 Being a little after three, let's get started. Wonderful to see you commissioner. Likewise. And I see that Mr. Purvis is there as well. He is because we both know that without clay, nothing is possible to convey. At least not about broadband. Well, it's great to have both of you here. Very much appreciate it. We have been, as I'm sure you've been talking about in other committees, the broadband needs in the state. We also know that this pandemic has highlighted the, the situation that we're in. And so what we're looking for is an overview of where things stand, how we might get to our ultimate goals of giving everyone broadband or an access. And with a particular eye for us, of course, we're looking at, you know, how we might get to our ultimate goals of giving everyone broadband. We're looking at schools, school children's schools. You know, our, our. Those that need it the most. Those that don't have it right now. So with that, thanks for being here. And. Great. I'll take it from there. Congratulations on your chairmanship. We miss you and Senate finance, but I'm delighted to see another committee as well. So, so here we are. And Senator Hooker, it's nice to see you again, of course. And Senator Perch like it goes without saying it's nice to see you too. I have with me two secret weapons, Clay Purvis and Rob Fish. They're not really secret. Because I'm very prolific, but these two guys are the keepers of data and keepers of order when it comes to our efforts to make progress on the broadband in the state of Vermont. What I'm going to touch on very briefly are a couple of things. Chair Campion, since you said you wanted an overview. What I would like to, to draw your attention to is that the department today will be filing its annual report on the connectivity divisions work for the year. And so I would, I would urge you to have a look at that because that'll give you a nice tidy summary of all that we've been doing this past year and where we are on things like level of deployment types of technology and the likes. It's a good primer, if you will, for the state of broadband right now. We also have a variety of maps and documents that we'll present to you today for the overview. Let me also say for the benefit of folks who may be new to the world of broadband regulation and deployment, the state does not have jurisdiction over this area of connectivity. It belongs to the federal government, but that doesn't mean we stand still and don't do anything. Rather, it means that we practice the art of the possible. And that means in part, working with such resources as are available in the state, money that has been gathered in the connectivity initiative fund, for instance, which is funded through a universal service. And the other thing that we also use here in the state is the power of persuasion with our federal delegation who've proved quite adept over the years in securing resources for the state. And we also, we've more recently have been working with communication union districts, which if you haven't heard that term before, you heard it now. Those are basically the ones that we've been using. before you heard it now, those are basically think of a fire district or a water district in your community and just put communication on there. And you get the idea. These are folks who on a volunteer basis, spend their time identifying their community's needs for telecom for connectivity, and then coming up with plans. And I think that the direction that the state is taking is to also have them construct and possibly operate this infrastructure that fills the gaps that are left behind by the competitive marketplace, where again, the state doesn't have any power to dictate terms or control. It's an interesting tension between the CUDs and the marketplace because the CUDs remain a sub unit of the government, if you will, and are therefore answerable to the public records laws that we have, that is right and good. But it also puts them at a competitive disadvantage to the market players that they're having to engage with as they try to plan for and ultimately construct infrastructure in their communities that they need customers for. So I expect that's an issue that you'll hear more broadly about in the Senate this session. And I just wanted to flag that for you. Before I pass the baton to Clay, there's one other thing I'd like to say and that is I'm delighted to have this committee take an interest in broadband because I think we have been thinking too narrowly about broadband in our country and in this state. We've analogized it to a utility service like electricity or water. But when you think about it, it's more like a highway system. And so Senator Purchlick, that should speak to you given your membership on transportation. Increasingly, it's getting more and more difficult to do things in our culture and in our society to be active as a citizen if you don't have broadband. So yes, there is definitely an education angle and a lot of work is needed in this area, not just to figure out what we can do for education, but also to understand how what has been done so far for education can fit together and perhaps fit together better with other initiatives that we have and hopefully aid that will be coming from the federal government. So Clay, if you'd like to get started on the materials that you have for the committee, and then hopefully we also have time for Rob to present a little bit on communication in your districts. Go ahead, Clay. And you're on mute. I should be unmuted now. Good afternoon. My name is Clay Purvis. I'm the director for telecom and connectivity with the Department of Public Service. Just wanted to give a little time today to talk about where we are with broadband and where we're going. This is actually my, I believe my first time in Senate education. So happy to be here. Try to share my screen here in just a second. But first, let me get what I'm going to share. There are two periods in history that we'll talk about today. That's before the pandemic and after the pandemic. This time last year, we were coming in to the legislature and reporting on broadband availability. At that time, we had 69,000 houses and business locations that lacked broadband. That meets the federal definition of broadband. So the, I think the most significant thing are division debt. Clay, you're cutting out. Yeah, you're cutting out. Okay. So I have really bad broadband at my house. I really need help. Is this better? Should I sign out and come back in? This sounds, this feels better to me. Okay, I was, okay, good. Okay. Sorry about that. And I haven't, there we go, Senator Chittenden mentioned that he's having difficulty seeing. Please know, if Clay has already submitted this to Gene, Gene, that it is probably available online. And for new members, new senators, I should have said this earlier on or your other committee chairs have mentioned it that you can find all the documents on our committee page. And that's a good resource. Thank you. Right. Thank you. So I'm not sure what you missed or what you heard. But our division maps broadband availability in the state of Vermont. And in Vermont, we're unique from other states, in that we map broadband based on individual locations. So each house, each business location, we assign a value of what kind of broadband is there. Other states, they do polygons and neighborhoods and different methods. Ours is very specific to a building location. So in Vermont, we have about 308,000 residential and business locations. In January of 2020, our mapping showed that of those 308,000 locations, 70,000 locations lacked broadband of 25 three or the federal definition. So that's 25 megabits per second upload and three megabits per second down or better. To put that in practical terms, what we're talking about is broadband that's provided by cable video company like Comcast or Charter, or a fiber to