 We're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech and it's the 9 o'clock block with Bert Mom, who is the broadband strategy officer at that right for the state of Hawaii. He lives with the governor. Am I right? No, no, no. I've got my own little office. All right. Welcome to the show, Bert. Nice to have you here. Thanks. We caught a piece in the paper about how broadband was getting big money from the federal government, which is really, that's squarely on you. Congratulations. Tell us about it. Tell us about the amount of money and what it's earmarked for and all that. Tell us how we're going to infuse the money into broadband here and how as a result, we're going to further diversify our economy. It's on you, Bert. Well, I need to maybe make a little clarification on your big money reference. The topic of conversation that is underway right now is something called the Emergency Broadband Benefit. The EDB, Emergency Broadband Benefit, was a $3.2 billion appropriation that came as a result of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. So that was something that President Trump signed back in December of 2020. And the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 created several line items specifically for broadband. And the EDB was one of them. And it took a while for the FCC, which is the administering agency, to actually roll it out. So what we have at our fingertips, and we made the announcement on the 5th of May with a press conference with the governor, and then the FCC slash USAC, which is the Universal Service Administrative Corporation. They're the ones that do all the administrative work for the FCC. They actually had the official launch of the EDB on the 12th of May. So just to give you some sense of timeline. And you might be wondering, what is that $3.2 billion for? Well, it's for the entire country. And it is a benefit that is made available to qualifying subscribers of the internet through their internet service provider to get potentially a $50, basically, off your bill, $50 off your bill, if you are qualified. And if you were qualified and actually are a beneficiary on white homeland, you can get a $75 a month benefit. And this benefit will only last as long as a $3.2 billion last. So now you got to imagine that this is money that the entire country is applying for. And it will last only as long as that bucket of money lasts. So we're in the sort of the beginning stages of signing up new participants in this program. Just to give you a sense of the ISPs that are participating, you can think of all the major ones. You got the oil and telecom, you got charter slash spectrum. You have the wireless carriers, which include Verizon, AT&T, as well as T-Mobile. So you got them all. And that's not to even mention some of the smaller providers that are perhaps reselling the T-Mobile brand or even independent ISPs like one on a big island called Aloha Broadband. They are also participating. So I can get into the detail as to how people can sign up. But in essence, that is the program. There's also a $100 hardware credit or any participating ISP that wants to offer hardware as part of the benefit. Well, okay. Let's unpack some of that. The restaurant revitalization money is the same kind of thing. You have a fund and it's a specified dollar amount for the country. And it's the Oklahoma Land Rush. Everybody trying to get a piece of that right now. And you know it's not going to last very long. It's going to be evaporated in short order. That's probably what's going to happen here. But let me ask you, is this retrospective or prospect? I've been paying my internet bill for a long time. And certainly since December, certainly a couple of months in the past. So query, can I apply for money retrospectively? Or is it only prospective? Yeah, it's not retrospective. It's I guess prospective using your terminology. It is based on qualification. And some of the qualifying parameters include whether you've been unemployed over the course of 2020. Are you a recipient of let's say a Pell Grant? Are you a SNAP recipient? Are you, let's say, have children that are in school that are on the free and reduced lunch? So the basic criteria is whether you have been economically impacted by the COVID pandemic. And based on some of the criteria that the FCC has stated as being the qualifiers, that will determine whether you can receive that $50 benefit. So there is a process. And that's what if you were to go on to the Ustack website and go through the MI qualified, that's what you would need to verify. If you apply, you have to fill in the form somewhere, probably online. So okay, so let me do the math with you. Let's assume that 100 million people in this country, that's probably an overstatement, would qualify, but just for numbers. So how long would this last if they got on board and they had the $50 or $75 benefit plus the $100 benefit? How long would it last in terms of? Well, so I kind of have been following some of the national organizations and their assessment as to how long this money might last. And their sort of rough gauge would be anywhere from four to six months. And then I looked at what would Hawaii potentially be able to bring in if the numbers that are reflective of who's been affected by the pandemic through unemployment, how many SNAP recipients are there, how many are there who have free or reduced lunch. The number could be anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000. So if I took an estimate of 200,000 participants in Hawaii that were able to get at least a $50 monthly benefit, then that would be about $40 million that we could potentially bring in to help subsidize that internet service bill within that four to six month period. So that's kind of the back of the napkin estimate. That's not very long. And after that, let's assume it's all used up, then you're back to ground zero again. So there is a recognition by the federal government that there is an issue around affordability. So what this program helps to do is to start to gather up some data on how well received is this benefit, what is the distribution of this benefit, and obviously, how long is this benefit going to last. There is a section I think in