 Welcome to the RF elements unless it's podcast. As always, I'm Caleb. We got tosses over here. Say hi to us. Hey, everybody. And this week, we have a very exciting conversation with David Zumbwalt from WISPA. He is the new CEO and president, and he's here to talk about all these exciting times at which he's taken the helm. So there's a lot going on in the industry for sure. Regulatory, technical, we've got WISPA halouza coming up. So I think we've got a lot of really good topics to go over and discuss. So before we hop in in the conversation, tosses, give the good people out there. They're called to action. Absolutely. Don't forget to like, listen, or subscribe to our channel right here on YouTube or anywhere you download your audio podcasts like Apple, Spotify, or Google. All right. All right. Let's get froggy and jump to it. So like I said, we've got David here from WISPA. Say hi to the crowd, David. Hello crowd, David here. Pleasure to be here. No place I'd rather be right now. Great, great. So, David, if you could give everyone kind of a quick history of, you know, how you've come up, not just within WISPA, but the industry as a whole, you know, you've got a very rich sort of history, ton of experience and everything. So kind of give the folks out there a view of how you've gotten here and where you're looking to take things right now. So coming through school, I knew I wanted to be involved in telecommunications and I had a lot of family sort of influence, a grandfather that worked his entire career at AT&T, Southwestern Bell and Uncle did the same thing. My dad was in petroleum, but also kind of engineering and technology oriented. And so coming out of school, I had an opportunity to go work in kind of a large company environment, did that on an internship basis. But then I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial. And at that time, we were just beginning to see the emergence of the competitive telecommunications landscape. This is when MCI and Southern Pacific Communications later called Sprint were coming into being and we were seeing the first long distance networks privatized and open for competition. So very, very heady times. This is when frequency coordination of the FCC was beginning to really take hold for companies that were either common carrier or private commercial users working with the FCC to get paths for various spectrum. And I was smitten being able to work in that kind of an environment to see what was happening in communications, even at that time. I knew that this is where I wanted to spend the bulk of my career. So I had an opportunity for the first four years as a professional to work with a company called CompiCon, which was primarily expert in terrestrial microwaves, some satellite or a station work. The frequency coordination work with the FCC and also land mobile public safety radio. Then through acquisitions, CompiCon is now part of Com Search, so it still has a legacy that people would recognize. But I had an opportunity to start my own business called CNET in 1985. It's not the one that people see today. I get that question a lot, but we were the first on the name. And we provided services to the emerging sailor industry. So we were working with the non-wire line and wire line carriers both. We ended up having as customers a majority of what we're then called the Bell Operating Companies, and we provided engineering software for them to both design from an RF perspective and also from a network perspective and then manage their networks as they grew. We rode their coattails as they began to work overseas as the international carriers privatized. And so we ended up ultimately deploying our software in about 40 countries around the world. And I sold that business in 1997 and said my first sort of start to finish successful exit. After that, I got involved in private equity kind of at the earlier stage. Also, I was a participant in the venture fund in North Texas. Love doing that. It made it possible for me to start a family. Funny thing is, you know, CNET when you're working 100 hours a week and that's no kidding, my wife was actually keeping score for a while. You have to have time for conjugal visits if you're actually going to have kids. And so switching and maybe downshifting a little bit made it possible for us to raise two great kids who are now young adults and they're kind of out on their own and doing their own thing these days. So did that for a while. And then I got a call from someone I didn't know, a recruiter who was looking for somebody with my background, which already kind of looks strange if you think about it. You know, yes, it's telecommunications that's there. But then he's sort of in the financial services industry. What is up with that? And the recruiter spotted me said, we have a need for somebody just like you in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And I thought, well, this could be interesting. What's this about? And it was actually an economic development program that had gotten started. The Virgin Islands has a lot of places in the eastern Caribbean very concerned about brain drain because bright kids growing up and these island communities often find that they have to leave in order to pursue their careers. And then once they come to some place like the kind of U.S., they can't get back because there's nothing for them there. So the government of the Virgin Islands, the University of the Virgin Islands and the private sector all came together in a plan to promote economic diversification by creating this economic development program. So I went down to kick the tires. We had visited the Caribbean frequently. We used to have management offsites down there. This was not my first time to be in the Virgin Islands. But what I discovered was that the basis for their ask was actually very solid. The backbone of the global Internet is optical fiber running along the sea floor. So submarine optical fiber at the time. And I think it's still true today. The second largest concentration of bandwidth in the Western Hemisphere resides on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and it's where North America, South America, Central America and Europe actually kind of come together and traffic is switched. It's the fastest path between the financial capitals of New York City and Saint Paul of Brazil. A lot goes on there, but those fiber landings were created to move traffic globally, not for the benefit of the Virgin Islands. And thus that's the reason for the economic development program. So we launched that program and did that for nine years. So now I've got some economic development experience. But more importantly, when we talk about because we'll get in this later, public private partnerships, you know, people can throw those terms around, but they mean different things, different people. In my case, I was the helm of a public, private and academic partnership. And so you think keeping two partners aligned is hard. And you're really hurting cats. And I no longer have any here. But so anyway, that had run its course. We knew we weren't going to be there forever. We were looking for a way to come back state side for a variety of reasons, including for family reasons. And so at the end of 2015, did that kind of re-entered the private equity space, working with emerging technology companies again. And then I got a call from broadband VI, one of the West, the major West in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2018 with an invitation to come help the company prepare for scale. So they saw opportunities coming sort of like a combination of Ardolf and CAF in the case of the Virgin Islands. It's called Connect U.S.V.I. And so we submitted an application, very detailed application for that and won it for a massive expansion of connectivity through the Virgin Islands. And then late last year, the we arranged, negotiated an exit. The company was acquired by Liberty Latin America. And so it's now part of the Liberty family of companies. So I helped in the transition for a few months at about that time. WISP was looking and that's how I ended up with WISP. But I know I took you a long way around the horn on that to give you some background. Sorry if that went too long, but I know I get questions a lot about, well, who is this guy and does he really understand WISP industry and where did he come from and what does he know? And I get it. I think that that's if I were, you know, WISP looking for answers to questions about where WISP is going to have the same sort of question. For somebody like me. There is one other story I wanted to share because this is timely as well. We've seen, for example, that there's now a requirement for the BDC filings for certification by a professional engineer or someone who has a title like a certified engineer. For the record, I'm a professional engineer, but I need to tell you the story of how that happened so that those who want to throw bricks can hold on for a minute, see that I'm actually going to be able to split the middle here. I came out of school with a double E degree and really saw no need to pursue a professional engineering registration. The tests, for example, don't test for telecommunications. They still don't. And so you'll find PEs mostly in areas that involve structure or civil engineering or chemical things like this power systems. But for the most part, you don't find PEs in telecom. When I started seeing that, I started it out of my house in Garland, Texas, which was then a GTE territory. And so as a business, you get a free one line listing in the yellow pages. I didn't need it listing in the yellow pages because our customers already knew who we were, but the agent was insistent and said, we have to figure out where you go because you get classified in the yellow pages. That said, well, we provided software for communications engineering. We're really consultants. And so the reps said, okay, we've got a communication consultants category will put you there. And I said, fine, you know, get off the phone. I don't need to spend more time with this. But a couple of years later, a little less than two years, we had grown outgrown my house and we moved into real office space in Richardson, Texas, which was the Southwestern Bell territory. And at that point, we had hired an office manager and administrator and so she's the one who took the call from Southwestern Bell and they said, hey, you