the home premise, fiber to the home providers such as EC fiber, Burlington Telecom, Waitsfield Champlain Valley Telecom has a lot of fiber. Those companies offer speeds of at least 100 megabits per second symmetrical. So that's really fast. We wouldn't be having the kind of problems that you're having with my connection today if you had those speeds. So when we started last year, we had 69,899 locations that lacked usable broadband. As of today, we are in the process of building many projects throughout Vermont that are that is expanding broadband. And the federal government has also funded broadband projects throughout the state. We now have 46,500 locations that did not receive some kind of funding yet to to upgrade their broadband to 25 three. So in the past year, we've really brought the problem down from 70,000 locations to 46,000 or 33% reduction, which just goes to show what money can do. Clay, if I could just footnote that too, it's important also to understand in this conversation that there are different views as to what is acceptable and what is not in terms of service. And so when Clay says we have X number of addresses that are not served by 25 three, he is using the federal definition of high speed broadband service. But please understand many of your colleagues are of the view that anything less than 100 up 100 down fiber is is inadequate. And I'm just putting that out there as a marker so that as you hear the conversation in your circles, you can understand why it is that some people are saying 33% of the problem has been dealt with in the past year. And others are saying, Oh, no, that's not the case at all. We in fact still have a good deal of broadband in the state that is not up to the standards that we are aiming for in our in our broadband policy. And just to be clear, the the department is well aware that there are many legislators who would like to see 100 up 100 down and that is indeed a statutory goal. So we're trying to clarify for you what is the state right now. But that isn't to say that it is the best state or the acceptable state from the perspective of what's in statute. So and also I just want to be clear that we are presenting this map today, the extent to which there are solutions in the offing, meaning this doesn't represent broadband as it has already been built. This represents a combination of projects that are in progress right now and that are going to be completed, that are 25 three or better. And also I'm sorry, we switched maps on me now. And also, if you could just go back quickly. Yeah. And also projects that have recently been funded through a a program that the Federal Communications Commission has, they did a bidding process in October called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. And those results were announced in December and pursuant to those results. We are going to see over the next six years, if I'm not mistaken, Clay, those solutions built in the or provided in the state. And if I'm reading the map correctly, those are the the blue, the light blue and the dark blue blocks, right, Clay? The that's the number of locations that was served in 2020 through one of the programs. This map combines both the connectivity initiative and the the RDOF program. So the the blue towns are the towns with the greatest amount of locations served. Okay, so I'm misreading the map and forgive me, I'm probably not helping by breaking in like this. But that's by way of saying that should you have difficulty making heads or tails of our maps, please don't be shy about calling us and following up, I'll be happy to go over them in greater detail with you. Back to you, Clay. Senator Hooker, did you have a question? Did before we go on play, maybe I could ask you to give me an example. I mean, I've heard as the commissioner stated, some people are saying 25 three isn't enough. Give me an example of what 25 three provides and how it's what's the difference between what that provides and what 100 100 provides? Sure, that's a good question. So for point of reference, my personal internet connection is four megabits per second down one up. And I can do just about everything that I want to do in my house, I can participate in this zoom call, not as good as I should be able to, but I can at least be here. I can stream movies from Netflix, access YouTube. So streaming videos from my my family could not be on a zoom call at the same time while I'm on a zoom call. That's for one 25 three for most residential households is probably a decent amount of service. They could do everything that they want to do. It would be possible to do remote education. Impossible possible possible. Okay, very possible to do remote education. Work from home. You could be working from home and playing video games at the same time. I'm just using examples. Yeah, 100 100 is super fast. That is incredibly fast. You could you could run an office building with that connection. In fact, our office building at 112 State Street has a 100 meg connection to it. So there's 100 people working there at any given time. So you know, that is an internet connection that is future proof. It's going to be excellent for what today, what your today's needs are today and will continue to be excellent for many years to come. Cable video providers, we put them in the 25 three bucket but it's important to note that companies like Comcast and Charter do offer broadband packages that are well in excess of 25 three. So you can get a 100 megabit per second download speed from say Comcast or Charter. Their upload speeds are not symmetrical. And so that's that's how the 100 100 standard cuts out cable. With the cable connection, you're going to get something like 100 down and 20 up. Still by far and away, more than what you would need to do the things that you need to do on the internet today. So primarily, would you is it safe to say that most of us who have internet connections now, unless we're paying for more have 25 three? Majority you have internet from a cable company. You are probably receiving something more than 25 three. Very few of them actually sell a 25 three service. The 25 three metric was actually designed to cut out other technologies, such as DSL. So in the FCC made made that the standard for broadband. They said we want to we want to cut out DSL. What is the most that DSL can do? We're going to make the standard, you know, one inch beyond that. So 25 three is something that DSL providers really can't do or could not do at the time that the standard was developed. Thank you. Senator Hooker, we also have maps that we can share with you that show the extent to which there's cable plant in the state of Vermont, the extent to which there's DSL service plant in Vermont, and also fiber. And that's a that's a handy way to get a picture in your head about what what percentage of Vermonters have access to what we're calling 25 three via cable, as opposed to 100 up 100 down. And we'll get you links for those maps, because they're helpful visuals. Um, while we're on that topic, I wonder, right, if you would also give everyone some information on 5G, as it relates to this, in other words, you know, I think a lot of folks will say, Well, you know, isn't satellite 5G technology going to take care of a lot of these kinds of things? So that's a that's a great question. 