 Hi, welcome to Town Meeting TV. We're here today with Christine Holquist, the executive director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board. Hi, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Hi, thank you. Happy to be here. And you have recently been in the paper, there was an article on VT Digger about some work around the affordability, the affordable connectivity program and the funding for that. Before we get into that, I just want to, you know, how did you come to the role that you have currently? Well, I won't bore you with my entire career history, but what's appropriate here is that I was the CEO of Vermont Electric Cooperative. And Vermont Electric Cooperative has served over Vermont. In 2003, the board of directors asked, how can we get broadband to our rural Vermonters? And I've been working on it ever since. And of course, ultimately, I became the chair of the Business and Technical Advisory Committee for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which serves all of the rural landmasses in the United States. So with that role, I was able to experiment with every technology that existed in terms of broadband. So able to work with all these different technologies and ran, been running spreadsheets ever since, the issue has been, it's expensive. For example, to serve a household in Chittenden County, it costs less than $2,000. To serve a rural household, it's $10,000. And when you say $2,000, is that over the course? What's over the course? That's the infrastructure cost. Just to set it up and get it to the house. Because you think about it, you look at the number of people per mile that are in Burlington versus the Northeast Kingdom. So let's first start with just an understanding of what does broadband mean? Well, that definition has certainly evolved over time. For a very proud of Vermont, we're the only state that's done this. The legislature has defined broadband as what they call a 100 millisecond synchronous, which only fiber optic can do. So by definition, our state has committed itself to getting fiber broadband access to every address that's currently on the electric grid. Which means not a dial-up internet service, not over cable, but literally over fiber optics. Yeah, just a piece of data. A fiber is about the size of a human hair, and it can carry about three times the capacity of a typical cable. And that's today, but through technology, it's almost infinite the amount of capacity fiber can carry. And one of the ways the state is deploying broadband or trying to get folks connected is through the communication union districts. Yes, that was novel as well. That was set up in 2015 where any multiple towns can come together to form a municipal district. And forming a municipal district has its advantages in terms of tax, not being taxed as well, not for profits, as well as the ability to pull down what are called municipal revenue bonds, which are low interest. And also some support from the state to fund a person to manage the CUDs as well, right? And the CUDs are going to be delivered by private companies. It's a public-private partnership. It depends on the CUD. Each CUD is autonomous. We have ten in the state. I think it's an incredibly elegant design. It's very much like the electric cooperatives. You know, if you look, or cooperatives in general, if you look at cooperatives, there's a seven cooperative principle. One is autonomy, and the other is being able to share cooperation amongst cooperatives, share ideas. This is exactly how this model works. Nate, who knew? So, and I'm sure there's a lot of, so what's, is there, when you say there's a definition for broadband, is that, talk to me about the symmetrical upload and download speeds. Sure. And I'm sorry, folks, if this is getting into the weeds, but I do think that it is important to understand, and maybe a little bit about why broadband is now considered not just, you know, a nice thing to have in your house, but a real necessity for people. Yeah, thanks. You know, if you look at broadband, it's, it's, it's the, the use of data has grown over like an exponential curve, you know. So, broadband, you know, I started my career in the 80s when it was 200 bits per second, right? Uh-huh. Now, uh, Slow. Slow. Slow is molasses, right? Yeah. And, uh, over time, it's evolved faster and faster. So, up until, uh, two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission defined broadband as what they call 25, 3 megabits per second download, 3 megabits upload. It's now, by the federal definition, 100 download by 20 upload. Okay. But the problem, of course, is that lower number, with the evolution that's going on with work, you know, when we talk about remote, like our whole office is remote, and you're trying to, you now, it used to be that, that having that lower number for upload was okay, Yeah. Because it was entertainment, right? Yeah. But now we do everything over the Internet, so big files have to be uploaded, which is why the state defined it as fiber. But let me talk about the importance of broadband. I, I propose that broadband is even more important than electricity, because I was a CEO of an electric utility, and we spent years building our telecommunications infrastructure, fiber to substations, communication to all our vehicles, smart meters. If we lost telecom, we would not be able to restore power, like we do today. You can back up a telecom system with batteries, you can't back up your electric grid. So it's, and then I'll go even one step further. I met with General Knight. You mean you can back up your electric system with batteries, but you can't back up. No, you can back up. The point is you can, your telecom system, it doesn't use much power. So, so you can put a battery on there the last 24 hours, right? Got it, yeah. And let me go one step further, because I don't think people realize it's all, it's just coming out in the news. But several months ago, I met with General Knight at the head of the National Guard here in Vermont. What we learned, you know, one of the things that's ninth about fiber is it's not