out of the electrical space and creates a junction point that can be easily accessed right. That's correct. Okay, cool. Thank you. Yep. Great. Thank you Christine. And we'll come back after FX is testimony and questions and have more of a group discussion. Thanks for joining us and my understanding is that you have the capability of pulling a presentation up if you want to do that. Yes, I will do that. But first, I want to just say for the record. My name is FX. Flynn, the initials are for Francis Xavier. I am the chair of the EC fiber governing board. I assume that role in May. After the legendary. Earth Tubman. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for joining us. And my understanding is that you have the capability of pulling a presentation up if you want to do that. Yes, I will do that. But first, I want to just say for the record. My name is FX Flynn the initials are for Francis Xavier. After the legendary earth to may decided to step down. And he has agreed to continue on our executive committee and serves as our government relations officer. And I have to say that I'm standing on the shoulder of a giant doing what I'm doing. In terms of EC fiber and the work that this committee did back in May and June. I want to report that we were the beneficiaries of a million dollar combined million dollar pair of grants that we have put to use doing underground work. To provide service to mobile homes throughout our district in areas where we are already in place and ready to go. As I speak, the third of 13 trailer parks in our district is having conduit installed to serve every single location in the park. And we're going to get that all done, probably by Thanksgiving. And for each of those locations. We'll have the fiber line will have the equipment necessary to make the connection to the home and at that point the only barrier would be the ability of the household to make the connection to the home. And that's what we're going to be able to do for the next month we cost and we've got hopes that we're going to be able to put together a between the connected between the emergency. Lifeline broadband program. And some private funding. We're going to be able to do that. We're going to be able to do that for the next month or so. That we'll be able to do some subsidization subsidization for families that are in economic distress in our district. And none of this would be possible without this kind of once in a lifetime opportunity to spend these cares dollars on this. And saying yes to that idea back in June. I'll also say that we are lined up for the second round of connectivity initiatives, which if we get should help us get even more crews out there and help us with our work on completing the build out in 22 of our original 23 towns. The one town that won't be completely built out is my town Hartford I've been on the EC fiber board since 2012. And the priority for EC fiber has been to build out in unserved areas. Hartford has Comcast for much of the area, not up in our Northwest quadrant with Sharon and Norwich West the West Hartford area. So we are going to be building that this year in fact I think crews are out in that area, as I speak. That's exciting. Now we've also added eight new towns in this year in May and July, and they are mostly up to our north. Newberry Bradford, the Fairleys, Corinth, and then we've also added Windsor to our south which, although it's mostly detail to the west of I 91. And so we're going to be building in from West Windsor where we already have service in place. So there's, there's quite a lot going on. Before I put anything else up I also wanted to just say about the CUDA, a wonderful acronym that Jeremy Hansen of CV fiber came up with the. We have established the weekly meeting which you've heard about. We also have a shared Google Drive where we are able to share documents. And in particular, we've been trying to post examples of the way EC fiber has been doing things. And CD fiber is also fairly well along they've been posting things. Once each new CD takes a step, it's been adding to that bank so that is actively happening I want to say that we recognize that need and we're, and we're trying to meet it. We also have a shared group email, which allows us to rapidly disseminate and share information among the cuts. So, we have worked to do to build up our organizational bones, but in this all hands on deck period, we're at least that far along. So, I wanted to begin with a just a brief overview of where I think we're at statewide in terms of solving the world broadband crisis. And in 2019, the state put a stake in the ground and said that the state strategy for doing this is easy fibers the model so we're going, we want to see more. CUD stood up. And I think it's important to point out that over the long haul, every single dollar that the CUD needs to get up and running. It gets paid back by customer revenue. So, this talk about subsidizing the CUD is this talk about needing to put more taxpayer dollars into the CUD is it over the long haul. No customer revenue is going to pay for all that. The trick is until there's customer revenue. We need the dollars from someplace else. So, originally, the idea was that we would leverage the Vita facilities and now we would provide small grants for the feasibility studies and so forth but then of course, the pandemic came. So, the strategy is still good but the tactics need to change we need to mobilize money a lot faster. At this point in time, no CDs have gotten to the point where they can apply for Vita and of course, the matching issue is a big deal so the $2 million that was proposed solves a very important problem, and we you know we strongly support, we strongly support the money for that, for that purpose. Of course, we also understand that the CARES funding is restricted but under speeding up deployment and being able to reach people sooner rather than later. There is support for spending on planning and data collection. So, how are we going to win this war. So, we have about 30,000 addresses out of 308,000 in the state. 