 It's welcome to everybody attending today. This is the second year for our special construction, special funding capability out of four years. And we're excited to have you here to learn more about how you can bring fiber to your library. We have, like I said, one year of participants under our belt and hopefully have learned something and hopefully we'll be able to share those with you today. I think that, quick, you've already, if you want to just start moving forward with the slide. I do have anything to Anna for logistics, okay? So just a welcome today. We have three presenters and I was driving in this morning to work and thinking about this and I haven't had the least tenure, but I think between the three of us, we have about 50 years of experience working in this particular area. Is that true, Tom? Are you 20 years here? Anna, I think Rick is about there, if not there, and then myself, that's him. So anyway, my background is I've been here for about 10 years and primarily the last five years I've been working with advocacy and working with libraries to improve their internet speed. I use the word internet because, you know, we have a majority of our libraries still are not at what the FCC defines as a broadband, which is what 25 up and are down in three up, yeah. So we're excited to have these opportunities to talk to you about Fiber because it is a great solution. It's reliable and completely scalable. And right now, I think it'll be about the chief if you can go to get a run on getting Fiber to your library. And so, Tom, would you like to introduce yourself? So I'm Education 19 Manager at the Office of the Chief Information Officer in the Nebraska Information Technology Commission. Long title doesn't fit on the card very well, but we're a sister commission to the Nebraska Library Commission. And we deal with information technology across all sectors for the entire state. The chair of the commission is Ed Toner. He's also my boss, the state CIO. He's appointed by the governor into that role. Since 2006, I've been working with a project you may have heard about called Network Nebraska, it's a statewide network for all schools and colleges. And we have a handful of libraries that have part of that network. We'll be talking more about that later in the presentation. So I think that's it from me at the moment. And they all know Christophe. Yeah, hi. Yeah, I'm Christa Porter. I'm the Library Development Director here at the Nebraska Library Commission. I'm one of my duties since 2009 has been as a state E-rate coordinator for our public libraries in the state. So I do training and consulting and handholding, whatever you guys need to make sure you get your E-rate applications submitted successfully and get your E-rate funding. Right, thank you. If we move forward, one thing I'm hesitated because there are a number of us on the line and I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about this screen here. I tried to think about putting this PowerPoint together so it would be easy for you to find where you need to go. I hear a lot of people say it's a three hour workshop and I have to find exactly what words or what I'm asking or thinking about. So these little highlighted areas are more for you as you go back through the recording. But so I've inserted them in here so you can find where you are within the recordings and with the PowerPoint to work together just a side note on that. But one of the things I found is for our first year we had seven libraries to participate with us and two of them did not use special construction. But one thing I thought was neat was that they started to talk with each other. I found out on the phone they'd be calling each other about forms and what they needed to do because they knew about each other and being involved in this opportunity. So I thought today we would just go ahead and if we slide on down to the next number four, Krista, and then the next one after that, do a quick introduction. And I'm asking you to really be brief, maybe in a minute or less and answer these questions if you can very quickly. So we know who you are and where you're from and just a couple of questions about e-rate and your status with your internet at your library. So if we have any volunteers, can we get started? Yeah, sure. I can just start alphabetically. On my list, everybody's alphabetical by first name. So I'm gonna unmute you and then call you out. And if you have a microphone, that's great. If you don't, you can type into the questions section. So Ann, Ann Bachman, I've unmuted you. You should be able to unmute yourself if you want to talk about what you guys are doing at your library. There's the microphone button. There you go. Can you hear me? Yep, there you are. Okay, yeah, I'm Ann Bachman. I'm at House Memorial Library in Pender. Yes, I have applied for e-rate funding every year that I've been here that I know of, which is 21 years. I do believe our current provider provides fiber. I had a very short discussion with them about that when I had some issues with getting my e-rate monies back. What do patrons say about our internet? Well, our local patrons think our internet is faster than theirs at home. But unfortunately, I had a visitor from Washington State within the last month and he actually left me a donation to go toward improving our internet. He's also an IT person for a hospital out there. And he said, I think you really need to do something about this. Anyway. Thank you Ann. Yeah, interesting. All right, next up, Connie, Connie Manzer. I've unmuted you. You should be able to unmute yourself. There's the microphone button is right underneath the orange arrow button on your go-to webinar interface. Okay, can you hear me? All right, hi, I'm Connie Manzer and I'm at Springfield Memorial Library in Springfield. And I've applied for e-rate funding also every year that I've been library director that would be 17 years. And our current provider does not provide fiber to our community, but we are right next to the elementary school. So I believe there is fiber outside our library. And most of the time our internet service is working pretty well if there's not a lot of patrons here at the library using our computers. But when all of our computer stations are full it bogs down, it causes problems with even our library system because our library system is internet-based. So that's why we decided we should try to apply for the fiber. Great, thanks so much. Good idea, yep. Julie Denville, I've got you unmuted. You should be able to unmute yourself. Looks like you have. You should be able to talk. I'm not hearing anything though. I need to turn something on. So I've got you unmuted, Julie, and you're unmuted on your side, I can tell, but we're not hearing anything. Could you type it in and then we'll come back to it? Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, just give it a second to... Yeah, if you're not able to, if whenever you hear you go ahead and type in or if anyone wants to pre-type in what you wanna say to answer these questions if you don't have a microphone, just go ahead and type it in right now and I'll see it and be able to read it off when I get to you on the list here. Oh, let's go on to Christy. Christy Hegstrom, I've unmuted, no, there we go. Okay, yes, Christy, you should be able to talk. You're unmuted on both sides. Oh, she doesn't have a microphone, got it. Okay, Christy says she's Ord Township Library. They do e-rate, yes, I can tell you that. Yep, then she doesn't know if her current provider does Fiber or not and they have not had any complaints about their current internet as far as she knows, but sometimes your patrons are just quiet about that. Laura, Laura Alt, I've got you unmuted. Do you have a microphone? Hi there, can you hear me? Yes, we can, there you are. All right, I've been the library director for 22 years and I have done e-rate every single one of those years. The school has Fiber through their ESH7 service unit. I do not, my internet speed is at 50 MPs and my problem is our smart shield takes forever to go through its process so they can start and it seems like it's running really slow. So I don't know if that's due to part of the smart shield or what we have going on there, but it seems like when they get on there, it's taking them quite a while. How old are your computers that you're working with? I couldn't hear what she said. No, you're fine, go ahead, ask again. Oh, how old are your computers at the... I've got two Windows 10s that are just about two years old and then I have tablets that I got from the grant last year, last summer. It just seems like they're really slow and they have to be so patient to get to where they want to go once this... Okay, we'll just talk afterwards, talk about maybe we can... Thank you. All right, Norma, I've got you unmuted. Morning, this is Norma Michaelman. The library is Nancy Fawcett Memorial in Lodgepole and we've done E-Rate, I don't know, as long as maybe they've been doing E-Rate. I've been here 37 years, so I don't remember how long it's been. Our current provider, we do have Fiber in the community, but not to the library yet. And I don't have any complaints from our patrons. Our service is pretty slow, but it seems to be okay for them at the moment. Thanks Norma. Okay. Thank you. And Julie typed in, Julie Dimmel, who you were trying to get earlier, Julie from Bellevue Public Library. They have not applied for E-Rate before because they're previously not SIPA compliant that is required for all of this, yep. Not sure if the provider can provide Fiber. Patrons feel that it's okay, but sometimes bogs down with lots of patrons using programs requiring lots of bandwidth. Sounds very familiar, yes. All right, where we at here? Peggy, wait, there we go. All right, Peggy, you should be able to talk. All right, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Peggy Lighting from the Lee Randolph Public Library up in Northeast Nebraska. We applied for E-Rate funding for about five years. I think the last time was in 2017. That's about the time I think they quit doing phone. So we quit about that time. I do believe that we have Fiber close. I think we do have it across the street because our school is across the street. So I think that's hopefully a good thing. Our internet service is, it is good. Kind of the same thing when there's a lot of people on, we feel like get bogged down. But right now, we're still like a little past COVID where we don't have as many on the computers at the same time as we used to. So I haven't noticed it as much, but I'm sure it's still there. I just, we just don't have our room full like we used to with that. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Peggy. Yeah. Randy, you're up next. I've just unmuted you. You should be able to talk. Randy at the crossing. I can hear you making noise there, Randy. You can go ahead and talk. Oh, I didn't have my hand up. Oh, well, we're just going through everybody to have you all just introduce yourselves. Do I have a microphone, huh? I also have a new computer and I wasn't quite sure what it would do. Okay, you're good. We haven't applied for e-rate for more than 15 years ago, since more than 15 years ago. It just didn't seem to provide any benefit for a library as small as we are. Okay. Do you know if there's fiber in your community or how is it? There would be fiber in our community. There's a telephone switch about two blocks from the library. I imagine they've got fiber there. How are your patrons doing with the internet service? Do they mention anything about how the speed is? We just have very, very low usage. And it's mostly because it's so slow. It's actually pretty good most of the time, but when the kids get out of school, they all log on at once and saturate the whole network that we're a part of. And I mean, that pretty much grinds to a halt. Yep. I'm sure lots of other libraries can feel the same way. All right, thank you, Randy. Stephanie, you are up next. I've unmuted you. Yes. I know I'm on twice. I'm trying to get my laptop fixed. Sorry. Okay. That's okay. I've got audio on my phone and then I've got video on my computer on the desk. That works. We have the options. Except it's no longer showing me the question. Oh, there it is. Okay. I'm from CB Preston Memorial over in Orleans. We've been doing E-rate longer than I've been here. I've been director for three years. No, we do not have any fiber in our community. The villages to either side of us have fiber, but they have not made it to ours yet. And then the internet. For the most part, ours does pretty well. Sometimes our computers clog down because they put Roblox on our computers. Hate Roblox. But other than the computer issues, our internet goes pretty good. Okay, great. Thank you, Stephanie. And Tanya at Ashland. Is that muted? Great. I am at Ashland Public Library and I am a new director. And so I've never done E-rate. And as for our library, we haven't done E-rate here since 2016 or 2017. Our community have fiber. Our school has fiber and then at home I have fiber. So it's just getting into the library. And then for the most part, our internet does okay. However, we haven't had the after-school rush yet. And I'm waiting for that because there's been days where we can tell just on our computers that it slows down. Just trying to load pages and things like that. And so I am sure that the 330 to 430 rush of children, now that we are out of COVID restrictions will pretty much bog down the internet. Something to look forward to. All right, thank you, Tanya. And while we were talking, Mary from Nelson logged in, Mary, I've unmuted you. You should be able to unmute yourself and tell us about what's going on with you at your library. If you don't have a microphone, you can type into the question section of your GoToWebinar interface and tell us about it in there. Yep, you have to unmute yourself, Mary. There's a microphone button right underneath the orange arrow button on your GoToWebinar interface that will unmute you. There you go. You are unmuted, but I can't hear anything. Now I just go ahead and type into the question section then if the microphone's not working. And that is everyone who's here. The only other person that is with us this morning is Cindy Osborn, who is our Western Library System Library Director. Keep it in eye, making sure she's up to speed on what's going on here to help out any of the libraries that