got a free one line listing yellow pages. So she said, just do what we did before Southwestern Bell said, we don't talk to GTE. We're competitors. Just, you know, tell us something about your business and we'll figure this out. And I got all this later after I got in trouble, which is where I'm going with the story. And she said, well, we write software for communications engineers. And the agent said, we've got a category for communications engineers will put you there. And she's like, fine. When the yellow pages were published, the Texas State Board of Registration for professional engineers had someone assigned to look through all the yellow pages and to look at every single business that was listed under an engineering classification and then go figure out if they actually had in their employee a professional engineer. And when they discovered that our company of nine or 10 at that time did not, they opened a full scale enforcement action against the business because we were misrepresenting us ourselves. We're holding ourselves out as professional engineers when we were not and that was an imminent risk to the health and safety of the public. And but they, you know, look, they understood how it happened and they were even somewhat amenable to, you know, thinking about the things that they could do to help on the fines. But the way the law worked in that day, you know, every day you hold yourself out is another charge. And so all pages are published for years. You're talking about 365 days of this and it was going to be an awful experience and also very publicly embarrassing for us. And so as I worked with the enforcement officer, I said, look, I think I can get registered because I've got the educational background and can do all of this. And he laughed and he said, okay, well, that's what we really want. So if you can do that and fine. And the long story short is it took a while because I still had to attend quarterly board meetings that we're dealing with this enforcement action. And so I'm now P.E. The reason I say all that is that when we see the FCC coming out with guidance that says we want a professional engineer or a certified engineer in the room, I know what state boards of registration for professional engineers can do if anybody holds themselves out as an engineer to the extent that those state boards have control over the title. So I know that in telecom people will call themselves telecom engineers all the time. There's kind of a waiver in place for larger companies like AT&T. But if you're a Wisp, if you're smaller, you know, you need to be aware of what the state boards in your state can actually do because I've been on the business end of that before and that's not pleasant and it's, you know, not great. So I'll finish that part of the story just by saying this that, you know, Wisp advocated to not require an engineer by title to come up with something else like a certified technology officer, but that would require rulemaking at this point, which we're still considering pursuing because of the way that the language works. But, you know, Wisp who are filling out the BDC need to be very careful with that. We can argue that public safety is not at risk by someone filling out these submissions, but state boards might see it differently. So a caution for those who have a lot of energy about this particular topic. I get it. I understand it. If you're mad at the FCC, maybe you're mad at Wisp for not, you know, just basically falling on the sword and trying to take that hill, that hill, but be careful because your state boards might be watching. Yeah. That's one of those things you've got to be so careful of. You know, I graduated. I was compi out of tech. That's actually how I knew Mike Moloski, you know, from that sort of stuff back in the day and they're like, oh, everyone's like, oh, you're an engineer now. I'm like, kind of depends on who you ask. It's the same reason I didn't set the test. Yeah. I'm like, oh, just find that right on a job. You know, on a on a finance application. Sure. Right. But you know, it's it's one of those things where I don't think people have taken the classification very seriously and it means very specific things to very specific organizations. So it's a it's a super important note. And I think it really adds some color to that conversation. So people understand, you know, where this is and it's not necessarily something you can just ignore or call yourself. So on the flip side, Caleb, I actually had professional engineers come to me and ask for me to be much stronger in defending the industry now that I'm a PE, you know, but but I don't think that I'm giving the industry short shrift, you know, the there's a there's a code of ethics that PEs have to live by. And so I'm very mindful of that. But at the same time, I just don't think that data submission rises to the level of, you know, requiring certification by someone that the state board could associate with a registered engineer. Yeah, I mean, I think we're in agreement to it's, you know, for for what's being done, you know, it's not like a bridge is going to fall down on somebody's head or something like that to you. So well, interesting. So yeah, you know, I think the the hottest topic of conversation right now across the industry is, you know, the the governmental money that's flowing in and all sort of the the hooks and stickiness of it. You know, you're you're timing into this joining the organization was very fortunate if you like to get into those conversations, I would say so great. But, you know, it seems like you've got a lot of really good background and can kind of navigate, you know, both the technical side, but also the the paperwork side of thing, the political side, the financial side of thing, which is it's good for sure. Yeah, the good news, I guess, is that I have sort of a personal motto of coming to work every day willing to be surprised. And you know, this is certainly delivered. The NOFO was issued on May 13th. My official start date was June 1st. I was working behind the scenes during May and so that exploded because I was trying to tail off some work. I was doing it broadband as well. It's got to juggle all that as well. Hello, so I don't even have business cards yet, people like so. Yeah, that's I came up to speak very, very quickly on that topic. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's definitely a trial by fire scenario. So we've had a couple of conversations in previous podcasts from the BDC side for more of a technical perspective. So with the tower coverage with Dennis Burgess and Cameron Crimm. So, you know, we've covered a lot of the, I guess, the mechanics behind the BDC and it seems to be that people are mostly on board with how they're going to get this done. Right? You know, that deadline is looming and I think a lot of progress has been made into getting that done. So I think, I don't know, maybe it'd be good to get some of your insight necessarily from the tech part of this, but maybe the like, why are we doing this beyond just being annoying and painful and the government always wants to stick his nose into it? Like, I think there's more of a story there that if we can kind of get the word out, yes, this is a huge pain, but kind of here's where things are going and you know, how WISPA is helping kind of frame that message too, not only to their constituency, but also to the government and maybe find some sort of middle ground or something because, you know, it's easy to say mapping is important. So we know where we can close the digital divide or however you want to pitch that, right? But you know, you've got a lot of good people or a lot of people in there with good intentions and as you know, it can turn into a real mess. So, you know, if you can kind of speak to the BDC side of thing, the mapping side of thing and how that plays into not just what's happening now with the beads stuff, but you know, where things might be going from the future with us. Well, if we go back not that many years ago, the FCC was pretty much the regulatory agency that we cared about in our industry. And the FCC to its credit has had a lot of time to put in place procedures. As time consuming as they can be, you kind of know what to expect. You can petition. You can basically create a proposed rulemaking. You can reply to comments or you provide comments and reply. There's a process and there's a cadence at the FCC that's very inclusive at the end of the day on making sure that all voices are heard. And so you can not maybe set your watch by, but the FCC has got all that down pat. NTIA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utility Service, those are relatively recent entrance. RUS has certainly been doing things in rural electrification, for example, for a long time, but telecom has been a little newer for them. And in my experience anyway, RUS has been a little more like the FCC in their approach. They have sort of a rigor that can be overbearing at times in the application process for the funds that they disperse. They don't want to provide funding to more than one entity in an area, historically at least. And so interesting that RUS has done it that way. And I mentioned that leading up to NTIA because the FCC itself is intended to be bipartisan. It'll have a political leaning based on who is president at any given time right now. We have a deadlocked commission because there's the fifth commissioner that has not yet been seated. So it's two, two. In the case of RUS, RUS is Department of Agriculture. And agriculture is a political organization at the top, as is Department of Commerce. And so both ag and commerce ultimately have to work harder to salute the flag of whoever is in office at that particular time. And what that means for NTIA, I think, and I want to be careful. I give all of the qualifications of the caveats up front. Nothing I'm saying here is intended to be provocative to any individual or anything. I've been trying to come at this apolitically, okay? So feel free to knock me if you sense an agenda in here. But in Washington, the reality is you've got to be able to work across both sides in order to get things done. But NTIA really doesn't have the processes in place that FCC has, for example. And they're beginning to develop those because they've been responsible for managing funding programs going back to BTOP, for example, in the Obama administration. And digital