susceptible to what they call electromagnetic pulses. So the big fear, and you're now starting to see it evolve in the news, is foreign, foreign, I'll call it Chinese. The Chinese have satellites that can take out all of our satellites. If we lose our GPS network, we lose our satellites, we're in trouble, because our whole national defense depends on satellites. And there's a movement, 37 generals have signed on to across the country, which somehow I'm involved with now. We need a secure fiber optic network, not only in Vermont, but in the entire country, because we're so dependent on these networks. If we lose our satellites, what do we do, right? So this rule that you have is as a broadband evangelist, and you're trying to get broadband built out throughout the state of Vermont. Where are we at with that at this point? So right now, 40% of Vermont has the ability to connect to fiber. Last year, at the end of last year, it was 30%. We expect significant acceleration this construction season this summer. We spent many years, many I should say two years, getting prepared for construction. Getting prepared for construction means you have to do the design, you have to get out to the field and do what they call make ready, get the poles ready. So much of that work has been done. So I'm pretty proud of the fact that we went from 30% to 40% last summer, but we're going to double that this summer. So we're well on the path. We're on schedule to get this completed in the five-year timeframe. And in those CUDs, is this turning out to be a useful, lucrative, valuable proposition for the folks that are picking up that work and doing it? I'm not sure. If you talk about value in dollars, it's never valuable. It's a very difficult business case. You could never make a profit in these areas. But what we want and a part of the grant allocation is based on a sustainable business plan. The idea that you can pay your bills. And part of those bills are debt service. So the more grant funding we can get, the less debt costs there are, which means it can become more affordable. We've been very successful at pulling down grants. When I testified three years ago to the legislature what this cost, I said it would be about $550 million. And we had $345 million committed through grants. That was my estimate. We could get $345 million. So there was a $205 million grant gap. We're actually now approaching $530 million in grants, which is now $630 million. So we narrowed that $205 million down to $100 million. And where is the $100 million going to come from? Well, that's part of the sustainable business plan. So the idea being once you get these CUDs set up to where they have 60% of their, call it 60% equity. In other words, just like your home, right? If you come into a home and you're going to buy a home, the more you have to borrow, the more you have to pay. So in order to make these sustainable, we had to get them to 60% equity. But now these grants are a lot higher. Once you get to 60%, you can now go borrow money through these municipal revenue bonds. So we're in better shape than we had planned. But they will finance that. So what we're doing is we're building out, they start getting revenue from those that are connected. And that revenue funds additional revenue down there. So the folks that are getting connected right now, they're paying the connectivity fees and then funding that further up. But we have this affordable connectivity plan program that supports those who can't afford to pay what it costs to bring broadband into their house. Talk to me a little bit about that. I like where this interview is going because that's exactly where we need to go next. So our job, it's not just getting Vermonters connected, right? We want our jobs to make it as affordable as possible and then maximize the positive social benefit. And one of the things that is true all across the country and true in Vermont is those people that are not connected today, we have a significantly higher percentage of low income people. So the digital divide is the economic divide today. So if you think about what's happening in our lives that are connected, we do all our financial transactions over the internet. We do our social connections through the internet. We do our medical, all of everything through the internet. Can you imagine if you're not connected? What that does to you in terms of opportunity, even for a career growth opportunity. So it's really important that we focus on how do we help these disadvantaged communities. We've identified eight disadvantaged communities in the state that we're focusing on. There'd be things, communities like the incarcerated elderly communities, the LGBT community, for example. Now if I look at all the communities in the state, I'm a member of three of those communities, but I'm not the one that needs help, right? So we have to even parse further down and identify those that need the help. For example, let's take the homeless. We're not going to give the homeless a computer that sits in an office, right? The homeless may be doing most of their work on a phone. So those people that aren't connected today, we're putting in programs to help them get devices, provide devices, as well as the training and the support necessary to learn how to use. And then on top of that, and we're working closely with the library system, by the way, because Vermont has 185 libraries throughout the state. But the other part of that, too, is teaching people to learn to discern, right? What's truth and what's fiction up there? Yeah, that's sort of my next question as we can give access to this place where you can get lost on YouTube shorts as quickly as you can be doing your professional development and growth and homework. And certainly people saw that during the pandemic. Anybody who was a parent whose kid was all of a sudden thrust into being on a computer in their room for eight hours a day and how do you manage what's coming in? And that's important. Somebody like me, as soon as I've been in technology forever, I like to call myself a lifetime nerd. I started my career with