may be doing this today. You could just move forward. Yep, that is everybody. So from Mary, do you want to try and type in? Or I'm gonna re-mute Mary for now, yeah. If she gets her information typed in, I will jump over and read it. But that is everybody who's here this morning. Yeah. Great, good crowd. So we'll just move forward. Next slide. So I think that one of the things I determined and I think we have those of us working with last year so is there a lot of, for some, and fortunately for those of you who are familiar with E-Rate, you'll be familiar with this timeline and some of the information that's included in it. But for many people, it is a challenge because of all the acronyms and where all the money's coming from and it becomes a challenge to work through. So we put this info graphic together and we're going to send this to you along with the PowerPoint and a couple of other documents after today. But we just wanted to start off by identifying that you do have options for how you get your fiber to the library. And in particular, Tom, as he stated before, has been engaged with Network Nebraska for a number of years. And I think I'll let him talk through the top part too and then I'll go through the bottom or we'll work together as we talk about it. So I'll let you talk about the timeline as far as... Well, I guess what I should say timeline-wise, those of you who are familiar with E-Rate, it runs from July 1 to June 30. And so it's like the federal fiscal year, I'm sure is what that is. And so all of these events are queued up from the beginning where in July 1, you can already submit what they call a Form 470 and get bids for various things that are available within E-Rate. But you cannot turn on or have your speed change or anything with your Internet until the following July 1. So this is all a process that goes on. So queue in on what Tom was talking about because this, of course, is the NITC Network Nebraska and there are folks who are moving through and making the situations for you to get fired at the following year where we speak below, we're talking about you being engaged in all of these activities. Very good, thanks Holly. And thank you all for your introductions of impressive group on the webinar this morning. I appreciate it entirely. I'm sure you've learned through like three new stories from the local level about the quality of your internet. So as Holly mentioned, Network Nebraska is the statewide network for schools, colleges, but also local government. So the legislature gave us a mission in 2006 that we should meet the demands of all public entities in the state for telecommunication services. So we proceeded on that mission, we do whatever the legislature tells us, but it was also a passion of mine and everyone with whom we work in this space to get the most advanced telecommunications in the state to all of our community anchor institutions. In schools, districts were all completely on the network by 2015. So it took us about nine years. As you have already recognized, they were all fiber to literally every building in the state. So that's over a thousand school buildings, 244 school districts, 17 ESUs, and then all of our colleges. So currently we have three, soon to be four libraries on Network Nebraska. They're Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island, and then through a consortium in the southeast of the author's public libraries joining as of July one. And they also got fiber special construction work just started. So their connection is brand new and much, much faster than the national. So as Holly mentioned, this calendar of the rate, whether you're involved in a program or not, we always say that we're our feeder in three years of the program. So right now at our office, we're closing out accounts that ended on June 30, making sure those finances are all correct. We have newer updated services that just started on July one. And now we're planning an RFP for July one 2022. So it forces us to be mindful of the deadlines that the FCC has placed upon us and make sure that we administer the program properly. So right now we are collecting in our office addresses by request for anybody that wants to be included in the state RFP that will be coming out in late August or hopefully early September. We bid for circuits for any requested entity at no charge. It's part of the state's service. And then when it bids or they come back, we award the contract to the most qualified vendor at the lowest cost and then set up a state contract. It's kind of like a buffet line where you as a library can choose to purchase from those services that have been state contracted or you may find that your local procurement guide by the library commission will be more advantageous. So we really don't know those results until all the bid costs come back and Holly uses this famous expression, we're going fishing, which means these are ones that you may throw back, but it may be fish that you catch in teeth and we won't know that until either or both of the procurements have run their course before a holiday. So before in the November, December time range bids are back, they've been evaluated, we're ready to award an agreement for contract. At the state level, we go into contract regardless of your decision and it just sits there if you want to leverage that. At the local level, you'll do what's called a form 470 coupled with an RFP and you'll get local attention back from providers bidding on your internet service. Maybe one, maybe more, if there's more than one, you have to go through the evaluation process and if the bids are satisfactory in the service, what you want for you, your board, in your village or city, then you go ahead and sign an agreement and then the rest of the reprogram follows. So you will encumber funds in January, February time frame, you'll commit to an order to that company and then if everything goes as planned, your new service would start July 1, 2022 and there'll be the fax of service you will have ever seen. And I don't want to scare you, but if kids, I know about that, and other rural patrons, you may be looking to build an addition because you could really be the most popular place in your community to offer your internet service. A quick backdrop for all of this. The reason this funding has been made available by the Library Commission was a study by the World Library Task Force and to see by the Library Commission due to Governor's Task Force that said libraries are literally not where they need to be in terms of services and bandwidth. The story from the individual that traveled here from Washington State or Oregon, possibly California, they don't ask the library, they just give them 1,000 megabits or 500 megabits of service and it's heavily state-funded. In Nebraska, we're a local control state. The program has been made available but the library has to decide that it's appropriate for them. So that's the process. We're about to enter. That's a reason for the webinar and we'll be providing quite a bit more background. But that's an overview of the network in Nebraska, the timeframe. It looks very similar to what you'll be doing at the bottom of the slide. It will be your local procurement. It's just so you have more independent decisions. More control over that. So, I like Tom to start. Next, why he's on the top. Because he does it the way he does. Because he has at least another decade of knowledge about this. A couple of things. If you look here, you'll see that the contract that you put together with the network in Nebraska is a four-year contract. We last year opted all of the libraries that we worked with opted for a three-year contract with the provider for Fiber. So there's a slight difference there. And if you're looking through here, there are some deadline guidelines we're going to call them because one of the things that you need to do is you have to finish certain things before you move on. In particular, for you, if you were to submit the bidding process of a 470 form for Fiber first, then you need to make a decision based on what is returned to you. We had every library received at least one bid, which was great because we were sweating a little bit. We weren't sure if that would be the case. And I think now that there's much more funding going into the issue of broadband in rural areas, the carriers are much more keener on looking to see what they can do that we may even see more bids this time. But there was one library that had three bids and the rest were one or two bids out of the actual there were five libraries to give special construction rather than seven that actually went for Fiber that we're aware of for this year and at least touch base with the program. So anyway, after you receive your 470 bids back and you make an evaluation and we'll talk about it further along in training here in the next tomorrow, but you will want to then submit for the universal services funds that are available to the public service commission. And this was something that they made available for schools and libraries, so they will match those of you who know your e-rate discount, they will match up to 10% of that and through application for this grant with funding. And then from there, because we have now that they match the federal government and saying the FCC it says, okay, so you've matched it too. And just my experience working with libraries for the last, you know, five, six years and talking about could they afford to pay for Fiber to the library. I think that for most rural libraries that up to 20% is absolutely critical for you to have success and bring forward the idea of bringing Fiber to the library within your town board city administration. We had two libraries out of the five this round who actually had 100% of their Fiber what can be covered, what is eligible to be covered through submitting and working with the special construction grant. So hopefully that tweaks your ears and you're thinking a little bit about that. And Holly, you can talk a little bit about what the current discount would be. So 80 becomes 100, 70 becomes 90 where they pay 10 I'm going to say anybody who's got an 80% discount as their basic e-rate discount would get this done for free because they does 10% and then e-rate matches that 10% and covers the extra 20 that normally the library would be responsible for. Right, I'm going to give this for many libraries to have that covered. Okay, I think we're ready to move on. I, well I'm not sure, I guess we'll take the questions and maybe you can write them down. We'll save our questions towards the end to see how things are going as far as our time. Chris, this is your area. Yes, so before even thinking about getting into doing this, there's something you do need to think about and working with your local government is definitely something you have to check in on. This is something you that know where the fiber is in your community, you know now we need to get it from wherever it's ending to the library. So this could be a major construction project potentially. It could be digging trenches, running lines, whatever it might entail coming from the school, this next door over to your building. So you'll definitely need to talk to your mayor, your city manager, whoever would be in charge of that kind of thing to make sure they know that you're interested in doing this, that they are on board with whatever might be going on. Your own municipality may have rules, regulations, statutes, things that about how you need to apply for a large project like this. We're going to give examples of RFPs. Sorry, did you guys want to say something? No? We'll discuss that topic tomorrow. That will be on Thursday. That will be our... Yeah, I was going to say, yeah. So if you do need to do a request for a proposal, we're going to give examples of things that Holly has put together to show you what we know needs to be in them, but your community may have something that how you're supposed to do these kind of large projects. Some of these projects could potentially cost $15,000, $20,000 or more. Some are cheaper if you found out, but there could be some that are going to be a pretty big chunk of money. And then who do you need to talk to? Do you need to approve from someone for doing something like this? Your city administrator or manager or mayor, like I said, they may need to be approving this kind of project. If you're going to be connecting or doing something with the city IT, talk to someone there, they will know what the city has and what you need. You will be citing contracts with these companies for some major construction, so your attorney, city clerk and accountants are going to be dealing with the money aspect of it. And of course, you're going to want to talk to your library board, make sure they know and understand what's coming and what's happening with this. And there may be others in the community. I'm not sure if anyone knows but this is just people that we know that some of our libraries have dealt with as they've been going through this process. So we'll move on to the next slide. So this is where we had the infographic earlier and this is what we're basically talking about. Tom and I will be addressing network, the differences for bidding process, etc. for network Nebraska versus a local procurement for filing. So at the bottom of this slide I didn't go back to this at this moment. We're going to dwell on this too heavily but in the e-ray program and in the world of telecommunications there are actually two different services and what most libraries have and almost all residents is what we call ISP Internet, Internet Service Provider. They bring Internet to the home and it comes with the type, whether it's copper or fiber to get it to your location. Same with libraries. So we never have thought about that any differently. Right below that is what we call fiber Ethernet. Ethernet is the actual transport of the telecommunications separated from the Internet. So the way that I use this analogy, Ethernet where fiber is the type like the water hose and the Internet is the water that runs through the hose. So why would we ever think about bringing a water main into our house and not have water run through it? That's exactly the kind of the framework and that's why libraries are all connected that way. School districts on the other hand we did their transport completely separate from Internet and then