set top boxes before that. And a long time ago, they were certainly known to me for their propagation modeling and RF and the work that they did there. So I like NTIA, but NTIA doesn't have the process of seeking comment, acting on it, you know, going through another round again. And so that's how you end up in a situation where you get surprised. But, you know, where did this exclusion of unlicensed spectrum from their definition of reliable broadband service come from when that's not indicated in the Infrastructure Act that basically created the BEAD program. But I digress. So NTIA doesn't have the same processes in place that, say, FCC does. But it's clear to me that over the last few presidential administrations, the administrations have looked at their political organizations like Commerce and Ag, and they said, hey, we've got more control over these guys than we do at FCC. So why don't we, you know, make sure that the funding goes that way. Now that's a little flippant on my part, but that's kind of the way it could easily be read. So while in the past, we might have focused all of our efforts to virtual efforts on the FCC. Now we have to be a lot more aware of NTIA and RUS, you know, Ag. We have to find ways that we can advocate in those organizations knowing that they're political organizations that involves a lot more work on Capitol Hill, for example. And it's also now exploiting, obviously, because we have state broadband offices that are coming into the mix. And all of these are, you know, kind of different. So I think that what we see in the BEAD NOFO is we see an effort to try to put together some structure where structure wasn't fully provided in the Infrastructure Act. And in doing it, they have, for better or for worse, tried to pick winners and losers. They've certainly underscored the preference for fiber. You know, I get that, understand, you know, why that seems like an easy button. But some of the other aspects of the NOFO are problematic, especially the smaller operators. And I'll talk about that for a minute. I mean, what the elephant in the room is unlicensed spectrum. And I know we're going to talk about that, but I want to sort of pick on some of the other issues that are there too. You know, for example, there's a letter of credit requirement to be a recipient for funding. And I know from having to, we had to go through that at Broadband VI that letters of credit are not things that you just walk into the bank and ask for. You know, for example, in many cases, if you're willing to get a bank to agree to issue a letter of credit, by the way, not all banks can. So typically you're going to be working with a JPMorgan Chase or something like that. And I'll come back to why that's a problem in a minute. But as you're working through their requirements, they're basically standing behind you and your business. They're willing to take it on the chin completely if you fail to meet the obligations that are associated with a letter of credit, which means that the bank is going to want to over collateralize everything so that there is absolutely no chance that they're ever going to be in a position where they're out any money, that they have some recourse to be able to go get what they need in order to satisfy whatever your obligation was. In many cases, certainly all cases in my experience, they're going to want to collateralize things that are not related to the project that's being funded. So while you're thinking about building a network, maybe with fiber, maybe with fixed wireless, however you're going about doing it, chances are when you go to try to get the letter of credit, they're going to say, no, you can't use those assets to collateralize because if you fail, all those failed too. So we can't monetize that. So we need to know where your other assets are. We need to be able to have sufficient collateralization of that in order to make that happen. And I would just observe that the passion that Wisps are throwing into their business, the investments that they're making in their communities, chances are every dollar or almost every dollar of profit they're making, they're using to continue to upgrade the network to improve services for their customers to deal with outages that come from time to time to do forklift upgrades because we keep jacking up the definition of broadband. Chances are there's not a big pile of hidden money somewhere that is going to serve as collateral. So the letter of credit, we haven't talked much about this yet. Certainly internally to Wisps, but we've been trying to be very on point in our messaging back to NTA, but I'm concerned about the letter of credit requirement and I'm hoping that we can get that shifted to something like a performance bond or maybe set some limits for where the letter of credit kicks in because I think that can disqualify many operators, not just Wisps, but small private utilities that are trying to play in the space too and I don't understand why that was there. There are other things that I find troubling just because they seem unnecessary. There's basically a requirement to look at labor rate, some sort of standard that's set at a federal level and that's generally not the way rural America works. So that can be very problematic when you're looking at adding expense on the money that's being delivered. Oh, and one thing I will say about the letter of credit going back to it, the bank's going to charge you basically a fee every year for that and that can be between three to 5%. So it doesn't take very many years before the bank fees have actually eaten up a significant part of the money that you got in the first place after qualifying for all this. So the letter of credit is expensive. The labor rate aspect is expensive. Both require a level of, let's say, performance and care that have not been priorities for smaller operators, you know? And what I mean by that is that smaller operators are working on managing their business. They're not working on making sure that a financial report is going to their bank on time every single month, you know? So they can do that, but that takes time away from other things that they're doing. So if I would have a general overarching complaint about the bid nofo, it just wasn't designed by people who knew what the rural experience was all about. And so however they came to be here, they've effectively told the first responders, the ones that have gone into these communities before, built these networks when the big guys left or wouldn't go in. They've said, you know, we really want you to participate in this, but now here's 16 tons of stuff you're going to have to do. In addition, everything else you're doing in order to maybe qualify for this. I think that could have been thought through better. And I think if they had adopted a procedure, kind of like the FCC has, to invite comments, they could have gotten a lot more industry engagement and advice that would have made it possible for them to get to a successful program sooner. Yeah, definitely. It's incredible how complex this whole process is, you know, and, you know, from the past podcast that we've done and the more we dig into this and the further we go, it just, it really seems like the rules have been set for somebody else and really it would make some people question, like do they, you know, even want to go after it, right? You know, what is the risk to reward ratio of that? And sometimes it seems like, you know, I think if you, you know, I don't want to say don't go after the money. I mean, if it's there and you can do it and you have the capacity to do it properly, yeah, you should, right? But at the same time, it's like, you know, as Wisps, we've been doing this since day one with no funding whatsoever, right? So I keep advocating and telling people, it's like, if you can go for it, that's fine, that's great, it's there, why not? But at the same time, it's like, just keep doing what you've been doing. If you build a network that's reliable, right? Then you're offering speeds that are more than usable and sufficient for people to live their lives in the digital world today. Not everybody needs gigabit, you know? I mean, I'm a techie and, you know, I don't use anywhere near what, you know, is offered to me. I have like a 200 meg cable connection at home. At best, I only get 50 out of it. You know, I do my speed test, right? So even the big guys with multi-billion-dollar companies aren't delivering the speeds that they're charging me for. And I use just a fraction of that. So I think that if we take a smart approach and like I said, not, I'm really big on kind of keeping everybody positive, you know? A lot of people were really worried about Starlink. Well, look what just happened with their funding, you know what I mean? It's like, keep your eye on the prize. The worst thing you could do is to stop what you're doing, you know, follow that rabbit down the rabbit hole of this money that it's there and stop progressing the way you have been. Because if you build a good network and your coverage, whether it's considered served or unserved because it's licensed or unlicensed, whatever that may be, people are going to consider, hey, you know, do we want to go into this area? Do we want to overbuild it? Because it seems like everybody's happy there. So it's, there's a lot to navigate here and a lot of decisions that have to be made on what's really the right approach. You know, there's protections that you have to look at. We haven't talked about now. CBRS is finally being considered licensed or served now, which is something really important. Maybe there are some protection mechanisms that Wisps can do on a smaller budget to at least consider their area served. So therefore the money doesn't pour into them and try to wipe them out. So there's, there's a lot of things to discuss here and it just gets more and more complicated and more and more in depth as we talk about it. There's a program in the Virgin Islands and I want to be careful here because I am using this as an example and not as a target, okay? But I think you would, listeners or viewers would be able to identify something similar in their own community. The opportunity for federal funds inspired many people in the Virgin Islands to go press very hard for reconnect money, for example, any kind of money that would be available because the entire territory was un-served. That was the argument. And if you were