Mergers, Monopoly Prices, and Accountability - Episode 676 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 trying to look into the camera again. This is super awkward. ⁓ We have on the show today, we're going to be covering a bunch of news topics. We've got Doug Dawson from CCG. Welcome back, Doug.

Sean Gonsalves (00:26)
you

Douglas Dawson (00:35)
Welcome, always good to talk to you Chris and Sean. ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (00:38)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (00:38)
And then

I'm going to talk briefly in a second about an update on Connect This!, and Doug just suggested that we should call this Connect Sean! So Sean, we've got Master Sean here, ⁓ Sean Gonsalves, welcome back Sean.

Sean Gonsalves (00:47)
It has a ring to it, doesn't it?

That's right.

All right, love to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (00:54)
So we're going to be talking about, we're going to talk about mergers. We're to talk about the value of broadband to a community resulting from a study in Chattanooga. Talk about California's CPUC did a study about competition. We're going to talk about the Starlink Rider a little bit. We covered that a lot last week. So we're going to cover a couple of other things here as well with Doug and Sean. Talk a little bit about update about the BEAD non-deployment funds. And if there's time.

do AI and upload speeds, but that's going to be pushing it. I we're going to end talking about Article III judges as we always do. So we've got a lot. ⁓ I did want to say, I got another note from someone. We did pause Connect This! because of just we're trying to adjust some of the things that we're doing here. We're trying to do a better job of what we're doing and also Connect This! at times takes a

It just takes energy and I haven't had it lately with all the things going on in Minnesota. So it has paused longer than I hoped it would, but we are hoping to bring that format back with more rotating guests in the near future. I'm going to guess that we might be able to do one in February, but I have a lot of travel coming up, unfortunately. So March, would say early March is when we'll probably have our next of the revitalize Connect This! and it may have a different name, but we do want to keep that going. So.

With that, let's jump into mergers and I'm going to have Doug kick it off. ⁓ Doug, you alerted me to that apparently some of the mergers closed, the big ones of the telecom companies last week.

Douglas Dawson (02:23)
Yes, last week AT&T officially took over all the 4 million fiber passings from Lumen. And last week Frontier officially became part of Frontier. the two big piles of fiber customers have now merged into the big guys who are just adding and adding and adding to market power. The other big looming one is, which should happen in the next couple of months, be Cox merging with Charter. So that's coming and that's going to be gigantic. The interesting thing is we're not done yet.

You know, the next big merger, and I think they're waiting for a bankruptcy, would be optimum. The problem right now is their stock value is worth less than their debt, so nobody wants to buy them. So they're waiting, I think, for a bankruptcy, in which case they'll be gobbled up by somebody. that's another... Yeah, they got five or six million fiber customers, cable and fiber customers.

Christopher Mitchell (03:05)
And they're like fifth or sixth largest cable.

Douglas Dawson (03:13)
So that's certainly a big target. And then I read a of stuff. I get a lot of newsletters and stuff from investment bankers on Wall Street. There's a lot of whispering about Charter and Comcast merging. They make a lot more sense together than they do it separate anymore. that's a really up.

Christopher Mitchell (03:29)
from the perspective of Wall Street, you

mean?

Douglas Dawson (03:31)
of lost

Sean Gonsalves (03:32)
Yeah,

Douglas Dawson (03:32)
yes i

Sean Gonsalves (03:33)
right.

Douglas Dawson (03:33)
i completely from the perspective of wall street and my gosh they would have at that point they would by time you get Cox and they would have eighty million customers broadband customers i mean it that

Christopher Mitchell (03:42)
Right, out of like 120 US households,

Douglas Dawson (03:44)
Yeah, yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (03:44)
something like that.

Douglas Dawson (03:45)
yeah, that's insane. but that but there's a there's a lot of chatter about that. And usually those Wall Street guys chat about these things a year before something happens. That means if they're chatting about it, somebody at a high level is having discussions about it. So I mean, it's a long way away from an announcement, but that's that would be an amazing deal. It would just blow everybody away. So

Sean Gonsalves (03:57)
So shut-

Should Charter and Comcast merge? mean, my sense is, I mean, from a consumer perspective, it's horrible, but in terms of, I feel like, of kind of like the big telecom companies, Comcast generally seems like it's one of the better ones compared to some of the other ones. And so I wonder if Charter, and Charter isn't. And so I wonder if they merge. Does Comcast get worse or does Charter get better or is it like...

Like, what happens?

Douglas Dawson (04:29)
It's interesting because both companies actually operate on a regional basis. They're not one big company. They have these regional offices and those two companies don't overlap at all. I mean, they do not overlap. So I think they would just keep their regional vice presidents going with the new combined name and you're still going to have that dichotomy. mean, they really...

Sean Gonsalves (04:34)
Yeah

Douglas Dawson (04:47)
Like today in Charter, they market very different in North Carolina than they market in California. They're not the same company. So it's very interesting how those companies run. They can't do anything on a consolidated basis. They're too darn big already at 30 million customers. it's hard to say. Now eventually, one of the two would become the powerhouse of pulling the rules.

Christopher Mitchell (05:03)
So.

Sean Gonsalves (05:03)
What's the?

Douglas Dawson (05:09)
Comcast has gotten their customer service together more than Charter has so there's I they have actually done a much better job of Not being in the complete basement anymore Yeah, there yeah, they're they're now like halfway up the first four steps out of the basement I think

Sean Gonsalves (05:19)
Well, if I have more...

Christopher Mitchell (05:19)
Right, they're still at the higher level

of the basement now.

Sean Gonsalves (05:26)
If I happen to drop off in the middle of this, it's because Comcast is supposed to be doing some upgrade work in my neighborhood and they were supposed to do.

Douglas Dawson (05:33)
Well,

now that they know that you're talking about them on air, you're completely dead. They're spying on you 24-7, know.

Sean Gonsalves (05:36)
I know right?

Christopher Mitchell (05:39)
Last,

last question about the mergers. So I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota on Quantum Fiber, which was Lumen or CenturyLink or I'm an AT&T customer. Okay. So what is your expectation of when I'll see that?

Douglas Dawson (05:47)
That was Luma. You're now an AT&T customer. ⁓ Last

Thursday, I think. Well, eventually, AT&T charges more. So the prices are going to go up. It may not be a flash cut. It probably won't be. But AT&T.

started out as the cheapest one. AT&T three years ago was $55 for a gigabit. Three years in a now, they've raised it $5. so they're probably going to raise it again by, so they seem to be on the $5 a year plan. So right now they're 70. What are you paying? Okay. that might be, but they're, but CenturyLink wasn't raising prices. It's very likely that, that, that AT&T is going to go to 75, 80, 85.

