 Is the clay is here? OK. Clay, you should sit over there. I'm going to find you. OK. Come on up. And walk us through this. OK. Did anyone did not get a generic mail? All water is on a boiled water notice. Don't drink anything. There's a whole bag of those underneath. OK. Great. Snacks. We can't face the telecom drill without snacks. Give us the audience. Like anyone, they're available to make it easier, more palatable. OK. We're off. All right. Thank you very much. Hello, Clay. Hello. My name is Clay Purvis. I'm the director for telecommunications and connectivity with the Department of Public Service. And I'm here today to talk about the 10-year telecommunications plan. This November, we issued a final draft on the 10-year telecommunications plan. The plan is required to provide a comprehensive overview of the telecommunications industry in Vermont and discuss priorities for the next 10 years, as well as policy and policy recommendations that might advance telecommunications goals laid out in statutes right in the plan. So I think you've done that. And addressed many of the key concerns of our owners, the most important, I think, of the sailing issue. Those first two things, is that one of the statutes you're trying to do? The statute has, and I'm sorry, I actually don't have a copy of the statute. Well, we'll get it. We'll have to re-enact the statutes. OK. I'm happy to call up a copy of the statute and read that to you. I'm not hearing that we may have some issues with statutes, but I believe we've followed the statutory requirements. I would welcome illegal opinion on that. Well, now, we may, as time changes, we may want different things to be able to go to statutes and sell them forward. You know, certainly a lot of the language in the statute dates back to the mid-90s and before, so certainly probably wouldn't hurt to have an update that reflects modern issues. So broadband is one of the key concerns that we hear about from the monitors, and certainly one of the most important forms of communication in our modern society. So much of the plan discusses ways to increase broadband availability in the state. The plan recognizes the cost of broadband is quite significant. We certainly cannot simply authorize or require companies to build out 100% broadband. There are severe federal restrictions on our ability to regulate broadband companies. But there are things we can do that can make it easier for certainly community-based broadband projects, employee-extended networks. So we've come up with some key recommendations that would certainly help communication union districts, as well as other broadband providers that increase their networks. We've got some more chairs to get down there. We can take out a book. We've got some room up here. Anyone that wants to share out. I would not recommend sitting behind that door because it can get open further quickly. At some point, get kind of an overview of the statute and of the federal authority. When we have it in there, there's a strength, just to get an idea of what we can do. So I'm having to walk through some of the recommendations that we've made in the plan to keep findings. I think the most important issue is that we don't have broadband statewide. So we do a lot of broadband mapping. We identified at least 6% of the state residential and business locations lack access to basic broadband. When we talk about broadband, it's the federal definition of what broadband is, 25 megabits per second down, three up. We have over 25% of the state that lacks broadband at that speed. And in state statute, we have a goal. So quarter of the state does not meet state's federal statute for basic broadband. For what they've defined broadband as, actually, they refer to it as advanced telecommunications services. What's necessary to do much more than get emailed? Yes. 25, three. So it's basically cable service, internet over cable. What concats are. And then in state statute, we have a goal of 100 megabits per second symmetrical. And that is, without question, requires fighting to the premises to achieve that. That's 13%. The state has that. Has that. Yeah. And do we have that? Walked out the maps were hard to follow. Can I assume we've got E.C. Piper, we've got Chittany County. Years ago, there was some in downtown Montpelier, but I'm not sure how long all that is. On the residential side, you can sum it up with three companies. Burlington Telecom, VTEL, has fiber to the premises and the telephone exchanges, and then East Fiber. There are other companies that have small amounts of fiber. Then on the commercial and wholesale side, you have lots of fiber all over the city. But those companies. Can you define that for us? Sure. Companies that would serve large institutions, such as government or, say, the national. Local boundaries. OK, so large business complexes may have their own. This is secondary. Second mile, right first mile is the transmission lines in. Second is out. Third is to the home. Is the line remembering that correctly? Yeah, excuse me, that's correct. Many companies that operate in Vermont, such as Level 3 or AT&T or First Light, provide fiber services to large companies or other telecommunications providers. We call that middle mile. We have lots of middle mile fiber in Vermont. The real barrier to residential and small business broadband is that last mile. It's making the connection from the middle mile to. So with those three data points in mind, certainly the cost of providing fiber services statewide was addressed in the 2014 plan. We did high level cost estimates, depending on which model we use for the rest of the fiber model. And estimated that cost to do that statewide about $500 million. How much progress have we made in the last 10 years? Well, certainly on the fiber front, I think it's fair to say we've gone from 0 to 13%. The cable infrastructure has increased slightly, and there's been much DSL deployment in Vermont. So I don't have exact numbers. Of course, the plan looks forward 10 years. We can certainly address the final copy where we've come in the last 10 years. But I think it's fair to say that we've made significant progress towards the plan fiber and towards providing some level of basic broadband to a clear majority of our monitors. You said you don't have specific numbers. Is that on the top of your mind, or anywhere in this report, or what? Certainly on top of my mind, we have addressed progress made in the last, since the last iteration of the plan. But I think the spirit of the 10-year telecommunications plan is to take a look at what we need for the next 10 years. So it's a forward-looking plan. What is the state of technology and communication systems today, and what do we need to get where we want to be within the next 10 years? But this all seems to work on the concept that technology is set, that what we need now is what we're going to need these two years. And I don't think that's how technology works. 20 years ago, there were no laptop. There were no laptops. Well, certainly the technology that's used to deliver broadband today has been around for a long time. Fiber optic cable has been around since the 70s, used in communications networks. DSL utilizes the same copper infrastructure that has been installed in our homes for a century. But I think we've agreed that DSL is inadequate. Yep. So we're really talking about how do we get fiber out of it. Yes. And we have, I mean, we have a latent electric, and we have EC, right? I think VTEL was mentioned, but perhaps that's a single panel, or two 10 exchanges. I believe at least 10 exchanges. And it's several pounds. It doesn't matter. OK. So what do they do that this plan says we can learn from? I think when you look at fiber optic networks, at least in this state, I think the one thing they have in common is that they touch public front. So public front, they just touch them. And so I'm like, so Burlington Telecom is a municipal. And EC Fiber is also municipal, though. They've done a lot of it on their own with some assistance from the state, using middle ground fiber networks that we've built that the Department completed in 2015, as well as grants that we've given through the connectivity initiative. VTEL received an $80 million grant to do its fiber to their own premise. It was a federal grant. It was a federal grant, $80 million. So $80 million for, I think, about 15,000 locations that gives you a good data point for what it would take to do the rest of the state. And is that those locations, like we said, several towns, is that the entire town, or just the downtown area? Or do the folks up on the hills get? They were required to do every location within their telephones. Within the telephone exchange. So maybe what it costs so much. Yes, certainly doing wall to wall fiber is expensive. But I think we've seen in the last few years, especially with the success of EC fiber communication unions districts, we have another one here in Washington County that encompasses 11 towns, 16. That's proposed, I don't know. It's certainly been established. They haven't, it's not built yet. It's not built yet. The union is established. Yeah, I know the political or legal thought structure has been set up, but no one's sent me a note because that's the only one I'm going to sign up. Right, so. I'm feeling I might get it wrong. But certainly, what can we do to help foster those networks in this state? Certainly there's a lot of interest among communities for establishing these community-based fiber projects. There's also another effort afoot in Newbury as well as Craftsbury did. Not yet. No, totally separate. That's what I was going to say, but the wrong thing. Our wrong thing. We have these little projects popping up. Some are big, some are small. And so I think the plan recognizes the need to make changes to existing state law or policy that could help facilitate development of those projects. Did you give us a specific law and policies that need to be changed? I'll admit after I got through about the first half, I was skin reading. They are identifying the plan. I'm happy to call them out. There is right now a prohibition on bonding or using general obligation bonds. So that's certainly something that the plan recognizes that should be revisited. For municipal bonding? For municipal bonding, yes. Because I know last time we worked on this, which was 10 years ago, because EC fiber was set to go to bond on the stock market. My right, Senator, to be honest, this is my memory. The way it all ended, it's not true. Yeah, and the bonds fell out, and they weren't able to issue their bonds, which was a major setback. At the same time, the chair, I believe, vetoed or received a substantial grant. Well, then there was recovery money, and there was then there was Irene money that came in to recoveries. It's a fair portion of that went to fiber to telecom, and I believe veto got a good chunk of that. So what I'm trying to figure out is how we learn from the past 10 years and apply that to the next 10 years. Is there any kind of regular discourse between the department and these, like EC fiber and the folks that are trying to spin off from there? Yes, and we've certainly, in preparation for the plan, as well as in the regular course of business, we have discussed these ideas with them with many different stakeholders, including Central Vermont Fiber, Incumbia Telephone Companies, EC5, and cable companies. So I wouldn't say that we created the plan in a vacuum. OK, for my notes that I wrote on it. Did I like it? Is it correct that when veto built out its fiber network in the towns where it's built out of, they were the incumbent providers at the time of the voteout? Yes, yes. So towns or exchanges in which they are the rural local exchange carrier in our lack. So while veto was similar to fair point in being one was an incumbent carrier in one place, or a point was an incumbent carrier somewhere else, veto got a federal grant and fair point didn't. Is that the reason for that? Why veto built out? Yes, veto received a particular grant within the grant requirement was to build fiber compromises. For the purpose of building fiber compromises. Yes, so fair point, now consolidated communications does receive significant federal assistance from the FCC for Vermont, the team of $50 million to do DSL service. To do DSL? To do DSL, they're required to bring DSL to about 24,000 locations in Vermont. 