10% of those are going to be taken care of EC5 and we've already taken care of a big chunk. That number would be closer to 100,000 without what we've already done. 10% of those addresses on 5,700 road miles are in towns that have actually joined CUDs. Another 21,000 are in study areas. And so towns that would be candidates to join the CUDs. If seven CUDs build 350 miles a year for the next four years, that would be close to the 10,000 miles that we're talking about. And not every mile needs to be built by the way, but so we'll just say that that would take care of it. Now, EC5er had trouble building 300 miles a year. It's a big challenge. So, doing this for all of the CUDs is a really big challenge. In many ways, this is a big jobs program in Vermont as well. If you can imagine all the work that would need to be done. I also want to point out that EC5er, it took us three years to start building, and then it took us five years to access the municipal bond market. And now it's going to have taken us six years to complete our original 23 towns. So that all began in 2008 and should all would all be wrapping up in 2021. And so the new CUDs, this year and next year, they have to make the progress that it took us eight years to make from 2008 to 2015. Now, I think this is doable, but I think that we all, I think that we need to be focused on this. And I just, I have a chart here with the numbers that you can look at later. But basically, by the end of 2021, if only EC5er is building, we're going to get it down to 63,000 addresses or 21% of the premises in the state. If only the member towns finished building out by 2024, we'll get that number down to just 8% of the state. And if the study towns are included, it'll be down to just 1% of the state. And that 1% are in fringe areas around Chittenden County, like in Bolton, and in the same way that EC5er serves some customers in Bridgewater, where VTEL is, but they don't come over the hill on the border of Woodstock. So we're filling in those roads. So I firmly believe that at the end of the day, that will be taken care of. So the 2 million or the million and a half for the Vita matching, that's only a start. We build cost effectively at 30,000 a mile. And so 2 million unlocking 8 million in Vita loans. If it's spent perfectly, that would do 333 miles or 6% of what are in the new cut towns. So, bottom line, we need to get the CUDs to the municipal bond market quickly. Customer revenues are the key. They need to start building. And so my message is that the legislature and the executive both need to find ways to say yes to the CUDs. And I do have some very specific, a very specific proposal that I know the committee has seen. Hang on a second here. And that involves the concept of doing what I call a poll harvest and using the CARES money for that. Now, oh dear. The notion of the poll harvest is that until we have poll data, network design cannot begin. And if you can't do design, then you have no way of estimating what your, what materials you might need. So you have no way of pre ordering things like the fiber optic cable. You have no way of really determining how you're going to marshal all of the labor and equipment necessary to make the build. And if we do not have this information put together this fall, then this winter, there's not going to be any opportunity to do the design work. Necessary to bring us to that place. Now, the existing poll data that's out there that we've seen just is not adequate to design fiber to the home networks. And I firmly believe that with the right combination of resources and funding opportunities, all of which can be paid back that we can get a number of these new cuts up and running and building the 25% of their network that the state's goal of having this done by 2024 implies. I'm also assuming that we can get this money put to work by mid September, which is a huge stretch, obviously, and we can talk about some of the mechanisms that might make that possible. We can collect this data for the winter in about an eight week period so by the, by the end of, well the middle of November, because what we have in mind to do is a this mobile collection effort using a million dollar piece of equipment that will have to be rented. And, but as temperatures fall below freezing that technology does not work as well. So, when it comes down to the poll collection, if we don't do the harvest, we're going to miss the next construction season. If it's incomplete then some areas will have no chance, and the poll harvest season ends in mid November. Now, I've already mentioned that we've, we've identified a way of doing this with vendors who are very familiar with New England. One of the guys grew up in the upper valley, another guy in Maine, and, and they really understand the challenges that we face here, in terms of getting the poll data. And so, they've got this mobile process and they've got highly trained guys who know how to go out in the field with sophisticated equipment and get a lot done quickly. But, but, and here's the big problem. In order to justify marshaling all these resources, we're going to have to give them at least 50,000 polls to collect mobility and at least 15,000 polls to collect manually. So, it's, this is not something that easy fiber can do on its own because with our new towns we, we, we only have about 9000 polls that we need collected. So, it implies that the risk to the state is essentially zero. As I've said before, all these costs that go into the CDs they can all be covered by revenue back municipal bonds down the line. And so if there's, if, if, if sometime in the future. There was a clawback of cares funds for this process, the