computers. So when I look at the technology world, it's pretty easy to discern what's fact from fiction if you've been in it forever, if it becomes second nature. It's harder now, though. It is hard, yeah. But when you see something that doesn't look right, then you do the research and you say, okay, I'm going to go to this and find other sources. Well, people who are not used to using it, we've got to teach them how to fact check on their own. We can't even rely on fact checkers because the fact checkers that you're getting to might have their own. Yeah. Well, let's get into that a little bit because I'm curious about that. And of course, we're sitting here in the community media center. And at the beginning of the pandemic, we worked with the community broadband board and the fish to set up a wireless network that we could serve the community with so that folks, again, kids who are like are living in the neighborhood, unfortunately, might have to come and sit in the parking lot next door but could have access to wireless internet so that they could do what they needed to get done. But where is the funding coming from and what is happening with the story of the funding being in jeopardy to support the Affordable Connectivity Program? Yeah, the Affordable Connectivity Program is what it does is it provides $30 a month to families of poverty levels of 200% or below, which is really important, of course, if you're a family that's struggling. That funding, there was a program set up with the federal government to fund that program. And the money that's in that program is slated to run out sometime in April of this year. So already, notices are going out to these struggling Vermonters that say, be prepared to lose this program. That money has to be passed through Congress. Now, our own Senator Welch has been leading one of the four senators leading the cause to get this bill reinstated and funded. But if you look at what's happening in Congress, specifically on the House side, we can predict, I think there's a lot of cynicism that anything's going to get passed on the House side at this point. And is there any effort in the Vermont legislature to make up this funding or to? Well, so the problem with this program is it's really complicated to try to set up a program in such a short period of time, and we would call it impossible, because it requires so much oversight and checking. So first of all, can we get something set up by April even if we wanted to? I don't think so, because it's so complicated. Additionally, it's expensive. If you look at what's happening in Vermont today as we're struggling with the news of the 20% increase in budget and those kind of things. So I kind of say that as a background. In order to, right now, there are 25,773 Vermonters enrolled in the ACP program. 25,000. 25,773, I just think I'll watch that. There's a federal website that gets updated every month, so that's why I know that number. It would cost about $9.3 million a year just to continue with that program. We estimate there's somewhere a little over 60,000 households in Vermont that qualify. If we wanted to extend the program to 100% of those that qualify, it would be about $22 million. So it's a significant expense. Yeah. It's not coming out of Vermont's cars. It was a fair question, but it's way out of my pay grade, right? I was asked the question in a committee at the legislature two days ago. Well, Christine, how can we fund this? Look, I said I really have empathy for our legislators right now because they have to make those decisions. I'm a telecom expert, but if you're looking at homelessness, feeding children, and $9 million to extend this program, it's a tough decision. Yeah. Well, I do have questions about that, again, maximizing the social benefit that you mentioned. I guess I would roll back. I mean, you made a bid for governor in 2020. 2018, right. 2018, okay. And those are the folks that are in that place that you would expect are looking at the big picture of community technology and what we need to do in the state around telecommunications. Who's managing? Who's got the big picture of vision right now? Well, I think by definition we're supposed to have the big, we do have the big picture of vision about broadband and telecom and equity and digital equity by definition. Yeah. You know, that's, again, that's where I go back to, obviously it's important. You know, what would I do if I were a queen, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's such a tough issue because it's so intertwined with, you know, the fact that the tax program has shifted our young children, our young people today have about a third the purchasing power I did when I graduated from college. You know, so this whole thing is so intertwined with all of this, what's going on in the whole country that I don't know what I would do. Yeah. Luckily, I don't have that job right now. Yeah. I would be doing much more research in those other areas. Yeah. So when we talk, let's talk a little bit more just about that issue of we can give access, but you know, this is an opportunity for the state to say, hey, but we're also going to put some effort. It's sort of like we're going to legalize, and maybe this is a bad analogy. So just forgive me. Okay. You know, forgive me. Yeah. You know, we're going to legalize POT, but we're going to tax that in a way that's going to be around education and prevention and harm reduction, right? And so where's the opportunity here, and who's going to do that work? Thank you. That was a great lead in because there's another thing I should talk about, too. I'm going to go back to this original number I talked about. It costs about $10,000 an address to serve these unserved remodders in these disadvantaged populations. Yeah. Meanwhile, in Chittenden County, it costs less than $2,000. Yep. So, you know, it really is unfair, and again, I'm stepping into opinion here, but it really is unfair to take a population that is struggling more economically and then have them have to fund when it's more expensive to serve them. So a more fair way to do this