The Potential of Fiber: Smart Cities, BEAD, and Municipal Broadband Financing - Episode 636 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:07):
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, where we're finally having a proper February and I've got my good friend Sean Gonsalves on who shoveled snow this year for the first time in quite some time. Welcome back, Sean.

Sean Gonsalves (00:30):
[00:00:30] Oh, good to be back, man. I'm glad my back survived it. I took it easy. I did it a nice pace, took me about an hour, needed that cold, crisp air to deal with this.

Christopher Mitchell (00:41):
Was it good snowball snow like they're getting in DC I imagine?

Sean Gonsalves (00:44):
Yeah, it depends. By good snowball do you mean one that will form and you can really throw yes to get hit in the face with one that's kind of on the heavier side. Probably not.

Christopher Mitchell (00:55):
Yeah, I mean we're not going to talk about snow this whole time, but I mean we've getting some snow up here when it's like five degrees [00:01:00] and it comes down, it's like a magnet with the opposite, with the same poles. It won't stick together. You throw it at someone. It's like confetti just comes all apart. There's no water in

Sean Gonsalves (01:12):
It that takes all the fun out of it, for sure. The most snow that we've got probably in the past few years, and it wasn't much. It was only about five inches, but

Christopher Mitchell (01:21):
It's a good amount on the cape. It's enough for the kids to have a day off. I hope

Sean Gonsalves (01:26):
I needed it, man, to deal with my, what I think a lot of it's are dealing [00:01:30] with, which is cognitive whiplash. You know what I mean? I needed to,

Christopher Mitchell (01:33):
Man, it is hard. We're not going to talk about the politics here, but just to know what's happening without being able to better understand whether we agree or disagree. Are checks being written for these programs or not? And it's hard, it's mind boggling, but I do have some good news. California at this point now, when the California Public Utility Commission, they had this big program [00:02:00] for funding Internet access across the state. We've talked before about how they really prioritize community builds and builds that were not just from the people that have refused to invest historically. Those big companies, all of the tribes that applied have now been funded, and so that's exciting.

Sean Gonsalves (02:17):
I'm super excited about that. As a matter of fact, by the time this podcast aired, Jessica will let the story. She's got an excellent story on the CPUC [00:02:30] program in general, but more specifically one of the tribes, Cold Springs Ranchera we're one of the recent grant recipients, but the story is excellent, so people should definitely check that story out because I've got to say that the CPUC has been a pleasant surprise to me, and maybe I just was so cynical at the start that I just thought at t was going to get all the money and man, community broadband and tribal broadband has made [00:03:00] out pretty well all things considered in California.

Christopher Mitchell (03:05):
Yes. Yeah, I think and now we'll see them make a real big difference, I think, and one of the things that I think is kind of fun is people, we haven't announced it anywhere, but they might be looking for that @CommunityNetworks.org rather than CommunityNets.org or muninetworks.org. We can't go more than a few years without changing our name apparently. What's going on there?

Sean Gonsalves (03:26):
I was going to say we won the jackpot, but actually

Christopher Mitchell (03:29):
We got [00:03:30] a domain name. Someone came to us, we cut a deal, and

Sean Gonsalves (03:34):
We

Christopher Mitchell (03:34):
Have CommunityNetworks.org now, so that's pretty exciting.

Sean Gonsalves (03:36):
Right. That's why I say what I was about to say. We won the jackpot in the sense that we have the domain name now, but it's not a true jackpot in the sense that it did cost us to play.

Christopher Mitchell (03:46):
Yes. So we're excited we're going to be making that change soon. I don't know exactly where. We might back up to it a little bit and then have to come back and fix a few things, but at some point, all the old domains will still work, but we will be settled in firmly, I think [00:04:00] to CommunityNetworks.org, which is awesome. Okay, we're going to talk today about fiber optic sensing briefly something that came up on Connect This! as well as the dollars and cents in fiber optic investments from BEAD, talking a little bit about what's going on there, and we're going to preview an event that you are running with Ms. Gigi Sohn on financing municipal networks. So I wanted to just [00:04:30] put you on the hot seat fiber optic sensing. I think you probably hadn't heard of it, it was a few months ago. I had never heard of it. For people who are out there and haven't yet watched this wonderful segment on the most engaging video show that one could ever imagine on broadband policy in tech, what did you take away from fiber optic sensing on Connect This!

