 Very good. I'm very honored this morning to begin with a welcome to all joining us. Thank you for doing that. I'd like to first of all say that the Special Construction State Matching Grant Program is a great opportunity for Nebraska's libraries to make significant improvement in broadband services. We've benefited, certainly for their, for your communities as well as for our library staff. I also want to acknowledge the work of the Nebraska Rural Broadband Task Force for the research deliberations and report that the task force prepared that is recognizing the importance of improving our broadband services throughout our state and particularly in our rural communities. Also, I'd like to acknowledge the support work provided by the staff of the Nebraska Chief Information Officer. That was important to putting together the product that resulted from the task force work. The task force recommendations included some very specific recommendations related to libraries and schools. And for that we are very thankful. Of course, that led to the initiative of the Nebraska Public Service Commission for which I thank them and led to this opportunity for special incentive funding to help with providing improvements in library broadband services. I really want to give my assurance along with that you will hear from our presenters this morning that help is available to work with libraries in Nebraska to make this, to take advantage of this special funding. Once more, a great opportunity and we hope that you will be among the very first to take advantage of this program. So I'm going to turn this over now to Holly for the next remarks. So I'd like to just give a brief overview of what we're going to be covering today in the webinar. There's a lot of information to provide to you and we're trying to at least give you an overview to see if this is something that you're interested in. And of course we'll follow up and visit with you about this if you would like. First off, which is probably one of the main reasons you're engaged in this is to find out more about the state matching fund and E-Rate. And you may or may not be currently a participant in E-Rate but or have been a participant in E-Rate. As Rod mentioned, we will be amping up our support for that as part of this project to know that. And then actually, Krista Porter will be doing the presentation on this area. And she's our library development director and also our state coordinator for E-Rate. Next item we're going to talk about is assessment tools to help you determine if your library is ready for fiber. Well, what I think is really interesting is we're going to be talking about hands on types of things that you can do in your library as well as which will be Cynthia and I will be talking about that related to Internet and your infrastructure network. And then Sam Shaw, who is our planning data services coordinator, he's going to be talking about data. And what we discovered and I think what we discovered is that data is important and significant when you're trying to advocate for some change or to receive something because it really explains the story about it tells where you're at compared to others. So I hope you're excited to see some of the tools that he has and the data sheets that are available for you who are participating to share with your community to advocate for fiber to the library. And the next option or the next item we're going to be talking about is what are my options for bidding for fiber build out. And I will be presenting with Tom Rolfes who has the lead project person for the Network Nebraska. And he'll be talking a little bit more kind of a brief summary about that I'm going to emphasize to Tom brief. But we'll be talking about the difference between a local ISP fiber build out and working with Network Nebraska. And I must say that Tom has been an advocate for libraries as far as increasing the broadband speed has been a great resource for us. He's worked with the library commission with the broadband toolkit which came out about five six years ago if you might have been familiar with being offered the opportunity to have this toolkit come out and visit you. And Tom was a participant in that and then also the Sparks grant which worked with the fixed based Wi-Fi between school and a library was also a part of an area that he was helped to facilitate and was a part of. And gained a lot of national attention. And finally we want to talk and wrap it up with talking about resources that the library commission is offering for those who are interested or ready to apply for the E-rate state matching special construction fund which means also working with E-rate. We're excited to have an opportunity to provide this information to you today. So sit back take notes and we'll go ahead and get started with Krista first. Thank you. Thank you. If you guys want to there if nobody's gonna be sitting in the chair there you might want to either turn off the camera just have one somebody sitting there instead of just an empty spot for you guys Holly. That's okay. And don't forget mute yourself. If you think you're going to be I think you're something to want to worry about that while I'm doing my presentation here. There you go. All right. All right. Hello everybody. Hold on just a sec here and I'm going to switch to the presentation that I have. There it is. All right. So as Holly said, I am Krista Porter. You guys looking at halls here. I think you all know me. I am your library development director and state E-rate coordinator for libraries in Nebraska public libraries. And we're going to talk about today is this great new opportunity that includes that is a state matching funding to help you get fiber into your libraries and it is all related to E-rate special construction deal. So what I'm going to do first is give a brief overview for those of you who might not know about E-rate or need just a quick refresher and just so that everybody does know what we're talking about for the basics. And this is definitely just a quick overview. This is not going to be anything in depth because then we're going to get into the state matching concept that's coming. So E-rate. What is E-rate? E-rate is a program through the FCC and their goal is as it says here on the screen, you see it's exact quote from the page to ensure that schools and libraries can obtain high speed internet access and telecommunications at affordable rates, which will keep students and library patrons connected to broadband but providing a discount on eligible services. So it's all about getting internet services, all about the money, getting internet services at a good rate and then getting a discount reimbursement money back from the federal government for it. It is funded by the universal service fee. All this money comes from a fee that you pay on your bills and that service providers paying your bills. Look at all those different fees you pay. One of those will say something about USF and universal service fee and USAC is the company that runs it. It's an after-profit that was set up by the FCC in 1996 to do this program. So you'll hear me talking about them a lot. E-rate runs on its own funding year, which generally does not match up with anybody else's funding years or fiscal years from July 1st to June 30th of a year. So right now for this special program that we're talking about with special construction and matching funds, we're talking about applying for funding that will be for next year in 2021. Applying for the E-rate 2021 funding year, which runs from July 2021 to June 2022. We're looking at next year. There's almost $4 billion available in the E-rate program in general, so there's a lot of money there for everybody to use. Here in Nebraska, all public libraries are eligible for E-rate. Our schools and school districts participate as well. The Department of Education helps them submit their applications along with Tom, who's with us today. And if we had consortia and groups. This is the URL for my name E-rate webpage on the Library Commission's website. If you want to know a lot more about applying for E-rate, if you haven't before, if you want to see my full loan trainings about this, go there for more information. Libraries and schools can receive anywhere from 20 to 90% off on their E-rate, on their internet related services. There's no 100% in the basic E-rate program. And this discount is based on the number of students in the school district your library is situated in, where you're physically