 So may I just ask a quick question? Yes. I completely realize sometimes, you know, some towns need priority, take priority, and a rep or a senator needs to advocate for that. But in any way, are we representative somebody being put on the back burner? How was that kind of determined? I'm sorry, who would be put on the back burner? Well, another town in some way, in terms of what Bedford's getting. Maybe repeat what exactly is happening in the town of Bedford. Okay, my under, and I don't know the exact situation, but my understanding is that there is a... Hello. Are you there? There has perhaps been a proposal. I don't know if Chuck can answer it because I don't know the exact situation. Okay, but what this basically does, town or not, it's similar to everything else we've done for towns, recognizing that some towns have enough broadband access to do Zoom meetings and public meetings via Zoom, and other towns are less gifted. And we have given towns extensions to almost everything, regardless of which town asks for it. Got it. I don't think we should get into the specifics. It's going out to all towns. It just gives every town the right to request an extension on the time that they have to get back. And I assume that, Ellen, this is, is this one just the COVID emergency? Yeah. One that is just during this emergency. The ability to put up temporary facilities is any emergency. So if there's a hurricane or an ice storm or other things, then that's for any emergency. It's forever. This one is COVID specific and it is similar to what we've done almost everywhere else. Right. Allowing towns more time, allowing them to do things remotely. So that's, I think, regardless of which town got a letter in saying, we can't do this in this timeframe. Thank you. I respond directly to Senator Campion's question. I don't believe that it disadvantages any towns. Yeah. That's the same opportunity for all. It's not where anything gets placed. No towns getting put on the back burner. Okay. All right. Okay. So section two was existing. That's the report on 248 criteria. No changes there. We agree on the report. Yes. Well, we knew you'd like that. Yes, that's progress. Okay. So then going to section four, which is where I think both of our committees have gone round and round and round. Yep. And so what we really focused in on was what is it exactly that we want to know? We want to know when there's a failure of connectivity. And it doesn't really matter what the cause of it is. We want to know if people do not have the ability to call 911. So rather than talk about backup power or subscribers versus the providers backup power or anything like that, we said if there's a lack of connectivity due to the telecommunications provider's network failure, if your system is failing, you need to report it. One question that I asked did show that there are still, it's not a perfect solution still. I asked the question. So if, and I'm picking providers at random here, but if a VTEL tower loses its backhaul, that the backhaul was actually owned by First Light, I said, who is responsible for reporting that? And the answer was perhaps nobody because it's not VTEL's network failure and First Light isn't failing their customers. So that's an area where this ambiguity continues to surface, it's not entirely resolved. But we felt it was getting away from talking about what the failure has caused by and having a long list of qualifying things to just notify us of a failure in your network. That's what we're looking for. I think we were looking for the same thing. Let me say the backup power, that was also a town-specific request. Yes, it was. It probably took longer than anything else in this bill. The question, I think we all wanna know when there's an outage. The question was, what is it reasonable? How long an outage and how long do you have, how big an outage? The thing was thus, it was a half an hour and something blows off a tower, it takes a half an hour to get a truck up there. You fix it, 10 minutes and it's fixed. By the time it's reported, it's fixed. And there are, for the national reporter, for the local guys should pick up the phone, you call 911. For the national people, they didn't have a system set up for that. They are set up for the national system. And I believe we delayed our start time because California is looking at making the reporting for the national carriers more granular. And rather than have Vermont be an outlier, we thought, as we frequently do, we'd ride California's coattails. Since they have a lot more people than we do. So, that's. And this is, so we were silent on what those thresholds should be, whether they should be California's thresholds or whether they should be Vermont specific and leaving that to the E911 board who stated. But they've already put out a rule. They put out a rule which has not been passed. Right. Because it's been waiting on this bill. Right. But their thresholds were clear. They're preferences for the thresholds. It's gotten clearer, yes. And the 25 subscribers for 30 minutes is an existing threshold for the old copper-based landlines. And so what E911 board was doing was extending that rule to all telecommunications rather than having different thresholds based on different technologies. I think one of the questions that we looked at at the time was at least from what we heard from some of the larger providers who are using the federal standard is that this will require the creation of a standard that is unique to Vermont among the States. And there's a cost associated with that. Now, we can certainly make large providers pay costs if we're getting a benefit from it on the one hand. But on the other hand, there's the potential of those costs should rightly be passed on to Vermont ratepayers if that's the case. In my mind, one question is, well, once we get the information, what are we gonna do with it? Having the information is great, but if there's nothing that you can do with it until we've thought that through, that's one potential problem. And given where we are with COVID and so on, the likelihood of our moving extremely quickly is not great. The second question is the California provision as I understand it goes into effect on July one of this year. And so we will have something to look at pretty