Year in Review 2024 - Episode 628 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, and I'm already kind of on vacation, so if you're emailing me, unlike my normal, never going to get back to you. Now, it's probably going to take a little bit longer, but before we actually sign [00:00:30] off, I wanted to check in with the team who's still going to be working, I think right up until the morning of Christmas and they want to evaluate some of the predictions they've made. So I'm going to introduce who's here. We've got Christine Parker. Welcome back. Christine.

Christine Parker (00:48):
Hi. Hi.

Christopher Mitchell (00:49):
What's your exact title?

Christine Parker (00:51):
Senior GIS Analyst.

Christopher Mitchell (00:52):
Right, and all around Data Guru in general?

Christine Parker (00:57):
Correct. Preferred Data Witch these days [00:01:00] though.

Christopher Mitchell (01:00):
Oh, I like that. Also on Blue Sky as See the Map lady, right?

Christine Parker (01:05):
Correct,

Christopher Mitchell (01:06):
Yes. Sean Gonsalves with the Communications division, the entire Communications division.

Sean Gonsalves  (01:14):
It's huge. It's a huge division. Mostly

Christopher Mitchell (01:17):
Head. Mostly head. Mostly head. We've got Jessica Auer, welcome back Jess.

Jessica Auer (01:25):
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (01:26):
I feel like you're the researcher who's sitting there double checking [00:01:30] Christine's figure in secret figures in secret only. You've never been able to tell anyone because she's never gotten anything wrong.

Christine Parker (01:35):
That's never in secret, and I do get it wrong.

Christopher Mitchell (01:39):
Jess, you've had a great year. You had some great work on the tribal research and doing a lot of cool stuff with the tribal broadband bootcamps, but I think our predictions are mostly outside of that, so we won't get to actually hit on your key topics.

Jessica Auer (01:54):
Yeah, my knowledge will go untapped, I guess.

Christopher Mitchell (01:57):
And then we have Ry Marcattilio [00:02:00] welcome back Ry, Mr Research himself.

Ry Marcattilio (02:03):
Hey Chris, good to see you. I could tell you're nearing vacation because you have vacation hair. It looks great.

Christopher Mitchell (02:07):
It is not in my eyes and I'm so happy about it. Yes, this has been a year of, once again we'll be able to go through and as we do any sort of montage, that's one of the things I look at is just how I have never found a good haircut and I'm just going to keep searching. So we do not have Emma. Emma made predictions at the beginning of the year and [00:02:30] one of the predictions that I had was that she was going to go on to grad school and do amazing things and she's there and I expect is doing amazing things. So we wish you well, Emma, and maybe we will have her back for future shows. I would love to find a timeline in which that happens. I was hoping Mr. Jordan Pittman would be here, but apparently he begged off I think making predictions. He was newer on the team, but I don't know. He's a veteran now and little disappointed, so [00:03:00] I have to bug him about that I guess. And then Angelina's not here. She's undoubtedly working on Asana tasks or something related to project management and DeAnnes Cuellar I think is just happy to not have to be a part of this clown show.

Ry Marcattilio (03:18):
You got it right Chris? I think

Christopher Mitchell (03:19):
So we are going to look at our predictions and the first thing I wanted to do is to look back on the year and to just sort of reminisce briefly about big things. And if I'm honest, [00:03:30] the thing that comes first to my mind is that I still cannot believe how bad the maps are and how bad the contracting process is. And I just kept thinking that some adult was going to walk into the room and say, no, you can't spend all of this money overpaying for this stuff, get such a bad result and keep the data from the public being owned by a proprietary firm. I'm amazed that we're still here and so it's not the biggest [00:04:00] thing of the year, but I don't know. I am stunned at how bad this was and I have to think that it might be the biggest unforced error of the Biden FCC, and this is something we'll talk about with some of the other shows that we're doing too, so we don't have to dwell on it here is what I'm saying, but I don't know if anyone wants a reaction to that.

Christine Parker (04:19):
Well, until the FCC decides to make a new map that isn't based on proprietary location data, then this is what we're dealing [00:04:30] with, I suppose in addition to the state's individual versions of broadband maps. So we've got all of these different maps to think about. Now,

Christopher Mitchell (04:40):
I was thinking that it's like you're in a contract negotiation and someone says, well, you could have it fast, you could have it affordable, or you could have it accurate and you got to pick two of them. I feel like we were like, how about we pick zero of them? It's really remarkable. It wasn't fast, it's not accurate. It has been really expensive. It's just painful. [00:05:00] So I dunno, we don't have to dwell on any other reactions. Well, just to Christine's

Ry Marcattilio (05:04):
Point today, as we record this in early December of 2024, we don't just have one broadband map. We've got at least 54 broadband maps, and that doesn't include states that are working on different version, a four different version of the BDC to do their BEAD stuff. And so I don't think we were talking about this all that much when we learned we were going to get a new map and then when we learned that map would finally be paid for [00:05:30] and then all the things that would go along with it. But we live in a world of many different realities when it comes to broadband on the ground and that has always been the case. Even though it's better in some areas of the country, it's more confusing in most places. Maybe that's how I would sum it up.