Christopher Mitchell (06:16)
I want to say 75 actually.

You ⁓

might have a price for life, Doug, and obviously we know that those are always upheld, right?

Douglas Dawson (06:30)
yeah,

especially after a merger. AT&T is definitely going to honor your CenturyLink deal for life.

Christopher Mitchell (06:39)
All right.

So I want to ask, we're going to talk about a study that came out from Bento Lobo. This is a more recent one. He had done one that came out, I don't know, is it five or six years ago now? It was on the 10 year anniversary.

Sean Gonsalves (06:48)
Yeah, I think was five years ago,

Douglas Dawson (06:49)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (06:50)
then 10 years, and then 15 years is the most recent.

Christopher Mitchell (06:52)
So it's 15 years

since they launched effectively. mean, they launched in like 2009, but they kind of substantially completed the build out in 2011, I think. So 15 years from then, I thought it was interesting in that I just saw a couple people on LinkedIn chatting about it. And there was someone who was raising questions about the value to the smart grid. And I was like, well, for 15 years, these people have had the smartest grid in the country. I think they have a sense of the value. Like they've been tracking it closely.

⁓ you know, this is not just like an academic ivory tower thing. This is, you know, I'm not going to say that every last calculation is not grounded in empirical fact, but 15 years is a long time to study something. Doug, let me start off with you and then go and I'll go to Sean.

Douglas Dawson (07:35)
Let's talk about the smart grid first. This whole study, this study measured the benefits to the whole community, not just the benefits to the utility. And so that, you know, because a large percentage of their benefit went to people who live there. And that's where the smart grid savings really comes in. When the electricity goes out, everybody stops. People stop working at home, all the businesses stop working. I mean, the cost of having even a one hour electric outage is big deal. I mean, it really does cost a whole

Christopher Mitchell (08:02)
Yeah, you can't just start a

factory back up from scratch if it happens.

Douglas Dawson (08:04)
No,

no. And so it's a really big deal. And so they're really talking about those savings and what smart grid does, because I've actually seen smart grid, it's now in my neighborhood. I mean, instead, when we used to get a transformer problem, we were out for three hours, I've literally seen it reset in a minute and a half. It's amazing to watch, you can literally hear them resetting down the street. And so that it's a really amazing technology. And that means

that I'm completely dependent on. I wouldn't be on this car right now if electricity was out. I don't have a backup generator. So I simply shut down. And so does everybody around here shut down. So there's also a big savings for the utility. They're not rolling all these crews to fix stuff all the time. There's a giant savings. Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (08:44)
Right. And it's not just the people fixing it. I talked with them after they had a string of tornadoes that came through in the evening.

One of the things they have to do is they have to summon all these people from home who are having dinner with their families to come in to answer the phones for like the hundreds of people that are calling to say their power is out. And so like, you got to pay them overtime or, you you got to deal with those dislocations. So there's a lot of implications if you can make the grid just stay alive by itself.

Douglas Dawson (08:58)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah,

and that's just one of the things they measured. One of the biggest savings was their prices are good. I mean, they charge $58 for 300 megabits and $67, I think, but that's been their, they haven't raised their price since 2019. know, so they weren't that cheap when they first said it, but they're cheap now in the market.

Christopher Mitchell (09:27)
Yeah, they

set the $70 or like $68, you know, for the gigabit and they've just held it steady. And this is actually, I I remember it's been a few years, but when I looked at the, there was like eight Tennessee fiber optic communities at one point, we looked at their pricing and over the first 10 years of being in service, half of the utilities had never raised their price and all of them had raised it much less than their competitors.

Douglas Dawson (09:30)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Now the one thing the Lobo study didn't mention is they got a lot of local programs to get low income people on the network. There's a lot of people who don't pay the $68 price. they really have gone out of their way. This study said that they had a 70 % market penetration in 2024, probably a little bit higher now. That's amazing. I mean, they've completely cleaned Comcast out of that market. That was Comcast's old market penetration.

Christopher Mitchell (10:12)
Right now that market penetration, do think properly calculated. You can argue about these things, but it does not include buildings, the apartment buildings that they are not allowed into. So Comcast is still going to be doing all right in some segments of the city. The vast majority of addresses in Chattanooga can get it and in the surrounding areas where they have their footprint. So it's like 170,000 households or so, you know, so it is, it's very substantial. Sean, what are any takeaways you had?

Douglas Dawson (10:17)
Yes.

Yes, yes.

Yes. Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (10:38)
Well, I mean, well, first of all, we kind of buried the lead and didn't mention what the value was. So 5.3 billion in ⁓ net community benefit for Hamilton County since 2011, which is six times more than the value of their original $396 million investment. That's a big deal. The other thing that I took away from the study that I thought was interesting is it did explicitly call out municipal broadband critics by pointing out that

Christopher Mitchell (10:42)
What is the value,

Douglas Dawson (10:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (10:47)
That's a lot.

Sean Gonsalves (11:05)
All the things that municipal broadband critics say about municipal broadband are not true, at least in relation to EPB fiber, in terms of what's led to lower broadband prices, it's pushed competitors to provide better service offerings in the area. So, I mean, the value to me is tremendous and I was just struck by the fact that they did specifically ⁓ call that out in that study.

Douglas Dawson (11:28)
Yeah, they claim they claim 10,000 new jobs. Now that's the kind that gets a little fuzzy. It's really hard to say that network created those jobs, but they certainly, especially in the early years, in their first 10 years, when they were one of the only gigabit cities, they did attract a lot of businesses just because of that. Because I remember I remember having those conversations with I interviewed some of those businesses. So nowadays, that's probably not so true anymore. But but it's certainly Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (11:29)
Doug, I'll...

Sean Gonsalves (11:52)
Well,

one thing that it has attracted is this quantum computing center or whatever initiative that they've got there. They expect that to continue to add ROI onto that investment.

Douglas Dawson (11:57)
Yes, yes.

Yeah. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (12:04)
Right. I think one

of the things that they're probably including in that is that facilities that are operated by companies that have a distributed footprint around the United States will often choose to expand there because the electricity is more reliable and more affordable than it is elsewhere because they've been able to forego electricity price increases.

because of their efficiencies and the smart grid benefits, think. So there's like, how do you then, you know, is every single job added on after that a part of that? You know, it's hard to say. And that's where Bento Lobo has to figure out how to justify it. But it's not unreasonable to me from what I've seen.

Douglas Dawson (12:29)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well,

and you just said something that I meant to mention because it's really not in his study. They are actually contributing to the utility, which means they're not having to raise electric rates as much even today. And after their bonds are paid off, they're going to be contributing a lot to the electric company. that's that he's, I they already have relatively cheap.

electricity because they're part of the big chain down at TVA but they're even cheaper than the other TVA companies because they're getting profits from fiber today. I mean, they're a profitable business.