Sean Gonsalves (04:53):
Two words? The first one is, wow, the second word is, but what [00:05:00] does that mean for the city? Is it potentially scary? So those were the two things that came to mind, mostly the

Christopher Mitchell (05:08):
Wow, so what is it? Tell the audience what it is.

Sean Gonsalves (05:10):
So when I first heard the, remind me his name, that was

Christopher Mitchell (05:14):
Paul Dickinson from Dura-Line,

Sean Gonsalves (05:15):
Paul Dickinson. Yes. And so he was essentially making the case for why we shouldn't be thinking about fiber optics infrastructure in communities as being just about connecting people to the Internet, that there's all this [00:05:30] other functionality that can be had making essentially like a smart city that can do a lot of sensing through sound and can give you a lot of really good data that city managers and town managers would be. It would be real beneficial like, oh man, there's a little leak. And we found out about it before it turned into an underground lake and it was this huge problem and we're able to fix it and save a lot of money and there's all kinds of functionality [00:06:00] that can happen as a result of using fiber optics and using it to get sound information, I guess. Right? Literal sound information.

Christopher Mitchell (06:10):
Yeah, vibrations. And so this is the thing, right? But people talk about fiber optics in smart cities. They're usually talking about something. If I'm just going to rattle off a few numbers, which may or may not be in the ballpark, but I think these are roughly in the ballpark. You're going to be putting in fiber to a location. You're going to be paying someone to terminate that fiber in a pedestal, [00:06:30] which is then vulnerable to cars hitting it. You're going to have an electrician come along and set it up to get power so that you can then run an induction loop underneath the traffic light signal to know when a car comes and is moving over to do a car count, you're going to be paying the electricity costs and the uptake, the upkeep costs on all that sort of stuff. That's what people think of as smart city. You're going to be running a pollution monitor somewhere. This fiber optic sensing is you're running a bunch of fiber from point A to point B, [00:07:00] you make sure you put it underneath the road or close to it or next to a pipeline or next to a water system with the tubing, underground pipes, water pipes.

(07:12):
I don't need to make it more complicated than it is. You put in this fiber and maybe you put 144 fibers in, maybe you put a lot more in. You take one of those fibers and you hook it up to this sensitive equipment and it's listening for vibrations and it can tell you are there cars? How many cars are moving over this [00:07:30] given spot? It can tell you if a car is waiting at the traffic light, it can tell you if someone's starting to dig right around that area, and hopefully you get someone driving over there real quick to find out to make sure they're not messing around illegally or that they are recklessly endangering the stuff underground. There's all kinds of sensing that can be done. In fact, Matt Rantin said in a conversation that it's been used to count animals moving around, and I'm just like, [00:08:00] come on man, are you just making this up? Wow. Yeah, the vibrations, I mean, I've been rewatching daredevil that was originally on Netflix and you could tell a lot with vibrations apparently,

Sean Gonsalves (08:12):
Or how you hear about, I don't know if it is dolphins or whales and how they can hear for miles away and sonar, that kind of stuff. In a sci-fi, utopia fantasy future, could you imagine a city with infrastructure where essentially there was fiber in everything?