quickly. So one question, at least across my mind is in the house's proposal, it was to take the date to September 30, 2020. And how would the house feel about simply extending that to July one, 2021, we will have the ability to look at the California standard and determine whether or not that's something that we can do right away anyway. I don't feel that I can speak for the committee on that, but our thinking on the September date was that that would give time for the E911 board to modify and reintroduce their rule, time for all car to respond. And then that rule gives the telecommunications provider six months to achieve the reporting standard. So it's not something that they would have to start on September 30th, but it gives them time to implement a strategy to reach that. And I think that if it became evident that they could not do that or if there were prohibitive costs, within that six month window, the legislature would have time to look at this again, January, February or March of next year. Said September, 2020. Correct. So the E911 board shall submit their proposed rule by September 30th. And then the rule says that from the date the rule is adopted, providers have six months to meet those reporting requirements. One of the possibilities, if we can't reach agreement on this, since I think we all agree the 248A extension has to happen. Does it? Is that everything could get stripped out, except that. Because I just, we wanted to do a committee of conference. We were told things wouldn't make it through by July 1st, if we did that. So we're trying to make sure that what has to go through goes through, but we've got a couple of new proposals here that we haven't seen. And I think we need to, and we've got very little time. So we're going to work on it and try and get it done. But that is a possibility. I would like to see a committee of conference personally. And I believe that. That was my first instinct. That we could all sit down, but I was not encouraged by leadership to do that. So we're working this out this way. It's true that the must pass piece of it is the 248 a sunset. Yeah. If we don't pass, other parts of it are, can be sacrificed if necessary. But what I would hate to see- We'll work on those in August, but July 1st is the drop dead. Yeah. But I would hate to see the E911 rule just hang in definitely as well. So, yes. Okay. Committee, any questions at this point? Mr. Senator, I'm sure you heard from leadership. I'm sorry, go ahead Senator MacDonald. It's the industry has been asking for the extension of the sunset, right? Yes. Oh, the sunset dies. The way the 248 a is the expedited way to put up holes and wires. What we've been told is if we don't extend it that every pole and wire we put up or cell tower will have to go through Act 250, which means if we want to get broadband out with COVID money before the end of the year, we've got a real problem. That was the issue that- Well, we've been, it's been suggested. The industry wanted us to just do away with the sunset altogether. Right, and I'm shocked, right? But we've been, it's been suggested that the reporting is gonna cost some more money to the owners of cell towers and it's troublesome. I gotta, you know, I understand there's a cell tower that being proposed in Chelsea that isn't- You've got two different issues confused, Senator. The 248 a is one thing, the reporting outages times is another. And when cell towers fail to communicate, the bill would require that notification be made. So fire departments or schools or whatever- No, to the 911 board. So 911 is unavailable when the tower goes out. Right, so they have to report it to 911. The problem is once 911 knows, there's nothing they can do about it except tell the fire department, watch for smoke up there. I mean, there's no way the local EMT knows I'm having a heart attack in my house if I can't call even if they know my cell phones out. This was for our information. We wanna know how much of a problem we have with outages, but the solution is a duplicate system which could be very expensive. So this is basically- Well, I was bringing up the notion, Senator Chair, of duplicate systems, because my understanding is that AT&T is proposing a tower in the Chelsea area and not doing the co-location that our policies call for. And maybe Chuck will tell me that I'm wrong because I'm often wrong, but talk about duplication is the same companies that are worried about duplication on the issue of nickels and dimes are perfectly free to duplicate when it gets into hundreds of thousands of dollars. I, you're losing me, Senator. Whether, if actually it would be better for 911 if they weren't co-located because if one tower went down, there'd still be another tower. Two shades. Okay. I mean, the problem is they're all on one tower and when that one tower goes down, everything goes down. So that's, you know, and it's, we're trying to figure out a way. First, we need to know how big a problem we've got. Then we have an idea of maybe what it's worth to fix it. But this is right now, the reporting is information gathering. And just to be clear, the E911 board is doing the rulemaking because they were instructed to do so in Act 79 last year. So that instruction is still hanging over their heads. Yeah. Well, I think that's when we first started getting information that it did go out. It went out in some places with some regularity, but we didn't know how much or how often. And I think that's what we're trying to find out is, is this an issue? And does some other tower pick it up? Well, on my cell phone, maybe another tower picks it up. There's been stories about that or other fire departments getting the call. But, okay. So Madam Chair. Any other questions? Senator Campion. Thanks. So if we're not gonna have committees of conference, it sounds to me that perhaps the most important part of this amendment from the house's side is section four. Is that accurate? Good. So I would say that the number one priority, as your chair identified, is sure something with the sunset. Yeah. And then the next one would be the clarification in section four, that allows in 911 rulemaking to be completed. Okay. Thank you. Okay. And we could ask for a committee of conference. I thought having us all sit down in the same room and have