in Washington, D.C., you wouldn't know any better. You look at the demographics of the Virgin Islands, certainly the socioeconomic side of it, you'd think, well, yeah, of course, there's nothing going on there towards broadband. But the reality is there were two principal carriers competing with each other and there were two or three other smaller wisps. So there was a total of easily five, six, seven ISPs that were active in the Virgin Islands and the territory was completely served, completely served. For those who are arguing at my face and the screen right now, it had completely served. And so in the case of the ReConnect program or others that came in, they were shocked to learn that this was in fact the case. And yes, we didn't have gigabit fiber going to every residence. So I'm going to come back to speed tests in a minute. But the reality is it was completely served. It was covered. So what I like about the mapping exercise at least from a high level is that what they're trying to do is to say, okay, look, we have too many agencies that are running the FCC, NTI, RUS. You've got the federal programs that occasionally make money available in black grants. You've got the state stuff. We need one source of truth on what's going on. Is the area served or not? So the notion of coming up with sort of consistent image of what is and isn't served kind of settles all those arguments, right? I know it's a pain in the rear to go through because people are concerned about, you know, exposing elements of their network to competitors. So they're concerned about what's the government going to do with this information? And those are all valid concerns. But at the same time, if you don't have a database that is showing something clearly about how to mesh all these programs and identify what's served or not, then all you're going to do is get continuing government waste where you're going to get overbuilt anyway. It's just going to happen. It's the way it is. So having a database, a mapping database that eventually will get right, I think is a good thing. Right now it's having big, you know, teething pains, you know, as we're going through this and discovering some of the issues that are there and certainly the definitions of what can be included and what can. Going back to speed tests for a minute, I don't know about you guys, but I've looked at various networks I've been a part of just to sort of see what we're consuming in the backhaul. Not what we're pushing to customer premise, but actual utilization in our backhaul links. And on a per capita basis, per subscriber basis, even recently, it's been on the order of two and a half to five megabits per second. Okay, all right, something like that. So when people are out there saying, no, we have to have gigabit to our homes. No, you don't. And for an iOS download, that's nice because to extend your iPhone or your iPads cooperating, you can get it downloaded very quickly, but you're not using gigabit. Zoom calls are somewhere around five megabits per second. How many of those can you fit in a 50 meg connection? No gaming even. Latency, we've talked about all the other aspects but the point is, is that you're not using a gig. Now, I know I sound like a dinosaur in saying that because, well, certain David, we're going to have a need for a gig in the future. Yeah, if you're going to invent a transporter or something like that and make it possible for you to beam yourself across the country, perhaps, but I'm having a hard time seeing why delivery of a gig perfectly in a network is happening anytime soon. I certainly understand why we want to raise the bar so that we can have networks that are going to be capable of delivering what's coming at us in the future. But at the same time, if you're looking at it now, just measure the networks. Go to Spectrum. Go to AT&T. Look at what they're actually doing in their own back hauls and they're not doing a gig anywhere. Yeah, you're getting me excited. You're getting me fired up. I knew this was going to be a great call. And one thing that I really like about these podcasts is it's really not about Caleb or myself. It's about the guest. And we do a lot on social media and you can't read a person or know a person by what they post on Facebook and stuff like that on social media. You have to see that person. You have to hear that person. I have to look at your facial expressions. Your body posture and all that stuff. And that's how you can see true passion, right? And it's clear that your passion is there with the majority, I think, of Wisps too, like we said. I mean, this is something that I always talk about. I really don't even like the model that ISPs have for selling speed. I think we should just, that's the dinosaur in the room. Not us. We've been around for a while. We're not the dinosaurs. That's the model that's a dinosaur. It's about reliability. It's about offering, of course, more bandwidth than they would need. But if you can deliver a reliable connection that's there when you need it, yes, it has to be quick. It has to be somewhat of an instant. When you click on something, the page opens up. We're not scrolling down like in the old days, building a page, right? So speed's important. But I really don't think that the public really understands and they need to be educated. The consumers here need to be educated on what good Internet really means. These definitions that are currently out there, which are just loosely thrown about, really, I think is what needs to be defined. And that's what we need to do. We need to educate the customer base into what's good and what's not. It could be a hard thing to define using analogies. I'm going to try so that you can perhaps give me some guidance on how I can improve this. But let's just talk about your bathtub for a minute. If you're going to go decide that, by God, today is the day I'm going to go take a bath, I've got my Epsom salts or whatever it is, I'm going to put it in there. When you turn the water on, in your mind, you're thinking, I probably have five minutes to go kind of get ready for my bath. Well, if you had a gigabit water delivery, your bathtub would be filled up in a mile per second. How does that help your bath experience? Are you still okay with a five minute filling of your bathtub or do you need it like that? Because right now I'm ready for my bath. When you think about power coming into your house, most homes have 150 or 200 amp risers coming in to their homes. But if we're going to have gigabit power, then I think what we need to do is we need to get those big Hawkins power lines that are carrying 100,000 bolts or whatever, right up in our backyard, because I need to make sure that if I need it, when I need it, it's absolutely going to be there. And by the way, you know that party that we're going to throw next week, we're going to need to really scale up the size of our sewer because the stuff that we're serving is probably going to provoke some stuff. So I don't just want the sewer line that comes in the residential side, but I want the utility sewer line to go in there because that's what I need. And listen, while we're at it, you know, although I don't really want to drive down my driveway at 80 miles an hour, I think I need to improve the driveway to interstate highway status, probably put in four lanes on each side, just in case, you know, so that I can get in and out of my driveway at highway speeds. It's like every other circumstance where we look at utilities and how they're traffic engineered, you basically engineer a power network to deliver what is needed to a high degree of high quality service most of the time with rare exceptions. And so most people don't even think to your point about speed. They don't think about power. Is my air conditioning running? Is the refrigerator running? Is my house cool? They kind of run on my appliances. If I can do that, I'm fine. I'm not thinking about my water main. I'm not thinking about my sewer line. I'm not thinking about anything else that's related to sort of a utility traffic managed system. But with internet, we've gotten fascinated with, oh, we got to have a gig. Got to have a gig. And I think part of that's been scope of marketing on the part of people who are pushing. Yep. And I think, you know, it's probably here to stay. It's going to be hard for us to argue with that, except through looking at the reality that people aren't using a gig. They're not. Well said. Great analogies. Yeah. You know, the quality aspect of it too, I think plays really heavily. And it's such a difficult thing to sort of measure and test, though, you know, because, you know, down in my parents' house, rural Georgia, middle BFE, nowhere, you're like, yeah, they've got good Verizon LTE coverage. I got plenty of speed down there on a map somewhere because they're, you know, three miles from a tower or whatever, but, you know, they're covered according to the specs and stuff like that. But if mom wants to send me a text message or a picture, like she has to go on the porch, go stand in the right corner, like that sort of thing too. Like there's no real consideration for quality or, I mean, my 200 meg pipe right now I've got from Spectrum. Yes, 20% packet loss for the last two weeks, right? So it's, I'm basically piggybacking on my phone connection right now. So, you know, I think people don't understand the quality aspect of it. Like it's for someone who's uneducated to the tech, a number is an easy binary sort of thing, right? Because they're like, you know, some politician somewhere is like, well, what's good, 100? Okay, 100 is a nice round number where my brain can wrap around, you know? So I think that's where a lot that comes from and is really, you know, difficult to push the concept of a quality connection just versus a straight sort of speed limit connection. So that's, that's always going to be the tough part in this fight, especially when those pushing that, you know, good intentions and stuff, but there's a lot of, you know, touchy feel, unicorn, rainbow, feel good stuff I'll play as into. So it was really easy to be like, big number. We'll get everybody the big number and then everyone's happy and that's not how it really works in the real world. Exactly, exactly. It's all, it's all marketing and it's, it's how easily it's digestible. It's like, you know, like you said, you know, offering a hundred meg package and well, we're not going to