24,000 new locations? Just like what's the? I believe it's 24,000 locations in a designated service territory, so what we call their high cost territory. Whether they're supposed to bring DSL of 10, maybe it's per second down one up, whether they already serve some number of those customers, whether it's a matter of just bringing up the bandwidth from say 4-1 or 7-1 to 10-1, or if they're truly serving customers that are before having had any service whatsoever, I think everything needs to be seen. I believe that retail also received a subsidy that enabled them to put towers up and to reach the places that were reachable, is that correct? Yes, so it's a separate project. It's a separate project, and in both cases where the retail received the money to do this, were they required to meet any, they're stating that any maximum fees or charges to sell the service to the folks in that area? I do believe there was a requirement to offer a $10 a month service. For dial tone or for internet searches? In the wow, so the wireless project, there was a $10, I believe there was a $10 broadband package they were supposed to offer, and they certainly, when they rolled out the service, I remember there being a 10-1. But this is broadband that can do, basically, email. But if I wanted to download research for my high school paper, I would have a hard time doing it in a reasonable amount of time. With VTEL's wow service, I think that depends. They were required to bring broadband of at least 768 kilobits per second down, 200 kilobits per second up, which is less than one meg, so less than one or less, far less than what a basic DSL package would provide. With that said, in many areas, they far exceeded that. In some areas, we found recently that they had no service at all. So it's hard to say what the service is and in any given place who has good access to it who doesn't. So we don't know, just like the cell service. I mean, we did the drive-around. We know you get a bar in this location, but we don't know if it's a Verizon bar or if it's an AT&T bar or somebody else's. Because I remember the discussion the other day with their service here and their service here. But we don't know, driving down the interstate or driving from my house to my kid's school or my office, if the provider that provides me at my home also provides service at my kid's school or at my place of employment. Because there are some places where there's one provider that predominates. If you stand in the kitchen and wave your cell phone out the window, you might get the other provider. But basically, we've got areas where there is no reliable service or only one provider service. And that may or may not be the provider that provides for other important places that I need to go or contact. So I guess, how much money have we got to do this with? What's our funding source? In-state or out-of-state? So I mean, I think there are two. Both. How much money have we got to do internet to Vermont? So in-state, we have a couple of grant programs. So we have the connectivity initiative. OK, but what's the source of that? The Vermont Universal Service Fund. OK. That is our primary source of revenue to do internet, right? Right now, right? For building infrastructure. OK. How much is that? Oh, this year, we're giving in grants. We have $220,000. So we figure about $2,000 in address. That's what you just told us it costs $80 million to do. $50,000. Yeah. So we have, can we say we have very limited funds? I think that's a fair. That's what I thought. And the Universal Service Fund is funded by? It is funded by a fee that we all pay on our telephone bills. It also pays for a couple of other key services, the biggest being e-mobiles. So this is kind of a stepchild that got added on. It also does the? Lifeline. Lifeline. And it does the T-Y, right? Yeah, T-R-S or T-R-S. And it's all right with a stepchild. Is that on mobile phones too? What's that? It's on mobile phones as well, right? It is on all tele, all voice services. So whether it's a mobile phone or a landline phone, you pay the 2% on the retail amount, yes. So that's our revenue source. Have you got another? There are. So the plan has identified a couple of issues with revenue. Certainly we need money to build infrastructure. And we do have a grant program in place to do that. But also planning funding. So folks at Central Vermont Fiber or AC Fiber could have access to capital to plan future builds. OK. So we have $220,000 for infrastructure. I'm here to do that. And Think Vermont, which is another grant program, is providing very small grants that could be used for planning purposes. Where is that money coming from? The agency of commerce and community development. OK. Tiny. Tiny. OK. So we've identified one problem. We have no money. No. How do other states get their funding? I mean, is it a similar process? A lot of states are starting broadband projects. If you look toward Massachusetts, they've got a broadband project. Do they have a similar universal service fee that's a percentage of the bill? Some states fund broadband that way. Others are just doing bonding. So Massachusetts is doing $20 million in capital bonding. So other states are doing things through the capital bill. Yes. And would you excuse my ignorance. Why did you say we can bondings off the table? I thought you had said that earlier on. Do this for the municipal bond. There's a prohibition on municipal bond. For general information bonds right now. Well, we can bond because this last more than 20 years. And theory at least more than 20 years. Have we done any bonding? We have 300,000 went into the connectivity initiative two years ago. These numbers are killing me. Clay, you're killing me. We put in five bucks. I want to know why we're not connected. OK. Compared to what we're putting to clean up the link or build prison, this has been a drop in the bond. So the governor has why did his budget this year? A million, I believe. That is absolutely. First, we have a real number. OK. So there's a million in general fund revenue? Yes. It's being devoted to a couple of the items of connectivity, initiative, think Vermont to do more planning style grants. And there's also an initiative to create a VEDA loan fund. So to do that, OK. I'm hoping this might be something we're doing with our one-time money. I'm just going to ask, is it one-time? I believe it is. OK. I don't care. Yes. The question of the two of us, though, old House members, keep raising our hands. The questions that you asked about how you serve and others, one of Vermont's problems is it's not flat. So when you're trying to compare to other states, where you can serve hundreds of thousands of people with towers in Vermont, you can only serve thousands with towers. So those are not apples to apples questions. And while the answers appear discouraging to us all, but they're based on geography, which are our challenges. Geography and commitment, too, Senator. I'm concentrating. I'm being nice. And I said before, my daughter, who's in Senegal with no running water and no electricity, she had cell phones. So it's flat, and we put up towers. Oh, I'm pretty sure you're right here. The witness to the position of giving accurate answers, which don't explain the questions you're seeking to. OK. So we've gotten one problem is that we do not have the capital revenue to make the investment. That's correct. And we are depending on federal revenue and private investment. That's correct. Yes. Which today has been woefully inadequate. Well, in some places. Well, poorly distributed. Has there been anything by whom? Details towns are served in the incumbent area by a massive grant of stimulus money from the federal government, fair points were not. The Central Washington County Central Vermont area is seeking to copy EC Fiber. EC Fiber's advantage once, back to 15 and 20 years ago, that they picked an area where no one basically got any service. So when they invest money, they can count on lots and lots of people signed up. And they have a revenue source out there. Desperately waiting to sign up. I suggest that the Central Vermont area has more peace meal cable services, which means when they provide the same amount of build out, they'll likely get much lower sign up rates to start with. So the profitability of their success is greatly diminished by their geography and pass history. I think that's fairly accurate. You've described the donor problem. And they're going to need those of us downtown to sign up in order to get to Calis, which doesn't exist. Just a couple of questions. The prohibition on municipal bonds, who is at the bond rate? Where does that prohibition come from? It's actually in state statute. So a state statute limits on and for telecommunications to apply that to revenue bonds only. OK. You're saying that that was obviously a great force by independent providers of broadband who wanted to make sure that towns didn't provide their own broadband and put room for experience on the stage, argue on behalf of their kids. Well, I'm sorry if you give us a kind of a break. OK. I'm sure that's true. And Burlington, I remember the bond, we're wrapping bonds. And it was, you know, and then it got more hamstrung to read every bureaucratic stuff. If we were having this discussion in a town hall that was not expertly moderated, people would be screaming at the rafters and throwing tomatoes at all of us. And I'm experiencing a little frustration and not having any sense of urgency or crisis from you guys who are, you know, only you get to sit here. I know more than you work on it. But I'm looking at the page 14 of the goals that we have in statute of getting, you know, it's sort of laid out from 2014 to 2017. We get our universal sort of laughable rate of 4-1. And then we'll move on to boosting that to 10. So we're not there. We're closing in. We have a year to go where we're supposed to be 10-1. Are we about to get to the point where you tell us how we're going to come close to achieving this or where we just decide this is not even worth pretending it's a realistic goal or what? I mean, people, this is a conversation that we've been having for now. Three governors, every campaign cycle that people run for office in the state, this topic is over and over and over again. And it is more than a little discouraging to feel like we maybe don't even have a plan. So I wonder if you could just sort of walk us through some of the now what we do. Sure. So I would like to dispel the notion that we're not concerned or we don't feel that this is an urgent situation. We sort of do, my staff and I, this is what we do. And I talk to Vermonters every day, who don't have internet access service. I also talk to Vermonters every day. His telephone lines are down for good. I mean, the weeks without someone to come to a pair of lines. Certainly this is a scary proposition that we could be faced in the future with a world where telecom is completely unregulated and folks don't even have access to basic telephone. Certainly we could be going backwards. So I think the sense of urgency is there. We are hamstrung by federal law, which prohibits states from exercising any regulatory authority whatsoever over broadband internet access services. We are very limited in our ability to exercise regulatory authority over telephone services that are not offered by the income of telephone providers. So new voiceover IP, wireless service, we don't, we can't touch it on the regular work front. On the kind of economic development front, which I think we just established, there isn't a lot of funding there. This is cost-wise, it's a monumental problem. And when you look at what the federal government is investing here in Vermont with the Connect America Fund, $50 million to consolidate it, the world local exchange carriers are all getting significant investments from the Connect America Fund. The Mobility Fund is a $4.5 billion fund for the nation. For the nation, I think we should see some of that. And that would do what? That would bring mobile wireless 4G LTV service to areas that lack it today. Folks up. Yeah. I just got a request to testify. OK. So maybe that, I think we know what the problem is. We're probably not going to make the goal for this coming year, never mind for the next 10 years. We also met the last goal. Yeah, we only met the last goal. But if we've got the rest of the year to do it, we probably are not going to do it. We have very limited any ability to regulate, force, strongly incentivize private carriers to make the significant investment to get out to that last mile. Never mind to upgrade the present mile because there isn't competition. I mean, if this is what my carrier gives to my town, this is what I get. So we're not a competition, which means that we need public programs. And money. Well, yes, programs mean money. Somebody needs to make the investment to do this. I mean, would you agree with that? I mean, if you had more money, that would build more profit. OK. And then so we need to find money. Now, this year, it sounds like there's a million dollars going somewhere in connectivity. But it's not like that millions are getting spread out over three kind of areas. But if that 2% tax, I'm not saying we'd do this. We're a 5% tax. You would have a lot more money from which you could use. I can't disagree with that. We know that the governor cannot support taxes, so we won't even put it on that. We don't work for it. But it sounds like one of the things we need is a reliable source of funding. And how do we bring it up? Did we increase what we put connectivity on to the universal service charge? Did we raise the universal service charge? Yes. It was set at a flat 2% in statute. What was it before that? I'd actually look to something 1.5. That's right. It went in. I remember that. Why do I have an image of a garden gate? But that's the one I had that. It went in, it depended on how much we used. And at that point, it was E911 and the budget. The budgets of the three programs were set based on the previous year's budget and collect that amount. So it was always capped at 2. OK, that's right. It was from 1 to 2. It was minimal, if you think about the cost of doing anything. But at that point, we also had recovery money coming in. So OK, and then there's how do we spend it? The EC fiber has chosen an area. Do we choose areas that perhaps concentrate all our money in one place? And do an EC fiber in Concord or north of St. Jay somewhere? Or do we just buckshot it and do a little bit in a lot of places? Which is something to think about. It's certainly a difficult question. One of the problems is that, and I think you described this, it's folks at the end of the dirt road. So there's a person here, there's a person there. They're not in a confined geographic area. So the question becomes, do you extend existing networks? Or do you overbuild existing networks and reach those folks with a different solution? And I think that that is a big question. Certainly with the connectivity initiative, it's geared towards getting to first funding the locations that have nothing. So the reason we focus our efforts on folks that have something less than 401 is because that's not functional broadband anymore. So we're spending the majority of our money trying to extend existing networks to reach those areas. So we've certainly given a lot of grants to EC fiber to do line extensions down certain roads. We've also given money to incumbent telephone carriers to do DSL. Actually, an investment in DSL is also an investment in fiber because they are removing copper from the network and replacing it with fiber, shortening the loop lengths. So they're doing, why would they give grants for DSL right now? Well, I think there are two reasons. The first is that many of the totally unserved population live in areas where there is no other low-cost alternative to broadband. So if you pick a town, we'll come up. We'll come up. I like Wheelock. Anybody up there in the week? Or be a stranger? There may not be an existing provider or another provider like a community fiber project ready to take on those addresses. The incumbent telephone company might be the only one. And so it might be the best choice, even though it's not a perfect choice. Just in Inversia, they had telephone service. And the wires were so old that