we bought by the Internet for the entire state in only a few purchases and by doing that we turned it into a commodity and we forced the price down through competition. When you do Internet plus transport you may only get one provider in your community and I hate to say it but sometimes they're liberty to charge you whatever they want. So when we separate those two and did Fiber Ethernet separately you may get a company that comes in that only does transport doesn't worry about the Internet side of things and that can actually affect the affordability of your project. That makes sense? So you can go ahead. So we're looking at what are my options for bidding and then we've added in here this NUSF 117 Fiber and this is basically we call the component of the rest of public service commission NUSF 117 just for jargon purposes probably should change that. So you're thinking about and I guess what I'd like to just say here too is you don't pick one or the other. I would encourage every library with their community's consent to go ahead and send Tom and his email will be at the end of this presentation an email with your name your library's name and address and request that you be included in this next cycle of 470 forms from Network Nebraska. But you locally let's say you decide too which I will also encourage is that you go ahead and file a form for 70. Those of you who aren't part of E-Rate basically yet may not know this but this is basically that you're filing and letting those interested know that you would like to have a bid for Fiber and things that must be included in this are the construction of the network facility so this would be the net symbol, you know, the actual hardware and everything like that that you'll need to indicate that PE or AF the bidder who returns will know that they need to know about that they need to know about design and engineering how is this Fiber going to be laid will it be in the air will it be in the ground what are the costs involved two costs involved in that will have to be identified and then the project management will be the company Fiber so this information primarily is in the RFP which don't get nervous if it's possible I always have told every library to take the RFP that we put together here at the library to your local administrator and have them review it first but all the libraries from last year use this as their method of communicating out there that they were interested in getting a bid for Fiber in their community and I visited with also those providers who responded and I'd say in general they were all pretty happy with it and felt it was adequate which is a sigh of relief for us because I don't know if you all would, once you see this RFP and then of course the state's RFP it's even more complex that might be something that would make you high tail and run because I really think that we have an adequate solution for that and we'll be talking more about that tomorrow when we'll be looking at that and so what happens is you file your form for 70 and you have it out on circuit there for state federal law I think it's 28 days for opportunities for responses and then when those responses come back you at the library as the director will put together a small team that recommended three to review the bid that come back and make a decision as to which one you are going to accept Good, thanks Holly and how are these two different columns different from each other at the local level when you do your form for 70 and point providers to an RFP you have a single site your own site, your own address that's seeking service on the state level the RFP for this fall is already shaping up to have over 50 circuits on it, schools possibly libraries and other requests so it's a highly sought after process with the state because providers know there's a lot of business there that they want to compete for and so our goal with all of the competitive procurement is to drive more competition into communities where there may not have been any previously and you would say well we all know who our telephone company is or a table company that's the only one we've ever known well it turns out when you have incentives that are fibers paid for to be in the ground you can actually get new companies to come to your circuit and that's our job to do at the state so we do a single form for 70 it points to an RFP that's over 40 pages long it's a cost proposal it has the same main elements that your local RFP won't have those three sub bullets and then as I mentioned earlier we'll evaluate all these goods for you in a formula and then make awards and contracts for internet providers whether you opt to buy from them or not so the state's process is no obligation and no cost we just do it for you because your political subdivision were thrilled to perform that service next slide so what kinds of costs will my library incur well one thing Tom alluded to earlier that some providers may have more cost or lower costs for some of these items again because you're looking at bidding in an area that you may only have one provider we don't know the overall cost what it will be except for the fact that you have a significant discount available to you with the special construction but the types of costs that you are going to have to incur include the non-recurring costs with the normal e-rate discount which we were talking about before could be average 70, 80, 60, plus 20 percent so the non-recurring costs would be let's see the fiber built costs with normal e-rate so that pricing would be whatever the discount after the discount has been enabled then the monthly recurring costs of at least 100 megabits per second service that is something that you mentioned earlier basically the NUSF funding if you were to want to secure that you have to have a minimum speed that you contract for of 100 megabits so what we found last year was we had some a number of libraries at 100 and one did 200 and the library director who is going to be speaking to you later today toward the end of our workshop is she basically a half a gig so 500 megabits her attitude was my gosh this is great, pricing is great I'm just going to go for it so that possibility is there we must at least have a minimum and this would be your cost for your internet service on a monthly basis and then there are additional taxes and fees and surcharges that could be possible we would work with the bid to try to figure out what we might be able to incorporate into your special construction costs but there may be some other charges there in general I didn't feel like any of them were something that a library could manage and I'll just jump in here I also mentioned this monthly recurring cost it doesn't mention it on here those would be eligible you would apply for an e-ray discount on those as well so you would not be responsible for the form for it you would be responsible for the full cost of the monthly just what was above your e-ray discount that extra 20% is only for the special construction that happens then the monthly if you're 80% you just have to pay for 20% of the monthly costs thanks Chris and the only one other thing that I wanted to mention is in that case too you may have more than just a yearly contract because if you if you're contracting with a fiber they have different pricing depending on how many years you're actually signed up for the monthly recurring cost too so it's advantage generally to have more than a one or two year contract because the pricing goes down very good on the right side of the slide is the network Nebraska model so non-recurring fiber bill costs are the same there would be a quote in the did response for monthly recurring cost the reason I put in there those surprises and friends the state requires bidders to identify all costs that would show up on invoice on July 1, 2022 and if it's not in their bid response it's not allowable and we will take them to the with that one and we have numerous times because that's what Sydney RFP and the master agreement now where we differ from local ISP that only charges you a single monthly fee or may not be coupled with your phone service by the legislative bill we have to charge to keep the consortium together so right now we have 293 entities in network Nebraska and they all pay collection of monthly fees to keep the consortium alive support and all the services that come with so right now any library that would connect that 100 megabits for your main service through the state contract would receive the lower of those two fees under participation it'd be $62 a month it's an administrative fee you pay for a portion of the back home called data regional transport right now I think that's $3.25 so between those two fees it'd be $65 plus the cost of the circuit and then a nominal fee for internet after e-rate and we file e-rate on that on a statewide level so it'd be 11 cents per megabit per month so if you were a 50 meg internet customer writing over a 100 meg pipe 50 megabits times 11 cents would be $5.50 so total combined would be somewhere in the $70 range plus the cost of the circuit and the services that come with and then that's what you would want to weigh against your local response you get from an ISP and our feelings are not hurt if you go with a local internet service provider the objective is to get you the fastest most reliable most affordable service in some cases that would be Network Nebraska in other cases it might be the internet service provider directly no problem as long as we go through that process and that's why Holly suggested that you may allow your address to be responded to with both the state and your local R&P so we'll move to the next slide and we'll let you keep going we'll shake them up so this is really not a good place for me to be because it says what are the pros and cons of either option and I'm a biased individual being involved in this project Network Nebraska for so long and what it's done for Nebraska Education and the libraries that it committed has been phenomenal and we'll take the case of Grand Island Public Library and they've been on our network since oh boy it's like 2009 or 10 so they've been through the bid process three times and the cost that they were paying previously to our procurement process were dramatically different so many of you know remember Steve Possumann he was able to triple the bandwidth speed to the library and still cut costs and every time we re-precured that circuit costs have gone down and bandwidth has gone up so now he's saline as the new library director it is entirely possible that in that case we can bring on the city offices of Grand Island through the library circuit on the Network Nebraska and everybody would enjoy faster speed so those are the kinds of things that can happen at the local level in a fiber community but it's not coming to the library or you may be in a non-fiber village and only the remote school has the fastest bandwidth we want the same for your library so if you pick through these bullets there's pros and cons to both we don't want there to be any surprises for you your library board or city or village council they need to be a price situation going into this and what's going to come out but we anticipate that there will be a decision making time before Thanksgiving let's say where you get to look at both good responses and make a decision yes and we're going this way or maybe no it's not in the cards at this moment for our municipality and we want to delay a decision until maybe 2023 so those are some of the pros and cons Network Nebraska has a whole slate of other services that local ISPs do not provide we have the lowest cost in the country for zoom pro licensing and right now the three libraries soon to be four they actually pool all their zoom licenses together and then share costs so they can have their own account and keep adding more libraries to that and it improves your collaboration with that service processing with the low cost licensing so because of what the legislature requires us to do we tell you from the outset Network Nebraska may be more expensive monthly but it may be that the other services that come with the management network and someone watching your circuit 24 hours a day that the university may offset the lower cost you might get with an ISP directly and the last thing I would say because of our 24 seven operation center if your circuit would go down like in the middle of the night for some reason we have an operator there that would detect the circuit outage create a ticket and hopefully get trucks rolling before you open the library the next day if you're with an ISP you're going to come in open the door log on the computers and wonder why there's no internet so that's one of the differences between the two services thank you I I wish we could all be on Network Nebraska I'm blessed Tom is an excellent evangelist for Network Nebraska and truthfully there aren't some things there in fact what he just touched on just now I think about a lot because it's called up the library and they've been like we haven't had the internet for two or three days and that to me is worth some amount of money and of course that is how I feel about it that may not be how you or your local administrator feel about it just to make a comment overall but I do again encourage you please send him your address and okay for having them did the Network Nebraska did on your library it will be interesting to see what they come back with so overall because we when you do your local ISP internet access procurement you are not going to be getting some of these features that Tom just described the cost could be lower so that's one reason that we would consider that as a pro we could talk a little bit about e-rate filing currently we file e-rate for the Omaha and Grand Island library as part of their normal fee so you don't have to go out and get a consultant it's just filled into the cost we're actually paying the monthly bill on those circuits filing for e-rate and then charging the net cost back to the library just like a provider would be on the left side with your ISP applying discounts to your bill and then charging you only the net so we do the same thing through our accounting department and they go ahead and file the annual forms for your circuit on time and then apply the discounts there's if you're steeped in the program you may know the third bullet on the right