the jobs plan that looks to extend this benefit. So there's already discussions about extending the benefit. I don't have much detail on what that is and what's the criteria for that extension, but there is discussion at the federal level in terms of extending it. The other thing that is happening with this particular program is it helps to inform what is the federal government going to do in terms of the redesign of something called Lifeline. And so Lifeline historically was a benefit that was offered to people who deserve or qualified for a discount on their telephone bill. So Lifeline was primarily around telephone service. And there has been a recognition that obviously telephone service has evolved quite a bit since Lifeline first came out, and that there's nothing really in place to address broadband connectivity. So part of the exercise we're going through is how can the lessons learned and the data that is results from the EBB, how can that help inform perhaps Lifeline could be modified or further enhanced. And to be perfectly honest, up until this particular program started to develop and roll out, there was not a whole lot of attention being placed on Lifeline. And you might ask, Jay, who does Lifeline in Hawaii? And the answer is there's only one, there's Hawaiian Telcom. And how many subscribers does Hawaiian Telcom have prior to EBB rolling out? My estimate based on some information off the federal website, the USEC website, was that there were probably about 500 recipients of benefit. And you might say, well, that's not that, that's probably not that much. And that's true. And the other thing that you might observe is that is anybody actively kind of like marketing or outreach or building awareness around Lifeline? And the answer is no, there was no real outreach on Lifeline. And so Lifeline obviously needs to be further, let's say, developed or enhanced or modified. And that's what the EBB is trying to do given how this particular program unfolds and what does it help to inform us of. So, again, I think it's a good start. It's an issue around adjusting affordability. And I think this is a way to try to get to some answers around that. Yeah, let's step through the one that's coming down the bike here. I suppose you go on the Internet. What is the role of these carriers you mentioned? Are they actually accepting the applications, processing the applications, distributing the money, crediting the money to your bill? I mean, what is their role? So the way the program works is that and a lot of this. So the role that we here at D-Bed wanted to help play was to provide a local aggregation point for information that would indicate what ISPs are participating and where do you need to go to, let's say, go and do a national verifier. So a lot of this information we've put up on our website at broadband.hawaii.gov slash EBB. So that's kind of an essential EBB. Can you tell us again what EBB is saying? Emergency Broadband Benefit. Got it. And then to your question about the, how does this work? So in essence, what the potential applicant needs to do is they need to register on the federal website. And that is, I mean, you can check out all the websites, links on our page, but you register on that federal website. And between the federal website registration, which ultimately qualifies you, and then you select the ISP of choice. So in some cases, people already have an ISP. So they're looking at getting a benefit off of their current internet bill. Or maybe they want to sign up for a new one. So then they basically determine their ISP of choice. And everything happens between the FCC slash USAC and the ISP provider. So let's pick on Hawaiian Telcom. So if the applicant went to the site, registered for the EBB, got verified, provided the documentation, and then qualified, and their selection was Hawaiian Tel, then what Hawaiian Tel does is that they basically sign that person up. And through the back office or back end of the EBB system, the federal government at the FCC would then extend the $50 credit to Hawaiian Tel. And then Hawaiian Tel in turn would credit you on your bill for $50. So that's how the $50 credit works. You don't get like a $50 check in the mail. It goes directly to the carrier, and then the carrier will discount your bill accordingly. And does this keep going? And what do you have to apply again for every month or every author? Oh, yeah, this keeps going. Once you're on, you're on for the duration of the EBB funds. So yeah, you don't have to worry about trying to reapply. The key is, and this is recognized by the FCC, that they don't want to have people all of a sudden at the end of the four to six month period either lose their service, get, you know, charge the retail rate. That's not going to be counterproductive. So, you know, the program in essence tries to get, you know, as many people signed up at a discount. And then the next, of course, challenge, which is in the next, you know, four to six months is how do you transition that to another program that continues that that's the level of benefit. This is, aside from that phone program, telephone program you mentioned is really unprecedented. Does the FCC administer the phone program and this broadband program both? Yes, yeah, yeah. So again, the two agencies that people may start to hear about and may not be familiar with is FCC Federal Communications Commission and their administrative arm, which is USAC, which is the Universal Service Administrative Corporation. And what you just mentioned in terms of being unprecedented is the fact that it's been, it's been pretty rare that the FCC would deal directly with consumers. And most of the time, you know, it's at, at the corporate level or, you know, at, at, at policy levels that the consumer tends not to have a way to directly interact with the FCC. You know, if you think about it, you know, how would you or I even, even, you know, deal with the FCC. And, you know, the only time we would perhaps, you know, maybe lodge a complaint or something like, you know, I heard a swear word on one of the radio stations, so you can lodge a complaint with the FCC. But other than that, the consumers don't really interact with the FCC. So the, the, it