 Okay, great. Well, I'd be happy to get started here. I know we're a small group, but we're a mighty group, as far as being able to put together our presentation. We'll also record it, so not only to benefit others who didn't make it, but for you to go back and go through it to listen to it if there's some things that you want to refresh your mind on. So we're talking about Fiber to the Library, and today we're primarily focused on, as an overview of what needs to be done by, perhaps it will be you, perhaps it'll be us helping you to get to have the Fiber at your library, and it would be next July, hopefully that would be our target of 2023. So we're focused primarily on special construction today, and we have a few people to introduce to you that you may not have met yet. I think probably our staff, you know, but we'll start with Sam and go down the line and introduce. I'm Sam Shaw. I'm the Planning and Data Services and LST, Coordinated Area of the Commission. Of course I'm Holly Wolt, and I guess primarily I'm a Technology Specialist in regard to broadband, Fiber, and network equipment at the Public Libraries in Nebraska. And then I'm Becca Kingery. If most of you remember, caring from Tom Rolfs in the past, I started working with him about a year ago, and recently he moved on to the NTIA, which I think you're going to hear a little bit about today. And upon his departure, I took his position. So I'm here from the FCIO for Network Nebraska. And for Krista? Hi, I'm Krista Porter. I am the Library Development Director at the Nebraska Library Commission, and one of my duties is that, that is my main part of this special construction, is I am the State E-Rate Coordinator for Public Libraries in the state. So I do training and assistance in helping with all of our Public Libraries do their E-Rate. And I think it would be great. We're a small group. I see that we have our guest library person here, who is from Kimball, Amber. And if you want to introduce yourself, because you're actually part of the presentation first, and then if we could follow through with the other folks on the line and just give us your name, and then I have something special to ask you to contribute to. Very simple. So we'll get Amber going first. My name is Amber Sweetland. I'm the Director for the Kimball Public Library. And Amber is here because, again, last year, she applied on behalf of the Kimball Public Library for special construction and received it. And she's going to share a little bit about her experiences. Probably the good, the bad, and hopefully no ugly. So can we move on to... I can't see everyone else. Is anybody else on that would like to introduce themselves? I can't see it. Let's see here. Yeah, hang on a sec here. I am going to... All right. Sarah, Stephanie, and Terry, you're the three people we have. I've unmuted all of you. If you have a microphone, you can introduce yourself and think about answering these questions that we have up here on the screen. Or if you don't have a microphone, you can type into the question section. Same information. Okay. So Sarah's typed in. Yeah. Sarah Sanderson, she's Director at the Sioux County Public Library in Harrison. Welcome. Good morning, y'all. This is Stephanie Malcolm, and I am the Director at the Palisade Public Library in Palisade, Nebraska, very southwest corner of Nebraska. I don't really have complaints about our internet. I really want to engage our patrons more with the internet, and I'm planning some programming for that. We do have very slow internet access for a lot of people in our community, so offering faster internet would be a boon for all of us. Great, Malcolm. And Terry, if you have a microphone, you can speak or you can type into the questions section in your go-to-webinar interface, whichever. I'm not seeing anything, but I know from our registrations, Terry Feyman is from Stratton Public Library. Right, and I visited with Terry. I'm excited to have you on board, Terry, and that you were able to come and be on live with us today. She just expressed what many of the rural public libraries in Nebraska say, well, we're just so small. I just don't know if we need to have fiber, and you'll see that's something that's pretty commonly stated by rural libraries in Nebraska, but we're happy to see you, and hopefully we can change your mind and get you on your way to fiber to your community, in fact, also. And she did actually type into something long. I can't see when people are typing, so I have to wait until it pops up. Well, she says, Terry Feyman, you can find me in Stratton, Nebraska. We have very weak computers at this time, and only one working got new ones coming, so they are getting new equipment, too. Good, great. Well, this is your voice to do big things, Terry. Thank you. Shall we just go on then? Yeah, I think we'll just keep moving through. Cool. So I have to tell you, I'm at a disadvantage here. I cannot read the the screen that's in front of me because our lights are pretty bright, so you think you can see us. I'm not sure that matters as much, but one of the things, these are the things we're going to address, and right off the bat, I decided to put this information in as why this is the perfect time for you to connect fiber to Nebraska Public Libraries, and this would be about you. There's tons of money, and we'll be talking about it shortly, that's coming into the state through the federal government, and it is offering opportunities for primarily rural or very low speed libraries with internet speeds to to switch to fiber, to to do infrastructure projects, etc. And I think that this is a really important piece for Nebraska to catch on to. Sam is going to do a bit of a data review, and this is what I was alluding to, too. I think a lot of times, Nebraska Public Libraries, rural libraries, feel like they might be isolated, and they're the only one, and they might be thinking, oh, I really should have a faster speed. But there's a lot of things that make it difficult or barriers for your library to be able to move to fiber or even a faster speed. And so he will be able to give us some information telling us about where we are standing, as far as in where your library may be standing as far as its data and its speed for internet in Nebraska. And then we're going to be talking about options for your fiber buildouts, and that's where we're working with our new team member, Becca. And I also want to make sure you all know that this is this cross agency working together is kind of a little bit unusual, and we can thank the OCIO for kind of giving us an invitation to join them for a few grants a few years ago. And this is where this relationship started. So we welcome Becca, and we've had a good time visiting already and about projects and things that we want to do into the future. And we, of course, have our live from Kimball Public Library Amber coming to talk to us and be thinking about questions that you might have to ask her related to some of your concerns. If you're thinking about fiber to the library or what about special construction, she'll give you a summary, but we hope that she's engaged in our question and answers afterwards. And at the very end, we have resources for you that are available now as what you complete viewing and being a part of the webinar that you can go to to find out additional information to answer questions. And then we have a Q&A time. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to talk about Wi-Fi for now before we get into the nuts and bolts of special construction, because there's some developments that have happened this past year related to funding and that I alluded to in the beginning that have come into from the federal government to states and in particular, we'll move forward. We're going one slide forward. Okay, so in particular, we're going to be talking about the funds that are coming through the NTIA, which is the National Technology and Information Administration. And it's under the Department of Commerce that established by, and I'm reading this here, by a bill that was passed last November, which is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and is also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Bipartisan Information Law passed. Okay, I'm doing a double there, but Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was passed last year. And if you look here, you'll see that this is a substantial amount of money. And we're going to be focusing primarily today and just our little bit of discussion of why now on the first two columns of this presentation slide. And in particular, we are going to be talking about the, let's move forward, move forward with a slide. Okay, that the slide over on the slide pocket is over on the right that talks about the six funding groups. And in particular, you see the one that's highlighted and it's basically includes libraries. So in this funding, there is this huge chunk of funding, there is money there for the libraries. There's also kind of an interesting piece about this. The focus is on some particular individual who lives, so this is residential business, and libraries, other anchor institutions, lives in the following households. It would be an individual with disabilities, individual 60 years of age or older, individuals with language barriers, or a low level of literacy, individuals who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group, individuals who reside in a rural area, veterans, individuals who are incarcerated or in transition from incarceration. So this, I think that it's not necessarily says it covers everybody, but I think that we can call this internet for everybody or access to internet for everybody. Let's see what else. So if we move forward in the next slide. This is the two slides that I talked about. One was the Digital Equity Act, and the other one was for the bead, the columns. And you can see here highlighted how much funding is coming into Nebraska from this 2.75 billion dollars. And it's amazing to know that in Nebraska that $598, almost $600,000 is just going for a planning