Christopher Mitchell (13:03)
TVA.

Right, specifically this is something that, and my wife and I fight about this, whether it's pilot or ilot which is in lieu of taxes or payments in lieu of taxes, depending on whether you include the P. So local utilities often make voluntary payments to the city because they are not paying the same taxes. Those amounts are often greater than what the private companies would pay for being similarly situated is my understanding. And that money comes from

Douglas Dawson (13:19)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (13:40)
people that subscribe to the cable, telephone, and mostly the Internet service, their rates include some of their money that goes to the city in these payments. And so that then reduces pressure on the tax base for the city from property taxes and sales tax and things like

Douglas Dawson (13:56)
You remember the story from Lafayette, Louisiana. I mean, the utility there was paying huge I-Lot taxes and Cox wasn't paying any. Which very much embarrassed them when that came out. It's like they kept complaining, complaining, It's like you guys are not paying any taxes right now.

Christopher Mitchell (14:11)
Yeah. So for those of you who aren't watching on the video, which is available on YouTube and, you know, is hopefully going to be growing in popularity. Sean just disappeared, which we knew was a possibility because, ⁓

Douglas Dawson (14:21)
We knew Comcast

hated him. If I was Comcast, I would hate him. mean, that's just the way it goes. Yes. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (14:25)
Comcast is working in his neighborhood today. He was warned that he may have periods

of instability. So we hope that he'll be able to join us back again. Anything else? I do want to say one other thing, Doug, which is that it drives me a little bit crazy, we had a, I saw a critic in ⁓ one of these. It's Richard who, Bennett, who has long been a critic of municipal broadband. He's an engineer type. ⁓

Douglas Dawson (14:32)
Yes.

I hope so.

Christopher Mitchell (14:50)
And, ⁓ and he made this claim, which I don't know that I'm still manning it, but I think the essence of his claim was that there was no benefit to Chattanooga of having a gigabit prior to Comcast also having a gigabit because nobody could use it. And until the big companies started offering a gigabit, it was not valuable because the fact that the big companies didn't offer it was evidence that it wasn't needed, which is circular logic that drives me a little bit crazy. I don't know.

Douglas Dawson (15:13)
But

we have an answer to that. During the pandemic, they had two and a half times higher percentage of people who were able to work at home than the national average. Because they had the fast upload speeds. The fact is there was a giant benefit from that because they were way better than anybody else at that time. So no other city had that many people on symmetrical gigabit, not gigabit, symmetrical gigabit. So they had something like

I forget the stat in there, but it's like 18 % and the national average was 9%. I mean, that's a big deal and a big proof that there was a benefit from that network.

Christopher Mitchell (15:47)
Right. And that's, it's another thing there to remember that when the cable companies talk about the gigabit, it's only in the one direction, the down direction. Yeah. And that's shared upstream, even as it gets bigger is still, not as robust. can't, it's built on an expectation that most people simply aren't using it for very much. ⁓ one other study, California, this California Public Utility Commission did an in-depth study on competition. And, I did not read it, but it was summarized to me by my team.

Douglas Dawson (15:54)
It's only the one direction, yes.

Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (16:15)
And I've forgotten most of it. So, Doug, I'm going to rely on you once again.

Douglas Dawson (16:18)
Now this is the second study they did also now about it's been about four years they did a similar study, not exactly the same markets, but and mostly that one was LA, but that study was based on sampling. They called people up and asked them about stuff. And so they had interns at the commission and they did that. So it wasn't very scientific of a study, but it showed almost the same results as this one. So that this time they really dug into it. They took the FCC maps and, and all the claims made by the carriers.

and they actually were able to do a lot of sampling to found out what prices people are paying. And what they showed was in places where there's no competition, prices are something anywhere from 15 to $60 more expensive in places where it's just the cable company. And then as soon as there's a second competitor, prices get better. And the reason it varies is there's different ISPs. There's four markets they studied, four of the biggest cities.

And each of them has a different mix of fiber providers. And none of them have 100 % fiber coverage. So all of them have parts of those cities that are still just covered by cable. The one thing that the study kind of, their claims are a little exaggerated. One small point, because two of those cities have Sonic, who you well know, who has the cheapest broadband in the United States. And so the cities they're in, the savings look even bigger just because Sonic, I mean, Sonic has, I think it's now.

35 or $40 for a gigabit, it's still really low, right? It used to be 30, I think they finally raised it, but it's way below everybody else. Yeah, so it's 40, but you in the other markets, you know, it's much higher than that, even for the other fiber providers. But what they've shown is just what you would expect, the cable companies drop their prices down to compete, and they literally do it neighborhood by neighborhood. And then what this study showed, which is the same thing the study four years ago showed,

Christopher Mitchell (17:45)
I remember it always being 40, but I could be wrong.

Douglas Dawson (18:07)
They do it house by house. mean, when you call up to negotiate, ready, you know, I just got this offer from the fiber company, they negotiate with you one on one. They don't have a standard, here's my best price. They will keep offering you something till you take it. And so you could very well, and it happens all the time. It always has, you could still be, you could be paying $20 more or less than what your neighbor pays for exactly the same broadband. And so they uncovered a lot of that in this case.

which shows you how sophisticated the fiber companies have gotten. mean, they are literally, know, this is getting to be airline price pricing. They're pricing by the seat, right? And so they, you know, they do their best to get the most out of it. The worst thing about that is, this is not what people want. The worst thing about it is, you know who pays the most? People who've been on their carrier for years, they don't get the offers. You know, you pay the standard price. And so,

Christopher Mitchell (18:46)
I think this is not what people want.

Douglas Dawson (18:59)
I had Charter for many years from paying the standard price. I just got a break because we upgraded the gigabit. My gigabit is cheaper than it was before, from what I had for 500. Yeah, it's like, well, I'll take the lower price. You bet. But how come I didn't have the lower price before? The folks who don't change plans are the guys who still are paying those list prices. And most people just don't like the experience of calling in and negotiating. They just don't.

Christopher Mitchell (19:08)
That happened to me years ago, with Comcast as well, yeah.

Douglas Dawson (19:24)
But this study, it's worth reading for everybody because it goes through market by market. But it shows what we've all known. But it has real backup data behind it. I'm hoping that we're going I actually had emails with the commission. I'm hoping that we can maybe get a hold of the data set. That would be really useful to see. I don't know if they'll release that or not. But this is no longer sampling. This is deep, deep dive. yeah. Hey.

Christopher Mitchell (19:25)
I hate it.