Christopher Mitchell (08:29):
I mean, the thing [00:08:30] is that that's the thing, right? We think about fiber as being expensive, but you want to know how much it costs to run a smart transportation system across the cape so that you have your timing, your traffic signals well, and to actually know where cars are so you can change the lights accordingly to make sure that you got the left turn lane. I'll tell you, by the way, red turn arrows are the bane of my existence. Nothing causes me to lose my temper like I'm back in 12th grade, one of those. But being [00:09:00] able to detect where cars are so you can more intelligently move traffic, save fuel, have less pollution and everything, and not that, but doing it by a fiber optic cables that are going to be underground anyway, saving that money of those pedestals, those sensors, the electricians to set it all up. I mean, it's a remarkable savings for more opportunities.

Sean Gonsalves (09:22):
And so that whole discussion, this whole world of possibility, and more importantly, here's the thing [00:09:30] is that the reason I think this is important to think about if you are a town manager or a city manager is because it puts the thought in your head, or at least I think it is, is that don't just look at this as just about Internet access. That's one very important facet of it, but there's all of these other things. And so when you start to look at it like that, to me, the value of having a town wide, a citywide fiber optic network becomes a lot more attractive and valuable than if you look at it strictly in terms [00:10:00] of Internet access, as important as that is.

Christopher Mitchell (10:03):
Yeah, no, we're going a little bit long on this segment. It wasn't supposed to be this interesting, and I hope that someone more than just the two of us think it's that interesting. But when New York City put together this master Internet plan and they said New York City does not plan to become an ISP, but we want to get fiber all across the city to be able to enable private companies, nonprofits, individual buildings, whatever, to be able to rapidly build [00:10:30] their networks to connect whatever niche or group of people they want to connect. That was a great plan. One of the challenges is how do you pay for that when you're not going to be collecting very much revenue? Well, suddenly, if you can do all of this sensing, if you can prevent water leaks now New York City, you're leaking water, that's an issue. You're in Texas and you're leaking water, you're in Arizona, you're in California and you're leaking water, that's suddenly a big deal.

(10:53):
I mean, this is something I talked about up in the high desert up in Amon, Idaho talking with them. Water is serious business and [00:11:00] the ability to make sure you're not losing water is worth a lot. So suddenly, I think what's exciting about this from my perspective is that it may free up cities to make the kinds of investments that will enable more infrastructure, more competition, more investment without the cities having to get involved in the retail operations, which although I certainly think many cities can handle it, many of them don't want to. And so it's more opportunity, I think, for more investment without [00:11:30] having to lock people into an uncomfortable business model.

Sean Gonsalves (11:33):
Great. Great point.

Christopher Mitchell (11:34):
Alright, so we're going to talk about dollars and Cents in BEAD. I think that was the title I think you put on my amazing writing.

Sean Gonsalves (11:42):
Well, I was just going to say yes, I admit to that because after all, it was written by one of our unknown interns by the name of Christopher Mitchell. I think the kids got some promise though. If you look at the policy brief,

Christopher Mitchell (11:58):
So this is one of those things that as [00:12:00] there was this discussion about should be so focused on fiber, I felt like some of the discussion in the press and some of the people that will be making these decisions aren't familiar with the backstory of how BEAD is not the first time we're funding better Internet access at these homes that are eligible, right? I mean, we're not just talking about rural America in general. We're talking about homes who have already been the effective recipient of thousands of dollars for AT&T [00:12:30] or CenturyLink or Verizon or someone to Windstream Frontier to be putting better Internet access to them, right? The Connect America Fund, we've talked about it in the past. It was $10 billion and it built connections that were obsolete before the very first connection was started. It was a poorly conceived of program and it was poorly run and it was a fiasco. And Congress in an acting BEAD was like, we're not going to do that [00:13:00] again. And what's driving me a little bit crazy is that the Trump administration's coming in and they're like, oh yes, we are going to do it again.