geographically are, who are eligible for the school lunch program, the free and reduced lunch program. The key to this is number of the students that are eligible and not necessarily that participate. You will possibly have more students that meet the criteria, but they don't participate. The Department of Education here in Nebraska gives us those numbers so we can look up and see where you're at there. And then you combine that with the weather you're considered urban or rural. Most of our areas in Nebraska are rural. It's a slightly higher discount for some things. So you can get anywhere from 20 to 90% off on anything internet related. So what is E-rateable, as I call it? There are two categories of service that are eligible for E-rate discounts. One is category one and category two. And I put together this little network diagram here to kind of give you a visual of what we're talking about. Category one brings the internet connectivity to your library building. And then once you cross that wall, inside it's category two. And that's all of this equipment that gets that internet to wherever it needs to be within your library. And notice there at the bottom of that diagram, there is all of the actual devices, your computers, your phone, smartphones, wireless, anything are not actually E-rate eligible. So the devices you use the internet for are not just the internet itself and the equipment that gets the internet to those devices is what is eligible. So specifically in category one, this is all about anything high speed broadband that any way you can get the internet to your building. So cable motor, DSL, T1, wireless, whatever gets it to the building itself. You notice there I've highlighted in both fiber because that's specifically what we're talking about today is the fiber type connection. Category two is everything, as I said, inside the building. All the equipment, all the pieces of equipment that you need to make your internet work. Your wonderful network closet, if it was nice and neat like this picture here, firewall switches, routers, racks, power supplies, upgrades in software, and the ongoing basic maintenance of this equipment as well is your category two. Now just to make sure you're aware as well, if you are participating in E-rate and you're going to get any of the funding that they have available now, you do need to be in compliance with SIPA, Children's Interment Protection Act. This means the basics of having a filter on your computer. I'm not going to go into a lot of deals about that right now. I just want you to be aware of that that is something you do need to do. There's an email in addition to the URL for the website for the library commission's E-rate page. There's the information from USAC itself. There are multiple forms you submit throughout the year and a couple of these relate to what we're talking about today. The 470 and 471 are what you need to be doing in conjunction with applying for this funding available from the state. Like I said, I'm not going into all the details of this, but just give you an idea. There's four different forms throughout the year, three to four forms. Look at my full training to get all the details on all of this. All of these forms are submitted online. Yay. So you do not have to worry about a pile of papers that you're doing. Everything is done through, they call their E-rate Productivity Center. So everyone will have an account in there. And that's where you will submit and monitor and keep track of all of your forms. Now what we're specifically talking about today related to E-rate is special construction. This is a special category of, a special part of category one. And this is getting the, if you don't already have a connection to your library of fiber, special construction is something you can get a discount on to get that fiber link to your building. It's actual construction, taking the trenches, laying the cable, any design, any prep work, whatever needs to be done to get that to you. Now you noticed, remember the beginning I mentioned that the E-rate funding year runs from July of a year through June of the next year for special construction because they know construction companies and libraries can always work within that one year. You can start your special construction projects anywhere early if you need to up to in January of the year. So even though we're talking about the E-rate funding year starts in July, this actual construction can start as early as January. They also do have some, if you need to run late when it gets into 2022, if you still haven't gotten things done, they also give you extra time at the end as well. So in addition to this special construction category, there is USAC, E-rate has created a special matching fund program where if a state of state legislature, state organization decides to put money up towards part of the special construction, E-rate will contribute some additional money to help libraries make this happen. So it is only related to getting your fiber connected and it will match. The E-rate program will provide up to an additional 10% to match whatever state funding is being provided to libraries. And this is on a $1 to $1 basis. So if the state library provides $1,000, E-rate will find another $1,000. And this is what we have decided to do here in Nebraska. Many other states have started doing this. This is a new option that they've created within the E-rate program. To make that a little more clearer and give you an example of exactly what we're talking about, if your library has a bid for $100,000 for an actual full fiber project of getting everything to your library, and your library's E-rate discount is 80%. The E-rate will pay that 80% of $100,000, so $80,000. And then the library is responsible for that extra 20% of $20,000. If there's a state matching fund set up as there is now in Nebraska, the state matching fund will contribute 10% of the project, which is $10,000. And then E-rate will match what the state is providing to another $10,000. And then the library pays nothing. That's what we're talking about here, getting your fiber run to your library for free if you are at an 80% discount. Now here in Nebraska, our library is generally run anywhere between 60% and 90%. It depends on your situation, of course. So for some of you, you might have to pay some, but you're still going to get a lot of it covered, extra covered beyond what your discount is if you decide to participate in this. And just to put it in a nice, either just math with not visualizing, $100,000 minus the 80%, 80% discount, $10,000 from the state, $10,000 from E-rate, and the library has to pay nothing. Now this is just to get the fiber connection to your library. Once you do have it connected, you will still have to be responsible for the monthly cost of this fiber. That's not part of this state match. State match is just for the construction of getting the fiber to your building. So after that, once you're paying for whatever your monthly fiber internet bills are, then you just get an 80% discount from E-rate and you're still responsible for 20% of that cost. So here in Nebraska, the Nebraska Public Service Commission is the one who has been set up to do this. They handle Nebraska's universal service, E-rate-related things. And they have budgeted right now a million dollars to start with over the next four years to make this happen in our libraries and schools. This is for ones that are not currently fiber connected. So if you don't currently have a connection, this would be for you. The way it starts is as of July 1st, when the Form 470, the first form of the E-rate process becomes available, you submit an application for that and then pick a service provider through competitive bidding process for whoever applies to you. And we're going to talk a little later about how you can choose and what your options are going to be for who that provider might be. So July 1st is when this form goes live. So we're talking next month is when you can actually start this process. After that is done, then you, after you've submitted your 470 and picked your provider, then there is a separate application form to apply to the Public Service Commission, the Universal Service Fund, the E-rate Special Construction State Matching Grant Program application. That's a mouthful. That's available right now and we will provide you with a link to where you can get to that application. And it is, there's no official deadline yet for that, that they've put out Public Service