this discussion might work. I was discouraged from asking for that. Okay. So we're taking testimony. And hopefully we can work that out. But we have a break out room on the side. Yeah, I know. And we can just call it a breakout room and sit down. Sounds like the non bank bank. You can have a non committee of conference. Right. I think they're really just the leadership is discouraging committees of conference on all sides, given that most things, all things important are supposed to be finished up in the next two weeks. And committees of conference can drag on. So I said, we would give this a try. If it gets really bogged down, we can ask for a committee of conference. And at this point, it looks like we might have to take a Saturday or an evening to all sit down and. Have actually Saturdays are starting to get filled up. So. That our differences on this are at all substantial. I think they're relatively minor. And I think that, that, that a discussion, whether in the formal committee of conference or an offline discussion. Might be able to resolve the major differences. Although, you know, we have to obviously. You know, talk about them as a committee. But I just sense it with that far apart at all. Yeah. I think. Yeah. I thought I heard Senator Brock volunteering to be an embissary. To the house committee for us. My connection could be shaky. Okay. He might be. No, I mean, there was. Senator column or to be a referee. There you go. We get, now there are several new sections in here. And they were new to us. I think today we're just trying to figure out. What they mean. I don't know that we disagree with them or not. There was some concern about that. You know, do it giving emergency powers, but then giving the town twice as long to. To respond. But I think we've gotten that. You know, that information. So we'll see where it goes. Well, and I'm certainly happy to, to come back as is helpful. Participate in any way. In any way. Whether it be a. A breakout room. Or further committee discussion. With a referee. All right. I'm going to go on to commissioner Tierney. Okay. Commissioner. I gather. That emergency power was. At the request of the department. That's about it. I guess my concern, I actually said, it might work for your barrage balloons. Because they're temporary. But. I can't see someone putting up a tower. I suppose maybe a cellular. And in this, you know, maybe something attached to a poll for that. I don't know. I really haven't had any testimony on the northeast kingdom project. But it keeps getting referenced. So maybe you can. Tell us what that is too. Thank you, madam chair. I think you've pretty much put your finger on it. This is intended to help in an emergency. It's a regulatory gap that exists right now. And I think that's a good point that is. And I think the manager said. There is a comparable provision for. Transmission and distribution utility facilities. Under emergency conditions, but nothing for telecommunications. And what I had anticipated. When the. Covid emergency looked as like it was going to. Result in an order for people to stay home. The city of And so in March. I had suggested to the administration that we try to get something going to close this regulatory gap. And the language that you have in front of you today. Is very much a product of a lot of hard work that house energy technology did. Over the course of a couple of Friday afternoons. There's no regulatory clarity. There's no regulatory clarity. There's no regulatory clarity. There's no regulatory clarity. There's no regulatory deployment of towers. But there are a variety of. Infrastructure elements that can be deployed. Rapidly and temporarily. Where there's no regulatory clarity that they can be deployed right now. Without some input from the PUC. So this language. Creates that clarity. One of the things I encountered when I put out the. April 10 call to action to the utilities. And the other thing that I did have in mind. In my opinion. Emergency telecommunications was the uncertainty about whether they could put up a poll. For instance. In order to site. Radio or the like. Or an antenna or. Or. Infrastructure of that nature. And there was some reluctance to proceed without that regulatory clarity. On the industry side. And Chuck Sturro can speak to this better than I can. if not a declination, to proceed rapidly with tower deployment if there wasn't some means of ensuring that in due course what was done under emergency circumstances could be reviewed for permanent siding. So in my opinion, the work that House Energy Technology has done is necessary work but it's not a big step. It's closing a gap that exists in our statutory framework. And to be clear, the extension that I was confused about earlier pertains to protecting towns when a carrier seeks a 248a cpg during an emergency. And that's different from seeking to site emergency. Okay, all right, that makes it clear. So someone's going through the regular process precisely 248a. This would allow the town precisely going through the normal not the emergency process to have longer to get everything together. Okay, and that makes it more in line with everything else we've done. That is COVID specific. Exactly. And as I remember now, that wasn't anything we were discussing when I was visiting with House Energy Technology. So I got my wires crossed and I apologize to Representative Chestnut Tangerine for breaking in on him like that. I did not mean to do that. In any case, I'm happy to answer questions for the committee about this. That's why I asked to testify today in case you had any questions. My heart sank when you said that the only must pass piece of this bill is the sunset provision. I can of course see why the committee sees it that way. But from my perspective, as you well know, Madam Chair, the window for expending COVID money is rapidly closing. And this is a tool that would be helpful for us to have in the toolkit. I'm not in a position to speak to the details about the NECA project, except to say that it is something that has come together rapidly to help a lot of students in the Northeast Kingdom. It's been a shuttle diplomacy effort courtesy of Velco and the department and the Northeast Kingdom wireless folks. And it's very promising, but it may require the