5G is a is a standard developed by commercial mobile wireless companies. So companies like AT&T and Verizon, Team Mobile are rolling out 5G networks. And those networks are going to have speeds that are well above and beyond 25, and you'll be able to access those types of speeds on your cell phone, for instance, when you're out on the street. For Vermont, that's still a ways away. 5G networks are being rolled out mostly in very dense urban areas. The amount of cities covered by 5G is very low. So even if you take a city like Houston or Newark, it's not going to be pervasive across the city right now, it's going to be in a certain neighborhoods are going to have 5G right now. So I think for Vermont, you know, 5G is going to be a ways away. With that said, carriers are upgrading their 4G wireless networks, and we're getting faster speeds on 4G every year. As you know, the problem for Vermont is that many places in Vermont really have nothing. There's no cell service whatsoever. So that that is still a struggle, especially for rural Vermont. At the end of our discussion about broadband availability, I did want to take a moment to talk about T-Mobile project that the department worked on with the Agency of Education and T Mobile, which I think would speak a little bit to what those kinds of networks can do for students. When we talk about broadband availability, we are mostly talking about whether the facilities are available at an address. So can you buy service or not? And the other side of the problem is really the affordability issue. If you're in Burlington, you have great options. The question is, can you afford it? And for students, we've definitely seen that to be a huge barrier, not just being able to have the service available at your home, but actually being able to afford it. So I talk a little bit about that as well in a little while. As June pointed out, this map shows where broadband money was spent in Vermont. So the dark blue shows where more locations were served by broadband. And it makes sense. A lot of the Northeast Kingdom, a lot of Southern Vermont between Bennington and Brattleboro received the benefit of public broadband funding. The Ardoff auction that June mentioned, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, we've mapped out the awards for this. And I'm going to talk a little bit about what this means for Vermont. As June pointed out, this is a federal program run through the FCC. They're spending $30 million in Vermont over the next six years to bring gigabit level speeds to Vermont. The green is consolidated communications. The blue is a consortium of electric utility co-ops, so Wackenbeck, along with a couple of communication union districts. So these are areas of the state where we're going to see fiber deployment. And they're some of the most rural areas of the state that are going to benefit from this service. So this is a huge deal for Vermont. And it's going to be quite a game changer if these projects are successful. Yeah, now go ahead, finish your thought, Clay, and then I want to add something. Sure. I also wanted to point out that SpaceX, this is a satellite company, did win several areas in Vermont. They're going to be responsible for providing broadband in these brown areas on the map. That's a service that we expect will be rolled out this year. The map shows where they are responsible under Ardoff for providing service, but Starlink will have service all across Vermont. And they will be providing broadband of at least 25, 3. Yeah, what I just wanted to add to this is two things. You will likely hear a lot of conversation about the inadequacy of consolidated and its service. If you haven't already heard that. And that is one of the rubs in broadband world in Vermont, because being the inheritors, if you will, of the baby belt system that was built in Vermont as it was across the country. That system goes all throughout our state. And it was the system that originally brought us DSL service, which in the day was a big deal. And of course, now is completely inadequate. So all of that green that you see there is consolidated now upping its anti and making a commitment to building fiber in our state. It's largely I think stringing fiber where right now they have copper DSL lines. So it's hard to reconcile the conversation about how awful consolidated is as a company with this prospect that the federal government has set up by awarding this amount of funding to consolidated to do fiber service in Vermont. And I'm not making a value judgment about it. I'm simply flagging that for you because you're going to hear those parts of the conversation. And it causes some confusion for people, I think. The blue part is something that I'm particularly pleased with because that is is the first sign of the CUDs and our cooperatives getting involved in the connectivity conversation in Vermont. They bid in the auction and what you see here is the fruit of their considerable hard work in putting together a team Vermont approach to solving some of those connectivity gaps that we have in our state. So I just wanted to alert you to those dynamics because it's easy to to sort of, you know, try to figure it to get confused about what the left hand and the right hand's doing when it comes to broadband in Vermont. Back to you, Clay. Sorry, you're cutting out. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Yes. Now we can. Thank you. So this is this is what the federal government is funding. Let's talk a little bit now about what we funded through CRF. Before we clear, there's one more thing I wanted to point out. I'm very sorry. It's also important to understand that these results from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction are beyond the control of the state of Vermont. And so if you can imagine a lot of where you see the green here on the map is going to have an impact on activities that the CUDs have been doing to plan their projects and to stand up connectivity infrastructure in their communities. And this is nothing that the state is able to prevent the federal government from doing. So I have spent quite a bit of time talking with the FCC over the last several years to say, hey, you folks need to partner better with the states so that we're not, you know, working across purposes. But there's been a very little appetite to date shown by the FCC to to collaborate with the state, so to speak. And it's just important for for policymakers here to understand that tension. In many respects, this result that you see on the map here is not what we could have wished for, given the investment that we've been making intellectual and to some degree revenue in the work of the CUDs. But this is a reality that we have to deal with that big things happen that are beyond our control. So these folks are doing things on their own identifying the geographic regions, etc. Based on based on applications based on They're doing this based on census blocks. That's the methodology that the FCC uses. Senator Lines. Yeah, no, I just thank you for indulging my absence. I finished my phone call and I apologize for not being here. But Commissioner Tierney, as you're talking about the FCC reluctance, is that do you believe that to be pushed back from the industry itself and not wanting to have to negotiate with another level of government? Or is it, you know, what what's, what's calling? Yeah, well, first off, it's good to see you against Senator Lines. Nice to see you. It's good to see you. That's an interesting question. I have to think that there's some element of that in there. But you have to remember that going back to 1996, Congress made a decided effort to remove state control from the telecommunications picture when it reformed telecommunications in the United States. That was the point in time in which the federal government decided the internet is not going to be subject to the kind of regulatory control shared by the states and the federal government that traditional telephone service was. The idea was that they thought the internet would develop more freely and more competitively. If they kept regulation far away. And here we are several decades later. And what we have is, yeah, a competitive market if you're in it. And we also have residual gaps that have nothing competitive in them. And with that, people who are stranded and don't have access to the internet. To what degree the industry played a role in forging that picture. It's hard to say