CDs would be able to just roll it into the next municipal bond they went after. I talked about how, how we would actually do it but I think you've probably seen this. And a lot of this is is up in the air but we have thought about how we might move forward. In terms of an example. Here are six of the CDs participating, and we get to 51,000 polls that we can collect manually using the mobile device and 30,000 that we would collect manually. And that's that 1.6 million. You know, EC fibers already been thinking in terms of spending 250 to $300,000 on this effort. And we were already planning on borrowing that so representative Briegel and I would say that 1.5 million that you're now targeting, you know actually turns into 1.7 or 1.8 million. So we could actually, you know, see through something of this magnitude. So the ask is really that there's either an appropriation or a grant or a loan of up to $3 million to do this poll data collection. And it would be great if we could come up with a way to do this and get this project rolling. Two weeks from now. Now, you know, I'm thinking, I know the executive has the ability to direct some emergency funding. Perhaps if they agreed to do that and the legislature replenished the funding. That might be one way of doing it. I think that in order to justify and speed this up. You know, direct grants to the CDs based on their identified poll counts that they would then run through EC fiber. It's the most direct way to do it, as opposed to going through a lengthy process where it's a new program, or it's stuck in under the resiliency program at DPS and then they have to go through a process of coming up with RFPs and, and soliciting bids and I mean by the time that's all done it's early November and, you know, forget it. We would just say at that point. We're not going to do that this year. So that's the challenge right now is that we've got it, you know, unfortunately, we are in a poll harvest crisis. So with that, I would, I would just say that my vision is that we can get these all the cuts up and running and they can be building and somewhere down the line you're going to see a picture of Vermont looking something like this, where all towns are associated with a CD and shown in some shape or form. I'm informed that the Middlebury Dixon line between Addison and Rutland is a real thing. So maybe that big yellow group on the west side is actually to but, but over the long haul, we can do it and there was a question about what the cost would be. I've got that worked out at EC fibers 30,000 a mile. I compared that to the emergency broadband action plan funding. And there were some differences but they're, they're all easy to account for. And I actually believe that, you know, based on what we're looking at at EC fiber. We probably will have right now we've got $41 million in loans out. We'll probably have something like 52 to 55 million. By the time we finish building out the 30 towns. So, again, these are fall apart back in the napkin on numbers but the dimensions are, I believe, accurate and suggestive. So, with that, I will be quiet. No, we're not going to let you be quiet effects. Because we've got a couple of questions in the queue. I'm going to actually jump in first because I've got a general question, which you don't need to go into the weeds, but it touches on Christine's testimony and Anne's testimony as well. And also kind of the evolution of where EC fiber is. At the high level. What are the, I'm going to say three or four, maybe it's five or six kind of mile markers on the road between setting up in a CD at town meetings and lighting fiber and serving customers so that they get fast internet service we've talked about a few different ones today, you know, we talked about poll surveys we talked about financing questions obviously their project cost issues and and but what are those again I don't know if it's three or four things or five or six things kind of in the business progression they get you from formation to customer service. Back in 2007, when the discussions began in the EC fiber district area about doing something like this. The concept was that the towns would join together and would jointly float a $40 million municipal bond, and we would go out and we would build everything by 2011. And so, in 08 at town meeting. We had 23 or 24 towns sign up. And then we had the. We had the economic crisis and we had the state law change that forbade towns from using property tax. Well, and I'm not so much interested in history I'm interested in step one is for me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Step three is pole surveys. Step four is financing step five is put the shovel in the ground and the fiber on the pole. I that's, that's quite fair Tim and and sorry I got distracted. No, that's okay. It's a long entangled history that I was driving I was driving to the point that what you've learned, you know, we had. We, you know, until we until we realize that we had to find financing on our own. That was the big problem at first is where's the money going to come from. So we've taken care of that. We now know the answer for all the CDs it's going to come from the, it's going to come from municipal bond market revenue bonds. And so how do we get the CDs to the point where they can access that market. Well, it took EC fiber. Five years after we began building to get to that market. So how are you going to jump start that for the CDs that's a that that is a really big issue. And that's, that's what I'm kind of focused on in terms of understanding those mile markers of, you know, kind of the tasks of a CD to get from formation to customer service. What the mile markers are and how you can and how we can help you compress what that timeline is to get from formation to customer service that much more quickly. You know what a business plan and we're talking a