deployment of a pole here and a pole there to get it off the ground. And so this provision today would help with that. Right on in there with it. Well, the 248 just expedites the process of getting any pole up for the next three years. But to do this emergency power, we really would need both. I think, but yeah, during this emergency, you probably write the ability to put up emergency. Like an extended pole, say a pole that's above 50 feet, for instance, or a monopole that goes up a significant altitude. Those are the kinds of emergency things we're talking about. And the other, the 248A versus 250 thing, I should add that the department supports that as well, the sunset piece, because I think the the progress that we have made in deploying telecommunications infrastructure in the state has largely been owing to the efficacy of 248A. So to have that die at this point would not be a good thing. And I think Mr. Fable will speak to the issue too, if you ask him. Okay. Anyone have questions for the commissioner? You have questions for the commissioner, Senator McDonald, or are you not hearing something? I know I was having a little trouble hearing the commissioner. No, I had trouble hearing you. Me. No one has trouble hearing me. Okay. It's technical. It's technical. It's not you. Okay. All right. Any questions at this point for the commissioner? Okay. Thank you. Next on my list, I've got Chuck Storrow. Charles Storrow. So Chuck, it's yours. Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members. Chuck Storrow, Lee and I in public affairs here on behalf of AT&T, here to just give you our client's reaction to the House's changes to S-301. So I'm going to be referring to the House's version of the bill. Okay. In section one of the bill, the House shortened the extension of 248A sunset from five years to three years. As the committee will remember, I was arguing that the sunset should be repealed altogether and the statute should be made permanent. It's always possible to amend or appeal a statute without there necessarily being a sunset in place. So we view the reduction of the extension from five to three years as not being a good thing, but three years has been the track record right along for extensions. We will take what we can get. Three years is pretty good. You know, be happy if the two chambers split the difference and came in with four years, but as long as it doesn't go below three years, we're good. The House also put in, in that bill section one, the emergency waiver language that the department was seeking. And I don't know how much AT&T would take advantage of that. Certainly for one of their larger towers would be probably pretty unlikely because there is always the possibility that if you can't get permitted after putting it up on an emergency basis, you'd have to take it down and the company doesn't generally want to run that kind of risk. But there may be other providers with smaller installations that this would benefit. And since it's not anything that hurts us, we're fine with it. The next part is, yes, the report on the criteria. There's no change there. There's no problem with that. Bill section three in the House's version is this ability of a town to seek an extension of the 60-day pre-filing period to 90 days before a company like AT&T can actually submit an application for a 248A permit to the PUC. It has to have provided a draft of that application at least 60 days in advance of submitting it to the PUC. AT&T routinely extends that period. In other words, it doesn't on day 61 slam in an application more often than not. It's engaged in productive conversations with a town to try and come to an agreement. And if additional time is needed, there's no problem. We routinely will provide that additional time. There was a little bit of concern about it being a sort of a mandatory feature, something that the towns could get because there is a federal shot clock that requires a time limit on the overall processing of these types of applications. But this section does not run afoul of the shot clock. So we have no objection to Bill section three. The main issue from our perspective aside from the 248A sunset is section four in the House's version of the bill. As passed by the Senate, that section instructed the E911 Board to revise its proposed rule and get it back to the car in September with the federal Norse reporting threshold being applicable to wireless providers. The House has taken that out. And presumably that would mean that the Board would just go forward with its current proposal that any outage on the part of a wireless carrier that lasts more than 30 minutes would have to be reported. I submitted a proposal to you committee members. I also gave it to the House committee members earlier today for sort of a middle ground. And this does relate to the California situation. California is working on an outage reporting rulemaking proceeding and they're under a statutory deadline to get that done by July 1. They have taken a round of comments but because of the COVID emergency they have not been able to complete the or they're anticipating that they're not going to be able to complete their rulemaking by July 1. So they have therefore adopted on an emergency basis a rule that will go into effect on July 1. And then presumably after they've considered the comments you know there may be a change in what they're putting into effect to reflect the comments to the extent that the California rulemaking authority agrees with them. So that made me think well what if the E911 Board was instructed to adopt the North Standard as the reporting threshold for wireless carriers but then you'll laugh at this but then that provision is sunsetted on July 1 of next year and by default the rule would then resort revert to what the E911 Board is currently proposing as a rulemaking threshold. And my thought there is is that you know the dust should be settling on what California where it's landing for its reporting rule and that would give if the current E911 Board's proposal is held in abeyance for a year that would give the legislature an opportunity in the 2021 session to take a look at what California did and if there's agreement that maybe what they did would be good for Vermont and then the board would be instructed