I- one of the things that is stuck in my head-

One of the things that stuck in my head,

welcome back Sean. We're talking about the California study. We're getting close to the end of that segment. ⁓ But a thing that stuck in my head is I thought that they, because of the challenge of measuring around promotional pricing, they included that as regular pricing rather than, and so in some ways, although you mentioned Sonic sort of pulls the data set in one way, I think the real prices people pay may actually be in the other direction. it may even itself out.

Sean Gonsalves (19:49)
Alright.

that.

Christopher Mitchell (20:12)
to some extent because of the biases in the data,

Douglas Dawson (20:14)
Yeah, there's just biases in both directions. But when you start pricing by the house, the analogy I drew, Sean, is the ISP pricing in those markets is starting to look like airline seat pricing. It's by the customer. It's by the seat. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (20:28)
And this is just, mean, my point is just

like, this is not what people want. People want this to be more like a utility in that sense of like, they want to know what they're going to pay now. They want to what they're going to pay next month. You know, like they just want to be predictable and they want it to work.

Douglas Dawson (20:32)
No.

Yes.

Right.

Sean Gonsalves (20:39)
And this is the study that says that people are getting between like 100 over 20 are paying around 116 bucks a month.

Douglas Dawson (20:47)
Well, yeah, no, the people people are paying more a lot more money for the slow speeds because they're the parts of the market where they can't buy gigabit there. Yeah, they're paying way more than and that's what the old study show to we should have mentioned that. Yeah, the slower the speeds you can buy the more you pay. Because there are non competitive areas. So if you're in non competitive areas, you just get socked. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (20:48)
I don't remember that.

Or

as Chairman of the FCC Carr says, not a problem. This is the market working.

Douglas Dawson (21:09)
No problem.

It is the market working like a vacuum cleaner to suck out all the money out of your house. ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (21:15)
I

mean that that CPUC study if we're talking about the same one It did also mention that low-income households spend more than 15 % of their discretionary income on broadband service. I mean, that's that's

Douglas Dawson (21:23)
Yes. Yes. It

also said low-income houses are paying more than high-income houses. Yeah, by the way, that was a finding.

Christopher Mitchell (21:30)
Yeah, that's wild. mean, let's just be clear,

and I won't assume that everyone knows the history. I was just reminded of this, this, this morning from a friend. Cause I made a reference to Bell Labs in the last one. And, and a lot of people aren't familiar with, with Bell Labs, which we'll cover in a future show, perhaps with you, Doug. And, but like we had to regulate a monopoly in which we decided what prices people would pay. And we had services like Lifeline developed by, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

to make sure people could afford the stuff. And at no point was any household paying 15 % of their income for the telephone. I can't make sure that people could afford it. Telecommunications is important and we've lost that total.

Douglas Dawson (21:59)
No, no.

Well, that was actually

not true. There are some people paying some unbelievable long distance bills in those days. So, yes.

Christopher Mitchell (22:11)
Right, well, so if you were gonna make

a lot of long distance calls.

Sean Gonsalves (22:14)
I've gotten a lot of trouble

making long distance phone calls growing up, I think.

Christopher Mitchell (22:17)
Right, but like

Douglas Dawson (22:17)
Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (22:18)
when

I was born in the late 70s and in the early 80s, we knew that we weren't making long distance calls. Now if you lived in an area where you happened to be on the edge of an exchange, that sucked because yeah, then you might be making a long distance call to your school.

Douglas Dawson (22:18)
yeah.

Right.

That's not, just calling the doctor's

office is a long distance call and it just adds up in a real hurry. So, yep.

Christopher Mitchell (22:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. The Starlink Rider. So we covered this some last week. Starlink, the largest winner of awards in BEAD has decided that it doesn't want to abide by the terms of the program. And so it basically seems to have made a take it or leave it offer to the states. we covered that a bit. But Doug, what's biggest, most important part of that in your mind?

Douglas Dawson (23:00)
Well, that's exactly it. was a threat. They very much said, here's my new terms and conditions. I'm sending you the contract I want to sign. Give up all these things. And if you don't do that, I'm probably not interested in your BEAD money.

Christopher Mitchell (23:12)
And so ordinarily, this is where I

talk about how bad NTIA is. NTIA was like, this is a terrible state. You should really, like, we gotta figure this out. And so NTIA, I think, had the perfect response to this. I was very glad to see that.

Douglas Dawson (23:16)
Yes.

Yeah, but in the end, if they truly decide to pull out, I NTI makes all the states sign it. That's my bet. So we'll see. But they wanted 100 % guaranteed payment even for folks who didn't sign up. They wanted 50 % up front. And then they didn't want to have any speed tests because they don't want to prove that they're actually serving 100 by 20 because a lot of cases they won't. They didn't want to have any labor requirements because theoretically, everybody at SpaceX who works on the satellites would have to be

Christopher Mitchell (23:30)
Yeah, we'll see.

Douglas Dawson (23:52)
paid a prevailing market wage. They don't pay that. That's why they moved to Texas, so they wouldn't have to do that, right? Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (23:57)
mean, I

will say I think prevailing wage drives me crazy with the federal government because I think we should make sure federal dollars are not, tax dollars should never put downward pressure on wages in industries. ⁓ But the federal government has no idea how to measure prevailing wage and it's just a giant mess. And so it drives me crazy that we haven't properly executed it.

Douglas Dawson (24:04)
Yes.

Right.

Right. they also, last

Sean Gonsalves (24:16)
Whoa.

Douglas Dawson (24:18)
thing, they don't want to do any financial reporting. They don't want to tell the federal government how they spent that money.

Christopher Mitchell (24:22)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (24:23)
Well,

you know what? It's all good because Senator Jacky Rosen has, you know, asked Ted Cruz to look into this about whether this threatens the integrity of the BEAD program. So everything's fine.

Douglas Dawson (24:34)
Yes, because he has

solved most of our telecom problems in the past.

Sean Gonsalves (24:37)
The thing that

just blows my mind is so Starlink is what? Something like 636 million, right? They're supposed to be getting to sort of like 460,000 rural locations. I still can't get over the fact that BEAD was supposed to be for building new infrastructure, not to subsidize already existing service.

Christopher Mitchell (24:57)
Well, they are going to be putting up new satellites. mean, I think it's a reach. They would answer that, Sean.

Sean Gonsalves (25:03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Douglas Dawson (25:04)
They

were putting the satellites up anyway. That's the issue. mean, they have 2 million US customers, but 6 million worldwide customers. mean, these BEAD customers are not changing their business plan at all. So that's just crazy. It's just the arrogance of them to go, we're not going to do it. Now.

Christopher Mitchell (25:06)
Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. They have the money.

Douglas Dawson (25:21)
They actually didn't say do this for us. They also happened to Amazon in there. They said LEO should be excused from all these rules. Amazon was writing on the coattails. I don't know if they knew that they had made a threat against the government, but they included them in the threat.

