After BEAD: The Future of Broadband and Accountability - Episode 663 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I'm here with Jordan Pittman, our Digital Opportunity Lead Just checking make sure I got that right. Who is just in town for our fall retreat. We all got together to talk about the Community Broadband Networks team. Jordan, you're still a part of it. Have you been updating your resume over the weekend?

Jordan A. Pittman (00:39)
Well, you know, I was, after the retreat, been reflecting a little bit on it, but I haven't got to a conclusion yet. But what I did go from the retreat and learn is that I'm not good at Mario Kart. I am not great at this. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (00:50)
Hahaha! ⁓

That's an important lesson and

also gives people a sense of how we do things.

Jordan A. Pittman (00:59)
Yeah, I think that's the main lesson from the retreat that I'll gather, so.

Christopher Mitchell (01:02)
Yeah, our priorities will be set by a Mario Kart tournament.

Jordan A. Pittman (01:06)
Absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (01:07)
We are going to talk today about a few topics informally. We're have a little conversational style. And that includes a little bit about what's coming next in BEAD and what comes after BEAD. There's been more talk lately about that. We'll probably talk just a little bit about what we see coming on with SpaceX and Starlink and a little bit on Verizon buying Starry and what that means. So Jordan, when you hear what's coming next in BEAD,

What are you thinking about? What should we talk about? We've BEAD BEAD to death, I feel like, but like there's always more news coming down the pipe.

Jordan A. Pittman (01:40)
Yeah, mean, take a step back, right? Like, was supposed to be just once in a generation, you know, type of investment. So I think there's this notion for some folks is like, once BEAD is out there, like that infrastructure ⁓ aspect is done. And I'm thinking about moving forward how there's still some people that won't be connected even after BEAD. And then even if they are connected, my big thing is they're going be able to actually afford that connection. So those are things that I'm thinking about. But you know, Chris, I'm always curious on your thoughts on that.

Christopher Mitchell (02:07)
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting to try to figure out how many people are being left behind because I'm somewhat stunned. If you told me that we were going to have a program to end all future broadband investment infrastructure programs, and it was going to be squabbling over two and a half to three and a half million locations, I would be like, well, what about the other 10 or 15 million locations? Right?

Jordan A. Pittman (02:31)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (02:32)
And we're just pretending they don't exist, I guess, right? And this is a mix of things. This is a mix of like homes that haven't shown up on the map fabric yet because it was such a disaster in terms of how bad the Federal Communications Commission put together the data of what homes exist. And so that we can then determine whether or not they had Internet access. We have a bunch of homes that don't even exist on the federal maps where there's human beings living there who are American citizens. We have...

a whole bunch of locations that are assumed to have decent service because an Internet service provider submitted documentation saying, no, we could totally serve them and all of their neighbors with this great service. Only it turns out that they might not even be able to get anything or what they could get is really below what we would consider to be a decent Internet connection. And there's a variety of other reasons why people have been left out too. And the result is, that we're talking about a program that

if it goes well and it's not gonna go well. I mean like but at its best, BEAD was gonna solve like what 20 % of the problem in the end and so I mean I don't know like I'm a little bit flummoxed in that like some of this is Trump's administration in that like if the Trump administration did the best it could, we would probably permanently resolve the issue for those three and a half million homes or whatever that we're still talking about but it's not.

But even so, majority of the problem is still left untouched anyway.

Jordan A. Pittman (03:54)
Yeah.

Right, and you bring up a good point about the Trump administration because it seems like we always have to bring them up, but I think their sort of philosophy on

Four or five years from now where the next administration or an administration after that is like hey We didn't hit that last like 15 20 percent so we need to do that and then we're gonna be here all over again Okay, I think fundamentally we still haven't fixed the issues of why people got left behind what you brought up is like the mapping so like I think what comes next for BEAD is like we need to like I don't know local state federal level we need to really focus on this idea of mapping making sure locations are accurate and that ISP's and just saying like yeah, man, just trust me, bro. I

Like just trust me that I'll be able to cover this place. You can just you can have my word for it Even though historically I have not done that

Christopher Mitchell (05:13)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think that's right. But a future effective program will have to have effective maps. Now, I think we might see that in some states. Some states might get serious about trying to figure out where decent Internet access is to make sure everyone's well connected. I really only see enhanced federal commitment to another large broadband program as part of a jobs program. I think there's a lot of us who are looking at what's happening in the stock market.

we're assuming that there is a major crash coming. There seems to be a significant AI bubble. There are a lot of warning signs. Now I'll say that there's more warning signs in any given year than there are recessions or like really deep, deep economic turmoil. So maybe I'll look back at this and be like, wow, like I really over-interpreted that. But I would expect that we will see a significant economic downturn and then the federal government will be like, well, what can we do to put people to work?