to adopt that. If the legislature didn't do that didn't take it up then the matter would be on autopilot and the board's standard would go into effect in July of next year. My sort of motive in all of this is that while the wireless industry isn't necessarily thrilled with what California is proposing California is going to adopt something. California is a big state we're not going to lead the market in California because of what it adopts we're going to comply with it and that being the case it would be better for us if we don't have to comply with three sets of reporting thresholds the federal one one for California and one for Vermont it may be that it would be the federal one and then a common threshold that's common to Vermont and in California. So that's the idea I see representative Chesnut Tangerman there I don't know if the his committee has had a chance I doubt they have to take a look at that but I offer that up uh as a sort of middle ground that seems like a reasonable way to proceed to basically give California an opportunity to do its thing and then look at it and then potentially follow it and if that doesn't work out well then Vermont's going to do what it what it's already proposing. I will say that in the grand scheme of things the 248a extension because we are close to July one is important the E-911 provision is important to us but I don't want to jeopardize the section 248a extension over a further wrangling on the E-911 rule if the house is certainly if it's just dug in and it's not amenable to what I'm proposing or anything else that the Senate may come up with. I will say and you'll hear from my colleague Dylan Zick was wiki in a moment there's a fix in the E-911 rule provision for the void provider that everybody's agreed to and if uh in order to make this bill move forward things have to be jettisoned I would respectfully suggest don't jettison that fix because everybody agrees to it and it's actually necessary from a technical point of view. I think what I've heard is the house was interested in being able to get the E-911 rule which I assume contains other things other than this reporting requirement and get it moving. The Senate was concerned about setting up a separate requirement for national carriers and having them have to do something special for Vermont so we were interested in extending in some way until California made a move and then we were told it was more granular than the national move rule and that you know we would look at that and then see if that was something we could latch on just trying to give some consistency. Madam Chair may I respond to that and then we're in a roll call vote in the house. So when we talked about what the threshold should be our committee was was adamantly opposed to the the Norse threshold as as far too broad in Vermont as as Barb Neal said if a tower serves a thousand people and the threshold national threshold is 900 000 user minutes that would mean a tower serving 15 a thousand people would have to be out of service for 15 hours before it would be require reporting which is just nowhere near the kind of we're looking for and so so we were very opposed to the the national threshold looking for something much more appropriate for a rural sparsely populated area. California's proposal was uncertain and the both the at that time the threshold and the limitation the progress of it were uncertain so we thought we would go ahead with our own which mirrored the requirements for the copper landlines. I think our committee would probably be open to a discussion about the California rule that's that's I can't speak for the committee but just um I think we should uh I think we would be open to that. You can ask Ellen if I think Ellen's here I see your name um there she is if you could do a little research for us on the status or basically what is being proposed in California or maybe it's Maria I'm not sure who it's Maria I'm sorry I need to leave okay yes you go vote thank you and I think okay hey one of the issues that I would suggest that we look at if we can and I'm not sure that Ellen will have the ability to do that truck may be able to provide some of the information but my understanding is that when you apply the Nor's rule of how many people are covered by a particular cellular tower it differs depending upon where you are in the country and what the population densities are and you get very different results and so it's not a rule that's simply based on towers but it would be interesting for us to better understand what that would mean in the event that the California rule were applied as to how many people would be covered by a tower in Vermont. Also when a tower goes down whether or not we typically have a single tower or whether we have multiple towers and again whether it be AT&T or one of the other or several of the other providers that's a question that we can ask them. Senator one thing I would like to just mention is that the original legislation from last year was flawed with respect to the issue of VoIP providers reporting. That has been fixed and the fix that the House has made is what everybody agrees should happen. The Board is going to be under the House's version and under the Senate's version too, the Board is instructed to make that fix and submit it to Elkar in September so the rule is going to and I would urge you to stay that course with respect to the VoIP issue so the rule is going to have to come back to Elkar in September anyways. I just want to make that point that it's not going to be able to go into effect or it shouldn't go into effect in July because it needs this fix so I'm happy to answer any questions but I would propose that that the wireless reporting threshold be Norse until next July and then at that time if nothing has changed it would go to what the Board is proposing. All right because right now it is the national there while right now there's no Vermont specific reporting. So it would be maintaining the status quo for a year. Well there would be a little bit of a change because what we're fine with being obligated to file with Vermont E911 Board when we file with the FETS and now we don't even have to do that. Now you don't have to do that okay. We're happy to give you know when we file with the FEDS with