offer one gig. We're going to offer you a thousand megs, right? Because, you know, the average person is like, well, a thousand is more than a hundred. So that must be better, right? You know, and that's the way, that's the way it works. But don't get me started on 5G. You started talking about 7G, right? Oh God, man. So quick, go on to the next topic before I go my 5G rant. Yeah, yeah, version seven. So, so going back to the BDC mapping, I mean, we know right now is pretty much a cluster, right? Like, I mean, we don't have a standardized address system across the entire country, no nationally 911 database and stuff like that. So, you know, it's going to be a minute before that gets to a usable phase, but, you know, staying positive at the same time too. I mean, do you have any sort of feeling where, you know, how long it's going to take the BDC mapping system to be relatively realistic? Are the big guys going to come in and just blow it up because they're like, the map shows pink here. So we're covering this whole, you know, state or something like that. And I'm really curious how the big guy data flowing into this is really going to have the effect, you know, further than the view that we've got into the WIS trying to put their stuff in. We have an advisor who works for WISP. I'm going to get his quote wrong here. He's actually Steve Coran. He's an attorney who works in the industry. And he describes the BDC process as we are basically designing a database without a plan, blindfolded and with, you know, bad data. So now I've completely skewered, you know, his quote's a lot funnier than mine was. But his point is, you know, the FCC in particular knows that this is going to take a few rounds in order to get right. And so we know we're going to be better eventually. The real question though is, you know, what happens in this period of time when we're getting it wrong? Because if we have people submitting BDC submissions and if they are subject to some punitive action because they got something wrong, that's going to discourage participation and sort of amp up the volume of complaints. You know, that would be a problem. And if funding decisions are made based on bad data, you're still going to let some money go towards overbuilding existing services that were avoidable. You know, the rush to make sure that we close the digital divide sort of means that we're going to trample over some of the opportunities while we work the bugs out. And so that's going to be very aggravating. There's the scene in the hunt for red October where the Soviet Navy is trying to chase and they're just pinging away, but they're not listening. And what they're really trying to do is just drive throughout October, right? If you remember that scene at all. And so right now we've got a bunch of pinging that's happening and I'm not sure that we have enough listening. And I don't think that that's going to be, you know, effective immediately. Hopefully in the long term it will. I do have confidence that we're going to end up with a mapping program that works, but you're right. You know, there's no standard standardized addressing. You know, what is a location? Who decided that? How do you argue that process? How do you appeal? And even within, you know, coverage mapping itself, we're working with some of the tools that are out there and seeing what's there. Some of the tools will differentiate between where you're providing, you know, 100 megabit service versus where you're capable of providing 25. And what that can do is open up holes within your coverage area that are un-served, you know. So what are you submitting here? Are you saying that your entire area is going to be underserved because you're one of the least common denominator? Or are you going to try to create this patchwork where it looks like Swiss cheese, you know? What I'm serving over here, you know, a mile away. It's, so there are, you know, things like that that can be, I think, really maddening and troubling. There's a lot of tolerance stacking going on, right? Because you're like, all right, address data. Okay, little fuzzy. LiDAR data for coverage. All right, little fuzzy, propagation map. All right, little fuzzy. But you put all these things together and you can have so much slop where you've got an end result, you know. You're like, all right, well, this kind of works. Or you've got so much tolerance slop across the board that you end up with something that's not even remotely realistic. So, but it is an iterative process, you know, and obviously it's better than what we've ever had before, which was, you know, effectively nothing. So we've got some, you know, some history here, some precedent, but I don't think it's being applied in this particular case. And the, in the cellular industry, as it was getting going, there was a requirement that cellular operators build out to provide coverage to, I think, a certain geographic area, portion of the geographic area in their service area, and a certain portion of the population within a certain period of time. So I think it was like 95% of the population and 90% of the area within some period of time is what they had to be able to build out and prove. Now, I know that is you're designing and installing a network in that particular case, but, you know, I think that that's something that mapping could look at as well, you know, within whatever you're defining as your service area or whatever they want to define as a service area, are you providing service to 95% of the population, 90% of the area, you know, something like that, rather than end up with something that is so granular that it is hard to analyze just an idea. Yeah, I mean, you know, we saw the DSL build out stuff, too, like, at least those companies, like, they understand what it takes to get the service coverage. They can define that. Like, I was co-opping with Bell South 99, 2000 when they were trying to get back in the long-distance game and the feds were like, all right, you can do it, but you've got to put DSL, you know, cover, I forget what the numbers were, cover some percentage of the population with DSL coverage. You know, like, sure, and I knew exactly, you know, they were dropping, we were dropping DSLams in every building that had more than one floor across Northeast Atlanta, like, you know, they knew exactly what it was going to take to just match the absolute bare minimum letter of the law. Now, of course, that all collapsed, you know, immediately after 9-11 and everything like that, but, you know, there's some aspect of, like, getting it good enough, as much as you hate to say that, like, you know, there's, a target goal can be acquired here, but we're also now mixing in, you know, not just a dataset from a hardline provider, a cable provider, cellular provider, but, you know, these regional telcos with electric costs. We've got everybody sticking their data into this big bowl and be like, hey, this is going to be a great stew. Well, there's, you know, someone might drop something in there that's a little dirty. So it's going to be an iterative process. So somebody's going to turn the punch bowl. So, but, so kind of, kind of shifting away from that a little bit, one of the things, I don't think it's really been discussed very much is the state level aspect of what this plays into, right? Because right now, everyone's focused on the Fed, you know, big bad Fed, but, you know, a lot of this money and a lot of the administrative stuff is going to be handled down at the state level, which, you know, some people are federalists, some people are, you know, very much state. I think it's good at the state level, my personal opinion, because every state is different, right? Like, how do you want to run a network or a build out in Vermont versus Mississippi versus California, completely different affairs, right? But now, I forget what's the number. Like, right now there's only like 26 states or something like that with broadband offices. I don't remember the number exactly, but... I don't have the current count, but I know that all 51 in on the program. So they're going to catch up. Yeah, everybody's got their hand out. But so I think it was 26, 20, I don't know, something like roughly half, right? So, you know, your California's and stuff have well-established programs and political processes and stuff, but a lot of places don't. And, you know, when you start worrying about waste or grift or, you know, whatever that may be, you know, now we're talking about 50 little thief thumbs trying to argue about what it is. You know, to me, that's really the concerning part is there's just 50 different ways of doing business, which is good because it allows for flexibility for giving that. And it gives, you know, if you're a regional operator, you know, you've got access to people at the county and state level way more than you would at the federal level. So I think there's a ton of potential there, but there's also definitely, I think, that chaos factor that might even, you know, everyone's getting worried about getting overbuilt now, right? But I mean, realistically, we're not talking about money hitting out till late 23, 24, whatever that may be. All these offices have to get going. And then what happens at the end of 24? And let's say we've got a national political pivot, right? So somebody side wins or vice versa. And then now, you know, do we continue on or does this all this sort of shift over? So, you know, I think going back to Tosso's point, you know, those that are afraid to get overbuilt today or tomorrow, I mean, realistically, you've got a lot of runway here. So it's definitely not doom and gloom. But at the same time, you know, obviously don't ignore it. So the state, the state part of this is, I think what's going to be really interesting and really those that are interested, you know, there's your opportunity to kind of get in on this and learn what it is. So there's several things to kind of unpack in that, you know, first I was talking earlier about my experience in public, private and academic partnerships. And ultimately in those sorts of partnerships, you're going to have some clash of priority. And so ideally you play to your own strengths and that's how you create something that can last. But I think the term public-private partnership is thrown around too much kind of globally and it actually requires a hell of a lot of work to make those work. People come in thinking