And something you can do to put people to work is building good telecommunications networks. That might be fixed wireless, or it might be getting fiber out to more people. It's not going to be satellites. I'll tell you that. That's not a good program to solve a problem and put people to work. But right now, the Trump administration is pulling billions of dollars out of rural America. And that's going to have an impact. And we also have

We're crushing the labor force in the United States as we have the silver tsunami of people that have grayer hair than I do or retiring. And so there's a lot of reasons to think that we're about to have a world of hurt. And after that, there's usually the threshold for whether or not the federal government wants to put money into something changes. So I'll say if the economy keeps humming along, I don't think there's a broadband program.

to deal with this. think we just, move along. I mean, don't forget, this is a country in which we debate actively whether or not children should have health insurance. And so the idea that like someone in Washington DC is going to lose sleep because millions of homes in rural America are paying too much for satellite or forgoing Internet home service in their home because they can't afford it. You know, they don't care. And as long as people keep voting for people who don't care, that's what's going to happen.

Jordan A. Pittman (07:13)
Yeah, and you know when you say that Chris it brings up a question I want to ask you so it seems like you know the big thing even when we talked about BEAD the last couple years is like COVID happened and that kind of prompt people to really see the significance of like ⁓ having a good Internet connection. What you're saying basically is like at least on a federal level there won't be a huge focus on maybe a program like this again unless we have like a huge economic downturn which I don't know in return it almost sounds like a

New Deal of sense of like if it gets that bad we're going to eat something just to get people back to work and that working in broadband can be such a great way to do that but let's just say like you said that doesn't happen like i mean this problem's still here right so like what does it mean for those 15 to 20 percent of america are we just going to be like well there there's Starlink for you which we can go into Starlink if you want and be like yeah this is going to solve that for you

Christopher Mitchell (08:04)
Well, I think that's an interesting question, right? So Starlink continues to do well and in that, in that it's like serving more and more people. It barely qualifies as broadband by the federal broadband definition, which was what is now what three years old about, I think. ⁓ And, and so we're seeing, I mean, this is, this is where we have to get into forecast territory, right? Because like for Starlink to be able to continue being able to serve more people.

Jordan A. Pittman (08:20)
Just about, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (08:30)
higher quality speeds, they have to get the third generation of their satellites up for Starlink. In order to do that, they need Starship, which is the heavier launch vehicle. We're recording this one day after, I believe it was launch 11, and it was a successful launch, but people should understand what it was. This ⁓ was a launch in which their version two of Starship was able to launch.

version three of the Starlink satellites successfully, but in a suborbital plane, I think. And so I'm not a big space guy. I'm trying to learn more about this stuff because it's really important for Internet access in terms of the Starlink. But the problem with that Starlink has ultimately is being able to launch enough satellites then to replace them on the regular, which will require a lot of launches of heavier

rockets than we are used to sending up. SpaceX is developing those and V3 will launch either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. That's gonna be their best shot at having a reusable vehicle. They need to have a reusable vehicle to make it affordable to do so many launches to get so many more bigger, heavier satellites up there. The problem is to be able to reuse that, they need to get the flights actually further out into space. All of the SpaceX launches with Starship so far have been suborbital.

And so they don't have to get up to a higher speed to be able to go around the Earth multiple times. And they're barely able to make re-entry, it feels like. They've done it a couple of times. They're still experimenting with it. Maybe they'll have a breakthrough. But I have mad respect for the scientists that went through all this stuff decades ago. And maybe Starlink's folks, we have advanced materials now. We can produce them in higher quantities more rapidly, perhaps. There are reasons that we might be able to have heat tiles that are able to withstand re-entry over and over again.

But we don't know yet. so for people who are like excited about this, like I've been thinking about it. It's like Elon Musk, it's like, this is an audacious goal, right? And this is what Elon does. And he's failed at a lot of them and people tend to forget about that. They just pay attention to the audacious goals he's succeeded at. But think of it this way, like for Starship to be able to succeed, it's like Elon Musk is like, I'm going to jump off this 10 story building and I'm going to be fine. And he's like, to prove it, I'm going to show you and I'm going to jump off this like 10 foot staircase. And he lands and he hurts his ankle.