little bit this morning about poll surveys and you know those types of things but again, one of my goals is to help CDs compress that timeframe. And what I'm going to talk about with my second question is, what is the, let me know what the analogy is, what is the, I'll say, exit velocity you have to reach in order to access the public markets for, for bonding. You can't, you know, a CD is starting up right now probably is not going to go go to the go to the municipal bond market. What's that hill you've got to get over in terms of I don't know if it's number of customers I don't know if it's revenue I don't know if it's asset base that is going to allow you to issue a $10 million municipal bond. Well, in our case we needed to have three years of financials that demonstrated that we were going concerned. So that that is a huge barrier and I think that there's going to have to be some kind of some kind of state backed guarantee or a different facility is going to have to be used in the interim years. So that when the CDs have reached that point of maturity, they can turn around and they can refinance all of those loans with the municipal bond money much in the same way that EC fiber had about $5 million in private placement, and in its first trip to the municipal bond market it borrowed 7 million and immediately use the bulk of that to pay off those promissory notes. So, I don't know if we can do it through Vita I don't know if there are other, you know what the other mechanisms might be. But, you know, somehow or other, tens of millions of dollars will need to be loaned to the CUDs over the course of the next two or three years to get them to the to get them to escape velocities as you put it. And I, you know, I hope that, you know, this is being. I'd like to think that this is being addressed and thought through at, you know, at the state level, because that that's really, that's the reality of implementing our strategy is we're going to have to find a way to loan those monies. That's the possibility that the federal government passes an infrastructure bill that has, you know, significant amounts of money in it that can be made available. I chase representative chase is, you know, you know, I get it. But, you know, there's hope hope springs eternal. Right. And that was actually a very helpful answer just in terms of, and I had heard that before I'd forgotten it that an important milestone in accessing the public markets is the three years of operating history. You know, to the extent that is still the case today. That's a, that's a pretty finite, pretty finite barrier. I've got a couple of hands up in the queue FX. I'm going to go to Laura first and then Mike. Hi FX thanks for being here this morning. Hey, can you going back to your slides. You know, we're thinking about different types of dollars that can be used to fund different types of needs. This poll harvesting. You know, that's $3 million is a lot of dollars. I see that you've got that being utilized throughout the state. I see being utilized in instant CUDs, which I would consider more youthful. Some of the younger CUDs. And so certain types of funds. For instance, if there were CRF funds. Those have to be utilized by November, December. Right. So, my question is, is all this work possible by November, early December. And how do you know that, and I'll just stop there and let you answer. I'm going to just roll back to a couple of something here that. So there's, there's a, there's this mobile data collection equipment. It's, it's similar to what Google Google use to drive around and get the pictures of everything that's on the road and to map where the roads go and so forth. And it uses, it uses lidar technology and and expensive cameras and GPS units and and as you drive down the road, it, it picks up on on the polls. It reads the information on the polls and you're able to collect information about the height of the polls, the attachments on the polls, get images of the polls. However, because the equipment is so expensive. It only makes sense to mobilize it if you're going after a large number of polls. So that's the, that's the basic answer. And the, the balancing act, you know, in talking with the guys who can do this is getting access to the equipment and being able to rent it. And there's a window of opportunity. Coming up end of September, early October. And then it would be getting out there and driving enough miles to collect enough polls that they could be paid for that work on a, on a per pole basis. I'm sorry, you're muted. Did you want to follow up, Laura? Hope you're muted. Okay, sorry. I'm looking for, you know, what is the capacity that could be done by November and if you could, you know, walk us through, walk us through what would need to happen in order for this, whatever the number is that you think that can be done by November, if you could kind of walk us through the steps that will need to happen in order for that to take place. So let's say by, let's say by Monday, September 14. We know that, that, that the money to pay for this poll data collection effort is going to be available. And so at that point, we would enter into an agreement with the vendors who are going to do this work, and we would make a down payment of around 250 300 $350,000 something in that dimension. And then mobilize the manpower, mobilize the equipment and begin planning for the roads that they would drive to collect the polls that needed to be collected. And then, by the middle of November, they would have been done with that now their, their best guess at how many polls they could really get to with that kind of a timeframe, starting in mid September is about 120,000 polls. So, that's why on the, on the ask page. I mentioned that $3 million would allow collection for of up to 142,000 of the 205,000 polls in CUD towns. It's really unlikely that more than 120,000 