is unprecedented. And the recognition from a local level was that, you know, if, if we did not provide some localization of the program and give people a sense of how it might work in Hawaii and establish some, some degree of, of trust, you know, in terms of how you might interact with a, an agency like, you know, like the FCC, we wanted to provide some of that local collateral that would help to outreach into the communities that would, you know, be receptive to this. So on the local level, and I got a lot of help from Laura Arcebol who is with the Department of Health. She also does a lot of work with the telehealth community. And, and she helped me pull together a variety of, of nonprofits as well as translators that provided localized versions of what it is that we wanted to get into the communities and help them understand what this program was all about. And that's the stuff that you'll find on, you know, the website, broadband.hoi.gov slash ebb. So we wanted to localize that to give, give it a, you know, sense of, of more, not only local language, but just local connection between, you know, this sort of federal agency and, and, and Hawaii benefit. And again, it is unprecedented, like you said, right? It's very rare that, that a agency like an FCC would, would actually have a program for, you know, for consumers. Now, you might say, well, what about lifeline? Well, lifeline, again, was out there. It wasn't really, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of marketing around lifeline. And now, given the pandemic and given how much recognition of the importance of broadband and how much we depend on it for, you know, whether it's work or education or telehealth or even just, you know, civic engagement or, or socializing, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a necessity, right? It's beyond the recognition of a, a nice to have, it's like a need to have. And that's why, again, it's, it's just the first step in, in a process that I think was long overdue. One of the, one of the next steps for, you know, do you see a time when there'll be not only a continuation of these support payments, but an increase in support payments or even, you know, free broadband, you know, they're sort of chicken in every pot. Everybody gets broadband. Well, you know, the, the challenge is, you know, somebody's got a pay for something, right? There's no such thing as free. So the question is, you know, as, as broadband becomes recognized as a more of a utility, how does that actually start to manifest itself into some kind of, you know, business or policy? What, what we're keeping a very close eye on is the, you know, the rolling out of programs for broadband in the American rescue plan, which is in play right now. And, and how does that help to change the environment, as well as what's, you know, what's happening with the American jobs plan? American, the American rescue plan, if you look at some of the, you know, sort of like the fine print and the implications that the, the rescue plan outlines is that it's not simply providing infrastructure money to the, the big carriers. It's also encouraging infrastructure for the independence, the nonprofit, the smaller ISPs, even, even encouraging municipal broadband. So those are types of sort of the kind of like the groundbreaking game-changing environment that creates more options and more competition that would potentially, you know, bring down the prices. Because if there's more options to enable your choice for, for connectivity, then the competition will help bring down, bring down prices. So it's a, you know, it's kind of a bold move. Obviously, you know, there's a lot of lobbying going on in Washington. It's, it's going to be interesting to see how a lot of this unfolds. And, and for Hawaii, you know, that's why we wanted to keep a close eye on any of these programs that are becoming available. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm encouraged through this last legislative session that, you know, we were able to, the legislature put in, in one of the bills. I mean, we have, we have the establishment of the broadband digital equity office. It still needs to be signed by the governor. So we're hopeful that that will take place. But it's, it's at least a recognition by our state legislature that, you know, Hawaii needs to focus on, on broadband and digital equity. So that's kind of, you know, right square in the crosshairs of what I'm, you know, what I'm doing here at the bed. And I am, you know, happy to have this, this conversation with you, Jay. And of course, this is a, you know, this is something that we've been working on ever since I got this job back in 2018. So it's kind of a pivotal moment. And how we continue to develop this into the future is, is really going to be how well we can create this environment for broadband for all. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the state bill. And I suppose congratulations on the federal bill. But query is the money coming? I mean, is it a certainty or does it require more congressional action for the EVB to start funding these payments? The EVB is underway. So that's already been funded. That's already been that's the thing that usually happens is that these bills, you know, they go through Congress, they become acts like the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act. Those need to be basically signed off by the president, right? And so they have been that. But the, but what that does is that it stepped in motion, something called rules. And those rules are what the federal agencies need to develop in order to roll out the actual finance, the money and the rules by which that money gets spent. So it's really critical that these rules are well thought out. And that's why between between December of 2020 and May 12, you know, the good five months, that's how long it took the SEC to come up with the rules and not only the rules, but kind of the back office system that ultimately enabled USAC to connect with all the carriers. So when we first heard about this, I mean, we were pressing the carriers to sign up for this program because it was a voluntary opt-in for them, right? It wasn't a forced upon them. So they voluntarily