Commission, but they've said by mid-December they want people to submit that. You'll include a copy of your 470 and the bid service provider you chose so that they can then evaluate them. And by mid-January, they will let you know if you've been approved for the additional state matching funds. And then when you do your second form of the process, the 471 where you tell USAC, I've picked who I want to be as my provider and here's what it's going to cost, you'll include that documentation letting them know that you've been approved for state match funding so that then E-rate will do its part of their match to what the state is paying. After all the construction is done and all the invoices is done is when the reimbursement will be made to the service provider for all this discount. So this will begin after the fact reimbursement is what the Public Service Commission has stated. So that is the basics of how it is going to run. I think it went a little bit over my time by a minute or two, but that is the basics of how the special construction and E-rate matching fund is going to go. All right, and now are you, and Holly, now I think we switched over to you guys to do the next part. You're going to have to unmute yourself. Oh, yeah, that's what we're doing. Yep, all right. So I'm going to hand percentage control to you to pick up the slides on your side. You should see a little pop up showing you to, offering you to show your screen. Just a moment. There you go. You're now going to see your internet assessment data slide. All right. My name is Sam Shaw. I'm the planning and data services coordinator here at the commission. And I wanted to give a brief overview of some data that's available that might help you throughout this process. Most of you, I think, are familiar with the Public Library Survey. That's the annual data collection program, the national program that we're involved with with IMLS. The good news is that last week we have just published our fiscal year 2019 data. So now that is now available. There's a number of questions on the survey that deal with technology. So those are things that you might want to look at. You might want to look at other libraries in your surrounding areas. One thing to mention is that our accreditation process has been suspended this year due to the COVID-19 crisis. But the backend data, the fiscal year 2019 data, accreditation data is available. So if you want to look at your peer libraries and look at the backend data that would normally go into an accreditation application, contact me and I can get you that data and send it out. A few links on the screen. The first link is the main page for our data. That's where you'll find a link to the fiscal year 2019 data that I mentioned. It also has retroactive data from prior years, I think going back to 1999 if you want to look at a prior year. And then we've also set up a page on the infrastructure broadband page of our website with just internet and broadband specific data. That first data file can be kind of overwhelming with all the financial parts. You just want to look at the broadband part. We've condensed that and put it down into that. That's that second link on the screen. We also have some county fact sheets and those are in the process of being updated right now with fiscal year 2019 data. What those contain is kind of that same data, that broadband data in the second link, but just for your county. So libraries within the county. Sometimes that's good to make that comparison. And one thing to mention in those data sheets and in the county fact sheets are, and I think Tom might talk about this a little bit is we've came up with the kind of a calculus. It's a LSA to speed ratio. So what we do is we take your legal service area or your LSA and divide that by the top end of your internet speed. And so just as an example, if you had a library that had an LSA of a thousand people and an internet speed of a thousand megabits per second, their LSA speed ratio would be one. That would be very good. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if there was a LSA that was a thousand and download speed is 1.5 megabits per second. Obviously that would be a much higher number and not as good of a number to meet the needs of the community. So we've kind of summarized some of the data from the fiscal year 2019 and to see how libraries are doing in Nebraska. This kind of summarizes the overall speeds that were reported on the fiscal year 2019 survey. And as you can see on the right side, libraries above that 24 megabits per second are doing pretty well, but we also have this large number in the 6.1 to 12 range. So we'd like to see that kind of move more towards the right end of the spectrum. And then another slide here. You might want to look at how many libraries in Nebraska are fiber optic connected right now. That's on the left. The majority are still on DSL. They have some on one pair of wireless, some on cable. And then the other is makes up about 10% or 10 libraries. I'm sorry. So then we talked about that LSA speed ratio. This is kind of a summary of my library system. So as you can see, like we said, the lower number is good. The higher numbers need some improvement. Central Plains is winning that contest, I guess. Southeast is second statewide is kind of between Western and three rivers are kind of on the higher end. And then we looked at, we looked at data for the last three years. We kind of broke this down into three categories. Something that Tom came up with underserved, which is be less than 12 megabits per second. Or unserved, which is less than 12 megabits per second underserved, which is 12 to 24. And then what we consider served, which is 24 plus. And as you can see kind of the unserved number and the serve numbers kind of switch throughout those three years. So we started in 2017 with a large number of unserved. And then that kind of those numbers kind of go down over that course of three years and that number of served go up kind of proportionally over those three years. And then that middle group that 12 to 24 kind of remains the same. And Holly asked, you know, do you think that this is due to the fact that libraries and unserved category are moving to underserved and replacing them and then the underserved moving to serve. And I think that's the case in some circumstances. But in other circumstances, we're looking at, I think a lot of libraries have moved from a very slow connection in a rural area to a fiber connection. And they've made that jump from unserved to served. Yeah, Vern bias or computer person actually sent me some data this morning, where he looked at individual libraries and a lot of them were a huge percentage increase from just last year to this year. That's it for me. Again, I just want to mention that I think that there's possibilities of using this data, especially if you need to go to your city council or to looking for that less 10% you might need for fiber. I think Sam might be your guy or you can talk with us and we can come up with some some information that might be useful and powerful for you if you're doing a presentation. At this point, we're going to move to Cynthia, who has the luxury of being at home and doing her presentation. So we will let that happen. Okay. I am going to switch to PowerPoint here. There we go. All right, hi everybody. Cynthia. You want to get back on. Pardon me. Do you want to get your camera back on you didn't you turn it turned off your camera before. Oh, sorry. That's okay. In the good. Okay. All right, so you can still see me. Yep, I see you you're doing good you see your slides go ahead and go through your slides. All right, great. All right, I'm Cynthia and I. I am the infrastructure support technician. Welcome to this overview of how to assess your library's infrastructure. I'll cover some information that will help you determine what you need to improve your internet speed. Aside from that cable you have bringing in your internet. So let's first look at bandwidth versus speed. So the data traveling over the internet cable is like a water like water in a pipe. The bandwidth is the width of that pipe essentially the maximum volume of water that can pass through at once. This is your this is what your internet plan and your service whether that be DSL or cable whatever that is. Speed is the amount of megabits per second that can be downloaded by a given device using your library's network. Speed is more accurately called throughput, meaning the rate at which