would be collected between now and the middle of December to qualify for using the cares money. Okay, so what I'm hearing is that there is not. We, we probably can't do the whole $3 million worth of projects by November. We could do a portion of that. I have two other questions, Mr Chair, one is, what is the effect of you, the CUD's getting access to these dollars after September 14 is the effect. Just less work done, or is the effect. Increased likelihood the work cannot be done. That's my first question. Okay, so the, so the first answer is that less work will be done, the later we get to go. But then at a certain point no work will get done. What is the point. Really October. Yeah, you know, I actually, if you give me a moment, I have an email that I might be able to give you a more specific answer. That would be great. And my second question is, how will this data be kept updated. Because theoretically it will change, even as we're moving through it. So will it be in some sort of a shared like will be shared amongst the CUD's and the utilities and the department like how would this data be held in a way that maintained its usefulness for as long as possible. Right. So the technical fail dates, October 5. Okay. And then, and then two weeks later, it would, it would just be completely impossible because of, because of the weather. So it's a very tight timeframe. Yeah. Sorry, more of the. The second question was how will this data. Be maintained because it will change. And so who will have access to it and how will be kept updated. Okay, I think the best thinking on this comes from David Healy at CV fiber. And he has posted up a model for collecting this data, which in fact the guys who would be doing it are using essentially the same. ArcGIS model for a populating poll data information. And, and David's idea is that this would be something that would become a state asset at the DPS, and that anybody making any changes or modifications to any polls would have to report that in. It would always be kept up to date. So in theory that so that's the answer in theory in practical and immediate terms. The poll data would be would be delivered to each of the CDs. For their design and engineering teams to make use of and for the CDs to make use of in terms of making make ready applications. And I also want to say, one of the benefits of of the data collection being done is because it's real time going into the GIS. It is relatively straightforward for make ready applications to be automatically generated as the collection is done. And that reduces the amount of work the CDs have to do on the make ready applications. So if we were to, you know, so I, I'm curious about whether or not you have if the department, if the department's on board with that have you had conversations with the department about that keeping that them keeping that data, and or the utilities and or the other poll owners. No, we nobody's nobody's advanced it further than. Okay. Here's a concept. Okay. Great. Thank you. Mike, go ahead. Okay, a couple of questions. So the poll harvest, you're looking at the poll harvest as a discrete task. It's eligible for the CRF funds. Okay, and that would be whatever you're doing there with whatever that 15,000 plus 50,000 65,000 polls. That would be completed by the end of the year and zero. And maybe Tim or somebody else on the committee could correct me but I thought that CRF money would require having actual connections completed by the end of the year. There's definitely money that we've allocated under CRF that does not result in connections. There's planning money that we've used there's money that we've used to accelerate the CD standup process, if you will. All right, so, um, Given that, um, as far as the 15,000 manual poll, also have to be harvested. Do they have to walk or will they use like ATVs or something like that. I mean, it's a lot of miles to walk. It's, it's, it's mostly walking. And because we're talking about poll easements that mostly go through the woods. It's we're not really talking about the polls that are in the electric corridors where you might be able to take an ATV and and use the mobile equipment. Okay, and what kind of what this whole data consists of what do you have to I'm location is one thing I know that Submeter accuracy on the location. When you're designing the network that's really critical. Also, attachment heights is is very important in terms of the make ready applications and then additional information about the polls in terms of whether or not there are drops going to premises nearby. What sort of other equipment or underground connections are on the pole, all of that, more of that that you have. So whatever you can account for in the design process, which ultimately makes it less expensive when you're out in the field building. So, can any of this data collection be done using drones. Using drones. Yeah. Yeah. I have. I've seen. A meeting about one vendor that is using drone technology out in the Midwest with with some success. And I reached out to them to, you know, get some additional information and unfortunately was not able to penetrate the bureaucracy to get an answer. And I guess it doesn't count the polls that you're talking about are not related to polls that are in our traditional telecommunication company territories. So it would be any any polls. Any polls. The, I think the only polls that would be excluded would be transmission tower polls, like the one that runs in our town from the wilder dam to the task. Okay, so I'm wondering about companies like Woodsville Champlain Valley Telecom who are actually laying fiber in their own territories and would you not be counting those. Oh, no, no, no, we know we wouldn't be going after. We wouldn't be going after polls like that. We actually have a spreadsheet town by town. Cut by cut with the estimated number of