side and this is somewhat of a loophole when we file our RFP and we're seeking ethernet transport only and that's the service that e-rate is applying technically you do not have to build an on-bath application but if you get internet through either Network Nebraska or local ISP that situation is moot meaning you do have to demonstrate a set of compliance it turns out on Network Nebraska we have two internet rates we have one for schools and libraries a file e-rate it's 11 cents a May and then we have a rate for colleges and municipalities where e-rate doesn't apply and it's 27 cents a May so in those cases 16 cents margin would be if you're in a community where your board is diametrically opposed to filtering for First Amendment reasons you could actually play the Network Nebraska game with only a marginally increased cost on just the water the internet that flows through the pipe so that was a little bit involved Krista I need a reality check was that explained properly yes that sounds that's correct thank you so moving on to go back to the left side so then Tom we were talking about having somebody on site who manages the issues related to the service provider well there's an outage or anything but you will deal directly with the service provider and I have to say for the most part I have to be honest and also think about the carriers that are interested in this most of the libraries this last year were very happy with conversations that they had with the local provider and maybe you already have an excellent relationship with the local provider of course this is a bidding process and so it's possible that your provider may change we also had a couple of instances of that depending on if they moved to Pfeiffer or not a local responsibility so we go back to the infographic we introduced in the beginning of the workshop and there are places where you as the library director will be engaged to get some things done and one thing I will say is the library commission we've dedicated resources to help you with this crypto for a long time been engaged with and as the e-rate coordinator for the state for libraries and with the beauty of remote sessions she's really gotten out to working with libraries that they have a question that are related to what they need to do so Holly something you said just brought up a good question I believe every library that's thinking about this program needs to know the terms of their current agreement so if you're getting internet and being billed month to month whether you file e-rate on it or not you need to know when the termination date would be on that agreement and it's possible that you could be in a multi-year agreement that would transcend July 1, 2022 and you don't want to be in a position where you have to pay a penalty to get out of one agreement and into another if you keep the same provider sometimes they'll allow you out of one agreement and into the new agreement that the value is higher but if you're changing providers the one that has you now is not likely to let you go we've had a couple of libraries in fact several that are on today that had that situation last year so they're coming up in there just wondering that's a good point so again any kinds of disruptions you're managing it at a local level and then of course there's SIPA and if you're working through this method you will have to enforce SIPA to your local library and there's no if ands or buts about that and I'm not sure where those resources are Krista do we have any resources related to SIPA that are available? Yes, right on our e-rate webpage there's a section all about SIPA there's some information there from USAC and the FCC and ALA about how that would work I do it go into it in my basic e-rate training as well to talk about it so that you know understand what it entails and what you do need to do I'm always hearing questions too as well I would recommend that you go out to our website and take a look at that at least initially because we're not covering that in this workshop and it is key and important to understanding if you're willing to do that and to take advantage of the special instruction and e-rate costs so next slide so the next steps in your timeline so I think we can go through this relatively quickly so you're going to be deciding about increments and bandwidth remember we talked about before in order to be able to be funded through the grant for the USAC you have to have a minimum of 100 megabits per second and in general I think part of the RFP I believe we asked for increments of 100 up to 500 so when you get your response from those that are bidding you'll see that they're giving you pricing at each one of those levels for the narrative the RFP document we talked about that as far as you're locally managing that we do have an RFP that will make available to you to use we'll then talk about the part that you play with that as far as the library director tomorrow in some more extent Thursday gosh I'm sorry you have a lot less and then also for the form 470 this is kind of a ballpark kind of a date for you but in general this again is part of what we talked about the importance of keeping track of your dates we will be helping you with that of course to remind you that we need to see things happening and what they need to get done and this award and the contract is also kind of a fuzzy date out there but again the dates are important there are a deadline but we don't know them necessarily except on an annual basis the use act actually lets us know what they are that's it nothing different on the right side those are ballparks September 15th would be ideal to get the RFP on the street but sometimes we're at the mercy of the state purchasing bureau and they have other projects that they're working on so as an agency they let them know how important the rate is the services that we're seeking through schools and like so we usually move forward and as far as these deadlines as they said these are not the deadlines in stone or anything the reason for these is to make sure that you have to have your 470 you have to have your contracts before you can apply for the funding from the public service commission so you do need to get these things done in some cases earlier than you might have thought of doing e-rate in general because there's that extra step that still has to happen right in the infographic at least if you if you send that to you if you just pack it in your office somewhere it goes through that you need to get certain things done so oh so the next thing I talk about is actually special construction I have to tell you for 6 months when I first started working with this I was like special construction what is that but basically it's just the word that e-rate uses for fiber installation for an entity school or library and I'm going to tell you in this section here I did it is pretty wordy I'm not sure that I'm not going to read all of this information I looked at this as a possibility of when you need to go to your local folks and talk about what it is that you're proposing some of this you would just be able to copy and paste or you would be able to read through at your leisure and be able to hopefully grasp and understand what it is that you need to be telling people before you go fishing and we should say this we're only in the second year of this four-year program and providers this is an alien process for them they're under the impression that schools and libraries do not have any money which is true at least I've found money so their normal process with fitting services with large bandwidth is to spread that over as long period of time as it can so that would be one of us in the ground therefore you would never see enough product costs it would all just be monthly recurring and they go they can budget for that they can apply e-rate so that would be better for them in this process we're requiring them to identify what this cost would be of constructing the fiber into the library and separating out those costs but it's a requirement of the matching fund the public first commission and that can speak so we had some unsuccessful ones last year because they just said this is what the internet is going to cost you and they didn't bother partition the cost we must have them do that in order for you to qualify for the extra distance so the special construction charge again is talking about the eligibility these three components and again when we're talking about this this isn't something you have to come up with it will be guided by your RFP that you're working with with the fitting process so the type of service that we're looking for is there are four three qualifying types of pricing the service that are I should say installation that you can request and we're looking at the least lit fiber that's indicated in the RFP as well as quick say does it actually ask you to check a box on your form 470 or form 471 470 you've met the RFP with your 470 and it does have you going to be doing that yes so when you're if you happen to have a conversation with your provider prior to moving forward in any of this conversation again remember it is least lit fiber that you're working with and so next and so this would be your other options as far as the other items that were on that page which is for your information so the special construction least lit fiber the costs that are eligible are your monthly recurring costs which we've just talked about and Tom was talking about how it should be able to benefit from that special construction charges which would be the actual type of what they're going to charge for you to install the fiber and it is interesting for myself I had a library who really wanted to know what you know are we talking 50,000, 100,000 that you just you don't know and I would encourage you even if you have heard from your local tech person you've asked them most of you may have already said hey what would it cost for my library to have fiber I wouldn't go by what they've said what I love about this whole process is you're actually going to be having data real real information when you file for a special construction category 1 470 because you're going to get this back and that will be the truth and again there's variability with this because of the factors who the carrier is some carriers seem to be a little more expensive than others there's what I found too was don't assume anything don't assume that these are the only people who can come into your or who will bid on this project because this is who is in my community there's a lot of interest with other carriers now with especially with the funding that's coming to federal government to increase their coverage or you may say hey you know I don't have there's nobody here so they're not going to come into the library you might be surprised because there might be an opportunity then for that particular carrier vendor to be able to extend into the business district or maybe into residential and make the event of growth for them I'm off topic but here we go special construction if you really want to know in the industry if they're putting fiber down where none exists and it may be at your door and you wouldn't even know it so there can be a vault nearby where a company is terminated their fiber on the way to the school for example and that may be as close as it is but that construction costs average five to ten dollars per linear foot so if they were stretching an entire mile to get to your library you could be 25 dollars a half mile 12,000 it may be your doorstep in the front curb at a nearby pedestal you really don't know but we require the vendor to itemize those charges honestly as part of the procurement process then you will find out how much it costs right so again so here are the monthly recurring costs special construction charges basic installation charges your network equipment and with the network equipment I just want to mention we'll talk about this tomorrow too often what I've discovered is libraries that are interested in fiber they may be provided to get the fiber to the library but inside the library they are not equipped with equipment they don't have equipment, network equipment or wiring etc that is capable of handling the speed and transporting that speed into the library so another whole area of concern but it would be fun that you could also get your basic discount for eligible types of equipment and services related to network funded through e-rate also we'll talk about it on Thursday and we'll be kind of a highlight for that but I want to let you know that this would be something that if you have a tech support in your library or somebody who you can trust that you could ask the question about what might I need to upgrade I have one of the libraries from last year the ESU tech person was willing to come down and did an evaluation and assessment for them to decide what they needed to order for category two and I'm willing to do that also I don't know if I would be considered a super kind of knowledgeable but I do have some knowledge and I can tell you and you probably know too that a five-fifty-year-old router is not or if you are a v-top library your v-top library routers those types of devices will not work with the new fiber coming into your building so some things we'll think about too and so the special construction talks we talked about earlier you know the construction network facilities the actual labor the cost to get parts and pieces that are needed from the end node to your library and I guess I forgot to mention Tom was just talking about how close is the end node for the fiber is it north bend Mr. Library it's interesting she was like a participant the library director was interested in participating in this particular program and then she thought I think I saw them end the fiber right in my parking lot and so she called up the provider and they said she had gotten a quote earlier six months earlier and it was pretty high and she said why would I have to pay that kind of money when it's sitting in my parking lot and of course the provider then said oh we didn't realize it was actually there and they actually were able to install their fiber for free so yeah I guess we'll move you to get some idea about what is what's around you where the fiber is and I guess we could talk about it on Thursday and a little bit about the mapping so we'll talk as another topic to our Thursday