data is put through to your laptop, phone, etc. This is limited by your old networking equipment and computers. You have all speed in the world coming through up to that point where it hits your router and your other network equipment and your computers. So just so you understand megabits per second is the standard measure of speed or bandwidth on internet connections. There's how many bits can be transferred each second. So you'll normally see speeds ranging from 10 to 1000 megabits per second advertised for home or your internet plan. But now the factors that determine your internet speed are the type of service you're using fiber cable cable or DSL. The internet plan your library has chosen. So like not all plans are equal. You might be only paying for 25 megabits per second. And it could be that your service provider offers more than that. And so you may want to be looking at that plan. Router switches and cabling determines speed. And of course your computer's age. Now this is a little chart just to show what kind of speed that you're actually getting with those different types of service. So you can see fiber by far is much better. It provides a lot more speed. And if you'll notice the download and upload speed is the same whereas all the others except for the fixed wireless microwave. It had that also has the same download and upload speed. So download is when you're downloading a file upload is if you're sending an email or sending a file. So to test your internet speed many sites that can be used. There's three here for you to try out. But if you did a Google search you could find all kinds. This the second one fast.com is powered by Netflix. So if you're having trouble streaming a video this is going to show what your actual speed is. The speed dot measurement labs it shows latency and there are other sites that show other things like how quick a packet is delivered. But this gives you a little more information. The results may vary from one speed test to another due to different limitations or where exactly the packets are being sent to be tested. But if you do a couple of them you'll probably get a pretty good idea of how much what your speed really is. And if they vary some. So now you'll want to compare that test to what you've actually purchased. So if you purchase 25 megabits per second and you're seeing that you're only getting six or 10. It's time to go do a little investigation. So you want to get a hold of your bill and see what you've paid for or call your provider and find out what exactly what speed are you should you expect. How much difference there is when comparing what you purchased and the test results get take a look and see what that is. If there's discrepancy then we better do some troubleshooting. So now do to do it speed test. It depends on you know how many people are on your internet at that particular time. Also which computer is closest to your router. So let's the first thing you would want to do is test on a computer that's closest to the router that has a wired connection. That's going to tell you one speed that would probably be your best speed. Then you could test on a laptop. Using a Wi-Fi connection if that if you have Wi-Fi in your library. That's going to be a lot slower speed more than likely. You want to test when no one else is accessing the ethernet or Wi-Fi. And then you can also test if if you happen to see a lot of slowness during the day you have some people coming in. You might want to do a test then and then just notice how many phones or tablets or computers are actually accessing. Are they accessing Wi-Fi from out in the parking lot to. Things that you need to look at kind of like the LSA ratio that. You mentioned earlier. How many people are using your internet. And you know using up all your resources we went to one library where. They totally. They couldn't even check out any books after a story hour. And it seemed like everybody that came in for story hour all those moms had their phones hooked up to the internet and it totally crashed the whole system. So how many patrons. Can your current speed support. It's a little chart that shows the different speeds available. And how many people it'll actually do this would be for a home. A home setup but. If that would be very similar to what you have. Now if you go with the. The special construction. You are required to get 100 megabits per second. So you can see that is only an average speed for three to four people. So how much speed do we really need. A general download speed requirements based on everyday online activities are below. Just to check an email and browse the web takes one to five. Desktop video chat point five up and down. High definition video conferencing like we're doing here. I'm not sure this is high definition and but I bet it's pretty close. So that takes two megabits per second. And on if you wanted to stream 4k video have online games. And download download large files you need 200 plus megabits per second. So I know that equipment in the that networking equipment can be kind of scary. We don't know what it is and what it does and there's all these wires that are so confusing. But if you get to know just the basics. Sometimes it helps so it's not so scary. So here are a couple of routers on the left ones and older one. The one on the right is a newer it's got all those antennas sticking up. So that it can broadcast your Wi-Fi signal. The switch is where all the all the wires are hooked up to. It would not be used in a wireless only network. These are for all your wired components like maybe your printer, copier. These are a little access points now in some places they'll be up on the ceiling. The one on the right here is a desktop model. And these would extend your Wi-Fi signal to cover a larger area. If you wanted to if you have a room that is not catching that Wi-Fi signal. Maybe you want to put one of these in there. And even extend it beyond your library out into the parking lot. So your patrons can access the Wi-Fi at night. Or when you're closed. Another thing that you might want to be looking at is your cable. If you don't have a cat six or higher preferably seven like it's shown here. That's really going to limit your service as well. You're also limited by distance and the cat seven wire that's shown here. Will increase the distance that you can travel that cable can travel. It can make a big difference if you make these upgrades and erate will cover it. Just a few years old equipment like your router or switch. If you if you get a new one you'll see huge improvements. And if your computers are older than five years old you'll see a big improvement as well. But first you probably want to handle that networking equipment. Erate category two is available. And depending on what your discount is you can you can really make a huge difference in your internet speed without even changing your plan or your type of service. Now there's also the cares act funding now you really have to hurry. But if you applied for that then you don't have to jump through all the hoops of the rate. It's a little less onerous of process. And underneath that that is a link that's going to show a list that we put together that maybe it give you some ideas on models of routers and switches and things that can guide you. They're not necessarily a recommendation for that product. But at least you know the specs to look for. So ways that we can help. We can help evaluate your internet options. Now here's a link to the broadband toolkit. Which is on our E rate site. You can download this and walk through it with by yourself or or with your staff and figure out what's going on with that network closet and all the equipment and how it all works. We can also we're going to be providing future trainings to smaller groups. So that we can walk through all this a little in more detail and be able to take your questions and possibly even we can walk right into you could what takes a computer into your network closet and we can see what's going on. So this is all going to be coming up. We're also talking about doing one on one to help you decide what you need. We could maybe just remote right into your computer and talk with you one on one since COVID we're not probably going to be traveling too much but we can still work with you to figure out what you think you need and how you can figure out ways to help you. So more details on the training will be forthcoming. That is it. My part. Yep. All right. I'm switch over center control