grant, which is unprecedented in the federal government. This is the first time this is happening. And right now we're kind of working on, well, I should say the library commission is also engaged in this and is a part of the planning grant group. We've been asked to be on board with that. And so we're doing a lot of listening right now and going out and having meetings and communities to find out what it is that we can do with the funds for the Digital Equity Act to meet the needs of the community. So let's see what else do we have to say. So you not planning grant runs October 1 through September 30. It's kind of a sliding type of a thing. It's about a year. Yeah, the planning, that's the other thing. Thanks, Sam. The planning is for a full year of time. And then the actual state grants, sorry, one of the things I like about this is that there is the potential for the division of the funding that we could have, the library commission could have its own sub-grant and work with libraries to enhance Digital Equity in their communities by just administering a grant that's out of this Digital Equity grant. There's just tons of money in there. Okay, let's move forward. And I guess I didn't mention the timeline is the same also for both grants. It's a four year, approximately a four year grant. This is where I wanted just to highlight when there was a discussion about bringing faster speed to your community and through the library, you don't realize that there's really a great potential for this. And this is why I'm saying this right now is to help you to understand when you're visiting with your communities that the BEAD program is offering the connection to first off has three priorities. First off is any residential area or a business that has underserved, which would be 25 megabits per second speed to the residents. And then the second priority is from 25 to 120 for businesses and residential. Unfortunately, the third group includes libraries. And they're saying that the funding probably won't make it to the third group. But this is a silver lining if the library uses special construction funding, which we'll hear about to bring the anchor of the fiber into the community, then the providers will solicit to the Public Service Commission and ask them or they'll solicit for proposal for being awarded a certain area. And so that can be a community that has a library as its anchor. And then all the broadband goes out to the fiber to the residents and to the like the downtown businesses or any any businesses in the area. So when we're looking at this as an option, I think that this would be play well in rural areas, because one of the things is, which you'll learn from special construction or if you read my email, it is really a great discount that can be used in order to bring the fiber to the library. And so business ISPs are very interested in doing that because then they have a location in with fiber node in the in the community, and then they can disperse out using this bead fund to do that. Moving forward with that, the bead program is based off of a map by the FCC of the locations that they decide is as areas to divide Nebraska and all states up into in order to be able to offer ISPs the ability to provide a proposal. So it's kind of like when ISP like your local one might say, I can do this for this much money. And then another one will come in and say, Oh, well, I can do it for this much money. And so once one is awarded, then they they can move forward and provide not only that the library has that high speed, but through the rest of the residents. And so to me, this is a key point. And this is really what I was driving for through the this part of the presentation and doing it early is that that as a library, you need to be talking in your community to your administrators and your movers and shakers about the possibility of coordinating this kind of an activity. So it's not just for the library. Yeah, there may be some healthy competition that this will instigate. Yes, and you may be surprised who actually has sometimes you have some provider that you weren't really aware of. And it's not your provider, but they come in with a great, a great bid for doing the services for fiber. And I think something that I to note too, on both this, the bead timeline and the digital equity on previous slide, that Holly mentioned, the planning is happening now. And through 2023, none of this will actually be implemented until 2024. What we're talking about today with special construction, this would be done in 2023. So you would be ahead of the game of these things that are still to come. And I think that that's also true, because I don't believe the map that they can work with, even for the, like you're saying, in the bead grant, I don't think that that map is going to be available. Do you know? Do you have any idea? And I got maybe a year before that's done too. They, I mean, they've talked about the maps and stages. So I think they plan to have their first edition later this year. But as far as I understand the NTIA, the NTIA is not going to move forward until they have the second configuration, which is slated for 2023. Okay, so move forward. So we're just going to put this up here for posterity. I don't really have much to talk about, except for this new website that the state of Nebraska has developed and is live now. This is a place you can go to read about announcements related to Nebraska specific, and I suspect some federal types of things that are down the pipeline. But this is where you're going to find out more about what fiber is, where fiber is being placed in Nebraska and what kind of state funding there is for developing programs for bringing fiber to communities. I think that's probably it. So this is talking about getting involved. And again, this is the reason why I started with this slide because these set of slides, because I wanted to keep it in your mind as you go through and we talk in depth about special construction and Chris is right. It's special construction has been around. But also we want to be sure that we now see that we have some other avenues of funding available that they can complement each other and your community, not only your library, community library, but your community has an opportunity here to grow too. I think that's probably it for what I need to be talking about. And this came, the slides came from NTIA via Tom Ralfus. And I wanted to give him credit for that because he spent some time talking to me about this position there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, now, now we'll be focused on for the remainder, special construction, and E rate, etc. and other topics. But if you want to visit with me later about this topic, or if you want to talk to Tom, then please feel free to, you know, we can I can put you in contact with him if you have questions. Thank you. Move on. Okay. One of the things I was looking at when I put these slides together, if you want to go to the next one, Christa, I just want to talk a little bit about where we're at with data sources and like what you can do if you're planning your project. But I think one of the overarching themes here is to look at the needs of your community. Before you look at, you know, some of these resources that we're going to show about data sources, you know, look at part of a larger planning landscape that may have to do with your infrastructure in your library, your internet speed, but also your equipment that you're using, you know, is that up to date? You know, what are the needs of your community? And that's, you know, your internet speed, your equipment, the availability, you know, is your Wi-Fi connected to outdoor spaces? You know, like, is your town square next to your library? And are there events that could take advantage of Wi-Fi in that area at certain times when the library may not be open, for instance? So I think that's kind of the overarching thing. And then how does that affect library programs, services? Are there programs and services that you're not able to offer now that you could with upgrading your infrastructure? Are there other needs in the community that you have, like, say your meeting room, for instance? Do people in the community use other meeting room resources because the library can't handle, you know, those technology needs of the community? So I think those are some of the things that you can look at, you know, kind of as the overarching planning process. But there are a few data sources available here to help you with that. Of course, many of you know we have a public library survey. We collect that data, those data, mid-December through mid-February every year. So the most current is fiscal year 2021. We also have a web page that summarizes that as it pertains specifically to internet and broadband. And that's the second link there. And then we have a third link that is within that second link page that is a county fact sheet that's tailored towards specific counties. And I don't know if you can click on that third link, Chris, that I want to show. Maybe if we could show that. Is that helpful? Can you click on that third link? Is that openable? No, but I can bring it up. Just give me two seconds here. I can get it up separately. Because I think that's a good, I want to show that because I think that's a good starting point for libraries and looking at where you're at. And it has some talking points in there that I think are helpful to people that maybe are thinking about what you're kind of talking about later with category two and special construction. All right, there it is. Okay, hold on a sec. I am going to tell you about that. I'm kind of three for a little bit. There we go. Okay, so that's the third link on that slide. We'll take you to this page and it's a county by county. You have links by county. And so if you could click on the second one, Crystal, which is Antelope County. And the reason we're not going with Adams County is because there's only one library in Adams County at Hastings Public Library. And so this is a