presentation that'll help you to find yourself where the fiber is designing engineering that will be also in the RFP and the project management identifying who is responsible for the project and actually will be guaranteeing that this is what you know with the contract this is what's going to happen this other part that I'm here frankly I don't really know a lot about it you know about with modulating electronics do we need to talk about it today well there'll be some costs that a provider will incur so they have to like the fiber right it comes in dark as far as the company is concerned they have to light it for you in order to hand you an internet service that is not part of special construction that becomes part of non-recurring costs which is the normally read discount where they'll spill that into the property referring to on an amateur time basis I think that's what they've been doing they wouldn't ever see that show up then at the very end it says access strands for community or future use so if a new company is coming into town or an existing company and they're going to deliver services to the library in root to five other businesses and they put in additional strands for those other commercial businesses or whomever might be the courthouse they can only charge you for the cost of the fiber to your premise not the other additional and so there could be some hospitality normally that's a really nominal fee once they open a trench or they're putting fiber across a powerful that's where the meat costs are those are all available under this program we can move forward I just wanted to say in reference to what Holly was saying about what happened with North Bend finding out well the company finding out from North Bend to actually start in this process we do have the connection here that's what this there's no you do this 470 with either yourself or with the state there's no obligation to go forward with it but you can find out there you can get these companies to potentially respond and say oh we do actually have fiber you didn't know but we have it and it's here and then you can decide what to do you might do it this year because you're ready or you might just find out what it's going to cost and do it next year this is a as we said you got four years yesterday last year was the first year to use this funding so you could be this year just checking it out and then getting prepared to actually go through with it next time and I just have to mention I didn't come up with freight going fishing it was Tom and I just have to disclose that but I have to tell you remember that because I have it seems too library directed to wait before their board and that's the phrase they use because this was the the board with a bunch of you know middle aged older men who go fishing so they kind of knew it and they were like they can relate to it and again so there is no obligation like as Tom said at this point when you're filing a 470 there is no obligation to get out there and find out what's out there and really encourage the library to do that and one thing to also state is sometimes I know library directors and the library is just busy and it's something that might be uncomfortable and easy for you to put off doing but the best thing you can do is try to start right away working towards visiting with your administration can we move forward with this again talking to them and making sure they understand there's no obligation and you actually get your 470 form out there to be seen because that gives you time you don't just have to have a minimum of 28 days but when you start to get backed up towards the end of this process as you look at that infographic your time constraint is there and no library stopped doing it because they couldn't but you have plenty of time now and that's why we're doing the workshop now too I'll just jump in at the end of Thursday you're going to have 5 or 6 hours of time and the challenge and then you've got to go before the village or community board and go I'm thinking about that that can be a bit of a load and the anxiety level of municipalities where they may not be familiar with what you're talking about automatically raises I grew up in a small town in Nebraska if you want to set up a call with me or a zoom call or whatever and talk any of your city administrators or village board through this process I'd be happy to do that anytime work hours after hours it doesn't matter the objective is we get the fastest telecom vendor library to benefit the entire community and we don't want anybody putting up barriers for you so if we can help with that please let me know where else and just one more static story one of the library directors went in and used the gone fishing and sat around the table and it was mostly there was the administrator but everybody else was male and they just said well you just go ahead and go fishing well they're getting fiber to their library and it's very cost effective so I just think it's kind of a I even think in that part if you're willing to do it it's a good one it kind of relaxes the group I just go to a city council meeting but it was for earlier okay we have a question that I think we can clarify quickly Tani wants to know and would you file the 470 both ways from network Nebraska and on your own yes yes that's the idea you could do both which is the best for you right and they'll be in parallel so providers we're going to double the workload actually and on occasion confused that it's all we can work that out they'll be providing if you file in both places the library will actually get quotes from the city and also locally so no problem and then you'll be able to make a comparison okay so we're going to have to roll through it pretty quickly here because I'm taking time like or we may have to divide yourself but I think what I would say for these next slides in all honesty I think they're self-explanatory they're here primarily just for you to have a way of finding out information that you can go to a board meeting or something to talk about well what is this where are these funds coming from this is talking about the state matching funds that the FTC offers I mentioned earlier that the Nebraska public service commission they'll give up to 10% of a match to your cost and then the state matching funds was set up in I think in 2014 and they basically said if you have state matching funds we'll match them so we'll move forward to the universal services fund that link there is live and it will take you to basically the order for the NUSF but also at the end of it there's a grant application and I need to clarify whether there's any changes to the grant application just regard it as a sample that's right but anyway that's the difficulty level that you would be engaged in which was pretty easy to do and then the next slide is basically it's the public service commission their public service announcement about this and again I find this would be something that you might be able to use to take part in pieces of last year they did when they went to the libraries that were interested in this when they went to their boards they provided that information so we should mention that all schools are already fibers so they really can't participate here but this is for schools and libraries a million dollars over four years implicates ten million dollars for the construction so we don't think the money is going to run out even if all 240 libraries are 200 or 180 that don't have fiber get fiber it's here for you it doesn't matter going through the process this is the guideline for it and interest of time today I'm going to just go ahead and take a look through it to see will I think it's pretty self explanatory but it will give you an idea of when you need to be following through and we will be engaged if you're interested in this and making sure this happens I hope all the libraries complete their forms and then they submitted it via e-mail very simple to the public service commission fiber go live to you just about 2022 there we go I knew there would be one in there yes that's a 2022 we will fix that before we send you these slides I look to well if you're really looking to find a request for proposal that you want to see what they look like this is just a guidance one that I left it in there just to compare at least what we've done to at least one other one that is part of usack the website just for your information so in this section right here I really think it's more explains itself and it is at least the point where you can maybe extract information that goes research more or you can use it in presentations you might be doing to you boys so quick and you have 20 minutes I think before I get into this actually why don't we take a quick break everyone we've been about an hour and a half into workshop today we don't want everyone to sit here for the whole three hours I was going to fix that too I'm sorry and I didn't put it in there because I wasn't sure where we do it but I could we do it in five minutes you know that'd be fine for me yeah everybody yeah you can take a break get your restroom refresh your coffee whatever you need and we'll come back in about five minutes what is it right now it is let's say at 1045 central time and we'll come back and I'll start talking showing you how to do epic great alright so we are back we're going to do a sound check over there just to see hello hello yes thank you yeah we didn't have a little microphone confusion but it was okay but we're fine we're better now alright next I am going to talk to you about where you actually do the e-ray application the 470 okay and for those of you I have done e-rate before I think almost everybody your head as you mentioned really have done it at some point only a couple of you haven't and that's okay like I said that's why I'm here I can help you through that e-rate is all the e-rate forms are submitted online in the epic system epic EPC which is acronym for the e-rate productivity center this is URL to get to that um from USAC the organization that runs the e-rate program at the behest of the FCC it is an online place one stop shopping basically for anything you need to do e-rate related so you go in there and submit all your forms you can look up your different forms check on the status see what their process where they are in the process um there's a you have your little news section in there where you get notifications about what's going on in the program in the process for you if you get questions from USAC regarding your application it comes from PIA which is Program Integrity Assurance is the name of the department um that handles that you respond to their questions in there um so everything is right there um in the one place you don't have to go to different places in line during about emails and whatnot you have one place to get to everything for anyone who's participated in e-rate USAC creates an account for your organization which will be for you guys for your library um so anyway if you've done it at all I know that many of you said you did it up through when the telephone was still going away if you've done it 2016 or later you have an account in there and it's got some information if you've never done the e-rate before or you did it before 2016 you will probably need to contact and have something set up for you and we can help you do that if that's necessary with getting an account set up um I can also just look up and see if you guys do have one ahead of time before you even start doing this just to double check and make sure one person is identified as the account administrator generally that would be used the library director to do that you're the one that goes in has the authority to just submit these forms you can have additional users if you want to if there's someone else at your library who think might be better at monitoring this and keeping up with these forms they can complete them for you as well as you can see there's different levels of permissions of the different people who may be part of your library's account the library's account and each individual has their own profile to work with that library um full user you want that for whoever's going to be doing all these forms you complete everything you file all the forms, you certify the permissions there is partial where you can someone come in and work on a form a little bit but somebody else has to actually submit it um and then you can have a view only um type of account where you can just see what's in there um and not do anything generally you guys working with this program all of you would do full user there is I'm going to go through screen shots here showing you um today we're just going to show you the basics of your account in Epic what it looks like where you can change and modify things on Thursday we'll get into actually doing the 470 form I'll show you that but there's a lot of training online for this um this is the e-rate website that we were mentioning before when um Holly was talking about SIPA and if there's any information about SIPA if you go to that our nlc.nabrasca.gov slash e-rate um I've got training videos on there workshops that I've done I do an online I do a workshop every year for e-rate and it's available online it's supported for people to watch as when it's your when you're ready for it information about SIPA is on there lists of recipients so if you're wondering when your library did do e-rate should be hopefully on our list correctly um but e-rate usac themselves has a lot of good training on their website as well short videos um five minutes maybe 10 at the longest of each section of a form and of using your Epic account and everything you might need to do so really good resources on their website that I have links to I highly recommend watching those um also to just see a live demo of um how the forms work as well um and they also have if you like to do things in paper or have something that just reads out what it is user guides and instructions in PDF so like actual piece you know something you can just read through what the steps are so when you first go to that website usac.org slash e-rate this is the page you come to and there's two buttons here to sign in they're the same thing they're just the same option in two different places it doesn't matter which one you use um you just choose it and you go to Epic excuse me the first time when you log in you get