to you Holly you're going to have to unmute yourself as well. All right. You're going to have to unmute yourself you still have yourself muted. Holly. Nope there you turned off the camera. All right. We need to show you the camera back on. Okay. There we go. And while we're switching over I just want to remind everybody if you do have any questions or anything you want to know more about get it typed into your questions section will take questions about anything we're all talking about here. At the end of the webinar today so anything you want to ask. Go ahead and type them in as you think of them. There we are. Okay, sorry. Trying to figure this out. So Tom and I are going to visit a little bit about your fiber options for your build out a couple things I just want to mention related to the assessment piece, especially Cynthia's part so you can see that as you're looking to fiber there you know it's the there are some other things that you'll be you'll have to be engaged in because even now we find libraries that we've come to visit with the assessment tool who are working with a older equipment network equipment and they may we have one library in fact that is had fiber and couldn't figure out why they were unable to find that type of speed and it turns out they had like a 1215 I don't know what it was your old router and so obviously that that won't work so it's good that you're here today and you're hearing this message because you may even be in the point where you should probably just update your routers and switches and hopefully you don't have a hub somewhere hidden away but if you do then you want to upgrade to a switch. So we, we are not on the camera. So where do we want to be on our camera here. If you both want to be in view, move a little more to your right. Okay, just switching over so Tom can get in the view there. So, again, this is Tom Ralfus who's been part and parcel to about five or six years of working for getting this getting faster speeds to the library as far as internet speed and now we're we've graduated to five possibilities and and we feel very confident that we're as a library commission we're ready to help with that and Tom has always been an assistant and I let him visit about himself a little bit. Sure. Thanks Holly. And I feel honored and privileged to be here to share information with you today and to be able to work with this extraordinary library commission staff. As Rod mentioned earlier, the reason this becomes an opportunity today is largely because of the role broadband task force. And they did indicate this is one of their primary goals in order to address the homework gap throughout the state of Nebraska that of using public libraries as significant community anchor institutions to deliver advanced broadband for community members. So the first objective within that goal is to get every library faster bandwidth through fiber access if possible. And the second objective was to use a public library within towns and villages as they get new fiber and incentivize to do so can also allow the provider to serve other customers as a result of the project. So that's also very exciting opportunities for many villages in town. So in this slide we're going to begin to talk about as you can see the difference between an ISP internet access and the internet access to network Nebraska. And one of the things I just wanted to mention right off the bat, I had sent out a link for questions from libraries prior to the presentation. And two of them came to me and they were about how much will it cost I don't know if I can afford it. And as we're talking through here and as Krista mentioned this form for 70 bidding. One thing you need to know is when we're talking about this form for 70. That's where you're going to get return information from the providers that will give you an idea how much things are going to cost for you. So as we're going through here you'll see this form for 70 and know that there's no obligation for you once you submit a 470 to act on it. But it certainly would give you some information to begin with work to think about budget and how much it truly will cost to bring fiber to your library. So the library itself if they're doing it locally they have to have file the form for 70. And in order to be legitimate. You need to include the eligible services for the rate discount which was mentioned earlier, which is the construction of network facilities design and engineering and project management. The 470 would not even be looked at unless you had included that so in light of that we're looking at. As we're working through training to include a request for proposal or an RFP that will be standardized that we at the library commission would. It would be a template that so maybe some customization, but that way you would be able to submit along with your 470 a detailed request for proposal RFP that would include questions to the vendor that would make this standard. And I think that's important to understand that for those of you who have worked with the 470 form, you know, the text box that you have that you fill in all your information. Instead of that you would have a nice form that would be filled out by the vendors and therefore you would have a standard to be able to then look at and evaluate bids and you would be able to award a contract to an ISP and I think it would be more easily and efficiently done that way. So Holly asked that I provide just a quick background about Network Nebraska. Many of you on today's session may be unfamiliar. Network Nebraska was created by the legislature in 2006 to serve public and private education entities as well as local government and state government. So for the past 14 years, we have operated as a consortium of our members to improve their broadband and internet services and to lower their costs. That's our simple mission given to us by the legislature. Participation is voluntary and the legislature also makes clear that the entire consortium must pay for itself, which means that there are no state dollars invested in the project. It's all completely self supporting. So right now with our network Nebraska, we have all 244 school districts, 17 years used, 23 public colleges, about 20% of private schools, but only three libraries from our public library, Lincoln City Library, as well as Grand Island Public Library. So they are members full-fledged as part of our project. We broker services on their behalf and we can also provide you with filing support as we do for many of our members. So as Holly and I work through these few slides, everything on the left is your pathway as if you are your own applicant. So there's nothing stopping you for applying for Fiverr service, doing a 470, working all the way through the NUSF 117 funding. You do not need Network Nebraska's help, but it's also an opportunity to allow the state to bid on this as an additional pathway. And you can actually do both of these pathways simultaneously and in parallel where we bid on your behalf, you bid on your own behalf and then compare the results after bids are known and then be awarded. So that's how we're going to work through these few slides. So we can see on the left there was talking about the non-recurring Fiverr bill costs and then the extra 20%. So as Christa was mentioning, you know, the average is probably somewhere around 70%. So you would get a return back with your 470 form and you would be able to figure out that maybe if you're at 70% with the 20%, actually you have 90% and then you have that 10% that you need to come up with and pay for. And then the other part of it is also as mentioned that the requirement is that you have a minimum of 100 megabits per second service. Now you can increment that up if you would like, but we definitely have to look at that being able to pay a monthly recurring cost for that amount of money. That's right, Holly. And as Cynthia and Christa highlighted earlier, there are several different versions of Internet access under the category one eligible services identified by the FCC. So on the left side of the slide, you have Internet access, which includes transport from an Internet service provider. And that's very similar to the service we might buy at our home or at our business. On the right side, Network Nebraska has separated the transport, which is the pipe called Ethernet from the actual Internet or the water that's running through that pipe. And we actually broker both of those services separately to get the lowest cost. So