Christopher Mitchell (25:36)
So

two follow-up pieces on this. One is, wouldn't it be great for the states to just say, no, go away, because let's be clear about this, right? Like what happens at that point? Then people possibly wouldn't get a free satellite dish that they would get as part of the BEAD program possibly, which Starlink already seems to be giving out to people in certain areas at no charge anyway. They're constantly changing this. So that may or may not even be a benefit.

Douglas Dawson (25:43)
Some of them will, some of them will, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (26:00)
And then this idea of the other benefit to if the state gives money to Starlink, the future customers that happen to live at the broadband serviceable locations in theory would have reserved capacity. But since we're not allowed to measure it, why would that even be good? So the best thing states could do is say, hey, our citizens will in no way benefit from us giving you money. So we're just gonna let you deal with them in the marketplace rather than giving you $1,000 per head.

to do this. That's what should happen, right?

Douglas Dawson (26:30)
And it won't have any problem with customers. They can buy Starlink today. They don't have to wait for these contracts to be signed. It's no change. The other interesting piece of news, maybe that was your second point, is Amazon One just asked for a two-year extension before they're ready.

Christopher Mitchell (26:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (26:42)
before they

Christopher Mitchell (26:43)
That's the other piece, Yes, Sean, you're

the one that put this bug in my head. What was your reaction to that?

Sean Gonsalves (26:49)
I mean, it's nuts to me that they're getting money for something that doesn't even exist. mean, but I guess in comparison to Starlink, mean, you know, I was just complaining about Starlink getting, you know, money, new infrastructure money for something that already exists. At least Project Kuiper can say, it will help us like, you know, build this new infrastructure, you know, in the night sky, I guess. I don't know.

Douglas Dawson (26:54)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (27:13)
Well, so I think you're the one that mentioned to me the absurdity of everyone argues that in terms of why we should fund these projects and wireless more generally is because it is quicker to market because we can get these people's faster. now Amazon's LEO is like, we did a two year break. Okay.

Sean Gonsalves (27:26)
Right.

Douglas Dawson (27:31)
They're

talking the summer of 28 before they can even sign up their first customer. They're not ready to sign up everybody then. That's only half of their constellation by the summer of 28.

Sean Gonsalves (27:36)
What's up?

What's the shot clock on BEAD to spend the funds?

Douglas Dawson (27:44)
four

years. So that's they're now going to be two or two over two years into it before they even have a product. And that and it's not an adequate product in the beginning. It took Starlink a year and a half. So it's going to be four years before they're fully ready to serve everybody. yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:57)
I have

one other thing I wanted to ask you about Doug while we're talking about being in space, which is that Spaceballs 2 is coming out at some point. So the world is getting better. No, actually it is AI in space, data centers in space. Is this just the dumbest idea ever?

Sean Gonsalves (28:06)
Really?

Douglas Dawson (28:14)
I'm on defense about whether this is real or this is something to get their stock price up because, you know, Elon always puts out these crazy ideas to show that he's a visionary, but it is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I can think of 10 reasons why it's a bad idea and I can't think of one reason why it's a good one.

Christopher Mitchell (28:27)
Because the thing that I keep

seeing in the comments section, people are like, well, it's great. You have unlimited cooling in space. And you're like, no, it's the opposite. It's a vacuum. It is not good for cooling. It's actually expensive to cool.

Douglas Dawson (28:40)
No.

Yes. On top of that, he's like, but we're going to have free solar power. Like, OK, built solar power next to your places on Earth. Like, you know, why don't we just solar power the data centers? It's like, that's not a benefit. What we're going to do is shoot a million. They want to launch a million satellites. And can you imagine all the rare metals that we're going to put up there that will eventually come crashing back down to the atmosphere? Current satellites are mostly made out of aluminum. These are going to have

These are going to have heavy-duty AI computing cards in them that have all those nasty selenium and nickel and just all these crazy... We don't really want to pollute the upper atmosphere with those things when they burn up.

Sean Gonsalves (29:16)
The rate we're going, I mean, you know, he talks about, you know, going to Mars at the rate we're going, we'll never be able to leave the planet.

Douglas Dawson (29:23)
We won't be able to get through the satellites with a rocket. No kidding. A million satellites for a day. On top of that, here's the killer that no one talked about. He wants to now use the regular Starlink constellation that's there today as basically the middle mile to connect the big data centers back to Earth. That's going to eat up all their capacity. So they're not going to be any good for broadband. They're going to just be processing AI. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (29:41)
No. It's almost like, it's almost

like his biggest profit center is launching stuff into space.

Douglas Dawson (29:48)
is. That is his biggest

profit center. Yes, that's very lucrative.

Christopher Mitchell (29:53)
All right,

so we're gonna move on. We're coming back while we wait for Mel Brooks's triumphant return to the big screen. BEAD non-deployment funds. Sounds like there's, we're gonna learn more soon, but it also sounds like when I talk to people, which I do on occasion, it sounds like there's some hope that some of this will be used for relevant things in the States and that it's not all just gonna be clawed back and given to Argentinean beef producers or whatever.

Douglas Dawson (30:14)
It's getting more and more likely that there's going to be some. So the answer is yes, it's getting more increasingly likely. Congress may actually put their foot down on this one. There's a there's a exactly duplicate bill in the House and the Senate that says give it all out. It looks like NTIA is going to put some limitations. They're going to say here's the three things you can use it for instead of the eight things that the law said you could use it for. But they're talking about using it for poll attachments. They're talking about using it for permitting. Those are good things.

One of the biggest problems with permitting is these little communities. A county might have one guy who's got to process all the permits. He can't do it if they get a whole bunch of permit requests. So they could go out and hire three.

Christopher Mitchell (30:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right, and they're not gonna hire

someone, they're not gonna hire a full-time position to leg for all this, so it is a legitimate challenge.

Douglas Dawson (30:52)
No.

But they could go out and hire three part-time people to come in and help if it's paid for by the state out of the non-deployment funds. And that would actually solve the biggest, that's the biggest holdup in the  process. There's not enough people in rural areas to actually process them. So those were things that states could do anyhow. But the problem is the states get a huge different amounts of money. Some states aren't even getting very much non-deployment. Other states are getting a billion dollars of it.

It's really absurd. know, Westford,

Sean Gonsalves (31:24)
Maybe Texas, I think

Texas says they don't even want it, right? Like they're like...

Douglas Dawson (31:27)
Right,

right. The states originally put together our plan, used to be about, we estimated it was going to be around four or five million. States all filed plans on how they would spend the four or five million. Now it's 21 billion and nobody has said what they're going to do with it because it's like, I don't know what the, North Carolina it's 1.2 billion. They haven't really put out a plan of how they would use 1.2 billion.