little bit better, better example. So what you'll see is on the left hand side. I don't know if you can read that or not. But what you'll see on the left hand side is kind of a summary of some FCC data. It shows the percentage of population with broadband available for the entire state. And then rural areas, you'll see, you know, that's quite a bit lower than the entire state. And then how Antelope County in particular compares to that down at the bottom there. And then on the right hand side, you'll see the percentage of population with broadband subscription for the entire state as a whole. And then Antelope County as it compares. And then if you scroll down a little bit, you'll see a summary in this kind of in the middle there. This summarizes the libraries that are in Antelope County. So we have Clearwater, Elgin, Nealey, Lois Johnson Memorial in Oakdale, and then Orchard Public Library. And so this summarizes the PLS data, shows the legal service area of those libraries, what they reported on the last public library survey for their maximum download speed. And then on the third column, we have a persons per megabit index. What we do, what we've done there is to look at the top end of the speed and then the legal service area. And that gives you a persons per megabit index. So it's actually the LSA divided by the speed. Let me make sure I got that right. Yeah, the LSA is on top, speeds on the bottom. And so lower the number, the better that speed meets the needs of that community. And so you'll notice here that, for instance, Clearwater, you know, as population of 398 and their top end speed is 50 megabits per second. So they have a relatively low number, it's eight, as compared to, say, Lois Johnson, which has, you know, a slightly less population, but only a three megabit top end speed. So their index is 96. So it's quite a bit higher than what Clearwater is. And then if you scroll down a little bit, there's some talking points there that should help you about, you know, some other resources. You know, this is a sheet that's up to date. You can print it out. It's a good talking point to take to your library board or community to kind of give you a starting point as to where you're at, and then some other resources that would help you in the planning process. I'm wondering if the libraries have, like, smaller, not necessarily a regional meeting, but if any of these libraries today that are on are in the recording. If they have a group that gets together, this would be an interesting piece of information to share with them, too. You know, as they look across, they're able to reference this and have a conversation. So there are meetings in some areas of the state, and then some are regional library system directors host get-togethers of library directors in their areas. So it might be something to mention to them that you might want to have a meeting specifically. This might be the topic of. The other thing that's not in this handout that you could definitely get from the public library survey data is your ISP. So that may be important if some of these communities are close, and one of them has, you know, fantastic speed in one ISP and the other one doesn't. It may be something to look at, too. Right, I think that's true, too. So if you want to go back to the slides there, Kristen, thank you. And the next one. So I've kind of summarized some of our PLS data just to show where we're at, and this is the most current, which is fiscal year 2021. You'll notice a relatively large number in the 24 to 50 and the 50 to 100, but, you know, we've got this cluster that's, you know, less than 24. You know, we've got almost 10 libraries that are less than 1.5, and then these other clusters. And those are the libraries that we'd like to see move, you know, up in that 24 to 50 to 100 and then 100 plus range. So that kind of summarizes those speed ranges, and these are self-reported on the survey, too. So they may fluctuate from time to time, too. And we've noticed that some libraries have actually upgraded their speed since the last survey. So we imagine that this would probably change when the next survey launches in November. So it'd be interesting to see how the landscape changes. So if you want to go to the next slide. So then we have a summary of connection types. You see that we have quite a few that are on fiber optic, but almost the same number that are on DSL. And so what we'd like to see is those DSL cable and area wireless libraries move to the fiber optic category. And next slide. So this is kind of, as I put this together, this was, we updated this from a presentation we did three years ago. And this was one of the slides that was in there, and I hesitated to put this in there again, because this is sort of misleading. I mean, if you look at this and you think, oh, you know, this is what we talked about earlier with the lower speed ratio being good and the higher speed ratio maybe being not so good. It looks like three rivers is way behind, but if you look at the number of libraries in three rivers library system compared to central plains, it's about 20 more, 20 to 25, I think more in three rivers than central plains. So you have more libraries and then western has the lowest number of libraries, I think about 40. And then you have to also look at which library is completed a survey, because we're using public library survey data and there may be libraries that didn't submit a survey. So that factors in here too, but if you look at statewide numbers, you know, are comparable to western library system in southeast three rivers, a little bit higher. We'd like to see that a little lower in central plains. Looks like it's, you know, a little bit better than the statewide average. So if you want to go to the next slide, Prista. So this was interesting as I updated this slide. This shows the last prior three years of internet speeds in Nebraska libraries, and we've kind of divided this in three categories of underserved, which is less than 12 megabits per second. And then underserved, which is 12 to 24, and then served, which is 24 plus. And you'll notice that that underserved line hasn't moved at all over the last three years. It's pretty much stagnant. But from 2020 to 2021, you've almost seen a flip flop in the unserved and the served as the served is one way up and the unserved is one down. So that's good news, but we'd like to see, you know, that cluster of about 30 libraries that are unserved and 30 libraries that are underserved kind of go up to that served category. Kind of like a flat line. So we'd like to see those numbers go up to that served category, but it's good that there's almost, from 2020 to 2021, the served has almost tripled. It's good that the unserved and underserved did not go up, though. Things are at least in the right direction. It's a very good point. I think this is actually also, I see, what I see here is, and it's a side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe, when that happened, everyone realized everything went remote, school, work, and communities and all that funding we were talking about coming. All of that is a side effect of everyone realizing everybody needs good internet. It should be a right that everyone has everywhere and some companies are already on board with it and doing it before even this money that's coming now in the next few years. And that's kind of like what I was trying to get out in the planning part at the beginning. Like, you know, do you have a community room? Is that meet the needs of Zoom meetings that, you know, those needs that people have now with people coming in remotely? You know, it may not be. There may be other areas in the community that those people are turning to that they could be turning to the library. You know, if they had a more stable, and not just a more faster speed, but more stable, too. Yeah, fiber with reliability and speed. Yeah, both of those are the issues. What, why you look to fiber instead of, I don't know, I personally am about the country, so I don't have a DSL possibility. But you know, I hear there's a lot of fluctuation with that type of service and non-reliability. And so even if somebody is watching this and they say, well, you know, we can serve our community with 50 megabits and we've got, we're okay at 100 even. I still say this is the time, flush with money for you an opportunity for you to move to reliable, scalable internet speed. Jump on that while it's available right now and think to the future. Go bigger than what you think, oh, we just need, like you said, 50 or 100. Go for 5 gig. Go for more than that. Think about what's going to be happening in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Is that it, Sam? That's it, yeah. Okay. That was my last slide, too. It was, yes. Do you want me to just pick up from here then? Sure. I think that what, today, don't worry and I guess I'd like to, if it's okay with you, Krista, to tell everybody to kind of sit back and relax and just kind of watch this if they're not familiar with e-rate or, you know, just finding out about special construction because we will have a workshop. Krista and I will be doing one on October, I believe the 13th in the afternoon and it's on the calendar but there's no information associated with it. It's on the NLC's calendar and we'll make sure that we include that in our email when we send our recording. But this is just time to sit and then either pat yourself on your back and say, oh, I knew that or say, oh, well, that's interesting. But one thing I want to be sure you understand is that we are here to help you through all this. So if you look at all this and say, oh, my gosh, I can't do it, we don't expect you to do it alone. And Krista has done a marvelous job the last couple of years working with special construction, you know, because of COVID-2 she remotes into your computer and helps with the submission of the forms, etc. that she'll be talking about. So again, sit back, relax and enjoy a segment of e-rate. Enjoy e-rate, sure. I wish you a good rest of your life. Thank you. Yeah. All