respect to a Vermont outage sure we'll file with Vermont. The House didn't think that the federal threshold was clear enough. There's activity in California that would require a fairly granular reporting threshold basically an outage lasting more than 30 minutes affecting half of a zip code so if they're proposing and if that's where they land well we're gonna have to comply with that and it may be that that's granular enough for Vermont maybe not but let's see that's the theory. Okay can you check I think it was Senator Brock who said he understood that there was some variance based on size of the state density is it a one size fits all at the federal level or is there variance? It is one size fits all at the federal level and that's why we think actually Norse is good because it treats urban areas the same as rural areas because we don't know how many people are on any in any given tower it's mobile service so we don't know there's no wire going to anybody's phone so what the federal rule does is you basically take the number of your customers and divide it by the number of your towers and then you say same you know same number of customers is imputed to every tower in the country but it would require for a or would allow for a single tower outage for not to have to report for 15 hours. But doesn't that mean in effect that a tower in an urban area and a tower in the in a rural area are very different in terms of the amount of people involved right and they get that's right senator and but they get treated the same in other words but what it would mean for reporting for us for us it might mean a number that is materially different than a number say in massachusetts or new york and that number of customers would be much much lower right potentially that's right no it's that's that would be likely in terms of actual numbers yes but because we don't know how many people are using a given tower at any time there's this basically this mathematical exercise that just attributes to each tower the same number of people across the entire country. But in fact the number of people on a tower in manhattan it just common sense is not going to be anywhere near the number of tower on that same tower in franklin vermont. I think there'd be way more on manhattan than there is in fact in vermont yes absolutely okay but but i guess my my thought is is that california is going to do something it's a big state we're going to have to comply whether we like it or not and it would just be easier for us that if we have to comply with california that another state that does this have a similar threshold so then we're not you know looking at different that's that's all and and since that's not resolved yet in california i'm proposing give us some have some time before the vermont specific the current proposal kicks in and in the meantime we would provide reports to vermont when we have to provide them to the feds um so that's the idea and i and i did send it to the committee the house committee members this morning and uh you know if they and i could follow up if they're fine with that then good if they're not and and i don't want to cost the bill over this and i think to senator brock's point we may have more towers per capita because of our landscape and we're not Missouri that's big and flat we're vermont so we have mountains that get in the way which require more towers um but yeah you're right so what they do is they take the number of towers and divide it by well so let's say if you have a national standard they say nationally this is how many people yeah if you have a uh a national carrier that has a hundred million customers and i can throw out that 18t has around 140 million customers so a hundred million customers and let's say it has a hundred thousand towers that's 10 000 people per tower regardless of where it is right then you just figure how long does it take 10 000 people to expend 900 000 user minutes that's 15 hours for one power but if two towers are down then you cut it in half three towers are down you cut it by two thirds because 10 000 per tower you know then you got 30 000 people well how long does it take to expend 900 000 user minutes that's that much less so that's why we are doing bigger numbers yeah the norse standard we felt was adequate uh because most of the time it is multiple tower outages but the house did not agree and so now i'm trying to say well if we're going to do something different than norse basically let's see what california does and then either do that or vermont will do what it is currently proposing okay i'm going to get on to dylan thank you and thank you okay dylan thank you very much chair comings um i will be brief so uh for the record dylan's wiki lian on public affairs here on behalf of new england cable telecommunications association or net net this issue is separate and distinct though it's it is also in secret section four of the bill and it's separate and distinct from the wireless reporting thresholds that my colleague chuck was just chatting with you about essentially both the house committee and your committee made some changes to the language in set in section four dealing with the definition of an outage and specifically our requests has been consistent that um an outage be at the reporter that the network level um this allows for uh clear and concise reporting requirements across different um providers whether your retail or concast or charter um and that report that those providers are going to be required to report when they actually know that there is an outage which they are they know when there's an issue with their network so really i think that the house changes provided some additional clarity above and beyond what the what the finance committee provided earlier this year as chuck noted it was agreed to by all parties significantly the you know it was actually suggested by mr gibson from shrewsbury so i think you'll find that there's a consensus on this language and we we feel it works well um from the industry perspective and we'll also ensure that uh we are clear on what we're what we're what we need to be reporting on and any questions dylan i'm not seeing anybody i'm assuming i've got everybody on one screen okay break favor yes that's true yeah i just wanted to check in