this screen first and this talks about doing a whole forgot password um process the first time you go in and use this new system you need to go through this process of changing your password usac has instituted with a called multi-factor authentication that's a two-step process for logging in you may have used this for other websites you have where once you submit something they send you a code on your phone that you then have to type in same kind of thing that they are doing now here for safety and security so um it is a multi-step process to get into your account and if you have not done this yet the very first time you use this new system you're going to have to do this uh so if you did erate in um you've already been going through this and you've been getting and we'll see in a second here these verification codes you've already done this you only do this stuff here with resetting your password once the very first time you do not have to reset your password every time you log in this screen confuses people it confused me because it appears that you have to that is not true you only have to um do this once and then you just ignore all this if you've done it first time and just hit continue instead but the first time you do it you go and so if you've done that once you then go in and you have a username and you have a password you'll have forgot password link is here if you do need to do that for the first time but once you have done that you type in your username the password you have selected you make up your own password click the box to accept their uh basic rules here and then sign in and then you're going to get this uh page that says email authentication this is that multi-factor authentication it's talking about the second step excuse me through the drawing excuse me so um you hit the button to send the email and it sends an email to your uh whatever email address you use for e-rate and now it will say enter this passcode if you'll then have to go into your email account whatever email you're using with e-rate and you'll have this this kind of email will have been sent to you the subject will be one time verification code and there'll be a six digit code this is only valid for 10 minutes as you see it says here so you only use it once and then delete this email the next time you log into your e-rate account you're going to do this again you'll get a new code and you get a new code every time so this time we'll grab this code enter it into the passcode I'm going to go back to our account verify and you're logged in when you first get logged in there are two options here of where you can go to submit different forms depending on which program you want to do we're going to go into the e-rate productivity center the emergency connectivity fund is a different fund of money a whole different concept you talk about that another time but what you're going to do for this is the e-rate productivity center this gray box here is clickable you just click on it excuse me sorry so then you get to your applicant landing page and don't worry about trying to read this whole screen and you'll have this as your slides I just want to show you this is everything that's on your main page when you first get into here so I'm going to highlight here in the middle and I'm going to zoom in is under my entity is your entity number this is your build entity number this is something that you will ask of you search providers may ask of you when PIA reviewers talk to you this is a code number assigned to your library so like a social security number but for the library it goes along with the life of the library the whole time no matter who the people are working with the library that is your build entity number and that's where you can find that there also down here at the very bottom of the page just so we can look up any of your forms if you're wondering if you submitted a form if you wonder where it is in the process this is where you can search so I get emails a lot saying I don't know if I did this form where am I at in the process did I actually do what I needed to do you can look this up yourself just go right there choose whichever form you're looking for choose the funding year and then you'll get your results come up right underneath frog in my throat of course if it is certified it means done and submitted and it's all been done complete or nothing comes up you have not finished it or you need to actually do the form this is your news feed where at the top here in the blue bar you can be notifications when you talk about any reforms and what's been going on with them and then back to your landing page right here is where you can make any changes and look at what's going on in your account you got here we can submit to apply for any of your form to any of your forms this news feed here when you click on it in the blue bar at the top if you notice this has got a lots of different libraries and schools mentioned this is a full news feed for everybody who is participating in the array you want just your own libraries news feed you click on your library's name here where it says welcome click on news over here and this is all information about your library and these are just the notifications for you for your library so this is where I recommend you go to not to that main one at the top that's always right there you won't find you'll have to dig for yours go here to find all of your notifications also the top is a task section you're going to want to pay attention to that this is whenever you're in the middle of working on something they're going to keep reminding you of it you've got forms here that I've started emails notifications about things whenever you see a little number there check and see what kind of tasks you may have available you can work on your profile here if you want to update or change any information if you're a new library director your library may have an e-mail account that has the previous director's name you may want to change that here so if you hover over this little silhouette you get this pop up and you can click on profile and you see there's buttons here to do things but it has this big red notification says don't use these buttons that are right here use the manage epic user profile button up at the top and you can see here all of these different fields are editable first name last name phone number address the e-mail address is not changeable that is your login but if you have a generic e-mail for the library that's fine you just keep using it and change the name to you as the new director if you need to you can set up a second account and then if you're ever going to if you have a different e-mail address now and and have that be the the one that is used you can also update information about your library itself that's the manage organization you would just choose your library here click on manage organization and then this is a huge I just want to show you the whole screen so don't panic here we will zoom in is where you can change if your library has moved has a new address change the name potentially if you I know we have some libraries have changed their names because of donations you can change all that information scroll down a little bit we have your urban or rural status where you are located that's default comes from the census bureau and the other contact information you want to put in here you can put that in here next section down is what kind of library you are you can put that you can change that if you need to add anything something important over here whoops square footage this has to do with how many square feet are in your library it has to do with what we call category 2 funding which we will talk about later I think on Thursday which is getting equipment and things for your library they need to know how big your library is to know how much funding is available to you do you want to make sure that you get this number correctly entered as how what is the square feet of your library building this is also where you can set up who your school district is that you are associated with your e-rate discount is based on the school district that your library geographically sits in so you have to make sure that this is correct as well if there is no school district here you can run a search and find your library there it is okay and alright that is actually all of my slides for the basics of the epic system does anybody have any questions or anything you want to ask about it or anything you want to Tom or Holly that you guys wanted me to cover I think it was good coverage and I appreciate your speedy walkthrough that was great I think we are we don't hear from anybody else we can move on to our presenter and Cheryl is here unmute Cheryl I see you are here you can unmute yourself and actually let me do just for everybody else to note Cheryl Green is the director for the Clay Center Public Library and was one of the special construction participation for Fiber to her library last year and she has agreed to come on board and give a brief presentation and then we can have chat time with you all you can either use the chat box or if you want to be unmuted this is just her information in case a little bit about the decision that was made that you can visit with her if she agrees I think she will she is a lovely lady so anyway thank you Cheryl for joining us yes I am happy to be here good morning can I do your webcam I just bumped you over you should have that ability to do that now okay should be a webcam section there you are first of all I would just like to encourage you to be library directors to just keep going doing the best you can to keep up with the dates of our society things keep moving and progressing especially with technology so do the best you can Holly and Krista are wonderful to help you with all the paperwork they saved me many times because I didn't know what some of these questions meant and they just hop right in there and help you and so it's not really that hard it takes time and effort like anything does but I'd encourage you to do what you can for your community it really does make a difference when how fast your internet is I can't believe how fast your internet is here and it really is a good thing I really don't know but to tell you we didn't have terrible internet service before we got Fiber it was around 50 not terrible compared to what some libraries are but as I said I'm always looking for doing better and Holly came to talk to me the year before we applied for Fiber and said these are some things you can do to get your library ready for Fiber so we did that through category 2 updated some things not a lot of things because we really try to keep our computers and technology up to date as much as we can afford and our community is very supportive so Holly helped push that along and then when the Fiber opportunity came along we said yes of course we found out on the late side that we could do something but we pursued it and with the help of these ladies it wasn't a big deal we've got Fiber and people are happy and I'm happy and it's great so I guess I don't know any questions you have any Holly is there anything else I should be saying I don't know I'm thrilled that you didn't settle for the 100 megabits and that you went to 500 and you said my gosh the price is right I'm going to do it and that was quite wonderful I really think that you may not use it to begin with but you certainly can grow into it and of course it is scalable anybody who starts at 100 can move up with those incrementals that they have in their RP but I like that thank you Fiber is so much more steady I guess I can't find the word but it's it doesn't fail as much as the other Wi-Fi this is just a better system for anybody that can hop on the train and do it now especially with the grants and the extra help and I know every small library probably doesn't have the support that we do but I would encourage any of you to try to do it if you can and Cheryl this is Tom Roffus here in Lincoln I grew up in Sutton I'm hoping that you can create some Fiber envy with the other Clay County libraries well well we try to do our best we don't go for envy but we try to encourage others to do their best but truthfully I think that may that may happen and this is part of it here I appreciate you accepting the invite and being here do you have any plans yet I know it's relatively new for the Fiber to be onboard there but this has it changed any of your programming yet or do you have some big wishes that you couldn't have done before that we have some wishes but I'm not willing at this time to talk about them because it's it's all not under the city council is looking at some things that we might do or might not do so yeah we have some wishes some of it's related to technology and some of it's not but again I any of you out there I encourage you to just keep pushing keep driving keep trying to make your library better more usable more available to people and that's and we live it this is a really old Carnegie library it's a wonderful old building but we don't have candy handicapped accessible that's one of the things that you know we just would love to be able to change but the cost of it is horrendous and so you know you deal with and you work around whatever you can do in your community in your building but do your best that's my encouragement for today I'm not a huge speaker so we do have a question and it's kind of just a broad question and wants to know how much did this cost you and did you mean like how much was their whole project or how much did it cost the library because that would be two different questions answers okay first of all our monthly bill for internet and we have phone didn't change a lot it's just a little bit more but not much not less than $20 which is worth the huge in bump and speed so that was my biggest thing can we afford this in our budget we check that out first the grants we have 80% on our E rate which was kind of a hard thing Holly and I worked through this last year was 90% that because of how COVID has affected the schools and stuff they were passing out free food to everybody some people did not have sign up for the food things that they had last year so our percentage actually went down to 80% it was 90% is that right Chris am I quoting it wrong um well it shouldn't it's supposed to be just who is eligible for the food program is what the calculation