right, thanks, Ali. Yeah, and Holly's been of course very helpful with this special construction we've been doing as well. You'll hear about doing not in detail today, but like she said in the later workshop, doing an RFP, request for proposal, request for quotes, which can be horribly intimidating. Don't worry about that either. We have templates, we have health guides. We will hold your hands through the whole process. We've done it with many libraries in the last three years, so that's two years. So we will get you through this. So as Ali said, yeah, I'm going to take just 10 minutes ish here to talk about e-rate and the special construction program that we have. Fuller training coming, as Holly said, in addition to our specific special construction training, I will have my usual fall workshops that are just e-rate in general. We scheduled some time in November, so look forward to those. I did do in August an e-rate 101 session on Encompass Live on August 17th, so there's a recording of that, a one-hour intro to e-rate. So if you wanted to get a little more than today, but a little less than a full three-hour workshop, you can go and watch that recording. So e-rate, what is e-rate? It's an FCC program to ensure, I'm just going to read what it says, that schools and libraries can obtain high-speed internet access and telecommunications at affordable rates to keep students and library patrons connected to broadband by providing a discount on eligible services. It's not a grant program or a loan program, it's just a discount on what you pay. It is done through the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. The funding to give these discounts to schools and libraries comes from the service fee. This is one of those many fees and taxes that you and I and all the service providers pay on your bills whenever you pay for your telephone and internet services each month. And it is run by USAC, which is a not-for-profit company that was set up by the FCC back in 1996, 1997, when this first was started, e-rate. Universal Service Administrative Company. So here we talk about USAC. They handle all the work with you on doing your e-rate. E-rate funding is given out on, based on funding years. Funding year runs from July 1st of one year to June 30th of the next year. So right now, when you are applying for e-rate here in the fall of 2022, you are thinking about receiving your discount starting July 2023. Holly had mentioned that earlier too, that we're talking about, that's when your fiber may be set up as well. So right now, you're thinking of applying for funding year 2023, which runs July 1st 2023 through June 30th 2024. So you're always thinking forward for e-rate. Who's eligible to apply? All libraries in Nebraska, all public libraries in Nebraska are eligible. The USAC's FCC rules must be eligible for LSTA funding. This is Library Service and Technology Act funding to the library services. All public libraries are eligible for that in Nebraska. All of our schools and school districts apply and are eligible as well. And if there happen to be a consortia, groups of libraries and school districts, they can do it as a group application. We have an website on the library commission website all about e-rate for public libraries and nlc.nebraska.gov slash e-rate. So you can go there for all sorts of details. We did mention schools here. I handle, as I said, I'm the state e-rate coordinator of public libraries. And the Department of Education has staff that handles this for the schools. So you'll hear me talk more about libraries here, and that's what you all are, of course. But schools do this as well, and they do it with the help from the Department of Education. So how much of a discount can you receive from the e-rate program? Anywhere from 20 to 90% is available here in Nebraska. Most of our libraries fall into the 60, 70, 80% range. So for whatever you pay for your monthly internet costs, you could receive 60, 70, or 80% off on that and not have to pay that. The discount is based on the percentage of students in the where eligible for the school lunch program. This is the free and reduced lunch program in your school district where your library is located. This isn't the number of students that apply, it's the number that are eligible. They needed to find something that is an indicator of poverty and so they picked this as that criteria. And if you have more students eligible for the free and school lunch program, that's an indicator that you have more people, that your community needs more health and you get a higher discount. Also, whether you're urban or rural is calculated into that as well. Most of Nebraska being rural, of course, and getting a little higher. So what is what can you get a discount on? E-Ray is broken up into two categories, category one and two. And services, category one is getting the internet to your library building, playing that's your monthly internet costs and any construction involved in getting that set up. That's where special construction comes in. And then category two is once you have that service to your building, how do you use it? There's physical equipment that you need to have, cabling, wiring, routers, etc. that you need to have inside the building and that's where you category two covers that. And you see, I've got a look, there's a graphic here, that brick there is your, you can think about this way, that's your library wall. Category one is outside the library building. Category two is inside. Only things related to providing internet service are eligible for E-Rate, not the devices that you use. So not computers or laptops or wireless printers or any of that. Those are not E-Rate eligible. Just the things related to getting the service to your building and making it work. Category one can be anything that gets you high speed internet. So wireless, Ethernet, DSL cable, so all of these things are available to get an E-Rate discount on. So you don't have to be on Fiber, but Fiber is what we're talking about getting to here today. But any of these are available for category one. Category two, as I said, all that equipment, everything in your wire, your closet there for your network, access points, firewalls, switches, routers, et cetera, power supply, anything that makes it work. Something to also be aware of is that in order to apply for and receive E-Rate, you do need to be in compliance with SIPA. This is the Children's Internet Protection Act. This is where you have their wording of technology protection measure. That means a filter on your computers, something that blocks certain types of materials that are harmful to minors. So just getting to bad internet sites is the short version of that. So you do have to be in compliance with SIPA. There's information on the USAC website and on our E-Rate website with more information about that if you want to talk about how to do that. But you do have to be SIPA compliant to receive E-Rate and receive this special construction funding that we're going to be talking about. E-Rate is an annual program that you just apply for every year and there are multiple forms that you do at different times during the year and I am the one that helps you get through all these forms. So this is to show you the different ones that happen right now in the fall is when we start with the 470 and then we go through the winter and into the spring and even into the summer next year possibly doing all of the other forms in the process. Like I said, I'm not going to go into detail on this at all today. We have full training coming in that E-Rate 101 I highly recommend you take a look at for a little more detail on this. In spite of this picture I have here of papers E-Rate is all done online. There is the E-Rate Productivity Center acronym for that is EPIC which I was instituted in 2016 and you go there to do everything. You submit your forms, you answer questions, you upload contracts do all of your back and forth for your E-Rate application all online and account you have there. So specifically talking about special construction special construction is as I said under category one because it's about getting the internet to your building and this is special construction is a you can get new fiber run to your building. So if you already have fiber this isn't for you this is just for libraries and schools who don't have it at all and you can get a discount that same discount of the 60, 70, 80% whatever you have on all the construction that is done any program management any planning all of that. Now I mentioned that the E-Rate funding starts on July 1st USAC does understand that you might your construction and your company might not be able to wait until then to do the construction and you really want your internet fiber to start on July 1st when the funding year does so they do allow you to do the work and do this construction digging the line digging the trenches and laying the cables and whatever up to January 1st of the year so this construction would actually start possibly somewhere between January and July 1st and then by July 1st you've got your fiber good to go. So that's special construction what the that is always available for E-Rate there's this special deal now that USAC came up with also back about 2016 a state matching fund. If a state would come up with some funding to match the extra cost that a library would have to pay E-Rate will match what the state is putting up so you have a cost for construction project that you get 80% of it covered by E-Rate so some of it still needs to be paid by the library the state comes up with money that will help cover that and then E-Rate will give even more now to put this even more make it easier to understand here's just the math of it and this is just an example the emails from Holly had a much lower bid because we it's not realistic but it's possible you know if you're out here in Japan or somewhere yeah you never know and this is a nice round of numbers yeah the bottom line so if you had if you get a company says it will cost $100,000 to run fiber to