they're 50-50 relationships, they're not, they're 100-100, kind of like marriage. You know, it's just you can't downshift at all but you're dealing with another party that has a different perspective on the world than you do. So in states that tend to sort of favor government intervention or government control, government involvement, then the state's going to want to have a lot more to say about how you run your network, how you spend, you know, how you potentially hire, you know, things of this sort. And other states that are more relaxed perhaps about government involvement may have a stronger private sector side or character of what's going on. And because every state is different, I'm fine with that. You know, I think that it's better to have a 50-state program than a one-size-fits-all. Well then, Wisp and some other remarks that I've made publicly before, another old story for you guys. There's a guy who, he was a union officer in the Civil War. He lost an arm in that battle and he ended up as the first sort of notable head of the U.S. Geological Survey. His name's John Wesley Powell. And he was tasked with going and looking at what was happening out in the western United States, the territories, to figure out how those areas can be developed. And so he went and he looked and he realized very quickly a couple of things. You know, first of all, there were all sorts of Aboriginal cultures there that had to be addressed. But most importantly to him, he knew instantly that you could not take a township mentality that pervaded the East Coast, you know, the Delaware's and make it work in Montana. You couldn't take attractive land and say, we're going to divide it this way. We've got Main Street here and we've got Oak Street or Elm Street or we're going to do this. The church goes there. There's the city. You can't do that. And the reason for that is, is that water is scarce in the western U.S. And so he came back and really beat the drum in Congress for shifting the way development in the west was going to be sort of attacked. Nobody listened to him because they kind of liked their township mentality and so they tried that out there and I just saw the story yesterday or this morning about how the states are still fighting over what to do about the Colorado River while lead meat continues to go down. You know, these water rights stories have been going on for a long time. The point to this is that over a hundred years ago, we actually had the head of somebody of an organization, USGS, trying to tell the federal government, let the states decide or shift the design priorities so that it deals with the realities that exist on the ground in these territories or in these states. But state defense, we're not doing that. We do it this way. So I think on the one hand NTI should be congratulated because they got a little bit of John Lucid Powell's message right. I think it was inadvertent, but they did. It's like, let the states decide, but at the same time, they came at this with a township mentality. You know, it's all going to be fiber and it's all going to be, you know, glitter credit and all the other stuff that's in there. It's like, no, you really, you had an opportunity to get it a hundred percent right. And, you know, I'm giving them all a grief for this, but they've got good friends there. And so, you know, I know that they've had their hands full trying to get this thing out the door. But Powell is an inspiration to this process too, because I think if we can all go look at the Texas's and the Montanas and even the Indianas and not try to treat them like New York or Vermont to your point earlier, we're going to be okay. And I think we're wisps have an advantage if they'll play the card is that they're the ones who are already on the ground there. They're the ones who are already serving in these communities and they might not have spent much time in their state houses, but they're the ones who have customers who have outs for them who are they're established in their communities. They have the relationships probably with a local bank. You know, people know where to find them. If they were producing that promoter score kind of KPIs in their business, they'd be way out in front of anything that the traditional fiber or cable guys are doing. They got some cards to play, but I think one of the things that I would deliver as a message to wisps is that COVID took us by surprise in the sense that prior to COVID, I think all internet service was sort of considered best efforts, you know, including in the West community, but certainly including in any other wired, but now people have come to see it as absolutely required. I've got telemedicine appointments for my kids going to school this way or I'm working remotely and I have to be on these calls. I can't stomach the possibility that it's down or it went down because it was convenient for you to do something right at this moment. And so there's, there are some disciplines that I think wisps can begin to apply to the extent that I'm already doing it based on the realization that we flipped. You know, nobody's fault, but it happened. We went from best efforts to we're now it's required to be a very high degree of service quality. Definitely. Yep. 100% on that. So, you know, and that's something we've talked about, I mean, since we started doing the podcast over and over again, over and over. And as you know, the competition, like there's always going to be competition. It was what was doing like a year ago. The dooming loom was what Starlink, right? Starlink was going to put the entire whisper industry out of business and hey, look, we're all still here. But it is. Yep. Yeah. 5G is going to put the whole whisper industry out of business. But you know, at the same time, there's definitely to your point, the days of being able to run just a few mags and stuff like that and kind of taking a lax, a daisical approach, you know, is probably pulling back significantly, for sure. So, you know, you've got to think about the networks that you're building, the investment, the technology type and, you know, do think a bit more longer term about where you're going with things. Yep. And that's, you've seen that, you've seen that change also in like, say, the hardware that's available, right? So there was a point, like you said, definitely it was way before COVID, right? But it was kind of the race to the bottom. It was like, I needed the cheapest CPE, I needed the cheapest access point, because all I had to do was deliver service to somebody because it wasn't as important. And now we're starting to see a shift where they're like, I'm not going to buy, you know, this antenna or this radio because it's the cheapest. I want the best. So you're seeing radios change from plastic enclosures to metal enclosures to be more robust. It's not just about speed, but it's about the reliability and the longevity of the hardware. The, you know, the company philosophy, right? Of a hardware provider is now very important with the migration path, right? I mean, the forklifting sucks. Nobody wants to do that. So they're looking at and choosing their companies based on will interoperate with my previous generation. So at least I can kind of upgrade the infrastructure and slowly bring those customers over to the newer technology without having to just, you know, trash it all and restart. So, yeah, that mentality and that shift, it definitely happened and was starting to happen right before COVID, but it definitely went into full throttle mode once COVID hit and it became that important for everybody. I know that Wisps are looking for stability, you know, because you can buy equipment and you can buy a backhaul that's capable of delivering bandwidth at a certain level. But when the end customer delivery standards keep going up, then you may not have the right equipment in your network and that can be a very expensive process to go and do. So if I could express one area of absolute solidarity with Wisps large and small, it is that, look, I get at this sort of changing fabric of requirements and standards where we're setting the bar has a dramatic impact on your business. And you need wherever possible for there to be some stability. I did want to shift back to NTIA for a minute because we haven't really talked about, you know, the elephant in the room, but we have had meetings with NTIA, with the staff to challenge, you know, the notion that unlicensed spectrum somehow doesn't belong in their definition of reliable broadband. And paraphrasing heavily here, but what they said at the staff level is of course unlicensed spectrum is reliable, little are reliable. You know, it probably would have been better if they could have come up with a terminology instead of capital are reliable broadband service if they had done something like qualified broadband service to qualify for the B funding. They were going to accept or prioritize certain technologies. But what they did by using capital are is they got everybody up in arms about what do you mean? You know, unlicensed is reliable. Yeah, that's reliable. And they acknowledged that little, you know, lowercase are but their main concern that they have shared with us is availability. And they're looking over a long period of time 10 years or so, maybe longer for the life of the equipment that's being put in place. Will there be available unlicensed spectrum to meet the needs of the future? And you can look at that a bunch of different ways. They didn't clarify it in that meeting. Do they think that unlicensed spectrum is suddenly going to change in the future? Maybe FCC policy is going to change on unlicensed or is it really more about just the potential for congestion because unlicensed means that, you know, anybody can potentially come in. So we're still working with NTIA to get clarification on that. You pointed out that CBRS-GAA is now considered licensed. That was really through the efforts of WISPA and congratulatory perhaps who is RVP of policy who's been working, you know, hard on that. He was not alone in doing it, but he was the one who was able to point out to the FCC that their precedent on CBRS in particular made it clear that it was intended to be licensed. And so they reverted back to follow their own precedent in the case. But anyway, so the question that the NTIA isn't about whether it's lowercase reliable, it's about what to include in their qualified, you know, network