Paul Goodman on Advocacy, Accessibility, and Broadband Equity with C4AT - Building for Digital Equity Podcast Episode 20

Sean Gonsalves (00:06):
This is the Building for Digital Equity Podcast, where you'll hear from those working on the front lines to expand Internet access, address affordability, and help provide the digital skills and devices necessary to participate in the digital world. This show comes to you from the Community Broadband Networks team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. [00:00:30] Here you'll find short interviews with digital inclusion practitioners from across the nation, highlighting the work and inspirational stories to ensure everyone has access to high-speed Internet. Now, let's see who we have today.

Christopher Mitchell (00:52):
I'm Chris Mitchell, and I'm here with Paul Goodman with the Center for Accessible Technology, which I think you call C4AT. [00:01:00] C4AT. Okay. Paul, you've been doing this work for a long time,

Paul Goodman (01:06):
coming up on 12 years now. Yeah, now for C4AT before that for the Green Line Institute, which did racial equity work, but all my work centers around broadband availability, affordability and accessibility.

Christopher Mitchell (01:19):
How did you come to doing this work?

Paul Goodman (01:23):
I'll try to give the shorten version of the story. It's kind of a long one, but I actually was an attorney foolish enough to go [00:01:30] to law school twice. I got my JD and then I met my now wife and was like, well, I guess I better find a better paying job than the job I have now. So I went back to get a master's in law in intellectual property, and one of my professors there, Kathy Sandoval, that's a name I'm familiar with, taught my antitrust class.

(01:53):
We talked a lot. She asked me to be a research assistant for her, and then she got appointed to [00:02:00] the California Public Utilities Commission where she became a commissioner. And literally two days after I graduated, I got an email from the Green Line Institute saying, Hey, Kathy Sandoval said you might be interested in doing this work on the AT&T T-Mobile merger. And I was like, yes. And that's sort of how I got there. And it was one of those jobs when I got there, I was like, oh, this is what I've supposed to have been doing all my life. So yeah, that's sort of the short version.

Christopher Mitchell (02:27):
So glad you're not doing intellectual property law. Yes.

(02:30):
[00:02:30] I went to grad school after undergrad. I spent four years working in a used bookstore that I loved. I loved doing that. I was reading before I was dating when I, in between dating, let's say I was reading four books a week and I was just loving life. And then I went to grad school. I had no idea what I was going to do, and I met this woman who was her first year teaching. She was a tour de forestry, was into energy policy, changed my life, and then got me just sinking along more utility lines and set me in the direction [00:03:00] that I am. So let's just give a little toast to the great professors in grad school institutions that are changing people's directions and for the better.

Paul Goodman (03:10):
And let's both be thankful that we didn't meet anyone in water policy because you think we're passionate Water policy people are the top of the list.

Christopher Mitchell (03:20):
Okay. Alright. Well, I'm going to keep an eye out for them then. So what is the Center for Accessible Technologies hook into technology? [00:03:30] What is their critique? What are they resolving?

Paul Goodman (03:31):
So basically they advocate on behalf of folks with disabilities to make sure they have access to technology that to a certain extent just helps them live their life. And we have three separate teams. There's my team, which is the policy team. So we do a lot of advocacy at the California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Communications Commission on broadband access and affordability and accessibility. Other two teams are the assistive technology team, which helps folks find [00:04:00] technology solutions that work for them. And it could be as simple as a voice to text program or a screen reader all the way up to eye tracking software for communication. And our last team, which I think they've been doing a long time, but we're getting more and more attention paid to is web accessibility, making sure that websites work for folks with disabilities because that's not actually as easy as this might seem.

Christopher Mitchell (04:27):
No. And my wife went through [00:04:30] a training on, I think it was solely PDF accessibility issues. And that in itself was a lot. There's a lot of issues out there.

Paul Goodman (04:39):
Yeah. My favorite love accessibility, I guess not so fun fact is that one of the big problems folks have is sometimes color contrast. So some colors just look too similar to some folks. And the two biggest ones are a lightish blue and white, which happened to be AT&T's, [00:05:00] like branding colors. So the AT&T website for a lot of people is not super accessible. And I'm guessing at this point we're not going to have a lot of luck asking them to change the color of their branding. So it's a challenge.

Christopher Mitchell (05:15):
This is something that I feel like our organization has not tackled well. And I'm just curious, and I know that your passion is on racial equity and with a focus on broadband related telecom issues, but since you are there, I'm curious, [00:05:30] where do we go to learn more about what we should be doing right now?