your library you have an 80% E-Rate discount E-Rate pays for 80,000 of that covered by that totally leaving 20,000 that needs to be covered by the library but if your state has a matching fund set up they do 10% of what's left over which is 10,000 and E-Rate says oh hey your state's offering to help will help even more and will match whatever the state gives you and in the end with this particular math of $100,000 project and 80% E-Rate discount the library costs them nothing to have the construction done zero this is if you had an 80% discount now if you have less than 80% discount you will have to pay something 80 is like the magic number and if you haven't higher than 80 you don't get money back you don't get extra it just all gets covered and so great deal to get fiber run to your library and to your community as we have mentioned this gets all that work done and covered by E-Rate and in our case the state of Nebraska we do have through the public service commission they budgeted a million dollars to do this for libraries and schools starting in 2021 and we've got some libraries have done it already and that's why we have Amber on with us there's a link to go and look at all the information about it so if you are not fiber connected you can apply for E-Rate so first you apply for E-Rate saying I want to do this project you see if you find someone who will do it and if you do find a provider that will do this then after you've got that set up you apply to the public service commission a separate application to them to get that match get that extra money for what you owe would owe as the library once you have that approved then when you do your second form the E-Rate process when you tell you say hey we've got this set up we've got this company to do it we've got the state matching funds we submit all that to E-Rate and they say great we now will have you on our list of people that will get that match we will match what the state is giving you and you'll not have to pay anything or you'll have to pay a small amount depending on your E-Rate discount so that is the quick version of E-Rate and special construction anything I missed Holly, Sam, Becca I guess the one thing to say and the emphasize and that was great but the all of this process it's a process and you can not do anything with any and any step along the way if you choose not to so I just want to be sure how are you still going through it so I mean and we do mention this when we talk about it in libraries it is a no obligation thing when you do this first form the 470 a 470 is just saying we're looking for somebody to provide us with this service we're looking for a company that can do this and we'll see what's out there so we highly recommend doing this at the very least just to see because you never know we've had some libraries that say oh our service provider doesn't do fiber you'd be surprised they just might or as Holly said there should be a different company you might end up switching so just put this out there does not commit you to anything just get this out there saying we're looking to have this done and see what kind of restaurants as you get back then you could go to the second step and do the 471 and tell us that okay we want and we want to do this you still aren't committed you can still even if they say yes you get approved if you decide wait the city is not ready for this is too much you can just stop there too you're not committed this is all just feeling it out and you always get an idea of what will it cost what kind of companies are out there and then maybe if this year it doesn't work out for you do it next year this funding is good through sorry sorry I'm sorry the only way that commits you is if you sign a contract so this might seem like a lot of effort to do before you sign a contract but remember you know that it's a pretty incredible discount and you're working with the federal government on top of that but really is something that it's also very empowering I have to say many libraries have told me this they've gone through the process and did not move forward but it really did as Christa said it gives you a good idea of what's out there right now and you can hold on to that and maybe in a couple of years you decide you want to try again and you may actually get a completely different result but you probably will I'm not to say that the technician that comes to help you perhaps your ISP technician that comes in and you ask them the library director says well how much would it cost to get fiber there that you always know and so that's the other thing is this is the definitive process to understand what's going on. And as far as the contract you do at this point the second form do have to give you a contract but we make sure and I was actually chatting with Amber about this yesterday there is a clause that we make sure is added to any contract you do that states this contract will only be followed through on receive E-rate funding if we do not everything is null and void and putting that in your contract is legal and that covers you so if you decide even at this point and you've done the contract white something didn't work out we can't do it you've got that clause in there and you said listen we didn't get the E-rate we got denied for some reason or whatever so don't panic if you're like but this is $20,000 that we'd have to then pay no you won't you've got that clause you're covered you're safe you always have that out there's my contact info the E-rate page if you have any questions about E-rate if you have any questions go ahead and type in the question section and we will answer them I don't see any now so I think we can go on to so what's the deadline for submitting the 470 then I mean when does that need to be in is it open now the 470 is open right now we do not know what's the deadline okay as far as E-rate we don't know the deadline yet because for the 471 there is a deadline for that but it is announced each year and we don't know what that deadline is we got to know that deadline first from USAC then we know what the E-rate deadline is however that's for E-rate when we're talking about adding in you want to apply to the public service commission they have their own deadline of December 31st to submit to that you're for 70 done by the end of November because you did have to wait to do the 471 you have a whole thing you had to to be at a bidding so I would say mid-November if you want to be participating in this and getting this public service commission Monday at the very latest to do your 470 and yes it is built one thing is the RP is out there for 28 basically I suggest 35 days because if you start off with the time when the ISPs can ask questions it's possible your scope of work can change if they bring something up and then you may have to start again so that's generally how I do it I would say that you need to submit it on whatever day you submit it it's nice to be able to have 35 days but if you have to I think 28 days is 28 is a minimum but having more time is always better the more time the better it manages to change and you have to update the bid process so if you're looking at your calendar we're looking at October 13th for our special construction we're going to be on the move but we're here to help you know that it's possible to do Amber can tell you you can do it in a pretty swift amount of time that's one of the reasons that she's great to have on today to talk about her experience okay so when we're talking about what are our options when bidding for fiber we're talking about this 470 submission basically you have an RFP that goes out and or we have another option do you want to highlight a little bit about Network Nebraska first this is another option which the library commission fully endorses we are partners in this activity so Network Nebraska was formed by state legislative action back in 2006 its basic mission was to provide a secure scalable educational network that's partnered with the University of Nebraska so the OCIO's office in the University of Nebraska partnered to create this educational network it's been around since about 2006 and every year it gets a little bit bigger that's really the basic background very simplistic if you have more questions we can definitely I just have one that I think is interesting of course do you cover schools do you know the statistics on that it's almost completely so we actually have I would say more than 99% of the public schools there's only one school district that's not a part of Network Nebraska libraries we have that option but it's educational it's obviously the public and non-public school entities within the state of Nebraska as well as colleges private and public and then additionally do you have the ability to also serve libraries or really any political subdivision within Nebraska so that includes municipalities and counties but where we don't have very many of those obviously our focus is primarily schools but that doesn't mean that we can't serve libraries as well and that's why when I visit with a public library about do you have fiber in your community they always say well the school has it I think and that is true but the company that manages that is primarily just focused on schools getting fiber schools they aren't looking at integrating into the community I mean not necessarily I mean we definitely can for specifically the municipal offices but it's kind of goes hand in hand with that those those anchor those anchor facilities within communities so you can get it in the door through the school the library if there's a municipal hospital county hospital we can get that in the door that way and then that opens the gate for other businesses within the community or the county to be served if it's if it makes logistical sense so we're going to go through a set of slides we can move forward Christa please and and basically on the left side is the this would be if and you can do both the good news you can do both of these and I would encourage you to do both of these you're going to find out it's a