Sean Gonsalves (13:06):
So lemme tell you my favorite parts of this brief, my favorite part is where you remind people, Hey, remember this thing called the infrastructure law that created the BEAD program where it says that Congress deliberately wanted to prioritize fiber optic technology because of these past failures that you're just talking about and not to make these repeated investments in obsolete technologies. I mean, that's my favorite [00:13:30] part of the brief because it's an important reminder that this wasn't NTIA, just sort of flying off the handle and this was literally part of the congressional intent, the law itself, and so

Christopher Mitchell (13:43):
Right. Alan Davidson wasn't sitting there one morning looking at a serial being like, you know what? We should prioritize fiber. I'm convinced

Sean Gonsalves (13:50):
Yes, but even laying that aside, you're making the case, I believe in this brief, by the way, two of my other favorite things about the brief is that it's very concise [00:14:00] it and it's very straightforward.

Christopher Mitchell (14:02):
Hey, we're not in North Korea. You don't got to keep buttering me up. I like that.

Sean Gonsalves (14:06):
No, I'm just telling you this is why the brief is good, but here's the other banger that's in the brief is that it really gets right down to it, which is that, and I know you're going to laugh at me when I use this phrase about let's not be pennywise and pound foolish, meaning it might save money right now, but is it really a good bargain the get the biggest bang of the bucket for right back here in like five to 10 years?

Christopher Mitchell (14:28):
No, it is a terrible [00:14:30] bargain. And the thing that I feel like has been missed entirely that we talked about a little bit in the brief is that a transition now away from fiber toward whether it's terrestrial wireless or certainly lower earth orbit satellite wireless will mean that rural homes, rural families we're talking about, of thousands, millions of people will be getting an inferior technology, and they will almost certainly be paying a higher price for [00:15:00] it. Now, we don't know exactly what all BEAD is going to result in, but when we look at what we see across rural America where fiber is being built, especially by the cooperatives, but often by others as well, the fiber is coming in and their families are being charged 60, 70, $80 for hundreds of megabits per second or a gigabit per second, somewhere in that range. When we look at the range, obviously, if we look at starlink, it's 120 bucks a month

(15:29):
And you're getting a hundred [00:15:30] down in the area of a hundred, down 15, 20 up, depending, maybe more, maybe less, depending on how congestion is or what upgrades have happened over time, that will probably get better, but maybe not if it gets too congested. But we're talking about, and this is one of those things, the word equity is super suspicious to people in Donald Trump's orbit, but the point of BEAD was that rural areas should be having communications, have Internet access [00:16:00] that is similar to urban areas, and the Trump administration, which overwhelmingly had the support of these people in these rural areas, they're going to end up having to pay more and receiving a lot less if the Trump administration moves to other technologies. And so that'd be good. If you look at, we have this documented, and I pity the person that goes back and watches every episode of Connect This! or our podcast or whatever to see how things have changed over time. But I've always said, look, I don't think you should be building [00:16:30] 50 fiber out to a house where it costs $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars.

Sean Gonsalves (16:34):
Well, I was just going to say that's another good thing about the brief is that as concise as it is, and much as it makes the case a strong case for fiber being a priority, it also is very clear that there still needs to be a mix of technologies that we're not saying it should be fiber. We're not going total like North Dakota broadband office, where it's like every last address in this state [00:17:00] should have fiber. It doesn't make that argument. It's saying, listen, like you're saying, if there's a super high cost location, yeah, well, in those cases, of course there needs to be a mix of technology, but let's not go so far in the other direction of this. Tech neutrality is the, it's

Christopher Mitchell (17:19):
Just drives me crazy. It's not neutrality, it's just awful. And the idea that it's neutral, it's ridiculous. They're specifically saying, we going to water [00:17:30] down the standards, right? It's the technology participation trophy program. But what kills me about, it's something that you and I, we've gone back and forth on this phrasing, but people are talking about how this is a once in a lifetime program. I could tell you this right now, if they're going to substitute wireless from space to millions of homes is not a once in a lifetime program. I'll tell you right now, I bet it'll be between five and six years from now, I should [00:18:00] say five to seven years from now. I think it would be that soon that if this administration decides to just give the money to Elon and perhaps some terrestrial wireless folks, although I frankly think if you're going to skip to wireless, why would you go terrestrial wireless? If you're so focused on the costs, you're probably going to end up doing mostly SpaceX or Kuiper or one of those low Earth orbit because there's no infrastructure to build anymore. It's just some launches. But the point is, if you put [00:18:30] all the money into that, it's just going to be a few years until the people from that area are saying, this is not good enough. We are not getting economic development. This is insufficient, and we want the fiber that other people in rural areas in my state already have

Sean Gonsalves (18:45):
To say nothing with the probably not insignificant amount of people who will say, and by the way, I can't even afford it.