the phone calls, just regular phone calls would lapse when things got wet inside of them. And Fairpoint rebuilt the phone lines out on the back roads with new copper wire to replace the old copper wire. And when you build out on the old back roads, some percent of the cost of building out has to be labor, not the materials. And yet Fairpoint made a business decision to build out with copper old-world yesterday's technology instead of fiber. And you would say, well, why did they do that? And one of the reasons they did it was because they had a monopoly out there. And they had no interest because they had a captured audience. The other reason they did it was because it was cheaper. So that's the type of challenge that is being unaddressed. I'm watching the time. I've got one more from Jeremy Hansen from Second Commod Fiber wants to talk to us. So I'm going to kind of compress maybe a break, but keep us moving. Clay, we'll head over back. I'm sure you're thrilled by that thought. Because this is just our first, I mean, it's massive. It's complex. And as far as I'm concerned, if this is our 10-year plan, we're just killing trees. I mean, because I read as much of this. And I still, I got a lot of history, which was good. And I got a lot of court or should enact policies, but nothing about what those policies were. So I don't know where to start in here if we're supposed to legislate policy or action to start. Because that's your tech field. I don't know that. And I'm looking, I think, for something we can hang our hat on and maybe say, in the next X years, we're going to do this. And this is how we're going to do it. And then in something less than 10 years, we will know if we have, in fact, been able to wire the village of Conker or Rewa or Gilthal was in the news recently as a town that's dying. This is what we do. Or we got, personally, I'd like to get cell service to Calis. So yeah, even move 12. Do you do day one? You know, I mean, that's 10 miles from the state capital. And unless things have improved radically, last time I tried to call out there, I had to drive to East Montpelieu to get cell service. That's a long way to go in an emergency. So I think the center appears to this point, which is we need leadership on this issue. And if the leadership isn't coming from whatever administration is in there, the center of McDonald was saying, four, governor's not three, but four. And you're working as hard as you can in your shop with the limited resources that you have. It's an issue of leadership. And if it is not going to happen at the executive level, then it needs to happen here. And we need to ask for the money that we need. And we have to figure out where it's coming from and how we're going to spend it. And from this to this, it's going to go to a country site. And then the answer is, no. Well, I'm a blast half full, Mark McDonald. Wait, one other, or maybe I have one of the EC's success in doing what they're doing is a detriment to everyone else who's trying to get broadband service. Because they usually, in an economic situation, of no one being served. And it's a handy thing to say, well, how come this area isn't getting served? Because they don't have the gumption that EC five or had to go out and pull themselves up by the bootstack. They don't have the economic model that works out there. Right. And the conditions are different on the ground. Maybe you can find some of the communities that do, because there are. I'm just saying, Senator, the Marshall Islands actually has internet now. Can we stop calling them the Marshall Islands? They have become annoyingly effective and probably so we succeeded, you should be able to. All we need to do is get you a stoplight. And you have joined the 21st century. I don't represent a stoplight, and I don't wish to. I don't wish to. OK. OK. Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much. But I think we're trying to get something that's unmeasurable, that's doable, and we need to get a price tag. Then it's our job to figure out if we can get it and where. Could I ask Clay one more question? I was asking about this last time you were here, but the wireless here on your notes says part of the leaves may potentially underserve locations of access to 401 service to wireless providers, but we don't know. I get that we don't regulate them in that sense, but we do regulate the towers, and we do have a hand on them in some fashion. They're corporations in the state of Vermont. So are they not responding to letter requests, or what's the process where we're trying to glean this information? And I only ask because it has been presented in the last many years that the wireless strategy is the way we finish this up. It's hard to reach areas, and it's kind of mind-boggling that we can't actually measure whether or not we've done it. Thank you for that question. Mike, I'd like to make three points about wireless. Knowing simply where the infrastructure is, so in the plan there is a map of where we've issued 248A applications to a good sense of where towers are. Even if we knew where the towers, what we do, where the towers were exactly, which antennas are on them, and at what height, and where they're pointed, and at what power level, the best you could do with that is create a propagation map, and propagation maps in my opinion are garbage. They don't do anything helpful for anyone. The best way to determine where we have wireless service on the ground and where we don't is to drive it, and we did that. So I think since this plan came out of this draft, I think we have much better data as to where we have wireless service and where we don't, and we'll certainly include those findings in our final adopted map. Other questions? Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to have my snorkel? No. I think this is a useful outlaw. No, congratulations. Now it's been outlawed, so I think that's good that way. All right, this is the snorkel. Territory. I think cities want to use municipal services. They chose the local option tax for the rural area, but it doesn't work for the rural area. Thank you. I appreciate the questions I'm hearing from the committee. I think you've hit the nail on the head. For the record, we all know who you are. Stephen Whitaker. Last evening, I reread a four-page letter I wrote regarding the failings of the telecommunications planning process. You gave that to us. No, this one I wrote in 1994. OK, and I pointed out that the department cannot no longer be allowed to adopt its own plan without an objective review of whether or not it's complete and it meets the statutory requirements. That's what current law allows. And I applaud the chair's wisdom in canceling the December 25th joint meeting with Energy and Tech, because that's the last checkbox that they needed to, whether you voted or took action or fell asleep, it wouldn't matter. They would then adopt this hollow excuse of a plan. Here, there was a request I heard. Here is the statute of 202C, those are the state policy and goals, all on two pages. And 202D, the planning review. Is this your book? No. No. OK. Hi. She's out of the room. She's out of the room, isn't she? Hi, puppy. Hi, sweetie. So this is 202D. These are the planning requirements? I don't know. If anyone is allergic or afraid of dogs, we will have a break. I'm afraid of forfeiting my limited time. No, not at all. OK. For a shaggy dog, sir. For a shaggy dog. This is 202D. I'm talking that way. You've got C, sir. That's D. 202C in policy and planning. 202D is the planning requirements and process. Both have been sorely neglected for many years. And I'm going to have to, in order to save time and stay organized, except for responding to questions, I'm going to kind of read an organized script. Call me a fool or an optimist. We're in an opportune place at the moment. We have long-term failures in planning, governance, and oversight. We've got a newfound awareness of the size of the stakes. We've got imminent large procurements that can potentially be redirected in a proper direction. Specifically, immediate ones are a proposed rumors, 20-year contract on managing the state's neutral host microcells. That needs to be put on pause until there's a planned foundation and a propagation study to support it. A $12 billion five-year 901 contract, which would be not only a missed opportunity, but an unsafe purchase in the context of the vulnerabilities that have recently been revealed in the existing underlying network. So we've got increased and emerging capacity in the legislature to tackle these problems. So you, meaning the Senate Finance Committee, but also Gullops institutions, the Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee, and the House Energy and Tech Committee, will need to no longer cast a casual glance, but to really dig in and investigate what's about to go haywire, what has already gone haywire, and where the immediate opportunities exist to redirect state efforts and funding back towards compliance with the statutory policy goals. Much of the money that you're discussing right now is investing in DSL. And I have some details of this. I was restraining from handing it to Senator McDonald. Of the connectivity fund, Comcast was granted over half a million dollars, $516,000 to build more cable modem service in one area of Norwich, $16,000 per address. So that money is being wasted because we also have a statutory policy in 202C to not build technology which will soon be outmoded. So we're ignoring the fundamental policy. That was in Norwich, not the kingdom. No, it was in Norwich. That was in Norwich. It's not a bid or a poor underserved community. That's why I mentioned it. Details. Fairpoint was granted $732,000 to extend DSL service, which will soon be outmoded, or I would argue already is, out of the connectivity fund. Easy Fiber, I have no complaints. They got over half a million to build fiber to the premises. Pair networks, $50,000. Waitsville faced in $61,000. So I have not made multiple copies of that, but. Well, if you get one, you will get it at least up online. So on one page, this documents the public dollar investments since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to who it went to. And it's an enormous amount of money. And the problem is that all this money was spent in the absence of a telecom plan. The telecom plan is supposed to be the policy basis guiding these investments. And we haven't had a duly adopted. We've never had an infrastructure-based plan. And we haven't had a duly adopted plan since 2004. So that's a failure of oversight. That's a failure of the department's adhering to statute. And there's no accountability. There's no penalties for ignoring the statute. Commissioner O'Brien ignored the telecom plan through two full iterations. We never. The 2007 plan was never even drafted. The 2010 plan was never even drafted. And it wasn't until I came from traveling and working out of state, came back in 13. And that's when the plan was ordered. It came out of this committee. A plan was ordered to be created in 14. And the 100-hundred symmetric goal was put in the statute. So that is reachable. But we've already lost five years because of the failure of planning. So I'm going to give back to my script in order to make best use of the time. It's going to take a long time to fix the specific problems that I'm prepared to inform you about today. Some will require years and succession at the PUC and the department. In the interim, get a telecommunications plan underway by a professional engineering contractor, engineering firm, whose professional reputation means more than politics. Build this plan on a GIS inventory of all the telecommunications infrastructure in the state that is clearly visible on the polls. I'm not asking for circuit diagrams that could be used for nefarious purposes. If it's visible on the polls in the public right away, it needs to be documented and owned in a fiber count of available fibers that can be made available to CV fiber, EC fiber, et cetera, and a price per mile of leasing that fiber. Proceed to complete a statewide wireless propagation analysis and drive test. I partially agree with Clay. A propagation analysis is useful because it shows you what areas you need to drive most importantly and most frequently as you improve wireless service. The propagation analysis is a less expensive and computer modeling, but you also need to do the drive tests. We need to build that capacity in the state. Half measures like the department did with six telephones in a cardboard box or what the FirstNet effort is proposing to do, which is to use first responders carrying around Android phones. It doesn't work on iPhones. They're going to carry Android phones around, and they're only going to map AT&T's coverage. They're not going to map. That's another thing that you need to put a pause on because the department has signed a Department of Public Safety, has signed a contract with Televay, and Televay thinks they're going to own that data, even though it's collected by our municipal first responders in the course of agency business. To me, that's a public record. There's also a severe privacy issue in that this data will be in the hands of Televay, a corporation, and subject to subpoena. And if a first emergency response goes sideways and there's a paper trail of certain first responders parked at the bar for four hours prior, that could have devastating consequences. So that's going to get to a future discussion in GovOps about IT planning. Our IT planning has to deal with privacy and accession. OK. So listen, read more. Just a real basic question because you alluded to it, but is there any statute in Vermont law that says a utility telecommunications company, the PUC, or the department, has to follow this plan? Yes, I'm going to get to that. It's only the only effective teeth of the telecommunications plan right now have to do with advisory on the disposition of the connectivity grants. That's optional. The Telecommunications and Connectivity Advisory Board, which is a statutory body, has not been able to meet or get a quorum, has never even had the vacancies filled for over a year now. They haven't met. And so last year's proposals increased the universal service fund charge. We're not advised by this commission. The commission hasn't met to discuss it. They haven't met. They couldn't