opted in. So likewise, any of the other broadband references, like in the, not only consolidated appropriations, but also with the American Rescue Plan, those all need rules. And so the rules are only now coming to fruition. So that's what we're trying to pay close attention to. And that will determine how we can propose projects based on those rules. Well, I suppose the rules might cover the question that I'm about to ask, which I hope it does. I hope they do. Suppose I have a business that would qualify, you know, my business was out of business for a while, say a restaurant, you know, I was, I was crippled by COVID. And in my restaurant, we have like five computers. And we have five connections to the internet. And we get a bill from our internet provider for all those five, or have a nonprofit, the same thing. We would qualify as, you know, a needy organization, not necessarily a needy individual with food stamps, but a needy organization. So I get five times the amount of the benefit you've talked about. How does that work? So the benefit, the EDB is only for residents and consumers. So it does not qualify for businesses. Because as I mentioned, the qualifiers are whether you are unemployed, a SNAP recipient, telegram, things like free and reduced lunch. There is, there's other programs that are benefiting businesses. But, but this one is strictly for the consumer. Got it. The other thing is, you know, okay, what we want to do is bring broadband to more, more people. We want to have it available to everyone so that they can have the benefits of the information highway, so to speak. God, I haven't heard that term in a long time, the information highway. So, so, I mean, how, how does, how do they think, how do you think this is going to achieve that? And further to add to that, you know, we are all interested in seeing, as you know, as you've written about and spoken about for a long time, we're all interested in seeing a diversification of the economy. We want to see tech companies come up. So, query, how does this kind of program affect that, encourage that, incentivize that, if at all? Well, you know, the recognition was that a lot of people were not connected. And so there's a whole spectrum of issues that are, you know, at hand to try to resolve. And one of the things that we did early on in the broadband who we was kind of recognize the fact that it's not just access. And that's what led us to something called the digital equity declaration. And it was also a recognition, we've kind of adopted this, this phrase, broadband for all, but all stands for access, literacy and livelihood. And it's a recognition that it's not just getting access to everybody, which is still important, but it's not the only thing. There are issues around literacy, around digital literacy. And can the, you know, the folks that are receiving some of this technology through access, are they able to use the technology in a way that is benefiting them on an economic social level, right? So, from a literacy standpoint, you know, we have started programs around digital literacy and computer literacy, around the issue around, you know, let's say you have access, and you're interested in moving more toward the digital economy. Do you even have the hardware to enable you to do that? And, you know, a lot of the initial funding sources went to purchasing of laptops and tablets. But we also encourage, you know, there's a nonprofit that has been part of the Hui from day one called Hawaiian Hope. And they take refurbished computers and make them available for next to nothing to anybody who's, you know, like, qualified or deserving. I mean, if you're, if you, let's say, you want to upskill through some digital literacy classes, but you don't have a computer, then, you know, organizations like Hawaiian Hope are able to get you a computer. So, Jay, you know, the effort around digital equity helps to get everybody up to speed with the technology. It's kind of like, I like to think of it as the democratization of technology. And, you know, in the spectrum of things that need to be done in order for us to diversify the economy, you know, you have to have, I think, the baseline goals of establishing degrees of digital literacy. You have the ability to get broadband to as many communities as possible that helps to encourage things like remote work. We are also looking at trying to apply some of the federal funds toward things like, you know, carrier, neutral cable landings, as well as the backhaul solutions that would perhaps encourage some of the cloud platform folks to consider Hawaii. We're also working with Amazon, AWS, and we have a program called AWS Cloud Certification. And so, it's a whole spectrum of offerings that help to get everybody from rural communities economically challenged, perhaps even disenfranchised to benefit from this technology. And not to lose sight of the goal that, you know, we are trying to achieve, which is digital, you know, get to a place where we are competitive in the digital economy. And not only, you know, so that you, Jay, can go home and watch Netflix, we're looking at how do we enable the, you know, the right kind of robust resilient network that companies can actually do business from Hawaii. Remote workers can work from Hawaii and through their collaborations, perhaps create some, you know, great startups. Yeah, that's the future. That's the future. A democratization and availability, even at home, you know, because COVID has taught us about the value of working at home, the value of organizing businesses and enterprises to take advantage of people who are literate and have the equipment and the broadband connection. So I can see this is happening all across AWS's term, all across the spectrum. And it's on your plate, Bert. I expect to see you more often. I expect to hear from you as you promote these things and make people aware of it. Bert Lum, star of stage and screen on wide public radio, the open data program, the Hawaii broadband hui and probably half a dozen other things. Bert is a very active person. Thank you very much for showing up today and doing this show with me. Bert, really appreciate it. Appreciate it, Jay. Mahalo for having me on. Aloha.