because it had the public utility commission waving certificates of public good just wanted to give you a chance to speak okay um i just i'm just here to talk about sections one two and three um section one um we continue to support the elimination of the sunset um however as long as there's an extension in place that will work i got to say that the uncertainty surrounding the sunset every couple of years causes a lot of problems for us in processing the applications we get gluts of applications that you can imagine once the sunset approaches and there's uncertainty about whether a news sunset will be imposed or whether the sunset will be eliminated this causes a lot of problems for us but as long as the sunset is um as long as there's some sort of extension of the sunset in place we're okay we'd rather see no sunset at all but um if it's three years five years you know whatever as long as that passes before july 1st that that'll be that's our main our main concern the emergency waiver provision uh put in by the department that's fine we're fine dealing with that the report we're still fine with that uh the the notice period you know we're fine with that so but right now there's an advanced notice what we call an advanced notice period that the um a provider will um it is required to send to the towns and the joiners and all those folks um a basically an advanced um notice of that they're going to file a petition with us the commission within 60 days and that's a minimum of 60 days so they could file they could file on day 61 they usually do not they have up until 180 days to file that a 180 day window which file that application with the commission once they file the advance notice with the town and everybody else um what this does is it says to the town you can seek a waiver on top of that 60 days you can ask for another 30 days to negotiate during the advanced notice period now as as Chuck Storro said um typically the um the providers um they want to have the town on board so they're willing to um take the time to negotiate with the town um however you know that being said I have no problem with this additional 30 days I would like to see and this is more to Ellen and Maria I would like to see a reference to the section in which this notice occurs because there are a lot of notice provisions in the in the in the section 48 a there's a there's an advanced notice period then there's a regular notice period once the once the application is filed there's different notice periods for types of applications so if there could be a reference to 248 a section subsection e that would be helpful if you're going to put that in but that's that's a minor that's a minor change um for section four I don't have any comments on that um and probably wise I don't want to see that one uh so yeah I just want to stress how important it is to get the sunset some sort of sunset pension pass prior to July first I think we're all hopeful we're going to reach agreement yeah but we have two options one is to strip it all out and just do the sunset and the other one is the final option we always have with stick it on the budget yeah either of those are fine with me as you can imagine um so so there you go there there's there's my testimony happy to take any question okay I think we know that that extension has to go especially if we want to get any kind of expansion up with the COVID money if this goes if this goes from a statewide level review to a town by town or for reverts to a town by town review from a statewide level review you're not going to see the pace of expansion that we've had in recent years um it's you're just not so um so there you go I think and that's pretty slow so okay all right so that right now is the uh testimony we've got on 301 is there any other we've got some decision points think about it the big one it sounds like up or down on almost everything except what do we do with the notice period that's going to be the hardest one I assume if we just strip it out then it falls to the rules as they've been put out um or we you know can delay doing anything for a year and leave the federal things in place or we can try setting a separate state standard which I don't know that it makes any difference to the national carriers which separate state standard it's the fact that there's a separate state standard for well for either one of them it's less than 500,000 people probably a couple no maybe not even 100,000 so um we shall go on um unless there's sender Brock you muted just one question in terms of what we've heard today uh the I know from my perspective I don't have any real issue with with much of anything in the bill other than this notice requirement and I wonder if the possibility in sort of an informal conference committee if we could modify section four on the that that the legislative committee on administrative rules to propose a rule on or before instead of September 30 to put it July of one 2021 I think that would satisfy the issues that the carries have raised I think it will keep us on track to get this done it will give us sufficient time at the beginning of the year because I'm hesitant to do it on the basis of six months after September 30th because again with the likelihood of a you know COVID resurgence at the beginning of the year and so on again I think we'd be faced with compressed time frames and the fact of the matter is in terms of what we're going to do with this information which I think is really thing that will drive a lot of that we're not doing anything with it anyway even if we had it it's true yeah this is right now it's information collecting so um sender Brock can you drop me an email with that and we'll see if maybe we can set up a mini meeting via zoom how are you how's your schedule Monday morning I have I have all the time in the world madam chair everybody who's calling me I just want a few hours away from the Brady bunch not that I don't love you all but okay I'll send you know 12 hours a day is starting to wear thin okay so we're going to go on to Lauren glint Davidian and Lauren uh sent us written comments um I told her we were really short because we do need to get um I try and get them out at 3 30 on Fridays I may not make that today but um want to give her some time um the local access