lot easier on that network Nebraska side you know she's she'll tell you how to do that but but for the site where you are working through this it's also something you know you want to get all the options available to you in front of you and in front of your library board in your community so it's also very good to work through that the ISP internet access with you as the initiator and when we say you were a village so don't worry about that so and just talking about this so the 470 that Chris has been talking about and saying how you complete that this is like she said it's the 470 is form is completed by you for special construction category one special construction and that will include submitting this RFP which we will talk about in the workshop training and when it talks about this must include these three aspects they if they are not in there e-rate will I mean USAC will say no we it's not a valid bid they become pretty strong-minded about this and so we need to make sure we emphasize this and my opinion on our library submitted 470s we want to make sure that the RFP includes this and let's see evaluate and so also the difference you'll see here is that when you are doing this you put your group together to do evaluations of bids and set the schedule etc we'll certainly help you with that but that's one of the pieces that's in the RFP and then with the network Nebraska we partner with the state purchasing bureau and we draft the RFP document to bid on any of our RFPs the service provider has had to already sign a master agreement that is already in place so we draft that RFP document and then we include in the appendices the specific location so really for us all we need to know is your demographic location where you are who the primary site contact would be and then in addition to that those breakdown of speeds that you might want you know we can go from 100 megabits per second to 1 gigabit per second and really up beyond that if that's what you wish we just need to know the breakdown and then once that gets finalized we will be the ones evaluating those RFP responses and we select the we award the circuit or the contract to the lowest final offer now for us we can even have that contract drafted and signed but you are still under zero obligation to buy until you've communicated with the OCO's office and specifically me that this is what you want you want to work order for this site location for this much bandwidth and then we submit that and at that point then that's when we enter into that that's when you would be under obligation to buy but we can even for us we can even get to that signed contract phase so the obligation of the library to do this is just to provide us the information right so a library of contact you say hey we're looking you would do the 470 for us here's where we're at here's the speed that we want and then at that point you take over yep we just need to know that you're interested where you're located and the speeds that you want and we would include that on our already planned RFP coming up this fall okay let's move forward so what we're talking about here is the non-recurring fiber build so that would be the cost the normal e-rate discount plus 20% that would be what kind of costs would occur and we hope we're at 80% because then we don't have to pay anything which is wonderful and then the one obligation and I know that I'm finding this in some rural communities is to apply for special construction they you must apply for 100 megabits per second but we also just to mention on our RFPs we also grade that from 100 to 200 to 300 and you might be surprised at the number of small rural libraries who've made a decision based on the cost that there's not much difference between 100 and 200 we're just going to go for the moon so to speak coming from 12 megabits so that's the the cost so on the network Nebraska side it looks a little bit intimidating and maybe like there's more but what I want you to keep in mind is when you're paying for the most part when you are going through an internet provider and you're not you're not connecting into network Nebraska a lot of times you are still paying those very similar fees the monthly reoccurring costs plus the inter-regional transport and the separate charts for internet they just bundle it all together and they call it internet so for us we do itemize those out so that and you'll hear about that why or one of the big reasons why we do it and so we have that monthly reoccurring cost that we will take the invoice or we will get the invoice from the internet from the service provider and then we will only go back to what your non e-rate portion but we will take that and that's really the equipment that gets the internet in the door I think Tom's always called it a water and pipe scenario he's always said that's the pipe that gets that gets you know installed into the building but it really is the equipment that gets the high speed internet from fiber into your door and then from there we have the inter-regional transport fee which is basically just a fee that helps to subsidize the backbone that goes along the university network and then you would pay that separate charge for your internet access depending on your bandwidth at that time so those three fees monthly reoccurring the network Nebraska and the separate charge for internet access it looks like we're charging you a lot more but a lot of times those are itemized they're just bundled into your typical ISP cost now what we do charge on top of that is that network Nebraska participation fee and we'll go into some of the benefits to being a part of network Nebraska I think on the next slide but for now that helps to subsidize because this is basically a it's a doesn't profit it basically has to pay for itself so those participation fees that all the school districts pay and the communities that are a member of network Nebraska and the university system they all pay into this program to continue the success of it going forward and that pays for upgrades and other services that we offer I just want to mention your two and because it doesn't really indicate that on here that the monthly recurring costs if you've gotten this installed the fiber installed using e-rate you will also be applying for e-rate for those monthly costs so you will not be paying the full amount of the monthly cost you'll be paying only what's above your discount rate so for the construction and doing the fiber special construction getting that two-year building in the first place we you get that for example like our math 80% discount and then you get the extra money from the public service commission then e-rate but for your monthly cost you just still get that 80% discount for your months so don't think we're going to pay the full amount of what that costs now every month for 100 megabits or 200 you'll get your great discount on that monthly cost too throughout the whole funding year and into the future as long as we keep helping you apply for e-rate and that's how the network of Nebraska those parts not the participation fee but the monthly recurring costs and that inter-regional transport fee and the internet those are all those are all separated separated out but those are all also e-rate eligible right so all of that you get that whatever your percentage discount does so remember that and then the actual network Nebraska I believe it's four-year contract for 48 months yeah support and then we typically include with the option to extend for four one-year renewals so potentially out to eight years right but the basic is 48 and for the RFPs that are submitted by the library usually well what's included in them is the one two and three year option which they can submit for their bidding process and they can be dramatically different because obviously the longer you are associated with the ISP they can recover their costs and so that's one thing I want we don't mention these slides I think we probably should okay okay so we're on pros and cons I'll let you go first okay well let's talk about the pros of that work Nebraska so like Holly had stated we have the potential and we can do a lot of your e-rate piling for you we would do the 471 the 470 to start the 471 and then we only charge you the non-e-rate portion back and we take care of the 478 for us we do a 472 bear reimbursement and we take care of that in-house the one of I think the biggest selling points of network Nebraska especially for libraries who you know you are the likelihood that you're going to have on-site technicians to maybe help you if there is an outage is very low or even you might not even know that you have an outage until you get to the library that morning and you try to turn on your computer and it's not connecting we because we partner with the university system we do have a team of engineers that work with network Nebraska and they monitor the traffic 24-7 so a lot of times if you have an outage in the middle of the night those network engineers are going to be notified and they're going to be already working to provide a solution to you before you even know that it's happening so we coordinate with the service providers on your behalf by doing that I know Tom's kind of gotten to this before and it gets a little complicated and so in the previous side we talked about how internet service providers typically bundle the cost of their backbone internet and the actual equipment to get the internet into your door but because we separate those out we have the ability to give you like charge you e-rate back or basically file for e-rate on those backbone and those transport costs the equipment to get it into the door so you even if you are not SIPA compliant we can file e-rate on those we just can't do it on the internet section because that's where you have to be SIPA compliant to get the internet portion so that is kind of a benefit you can still get some of the backbone because there it's not a requirement for those aspects of it so that's another pro that's associated with this we also do have we work with ESU 