(05:34):
I would say we try to be very good with people who have colorblindness issues, and that's very cognizant in our graphics and charts especially. We try to do transcripts for all of our audio programming. And then beyond that, I don't know what else we should be doing, although I know there are things we should be doing.

Paul Goodman (05:50):
I think with every single issue both of us work on, the key always comes down to community input. So at our organization, we work with a lot of testers who [00:06:00] will actually say, oh, we think we have this solution. Let's bring some folks in and they can tell us if this actually works or not. And I guess as a free advocacy for at, yeah, our team will work with organizations that sort of want to learn a little bit more, say, Hey, can you take a look at our website and see what's going on?

(06:20):
And there are a bunch of organizations that will help folks find accessibility needs. It is tough though, I'll tell you, because [00:06:30] there's no one size fits all solution. And honestly, I think just like broadband access accessibility is a household by household or person by person issue.

Christopher Mitchell (06:43):
Now, you are regularly helping out with the LA Digital Equity Coalition, and I am curious how that's going. What are things that are happening in California that are exciting for your passion on these issues?

Paul Goodman (06:57):
I always joke that my job is [00:07:00] a very good job. I get to fight AT&T and Comcast all day long, and I will admit I am meaner than I should be to AT&T and Comcast.

Christopher Mitchell (07:07):
But I'll just throw out there, I feel like I get a little defensive about this. I do feel like I fight Comcast too. We're working to improve access.

(07:17):
We have some disagreements with 'em. I still think Comcast is the best of the big cable companies in terms of their trying to resolve these issues. You could disagree. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Paul Goodman (07:25):
I would characterize it as least worst. Sure. [00:07:30] But I agree with you. For a while it was Comcast, but boy did Spectrum put a lot of effort into,

Christopher Mitchell (07:39):
I guess I'm going to keep it positive and we'll just focus on what's going well in California.

Paul Goodman (07:41):
But so right now in California, there's just a bunch of money flowing in for broadband deployment, and it's really exciting. It's not just money specifically for unserved areas. There's money for not very well served areas. [00:08:00] And I think the most exciting part for me is there's funding for a state owned Middle Mile network, which will be a game changer, I think. And also, I think as much as big incumbents complain about a Middle Mile network, they're going to be able to take advantage of that too.

(08:16):
That's going to be great for them. So right now, there's really a fight about, oh, where should all that money be prioritized? At and t and Comcast and Verizon, everybody's business model is a little bit protectionist. So they're [00:08:30] very concerned about, oh, someone else coming in and building a network or someone all of a sudden having access to a network that helps them serve an area, and it's not necessarily an area they serve, it's they're a little concerned that someone might get a foothold and then become a challenger to them. Right? And so there's been a lot of, I think misinformation or overstatement about, oh, we can't build here. We should really be looking at the most poor off, [00:09:00] which by which they always mean folks in rural areas that have no broadband services. All right,

Christopher Mitchell (09:05):
but doesn't AT&T is like, Hey, that area over there by Frontier is a really great place you should be building.

(09:10):
And Frontier is like that area over there by AT&T is where we need to invest.

Paul Goodman (09:14):
And in California, just by headcount, we have more folks in urban and suburban areas that don't have access to broadband than we do in rural areas.

Christopher Mitchell (09:22):
I think there might be more people in Los Angeles County who lack access than in the rural areas.

Paul Goodman (09:29):
And one of, speaking [00:09:30] of Los Angeles, one of the folks I'm working with there, one of the really exciting things I've been able to do is I sort of call kicking down the gates of the PUC, helping them learn how to advocate at the PUC, which involves honestly a lot of gatekeeping kind of knowledge. Like, oh, here, there's a special sort of application you have to file in order to be a party.

Christopher Mitchell (09:52):
We have filed a lot of documents over the years. We got rejected four times in a row by the California PUC.

(09:59):
We worked hard on trying [00:10:00] to get our filing accepted. There's just even not even knowing which language to use and how to be strategic, just the process of clicking submit is challenging.

Paul Goodman (10:11):
And there's no real explanation, easily accessible explanation for it. And I always sort of used to joke that there's the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure, which are all on a webpage, and there's the 50% of the rules of practice and procedure that are just passed down by oral tradition, which it's not fair admittedly. So I really [00:10:30] like helping folks understand how the commission works and how they can have their voice heard there, which is really important.