And then like a few months later, he does it again and he lands. He's okay. He's like, all right, now I'm to jump off this 20 foot roof. And he like breaks his leg and he has to go back and he's waiting and he tries it again. He breaks it and then he finally lands it. And he's like, see, I'm fine. I told you guys now I'm going to do that 10 story building. And it was like, all right, man, like maybe you'll figure it out. But like, but like jumping off a 20 story or a 20 foot roof is really different from like a 10 story building. And like, there's still a major challenge that has to be met in order for Starlink to be able to do all of this stuff.

Jordan A. Pittman (10:58)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (11:11)
We don't know if Starlink will be able to put up enough satellites with the tech to be able to serve millions more people with very high quality systems. The Ookla tests show that, you know, when you do the speed tests en masse, that the average tests are like well below the upload speed that is needed for it to be broadband. And so the last thing I'll say in this diatribe is that, you know,

Travis, Travis from formerly of USI Internet, who, you know, is back on the road again, he keeps sending me his results and Starlink has gotten better and Travis is seeing good speeds. And not only that, but Travis is telling me how it's like only half the sky and he's really excited about how it's going. But like, we're not seeing that in the mass reports that we are seeing everywhere else, that everyone is having as good of an experience. And then we still haven't talked about affordability, even after all that.

Jordan A. Pittman (12:02)
Right, yeah, I mean, there's a lot that you said, Chris, that I really resonate with. Especially, I actually am a space guy, like grew up loving the space, man. That's just like my favorite cool rule of thumb there. But the thing I really wanted to emphasize on was like this idea of like Starlink is good in like certain situations, but not on this mass scale, right? You know.

as this money is being transferred from rural America from specific like fiber broadband to Starlink, it's one of those where like yeah, in theory, like yeah, Elon can jump off a two story and say, yeah, I can jump off a 10 story. This is all in theory, right? Like the hope is that the technology gets better for them to actually connect these Americans. But this is all theory. We're playing theory and with real money with people who need connection now.

That's the really frustrating thing about this to me. It's just like yes, like I don't want I'm not a hater like I want this to work I want this to be successful for people can have connection being able to connect from a satellite in theory sounds super cool But what we've seen time and time again as you just mentioned is that the report showed that it does not You know connect people with a stable connection on the masses like I'm not gonna connect to Starlink in Atlanta and be able to do this sort of call with you right now so this money's just keep on getting thrown to him with the hope I'm just like

Well, I hope when we already have proof that like there's other methods that can get people this connection right now. And that's the most frustrating thing about this to me.

Christopher Mitchell (13:26)
You know, I'm entirely with you. I keep thinking about North Carolina as you were talking, right? Like the federal government, I mean, you said this earlier, the federal government during the pandemic is like, Internet access is so important at this point. It is important for the economy. It's important even if we don't have a pandemic, right? And people need to have access to this, right? This goes back, like one of the things about the United States is that back in the 1930s, we set the policy that we wanted everyone to have decent telecommunications.

Jordan A. Pittman (13:31)
Right.

Right.

Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (13:52)
We revisited that in 1996 and we said everyone should have basic, the same connections at, not basic, I mean that's the point, is that everyone should have reasonably equitable access to the extent that it's feasible is the way it's been interpreted. And the federal government was like, all right, we're gonna put $45 billion into this and we think it's so important. And then.

Jordan A. Pittman (14:05)
Absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (14:14)
The Trump administration comes along and they're like, you know what, we're going to spend a lot less. And it's like, well, how are the connections, how good are the connections going to be? And they're like, we're not worried about that. We're just going to spend less. And it's like, well, people are going to be able to afford those connections. We don't care. We're going to spend less. And so the federal government gave North Carolina like what? Like $1.4, $1.7 billion. I don't know. It was well in excess of a billion dollars to connect a certain number of locations.