comes from so the change would it could have been if there was a change in enrollment at the school maybe we had because of who was enrolled or who was no longer enrolled and then comparing that to who is eligible that's what if you have more the more children you have eligible for the program the higher your rate will be so for some reason in your school district then the percentage eligible went down changed but would have made it go from um the 90 to 80 also I should make clear this is not anything the library has any control over correct or is responsible for the schools they submit their data to e-rate and tell them here's how many kids are on our schools and how many of them are eligible and then that gives you your discount rate and then the library just has to kind of follow along with that well in the in the process we had thought we had 90% of this special construction paid for and then we applied for this um sorry NUSF grant which was 10% so it would have been basically free to the library so of course we were ready to do that and then it came down that when the e-rate things came out we had another 10% that the library had to come up with which fortunately our again our city is very supportive and I went to them and said this is what we're trying to do the cost I think was around 800 I would say $850 that's not exact but I presented it to them the city court to help us with this little 10% and they said yes that's not a problem so yeah um it all worked out and I realized some communities may have more difficulty with that than we did but uh that's basically the cost of the special construction were not a huge big deal to us it was more getting through the paperwork and stuff that was kind of frustrating but we got it thanks to you ladies um so and did one of what was the bid total so how much was um the project if you know before all the discounts and stuff she's just curious about what it did what it was the original costs I don't know if you have that info Cheryl or not in front of me I'm going to talk about that I just interrupt I'm going to be talking about that on Thursday a little bit about you know just a sampling of what the libraries that we had not necessarily identifying the library itself to give uh seems to be of interest to the library directors to know this information which I understand but it was uh pretty pretty wide you know the the cost that I wanted to ask you um how far away was the node that you your fiber where it came from do you know where um the construction started for the fiber Cheryl to the library was it two blocks three blocks they actually had fiber at the courthouse which is the next block over so the company we chose to go with just had to bring it over basically a block it wasn't terrible it you know which it could have been more if it was way out of town or something to try to get it into town that would have been much more expensive did you know they were there with fiber before you started this process before I started I had checked around and I knew that there was fiber at the courthouse I knew there was fiber at least one of the banks and so I knew there were at least one company in town that was available it ended up there were two we had a kind of a small bidding war it all worked out how exciting does work in your favor yeah yeah it does great other questions anybody has you can go ahead and type them into the questions section or if you want to I can unmute you if you want to ask your questions that way you can use the little hand raising option if you want me to do that on the side if anybody has any questions I think Holly had asked earlier nobody else joined us from this morning so the same people we had on earlier were the same ones that are still here and I know you mentioned the forms the paperwork there is the forms and I just showed you the main interface for Epic and on Thursday we'll show you the actual form this is something that I can help you get through all the different steps of it as well and I've done this kind of this go to webinar connection we're doing here where I'm showing my screen to you that's how I'm showing you the slides I did this with libraries where I have you guys show me your screen and I can see exactly what you're doing and I just tell you click there click there no not there at the other box that kind of thing and I did through it with many of our libraries this year just to make sure that we get the forms submitted so I would say don't worry about all that internet do I know where to click and do I do the form correctly we'll get through that with you that way I had a response from the libraries participating they said oh it's easy I just I just made an appointment with Krista and she walked me through it so that's great that's really wonderful it is pretty quick the forms the e-rate forms the e-rate can be a daunting process to some people if you did do it years ago which I know many of our libraries mentioned oh we used to but it wasn't worth it we don't do it it was a lot of actual paper paperwork and so much to go through really has been streamlined it's really slick now so it takes some time most of the process with this whole special construction I think is more not the e-rate part it's figuring out are we going to do it talking to our community talking to our mayor or whatever and then working with the providers of what is your contract that you want to send us what does it say in it does it say the right things we wanted to say I think the RFP is a big piece that is daunting I don't know if any library would really want to go out there and do that and whether they would have the support of the municipality but somebody who might be more familiar with that in the administration of the community to do that so I think that is in my opinion a must and I know Cheryl and I and Kathy walked through that on a couple of occasions but I think in general would you say it was relatively easy I don't want to put words in your mouth again I will say you ladies made it very simple and I'm very thankful for you both of you you did great wonderful to work with thank you but the template that Holly put together is great and easy it's a long document but you just got to find the parts you need to insert your particular libraries info and then you put it out there with your 470 and as Holly said the providers we worked with said you did good so don't have any other questions anybody typed in for you right now Cheryl but you guys probably know where to find her if you didn't want to ask or anything else yep I'm happy to help out whenever I can but you two are the experts and thank you so much for all you did to help us you are welcome and thank you for being here today I appreciate it have a wonderful day have a wonderful day thank you okay so we're just going to complete with a wrap it up this is something we did last at the last workshop last year we asked if you would just chat in the chat box put some answer these two questions what you found was valuable information at this training this would be today's training and share one thing we said just one thing you found confusing or didn't understand at this training if there's more than one thing if you want to list them that's fine and I think we'll just kind of let you do that for a few minutes and then we might you know just try to address some of them or you know just see what's going on if not for this session we can do it on Thursday come back on Thursday and do it yeah so go ahead and type into your question section or yeah I'm just going to hear while we're waiting also mention you should have you do have in the email that I sent you all today the login link for Thursday there was the link here's the link for Monday and here's the link for Thursday so you should all have that and we should be good to go on Thursday no problem with that one it's a different link for each day so you would not use the same one you used today on Thursdays session but we just start at the same time right 9 a.m. yeah 9 a.m. Central time so does anybody have any questions anything that was confusing or I'll tell you I can't see if you're typing you know sometimes with some chat things you can see I've wait until it pops up so all right we do have one here and says good to learn how affordable fiber can be brought to libraries especially those who get comfortable who get considerate rate discounts because of free and reduced lunch numbers yeah most of our libraries in Nebraska as I mentioned ours range from the 60 to 70 to 80 range so it's still pretty good even if you do have one of those lower relatively speaking rates you still get a lot covered especially this special the fiber being covered with this special deal they have Stephanie says it's very overwhelming yes we know that's that's okay that's why this isn't all we have for you we're here to help you get through everything what I learned today is that you all are fabulous will hold my hand through the whole process thank goodness yes and I want to mention Cheryl mentioned that she came in I think it was the week before whatever all the deadlines were is when she called and said you know I think I want to do this you know as far as submitting the 470 and then the 471 etc so so she is a testament that that it can be done on a short leash but we sure would appreciate and are happy to have you all with us today to be thinking about this at this point in time yeah yeah we had those those you know deadlines of what we'd like to have you start working on them you know next month but if you're not ready that's okay the process that the big deadline is the that really kind of really to the close then is getting that the application into the public service commission wherever they need that in you have to already have your 470 done and your contract and you know figure out who you're going to go with before you do that so it has to be that you know time between those before and I don't like you said Holly you're going to check and see what their deadline is this year if they have something out there because last time it was December and then they kind of fudged it to January ish but we like to say they fudged it to whatever we need which was wonderful they're like we were they're here they just they have this money this million dollars to give away it doesn't it's designated for this particular this purpose so they want to get it out there and I think as Tom mentioned we're not going to go through all this money very quickly at all we did not use very much of it the first time around so there's plenty there just go for it but December is when we're starting with that deadline so we might let's see Connie says I'm happy to hear that we can apply and have the option to wait if needed yep that's true you can and actually what you can do is you can do this for I said 470 this year and at least get the numbers and if you're not ready this year to commit to everything come back and do it again next year that's okay there's no you can still do it again and then maybe next year is when you're ready but if you're ready to do it this year we'd love to have you will the PowerPoint be available yes the PowerPoint and the recording of this will be available we're hoping by the end of the day today as long as you go to webinar cooperates with their processing of the recording we're doing right now Holly will send an email out to you once I have it done and processed with the link to recording and the slides from today yep and Peggy wants to know is there anything we can look into now to help us prepare to apply what should they be doing now because you can email Tom you can email Tom at least for the network Nebraska procurement I you know I think right now if it would be you might go back when we get this PowerPoint and look at some of the links and read a little bit more about NUSF funding or things along that line but I think it's a pretty straightforward process or schmooze your city administrators you know I don't mean to say it like that but basically let make them aware I think that is one thing that's actually a good question that regard make them aware of your intentions and maybe feed them small amounts of information as much as they want to know be sure to let them to begin to understand what you're talking about doing because I think if you like today for the workshop if you showed up and you were you know presenting all that information it would be hard for them to absorb I'd be happy to help you last year I put together for several of the board meetings kind of a presentation in particular if you move forward with the 470 and you want to present to the administrators of the city or board whomever needs to know kind of a breakdown of the cost to do that too okay someone wanted to ask someone's asking when you mentioned about contacting Tom what his email was so that's why I just talked it over here so you can see here is our contact information for the three of us if you do have any questions and the as far as Thursday main topics will be the RFP the category that exists in year 8 for network eligible equipment which Cheryl brought up how the year before she applied just last year for Fiber we had gone through to determine an assessment what was needed and she applied for her category 2 funding to help pay for that so in her case whatever her percentage with the free and reduced school lunches that was what she got discounted off I think now it's different and we'll have maybe crystal will be able to explain a little bit more about how they're doing category 2 funding from this year forward we have another question here which is here we have plenty of time if any other questions go ahead type men we're not wrapping up we actually are ahead of time schedule totally so any questions you want to ask right now go ahead Randy wants to know it seems like you have to go partially through the process before you can determine the final cost at what point are you committed that's true e-rate in general is you're asking for the 470 first companies to provide a service with you to tell you what it would cost and then you do get then you pick one of them and you sign a contract with that company so once you get the bids from these companies that's when you'll know what it's going to cost from them and then you know we do the math of okay the public service commission covers 10% more and then the e-rate matches 10% then you'll know