get a quorum for last September's meeting. They didn't meet. They canceled last January's meeting. Do other states have long-term plans that do have teeth? Let me finish answering that. The more important place, and it's in my following testimony, is in the Public Utilities Commission's review of incentive regulations plans. So can I get to that? Can I? Yes, there is a requirement for consistency with the telecom plan, an affirmative finding of consistency with the telecom plan before an incentive reg plan has been approved. The problem is the PUC has ignored that for years, including while our current Commissioner of Public Service was general counsel for the PSP. We're going to stay out of personnel. It's OK. Building out new comfort, or at least old comfort version, is a violation of the plan, which prohibits you using yesterday's technology for new stuff. And that happens. OK. So we will make that clear in the statute, which I have a feeling we're going to get up. OK. Should not result in widespread installation of technology that becomes outmoded within a short period of time after installation. And that would, in effect, in my mind, rule prohibit any connectivity money or any approval of a plan or an incentive reg plan that continues to build anything other than fiber. Because fiber is our statutory goal for 2024, fiber speed connections. And OK. So proceed with a statewide wireless propagation study, drive test verification of all wireless carriers. And certainly, including the allegedly secret AT&T plan coverage being built over the next five years with the $25 million that governors got forfeited to AT&T at the end of last year without any legislative approval. That was for the first net opt-in decision, where NTIA had 25 million had stated they have 25 million available to Vermont. And instead, we defaulted into a secret plan that we have no control over. And we're not even allowed to see the contract between first net and AT&T. So far, that's subject to federal litigation. That's not a public record? First net thinks that they're exempt from federal FOIA as well. And this is on appeal in a public money. Oh, yes, this is public money. And it's public spectrum. In addition to the 25 million that governors got forfeited, he forfeited 30 million worth of valuable band 14 spectrum, which is licensed by the FCC for use with high power user equipment, meaning that you can reach a tower that's twice as far away. And that's not going to affect your iPhone or your cell phone, but an ambulance mounted hotspot. That's where that would be most valuable. So we need to proceed and investigate whether we can sub-license the state can sub-license that band 14 spectrum from AT&T and deploy it on our microcells. I think you're getting above our pay grids. But my point is in pausing the microcell, we risk the department entering, giving a 20-year exclusive contract for my... So I've got that on my things to look for, which is the fiber microcell and the 911 contract. So if it can be determined to be feasible, combine the cellular propagation mapping with a study of the land mobile radio. That's the brick size radios that most first responders carry. Those are, they're unique from cell phones in that they can talk directly to each other without having to hit a tower. That's called peer-to-peer mode. And those land mobile radio will continue to exist for at least the next decade in public safety. Getting those so they could talk to each other was a major step. We had several crises where the fire and police couldn't talk to each other. They couldn't talk to the state police. They couldn't talk to the... I understand, but there's still a lot of dead zones for land mobile radio across Vermont. And it is possible. We need to investigate whether it's possible to map the LMR frequencies simultaneous to while we're collecting the cellular propagation data. That's an efficiency that shouldn't be overlooked. This mapping and resolution of public safety radio coverage is essential to inform ongoing discussions and plans for consolidated dispatch statewide, which at this time doesn't fall under the responsibilities of any state agency. So I have a letter from the only active and independent member of the Public Safety Broadband Network Commission. He's a radio engineer. He is able to inform you and... I'll pass that out at the end so that... But in any case, lacking a telecommunications plan that also addresses LMR radio, we're not able to gain the efficiencies that we need to do. The point that Ron Cummins, he's an Alberg Fire Chief, makes in his letter, is that there's a one-time opportunity here that we risk missing, because as these 30 new towers are going up, that AT&T is building as part of FirstNet. And I'm sure they'll tell you that was a trade secret I just revealed. That's Vermont, trust me. Towers are not going up without a deep thought of knowledge. That opportunity, that time of planning and permitting is the opportunity to get first responders or repeaters of these LMR radios on favorable terms or even free. Once those towers go up without these tenants, it's much harder and more expensive to negotiate those things. Can I have some of the process question? Yeah. So what you're trying to ask here is in several areas for us to improve the plan? No, I'm asking for you to start over, insist you have a professionally written plan for the first time ever, founded on infrastructure. Fair enough. But. And then change the law so that you do need to approve it or a body other than the department needs to approve it. Okay. And did you make these comments too in the hearings here to the department or whoever? I made many comments, not regarding the approval because that wasn't the context of those public hearings. I have a transcript if you'd like to. Senator Schrodinger does as well. So did they respond to your comments in writing? No, they don't respond to comments. I've been in fact here. Correct. They asked him to speed up because we were running out of time. And I was the only one. He was the only person in the public hearing. Now also, we have to sort of short circuit some of this. We have a law with Elkhart, so it makes a comment even though the department doesn't like it, they're forced to respond to that comment. So you can see what the pros and cons are. Those folks work for us. Whereas these are private businesses. No, I think. I'm talking about whoever, whoever test the plan. I'll write it in the plan. Okay, yeah. You make comments and you get a response to the comments. That's nonsense or that's important. We reject the conclusion. And put us one step ahead. The Joint Legislative Telcom Study Committee in 1992 came out with... You're even predating me or... Came out with those recommendations. This is the foundation. I guess I'm gonna, I'm gonna, on advice of Senator Brock, tell us what you're gonna tell us, then tell us and then tell us what you told us. That's right. Pause the $12 million five-year E-911 procurement, which is scheduled for a vote tomorrow in the E-911 board. The E-911 board thinks that they are not subject to PSB, PUC jurisdiction for the E-911 system. Pause the public service department's imminent award of a 20-year contract for Microsoft Management. Pause the first net, first net, and then tell of a AT&T-only propagation mapping being done with the privacy and access implications that I raised. Mandate an immediate inventory of any Huawei equipment. The federal government is serious about this. Our national security agencies have raised the red flag. I've been told by VTEL owner that they are being asked to interconnect the first light and the first light has Huawei equipment in it, which could potentially open a big security hole. I'm not confirming or denying it's above my pay grade of how big that risk is, but we have to take it seriously in the nations around the world and the federal government are taking it seriously. I'm not saying stop, I'm saying mandate an inventory so that we know how big the problem is. Make plans, make affirmative plans for a summer study for this committee or the joint tech committee to adequately dive into these issues, because they are way bigger than you're gonna be able to do. You have those bullets for us? Yes, this is to call me a fool or an optimist. Okay. I'll pass 10 copies around. That would give us something to start working on. Okay, I'm gonna again tell you that you really need a complete plan. We need a really good plan and we need it very soon. Those who chose choose to ignore his fear and don't repeat it, even if it was before your time. Any tell you, any tell you- Because it was before everybody's time. I was here. In fact, the transcripts of the 2014 hearings, all the comments and advice and recommendations were pretty much ignored in the draft you're seeing in 2019, so I can't fix the department. We need to have an engineering firm do a plan and maybe as the department regains its bearings, you can hand it back to the department. Any 10-year telecommunications plan lacking specifics, lacking long range vision, analysis of alternatives, costs, benefits and actionable strategies is no plan at all. Any plan that fails to chart a clear path or even several alternative paths to reach each of the statutory policy goals of 202C is not a plan, but more of an aspirational road sign of a primer or a pretense. The single most important goal in the statute is number 10, bring Fiber Speed connections to every E91 address by 2024. At this juncture, I think that you will need to direct at the plan, at least this version be put out to a bid. The long overdue plan founded on a comprehensive inventory of our existing infrastructure must include wireless propagation mapping, accurately documenting Vermont's sparse cell coverage. I've already spoken to that. Vermonters are being asked to climb a steep learning curve to engage and participate in this statutorily defined planning process. Yet at every step, the companies, the department or the commission assert that we're not allowed to or we don't need to know or see the details about where our telecommunications facilities are. It's absolutely necessary to know the details of the infrastructure, how many fiber strains are available for lease, where the interconnect fiber access points are, that are publicly funded from the Capitol Bill and at what cost we could connect to that fiber. CV fiber shouldn't need to plan to build new fiber across all these towns, 15, 16 towns. If there's existing fiber owned by First Light, Cybernet, VTEL, Comcast even, we should be able to lease that fiber at least for the first few years from point to point and save those builds. I'll mention one other thing that needs to be considered, it's not in my written testimony, is that the state on every permit it has granted through the building of fiber has put a permit condition on there for many years. It says the state may for its own purposes overlash its own fiber to these facilities at no cost. That would mean no monthly annual poll rent, no make ready costs, no make ready delays. We could in effect lash middle mile dark fiber owned by the state to get the cost from 30 to 23, possibly down as low as $10,000 a mile. That's a significant strategy that needs to be explored. There could likely be a legal challenge to the for its own purpose, but I believe that it would be sustained based on the economic development priorities of the state to make dark favorable. As long as the dark fiber is made available on a non-discriminatory basis to all comers. Is that how we built all comers? Yes. So, regulated utilities typically plan for 10, 20, even 30 years in the future. Elected state administrations plan for just two, maybe four years. Consolidated acquired fair point for about a billion and a half worth of fiber and is said to have gambled the additional 300 million on the copper switches in real estate. During the period between 2000 now and 2004, that's when our last telecom plan was duly adopted telecom plan was created. We've invested over a quarter billion dollars of public money in this infrastructure and we don't all without knowing where it is or being guided by the policy basis of statute. Our economy is now paying a steep price for this lapse with our young people leaving the state, our community media organizations at risk, repeated 901 system failures, legislative state government libraries repeatedly going offline for hours at a time simply due to a squirrel munching on a fiber sheet or a back co-accident. And still thousands of our monitors are frequently unable to call for help in an emergency or for days at a time when extended power outages or wireless dead zones disrupt and frustrate essential communications. These are the costly results of poor planning. I believe that the department has for years, possibly for decades, intentionally skipped plan rewrites, neglected final drafts are otherwise watered down and marginalized the importance of the state plan. Possibly to incur political favors or to grease the approval of the incentive reg plants for the dominant highlight, be it Bell Atlantic, Verizon, Fairpoint, now consolidated. In short, the department has lost its regulatory planning and public advocacy compass. So the statute 30 VSA requires that the plan shall be for 10 years and quote, shall serve as a basis for state telecommunications policy. What forum does that occur in? In state contracts, no. State agency plans, no. At 250 or at 248, no. Section 248, not at 248. Section 248A, tower site, no. The only place where does the rubber meet the road? 30 VSA 226A, which is contract regulation and 226B, which is incentive regulation. And a brief history of those is warranted here because in 1989, the first contracts regulation was initiated and it was initially rejected by the PSB. They modified it and approved it for three years. In 1991, they filed this VTA-2, the Vermont Telecommunications Agreement number two. In the meantime, the statute that had authorized contract regulation had required that the first telecom plan be created and adopted by January 1 of 89. Lo and behold, it was ignored. In 91, here's VTA-2 sitting on the table and we noticed. Lauren Glenn and I were both involved in that error. We noticed that where's the plan it's supposed to be confound consistently and the plan wasn't there. We learned later that there was a draft