16 I'm sorry and we have an enterprise ownership of zoom licenses so that would be as a network Nebraska member you would have access to be able to purchase those zoom professional licenses at a pretty large discount one of the other things because one of the participants talked about you know she doesn't get a lot of complaints about the internet but she does she wants to find more programming and get better internet speeds because this is an educational network we are a member of internet too now for schools that provides a benefit through appearing services for testing things like that but one of the unwritten benefit or one of the kind of what would be the word that I'm trying to think of hidden benefits that not a lot of people maybe know about in the state of Nebraska is that there are curriculum resources that libraries the schools have access to that the libraries would also have access to so you know if you're interested in that information I can get that from internet to resources that I have but that would be something that you have available additionally part of those participation fees I know cybersecurity is becoming a buzz word around even people who are not maybe so like they don't have the higher speed internet they're not a big school or a big library with 10 gigs coming in the door but I think cybersecurity is becoming a buzz word in the community regardless so we have certain equipment that's attached to our network that can help offset some of those cyber threats primarily what we have is called DDoS protection which is the denial of a distributed denial of service so that's when you have some attackers that might try to attack their network and they just have that's called a botnet I won't get too technical I don't want to lose you but they'll try to attack your network and bring it down so we have equipment installed into our backbone and as a part of our network that helps to filter that off and get rid of it so your internet stays safe really the biggest con for us they think or the biggest concern that some libraries have is because of that participation fee the cost can be a little bit higher what we do try to do is provide the services to offset it and make it make sense maybe a little bit more for you okay so it's a local library make a decision that you're going to go with a bid yourself as opposed to a network Nebraska again you know nothing's free I'll just use old adages but basically this is it will be more than likely it is a lower cost for you and and then also this is a pro and I think also a con it can be depending on what type of service provider technician or you know what kind of response that you're going to be getting but again that's one of the things in my mind I think about with libraries you know how many libraries you call in the morning well I really can't talk to you right now because our internet is down and I don't know what's going on and this is something especially now and after COVID we had so much Wi-Fi distribution out there you know in the middle you know somebody comes in to do their homework from 15 miles out and they park and they don't have there's no internet so this I'm not saying that would not happen the network Nebraska at some point but but I think they'd be much more proactive on that so that to me is something to be thinking about and also erate filing I think my opinion is that erate filing although I've never filed for I think it's a lot easier when it's online now and I think that many people are able to work their way through that but so when there is some kind of a conversation I just need to ask you if the library gets something back from no it wouldn't be a part of your situation do you get you also then deal with all those emails to come back to the library from USAC saying there's a problem with this or that so here is a happy smiling face who manages that herself or with a team or whereas those of you who are erate users know that sometimes that can be frustrating and you have Kristen help you and that's for sure but sometimes they can come at the most inopportune times so I was just thinking about that because I've seen a lot of those recently that come to me I don't do anything with them Kristen does at all but just to be sure that there is that kind of communication that you would have to be dealing with it's a con service disruptions are mitigated locally this is what that's why she went first because she covered it so well as far as what it is that needs to be done and what is included in your network Nebraska fee and then you will have to abide by the civil rules in order to help erate it usage of funding for your costs so that's also a definite con for many libraries okay. Yeah you can go. So we kind of covered some of the information on this slide basically what we need to know right now I am working with the educational state coordinator and we are working to draft that RFP and get that to our state purchasing bureau before October 1st which is the date that we have on this slide so if you want to be a part of the special construction RFP that we have coming up you just need to reach out to me my contact information will be at a later slide and you just again need to know you need to let me know where the libraries locate the site contact and maybe those increments at bandwidth and if you need some help figuring that out we can definitely walk you through that and talk about what's most common. The contract term as Holly asked earlier is for 48 months with the potential for buying or for renewing for for one year increments otherwise also at the end of that four years we could then just put you onto what would be our general RFP and we could just continue that service at that time again like I said there is no obligation to buy if we if we add you to the RFP just give the information as both Holly and Krista have talked about just to find out what's available to you you are under no obligation to either join Network Nebraska it's completely voluntary nor are you under any obligation to purchase a work order off of that state contract and we will contract with the providers directly on your behalf so that's when it comes to making sure your build out is done on time that's a service that we also offer. Okay on the other side we've already talked about that we asked for bandwidth increments from the library to make the decision they have the RFP I see the dates didn't get changed on my side of the column sorry about that but I'm going to estimate about the end of October very beginning of November we should be turning in our 470s right now and the signing and the boarding of the contract will be actually the award for the contract would be some time toward the end of mid to end December I think you know I will say and I don't want to be held to this but the public service commission has been very flexible with the deadlining for our matching fund from the public service commission they've been wonderful so I suspect that's because we don't have a high number of applicants or for the grant but I wasn't sure if I was wanting to mention that but since you did yeah on my side I did say the deadline is December 31st to apply for the public service commission money and that's why it says it on that website but I think almost every year we've just reached out and said oh we have a library wants to do it and it's like January something or February is that okay and they're like yeah yeah send it to us yeah they want the money is there just sitting waiting to be sent out so they want to do whatever they can to make it so they can get it out to you all so so we move on and the next slide I'm just going to bypass this is we'll go into depth into this in our next training this is basically outlining the year year and the difference between Nebraska network Nebraska and your local submission for social construction so we'll move on okay Amber finally thank you so much for waiting and being a part of it I love this picture I had a hard time getting she just couldn't find a picture and then she had this one and she submitted I love it must be from the innovation studios Amber yeah I was actually out there when that picture was taken I had just used the the router the CNC router and the staff member that came like let me take your picture for the I feel like a dork and thank you for taking part in this and feel free to start you know if you want to introduce yourself again so my name is Amber Sweetland and I'm the director for the Kimball Public Library Kimball is about 20 miles from Wyoming and 20 miles from Colorado just so you have an idea of where we are kind of in the middle of nowhere so our community is pretty small we're about 2400 people and I've been here I've been at the library for five years but I've been the director for two I actually first attended one of these sessions in 2020 right after I took over as director and you know once I kind of learned everything and all the steps my enthusiasm wanted to just go forward and do everything there right away but then I realized that that was not for me so that first year I just decided to get E-rate and being super compliant and all of that under my belt and then you know the following year I wanted to move forward with the fiber I know one of the biggest pushes for this is connectivity issues we didn't really have any other than the occasional you know slow occasional complaint but I mean it was pretty rare but the way I looked at it was this was something that eventually was going to need to happen regardless because that's just the way the technology is moving forward and I might not do it when I can do it for free or next to nothing so I did I lost my place so for Kimball our discount rate is actually 80% so while our total bid was $25,000 for the construction I paid nothing which was pretty fantastic our average speeds before we got our fiber installed was about 12 megabytes and our contract speed now is a gig I'm not actually getting that but there's reasons so our actual download speed at this moment through our Wi-Fi is only about 30 which