the reason there's more bullets under Network Nebraska is the consortium itself. When it brokers the services, it has to cost recovered from its participants. So the things that are similar, you'll have a non-recreate fiber-built cost. You'll pay the net after the 20% added discount. You'll be required by the FCC to buy at least 100 meg pipe or higher as a result of participation in this program. And then the Network Nebraska bullets start. So we charge participation fee. There's a sliding scale there for lower bandwidth, higher bandwidth customers. We charge for the statewide backbone called Interregional Transport, also sliding scale. And then we separate the charge for Internet access. Approximately 10 cents per megabit per month for our e-read-eligible customers and then up to 24 cents per meg per month for non-e-read-eligible, which would include all of our colleges and a few municipalities. So I can provide more information offline by writing a question to my email. You're welcome to ask it as part of today's session. So what are the pros and cons of either option? And again, remember what Tom mentioned that you can file for both, which I think is a good idea and see where you come out as far as costs. But this may help you to understand why there are some differences too as far as what services are offered. So the pro for the ISP Internet access overall monthly costs may be lower than Network Nebraska. That's a little hint there, but we'll talk about services. And you get the deal directly with the service provider. We call that a pro. Maybe sometimes it isn't, but that's something you have to be thinking about. You have to take on all the e-rate filing, local responsibilities, the library does. And again, we're here to help you and we have been traditionally, we have had fall workshops and Chris is available and now Cynthia and myself have come on board too to help in various ways. But again, ultimately it's your responsibility to do that. And then go ahead. Yeah, sure. Network Nebraska can be your e-rate filing entity as part of our consortium. So right now this upcoming year we have 140 circuits that we filed for on behalf of the state consortium. Some school districts prefer to retain that responsibility on their own. There's no problem. That could also be a decision of the library if they decide to join the network. But the part about the network management services is just distinctly different. As Holly mentioned, you will have a direct access to your provider. If you're filing on your own, you would know that company. They're your internet provider. If you had a problem, you'd be dialing them directly in network Nebraska support model. We monitor all the circuits that are connected to our network 24 seven. So if there was ever an outage, let's say three in the morning. Our 24 seven operation center would probably know about that before you the library director even gets in in the morning. We would have already started a trouble ticket and then try to get resolution on that service. And we do that 24 hours a day. So that's kind of an added bonus of being part of network Nebraska, but there is a charge and a cost for being part of the consortium. And those are things that every library must weigh pro and con when they get their bits back. I think that's important because oftentimes and I've been visiting over the years with the library. I have actually been at a library to work with them and they're down and they're they are calling the service provider who is diligently working on it, but they aren't getting much information about it and they just have to wait. And so to have so a proactive situation would be excellent. No, we entered the minimal advanced portion of our presentation on the right side. It says that SIPA content filtering is encouraged and not required. How is that even possible? Right. Well, it turns out the network Nebraska separates those two services of internet plus ethernet. Ethernet itself is transport that's unbundled with internet. And you can actually get you rate discounts on that service without declaring your SIPA compliance. It's only when internet is bundled that you must do that. So the reason we say it's encouraged because if we're to take on a library and I'll use on Grand Island as examples, they're perfectly SIPA compliant at the local level. When we enter them into our statewide application for internet services everywhere, it does not endanger our discount. But on the other hand, we have Lincoln who checks a different box on their SIPA form and they act more like a college than any rate supported library. And then we remove them from our internet application on a statewide basis. So we actually have two different fee structures. If filtering was a local exception, one that the library would not want to pursue, you can still be accommodated through network Nebraska. But know that some of your fees may be at a higher sliding schedule more like a college. So just wanted to mention that Zoom is in frequent use around the state of Nebraska. We actually have an enterprise license and we make available an unlimited number of pro licenses in the state. And right now we resell about 20,000 of those for K20 education. It has been our most popular service outside of internet itself. So, you know, to wrap it up here, I do think it's an excellent idea to look at the asking working with network Nebraska at least to do a 470 filing to give you some idea and then come back and take a look at these pros and cons. And one thing I do know about library staff so you know your hours are limited and what you can get done is limited. And whether you want to look at this and say, well, I can't file for a rate at all because I just don't have time, or whether I can file for a rate and maybe pay a little bit more but take advantage of all the opportunities and higher speeds and everything else so zoom licenses and be able to be using that faster speed is something to be thinking about and it is relatively easy in the sense that you would do one and then the network Nebraska would be the other filing for the 470. Okay. The timeline and next steps. So, again, we know from a presentation throughout that for a requirement for this grant funding is 100 megabits per second but what is what you have to think about is you may want to have increments and this is something that I really wasn't aware of until I visited with Tom that you started 100 and then make a decision as to you know if you want to do 100, 150, 125, 150. So you may want to move up within the period of time that you've contracted with your provider and this enables you to do this without having to file an additional 470 form, am I correct? Sure. Okay. And the other part about this is you're going to have to work through all the contract terms to be bid and negotiate with that. And in fact, you may find yourself in a situation with a 470 form that you've evaluated and there's nothing that says I don't think that you can't come back and ask, you know, for them to review whoever you're working with and maybe consider changing the pricing to your advantage. So this is also the we have to work with a narrative for the 470 which is the text box area and then the RFP document and the RFP document I believe has to be posted on your actual website or some way is that also true or how does that? Yeah, I think the project is strongly suggested, but when they get involved in Epic the online portal and they initiate their form 470, it will ask, have you constructed an RFP to be associated with this 470? The answer is yes. Whatever that supplemental document is, it might also be uploaded at that time, and then a library may also provide a URL and then house that document locally. But as far as a provider is concerned, and the FCC and USAC, the document that gets uploaded into Epic the portal is your official supplement to the 470. So if you want to catch up on the top up there and then we'll talk about the time different. Sure. Yeah. So if one were to choose the pathway with the state of Nebraska bidding on your behalf, know from the outset that there are no obligations. You can allow us your bandwidth increments. So what would be typical in this case is to say, I'm requesting then with the 100, 200, 300, up to 500, and that becomes your buffet for later purchase. And then we would need your Fiber site address. What's the address of the library for the provider to be able to do a site survey and construct their bids. The state network contracts that you could