plan that hadn't been released to the public and I'm gonna have to, in order to, I'm gonna have to keep this focused here. So this came out of a summer study in 86 which was Senators Phil Hoff, Harvey Karn and George Little. You've waited for a long time. Okay, and Representative Lawrence Chase, Richard Hausman and John Kennedy. Yeah? No, yeah, it is, it's written any wrong, no. So Act 87, they finished their report in 86, their summer study in 86. They filed their report in January of 87. Act 87 of 87, they had to come flexibly created the contract, authorized the first contract regulation and required the first telecom plan and allowed the first contract to go into effect in the absence of a plan because it would take a few years to write it. But they did require that the first telecom plan be completed by January of 89. The department ignored it. I recently talked to George Starzinger and he says, what were they gonna do? Put us in planning jail? They were under resourced. But the purpose of that bill was to strengthen the state's role in telecommunications planning. And so here we are 30 years later and we have not strengthened the state's role in telecommunications planning and billions upon billions of infrastructure have been built out. There's a statutory goal or policy in 202C for open access and yet no one has ever written any rules for what that means. So everybody's building repeat and redundant fiber rather than using the abundant fiber that's already there in one sheath. Similar with towers, Northfield, a second tower just appeared on the hill. So as soon as the plan was adopted, no, the legislature got involved. Riley Allen let it slip in a lunchtime conversation that Louise McCarron, who had been commissioner of public service, was voluntarily rewriting the draft plan after Snelling had died and after she had left office. So it's like what? And she was rewriting this plan. Let's do it today. Well my point is that the industry corrupting the prying process It has not been, yes. And so the legislature formed a joint committee and they studied over the summer they held hearings around the state and that's why I'm telling you this is this is what's needed now. A summer study that dives into updating the requirements of the plan and considering the needs in a current environment. Okay, so what I'm getting is we need a summer study to talk about today's situation and what needs to be in an updated plan and we need an engineering based... I would argue that you should put out the media put out a contract for a plan now and have the summer study and the legislation... I have just one problem. Okay. Money. I have to get it from over there which means I need to find out what it costs. I would ask you to have your attorney look at 30 BSA 20 and 21 which is the language authorizing the bill back. These are regulated utilities and I would argue that if the PUC opens an investigation related to this the bill back authority is triggered. Okay. The governor still has veto authority over that but my point is that these are legitimate things to build back to the utility. Well some of these are regulated utilities but much of what we're talking about are unregulated. Those who are providers of internet those are providers of broadcast. What I'm talking about is that we need we're talking about regulated infrastructure. The services provided over the wireless and that we don't need. So by regulated infrastructure do you mean anything that is built under Act 248 you're adding to that list of what is regulated infrastructure as opposed to conventional telephone companies for example. No I'm saying that the regulated the fiber and the towers that are owned by these are still regulating certificated companies in Vermont and they can have permit conditions on their tower permits that you will have redundant fiber connections from your tower. There's a lot of latitude that we do have on the infrastructure basis without getting into the preemptive. We'll get. We'll get. Questions have to be answered. Your questions. I'm going to try and wrap this up because I've got one more witness to get in and I do want to give a break because getting oxygen back in this room is helpful. I will wrap up with a disturbing list of what's missing from the plan. I would say that the how can this plan possibly be found to be give a soliciting. Okay. How's the department of public service charged under a few or two days being the responsible planning agency of the state reconcile the department's failure to plan for and integrate each of the following initiatives into this draft plan. The enhanced 901 system service reliability resiliency the post remote vulnerability which I've recently discovered the vulnerability of the sovereign cracked fiber which interrupted 901 calls it was never investigated the voice over IP the power amplifiers on the poles lose power and people cannot call 901 from avoid phone which most people on Comcast network have migrated to the first net AT&T rollout of 29 new towers within a high power spectrum. Hardening of the tire towers and fiber back off to withstand hurricane force winds the siting of the 400 VTA finance Microsofts that we the state owns that are still sitting in boxes the fundamental importance of the neutral host infrastructure model rural areas will never be profitable for multiple carriers in the neutral host model where the infrastructure is paid for by incremental payments from all the carriers using it and that also solves the problem that you raised Madam Chair of needing two phones to get from here to Cabot the neutral host model the small cells that are owned by the state pick up all the carriers US cell, your sprint, Verizon that is fundamental for most of her over month the only places where you're gonna move back to coverage not coverage COVID, the microcells neutral host model, right the state owned microwave network which is upgrade plans to increase capacity currently managed by public safety even though statute requires that DII manage all the state networks the comprehensive propagation mapping the LMR radio is missing from the plan the health and safety assessment of the RF wireless especially as you get to higher frequencies of 5G the natural resources board statutory wireless facilities inventory is required under 10 VSA 6030 it's been ignored for years they're required to have an inventory of all wireless facilities and no one's doing it and no one's holding it the natural resources yes, on the theory that active 50 permits for towers and then when you adopted section 248A no one required that they provide that information to the natural resources board all right preemption efforts to supersede municipal zoning and citing the small cells in 5G that's I believe what's hidden in this 20 year Microsoft contract the middle mile dark fiber fiber access points location planning integration so the states investing hundreds of thousands and putting new fiber access points slice cans on the state owned fiber up in the Northeast Kingdom but there's no coordination with whether we would need a microcell there so when we needed to coverage co-microcell they had to build a mile or two back to get to an access point gross waste of money so this is integrated planning and I couldn't okay, I think you've given us enough to work I think you understand so I don't think we understand you have to speak to all of them the secrecy of the infrastructure there is Charlie Larkin and I hired a company called Vantage Point to do an assessment of state telecommunications four years ago then we asked them to do an engineering assessment of the 2014 plan and they wrote a letter which I'll give you copies of which says we can't do it because everything's under these secrecy clauses and no, it's not national security in fact, I have 50 83 non-disclosure agreements signed by VTA and every carrier and their brother but the point is that they what they do is they undermine public records law by saying we're gonna presume somebody has a privacy trade secret interest in this and we're gonna make you take us all the way to court before we're gonna give you a public record okay so I apologize for no, this has been helpful I just gotta get back up it's just gonna take us a little while to digest it all on all fronts now we're just getting started of what? okay, I'm gonna try and get Jeremy and Jeremy can you do this in 10 minutes? yep and then we'll do a 15 minute break we can run a little long I think I've got a meeting at 4.30 not yours, another one got put in there but well try and get this I don't know I didn't mean to take Laura Glentz oh no, Laura Glentz I'm sticking Jeremy in everybody else we're gonna keep on schedule I'm trying to get everybody out of here I think there's kind of different paper copies of these out too, but I think did you put them in there they're online they're online, but hand out, they're like a paper thank you how are you doing? have you done this before, just name it Jeremy Hansen I live in Berlin I'm a computer science professor at Norwich University I'm also a Berlin select board member I teach computer networking, security and other stuff like that so I'm kind of coming at this problem from both a municipal official and as a tech geek I founded and I chair the communications union district's CB Fiber we cover 16 towns in Washington County, Lamoille County, and Orange County we're probably gonna add our 17th Woodbury in the next two weeks, actually so I'm here as a representative from CB Fiber and to talk as a chair I'm not authorized by the board or anything to to take to make statements on their behalf, but I'm speaking as the chair so first of all, and you'll see this in my testimony here I'd like to thank Clay for what they have put out there's a lot of work in telecommunications policy as you've probably figured out by some of the past testimony this is really large and really all-encompassing any report that's produced will necessarily have gaps there's not really a way around it so it was a heavy lift and while there are some places that I think there could be some improvement including concrete policy proposals I think what was provided gives a pretty good pretty good picture of where we are at the moment I want to try to be as narrow as possible and talk only about communications union districts and how I think that the communications union district model is the right way to get Vermont moving forward to actually hitting maybe not the timeline getting everybody 100 megabit per second internet access but at least getting that sooner or making that actually possible so I want to point out I support what's in the plan, the conclusions about legislative changes to the public records law, the thing about municipal bonding that Clay mentioned earlier and David Healy who's on the CBF Everboard who's set to testify shortly he's going to talk more about maps and data and echo some of Mr. Whitaker's comments before he has some good maps as a map guy and a data guy that I think will hopefully give you a sense of where these community efforts like CBF Everboard where those are currently so I'm looking ten years down the road and I'm envisioning a network of these communications union districts covering basically all of Vermont I really think that that's going to be our best way forward to get to actually get real 21st century broadband to folks in Vermont and in fact there's some folks working on essentially creating resource kits documents and essentially cheat sheets for other folks in other places in Vermont who want to create communications union districts of their own and I know there's probably two maybe three kind of behind the scenes communications union districts being sort of worked on they're in the early stages right now but the fire districts in the future yes internet districts so because we're a municipality we anticipate taking out revenue bonds and I think Clay mentioned that before and those would cover our infrastructure costs you know in founding CBF Everboard I really looked at CBF Everboard as an inspiration however using getting those revenue bonds requires audited financials for a certain number of years and that's a hard chicken and egg sort of thing to get to where we have you know reasonable revenues that we can stay in business we have something to show to that point I wanted to sort of take a quick segue to a previous comment that was made about EC fiber being in a unique situation I don't think that's the case at all our towns are not all that different you know the business model for Barrick City and Montpelier is rather different than it is for some of the Orange County towns that we have for example Williams Town in Orange the densities are quite similar the costs are quite similar and I can say with confidence that the EC fiber model can work in other places because up in Craftsbury Kingdom fiber turned on customers in Craftsbury within the last six months giving gigabit fiber to the premises the gentleman who's spearheading that effort is also on the CV fiber board and is helping us try to make that successful Michael Bernbaum which I think he will be here on Thursday I don't know maybe not in this committee but he will be in this building on Thursday EC fiber just to go back to that EC fiber was building primarily in places that had DSL so where there were phone lines where there was existing copper they overbuilt that they get a 30 to 35 percent take rate in those places where there's DSL 30 to 35 percent of residences said hey yes we actually want fiber to the premises in places where they built where there was already cable that take rate is 17 percent and there's a bit of fluctuation based on town and based on when they built it but they have good concrete data that shows that this model is is definitely something to be emulated it's something that we can we can use here in central Vermont moving forward so I want to want to back up a little bit and talk about a couple of different ways that I think the legislature can get involved in the in the funding of this you can sort of ask yourselves about priorities connectivity initiative like clay mentioned is really about getting the last few people that don't have anything and it's really focused it's really focused on that and that's a that's a lot of a goal no no doubt about it uh... it's solving a different problem that