And North Carolina, following the Trump administration's new rules, is like, all right, we're going to spend a certain amount of that, and we're going to give you a billion dollars back, or we're have a billion dollars left over. So they're just leaving out five counties in eastern and western North Carolina are being cut off. And they're going to be reliant on Starlink in an area that's heavily forested with cliffs around them, with mountains all around them. And they've got to their money back. And the Trump administration isn't even like, we're going to use that money for job training to make sure that like,

Jordan A. Pittman (15:06)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (15:06)
that we can have like the workforce that we need as we're like cracking down on immigration because we're not going to have workers coming in from other countries anymore. And if anyone's listening, like I don't want, I'm not trying to get political, but the facts are that there are a lot of people in the Trump administration who are trying to reduce legal immigration, not just illegal immigration, right? They are trying to reduce all kinds of immigration and that has significant impacts on the workforce. The Trump administration, it hasn't said what they're going to do with the money that they're trying to claw back from the states. But we know

that a previous Congress had said, it is so important to us to connect everyone. We're going to spend like one and a half billion dollars in North Carolina. And now we're just saying, no, we're going to, we're not going to spend that money. We're going to tell those people, good luck. You know, you're on your own and we're going to save the money for some indeterminate purpose at this point.

Jordan A. Pittman (15:52)
Right, you know, it's frustrating because this is also the same administration when DOGE was still doing his thing being like, hey, our thing is making sure our government's efficient, that the money that you're spending with your tax dollars is going towards proper things, but what this is doing is you as a taxpayer, you're gonna spend more long-term on issues that we could have solved yesterday. So it's like, at the end of the day, you're still...

Spending more just for administration to have this sort of idea that like hey, we're saving money for you So this is the type of stuff like where hopefully people like us can be like hey like I know it sounds good what they're saying but like the reality is like you're actually gonna be paying more for this and you're still not gonna have a great connection because the Connection you're have right now is a Starlink connection, which again and limited situations is really good But again, Charlotte, North Carolina is not gonna use Starlink

Christopher Mitchell (16:38)
No, and

additionally, I mean, if you go back to Connect This! sorry, I mean, Connect This! from Friday, Doug had pointed out last week in a blog post on the Pots and Pans by CCG, blog that he runs, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, has announced that people have to do all their filings online now, right? So if you live in Western North Carolina, the federal government just told you, hey, you're not getting anything better for Internet access. You know, good luck.

Jordan A. Pittman (16:43)
There you go.

Christopher Mitchell (17:05)
Tristar Link, we're gonna get, not all that. The ultimate slap in the face is of course, rather than creating jobs and economic activity in your county, we're instead gonna write a check to the world's richest man. And he's gonna put stuff in space that he's gonna then charge you more than $100 a month for. So they do that. And then they also say, and if you were ravaged by a hurricane and you're trying to deal with FEMA, you have to communicate online now. It's a shot in the face.

And I mean, just like, it's just, is so frustrating because it is not, this is a, I'm all for saving taxpayer dollars. I talk about this regularly. Like I think we should have more efficient services. I frankly think we should spend more taxpayer dollars on being more efficient, you know, and, then, you know, like, so that we can be ready for the next fricking downturn. Um, but, but what is happening here is not saving taxpayer dollars. This is about screwing people in rural America.

Jordan A. Pittman (17:45)
Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Mitchell (17:57)
who don't have access to technology. It's about the people who have already taken it on the chin the most because of how we set things up in the past and because of perhaps bad luck or perhaps they made bad decisions. And now the federal government is like too bad. We're not gonna like try to like build a system in which you're able to access rights that you should be able to get. We're gonna make it harder for you to access the benefits that you're entitled to after a natural disaster comes through because we try to help each other out as Americans.

It's just, it's so frustrating. And so it's important for people to understand like, like the cost of this is being born by the next natural disaster victims, right? Like that's who's going to be punished. Now those people might benefit in the short term from Elon Musk and Starlink, right? Because like, like when, the telecom lines go down, takes time to get them back up. But, but in the longer term, they're going to be screwed by the fact that economic activity is leaving their region. New jobs aren't coming in.

because of the decisions that are being made by the federal government.

Jordan A. Pittman (18:57)
Yeah, I mean,

I'm going to tap a little bit into my degree because I did like rural sociology. So this really hits me personally. So there was a there's a graph for this and maybe like I can put it in like the post whatever it's called the upward spiral and the downward spiral. So basically what it's saying is usually specifically with rural places once one domino falls either positively or negatively it just continues to fall down. So what you've seen rural places because it's amplified because it's smaller these sort of investments allows people to come into the town bring jobs.