except that in terms of economics, the gaps exist because there's no business case for somebody to provide service in those gaps. It's not economic. Now, when the FCC gets money from the Congress, and it does something like conduct such an auction, whether they design that program to suit the tastes or the preferences of industry. I don't know. I'm not there. But I will tell you this, I know that in my time, when I have gone to knock on the door to talk to the FCC commissioners, I've gotten appointments. And then I have to write a letter afterwards that publicly discloses what I talked about. And I know that industry representatives do that too. The question is, you know, how much of what we say in those meetings ultimately gets into their thinking. Maybe it shows here. But I do know that they conducted a bidding process that is much like what we would do with RFPs, where they have rules for that process. And then they pick the bids on the basis of the merits. And those rules were public. And as you can see here, consolidated prevailed quite a bit. But so did our consortium that's made up of homegrown members like some of our coops and some of our CUDs. So hard to say to what degree industry is choking things off. I tend not to think that way as a commissioner because I'm the commissioner of everybody. So I regulate those those same companies. And I have to say that they've also done a lot of good. We just don't talk about that a lot. I hope that answers your question. No, it does. Thank you. That's a that's a good, a good perspective and appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, good question. Senator Hooker. Commissioner, you mentioned the $30 million over six years or maybe Clay mentioned it. And that's a lot of money. And that's and I'm thrilled to think that we have that. And as I look at these projected projects, my question is, and maybe you're going to touch on this later, what do we do in the interim with the immediacy of the need for broadband in places, especially during the pandemic? This is this is where you folks are joining a very difficult conversation because there are competing ideas. What we do in the in the meanwhile is what we have been doing so far. The connectivity initiative, for instance, is a fund that you folks created a few years ago and that's got monies in it that come from that universal service fee that we all pay on our phone bill. And that's had modest amounts of money in it where small projects here and there could be built. Some of those projects bring 25 three service via cable technology, some of those projects bring service via fiber. And in the pandemic last year, you folks voted something on the order of 17 million, I think, in Act 137, of which 12 million was set aside for more connectivity initiative projects, and something like $2 million, I think, for line extensions. We have used we've appropriated, I think all of the connectivity initiative funding, and unfortunately, not as much of the line extension funding. But still, that was one of the single biggest jumps the state has made in making service available during the pandemic. And noteworthy, some of that money we gave to grants that paid for wireless service, which is very controversial, as you probably know, in the legislature. And it was only because of the emergency circumstances, i.e. trying to get service out to as many people as we can as quickly as we can, that we went there because we know that that's been controversial in the past. So, you know, in dramatic terms, if you wanted to blanket the entire state tomorrow, I suppose you might look at a wireless solution. But then you create other planning problems. And also you have to deal with the tension that many of your colleagues favor, you know, the more robust 100 up 100 down fiber to the premises solutions. And as you heard Clay say a moment ago, that is the future proof solution. So I hope I'm answering your question. I don't want to be the person who says if you really want to get service to everybody right now, you pay for wireless broadband because that's that is just not where that is not in the direction of the state policy. And this commissioner will live up to state policy as directed by the legislature. Senator Campion. Yes, please. Senator. As a brand new commissioner to the Senate, not to put you on the spot, but can you give me a 30 second understanding of why some of my colleagues would be against a wireless option just for my own education? Well, by putting me on the spot, you're showing that you're actually an old hand already. That's that's what senators are supposed to do, senators. So no offense taken. The the long and the short of it is that a few years ago, a company named Vito received substantial federal funding, something on the order of $112 million, I think, to construct a project which many people understood at the time would result in a canopy of connectivity in the state. And that was in the the era period during the Obama administration. The grant was given through the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture. They monitored the grants. And when it came time to determine whether the grant was compliant or not, they did what they do as an agency and they made the determination that yes, Vito had complied with the terms of the grant. And so it was closed out. But as you know, probably from your own experience, we in fact do not have a canopy of connectivity in the state of Vermont. And so there has been a great deal of of dissension, if you will, about or tension around whether wireless has proved to be a reliable means of addressing Vermont's telecommunications issues. And many of your colleagues have felt that item one was to do no further business with Vito. And I think there's also a piece of this that belongs to the Vermont telecommunications authority, which was a project that the states stood up several years ago, and then made a judgment call in I think the 2015 timeframe to mothball that authority. They had done a substantial amount of planning and administering of funding for what's called middle mile build out fiber in the state. And the I'm not privy to why that particular entity was mothballed. Others would know. But that that was the state of play. And so the Vermont telecommunications authorities activities at that time were then housed in my agency. And we have done our best to carry on with that work. So I hope I answered your question. And if you have more, we're happy to spend more time with you on this. But VTEL has been a subject of significant controversy. What you need to understand, though, is that, however inadequate, some people may think their work was in the past. As a matter of public record, it is a company in good standing in the state. They are licensed to do business. They have a certificate of public good from the Public Utility Commission. They don't have a record of poor service quality that I'm aware of, unless Clay wants to tell me differently. So it's it's very hard to act just on perception or or preconceived ideas about what the company is likely to do, especially in a pandemic, when you're trying to get connectivity solutions out to people, which is why in the end I made the judgment that, yeah, if we can make service available to 6,000 addresses with one grant to VTEL, we need to do that, especially given how well they scored in the competitive process for for reviewing the grants. Does that help you? Yeah, it gives me gives me much better understanding and I got plenty to learn still. But I appreciate your explanation and I think we can all agree that we have to figure out a way to do to do better for our our students and all of them on earth. So thank you for being here. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Back to you, Clay. Thank you. So this map is is the federal RDOF. I want to turn now to our state work and what we did in the connectivity initiative in Act 137. When the pandemic hit before Act 137 was passed, we were posed the question, how do we get broadband to students? And I think that question couldn't be answered without first answering the question, where are the students? We worked with the agency of education, the principal and superintendent's associations and individual school districts to collect information on where we had students and where they lacked broadband internet. I have this chart here or this map here. I'm just going to talk a little bit about the legend first. We have three categories of service. Those served at 10-1. Those served at 4-1 and those that are not served. It says under service. It really should be not served. So all of these dots here are locations that lack 25-3. So these dots all have inadequate broadband collected information from individual school districts on student addresses just on an aggregated, non-identifiable way, where students live. We married that data with our broadband availability data. So we had information on about a little under 30,000 students. And so of those 30,000 students, we were able to identify a little over 7,000 students. These three numbers add up to about 7,000 students that live at a location that lacks broadband, meaning the definition of broadband 25-3. So when we issued the Connectivity Initiative RFP, we sought proposals and gave extra points to proposals that proposed to serve one of these addresses. Once Act 137 was passed, we had the authority to implement several programs. One was the Connectivity Initiative, which June mentioned. We put 12 million dollars into that program. And here are the results. We ended up serving 9,439 locations that lack 25-3. Of those, just under 1,000 were priority addresses. So about a little less than 1 in 10 addresses had a student or a person in need of telehealth. As far as tech was concerned, that begs the question. So of the 9,000, when 1,000 were identified as priority? That's correct. So why the 9,000 weren't priority? Why were those dollars not, perhaps I'm missing something here. Why weren't more priority households granted the access? We tried to hit as many priority locations as we could with projects. So you can imagine, for instance, a wireless project might hit 1,000 addresses, but only a hundred of them we identified as a priority address. But we're going to do the other 900 addresses. So that's where that issue came in. There were priority addresses scattered all over the state, but you couldn't just do a project that only hit these addresses. Sure. The other addresses. So it wasn't the cleanest way to go about it, but given the timeline we were under and the need to roll out as much of this money as possible, we wanted to make sure we were hitting as many of those addresses as possible. We also collected data through a survey and asked people if they had, for instance, a telehealth need or remote work need. So those addresses are included in the final priority number. The vast majority of the data points, though, are students. At the bottom of this chart, this is a chart of the different projects that we funded throughout the state. At the bottom of this chart is a breakdown of funding by technology. So you can see we spent about eight million dollars on fiber to the home. That's the best broadband you can get. That's the 100-100. And we hit about 2,175 locations with fiber to the home. Cable video just under 200 locations for about $300,000. And then fixed wireless for four million people hit 7,070 addresses. So you can see that fixed wireless on a per-location basis is, by far, in a way the most affordable or the least expensive. But the legislation did direct us to favor fiber to the premises where feasible. And we did our best to do that. In addition to the connectivity initiative, we were able to implement other programs. One was a program called the Get Vermonters Connected Now initiative. That was targeted at locations and neighborhoods with difficult or situations that made it difficult to serve them, such as mobile home parks where all of the utilities need to be undergrounded. So getting fiber into a mobile home park is much more expensive than at a residential home that can be served by aerial drop. So served on telephone poles. Going into a mobile home park, everything has to be put underground. You have to put in conduit. And that can be very expensive. We ended up serving about 322 residential homes with mostly fiber to the premises in mobile home parks around the state. We also initiated a program called the Line Extension Consumer Assistance Program. This was a program where individuals could apply to us to seek funding to get a line extended to their home. So if you can imagine that your house sits under our speak on the end of the cable line, you can get that line extended, but you typically have to pay for it. This program provided the funding for consumers to pay for that line extension. We offered up to $3,000 per home for a line extension. We ended up doing about 260 line extensions at a price of $545,000. Is that a question? I have a question. I don't know whether you've covered anything of this or not, but as you're doing this extension, what consideration, if any, are you able to give to the income level of the people? I mean, if there's a, does that play in at all to the decision making? That's a good question. We didn't do any means testing for the line extension program when we rolled it out. What we did do was limit participation to those who had a CARES Act eligible needs, so remote learning or telehealth or remote work. You had to have one of those three. We did not exclude folks on the basis of income. I think if we were to continue that program, it would make sense to do some amount of means testing to ensure that money is being spent on line extensions that wouldn't happen otherwise. Up for, the but for test that we hear about, right? Well, no, I mean, there are people that would commit murder to get broadband. Yes, I know. And some of these line extensions can be very expensive. We heard from many people though that they would not have been able to do this but for this program. So we did we did hear from teachers who took advantage of it, students that took advantage of it. In some cases we did have doctors that that took advantage of it. But I take your point and I think it's an important consideration as we move forward. We did have to roll the program out very quickly. The legislation passed at the end of June. We started accepting applications at the end of July. We turned down over 200 additional applications simply because cable companies and other internet providers said they could not do all of these line extensions by December 30th. So we turned down a lot of people simply because we ran out of time. So, you know, given that and given that the emergency goes on and we had a bit of an extension on I don't know how much money is there. But do you think that we'll be able to you you're doing amazing work? I just I just want to say it's just amazing. Do you think that there will be that you'll be able to put in additional extensions? I would I would consider whatever you're doing now is an important part of the emergency and any emergency going forward. So are you still working under that sort of framework and mentality? The program's on pause right now because of we don't we don't have clear direction on whether we can continue the program. We have not denied applications simply because of the time issue. We've told folks if if we get this program reauthorized, we'll come back and do your line extension. That would be my hope whether it's funded through CRF or some other means. This is a very popular program. People liked it and were very disappointed when they we couldn't take advantage of it. So I think the need is still out there and if there is an ability to continue that program, I