Christopher Mitchell (31:48)
Well, I hope it'll

benefit some of those rural Western counties that got totally screwed by the BEAD process and aren't getting anything, you know?

Douglas Dawson (31:54)
Well,

they could pay for the satellite dishes for folks.

Sean Gonsalves (31:59)
You know,

Christopher Mitchell (31:59)
That aren't gonna

work. Go ahead.

Sean Gonsalves (32:00)
I, I feel like it still has to be noted that we're at a place where the central question around this is will NTIA comply with the actual law? I mean, it's nuts. mean, the G, you know, the government accountability office just put out that audit, what was it, last month or something like that, that said that the Trump administration has violated the law and with all these BEAD changes that they needed to go to Congress to make any changes, which they didn't. So it just blows my mind.

Douglas Dawson (32:08)
Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (32:26)
As it relates to the non-deployment funds, I guess it's good news that Arielle Roth said that she was operating under the assumption that the states will get their, you know, non-deployment funds, so.

Douglas Dawson (32:35)
We'll get some of their non-deployment funds. You never made a full commitment. Now remember, there's also some other little nasties out there. If they don't like your state AI laws, they may give you none. And that's a way to selectively get rid of funding for the states they don't like. Because guess what? States like New York and California have some pretty severe AI laws already. Turns out that a couple really

Christopher Mitchell (32:49)
Which, yeah.

Douglas Dawson (32:55)
blue state or red states have very severe. Utah has some very killer AI laws. Are they not going to give them the money? So it's going to be very interesting to see how they apply that kind of thing. I suspect not the way we like. It's probably going to be very select.

Christopher Mitchell (33:06)
Right. And let's be clear,

like, there's like, it's not clear what the mechanism is for the broadband development office within a state to push the legislature to change the laws. Like, okay, good luck.

Douglas Dawson (33:10)
Nah.

Do you realize that these state broadband offices, except for the handful of them where those offices are actually part of the governor's office, most of them they're separate units. They have absolutely zero political power. I mean, they have less than zero political power. People like you, you're telling me I have to do what? In a bureaucracy? You're telling the state roads department they got to process permits faster? That phone call is going to last three and a half minutes before they hang up.

Sean Gonsalves (33:39)
Doug, I think what you wrote in your blog is the perfect thing. It's as clear as mud about whether states will see non-deployment funds. Exactly right.

Douglas Dawson (33:44)
Yeah, they're having a

listening session soon. I don't know if it's this week, next week. I don't even know what that means. But that just means the state broadband offices, that just means they get to complain to NTIA about how they'd like to use the money. That doesn't mean anything. And I think they already know how they want to use the money. But there's still, Arielle still mentioned, this one kills me. It's my biggest pet peeve of this industry. You know, once she talked about, you know,

Sean Gonsalves (33:50)
think it's coming up this week, or next week, November 12th, I think.

Christopher Mitchell (33:53)
The week that this show is released.

Douglas Dawson (34:11)
going out and making sure that anytime we build a road, that we put conduit underground. That's a 100-year fix. In rural areas, roads get repaved every 50 to 100 years. It's like, well, yeah, let's just wait till those are all done so there's conduit there.

Christopher Mitchell (34:24)
Yeah, I mean,

she's right. She's right that that's a practice that should be done. However, it is not the solution that ⁓ will get us where we need to go.

Douglas Dawson (34:28)
Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (34:29)
it was.

Douglas Dawson (34:33)
it's not the solution it's not the solution

for a half a percent of the BEAD projects yes it's crazy so

Christopher Mitchell (34:38)
Right, right. But if you

I mean, if you do truly believe that this needs to be a competitive market, then we desperately need lots more conduit and lots more fiber that is available on a non discriminatory basis for different business plans to be able to take advantage of that is something that we need.

Douglas Dawson (34:47)
Yes.

And here's the reason we know it, because the piece of news that wasn't in your list is Charter has stopped selling wholesale transport in rural areas. WISPA actually filed a complaint with the FCC because they were the only one who could provide some of the backhaul to the towers and they decided not to be in that business. Does that mean, I think that's probably just too much hassle for them, but it's also, there's a nasty chance that they're trying to kill their competitors because they're in rural areas now too. in either case.

Christopher Mitchell (35:21)
Right.

Douglas Dawson (35:23)
In rural areas, there's very few options to get a hold of fiber from other people. It's very, very limited. So yeah, we really could use that. I agree, in the long run, it's good.

Christopher Mitchell (35:31)
⁓ so let's move on to, ⁓ AI and upload speeds. I, you know, I, I will have to say that like, before I read a post that you wrote about this Doug, and I was contemplating what to talk about. I was trying to figure out like, does AI really need a lot more capacity? Like why? Because like if I'm sending in a text question and then it's doing a bunch of processing and sending me a text answer back, then there's not a lot of, of, of stuff there, but you provide a use case that you think will be growing.

that does suggest we need the capacity, not for like, we don't need like super high speed capacity in that I'm not going to be generating terabytes of information to upload. However, if I generate, know, like, I don't know, like a half a gigabyte to upload, I want it to go immediately and get back. And so we need like that instantaneous, low latency, high speed transfer, even if it's not saturated all the time, which is interesting, I thought. So anyway, why, why, what's the use case that you came up with Doug?

Douglas Dawson (35:59)
Yeah.

With the use case is AI is everyone's talking and there's actually people working on developing these products. So these are not pie in the sky. People are designing them right now. You'd be able to walk around with your smartphone or put a little camera on your lapel or something as you walk around in a strange city. And it's going to tell you, you know, that's a, that's a Mexican restaurant that place sells dresses, you know, turn left here.

It's going to and what it's going to do is going to upload video constantly and remembering that uploaded video is not three megabits a second like we have on this call. It's raw video. I mean, you're into that business. It's raw. It's way bigger bandwidth because it's not been compressed properly. Yeah. Well, yeah, you're

Christopher Mitchell (36:58)
I wanna see how the batteries work on this thing, but yeah. But even if, it's

video or whether it's an instantaneous image, that's, you mentioned a menu where a person might scan a menu.

Douglas Dawson (37:03)
Well.

Yeah, scan a menu and it just says, you know, you're these three foods you're allergic to with your with your calorie count because because I know what you're what you're trying to eat. Don't eat these. These are the wrong things for you. This has cream in it. Stay away from cream, whatever you personally are looking for in a menu. So there's just a lot of uses. The other one that's always been said is you, you know, you go to one of these conferences and it tells you who everybody is as you run into their face. And there's a lot of uses for it. So ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (37:33)
Well, I'll

say like for the menu, I would love it to be like, Chris, remember you don't like the shrimp po' boy here. know, like it looks good, but like, yeah, yeah.