like you mentioned and then once during in that kind of starts this upward spiral of Improving not just the people who are coming for jobs or whatever but just for everybody in the town itself But when that is taken away that spiral also happens downwardly what you see like if there's less investment There's not an incentive for people to come if you're young like somebody like me that grew up in like a rural town It's like well, there's no opportunities here for me I much rather leave to go to like a better place if that's a city whatever the case may be and that actually continues to spiral because as you're

earlier as more Americans get older and there's a lot more older Americans that are not working versus young Americans like we need us more now never and if you're not around that's just gonna continue to make the town almost a ghost town so what we're seeing is investment shift

We talked about it before there's a cost of doing nothing right if you don't do nothing and invest in in broadband Internet access You're gonna be left behind. I'm a phrase this one This is the cost of being stupid because the cost of being stupid of actually that being able to invest these people Intentionally, this is an intentional thing to take money away from here like these places that voted for you It's gonna die. So it's one of those where it's important for me when I go back to my role places to be like Hey this struggle that's going on right now

This is intentional and this is intentional by the people in power that don't see you as valuable. They see the pockets of Elon Musk more valuable. So it's important to have that structure in mind to be able to show them like, hey, there can be a better future if we allow it to be.

Christopher Mitchell (20:54)
I agree, but it's important to note, mean, Starlink will be something that is important to have. However, we need to have something on the ground that is available. One of the other points you made that I would come back to is how quick this is gonna happen because ⁓ we don't know when Starlink is gonna be able to have enough satellites up to cover all of the demand and the throughput to be able to deliver high quality services on the regular.

Jordan A. Pittman (21:00)
Right.

Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (21:19)
And as soon as they start perhaps lowering their price, they're going to see more demand. And so then it's going to be harder again to keep up those high quality services. If you're in a city, if you're in a suburb, if you're one of like four out of five Americans, you have access to Internet access. That's like a gigabit now, right? Like nearly everyone has that available, whether it's through a cable system that also has some slow upload or some faster upload, depending on whether they've done the mid split or not. That's changing over time.

And but those systems are getting much better, much faster. Most people have much faster speeds at a much lower price than what Starlink is charging. And and so that just gets us to the other issue, which is the thing that always drove me nuts during the Biden administration was they call this Internet for All And it's just aside from the fact that it's Internet Access for All which is a small point, it was never about everyone. Right. Like like it was it was forty five billion dollars for physical networks.

Jordan A. Pittman (21:57)
Absolutely.

Jesus.

Christopher Mitchell (22:15)
to get people service in rural areas. And then $2.5 billion plus some of the non-deployment funds that would have been left over in some states. so, you know, but like it was, it it was, I don't want say, I don't want to say chunk change or Trump change. There's something there perhaps, but there's, there's $2.5 billion for like job training and devices and affordability programs and, things like that. And that money all just got taken away.

Jordan A. Pittman (22:29)
Just.

Christopher Mitchell (22:41)
by the Trump administration illegally, unconstitutionally, and I suspect that might come back. But that was like the beginning of something that we needed much more of, and we're not seeing that at all. And so, you know, we talked about all the people that were left out by the mapping. And so if we step back for a second, BEAD is gonna cover like on the order of like plus or minus three million people, or I'm sorry, three million households.

And so we're talking about households, 3 million people in BEAD There's probably another 10 to 15 million households who are, who should be getting an improvement from BEAD, but are not because they were left out of a really bad mapping process. ⁓ and then you have probably another 15, 20, 25 million households who cannot afford services and they live in an area where there are good services available.

Jordan A. Pittman (23:15)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (23:25)
And I don't know when we're going to see something at the federal level on that. I think there's some states that are starting to get concerned about it, but we need more metros to be concerned, right? There's some places that are doing stuff. A lot of the cities that have municipal networks, they're trying to figure out how they can develop a variety of programs. We've covered a lot of them over the years, where they have municipal networks that are really trying to make sure that everyone can benefit. mean, Wilson, North Carolina is one of the best examples of this. They've had many programs over the years to figure out how to meet the needs of people.

who cannot afford a regular connection. And so we just have this larger issue then that's left untapped. And that wasn't even contemplated really under the Biden administration as they talked about Internet for all. And so there's a lot of work that has to be done still.