purchase from are 48 months. We would draft the entire RFP. And then the library, all the libraries would only become lines of an appendix and providers would then bid on any lines which they can provide service. And then we evaluate an award to individual providers and then it then becomes available for purchase. But as I mentioned, no purchase required to the library. So Holly mentioned that timeline is upon us. It's hard to imagine we're at the end of June. We've been working on this project for over a year. And now it's time. Correct. You know, where if we're looking here that we have a September 1, 2020 for the form for 70. Remember that the, you know, it's been mentioned that there's at least a minimum of a 28 day period that that has to be out in public before you can do an evaluation. And the award signing and contract now, I'm not sure if we would be doing that if we're doing the NUSF 117 funding, we would be holding off on signing any contract until after the award. What you can do is actually sign a commitment with a provider that's conditional upon receiving state funding. But don't take that decision lightly, even though it can be conditional. By that time, the libraries worked with their community decided that these bid costs are going to be doable. If they were to get the extra 20% for fiber construction and that you'd be fully able and willing to take on the monthly recurring costs starting July 1, 2021, if you're in the first year cycle of this program. So you could hold off on that contract that's signing that commitment, but the public service commission must know that the library is committed before they're able to review and award the state funding. So they wouldn't be required to have a signature on it. Yes, they and then the next step after that would actually be the 471 where they've encumbered funds from us. So the state's version of this will vary very similar, except that our RFP will probably come out earlier. And remember, you only need two things, what bandwidth increments and let us have your address. And then we would bid on your behalf on our timeline, which will probably by October 1, we would also be prepared as a state to sign the master contract. But then the agreement from the library to the provider off of that contract would be somewhere in the early October timeframe. And then whichever pathway the library selects, whether local or state, then they would bundle that information and be ready to make application to the public service commission and then be eligible for the NUSF 117 funding. Again, if there are any questions, do you have a closing slide? No, I don't really do that. So I'm moving on. Holly, can you go back to that previous slide, which is second there? Actually, I just to clarify about the contract signing that were seen to be not a little unsure about I just looked at the public service commission document about submitting to them for their funding. And it actually words it and says that you have to include a copy of the selected bid response, not necessarily a fines kind contract to then apply for the public service commission funding. So it looks like you can apply to them. Here's what we've been bidding what bid we received, but we haven't actually signed the extra way to see if we get the public service commission money. So it looks like you don't have to have the contract signed according to the wording in the actual report. Yeah, that's probably more comfortable for a library to be. Yeah, so just to go and I'm just reading it by exactly the wording they put in there in their own document says the bid response not assigned contracts. So I think it's okay that you can say here's you don't have to commit to contract before applying to the public service commission. It's okay that you can wait until after both of those things are done and then you find out do we get the public service commission money now we can sign the contract as you said Tom make sure that's on you know it is under. We won't sign the contract unless we get this month extra money can be a requirement yes with the library could release which is non committed or non obligatory is what we call an intent to a work. So after the 470 bids have been evaluated, and you're ready to select your likely awardee, you could communicate to all vendors that if we were to go forward, this would be the likely company, and we call that an intent to a work in a stable do that as well. But there's no commitment at that point. This date to look at your application for that money, and then make the final. Excellent. Thank you. And I do also I the that you've got this September 1 deadline for the 470. What is that coming from. Basically, in order to meet the timing. I think it's to meet the timing for the end usf 117 is really part of the reason for that. There's probably some budget room in there because there better be for us this year. But I think that you know that's really what we're looking for we need to move back from when we need to have that the 20% the application for this 10% from the state and see how we move back into it. Yeah, they also state that they they don't have a specific deadline for submitting their thing but they do mention by mid December is there a freezing also for that. And after that they were actually going to have a deadline or and it may. That's a good question and I wish they did but it doesn't know it just says we would want to receive all these applications to our money by mid December and we'll give our answers by mid January that's the all the wording they have at the moment. And the only other thing I would say I'll give us some specific dates because that would be really great yes. The only other thing is, I guess, the one thing is that it states that it's first come for serve now. I don't think they're going to run out of money, but that you know they may make a cap on it or do something I mean that's in their control to a certain extent. So the idea, I think is to get the application in as soon as possible. I was thinking that opening up sometime in November. And so I think that's, you know, I don't I would not consider that a hard rule, but again, they just have to be able to work their way through it, but that's a good point. A very good point that none of us mentioned yet which I think is important to as far as the public service in Nebraska money. It is first come first served as long as when they evaluate so July 1 that 470 becomes live, you want to get your application and first they're going to look at the first ones they get in and start. Evaluating them based on that it does phrase it that way so that is something very important to be aware of that if you want this money you need to be more on the beginning than on the end don't do it like you do your e-rate where you wait to the last dead lot day of the deadline. And then hope the militia they'm all at once that's not how they're doing it in for our state money here in Nebraska they are saying first come first serve for it so that is very yeah something very important that we hadn't yet mentioned yet. So I'm glad you mentioned that Holly. Okay, so now we're moving forward and we're going to just kind of get to the end and wrap this up appreciate you all hanging in there with us at this point we'll have questions afterwards but one thing that we wanted to mention a little bit about is what we can provide at the library commission to assist you. And looking at that July one opens up obviously at this point we're in the end toward the end of June and we haven't offered any training or anything on and USF 117 and part of that is of course it's only been announced about a month ago and so we had to wait for that. So to wrap these this up as far as what we're thinking about offering as training and and this is a little bit fluid still but definitely some of the points that Cynthia has brought up and and Chris have brought up about training will reiterate. I can't emphasize enough about the toolkit toolkit broadband toolkit is wonderful. If you have some time to download it and take a look at it on your own and go through it. It's easy to read easy to understand it becomes something that you can leave in your library if you work through it for administratively as for a another library staff person to go take a look at to find out information about things related to technology at the library. It is currently online. We're allowing library staff to get a to I think it's to see you continue see credits with going through that and