think we'd be excited to do that. Yeah, that's that's right. Part of what we're struggling with is I think everybody's struggling with it is with the deadline having so recently changed in Washington DC, the change of administration, the announcement of new aid coming. My perception is that both the administration and the legislature are sort of trying to clear the smoke to see, OK, of the CRF dollars we have left. How best do we spend them? And I know that our connectivity initiatives have been a high priority for both the administration and the legislature, but that that looks see as necessary. And if at the end of the day, the upshot is, yes, we want this program to continue or poise to do that. Right. But if schools open up, there might be less precisely. Yeah, I got it. OK, well, let's hope that a new CRF has sufficient funds to do some more of this work. Let's hope for a lot of things. Let's hope. Play back to you. Sure. So that was three of the four programs. The last is a temporary broadband subsidy program. So this is tackling that other problem, and that's that of affordability. We rolled this out in tandem with the Vermont consumer, I'm sorry, June. It's the end of the day, the arrearage program. We rolled this out at the same time as the arrearage program, using the same kind of system that almost all of the state applications have been through a Salesforce portal. And it was moderately successful. We had just looking for the number here, two thousand nine hundred and thirty five unique applications. We gave out just under a million dollars. The subsidy provided a $40 a month credit on your broadband bill. We made the credit retroactive back to March 1st when the pandemic began. This had the effect of paying some of the arrearages that people were accruing with their broadband provider. If you remember the the VCAP program, the electric arrearage program did not cover broadband. So through the section 13 of Act 137, we were able to still cover broadband subscribers who had arrearages. A number that's not in this memo. I did want to call out again. You had to have an eligible use remote education, telehealth or remote work need for us to cover your broadband bill of the two thousand nine hundred and thirty five applications. Two thousand and thirty six of them pleaded remote education need. So a vast majority of these applications work for students. This is another program that I think the deadline kind of hurt hurt Vermont in a lot of ways. It's people receiving a credit up until December 30th. Now that credit has expired. So we're not giving out credits for any any time in two thousand twenty one. With that said, Congress did authorize the FCC to start a program that's very similar to this. And they they appropriated three point two billion dollars nationwide for the same purpose. So they're going to have their own temporary broadband subsidy program that will start sometime in March. We have Rob Fish on the phone. In addition to monies, we gave to broadband providers to expand service. We did do some grants to communication union districts. Happy to have Rob talk a little bit about that. I do know at the end of the day, I just wanted to take two minutes at some point to talk about the T-Mobile project that we did with the Department of Education. But I'll leave it up to you if you want to hear from Rob. No, why don't you do that now, Clay? And then we will shift to the CUDs. Great, thank you. Kind of an interesting problem that we face any time you're doing telecom is that you can do all the planning in the world and then an opportunity pops up that's not in your plan and you just have to take it and figure out something with it. T-Mobile approached us in the fall about a program that they were initiating. It's a broadband subsidy program for students, specifically. They wanted to promote, they wanted us to promote the program in Vermont. Our initial reaction was no way because your service is lousy and nobody here has T-Mobile service. We spoke with them for a while about what it is they're trying to do. And we did some mapping work around T-Mobile service and where schools could take advantage of it. Here's the deal that T-Mobile is offering. They will sign people up through schools. So the school has to sign up the students and T-Mobile is selling the service to the school. They will give away service for free at their lowest tier. For $12 a month, students will get a hundred gigabytes of service a month, which is more than adequate for one person to do schoolwork. And then for $15 a month, they're going to get unlimited data. What they're actually getting is a little hotspot device that they can take home with them. They can connect their laptop to that device. The download speeds range between five to 30 megabits per second. You get what you get depending on where you live. So we worked with T-Mobile and the Agency of Education. And we came up with a map of where students could take advantage of this program. And it's my understanding that the Agency of Education is pushing this out to school districts right now. But I just wanted to bring it up because it is an area where the Agency of Education and the Department have been collaborating. And it is a pretty good deal for students that don't have broadband at their home because they can't afford it. So this is a map of reported student residences. We did some drive testing data that we took and applied to that. And I believe this is a map here of 4G LTE data coverage, T-Mobile coverage by school districts. So you can see up in the Northeast Kingdom, they have pretty good, excuse me, the Northwest, they have pretty good T-Mobile service and then around Burlington. And I assume this is Rutland down here. So there's quite a few school districts where the majority of students could take advantage of that program. So that's it. Terrific, Clay. Thanks. And we're now going to shift it looks like to Mr. Fish. Rob, glad you're with us. Wondering if you would just take a few minutes, let everybody know again what's the CUDs are. There are new legislators here as well as others that might not be fully aware of their structure and how they're working and provide us with an update. Thank you. First of all, I had permission to share my screen. I have five slides that would it's sometimes visuals are quite helpful with talking about the communication union districts. Absolutely. You've now been made a co-host. Okay. Okay. I believe everybody should be seeing my screen right now. First, for the sake of introduction, my name is Rob Fish. I'm the Rural Broadband Technical Assistance Specialist for the Department of Public Service. I started in November of last year just before this pandemic started. So to bring up the date on the communication union districts, a communication union district is formed when two or more towns join together to form a district for the purpose of developed purpose of broadband when it comes down to serving unserved areas. For the sake of point of reference, there are other types of municipal districts such as solid waste districts, consolidated sewer districts. You get the idea. So the districts have grown dramatically in the last year until until this past March, there were only two districts. First with EC Fiber, which is now serving over 5000 premises with Fiber to the home and then CV Fiber. And here is where we are at now. She can see there's nine districts, 160 member towns, 58 additional towns and study areas. And what this means is that each of these towns has a representative and an alternate. So we have 160 volunteer board maps and 160 alternates that are working on telecommunications specifically broadband issues in their communities. So our current challenge is taking what EC Fiber did when I said now they have 5000 premises served. They started in 2008. We have to compress that in a tenth the time to serve Vermonters in