Christopher Mitchell (18:51):
Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that it's not affordable. It's hard to imagine how it may become affordable and it's super brittle. Let's be clear. [00:19:00] People think I'm loonier than I really am. It's funny on some things. I'm really loony, right? Okay, I'm going to move north before I move south. I admit I'm fully in the minority of people because I like cold temperatures. There's all kinds of weird things about me, but I think about this a lot. No one thinks about it. The idea that we should be served by a few thousand satellites and millions of people's communications in rural areas should be dependent on that. These are satellites that are vulnerable to any number of bugs. [00:19:30] Solar flas, solar flares, also flails if that's a thing. But so natural disasters as well as if there's a significant war with any major power in the future, all them satellites are coming down. And so it's just brittle in ways that terrestrial fiber resolve so many more issues. The last thing I would say about this is in a recent meeting, Gary Bolton was talking about how [00:20:00] there's a major data center going into Northeast Louisiana. Northeast Louisiana needs investment. It's a very low income, high poverty area.

(20:08):
Because fiber is going in there to connect people, there's now fiber and it's in a more attractive area for business data center and things like that. It's not going to change the region overnight, but it creates more opportunity for economic development. And nobody is looking around saying, oh, I'm going to put this data center in this field of West Virginia because SpaceX is going [00:20:30] to be going over it x number of times per hour. It's not a thing that happens.

Sean Gonsalves (20:35):
And for those that are trying to follow along at home, Gary Bolton is the president of the Fiber Broadband Association.

Christopher Mitchell (20:41):
I didn't say that, did I? In my head, I said it. Is that not good enough now?

Sean Gonsalves (20:44):
No, no, no. Gary is a star.

Christopher Mitchell (20:47):
Alright, so anyway, we did that. You can find it on CommunityNets. You can find it on our fact sheets pages at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: ILSR.org, as well as our site CommunityNetworks.org [00:21:00] or CommunityNets.org. Both will get you to the same spot. Oh, and one other thing that I did want to share is just that a reminder that the reason that BEAD didn't get very far in the past three years and is still being rolled out now is because the Federal Communications Commission does not take its job seriously and did not know where broadband is and has not still in the year 2025, still can't point with any degree of accuracy. I mean, if I was to say to [00:21:30] Commissioner Carr, who's been on the commission for many years now, Hey man, I'll bet you a hundred thousand dollars. We'll pick a house at random and you tell me if you want to bet a hundred thousand dollars if it's really served the way that it's claimed in the database, and we'll see what he says.

Sean Gonsalves (21:44):
I'm glad you brought that up because I couldn't believe that. I haven't already brought that up because one of my biggest left, the biggest bone in my craw on this whole debate about how BEAD has taken so long is it's like, yeah, no one ever talks about why it's taken so long. It's [00:22:00] almost like it's said, and then people will laugh and make it sound like, oh, like a cynical, oh, government, they're always messing stuff up and taking too long, and what was the Biden administration, all this other stuff and everything, and it's like, yeah, what was the FCC doing? How come it took so long because those maps were terrible and they're still not that good? And do we really want to be spending tens of billions of dollars when we don't have a precise picture about where those dollars should be best