you know obviously it should be faster than that but I've found that there's a lot more involved than I originally anticipated but when we're direct connected we're getting about 250 megabytes per second which is really good and our tech people told me that a portion of it is because of our circuit compliant device it slows it down to an extent but it's still a thousand times better than it was before so and then the Wi-Fi issue we're actually in the process of hopefully applying for category 2 and redoing our entire Wi-Fi system to speed up our Wi-Fi so the application process was awesome it was fast because I got confused on some dates but everybody over there Holly and Krista were amazing and they helped me through the whole thing they actually made it pretty simple and I mean there was a lot of stress involved for me just not knowing what I was doing but they were always available anytime I had a question or a concern they answered the questions and quelled my fears and you guys are awesome so our service provider that did the work and we're actually using the internet service for is Nebraska Link which I think they've changed their name since then but yes exactly but I couldn't be happy with them they one of the biggest problems that I've found with my e-rate is when I first did it I didn't when I first filed for e-rate that very first year I told USAC that I would do the billing myself like we would pay up front and get reimbursed I've come to realize that was done because filing bear forms is a nightmare and so Nebraska Link they actually do the billing for me so when I get my bill every month it is $35 and done I don't have to do anything else so I love them plus they're just amazing with their customer service we had a couple of issues right at the beginning they were here super fast to fix everything and they're just they're fantastic I think the only other thing that kind of was our ugly was COVID so we had gone through all this process and we actually were live July 1st I got COVID for the first time in June and also one of my staff members because she had picked me up from the airport so two of us were home in the middle of summer reading at that point I had not yet gotten my approval while I was homesick during the second week Nebraska Link showed up to put in our fiber and my staff was amazing and they did not want to bother me and they knew I had been working so hard on this so they didn't tell me that they were here putting in fiber because they thought it was okay so I came back and freaked out because I didn't have $25,000 to pay them and we hadn't gotten approval yet but thankfully because of that caveat that we put in the contract I wouldn't have had to pay if we hadn't gotten approved it was about three weeks before we actually got the approval but we did and so everything was fine it all worked out great I say there's absolutely not a single regret our community as a whole they are just absolutely thrilled that this has been done there was one business that was in the process of getting it into town when I was as well and they were a little bit faster than I was but it was nowhere near us it was completely the other side of town two miles away so they had to bring it all the way from the train tracks to the library which they did with Born but it was simple it was easy and I'm very happy Any questions? We'll have questions and answers after but if any of the libraries are on board we'd like to just directly ask our question if they've listened to her If anybody has any questions go ahead and type them in or if you have the microphone you can unmute I will mention it is a little after 11 which is when I would rather maybe we can wait with Amber and then just go through the next couple slides and then do a Q&A Yeah, if you have any questions type them in Go ahead One thing I do want to mention Amber's experience with Optic Networks they did the same thing with Baird Public Library and I think they just might like to see library directors panic they did the same thing while I had that clause and I said yeah don't worry but they I did that with their clairvoyant I thought that was interesting They also gave me my contract like when I was in my 28 day waiting period I got no bids until the very last day they walked it into me so there was also a little bit of a freak out there it was like four in the afternoon and the guy in the sales rep walks in he's like here very last day it's wonderful okay so we're just on the next slide here we can just put it up and then start questions because for the most part I think it's all self-explanatory this tool that's out there and I can't remember what it's called the broadband toolkit it's interesting if any of you are feeling like you don't really understand a lot of the terminology or what's going on internally and the infrastructure of your library or related to there's a little bit in there now about e-rate and some other activities this is a great resource to download to use we have the 13th and it's from 130 to 3 it's our next meeting together for workshop and this will be all focused on special construction only we will have one more and I think what Amber alluded to and didn't really say outright is part of the issue is when you get high fiber a lot of Nebraska libraries have old network equipment or some subpar and they need to upgrade it and so before you panic and say oh my gosh I can't afford to do something like that remember that the category two there is the and we've seen the list and most of it is that type of equipment you can buy for and what we want to do is instead of finding out about this afterwards and having you wait we want to see if we can't get this we will have a workshop in November and you will be able to then apply for category two too and that can arrive a little bit early and be installed and we'll talk about that all later so but just so you know that and then a reminder about the training in the fall and our staff again we are so excited about this project and being able to bring everyone together, however you just need to call us no done question and we see that you could send an email or contact and she'll be happy to help you too I encourage all libraries to go ahead and apply for Network Nebraska also that's just my experience for the last four or five years and then your thinking you don't have to pick, you can do start bold and then decide which one ends up being the better deal for you right it does sound like overdoing work, but you know, Holly and I help you do the one on your own back at the state does theirs and then you see what kind of responses you get back and then decide okay now which way do we want to go when at all you know we see what everything is available and how much is really going to cost and when it's all going to happen and everything. Right and then your regional system directors can be very helpful also so you want to be sure to contact them and if they can't answer it they'll send it on to us and we'll get back to you. Samber you wanted to say something? Yeah just about the the Wi-Fi system you know our mayor and a whole bunch of people in our community were so excited that we had this in place that when I realized our Wi-Fi system needed to be redone and I asked for that additional funding in my budget and then at the City Council meeting I explained why I needed it and to really you know make the best of the fiber they were ecstatic to give me the money. Oh okay yeah even if I don't get it done they would that they that you know you're a little embarrassed by being like look at this wonderful Amber what she did. Oh yeah at the employee appreciation dinner the mayor made a point to make me stand up and receive applause for getting fiber into our library which is horribly embarrassing. So now the next step to be queen of Kimball is to talk to them about the bead grant and find out and have them work on that because then you will have fiber to the residents. I just got to say one more thing this is my concern is if this happens is the library really viable anymore for you know usage in the community looks yes but if you have fast internet at home and you don't have it at the library what are you going to be doing you know you'll be doing your research etc doing that at home I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer but this is one of the reasons I really think it's important that libraries get on this bandwagon now and get their fiber so it's at least as high speed as maybe the residential one now. Okay questions are there any? Yeah let's see nothing's committed Sara Stephanie Terry do you have any questions anything you want to ask of Sam Holly Becca myself or Amber about what she went through go ahead and type in or if you can unmute you can ask your question that way. What else do we have here? And I will bump over here while waiting. There is all of our contact info too. I'll wait and see if anybody's typing something or if you don't have any questions you can just say no questions now I'll call someone later. As we said this has been recorded so we will have the recording up and we'll email that out to you probably should be ready tomorrow sometime if you need to revisit anything and then I don't Holly are we going to provide them with the slides as well? I don't have an objection to it but maybe I'll edit and put the right dates in the one slide. Yeah make sure it's got that updated before we send that out to anybody yes that's a good idea. Sara says I don't have any questions at the time but I'm sure I will later thank you for all your time and all the information. I guess it yeah I guess nobody has any questions at the moment we covered it so well. This is Stephanie y'all and this has been so much information so awesome need some time to process and and just like the other commenter I will have questions in the future I'm sure. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right thank you everybody for being here with us today. Thank you Krista. Hopefully we'll all get new fiber to our libraries. All right bye bye. Bye bye.