what people generally talk about we talked about improving broadband in Vermont we want to improve broadband and get real high-speed internet access something like Burlington telecom like senator Pearson might be able to experience at his house but very few of us anywhere else in the state can can experience uh... to two different problems and i think we probably need to come at them at the same time so that connectivity fund i think was as was mentioned before this is a really really expensive proposition so even though there's another million dollars put into the connectivity fund we're still we're talking about handfuls of subscribers they're getting additional access to dsl in a lot of cases and cable in in other cases easy fiber will take advantage of that some people true twenty-first century fiber the premises there's another half million dollars in the governor's budget proposal for loan guarantees i'm not sure that that's really appropriate for what we're doing the moment i don't think we're ready to take advantage of something like that i i i did hear and i i don't know uh... i don't know details there was a discussion of creating a twelve million dollar revolving loan fund for the use of communications union district districts to be that bridge funding to get us from twenty nineteen twenty twenty-two twenty twenty three when we can go to the municipal bond market and say hey this is something we want to participate in and we take that bond money pay it back to the state mistake and invest in the next communications union district that wants to use it to build out so this is uh... if that is in fact something that is that is in the pipeline that's in the works i really think that that would be an amazing opportunity and is a clear concrete substantive move forward that's all i got for you okay thank you for Mr. Healy in our folders okay welcome thank you my name is dave healy and i appreciate the opportunity to testify on this proposed plan some background for this meeting i am not affiliated with stone environmental comment talking about it just to be clear i'm representing myself as a citizen of the town of callous and the callous representative to the cb5 report i am not speaking on the part of the cb5 report that i'm on the board and what i'm going to discuss is stuff that i have learned as i've tried to uh... become user of data to help the cb5 avoid development my background is this gis i spent the last thirty years plus doing geographic information systems work both data collection as well as application development and i'm going to probably do gis i do do gis i was hoping to tell us how much money i've got to go big for getting engineers to spend it i'll do some numbers in my testimony on that i mean for the data that i'm talking about but anyway the reason i'm here is the gain recognition for the need to provide direction and funding for the development of statewide telecommunications infrastructure database now when the state's gis started in 1988 i was the operations administrator and we developed a plan about what the priority high priority data sets were and utilities were in there the funding was cut in 1992 who was funded by the property transfer tax and so funding of data from that fund stopped at that point i'm advocating that this infrastructure database get created again a statewide thing to support communication district deployment and planning of fiber and basically it's impossible to plan without good data and i think you saw that in the plan itself we're looking historically at backwards data we need to look forward and the department has spent a lot of time compiling data on their broadband initiatives they have a lot of data by you know census clock and that you know with the deployment is but to go forward with actually building the system you need a lot more data and that's what i'm sort of advocating in my testimony it's not an easy task to do statewide E-91 one was started in 1993 i believe and it's a few years to get we have some of the best data in the United States and that data set which cost millions of dollars was is has been reused for lots of other purposes besides E-91 and i can tell you from the environmental side of things we've used it from everything from on-site wastewater management studies just to know where building is so you can do peripheral spatial analysis around that data i think the lacking of the you know the data structure of data information for poles in solar facilities related to poles that are next to it or what's on the poles is all critical to to building the system in it one of the things that in listening to some of the the stories from ec fiber and kingdom fiber is that everybody's in these communications union districts is collecting data is it being done consistently with a with set of standards no they're doing it at the level they need to do to run and operate the fiber deployments is information that the state could use in multiple ways areas arguably maybe we should correct and and that's the way the state's GIS system was built we build standards and then we build it to that standard even if you go out and do it yourself there's a standard to follow so for example property mapping property mapping stands to all of them in the early 90s and now they're universally accepted by towns and the new statewide property map that'll be finished next year with attached to the grand list is another one of those resources in this case funded by v-trans with both federal and statement there's another asset to this statewide information system and the utility infrastructure is the big one piece that's missing so the question for me is where do we find this is there a central there is a central GIS clearing house the states from one side of the geographic information which is now housed in the agency digital services that's they are they are storing and managing multiple datasets that are accessible over the web if you have web if you have internet access they are in a position of not only overseeing and working with the department of public service to develop the standard for the kind of information that's needed for the employment of fiber to the premises i don't believe it would take that long to create those standards because there's a lot of other organizations in the united states that have already done this and some of the software companies out there have already built the data model to hold and contain this information and the question about how do you collect it and who collects it may not need to be that a big an issue but there needs to be one repository that the information goes into the other dataset and you know is also described here is is where is cellular towers with with the propagation and that building that comprehensive dataset is and keeping it current is important as well and so i'm looking at teleco infrastructure as a broad definition and if it's only built at a piece at a time that's okay i just want to make sure that it's done in a sort of a comprehensive way that's useful for everybody and what's happened then is i was working to develop the information to cd5er i put out a request for acquiring data i can get the data from vcgi easily for green mountain powers poles and lines and i put this in my testimony they have okay data there's not a lot of information about what's on their poles it just tells you who owns them how tall they are and some information about electric wire transmission on them we're talking about a lot more information that's needed about every pole to do this you know the range of costs for collecting information per pole is in the range of you know 20 to $40 per pole so it's not that even that is not a cheap undertaking but without it you're really stuck i mean right now cd5er i mean ec5er and kingdom 5er out there gpsing poles even though the data exists in these other electronic databases because they're not accurate enough and so to be able to run a span between poles you need to know pretty accurately what the distance is so it's being recollected is it being shared back with they like electric utilities don't know but i might guess it isn't it isn't so that's another area that i think you know needs to be addressed in some sort of statute or you know mandate that comes out of this so public access is another critical thing and is i did make public information requests to hydroelectric and marshal municipal electric and uh one other i couldn't get any data from when i contacted velco velco said we might be able to give you our five and distribution lines with a non-disclosure agreement and i basically said at this point i don't need i mean i'd like to have your data but i don't need until we start doing our engineering studies but that's the kind of thing that people are spending a lot of time trying to find and so setting the record straight on how this information is managed collected and used is something that's going to take a little bit of time but i believe needs to be done if we're really they're going to succeed it deploying five into the premise around the state of ramon um the other thing i found out in in in researching this topic is that even there are there are pole attachment fees that regulated by the public utilities commission well uh watching lecky was not sure who's on what pole and so they're missing an opportunity to collect the fees so that the idea of this there could be recovery here for the utilities as well and so that address that doesn't get to how do we pay for this and no one has a record of what's attached to the pole well there's plenty of paint paper that has been automated into a building so somewhere in a file there's a paper thing sure because that's to go through the process of getting attachments yeah that's yeah you didn't just go out and put something on a pole although you might find that some places they could make a very lethal mistake right so anyway that that's sort of my i think it's a collaborative effort between the department the utilities and vcgi to make this happen the time frame for doing it i guess i would say as soon as the standards were done all the communication union districts did a deploy and going forward with this would probably be the high priority areas for collecting the data because this isn't going to be done overnight and then following that i would suggest that we actually refine the public access components of this and really define what's publicly accessible and available for use in both the public the communication union districts and the utilities i in the fourth in the course of trying to get washington electrics pole and wiring data i was told that i didn't want to give it to me because it was they just didn't want to give it to me and i said is that is that a reason i said dream out in power has been giving its data out for five years ten years they every year they update their database with a one-centra geographic information and i i can download it i can look at it on the web you can look at it anyway and after five months of badgering them they finally agreed to put their data up on the one-centra geographic information that's a lot of work yeah five months yeah thank you though but um and i think that you know it's not that they have ill will about what they have is just they don't know how to do it and and they don't have resources to do it so it's not i don't want to disparage anybody in this testimony i'm giving it it's just a lot of work yeah and that i think the legislature can help make this a lot simpler but that's my testimony is a lot more detailed um and i'll leave it at that and if there's any questions i did include a map in my testimony of where the fiber districts are in vermont um there's 65 towns currently doing this on the uh i left out two towns on this map that we're doing they're called ready districts rural and economic development initiatives is that what they call and that's Corinth and Newberry and they're available with why they took that route is there's some rural development that's available for this and in the farm bill just a little bit about other financing possibilities the farm bill that just passed has a lot of money for rural broadband they also have money in the bill the there's the northern borderlands commission and they have gotten they're getting 33 million dollars a year beginning this year from the farm bill and this year all vermont counties are eligible to apply for that money kingdom fiber received some of that money last year and that's how they're putting the infrastructure in craftscurry and greensboro so there's a lot of other opportunities for but it's a mishmash strike me as the towns that are resource or correct well they have people who want that but i would hope that we might use federal money to go where there isn't much personal or municipal money and that's where the backbone stuff comes in and i don't want to talk at this point but the movement of rural electric co-ops into fiber is something that's been going nationally Washington Electric is thinking about it and what they're thinking would be they might consider putting fiber and all their network but they don't want to operate a fiber system they will just let people other people use it but there's and they have access to money as well but they need to find the business case to do it so it's a lot of i'm optimistic about vermont but it's certainly going to take you know consolidate efforts to make it happen go ahead all right so are there strategies that you know we're hearing that some of the federal money is going to stem cop or just really galling are there state strategies that can prohibit but but help avoid that sort of foolish investment i guess if the plan the telecommunications plan said they weren't going to do that or it's in statute already then we shouldn't be spending any of that money even though it's allocated for that purpose i could be allocated for that purpose should we be doing it so yeah no i it seems a little crazy i i i think i'm i'm so encouraged by community initiative to make this happen so and in terms of looking at like the cd fiber i've done the numbers on how many houses are our per roll per mile and i can use that the 911 database i said how many roads run this road segment um and you know for the most part we have six houses per mile which is the minimum they really want to do five at home