Jordan A. Pittman (24:07)
Yeah and to you know we don't have to be on this too much longer Chris but your last point really hits me because you talked about the potential for economic downturn but like to be transparent like my Internet connection like cost is like $80 so if stuff gets more expensive and there's ⁓ layoffs and people are losing jobs or just whatever might happen in economic downturn but we increasingly tell people that more and more things are being digital you're putting people in a really really tough spot to

where

you need to be online to pay your bill or to do things that you have to do online. I mean, for example, there's stuff even in Atlanta where the offices are closed where they're just like, hey, we don't accept paper in person. We only do it digitally. So if you don't have that and then you're struggling to pay bills, and by the way, your plan is like $80, $85 for a decent connection. It's one of those where it's just like.

people want to start making choices but then you're going to get mad at people choose food over their Internet plan and then not be able to turn in whatever they need to to you know online so it's it's one of those were my favorite I'll go ahead

Christopher Mitchell (25:13)
Yeah,

you remember Sean Sean talked about this when that the BBB bill passed remember ⁓ with I forget if it's WIC or snap it was snap. Yeah, and in the federal government basically saying Internet access is not essential and then it's like by the way, we're only going to deal with you online with your non essential connection that you're going to be penalized for having you're going to get less in snap benefits. If you're paying for Internet access, this is incoherent.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:20)
huh. Yeah, what's now? Yeah, what's now? Right.

Right.

Christopher Mitchell (25:40)
And that's one of the things that frustrates me is that I'm familiar with bad policy and I'm familiar with good policy, but incoherent is like really hard to deal with.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:48)
Yeah, it's it's frustrating and you know I can leave it with this when I'm usually driving around with folks in the city And they asked me what I do and I say why is this important? I always tell them my favorite analogy is this is the equivalent of telling a community Hey, you know water is the most important thing you need to drink. You drink eight cups of water a day This is super essential. by the way, you have no access to water in your area And if you do it's like this dingy like well over here And if you want something more it might take like a year or two for us to finally come over here and do it

do it because I don't think we can make any money actually putting like a proper well over here. So that's how I feel about this is just like you you can't simultaneously tell people that this is important but they don't give them the tools to actually have access to this important thing.

Christopher Mitchell (26:31)
or actively deny them the tools, right? mean, like when it comes to like municipal broadband in some of these states where people are, the community is poorly served and then you have a state saying you can't drill a well, you know, like you have to, you have to buy it from this like European company that monopolized the water system.

Jordan A. Pittman (26:33)
Right.

Right!

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's like yeah. by the way, if you want to do this for yourself and start whoa, are you digging over here? What are you doing? But you can't do that

Christopher Mitchell (26:53)
Right. You got to get

permission to dig from the water company in Europe that like bought out the local system.

Jordan A. Pittman (26:59)
Yeah, it's just incredibly frustrating, incredibly frustrating.

Christopher Mitchell (27:02)
So Jordan, whenever I think about wireless access in the home, I think about some of the stuff that I saw, I want to say like eight years ago, seven years ago with the 5G hype. And I know that kind of predates your activity in broadband type stuff. But like, there was this moment where Verizon signed a deal with the city of Sacramento. they were basically like, I might be overstating it a little bit. My recollection was that they basically said that

Jordan A. Pittman (27:11)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:29)
Sacramento had given them ⁓ expedited access to the rights of way to put their wireless systems up and approve their permitting stuff. so Verizon was going to have basically all the addresses could get like gigabit wireless service, you know, within a few years. And then as best as I can tell, nobody ever checked back in. Every now and then I try to check in like once a year or so to get a sense of what had happened and basically nothing happened. I mean, there might be a couple of neighborhoods, but they found that the

Jordan A. Pittman (27:45)
Okay.

Shocking.

Christopher Mitchell (27:58)
that the millimeter wireless system they planned to use just didn't work well in the real world, right? It works well, perhaps, in a laboratory, ⁓ but it didn't work in the real world. And so I saw that Verizon buying Starry, ⁓ Starry, which was an ambitious company and was very well-reviewed. Its customers tended to like it according to the reviews, if I remember correctly, but it tried to expand super fast. It wanted to be one of the big boys.

And so rather than, you know, scaling up in a way that was responsible, it overstretched and collapsed. So now Verizon has bought it. don't know exactly what that includes. mean, they had some spectrum, they had some patents, I think they had a great engineer, who was working for them, if I remember correctly. and I'm just trying to figure out like, you know, is this something that like, is Verizon really gonna go back to this wireless to the home? And, I don't know. don't know when you, when you hear this sort of like, feel like

We know that getting a fiber out to the homes in our areas is economical and it's a multi-generational investment that will pay off in the long term. But these big companies, they're allergic to spending this money because Wall Street will punish them. The investors won't like them if they're too much, you know, capex out, capital expenditures out each year. And so they're trying to find ways to, you know, just get through. And I'm curious how you react to all this.