need. So I want to talk briefly about what the CUDs did during the pandemic. They assisted the department in gathering data and gathering addresses of students of gathering locations for Wi-Fi hotspots of distributing information on other programs. Several CUDs have also distributed Wi-Fi personal hotspots, especially up in Lamoille County via their schools. So one of my goals was building those relationships with schools, libraries and towns. Since we were all in this together, it's going to take all hands on deck to solve the connectivity issues. Some CUDs have created a clearing house for information and a case management tool. So lastly, I just want to touch on one thing that they assisted and had joined with the program the department was doing, which was creating Wi-Fi hotspots around the state. So these are publicly accessible locations you can access from your vehicle. And we've now installed or provided license for 191 sites around around the state. The initial focus of this was specifically on communities where there were a lot of students that were unserved. I'm happy to announce that yesterday I found out that a national group is going to take up our charge here and provide as many Wi-Fi hotspots that are necessary to serve the rest of the state. And they'll be announced, we'll be announcing something about that soon. But that's just a really quick overview. I know it's the end of the end of the day now, but I wanted to introduce you to CUDs and these volunteer powered organizations in your community that you should certainly connect with to work on connectivity issues. Senator Hooker. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Rob. Could you share these slides with us? I don't see them on our page. Certainly. Thank you. Yeah, no, I just want to say, I think that the structure of CUDs, it sounds like having them in place prior to the pandemic was, it sounds like it was really helpful. Yes. Yeah, it was a key to have really just to have have fingers in every community around the state of people that had a pulse on what was happening, what the need was, and how to best address it at the local level and mobilize local resources. It was important that we had it and that we were able to grow it during even during the pandemic. And so you had folks then volunteers going out and in assessing what is in their district and giving you that information. Well, since every school, et cetera. So since every single community that's a part of the CUD has two representatives, those people were responsible for reporting back for reaching out to their school districts for identifying Wi-Fi hotspots. We also had assistance from the Regional Planning Commissions in doing that. Right. Right. Senator. I think it's to chair Campion. I think it's important to to note to that we had a lot of good organization in place. But these are volunteers. Yes. And so I don't think the action was quite as uniform as you might be describing or that in a perfect world we would have, it wasn't like we had, you know, a command to control approach where we could say to a CUD representative, go out and find out what this school needs. It doesn't quite work like that. But it certainly was a very, very important asset in giving us a good feel for what was on the ground. And it's what enabled us to make good use of those planning funds that you folks authorized for the CUDs. They were able to pick up a lot of ground in assessing what they need in their communities and helping us with the emergency response. For instance, I know people are of two minds about the Wi-Fi hotspots because nobody, nobody for a minute thinks that that's a great connectivity solution. But when you consider that in so many places in the state there was nothing or very little. We had communities banging on our door saying, please, can we have one? And the the CUDs were really instrumental in helping us develop a feel for where would it be good to put one? Who could be making use of one and the like? So from that perspective, Vermont had a wonderful collaborative response in at least getting up this rudimentary Wi-Fi hotspot system and the folks who are involved in the CUDs had a big role in that. As did the Regional Planning Commissions. Yeah, I can't say how I'm just beyond proud of what they've been able to accomplish when most of these were started in March of last year and some were just started in July. So there's they're facing a lot of challenges, which if you have a few more hours we can go into. I'm not going to do that today. One of the big challenges is I think we we are balancing so much on the backs of volunteers here. All of them need some form of staffing and paid staffing and who's got the money, you know, to give them that. But it's we've just gotten to the point where we're for what we need the CUDs to do. They need more resources. Yes, and the CUDs that were able to use the CARES Act funding to help assist with some of the unexpected administrative support are the ones that performed the best and we're able to get into their communities and get us the information and get information out and make stuff happen. So just to echo that capacity is a key challenge. But you know. Sorry, we have Senator Perchlick who's been patient. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I had a question about when the T-Mobile program was going to be announced. And then I asked that a question for Robert, what is my pie? Is that just the grant, the trademark of a certain Wi-Fi company? Why don't I address that really quickly? So that's like a personal Wi-Fi hotspot. So it's where a student would take it home. And one other thing to add on the Wi-Fi hotspots towards the end of the program, we were actually installing them at hotels that were serving at shelters and affordable housing as a way to try to get even more directly towards where people in need need the access and can't afford it. OK, in the T-Mobile, was that that's already out there? Like we could tell our constituents about it or it's going to be announced and rolled out soon. I wasn't clear. Clay, do you want to take that question? Since you took us through that or commissioner? I think at this point I'm looking at Clay or Rob for that specific answer. I'm sorry, I'm just under I understood Clay to be talking about a different program that's about to be announced. I thought T-Mobile was already live. Rob, you're on mute. If you're on mute. Sorry, technology. I'm not as familiar with the program as Clay, but I know the program goes through schools directly. So it's about schools getting on on board, not individuals contacting T-Mobile to get involved. But we can we can get you that information. Clay would be responding. If he if he's got kids at home too. He's probably momentarily diverted, but we'll get you an answer on that. Yeah. Certain people know to contact their school. And Senator Hooker, just to let you know, we have dropped those map links in the chat so you can go access them there. You wouldn't mind responding to all of us with the information that Senator Perchley. Sure, absolutely. Yeah. Did you have a question? And then Senator Hooker. No, but I continue to be impressed with the with the work that's being done during the pandemic. I can't believe that you have been able to do so much so quickly. Well, Senator Lyons, thank you for that. It means more to us than you can possibly imagine. And that goes all to Rob and Clay and the rest of those fine folks who just been knocking themselves out. I got to tell you what's been interesting about it is we're all besieged by the pandemic. Having the privilege of being able to do something about it has just been immense and really gratifying. But really, thank you. And I return the the the compliment to the legislature. You've been wonderful to collaborate with. That's good to know. I mean, we've got to keep doing it. So thank you. And we ask you much and say, I mean, thank you for your work, really. That's that I know that Clay and Rob, everybody else has been out on the ground doing this in a very difficult time. And the results are outstanding, really. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It means a lot. I know that Clay had mentioned the that Congress is doing a temporary broadband subsidy program that will start in March. And maybe that was the the program that Senator Perchlick was wondering about. No, those are two different ones, but good good connection. T-Mobile is already in place, but this one is starting in March. Yeah, this is a really good example of this peculiar jurisdictional divide. I'm talking about Senator Hooker. T-Mobile decides to do it because T-Mobile decides to do it. And we can't force them to do something like this. The the appropriation that the FCC will be working with is something that Congress has legislated. So FCC has an obligation to do that and they have to create a program very quickly, much like we had to create one with our broadband subsidy program that we did. And that's what will be ready to go in March. But the two are separate, one's voluntary and the other's directed. OK. And then when Rob was talking about the CUDS and what they're doing and you had mentioned, Commissioner, that there wasn't the coordination that we might have hoped for, the type of coordination we might have hoped for, how when more money is available, will the word get out to these organizations? Yeah, no, no, I appreciate your calling me to account for my words there. What I meant to say was that it's important to understand that the CUDs are made up of volunteers. And I think a continuing frustration in this realm of policy is that it begs for more centralized control. And so in that sense, you know, when we think we've created the CUDs, it's easy to slip into thinking we've now created entities that will do what we plan and want them to do. And that's not at all the case. And that's what I meant by not as a coordinator as we might hope for in the sense that we hope for something that's very we, some people hope for something that's very sort of command and control like in order to create order out of chaos. But that's not the nature of the policy sandbox that we're in here. And so it's in that sense that I could not as a commissioner look at the seven CUDs that already existed in March or April and say, OK, we're going to draft those guys to execute X, Y, Z of a plan that I have to make connectivity better for people in Vermont during the pandemic. It's much more of a, you know, an iterative, collaborative. What can you tell us? What do you think you need? What do we have? Groping kind of thing that you do. And then you you hope for the best and it being Vermont, good things come. So and I have to say that throughout the day, starting this morning, Senator Lyons, with your comment about volunteers in Vermont, it is just incredible how much we depend on volunteers in Vermont. It is it is and we're so very fortunate in that regard. I this is something I tell the FCC all the time is like we are a small state that makes us a perfect laboratory for trying out things that, you know, could be scaled up for other states because we have an unusual degree of collaboration in this state. It goes, you know, it begins with our volunteers and it goes on to enterprises like our utilities, for instance, who frequently step into the gaps and do things that you might not do if you were in California or Ohio, but you do it because it's the Vermont way. So it's it's an ethos that permeates every level of our culture here. But it begins and ends with the folks on the ground and the communities who wear all those hats on volunteer basis. The CUDs are truly a grassroots. It's a grassroots force and a grassroots effort of people coming together to figure out what's best for their community. They are working together to coordinating via Vermont Communication Union District Association, which was one of the one of the projects over the past, I guess, nine months. That was that's key to trying to bring them up to speed and get them organized. So that's going to continue. Any other final questions? I'm trying to give a thumbs up to Senator Chittenden's idea that we need to export our ethos. Absolutely. It's true, Senator Campion. It's been a real pleasure visiting with your your committee. Is there anything else we can do for you today? I think we're going to leave it there. It's been a real pleasure having you. Thank you for all the incredible work you've been doing. I hope you'll continue to keep us in the loop as you progress. I know that so much of this is connected to funds. It's all connected to funds. And one of the things we'll continue to talk about in this committee, and I know other committees are talking about it, is how, you know, given this new construction in Washington, how can we, you know, work with the Biden administration and Senator Leahy in particular to access greater funds for these kinds of infrastructure projects? So absolutely. And since you've mentioned it, I would point out to you, too, that my observation is that in the areas of health and education, those are two areas where at the federal level there seem to be many more avenues by which funding has been made available in the past for broadband, and meaning both infrastructure and equipment and now subscriptions. So it's it's important to get a handle on those outlets as you craft your your policy. I'm more happy to do what we can to help you with that. And there is also, I think, an individual in the Department of Education, whose name now escapes me. I don't know if Rob knows it. But Clay mentioned it to me yesterday, who's somebody you ought to have in as well. So I'll get you that name. Senator Lines may know that name. I see your hand. You're muted. No, no, technology. Technology, I know I was I don't know the name, but my question was for the commissioner and that is. Let me know at what point you think it might be helpful for our committee in health and welfare to hear from you because I know you came in last year. It was extremely helpful. Oh, I was glad to come visit with any one of your committees. And and for that committee, too, what I just said about education is very much the case. There are a lot of avenues by which federal funding is is available and can be made available for health and telecommuting purposes or telecommunications purposes. It was wonderful to see you. Thank you. OK, take care. Mr. Fish, Mr. Purvis, thank you. OK, thank you, everybody. Have a great weekend, too. Committee, we'll be picking up on Tuesday with higher education or work on higher education. We are going to hear from the President of the University of Vermont, and then we are going to talk to the select committee on the future of public higher education. Senator Bruce will be in with Joyce Judy, who I believe served as one of the co-chairs of that committee. And Brian Prescott, who was the consultant that worked with that committee. Then Wednesday, we are going to pick up again with education finance with Chloe and I've asked after that to have Ledge Council come in to give folks, I think, in particular, new folks to the committee, just an understanding of some of the major policy decisions that have been made around education, particularly the Brigham decision. So folks understand that a little bit in Act 46 because I know that a proposal is coming our way that might could impact both. So Thursday, we're going to start bill introductions, at least with one bill, and that's where things stand. I can't believe it's just been four days together. So thank you. Questions, comments. Thank you. OK, we're on our way. We're on our way. Look forward to continuing our work together. I really can't believe it's been just four days. And unless someone has it something else, we'll adjourn.