mobile polls estimated number of manual polls. And we've been having the CDs go in and, and check off which towns, they would want to be sure we're collected so that they could start designing this winter and hopefully be building next summer. And so I'm waiting for all of that to be done. I believe that there are at least 50,000 polls under, you know, any scenario. But now that now that this idea is getting significant traction in the legislature and executive. We're going to have that task completed next week and have and have a really solid number for what we're going after. Thank you. Go ahead Scott. Thank you. I have to say I bet the people out there in YouTube land find it a little amazing that we don't know where our polls are. We don't have that data already. But apparently, I have another you've been, you've, you sort of have been in touch with a contractor who can do this. We've never seen this poll data. And in effect, we have them queued up. This is, this is because getting a contractor to do anything in two weeks is impossible unless they have had it on the radar already for two months, at least. So, I find that that's really interesting. I'm wondering whether you mentioned one idea about shaking loose the money to do this, since the legislature is not likely to be able to act, you know, in a matter of a week. One strategy for getting money to do this is, is to have the administration front the money basically on their authority and, and then the legislature authorizes it as quickly as possible, possible after that. I'm wondering whether you've been in conversations with the administration and have reason to believe that they would be willing to do such a thing. IRF has been working that particular thread for me. And I don't have anything to report right now. We need to hear, I'm waiting to hear from him. We don't know, but I would encourage all of you to use your good offices to, to say, Hey, this is a great idea. Let's do it. So, right when we get down here. I also want to say that guys who are going to do this work. You know, this would represent a significant opportunity cost to them because they have other clients that they would have to put off for a period of time and that might result in them losing those clients. And so that's another reason why it's not, you know, in fairness, the mobile equipment is an important part of it and a big cost. But it's also true that these guys have clients and they're working and, and so to be motivated to do this, you know, on top of the fact that they are that they're sort of local and they get it and they really want to help make this happen. We've also got to make it worth their, worth their while and getting that poll count up is a big part of that. Absolutely. I mean, if you have a million dollar piece of equipment, you want to keep it working. Thank you. Yeah, two things for the stuff going through the woods I know for pulling lines sometimes we use horses for the rest of the committee. So I'm not sure if they'd be doing that for this but it doesn't always have to be walking. Yeah, Fx, I was wondering, you mentioned Google and using similar equipment. I was wondering how much of this data already exists within Google, and if it might be more economical to capture it from them. Yeah, they're not. Yeah, they're not focusing on the polls there. They're taking pictures as they go down the block and identifying points for navigation. We're not looking to collect the kind of data assets that that we would need. I got to say that we ran into some issues with our design because the poll data that we collected, you know, really wasn't as good as it could have been so we've learned a painful lesson about about the need for really good poll data. I'm sorry. Yeah, I was just going to use your background as an example there's a poll in the background. And with the next photo from down the street you could triangulate. Yeah. And me that I don't know if that's more or less expensive but the the resolution on those photos is usually good enough to capture the individual poll, like the tags and stuff. And the tags of each photo the metadata. I mean, just throwing out ideas there. I'm not sure if that's been looked into. I think if that were, I think if that were, yeah, I think if that were doable. These guys would be saying we could, you know, we could do this because they're, they're so data intensive and the, and the processing they do to pull this out. And if it was already there, you know, be a lot cheaper to just take that and just scrape that data and then and then do that work so yeah, I don't think the feasibility is there to use what what's on the Google maps. Okay. FX I don't see any other hands up, and we've got about five, seven minutes left in our hearing time today. You know before I asked if there's any other questions questions for our witnesses. I also just wanted to go back to Christine and to and to see if you had, you know, any, any comments from your testimony as you know you've heard additional questions and additional thoughts from other witnesses today I didn't want to let the hearing close without giving either both of you another word. So, I don't know if there's any other thoughts you wanted to share, based on what you've heard today. I just wanted to go a little backing up with what FX was saying about poll collection data. You know one of the problems we have. And I, you know, again, we, we asked, we started GPS in our system back in 2000, and eliminate paper max paper maps put laptops on the trucks, but the thing we experienced about triangulation is when we triangulated our maps we found sometimes they'd be a half mile off. So, so triangulating doesn't necessarily get you the accuracy look for what. The reality is, some meter accuracy could work. We're really with the better the accuracy the more the less pre engineering we have to do. You know, poll