Jordan A. Pittman (28:55)
Absolutely.

Yeah, I

mean, when I hear that, it's a constant reminder for me of how these big corporations would much rather

by mergers, sort of like property in the sense of like not allowing anybody else to do it. Instead of just actually doing their job of doing the service that they've been told to do or to even proclaim that they will do. I think that's the most frustrating thing to me. like you actually would save more money in my opinion to actually just do the thing that you promised to do. Instead, you would much rather save because of name brand or whatever. It's like we are Verizon, you can trust us that we're gonna cover this. And then nobody checks in.

And does it and then ⁓ when somebody else maybe comes in is like hey actually you know I've noticed Verizon hasn't done this maybe we can do to deal due logist of doing this they're just like No, are you trying to mess up our little thing over here is that we're gonna buy you and then like then we're still not gonna do it and it's just like it's incredibly Frustrated because it's almost like they're more focused on the short-term profit in the long-term profit Which I know I don't know I'm not in those rooms with those stakeholders And it's just like yeah if I was in there be like hey just a thought we actually could make more money long-term It won't be immediate

But we could really make an impact either by the money that you're gonna receive from that or the multi-generational Basically profit is gonna come from this but it seems like it's very tunnel vision like how a lot of these big corporations think and it's just it's just incredibly frustrated because at the end of the day they're not actually doing the thing that they said they're doing and then you said it earlier Chris Nobody really checks them on that. It's just kind of like yeah, man. We trust you on that and then

It's almost like a slap on the wrist if we find out, well Verizon didn't do that, well. Like nobody gets punished, nobody gets penalized, like it's almost like they can just continue to do this. So if I was a corporation and I saw that I can continue to do this and I don't get punished, why wouldn't I keep on doing it? I'm not saying that's a good thing to do, but if I'm in their shoes and I can do this without any penalty, I'm gonna keep on doing it. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (30:52)
Yeah, no, there's, yeah. Yeah.

Incentives matter. I

agree. I do think you're right. This is a standard critique of a lot of these companies. It's eating your seed corn is the old school way of saying it, which is you're basically trying to figure out how do I benefit in the next quarter or two in order for my CEO to hit their targets and get their payout and then get out of town. And the shareholders are all left with less profit overall because it's been poorly managed.

Jordan A. Pittman (31:20)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (31:24)
I mean, this is our critique, right? Is that like, this is inevitable with the big companies and that's why we need more cooperatives and municipals in when it comes down to these, this infrastructure that is core, right? The entire economy is built on this. Like if you wanna, if you're gonna build a watch, if you're gonna build a phone and compete with Apple or if you are Apple, you know, like fine, you know, like these are, these are important things in our lives too. You know, like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna trivialize it.

But it's not the infrastructure the entire economy is built upon. And the idea that we should have these same companies playing their games, building the infrastructure that every other business depends upon is a poor way to run things. And it's why things go poorly, frankly. Why communities are disinvested in, why we have so many people that cannot afford access, we don't have good choices. That's why you're paying 80 bucks a month, right? It's not because like you chose that.

Jordan A. Pittman (32:18)
Right,

absolutely. it's just, you know, and I want to take a step back because it's just like, it starts a bigger conversation. It's like.

We need other players in and that's why we advocate for this like, you know co-ops and everything because like as a business Their goal is to make more money this year than last year quarterly So it's like they're just playing the game in their head is like, maybe it'll be really nice to serve these communities but if I as Verizon like let's say Try to be very humanitarian and actually do a little bit more on that They know AT&T is not going to do that and they're gonna get behind so it's like it's all

Christopher Mitchell (32:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jordan A. Pittman (32:54)
like and I'm not giving sympathy to them but it's almost like they're put inside their own box of their own making is like well this is the game if we do decide to not choose profits and actually choose people like we're gonna be left behind and maybe we'll make less money and then AT&T would buy us because this almost seems like the game right so just like

Christopher Mitchell (33:10)
That's exactly

it. mean, that's our critique is that at the end of the day, if you're trying to figure out how do we fix Comcast, you're not changing anything. That's not how the system works. You can't, like, and I say all the time, Comcast and Charter are two very different companies. Comcast puts a lot more money into communities doing digital equity. They put more money also into preventing competition, and they're more effective at preventing, you know, competition from cities making their own investments than the other cable companies are.