would be to provide a fund that all pay into. Yeah. And I'm safe to say that because we had a meeting with the chairwoman of the FCC in Norwich a couple months ago, and we asked her that question. We said, you know, what would it cost if we equalized this in terms of the entire country? And we wanted to pay this fund. She said it would only add 4% to your telephone charge, you know, whether your cell phone or, you know, because phones today are sold regularly. Yeah. It would only add 4% if we did this distributed equally. Ouch. Wow. So now you're looking at... Yeah. Yeah. I say ouch because you realize it's obtainable. Yeah. But politically. Right. Can it happen? Yeah. That's the right, you know, again, straight into opinion here. Yeah. But the most fair way to do this would be to equalize the burden. Across the country. Across the country. And you think about the fact that it costs five times more and you only need to have a 4% increase. You know, that's just... I think the date is clear. Yeah. And again, there's this issue of the broadband board also having a role in pushing for beyond just like let's get the house signed up, but let's make sure there are programs out there that help work around misinformation, around disinformation, about how to navigate, how to utilize a resource. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's all. What's the vision there? Talk to me about the vision there. The vision is on that front is we have significant access to funding for digital equity programs. Yeah. We received a $516,000 grant last year to develop a five-year digital equity plan. And that there will be...this plan is how we're going to pull down additional funding. Yeah. And the potential...there's a potential for us to pull down somewhere around 20, you know, this is a real rough estimate based on the math that was used to issue the beat infrastructure. But if we use that same math, Vermont would get an additional $20 plus million for equity, which we would manage through our program. And so we're working with partners to...you know, for example, we're working with the Leahy Center here at the Leahy Institute and the universities as well as the libraries and others to identify how to best utilize those funds. Yeah. Well, I think about things that, again, you know, I'm a little biased because we're sitting here in a community access center, you know, one of 24 different access management organizations around the state that serves not just like the content that you're watching on the channel right now and not just on cable, but is working in communities to help hybrid meetings happen in the communities, working with students and interns around media literacy and media education and doing that work. So something like this, it just lights up. Oh, I get... My excitement centers around being... Yeah. Let's talk about you. Yeah. So the program, there's two programs that'll be part of the digital equity...the digital equity...I'll call it program. Yeah. One is we get a block...we'll get a block grant and the other is a competitive program. Yeah. So for an organization like yours, there's two opportunities to apply for funding and the funding will be...we have a digital equity plan, you know, identifying how you fit into that plan and how you're going to contribute to help support those eight identified populations is how you would access the funding. So anybody listening to this program who's in this kind of work, it should peak your interest because, you know, 20 plus million is a lot of money for digital equity. We talk about 9 million to sustain the ACP and we're looking at 20 million to help. Yeah. So we will be reaching out to organizations like yours and other organizations throughout the state to say, hey, put in a bid for these programs in terms of funding. Yeah. And in a community that doesn't have...you know, we just were in the middle of our election season right now. And we had, you know, last night the word foreign, word seven, city council candidates were on. And every time, I mean, I get a little like geeked out on this, but every time I'm saying, like, where else are they going to be on TV? We are participating in a kind of campaign finance reform by providing the service to folks. Well, I think when you think about TV. Yeah. In the new world. Yeah. Right? Especially when you look at the targeted populations, you know, it's...and I know you have access for that, but it is streaming access, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I...the cable viewers are declining. Right, right. We still love you. You're still there. Right, right. But...and, you know, it is, you know, various different populations who are watching on cable who can know how to get over the top. And that's our job to teach people how to do that. And that's, you know, that's...I can geek out to it with excitement. Yeah. And we'll talk about these targeted populations and we'll talk about the homeless again. You know, they'll have a hard time trying to watch a show that's on at 8 p.m. every night, right? But if it's streaming and available on demand... Yeah. For free. And you can find it. And you can find it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess, is there any last things that you want to...like, is there anything big that you're pushing for in Montpelier right now that you want to flag? Yeah, the one thing we're pushing in Montpelier is, again, you know, we're hypersensitive to the issues of funding. Yeah. So we're not asking for additional funds. What we're asking is to make sure not to put additional burden on the...on...on rural Vermonters who are trying to get access. You know, and what I mean by official burden is taxes and fees that might negatively impact the bill. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Christine Holquist, thanks for joining us today here. And thank you all for watching Town Meeting TV. If you want to see this and other programs, you can visit our website at cctv.org. Of course, watch on Comcast, TAN 87, Burlington Telecom 217, and at youtube.com backslash Town Meeting TV. Take care. Thank you.