what your final costs could potentially be but as far as being committed we are putting into the when we do it directly from us now Tom maybe a different process for you we're having put into the contracts and we did this last this the year that we're currently just working on a clause that states this contract is only valid we only go through with this construction if e-rate is approved because that's the thing your e-rate application has to be approved still the 470 is saying you want to apply then there's a second form saying we've picked our service provider you tell e-rate you've picked your service provider and you've been approved for this public service commission funding to help with it and then you wait to see if you're going to be approved for the e-rate funding so e-rate is not a I'm going to say this officially it's not a guarantee there's always a chance they could deny however this has not happened to any of our applications for this yet so they want to push special construction and we're here to help sure you make sure you do it so you will sign a contract but there will be a clause that says this will not happen though unless the rates approved so you've got kind of that buffer yeah contingency yes contingency yes so you'll sign off on something but don't panic until your it's approved you know that you have all that covered the 80% plus the extra 20% or whatever your e-rate discount is then it's actual committed that it's actually the projects going through going forward very good Kristen our state process is very similar only that we bind the company to the pricing that they had offered in a state master contract and then no work goes forward until an actual work order is submitted which means you tell the company yes we're ready we've got e-rate we're going to go ahead and light the candle so to speak and sometimes we have July 1 2022 as a target date your fiber can come up even later than that and you might want to go into that Kristen that's the thing to be aware of yes and that on that timeline the schedule those are the very very beginning of all the dates yes the e-rate funding year starts always on July 1st of any year and normally that is when your service can start however it could be later depending on when things get approved I know right now and I still have to check we still have we still have some libraries who apply for e-rate for this current funding year 2021 and we're in August who have not been approved yet it doesn't mean they're not denied it's just there's so many applications that come into e-rate it can take them some time to approve them all and get through them all no matter when you're approved you will get your e-rate discount going back to july 1st so if even though somebody doesn't get approved until this month their monthly costs for July will be covered will be discounted they'll just be some sort of credit on a future bill or something but it can take some time for that to happen ideally it gets done in the spring everything's done quickly you get your approval your construction gets done and your fiber starts july 1st because everything went nice and quickly and with the six, seven libraries we had for some of them that happened and for some of them it's still in the process it's yeah so we've got these dates but it may be a little later than july 1st or 2022 when you'd actually get your fiber working depending on how it all goes and most of it is unfortunately waiting for e-rate waiting for use act to do their part I would just mention one other thing I was out for to run an errand but one thing that happened with all these little computer chips that aren't available with the category 2 utilization for ordering equipment I mean ordering any kind of equipment but if you're thinking about working with e-rate 2 to do this I know that some of the libraries for this last fiber build also purchased some equipment and they're waiting up until November for some of the equipment to come in so not even to agree with you about e-rate but I also think you know just the world situation currently I understand there are circumstances that may delay things that nobody has none of us have any control over yet if I would encourage potentially that you could consider doing an assessment of your network equipment and if you're really not ready for fiber quite yet you probably may need to do some type of upgrades anyway with your network equipment and have an assessment done and you could even work on that this next year and then the following year do fiber or do them both at the same time but I have to say to a certain extent that's a bit overwhelming to get done and all at once yeah because your fiber can be ready but you don't have your equipment to run it yet if you're building, if you don't have the actual physical equipment that can handle that speed it doesn't matter if you're having an older router or older cabling it just can't handle the faster speed you're not going to get that speed ending up at the computer end so you need to replace the equipment in addition to the speed that's coming in you could do an e-rate application this year just for the equipment get that all done and then next year you have the fiber run once too, we've got libraries that have done both they've got their fiber their special construction and they apply for the equipment now when that equipment comes in yeah and Randy does have another question yes the question is costs are two parts initial and ongoing yes there's the initial construction the actual special construction of getting the connection to your library and then there is the monthly cost to keep that service going and the special construction is what gets that extra public service commission funding your regular monthly e-rate costs for just continuing it month to month is just would just be your regular e-rate discount your standard 60, 70, 80 whatever it is off of that and you apply for both of those at the same time we would apply for the special construction to be done and then to continue with the monthly discounts as well and Peggy says our city seems to be on board already nice well congratulations so I think some of our homework for our team before Thursday and Chris you may have already done this we can look up the percentage discount for each of the like Mary said expressed interest and also check on their epic logins and account administrator to see if that's current yeah that will be done yeah and we got another question Stephanie asks Stephanie asks the 470 cannot be filled out before September 18 actually no that September 18 was the one we wanted you to have it done by you can do the 470 right now the 470 always goes live every year when the funding year opens on July 1st so the 470 is available right now that September deadlines that we were talking those are actually the deadlines of when we would want them to hopefully have you have them done by so that then you can get approved get the bids in then apply for the public service commission money before the end of the year so we're trying to get things done as well Stephanie can you wait until after Thursday because we'll want to make sure we have the RFP out there also to accompany the 470 so I should back up so actually to answer your question her question was it can't cannot be filled out before September 18 the answer to your question is no you can do it now but for the special construction you're going to need the RFP that has to go with your 470 so you're going to you can't do a 470 until on Thursday we're going to show you the template of that and how that all works and then you can work with Holly on customizing your RFP to whatever it needs to be for your library and then submit it with the 470 at the same time yes you're going to need that RFP done ready first to attach to your form she's just want to get it straight in her head of when to do things yep yeah it is a lot and a lot of timelines but basically the first thing is get you know think about it talk about it get the RFP ready and then when you know the RFP then you can do the 470 any other questions anything else Holly and Tom wait of course something pops up okay Stephanie says you mentioned about the city getting city approval that the money goes through them how does that work if the library is owned by the township and not the city it'll go it goes it doesn't matter to whoever your whoever handles the funding is where the money will go to it's whoever you officially are as you said owned by that's who it would work with right if all of your funding has to go through the township that's what you who we rate will work with it goes directly the library we would grow directly with the library now so pretty much you tell them sweetness if anybody has any other questions oh gosh I don't know the answer to this question you might know Tom how do you find out where the nearest fiber node is well it's for reasons of national defense the company will probably not tell you but if you do have an existing provider and particularly in communities or villages where you know them to be the only one go ahead and call their 800 number and ask for engineering or if you have an account representative they may be able to tell you it's not a requirement or necessity for us to know we really don't know what their infrastructure is like until we start to see the bid responses come back because they're going to bid the marginal cost from their central office to your front door to the nearest closest hand hold of fiber to your front door or whatever so we oftentimes don't even know and because we're bidding a service they don't have to tell us any more than what they put into their detail on the RP response and sometimes they may suppress detail and then PIA as Chris mentioned will come back and ask questions while they're reviewing the application for funding and then the company must cooperatively respond so don't tell you as much as they can in the bid response and then sometimes we have to go back for more information that is something we learned from the first round that something very specific that the second form the e-rate process for was how many feet or whatever from construction is being done from where it's starting to getting to the library and some of our companies did tell us that and some didn't I discovered we'll have to ask but when I worked with some libraries on their forums it was very easy actually the companies they do know, they have to know they don't always put it out there I worked with at least two libraries who while I was doing the 471 the form with them and go to a webinar looking at their screen and I said where is that amount you know we need those details and they looked and said they didn't put it in here and they just turned around I'm just going to call Bob at the company and so they called got an answer I stayed on the line with them and then we filled it in and kept going so they will get that information to you when you need to ask when you need it yeah in one other point if you're in a community where all of the electrical and telephone is underground like half of Lincoln there's probably conduit in the ground that could be carrying fiber if you're in a municipality where everything is above ground where it's writing a telephone pole or a power pole you're beginning to start looking up right this will be part of your homework you see that are carrying either telephone or power are running across insulators and if you look at the very top of the T there may be a single line of coax all by itself that can actually be fiber writing that same pathway of telephone poles so start looking it may not belong to the company that will do business with you that there is overhead infrastructure there and when we bid fiber the company will bring it to your library either underground which is terrestrial or aerial which is above ground and they get to choose but we hold them accountable for reliability so if they choose overhead which is cheaper you may not have any squirrels in your community you may not have ever an ice storm in your community etc etc or it can contribute to an outage and that's why a lot of companies will put fiber underground because unless you have a backhoe you know trenching right through and we've always heard those horror stories that fiber is normally pretty resilient and then you worry about furry dogs instead of squirrels so I can tell you stories if we have a lot of time left on Thursday things you don't want to know about telecommunications but hope that helps with your question you might not know but you will find out any other questions you all want to ask today will we get into a lot more details again on Thursday so we have more to hear about and learn and we can always revisit yes Thursday we will go through what we have on our agenda for Thursday but this is all connected today in Thursday so if you come up with questions that you think about think of between now you can always go back to what we talked about today and ask us questions about it of course want to make sure you have all the information you need as much as we can to help you understand this and to communicate it to your community I don't see anything new coming in so we might be able to wrap it up as soon as I say it someone is going to type in some long thing I know anything else you want to wrap up or talk about for Thursday holly or tom nope just want to thank everyone for this sit and get session and they have been very attentive with excellent questions thank you alright I don't see anything new coming in I think we will wrap it up for now we will see you back here again on Thursday use that email I sent you use the Thursday link and we will talk about on Thursday RFPs and the 470 and any other things we need to know about it what other funding is currently available there's so much funding out there oh yes this isn't the only thing out there make it even more confusing but that's it there's more money go for it it's going to be a way for you guys to get this done alright well thank you so much for joining us this morning alright thank you everybody and as I said we will have these slides and the recording should be by the end of the day today email it to everybody to all of you who attended the ones who weren't able to make it with us today will send it to them as well everybody who registered too so look for that alright thank you we will see you on Thursday okay