Douglas Dawson (37:39)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, the last time you got it, you hated it, remember? Yes. Exactly.

Sean Gonsalves (37:40)
You don't like

Douglas Dawson (37:46)
Exactly. Exactly. So if that becomes a very common use for it, then we need a lot of upload. And so the chances are it's the only real common sense use for it. Because otherwise, the stuff you described is Google. It's like, if I'm just using AI for search, that doesn't take any bandwidth. So yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (38:04)
Sean, any thoughts on the AI world we're heading into here?

Sean Gonsalves (38:08)
No, I'm just still thinking about how you said you didn't like a shrimp po-boy. Like, I've never met a po-boy that I-

Douglas Dawson (38:12)
Yeah,

is there any version of a shrimp po-boy that you wouldn't like? I can't think of one.

Christopher Mitchell (38:18)
I do, I did have one that I was, mean, was,

I, so I, I was introduced to the shrimp Po Boy at the old time grocery store in Lafayette, Louisiana, which is like, it's a high bar. So I don't know, maybe I've become a little bit of a snob when it comes to them.

Douglas Dawson (38:27)
Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (38:28)
That's a point. Yeah, yeah, probably.

Douglas Dawson (38:31)
I have

had some fried ones that were a little too greasy in other places. You're correct.

Christopher Mitchell (38:36)
Yeah. Also, I

was trying think of like pulled pork sandwiches very significantly from diners to diners in my experience. Okay. Um, so I want to ask one other thing, Doug, which wasn't on the calendar, but we haven't, we are not closing in on an hour yet. And so I want to just, I want to, I don't want to, don't want to take, take that long on it, but, um, I'm expecting that you didn't listen to the show last week where, um, where I was talking about, um, uh, competition and municipal and Doug.

Sean Gonsalves (38:42)
yeah.

Douglas Dawson (38:42)
Yes.

Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (39:01)
Doug Adams put it to me hard to be like, I feel like you're just like wanting the good things and not recognizing the challenges of like, of like how we're going to get there and like competition and stuff like that. And, and I am curious, like if you could set telecommunications policy right now to try to achieve the best results for people, what, what would that look like? Would you be tempted to go in the direction of a regulated monopoly or would you be trying to do fix to, to increase competition? how would you.

How would you try to solve that issue?

Douglas Dawson (39:29)
I kind of like the concept behind what California is doing. They're the only state that is still regulating. You can't do it at the federal level. You're never going to get enough votes to do it. But what California could do with that rate study they did is they could put a lot of pressure on these ISPs to stop this rate discrimination. And so I think that's the best you can do. mean, than, well, data caps, price caps is the way to go.

Christopher Mitchell (39:48)
effectively moving through tariff rates? Is that what you're saying?

Douglas Dawson (39:55)
I mean, you say, look, you can't charge more than this percent above the market or whatever. And so you can't come in and if you start giving away all these $40 specials, that lowers how much you can charge the top guys. There's sort of an average thing. Definitely we could come up with a mass scale that could do something like that. It's like if you're going to give it away to half the market, you can't go to discriminate against the poor neighborhoods who are not asking for those specials. So I think.

You know, that's the customer half of it. The other half is just getting more fiber built, because that's where the real competition comes in. And so...

I don't see the federal government having a role in that. Almost all the fiber that's being built is being built out of private money. mean, all we can do is keep on hoping that they do more of it and maybe making it easier for them to do that. the government's not subsidizing any of this urban, suburban, or even small town fiber construction. That's only B. That's only the middle of nowhere stuff. So I don't know what we do to promote more fiber. But I think the market's taking care of it. You can't believe how many ISPs are still building

fiber in towns like crazy. I the market's going to get covered. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (41:02)
But at the same time,

you think that that's happening faster than the consolidation is on?

Douglas Dawson (41:06)
Yeah, but here's the problem with it. I live in it because I just investigated my town again. I haven't done it for three years. so AT&T is here. Guess where they've not built?

The neighborhoods were cost a lot. So they actually don't go poor rich. They go, they over lashed and they've built about half of my city. And I don't think they're ever going to build the other half because it's like when they have to bury, they're not interested. And that's what Verizon, that's what Verizon, that's what Verizon Fios always did. Where there's no poles where there's no poles. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (41:28)
Is that because there are no-

That's where there's no poles or the poles are inadequate.

Douglas Dawson (41:37)
well it even poles are inadequate if they already have copper up there they don't care if the poles are good or bad they just snap it onto the fiber in this city i don't think they asked for permits they just showed up and did it so because they say that's our stuff we don't need permission to mess around with our own wires and so so you know so i think what we're seeing is cities are getting half covered and the other half is going to be a broadband desert for years with no competition and

Christopher Mitchell (42:00)
Yeah, I this is I've been saying that for

years. mean, not not news to you because I've learned a lot from you. there's but like, many places are gonna see like my address is more likely to see a second and third fiber option between before some addresses see a first

Douglas Dawson (42:11)
Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (42:13)
Mm.

Douglas Dawson (42:13)
Right. And the ones who don't see a first may never see a first. And so I don't know how we solve those. At some point, do we somehow give the big carriers incentives? Do we have a giant grant program to get to those neighborhoods? I doubt it.

Sean Gonsalves (42:16)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (42:27)
Sean,

how do we solve those?

Sean Gonsalves (42:29)
I have no idea. mean, open access networks everywhere.

Douglas Dawson (42:32)
Somebody's got to build the fiber first though, that's the problem. Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (42:35)
Exactly.

I don't know. And then the other thing too is that in those areas that will, like you say, sort of will never see it or probably will never see it, so many of those people are convinced that, well, that's what Starlink's for.

Douglas Dawson (42:49)
Now, most of those people are in cities. The majority of people we're talking about are in cities. They have a cable company, Monopoly. They're the ones who the California study pointed out are paying absolute full price. They don't offer them a penny discount. They're like, if you don't want broadband, then don't get broadband. Here's my price. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (42:59)
And they're not going to be eligible for.

Yeah, I

we looked at LA and LA has a substantial number of Charter monopoly customers where they just don't have another option.

Sean Gonsalves (43:11)
Mm-hmm.

Douglas Dawson (43:11)
Yes,

Correct. so a lot of those folks are not going to see a solution, which is very, very unfortunate.