verifying and sending it to us that you've gone through it. So here we are talking about our special construction project training and we're thinking to start this in late July. One of the pieces of it is going to be no surprise working through an assessment of your library because I think it's important that you know where you're at. You know, are you ready for fiber is this the time and maybe it's not the time this year for fiber but maybe it's the time this year to be upgrading your network equipment or your computer so when you have fiber you're able to receive, you know, and utilize the full speed in your library. So we're looking at probably multiple trainings sessions of primarily in July. Maybe we begin to look at those that have never used Epic before getting on to Epic and the beginnings of a 470 form that they would begin to you would begin to fill out and then your assessment and then in August. We already mentioned talking about the being able to complete an rp which would be the other half of that 470 form for for fiber for the category one special construction fund. And then we also would be looking to do some training on the category two area for the eligible eligible device list and see if there if you from your assessment see that you need to purchase more network equipment. Part of that is another pitch for the cares act, because if you are looking at that right now, you can get that and you don't have to go through irate to do that so another pitch for that will have a traditional general training in the fall for irate The commission staff are available to answer questions. You know, there might be something that you're interested in finding out from Sam that as you're beginning just visit with your community decision makers about funding that would be helpful for tooling for you to be able to present to them. And for the special construction, any of those questions or the network device information that would be myself Cynthia or Krista and Krista also with the irate and to a certain extent, we may be able to help you Cynthia and myself as we get into this program. But certainly she can help you Krista. So, finally, we haven't really mentioned this and I know we have regional system directors online with us and they are also committed to this project, and wanted to mention that that they would also be a resource for you. So if we develop resources will provide them to them, or if you have a question and they're easy for you to visit with, they will email us and ask us a question. So, I think I'm done with that and I think Krista, you are welcome to take over at this point. If there are any questions. All right, yep. All right, if anybody has any questions, nobody typed anything in during this, my we're talking, but if you have any questions, type them into your questions section to go to web interface and we will you can ask them that way. If you have a microphone you're welcome to use your microphone to ask your question explain what you want to ask about just instead type in ever Mike please unmute me, and you can ask your question that way. While we're waiting to see if anybody is in the midst of typing anything in. I will show here is contact information for all of us as Holly was saying here is everybody who's involved but here is the contact info for any of us depending on where your question may fall in the future. Also we are recording this webinar right now. So the recording will be available later for you to rewatch. If you want to if you need to or to share with anyone who of your staff that you wanted to know more about it and have them watch what we talked about. Also we will be sending you all the slides. Right now they're in a couple of separate files. The plan is to try to merge them together. If not, we'll just send them as separate. We'll see how that works out in the next day or so. I think we had some difficulty with trying to get everything into one giant presentation, but the slides will also be available as well with all the information on there. That is something that some people did ask about. Yes, I mean gail us about that. So any questions you have about the project to program erate special construction network in Brassica anything that we're we were talking about today get it typed into the question section there. While we're waiting for that I'll also tell you about the cares act as I mentioned a couple of times here today. This is something that you've heard a lot about it in the news I'm sure from all over the country. The Nebraska Library Commission was a lot of some funding from cares act those are for specifically through the IMLS to state library agencies. And we those grant applications are available and open right now you can go to the URL there look on our website we've got links to it all over the place. The deadline to submit us is the end of this month June 30th. And we will evaluate all those applications after they come in and decide who we will grant funding to this is IMLS funding. It is not anything to do with erate as was mentioned before this is this you don't have to be doing erate to do this cares act funding. You do have to be compliant with set by however because it is IMLS LSTA related money. We've got all that information is on the website and this is for anything related to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. So things like upgrading your internet your and all of your equipment that we've been talking about some things that you might want to just get new equipment as I think Holly and Cynthia both mentioned. Sometimes your speed issue may just be we have an old router we have an old switch whatever that is something that this grant can get you that equipment and you don't have to go through erate or anything just submit this one application dust you can get that. Also things cleaning supplies cleaning resources you may be needing the things to keep your library safe online resources that is something else you can apply for. Also for some libraries have already opened up we want to be clear about this too if you have already purchased things for safety and security and cleaning. We know that we were some libraries already had to jump on it and get that those kind of things done before just to reopen however they're in whatever capacity they are. We can retroactively give you reimbursements for anything you've purchased and it's after April 21 was the date. Look on the website that's when we were officially awarded this money so you can submit for things that you've already had to purchase before we had our grant application up there and ready. So definitely take a look at that to get anything you might want. Funded ASAP and this is not as I think Holly mentioned something about getting your money like ASA right away to the grant closes at the end this month we'll immediately start looking at things and start awarding money and sending out the funding immediately. There's no delay or anything you'll have this money within a month or two at the longest I would think. Looks like we're not getting any questions about what we talked about today I don't know Holly Cynthia anyone else want to do any final wrap up of of anything and summarize what we're doing or anything go ahead. But nobody's typing in any questions that right now. I'm just I just wanted to say goodbye thanks for attending and give us a call. We'll talk to you about how we can help you. So we're very appreciative for those of you who have hung in with us there was a lot of information that came through and we recognize that it's a lot to digest and that you have lots of responsibilities especially with covid issue also. But we're excited about this. This is a limited opportunity. Basically four years and then this funding may or may not be available. So be thinking about that and you can take baby steps and we'll be right with you with the baby steps if that's how you want to get started. Yeah I was going to just mention the same thing and is and just to push that this is a lot of info. A lot of new things that you're hearing about I'm sure take some time to digest it. Look at the slides we sent him at you rewatch parts of the webinar if you need to and call any of us with question call or email any of us with questions concerns confusion whatever you want to know about it we're happy to help you and as I do with the everybody as your e-rate coordinator at we will handhold you through the whole process. All right I think that's it. Thank you everybody for being here this morning.