solutions, which raises the question for me, what is DSL doing in there? You're going to talk about availability. Does anybody really believe yet that DSL has got to be around? Is there some technological improvement coming that I don't know about where, you know, you just replace the stuff in the central office and it's your customer premise and now you've got broadband speeds? I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, all those 40-year-old copper lines on the polls are just going to get magically replaced somehow. And yeah. There are a couple of other things that I would share. We have gotten a qualification is where our clarification that when they're talking about unlicensed spectrum, they're talking about as it's delivered to the end user. So they know that many of our whists for using licensed spectrum in their backhaul, but this then leads to the question of, okay, so they've left open the door for using a hybrid of licensed and unlicensed spectrum for end-user delivery. And we all know that there are systems in place that will do that for backhaul links, but there's not a whole lot in place that does it at the CPE level. So there's some things that we're looking at there because you may be able to use, for example, the dual-win router at the CPE that uses the unlicensed spectrum as your main connection and maybe throws it over to something that would be considered a fixed service that would qualify. And I don't have a magic bullet here, but these are some of the things that we're working with our industry partners on to identify. But if there's one thing that I would say to WISP today, it's that to the extent that you can be looking at GAA as the opportunity, you don't have to deploy it everywhere. The requirements are that if you get a request that you were able to deploy within 10 business days, as I recall. So it's not a forklift upgrade to your entire network, but it's something that you really should consider as a way of sort of creating some boundaries around the area that you intend to demonstrate as served. And always, you're going to want a better advisor than me on these subjects. So I don't really want to hear later that both David said and that I suddenly become the certifying engineer for your network. It's probably not a good idea. But the finer point is that I do think that we have some time. I might get some noise from people about this because it can be an existential threat the way that this is shaping up. But the reality is it's going to require a lot of time for the money to flow. We do see political change afoot. I don't think it's just 24. We'll see what happens to the Congress. Yeah, the program won't change, but the congressional pressure will to the extent that we see a change in the House and in the Senate. And so this is a work in progress. It's going to take a while. We've got at least another year of mapping improvements that are underway with waivers associated with that. And so while, yeah, I do believe that some of the areas WISPs are serving would be juicy targets for people, larger operators to come in and use beat money to rebuild. I think Caleb, you made the point earlier. If you're already serving that market, well, that's not a guaranteed pickup in customers just because somebody dropped in with a fiber connection. And the final point I guess I'd make is that I don't think the money is enough. As big as 42 plus billion dollars is when you start imagining how that's going to be deployed in fiber infrastructure, it's going to be expensive that has supply chain problems. By the way, I love fiber. This is not a being I've used fiber. This is not that. But if you just look at the practical realities that fibers going to face, if we're really serious about closing the digital divide and going into unserved areas, throwing fiber at areas that are partially served, underserved or even fully served does not close the digital divide at all. Definitely not. Yeah, I mean, so much of this. I mean, it's technically feasible, but you're almost in that infinite money glitch to do so, you know, I've been, I've been a lot of places doing a lot of this sort of stuff where I'm like, there's barely roads here. Like I can barely get the truck to where these people are. There's no way we're getting, you know, the stuff drug up here. So yeah, and there's there's time to deploy, right? I mean, so yeah, you can do fiber everywhere if you want everybody to finally have internet in the next 50 years, right? Where we can get them really good internet wirelessly now, right? So, you know, supply chain issues is one thing, but there's also issues with manpower as well to do it because it's very labor intensive to put fiber in the ground. And that's just the back hauls, let's say, right? To run the main arteries and you got to also trench it and do things to get it to the premise as well. So I mean, it's just, yeah, it's difficult. You know, one more observation I make about this is that I think we can get ourselves into trouble if we look at the stated purpose of the program and believe that that, in fact, is the stated purpose of the program. If, for example, we were serious about closing the digital divide right now, the most agile way to do that without question is wireless. 100%. Absolutely. You know, so if we were serious about doing it, there'd be a wireless preference because that can happen tomorrow. You're not trenching roads, you're not getting pole attachment rides, you're putting up poles, you're not doing any of that. And in particular, unlicensed spectrum because you can put that up now. That's not something that requires coordination to go into. So if we wanted to solve the problem, if DC wanted to solve the problem, it would have been wireless. So we're not trying to solve the digital divide problem right away, are we? What we're trying to do instead is look at this as a public works project, maybe an FDR era investment so that we can have the billboard that says we as a nation committed to go and do this and we were going to do this in a way that was very robust. I mean, that's fine. Advertise it that way. You know, this is something that is so important at a national level that we're going to go do it this way. And yeah, you're going to be waiting five years or something to close the digital divide, but we're on it. You know, so yeah, so by excluding unlicensed spectrum, that kind of forces the supply chain and the timelines to align if you think about it. Going to take you time to get fiber. It's going to take you time to get a coordinated path. It's going to take you time to get facilities on which to put power, put fiber or to put your paths in place to go do it. Unlicensed, that is not the problem there. So if unlicensed have been included in Capital R, Reliable Broadband Service, I think everybody would have run there. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well said. And I always thought it was funny too, so they can basically have a level of granular detail to like have the bean counters like looking at every orifice, making sure your financials are straight, weird labor laws you've got to do. I'm sure there's going to be some sort of goofy EPA regulations like all that sort of government like lay on the stuff. Super fine detail. They're going to be watching you. And then on the other hand, they're like, we're just going to get this giant chunk of technology because we can't be bothered to look at that in any detail. We can make sure that you're using the right kind of gas can and you're hiring the right kind of person that's like labor-rated to carry that gas can to fill up your trucks. But on the other hand, we can't be bothered to look at your entire technology to hype or deployment scale or anything like that. It's a little backwards to me, but who knows? Government. Government. Now, that said, with the government, I think this is a really good opportunity to kind of tell people, hey, you know, this was doing a lot at the state level. And I think we're seeing a lot more ramp up, you know, trying to get those state level whisper things rolling if you'd like to speak to that. We do. We have a state coordinator, Steve Schwerble. We have one of our board committees that's working on state programs where we are ramping up our state advocacy program. And that may seem at times to be a little less visible to our members because every state is going to be different and they're operating under different timelines. And so one of the things we're doing also is we're looking at how other organizations, associations, not just in our industry, but elsewhere have dealt with state level advocacy because we want to make sure that we're not reinventing the wheel when it comes to tackling these problems. We'll say this, I think that it's likely in most states that what the governor wants is going to be reflected in the state broadband office and in the way these programs are administered. So the governor may even be more important than the legislatures are in the overall scheme of things when it comes to looking at what broadband offices are doing. I mentioned that not to say that we're only working with governors, but just to say to our WISPA members and other WISPs that if you're looking to get involved in advocacy on your own, be thinking about the way your state is actually going to be working. You might be establishing a relationship with the broadband office, but be aware of who is the person who's driving those priorities. Chances are it's your governor. Yeah, understanding the sort of approach and political stance and everything really plays into it from the long term for sure, for sure. If your governor happens to not be aligned to your political views, you might want to think about your Facebook posts. If you're going to try to create a relationship there, that's not advice. It's just an observation. You want to make sure that when you're trying to get your point across that you are putting your best foot forward. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And like a lot of people are like, you know, it's unattainable, but you know, we went to the Texas WISPA event last year and I was like, hey, there's representative people here from the real Texas, you know, state level government. Like it's not unattainable by any stretch of the imagination. So, you know, it takes effort. It takes organization, you know, and those sort of a skill, you know, soft skills sometimes to navigate that scenario. But, you know, it's not unattainable. So in many cases, you know, the state officials are very thinly staffed, you know, so for example, in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago, we had the Midwest Midwest regional gathering. We had the Indiana Broad Beneficial, you know, came in and he's a staff of two trying to administer all of this. So they're coming up to speed. The chances are your state will see the same thing. They're coming up to speed and they're trying to develop relationships and in many cases, I believe that they're looking for advice from you. So make sure that you're known to them and take the time to help them understand what you're doing, how long you've been there and how you're making a difference in the community. Yeah, that's a very good point. I believe, like you said, there's huge opportunity there for WISPs in their local communities at the state level or county level to be the expert and to be the guidance, you know, for, you know, these offices. They're looking for that and they're very accepting of that. So it's a real good opportunity for them to get involved, know who the players are and try and inject yourself into that conversation and that decision-making process and help as much as you can. Yeah, definitely. Their guard isn't as much too when you're wearing a, you know, you're from a local community and you're not walking in there with like an AT&T shirt on, right? So you can have like real conversation. You know the constituency, you're one of them, right? So, I mean, there's a lot of clout and that goes back to the whole servicing and stuff like that. You know, your community knows who you are, right? They don't know who AT&T is. And I think just society is changing as a whole too. You know, they're tired of the robotic, put you in a box. If you didn't read the fine print, you know, you're going to get screwed kind of attitude of big business, right? So, I mean, there's, small wisps have such an advantage. I just don't think that they've been, you know, shown what that advantage really is and being local really speaks volumes and empowers you more than you would think. Well, if you, I get it again, you may have seen it, but I'll do road trips and I'll just stop off at our members at random and do 30 second snippets after meeting them and talking for a while. And the story that oftentimes comes out of this is that these people have been in their communities for a long time. They may have grown their business up with the situation where the existing carrier left and so somebody's desperate for service. The point is, is that the support for those wisps by the community is very intense. And so the wisps have a constituency too. And so a broadband official or a governor or whoever is administering the program is going to care about where the constituencies are. And so if they're going to promote a program that can disadvantage a beloved member of the community that has made a difference there and that has a constituency all of its own, they may think twice about bringing in a big guy to go over build in those circumstances. So wisps have some pretty powerful cards to play at the local level. Great, yep. For sure, for sure. So I guess speaking to kind of the public side of WISPA or I guess where you're going to see the next big thing coming up from the public side, I guess it's WISPA Palooza. You know, that's what, six, seven weeks away. So it is coming, it's coming down the tunnel real quick. We were, we were planning all the stuff we were in a meeting this morning. We're like, hey, you know that show that was like way down the road? Yeah, it's coming real quick. So. Yeah, it's shaping up, it's shaping up very nicely. It's the beginning of October. You can find out about it by going to our website at wispa.org or WISPA events and see, you know, what's up there. I think most of the agenda is published, still working on some aspects of it because we're in an industry where things change by the day. And so you want to get enough of it settled so that people know what to expect when they're coming but at the same time, you got to be flexible because things are happening in real time. We're also updating our strategic plan for the next couple of years in particular with the realization of what mapping and what the B and OFO mean for us. But we're also looking at ways that we can expand the programs that WISPA offers to the WISP members because in many cases, you know, the things that we're seeing our members face are going to be new to them. A year ago, they weren't worried about things like best practices, perhaps. And, you know, out of that, sort of sounds governmental even to say that but I think we learned from each other and so to the extent that we can lever these experiences a lot of times with the help of our vendor community that makes us as an industry stronger and more capable of carrying our message forward. So that didn't give you very much in terms of scoping that out for you but I did at least want to make that statement that this is something that is front of mind for us and we're working hard on it. Yep, yep, for sure, sir. Las Vegas is where we're going, by the way. So if anybody wanted to know where the show is, it's Las Vegas. Yep, and this, you know, and we've said so many times in this podcast talking about the shows is, you know, the educational aspect of it would be hard to overstate. You know, there's, you know, a lot of people show up for the party and see the exhibit stuff and hang out with friends and that's great. Definitely do that, right? But, you know, you've never had a better opportunity to not only sort of meet and congregate with your peers across the industry but also, you know, get, you know, direct verbiage from you guys, you know, whisper as a whole, you know, work on your state level. Start building those relationships. You know, it's a relationship thing and, you know, there's no better opportunity because that's where a lot of us are gonna be there for sure. Yeah, I mean, this community as a whole, right? I mean, we're, you know, another positive note and check in the box for the power that we have as Wisps is our ability to work with each other, you know? It's really, I've never been part of an industry before where we can come together. I mean, I think we have to stop looking at ourselves as our individual businesses, right? And look at our industry as a whole, right? You know, we're, you know, united, you know, we're strong, right? And the relationships that you make at these shows and the amount of help and experience that you can get from your brother and sister Wisps that are out there is just phenomenal and that in itself. I mean, beyond all the education, everything else that happens there is something that I truly love about these shows. And I love seeing the new people who are coming into it and it's almost what has kind of created now this ecosystem of support. It's just something that's now organic. It's not something you guys necessarily plan for. Maybe it's something you can. You can consider that a little bit better of a mixer thing, but really it just organically flows. People, the experienced guys that are there come there and they want to teach the new guys, right? The new guys come there looking for information. It just naturally happens and it's a huge brain share and it's a very powerful thing that you don't see in the other industries and the bigger industries, they're all looking at how they're going to screw the other guy and make more money. And in this industry, in the Wisps industry, we're looking at how we can help each other. We're no longer competing against each other and it's a wonderful thing. All right, so we've covered a lot of ground so far. I mean, we can sit here and probably talk for hours. I mean, there's spectrum uses, there's technology types, there's everything else. But I think we covered a lot of the big hot topic items that's really on the fourth round of everyone's thoughts and communication and stuff right now. And that's great. It's a great opportunity. Like I said, Wispapalooza is right around the corner, you know, great opportunity to meet those and talk about it in more detail. So, you know, if you guys are ready to put a bow on this, I think we're in a position to do so. So David, those of folks that are looking for you, what's the best way to get in touch with you or track you down? So I'll give you an email address. This is probably the easiest way, although I can have an overwhelmed inbox from time to time, but it's dsomewaltatwispa.org. So D is in David and Z is my last name, Z-U-M-W-A-L-T. We'll throw it up there with our fancy anything. Yeah, exactly. So feel free to reach out and I'll try to get you connected to whatever answer you need or whatever resource we can provide. And that's probably the easiest way. Okay, great. Any closing words that you want to throw out there before we wrap this up? Come to work every day willing to be surprised. I know I do and I appreciate the time to be able to kind of convey this message with you today. And I look forward to seeing you at all at Wispapalooza and continue to work on making mapping better and see where we can go with this speed, no problem. All right, well, great. We really appreciate your time, your expertise, your knowledge, and we look forward to talking to you in the future about things, so. Thank you very much. I'd love to come back. Yep, no problem. Tasos, where can folks find us? Yeah, they can find us anywhere on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and of course on our website. So feel free to email or DM either Caleb or myself directly on social media. We're happy to help and also another thing. You know, we're always looking for new guests to be on our show. So it doesn't matter if you're a beginner with, if you've been doing this forever, a hardware vendor in this space, whatever it is, we want to give exposure to this industry. Like I said, I mean, the best thing I love about this podcast is being able to really see people for who they are and get a better read on people and basically, you know, see what they can do for you. So yeah, if you want to be on the show, reach out to either myself or Caleb and drop us a DM or an email. All right, well, until we talk to y'all next time, y'all be good out there. Bye. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. Thanks again.