bill came to us it was a study we sent it over to uh appropriations because that's where all studies go because they cost money um I know they're trying to find some COVID money in there but uh this is perhaps a little yeah this is a future um so Lauren floor is yours oh you're you're muted thank you thank you so much madam chair and members of the committee I'm Lauren glint Davidian I'm the executive director of cctv center for media and democracy and I also represent the Vermont access network which as you know is a mutual aid society of 25 public educational and government access channels and community centers across the state I wanted to I really appreciate the opportunity to testify I thought it would be beneficial to provide you with a little um insight from someone who's been in the zoom galleries watching the discussion about the broadband emergency funding and how these issues tie together from our perspective both as you consider the house um bill the cares um act relief um funding proposal that is going to come to the senate and also as you look ahead so this is really just um it's an overview but there's also a couple of appeals in here to you directly so um the house looked at the needs of public educational and government access centers through the COVID emergency period and the work that we have been doing to support communities and um they're very generous we think in and insightful to include our operating and staff costs associated to being able to stream and provide technical assistance to municipalities and other organizations and individuals to be able to participate in using online interaction they were not able and they did not see that our capital costs were eligible and it seems that there may be a window to consider those capital costs in the recommendations from the ccg group that they made to you in the cares act relief report that they submitted and you heard testimony on so we would just like you to keep this in mind as you review the bill from the house and the recommendations of the ccg group and perhaps consider helping us to cover the capital expenses related to supporting the community during this time so that is sort of request number one okay so the next thing is that I just wanted you to be aware because this is an ongoing conversation of the impact of COVID-19 on the state's pegged community access centers because um I think it's just important to understand the first is there is a pretty precipitous decline in non-cable revenue that these community media centers are experiencing many of them have started as you know to diversify their revenue through earned income and philanthropy and a lot of those revenue streams which are meant to offset cable revenue declines and also make us healthier organizations we're anticipating about a 75 percent decline in that this year which is about a quarter of a million dollars we also know from the trades and from Comcast's own communications with its shareholders that there will be a dramatic decline in cable subscriptions around the country and we expect in Vermont so we think that that may be as much as 10 percent this year which means about 700 thousand dollars of the roughly 7 million that subscribers pay towards peg access so those are just two points of information that I think are important for you to know in terms of the general context of the funding world for these services the next thing that I just wanted to underscore is we are very appreciative that this committee senate finance voted out our request for a study of how to assess public benefit from the use of the rights of way and as you said madam chair that is in the appropriations committee and they are certainly struggling with many difficult decisions the discussion of broadband and extending broadband to every home in the state or at least to the students the households where there are students that don't have access really raises the issue of the importance of looking for ongoing and regular revenue streams for this kind of public access whether it's public access to equipment and cable lines or to broadband and so we think that S318 is really critical and this study is very very important at this time and we also think that the mapping requirements for mapping where broadband services are broadband infrastructure is actually to be specific is a very important requirement of this period of time it is the only way to have a clear map of broadband infrastructure fiber infrastructure which we do not have in the state we need to have that picture so the decisions about potential policy implications and also where to deploy fiber can be made easily and quickly and then finally I just want to draw your attention this is I think this is just an important point to make which is in the houses bill the get vermoners connected now provision of this coronavirus emergency funding and it talks about line extensions cable line extensions but in the house version in energy and technology the language about the installation of temporary Wi-Fi hotspots or well it in essence the installation of temporary Wi-Fi hotspots to expand broadband capacity was x'd out of that bill and it just really seems very short sighted to exclude this as a solution fixed wireless so I just want you to I just want you to know that it is short sighted to exclude fixed wireless as a way to get broadband to homes across the state and that the line extension solution may get us some of the way but without these Wi-Fi hotspots of high and low frequencies to reach people in different parts of the state we are really I think precluding the options that will help solve this problem and I also you know I understand in the background that there is and this is just completely I'm just going to say it I understand in the background that there is reluctance to do business with VTEL but I think again that any provider in the state should be considered to help us solve this emergency set of issues that we have so they're in and my testimony and I just wanted to offer it to you as you make your way through some of these thorny and sometimes intractable issues thank you any questions for Lauren Glenn okay I am not seeing any so thank you for coming in on this warm afternoon to talk to us thank you so much madam chair okay thank you