Christopher Mitchell (43:17)
Yeah. So I

did want to, want to end up with this, which is, um, I don't have a major update here except for like, I'm just, um, regarding Minnesota, which just that, I mean, I'm recording this on Thursday. It's going to go up next week. And, uh, um, you know, we continue to see the, same sorts of things, observers being attacked for, um, you know, for taking video of, of some of the ICE agents and things like that. Um, but

Last week, Karl Bode reminded me of the absurdity that we are living in, in that right now the Fifth Circuit has decided that the FCC's fine against AT&T, which was illegally selling customers' location data, the FCC fined them for that. And the AT&T appealed it and said the FCC is violating the constitution because there's no Article III judge, which is to say a judge from the judiciary.

which is from a separate branch than the administrative branch or the executive branch. At the same time that we are being told that you need to have an Article III judge signing off on or adjudicating a fine against a company that has violated the law, I am living in a city in which the Trump administration and the Republican Party position seems to be that you do not need an Article III judge to break down a door.

to literally come into my home because you think there's someone there. And let's be clear, this is not just sort of a theory. This is happening. And we're talking about places where, if you saw the picture of ChongLy Thao taken out, the older gentleman who was in his underwear in Crocs, he was taken out and they were looking for someone who was actually in prison, I think somewhere else at that time.

Sean Gonsalves (44:50)
Yeah, and the

Christopher Mitchell (45:01)
⁓ who is not living there. And they are asserting the right to break down those doors. And so it is fascinating to me to hear this idea that AT&T can't be fined for violating the law without a judge being there, but they can break down my door if they think someone's in here. I don't know, I think they're wrong on both counts. And I hope that we get to a point where everyone agrees on that. So.

⁓ Doug, don't know if you had a, not so much the Minnesota situation, but you've been watching the situation with the fines. Do you think this is the Fifth Circuit being way out of line or do think this is coming to the Supreme Court and we're going to see this everywhere?

Douglas Dawson (45:34)
All fit.

it is coming the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit's always out of line. The Fifth Circuit's where you go when you want to get an anti-whatever ruling, right? So there were two rulings in favor of the FCC. The Fifth Circuit always goes the other direction. Remember, the three carriers went to three courts to appeal the fines so that they wanted conflicting opinions. They want this to go to court. The funny thing is, do they really want to take a case? This case, Sean is the one, we talked about it before the call. The carriers...

Sean Gonsalves (45:38)
Yeah,

Douglas Dawson (46:03)
everywhere you want all day with your cell phone and then sold that to people. That's something we do not want to be marketed. Do they really want to take that to a judge on a jury trial? They would be fined billions. I would love to hear it. I would love them to take that to an American jury.

Sean Gonsalves (46:18)
Right. Although,

well, so you're right. mean, so the Supreme Court agreed to hear it. I think they're supposed to hear arguments in like June or something like that. But when you look at like what they ruled with the SEC when, you know, in a similar kind of a situation, they basically said that it was unconstitutional for them to levy that fine because it violated the what, the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial. So I would imagine the Supreme Court.

Douglas Dawson (46:23)
They are, yeah.

Yes. But what they

said there wasn't actually unreasonable if you dig into that case. They said you have to give the guy a chance. He can either pick a regular court or he can pick the administrative judge. You give him the option. And so I bet after they do all this that the AT&T News guys would still pick the FCC guy. They're not about to take these cases to open court. They just want the right to be able to do it.

Christopher Mitchell (46:56)
Well that may be, I mean I think-

Right. Well,

I think the thing, Doug, the answer to your question as to like, what are they doing is that they recognize the federal government does not have the resources to run a jury trial in all of these. And so they would be, they would basically be able to go without punishment for violating rules right and left. And every now and then they might get hit with something because we see this with, all kinds of things. mean, I was actually going to make a joke at the beginning that this show is going to be all about the Epstein files. Cause that's all people want to talk about, but like,

Douglas Dawson (47:09)
Now. Now.

Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (47:29)
I will say like, am deeply horrified across like four presidential administrations. We had one of the most horrific crimes of our times not prosecuted. And so like you just get a sense the federal government is not doing a great job of going after protecting our rights and going after, whether it's white collar crime or whether it is raping a thousand young girls. It is, it is just horrific what's happening out there. And we need to figure out how to resolve this.

Douglas Dawson (47:39)
Right.

Sean Gonsalves (47:53)
Thanks.

Christopher Mitchell (47:56)
you know, to have the resources to punish people that are just acting well beyond the law, whether they're a corporation or whether they're rich individuals.

Douglas Dawson (47:58)
Ahem.

Christopher Mitchell (48:03)
So I don't think no one's gonna fault me on that. I I ended up in a place where it's like, well, no, Chris, we're gonna frame it like that.

Douglas Dawson (48:04)
Wow, No.

Well, let's overturn Citizens United so corporations are not people anymore and get rid of half of that nonsense right there.

Christopher Mitchell (48:15)
Oh, I have a book for you. I'll, we'll end on, we'll end on this, uh, which is, Oh, Oh, I can't remember the name of it. Um, there's a, but there's a book about this whole like question about whether corporations are people. I will say it's, um, uh, Lipton, Eric Lipton, he's a writer from the New York times. I think it's a history of, uh, of Supreme court and, uh, dealing with these things. and I'll just say that like, um, from the point of view of like whether or not corporations should control our elections through their massive ability to spend, uh, no, we need to resolve that.

Douglas Dawson (48:17)
I know, I know.

Sean Gonsalves (48:19)
look, yes. Aw.

Christopher Mitchell (48:43)
But do I want the New York Times to have the right to free expression? Yes. And do I want to make sure that the police cannot bust down their door? Yes, I think they should be subject to the Fourth Amendment.

Douglas Dawson (48:52)
But they already had that.

They had that in the First Amendment.

Christopher Mitchell (48:55)
Yeah, but other

issues, you know, so ⁓ I don't, anyway, like I just, I feel like, I will say that like, like any of these things, the bumper sticker is not always the, the, the best. And I know that you agree with that from our other conversation.

Douglas Dawson (49:07)
Yes. This

stuff is complicated as hell.

Christopher Mitchell (49:10)
Yeah. So I hope that people enjoyed going through so many topics. I appreciate all the time you've spent with us to cover some of these issues. I think we might have you back again in February if I can work it out, Doug. But I'm hoping to do a ⁓ Connect This! style show in ⁓ March once we are able to.

to think a little bit about, mean, I will say Sean and I have been giving a lot of thought to the future of our work along with the rest of the people in the Community Broadband Networks program. The world is changing. Internet access is only becoming more important, but tech is more and more broad. And so we're trying to figure out how local self-reliance and technology all fit together and work that we can do. So that's some of the stuff that is happening behind the scenes here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. And I hope people are gonna be excited by it.

Douglas Dawson (49:53)
I just have to say,

I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in the first episode of Connect Sean! that he was rude enough to disappear for a while.

Sean Gonsalves (50:01)
I know, know, Disconnect Sean!

Christopher Mitchell (50:01)
Yeah. I'm just going to say that.

All right. This has been another fun. Well, this has been the first fun episode of Disconnect Sean!