Jordan A. Pittman (33:25)
Right.

Right, of course.

Christopher Mitchell (33:38)
But they also put more money in where their mouth is to support like low-income communities and so they're different but like if Brian Roberts decided that you know what I'm gonna run this thing like Wilson, North Carolina I'm gonna make sure that like we're a utility he's gonna retire the next day and it won't be his choice, right? Like the board of directors is like I don't know what happened to you man like you used to be cool But now you're not cool and we got to get rid of you. That's what's gonna happen

Jordan A. Pittman (33:55)
Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

And

you know, ⁓ there's a phrase for it's called golden handcuffs on the sense of like you are locked by, ⁓ the success of what you've done previously in your past to point where if you try to undo those handcuffs, not only is that difficult, but like people will look around and it's like, well, why would you do something like that? Because we have this good thing going. It's like we're making money. It's like, if people aren't critiquing us enough and we're able to get away with it, why should we change? Because if we change, then we are going to be the sore thumb that get kicked out. So it's, it's

It's almost like, that's why I tell people, I don't get mad at a particular company because it is a sort of systemic thing where it's like they're all just trying to do what.

Either they're stakeholders or see they're just doing what they're told so it takes us the people to be like hey We got to hold you accountable because I know you're doing this but we are still people and like there's something that's more powerful than the money that they're making at the end of the day because It is about this is about this connection So being able to hold them accountable and be able to do our own thing and have the laws Put aside so where if we do want to dig our own hole like that analogy we did earlier and make our own well we can

Christopher Mitchell (34:46)
Mm-hmm.

I want to come back then to, we'll bring it full circle back, right? We were on the retreat last week and what you're saying, I just want come back to the thing that is my critique of what some of the people on our team, which is that like, you know, the issue I think in my mind is not profit. And you could tell me that I'm, you can tell me I'm wrong. You could tell me that now or later, like publicly or not. But the issue to be clear is also like, it's not one of profit. There's a lot of like, a lot of small.

Jordan A. Pittman (35:14)
Okay.

You

Christopher Mitchell (35:37)
locally rooted for-profit companies that make money. Some of them make a little money, some of them make more money. None of them make billions of dollars a quarter like AT&T or Comcast. That's the danger there is not profit. Because I mean, at the end of the day, I will say that we call it net income for a municipal utility.

But a municipal utility wants to have more money at the end of the year than not, right? So can put it in a rainy day fund or it can give it back to the community in something that's called in lieu of taxes, which is a payment in lieu of taxes, which is like the way that utilities invest back in local government as though they were subject to taxes like private companies, right? Like, you don't, I don't want a utility running a deficit. And so,

Profit in my mind is not the challenges excessive profits profits at the expense of people. ⁓ That's the damage right there is when you're is when you're a psychopath and so like the issue is the scale of the profit not whether or not there's profit.

Jordan A. Pittman (36:26)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Yeah, no, I actually really completely agree with that because like I can make a profit off selling my couch But if I have so much profit where I buy all the couches and then I dare for choose the price for people to pay For their couch in their house and it's an excessive price and that's a different thing, right? So like there is nothing wrong inherently with making money making profit It's when those two things you just said when it's excessive and usually when it's excessive That means you're choosing profit over to people that you're either working with or the communities that you're serving So that's like sort of the bigger conversation

need to have and I feel like for a lot of these corporations that's where we are right now where they're record saying my god we made a billion dollars in profit but then like they're still the people that they serve in these communities like you know AT&T for example like we know people aren't connected so it's just like there's just disconnect that hopefully with more discussions like this it can kind of lead to people asking more questions about so record profits huh but like what about my neighborhood

Christopher Mitchell (37:33)
I think it might be time for you go back to couch shopping. I think that's on the top of your head.

Jordan A. Pittman (37:36)
It is on the top. actually I have a white

couch like right over here. I need to sell it hate it. So it's just like Yeah, I just I'm done so I will be trying to get a profit from that just to get a better couch

Christopher Mitchell (37:42)
man, even if I had a white couch, it would be a white couch for like two days. I am a messy person.

Alright man, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jordan A. Pittman (37:53)
Thank you Chris, I appreciate it,

Christopher Mitchell (37:54)
That's Jordan Pittman, our Digital Opportunity Lead. I can remember this. Digital Opportunity Lead So thanks, Jordan.

Jordan A. Pittman (38:00)
Yeah.

Well, thanks, Chris. I appreciate it.