but you know ec5 has been running it everywhere anyway and hoping that the other people kept catch up with it but if you amortize the cost of town of callous to cost about three million dollars to run fiber to get to every house put that over a 20-year basis three million dollars is probably not all that a lot especially if it's a you know revenue generated you know to pay it back so i i you know i think we probably just haven't been thinking quite well over the last couple decades good we're going to try and get this back on track i keep seeing that camera and think i'm seeing a hand raised just catching the point okay thank you questions thank you very much what's the name of your organization central remote fiber sorry um anytime anybody and says something about something c fiber we always think it's ec fiber yeah central remote fiber so it's you know i need suggestions to i mean this is a new fiber network which is copying easy i don't want to call it just son the vc five gc fibers is central for my i just is that what it means is there a way to uh rename or come up with something so everybody knows the difference the way to hear it the website is central for my fiber okay did you have a handout yes it's a useful it's a useful to be behind a plan other questions thank you this becomes slightly less muddy the further we go this was helpful it's not sure i suggest the enthusiastic and renewed interest in these issues i think there is it's been a good possibly happening okay thank you okay we're going now to learn plan dvidian karen christopher so we may actually head of schedule so if there's anybody else that would like to to speak at the end okay you're together we're together okay that way we don't have to pipe up on each other from the cycle okay so i'm lauren glendavidian i'm the executive director of cc tv center for media democracy based in berlington vermont we started public access television public educational and government that's pe and g known as tag in 1983 um so i go back maybe longer than john canady i'm not sure i'm kevin christopher i'm the executive director of lake shampoony access tv we're the same facility for a different area we're based in cochester i'm also the president of the vermont access network which is our statewide support and advocacy organization um which represents all 25 access centers throughout the month okay this is orca local orca in mondia orca in mondia exactly um so we thought that we would use this opportunity of the 10-year telecommunications plan being presented to you as a way to highlight the issues that um two fundamental issues that are before the state and that we would like to seek your advice here at this table about how to proceed we have some thoughts and we want to invite you there are two fundamental issues that face the state faces today in our opinion the first is the erosion of the state's authority to manage its public rights of way and a symptom of that is declining funding for public educational and government access tv channels which are required by the state of cable operators who choose to use the public rights of way to provide cable tv they use the same rights of way to provide internet service but they're not regulated in the same way by the state the um the issue of the state's ability to manage its rights of way i think is the fundamental question and it is the foundation upon which the state decided that public access which i will call for to make it short public access television was a public benefit um the state decided this in 1984 this was even before the cable communications act of 1984 was passed so the state decided to do this absent federal requirement and um the state said basically we will achieve this public policy objective of having vocal communications systems developed around our state through our regulatory structure um there are four or five actions currently at play that are both federal state and uh the judicial that i we wanted to bring to your attention that um calls the state's ability to carry out this public policy objective into question and so we are concerned about a does the state still believe this is an important public policy objective and in the face of the eroding regulatory authority to get this done um what other options are there for us as a state but i just want to reiterate that this goes back to this more fundamental question of the state's authority over its rights of way so um there are four or five as i said things happening that are threatening public access funding and i think most of you have appeared on your local channels so that you know that there are government access channels that post election forums and for meetings there are educational access channels that provide educational resources all across the state and supplement our education system for people of all ages and there are public access channels which really are a true free speech forum that you will not find in any other venue maybe you will but um when you started you wouldn't but these are really the places in the channels where we can engage in discussion with people who think differently from us which is actually fundamentally the only way to democracy so for many reasons um we don't need to to go into deeply because i think you understand them these public educational government access channels are really central to our ability as a state to function well to build community and to come up with the best possible ideas about how to go forward so the first thing is that there is cable cord cutting so people are finding it much more convenient and less expensive to cancel their cable subscription because the video entertainment to which they are accustomed is now available on the internet in an a la carte way so you can buy hbo on amazon if you want to you don't have to have cable to be to watch the next season of true detective so why hey a hundred dollars a month for cable if all you really want is hbo so because um just to clarify um the state requires the cable companies to um pass on a two two um let me just back up so the state of vermont when a cable company wants a franchise or a certificate of public good from the state of vermont the state sets a series of conditions and one of those conditions is a public access channels will be set aside and five and a half percent of funding on every bill will be put and passed on to subscribers so public access channels are funded not by the cable operator but by subscribers cable operators don't really like this fee because it makes it hard for them to compete with satellite providers that don't have this fee because satellite is regulated federally not on a state level and now it makes it hard for them with themselves their internet business so they'd like everybody to be moving to the internet because it's much cheaper for them to operate so cable cord cutting for a variety of reasons is having an impact the fewer cable subscribers there are the few the smaller amount of money access television so what we're seeing is a trend line that has plateaued in terms of cable revenue and is starting to go down like this this is something we've known since 1990 when the phone companies first got into the telecom business this is not a new thing it's just we're now finally seeing so we've been thinking about this that's how many years is that 28 trying to re-add the numbers it's always the same the second thing that's happening is that Comcast is suing the state in federal court because when the public utility commission said put conditions on its certificate of public good last year it's renewal it's 11-year renewal they put a number of conditions in one of them for example was a Comcast we need to invest three million or more dollars into the electronic program guides so that public access TV channels could be found and the programs could be manipulated seeing stored saved to be seen so right now if we put Burlington City Council on the channel 17 line on the program guiding Burlington it will show up enrichment and this is a vestige of the 80s when there were federal companies in the state before Adelphia bought everybody up and then Comcast bought Adelphia and consolidated these systems they didn't rewire their head ends so there's some real legacy architecture that does not serve people who are looking for their Burlington City Council meeting at a particular time they can't find it on the program guide and that's all across the state just to be clear folks in Richmond are not watching the Burlington it's just a labeling is that what you mean it's that it's the program guide is regional not county town it's inaccurate when people are reaching me no it's that if we were to put it on if we were to pay the program guide service to put Burlington City Council on channel 17 in Burlington it would also show up in Richmond because the way the programming guide service is designed is regional so you do it no no just you can't so but if you can't find a program on the program guide it does you don't exist in the mind of a cable viewer you can't record the program you can't do it at save it to be seen another time it it ghettoizes as essential that is Burlington show around there well we don't list it because if we did it would screw Richmond so you say cable access it says keep government access yep so Comcast was not what is do you see what it says government access programming that's what it says I think for order yeah so this is true across the state I have to look and see if I recognize faces to figure out if it's Barry Montpelier or Waterbury I'm looking at precisely so so so Comcast I'm sorry yeah just try to help folks understand because you and I were talking about this typically a minute so if you live in Richmond whatever the Richmond access is filming is shown at seven o'clock and you live in Burlington whatever Glen's shop is showing is being shown at seven o'clock and on your guide it says government access but if they wanted to have more detail and say Burlington City Council they're putting that in would change all around the region it would say Burlington Cable Access or Burlington City Council even though in Richmond you'd be watching the Richmond select order or whatever so that's where you can only have one government access program on that so no no only the one you live in is a guide you can have as many on your big tv screen would say multiple news right yeah so Comcast told the Public Utility Commission it would cost three million dollars to fix this problem and the Public Utility Commission looked at the evidence and they said well you made an untapped profit of fifty seven million dollars in 2015 so we think actually you could afford to solve this problem and we require this as a condition of your contract renewal to fix this problem so this is one of a few things that Comcast said well we're not we don't like that because we don't want to be told what to do by the regulatory authority even though they have agreed to fix these problems or to provide high definition access channels all across the country in side agreements so Comcast went to federal court so currently Judge Crawford in the Rutland federal court is overseeing this case which just to say it costs the Vermont Access Network members a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in legal fees to participate in the certificate of public good process and we're anticipating it will cost another hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be involved in this case to make sure that what the state has required Comcast to do Comcast will have to do so that's the second kind of threat that we're dealing with which is we are spending subscriber dollars defending legal positions that of course we understand why Comcast would go to the mat but it doesn't seem to be the best use of anybody's time anybody's time and it is a it is enough front to the state's authority to require things that they're asking legitimately within rule eight which is the rule that controls cable TV and within the Cable Communications Act of 1984 which is the federal controlling document of all of these things the third thing is the FCC so in the Cable Act of 1984 there are really two public interest baskets one is the state's or municipalities authority in this case of Vermont as the state's authority to require franchise fee to be used for public purposes or public access and the other is another basket which is that the state could say you need to put in a public a drop so we can go live from the Rutland City Hall or you have to provide discounted cable service for low income people or in the case of Burlington Burlington requires an additional franchise fee on top of what is collected for public access and the FCC has even said we think cable company that you should be able to take the cost of the channel the public access channel and subtract that from the franchise fee dollars so the FCC is proposing that all the stuff in basket two it gets subtracted from the revenue that the access channels use to run their access channels so this is a rulemaking that the FCC is now considering they've taken how many comments a few thousand a few thousand two hundred and fifty from Vermont could showing but they are likely to rule on this and basically to rule the cable operators could do things like subtract the value of a channel from the dollars that are given to access which will be devastating to access it will close down access centers we think um and we know that there will be a court challenge once the FCC rules this because this is of course that telecommunication policy works congress does something FCC interprets the court's challenge means this you know we're still working that way through the end of the trial exactly it's a virtuous cycle but whether that FCC decision is stayed while the court case goes on is we don't know so this is okay so that's the third threat what i'm not a business it doesn't make much difference right and you know Comcast would have discretion as to whether they would take the cost of a channel and subtract it under the franchise fee they don't they won't be required to do that but we are to have a letter from Dan Glanbel from Comcast asking him about HD channels and he said well of course the cost of the HD channels which we don't have high definition for access in Vermont except a Berlin's telecom could be