Christopher Mitchell (10:36):
I think you do a really good job of it, and I've really enjoyed knowing that you're out there and able to help. And I know that other groups are doing that. You're in the middle of CPUC land and working on these issues.

(10:47):
I feel like if we can't get it right in the CPUC I despair to think of where we could get it right in a state commission got turn, you've got greenlining, you've got the Center for Accessible Technology, there's so many good organizations, [00:11:00] you've got the intervener compensation. I get that. Right. So unlike in many states turn the Utility Reform Network, great organization, they actually have some of their budget comes from the state in order to make sure they're able to intervene on behalf of people that otherwise their voice wouldn't be heard. And yet I still feel like we see industry dominating the CPUC in ways that are concerning.

Paul Goodman (11:25):
And there's a couple reasons for that. I'll start with the sort of minor reason, which is right now the [00:11:30] big sort of utility issue in California is clean energy and wildfire mitigation, right? So sorry.

Christopher Mitchell (11:39):
This is what we see in Minnesota.

(11:40):
How do you get on the Minnesota Public Utility Commission? You get on it because the governor likes your position on energy policy and then also you take care of Telecom.

Paul Goodman (11:48):
And so right now we have five of the five commissioners all come from an energy background, so there's a certain amount of education that goes on. [00:12:00] The second obstacle, which is not much of an obstacle anymore, was for a long time we didn't have a governor that was interested in getting broadband to everybody. And for all the criticisms you can have of Gavin Newsom, his commitment to broadband deployment is not one. The last one is,

Christopher Mitchell (12:17):
yeah, I'll second that because I have not been in the Gavin Newsom fan club, but I think that there are transformative and important investments that would not have happened without the leadership of his office.

Paul Goodman (12:28):
And I'll say the last one [00:12:30] is, and I always joke that in terms of the United States, it's not the worst problem to have moderate Democrats for us who, and the problem is we turn over about because of term limits and all that, we turn over our legislature about a third of it every two years.

(12:48):
And so every two years you have a bunch of moderate Democrats who have their eyes focused on something higher up the political food chain, and some of them. So some of them, because they're [00:13:00] ambitious and they know who needs to grease the wheels will be pro-industry. Other folks just are new to the ecosystem and just don't understand. But companies spend a lot of time going in there and lobbying in them, and there's just more of them than there are of us. So sort of constant reeducation. The one that's really, I'm sort of excited to see that this is how in the weeds we've got is the fixed wireless folks who are saying, oh, fixed [00:13:30] wireless is just as good as fiber. It's fantastic. It's a frustrating argument to have to keep pushing back on. But also five, six years ago, we would've been talking saying, no, here's what you actually need to put money into broadband across the state. So it's huge progress. Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (13:49):
Yeah, no, and I feel a little bit conflicted on that because I think fixed wireless can do a lot, but I also don't think it's a good investment with public dollars because of the longevity issues around it. [00:14:00] So I feel like the state of California is heading in the right direction. And yet I also feel a bit for the wireless folks who feel like they are getting overrun.

Paul Goodman (14:11):
And I think I share that concern because it's not a good investment, but when you talk to communities, there are some communities who say, and I don't know how much of this they hear from someone else or how much they think themselves. It's like, we need this because we need broadband now and that's going to be the way to get service [00:14:30] to us. So that one's tricky. But what I do know is if we put fiber in, we're good for good 30, 40, 50 years.

Christopher Mitchell (14:38):
And it can be expensive. And I'm not saying that we should be doing a hundred thousand dollars, the homes that are a hundred thousand dollars of build to get there. I am not saying we should be doing fiber up to their doorstep necessarily, but there's plenty of homes where the benefits of connecting that home over 20 years will more than pay for the cost of doing it. Absolutely. Well, Paul, [00:15:00] it's been wonderful catching up with you. Thank you so much for sitting down with me.

Paul Goodman (15:03):
Oh, no. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been great talking with you. Excellent.

Sean Gonsalves (15:07):
We thank you for listening. You can find a bunch of our other podcasts, including community broadband bits at i lsr.org/podcast. And as we continue the Building for Digital Equity podcast, we'd like to ask you a favor. Please give us a rating wherever you found it, especially at Apple Podcast. Share [00:15:30] it with friends. You can even embed episodes on your own site. And let us know what you think. Write us@podcastcommunitynets.org. Finally, we'd like to thank joseph mcc.com for the song on the Verge.