Christopher Mitchell (22:29):
Invested? But this [00:22:30] is why we don't have good maps, because it has been a Republican priority to discourage government investment in this. And they correctly recognized if we didn't have good maps, we wouldn't be able to spend money accurately. And so if you look back, Democrats did not cover themselves in glory. It hasn't been a priority for them to have good maps, but it has been a Republican priority to stop us from having accurate data on this. And it just drives me crazy because it shouldn't be a matter of party issue as to whether [00:23:00] or not you think the government should have important, accurate statistics. If you believe in markets, we need information on which to make investments and that information, according to Adam Smith who knew a thing or two about markets, this should be broadly available in order to have efficient markets. And so it has not been a priority, and in fact, they've made it a priority to not do it. So anyway, I think we both wanted to hit on that. Before we run out of time here, what are you doing? [00:23:30] I think you're a traitor. You're moving away from our organization. You're trying to help out the AAPB, what is that and what are you doing over there?

Sean Gonsalves (23:40):
Oh boy. Yeah, the AAPB, we love the folks over there, the American for Public Broadband, so that's Gigi Sohn she's now, I shouldn't say now because she's been now for what, two years almost the Executive Director. A year and a half or so, we are getting together and hosting a webinar. The first joint [00:24:00] webinar that we're hosting, it'll be February 20th, so probably a couple of days after this podcast is published from noon to 1:00 PM It is free, but it is geared towards a particular set of folks, those people out there who are seriously considering pursuing a municipal broadband solution for their communities or who are sort of on the fence but aren't quite sure, well, how could we make it work financially? This webinar is for folks that have that question. And so as part of that, we've going [00:24:30] to be talking to, I guess you could call 'em panelists, although it'll be very much structured around a conversation with Ernie Staten from Fairlawn Gig.

Christopher Mitchell (24:38):
This is not one of these Yawn Fest. This is going to be moving quick. Interesting.

Sean Gonsalves (24:44):
Exactly. We're going to get into the nitty gritty of municipal finance with Ernie Staten from Fairlawn Gig, a city that's gone through and financed the network and has a very successful municipal broadband operation. Now, F.X. Flinn, who is the Governing Board Chair with ECFiber, the [00:25:00] first communication union district in Vermont, and then we've got Laura Lewis, who's the Principal and Co-Wwner of LRB Public Finance Advisors, and Eric Rex, the Vice President at KeyBanc. Both of those last two are people who have been involved in putting together the financing for some of these projects. And so for communities like a Falmouth, which is not far from me, who has been wanting to build a municipal broadband network, it's been stop and go with talking with some private companies, et cetera. [00:25:30] Those type of folks I think will be very interested in learning and hearing from people who have done it, how they did it, and what are some of the challenges and ways to think about doing it, especially now given the uncertainty of BEAD, which by the way, most of that money wasn't going to a lot of these urban and suburban communities anyway, however, these things can happen without recourse to a program like BEAD per se.

(25:57):
And so this is what that particular webinar [00:26:00] is going to focus on. So I'm really excited about that. Gigi and I are going to serve as co-host, but it's really going to be about folks being able to interact and talk to people who have actually done it and are doing it,

Christopher Mitchell (26:11):
And it's the first of more to come. It'll be archived. We're doing it on the same platform we do Building for Digital Equity (B4DE) and Connect This! and all that. So it'll be on YouTube and yeah, a lot going on out there. A

Sean Gonsalves (26:26):
Lot going on.

Christopher Mitchell (26:28):
Well, thank you, Sean. Appreciate your time [00:26:30] today.

Sean Gonsalves (26:30):
Yes, Always good to be here

Christopher Mitchell (26:33):
And we'll see you at the webinar. We'll see you in the future.

Ry Marcattilio (26:36):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available at communitynets.org/broadbandbits. Email us @podcastatcommunitynets.org with your ideas. For the show, follow Chris on BlueSky. His handle is @SportShotChris. Follow communitynets.org stories on BlueSky, the handles @communitynets subscribe to this and other podcasts [00:27:00] from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for a Community podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly newsletter @ILSR.org. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Commons.