subtracted from your franchise fee which indicates they're already considering that and they have provided testimony about the value of these channels whether their market value or like i don't know how they're going to price it is what's really going on that they've got a limited number of bandwidth channels and they think maybe they could sell yours to something more profitable you know what's so interesting about that is that when we started there were three channels on 36 three access channels on 36 channels so we had what is that 10% in nine percent um our share of the bandwidth has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk because in fact they don't use channels to deliver to deliver content they serve it up from a computer so it's not even like they're a dedicated public access channels anymore on which our programming sits and is real estate occupied by the public which was the initial concept behind it it's no longer constructed that way they use the same network that they used to deliver internet service just to say the same network and they serve up content like a program like they it's not like the stream that's open to the public all the time yeah explanation or digital yeah so finally the final just threat and i just i i don't i don't mean to sound like a whiner but it's just important that you understand that this is like federal judicial and also the discretion of the cable operator is the herb in addition to cable port time that threatens these this community ecosystem of information help you if a fair number of reminders threatening cut their cable to court if well not our cast was not a good behavior not under the current way that we fund the herb access so um so we'll just we'll get to that point in one second so that the final thing is that in january of this past year 2018 Comcast was given advice by their auditors gap advice generally accepted accounting principles advice that they could reclassify what they count as revenue and um they did and that resulted in a $500,000 loss of income for the access channels around the state and they had discretion because they're the only cable operator in vermont that has done this who stayed there complex yeah so that just i think reinforces the concern we have about the FCC rulemaking and um and fundamentally the question of how do we advance this public policy objective if the regulatory arena is being threatened in these ways and we can no longer achieve the objective of creating these community media centers that support the um well-being in the common good of vermont so i'm going to let ken sit get a word in um and then we have a couple of recommendations that we should sort of like to feedback on uh while my colleague said it's a little good thing i think the one thing i would add is that i don't know about your towns but in the towns that i serve and live in we've seen such a shrinkage of local content in our local print and television other than access media that in many towns in vermont we are the last refuge of a local content of connection to town government city government connection schools libraries that's disappearing at a modern rate in other avenues and we're hopeful that we can maintain that in our industry here in vermont and around the country so were there any questions in what i said so far mark why are they doing this why why is conch has been trying to make a greater profit with that time or with customers i mean i think that they have a run directed which is their margin which is profit i mean you know they're a business they're they're not they're not here to make the community a better place they're here to deliver to their showholders so i think they're going to be very aggressive in their public policy agenda and um they see access despite what they may say we think access is a good thing they see it as a competitive disadvantage i mean that's been our experience who has the advantage over them well in the in the old days it was the satellite so they who saw themselves Comcast saw themselves as competing with the satellite video purveyors who did not have that five and a half percent extra fee on the bill and so they felt when people were spending you know 160 bucks on video that five percent adds up and that that would make a family less inclined to choose cable than satellite because of the extra fee now i can't go much farther down the road speculating on your answer other than our historic experience with them which is that they don't see us as a advantage for them as an offering that is appealing as cable to watch because now i have a tv that's not hooked up it's netflix ready and we got it for the grandkids and when they come over you can put on a season of orca or no you can't you can put on a season of any cartoon garfield you can watch garfield by nauseam or you can get movies and you know the last time they sent me a notice it was would you like us to share on facebook that you're watching tom is the train no thank you but that's what was on my account so you don't i have you know some people just watch hbo and you can lie live stream and you can get other services if you don't sit and watch sitcoms in the evening or you know just a network network news if you don't watch that but that makes you well you can stream the the good news is you can stream these access center channels across a month so there is an alternative way that is not simply cable there's some access channels that you can find on roku which is another kind of online service so we are diversifying the way that we distribute good which i think is really important to point out because we think that there may be other ways to fund this work so one of the things that's happening is that in light of this five hundred thousand dollar drop in revenue our colleagues across the state have gone to their local municipalities many of them have not gone there before asking for support in our communities around burlington we've asked those municipalities to double their contributions which most of them are doing if not all of them so there is we're we're also doing philanthropic for the etv way of raising money so we're diversifying but we may not be able to diversify quickly enough because it's a lot of work yes the cost back on the property tax and to get you out competing with things like the cala covered library and just locally home health services and a whole lot of other places so there's that so i thought that when you've got a license to provide i don't get cable because there are not people that are there so but one of when you won the when you're able to get a certificate of public good it was because you agreed to do this stuff and you're saying that they got the certificate of public good they've agreed to do this stuff but now they're going to court so they don't have to do it anymore they were given a new certificate of all the good 11 years with these conditions and the cable company said we object to these conditions so we're going to court to fight the puc so you pulled the certificate of public good well that would be a question for you to ask the puc because that is a curriculum why wouldn't you say or you don't want to serve okay but i mean conk has is so heavily invested in the state it's probably not the first thing people want to do yeah if you pull conk cast but it's a good question it's a legitimate question to be asked because you know for so so what why are we here so we're here to raise your awareness about these issues they agreed to the certificate they didn't agree they didn't agree they said we don't agree with these conditions so we're not going to so they're currently operating under their old certificate they didn't get it no way oh they're all certificate is still operative so they're operating under an old certificate that expired in 2016 so this court case could go another two years i mean so um so we would like to talk with the legislature more about this and we are not sure if the summer study committee is the way to do it or so we just like your advice about what you think we could do to discuss this as a public policy agenda well i think and it's probably as part of the telecom i mean summer studies if you're so limited a we won't get funding and b you can get lost you're really part of the future of telecommunications we kind of forget television anymore but it is there and with the decline of local papers there is a real question as to how do you i mean i can remember almost every word that got said in the city council appeared on the front page of the paper for better or worse um the next day i can remember wishing the days that didn't happen um but there was coverage and i was told it was nothing compared to the coverage you used to have when a report is listened with glasses against the door when you had a you know an executive session it has deteriorated to the point where and i was amazed because it was after midnight at a budget session i said well if there's any members of the public that are still listening and we got calls saying we are still out here listening um that people do watch it they don't come down and sit through the they sit home and their jammies and their slippers and and a comfortable chair and god love them they listen to the town budget meetings but that's it there there are no and when you get reporters they're stringers and they have no idea what you did last year in your budget or what any of the previous yeah thing leading up to it so it is in the context of democracy where does this all fit in and i think that would go into the telecom it is part of the interconnectedness but we have limited authority as does everybody else in regulating i remember we put what did we do to satellite a few years ago and they were trying to tax it trying to put a tax on it oh that was something oh yeah yeah there were legislatures going to tax your tv so what would be the best way to pursue some legislative discussion of this policy question and funding question you've got us you might want to also if you're talking about funding you might want to talk a to the governor's people and it's a little late but it's always good for them to understand and talk to the appropriations committees because if you're looking we might find a fee or a tax we could raise but that is a heavy lift to do that was the governor's office response they ask some really good questions are they ask good questions yeah they do yeah they ask some really some really good questions we went originally on this question of the Comcast reclassification of income which which affects the Comcast Access Centers so that's 23 of the 25 not all of the access centers and the i think the thing that we came away with was they said well why would you be rewarding Comcast why would you be asking for funds to make up this different for just Comcast systems which be a kind of way of rewarding them other cable operators who come and say well why are you doing that for Comcast systems so that was one set of questions they also wanted to know about return on investment you know they asked the RBA questions like what differences it made which were good questions and we I think have some good responses to that and so it would yeah so I mean we see this as an important way to raise awareness within the legislature who depends on these resources and we feel a little reluctant to come in this year and say hey we need some money because we just feel like this is a multi-year process and it's also a bigger public policy question so you're still the planning and thinking and reflecting phase really I mean so that's why we just like to do so that's why we're thinking you know possibly a summer study or looking on if you were going to have a you know a telecom study committee that maybe that needs to be part of that because I think it isn't just as simple as saying we'd like an appropriation this is a bigger this is a bigger question this is about rights of way you may actually have latitude that we haven't explored and researched that is they require some thought because this is you know this is a 35 year 40 year asset these access centers and we need to figure out how to position them for the future and we'd like to have the legislature in partnership in those conversations I think you've made the right step you're getting in under the discussion telecom because that's definitely where you are and I think the FCC is doing some interesting things run record is not particularly liking their net neutrality rules you know but what happens in Washington can change radically in a four year cycle you know we might get some relief that way but uh we should at least you should be included and because the goal isn't to lose what we've got and maybe the solution is you morph into the new world of being internet stream I don't know yeah I think ultimately that is going to be what happens and I think the question is what are the ways that we can support it yeah on the 20th of February the who's left out of that if that is you're all right that's what we were talking about before you did your inclusion as a key piece of work yeah I think as we're finding as technology changes older funding sources in utilities in all of these things are not keeping up with the new needs and we need to find a way to tap the folks that are now being regulated and are not paying so just two things for you to know where I'm we've asked the department the department I think is moving ahead with a request for a workshop with the PUC okay so we're going to take it up there which I think will be really good to have all the parties at the table to talk about this because I know it isn't actually just concast as a bad actor it's that's too simple you know we're all about trying to serve the community needs of the people in the state and you know we need to put aside any differences in view to figure out how we're going to do that and then the second is on the 20th of February for my access network is having a legislative day so we'll be here and our fearless leader from the National Association the community is coming so I mean if it's all right would you ask for him to come testify just let us know you know just we started about two weeks out so just let us know a day and we'll hold you some time is it between 20 and 20? No, would you like to have a meeting? There will be donuts on February 20th so please stop.