collection is cheaper than engineering. So, getting the right data I suspect, you know, getting getting the right data is important. I suspect that some of the utilities today, who have collected data in the past five or six years have it at the level we're looking for. But, you know, can't stress enough how important having this databases and having it maintained. And really the only way we're going to get it maintained as if properly as if the utilities work with the telecom providers and we all work together if we have two separate databases, you'll never get it fully updated both. Both will be off. And did you have anything again I didn't want to let the time go by without you having a chance to chime in again. Thanks very much, Tim. I just want to emphasize we've talked a lot about the financing and the money that is needed to carry off this in the time frames that are talked about and really encourage you folks at the state level to focus on the need to give the CUDs as much power as we will need to acquire our financing, whether it's directly or indirectly or whether we can use one pot of money to morph into more money or to adjust regulations that favor us so that we have we can compete in the competitive structure that we are in. A lot of people don't think that way. If you've never had run a business then how to operate inside a competitive marketplace subject to the tyranny of the profit and loss statement. It's much more difficult to understand how important that is in the mission that you have set us free to accomplish. So I guess I would just like to emphasize that there's a lot of ways that can happen. Yep. Thank you. One other hand came up here. And I'll just ask members if they have questions. We got about four minutes left. Go ahead, Mike. So Christine mentioned a couple of times in the testimony and in follow up that you distribution utilities like utilities have a lot of this poll data. And it would be, you know, if they could be enticed to share that data. I was wondering whether that would be appropriate or applicable to the 65,000 that effects I was talking about. Yep. I'll answer. One of the things we've talked about the CUD, the VCUD meeting is taking finding out and I've taken the task to actually go to that contact Vermont public power supply authority contact utilities to find out what data they do have and identify that we are we are actually going to do that. And we have to figure out what existing data is available. Now, that doesn't say the utilities will provide it for us. But that does say that it's there. And we probably shouldn't double collect it, and then figure out a way to get it from the utilities. But again, we have to check part of my conversation will be checking quality of that data as well. So we're going to go up with the poll data that you want to harvest to nothing she can talk about. Yes, you know, we don't want to do redundant. You don't want to have redundancy where it's not necessary. What we have, I'm wondering if we would have to specify legislation that any poll data that utilities have should be made available to see you these I don't know effects I'll let you answer that but it seems like a good idea to me but that would be that would be fantastic. You know, we are, you know, we're certainly able to protect that data under the trade secrets part of the open meeting law. So I don't think that there should be any barrier to that information being shared and it would actually be a lot of things. However, just based on some conversations that I that I've had, I'm, I would be concerned about, you know, how good it, how good it is in terms of the needs of people who are designing the fiber to the premises network. So, yeah, ultimately got to see the data, we would know. And ultimately, I would add that, first of all, I don't even understand why this needs to be confidential. You know, so when we talk, the, the FERC, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission defines what is critical infrastructure. And most of our, you know, our distribution system, which is greater than 90% of our polls is non critical infrastructure. So the point is this public database could be very helpful to anybody doing work in building new homes and develop. So I do think for we are first goal should be to have it as public as possible. Now that, you know, again, there may be something I don't understand, but certainly I've heard some people say, well, we got critical infrastructure issues. I want to clarify, no, that Velco is this the utility that has some of the critical infrastructure and met GMP has some and we might have one substation, but there just isn't that much critical infrastructure. Go ahead. We've talked a lot about getting the information off the polls, but in terms of the question you posed a little earlier Tim where you were looking for the sequence events, the benchmarks that we have to go through to get from here to lighting up fiver everywhere. It isn't just getting the poll data. Velco is going to the steps of make ready on those polls certificates of public good. And that whole step of process, all of which has to happen before we can drop the hammer on the next phase which is basically design and engineering. Yeah, the answer just to piggyback what I'm saying, you know, the poll data alone. Although I think, you know, it's debatable with things are getting so accurate now with GPS that we could do a lot of pre engineering without ever setting foot on a site. But that said, you know, the reason the poll data is improvements is it cuts down on your pre engineering costs. It will eliminate that probably not but but then again you know I'm not familiar with this technology that effects is talking about it sounds like it's pretty accurate to get down with it. You know, sub foot accuracy, and probably could do your pre engineering without field visits.