Christopher Mitchell (05:46):
Well, with that, let's move on to ACP. We've made some predictions around that that we'll recap, but it was a pretty big deal. I think that the ACP died, there was no real strategy on keeping it alive except for hoping for the best. I would leave that at [00:06:00] the feet of the Federal Communications Commission, which I think it was not a hundred percent their responsibility to keep it going, but you might think they would've planned for some sort of campaign or strategy to either keep it going or have something ready for its demise and they didn't. So I'm not looking forward to the future Federal Communications Commission. I think they've made that pretty clear that I have deep concerns about what commissioner soon to be, chair Carr thinks about his mandate, but this is a pretty [00:06:30] bad one. Sean,

Sean Gonsalves  (06:31):
I think the strategy was write sternly worded letters was the strategy for saving ACP.

Christopher Mitchell (06:37):
Yeah, we could see how well that went.

Sean Gonsalves  (06:40):
Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (06:41):
I would say that those were two negative things. The thing that also I would just say is that boy California and New York, Vermont, Maine, Washington State, Sean, what am I talking about?

Sean Gonsalves  (06:53):
You were going to take the words out of my mouth for me. The theme for me, the thing that was most exciting a previous year was [00:07:00] rescue plan to the rescue, especially for municipal broadband. Those states did an outstanding job of standing up programs specifically designed to fund municipal broadband builds and they use rescue plan money, and I think that's where all of the action was in community broadband over 2024.

Christopher Mitchell (07:23):
So there was a lot of enthusiasm. We'll be seeing some benefits from that for some time. New ecosystems being created, a [00:07:30] lot of local jobs, a lot of local partnerships for both municipal owned infrastructure as well as local companies having more opportunities to operate on public infrastructure. I think it's pretty exciting, frankly,

Sean Gonsalves  (07:44):
Vermont, a small state that makes great cheddar cheese my favorite, but that's not why I love it. In addition to their focus, they're centering community broadband with the uds and what have you. They also have created a couple of apprenticeship programs to actually [00:08:00] train people in Vermont, locals in Vermont to help build these networks. So they're really on fire up north there Northeast.

Christopher Mitchell (08:08):
Alright, let's dive in. Let's start off with the ACP Roundup since we already touched on that a little bit. I believe Jess was the only one who had the courage to strike out from the rest of us who said it was doomed in January. Jess, did you like to reflect at all your thoughts that there would be a refill [00:08:30] and it put on life support?

Jessica Auer (08:32):
Yeah, I think maybe I was a little bit in a contrarian mood and wanted to just hold out hope a little bit, but I think it was just a matter of there were so many people benefiting, not concentrated in districts represented by one party or the other. I thought this was enough. There was enough skin in the game from everybody. I mean, it's obviously a lot of money, but I thought big telcos were supportive. There's just too much, I thought, too much [00:09:00] momentum or I hoped I should say, but as a less, as it turns out, not. So

Christopher Mitchell (09:06):
One of the things that we all predicted, I think we agreed on is that there would be a loss of trust, a loss of public trust and some harm to the reputation of those who had signed people up for it. And I think we saw that, although we saw it less than I expected, so I think I could take a minor loss on that. I thought it might be more significant or maybe we just haven't yet seen the full effects. Right.

Ry Marcattilio (09:29):
Yeah. The other [00:09:30] thing I was going to add about ACP is I think one of the big tragedies of it going away is that the national verifier system also was let to die on the vine. And so any state that wants to set up its own ACP like program now has to build from scratch a verifier that lets it figure out who's qualified for the program and keep that going. We have that it existed, I have to imagine it was relatively inexpensive to just maintain and yet now we have to start again.

Christopher Mitchell (09:59):
It would certainly be inexpensive [00:10:00] to maintain relative to its benefits, whether it's for private or public entities that would like to have continued doing that. I expected there to be more of a problem with people who didn't realize that it had been discontinued, had not got the notifications, and were hit with bills and surprised by it. And I don't know that that didn't happen, but it didn't break through into the media or become something that was clearly happening over and over and over [00:10:30] again. I think there might've been isolated incidents, and so I certainly thought that was going to happen, Sean.

Sean Gonsalves  (10:35):
Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you made that caveat because I think just because we didn't hear lots of stories about it has nothing to do with whether or not that happened or not. I just think that there's quite a good track record of news outlets ignoring stuff like that.

Christopher Mitchell (10:49):
Yes, and I think that these are families that are used to getting the short end of the stick and the fact that it happened again may not have triggered a [00:11:00] surprise for anyone.

Sean Gonsalves  (11:01):
Well, let's face it. It's not as exciting and sexy as the price of eggs.

Christopher Mitchell (11:06):
Yes. So that was certainly a big theme. I would say that with you just saying that I expected the price of Internet to go up more than it has for Internet access. Certainly it's continued to go up. Normally I feel like it hasn't gone up as much as I might've expected with all the other prices rising.

Ry Marcattilio (11:27):
December is about when charter normally raises its [00:11:30] prices, maybe it's feeling a little bit of pain having lost, I mean, it was the provider that had the largest proportion of ACP subs, and so maybe they want to stem some of those losses that churn. Yeah, but you're right,

Sean Gonsalves  (11:44):
And yet somehow I feel like subscribers that are seeing increased bills are not exactly going, Hey, well, at least it's only going up at the rate that it has as we've tracked it over these years. I'm sure nobody is saying that.

Christopher Mitchell (11:58):
Yes, you're a hundred percent right. [00:12:00] I agree with you. Okay, we're going to dive in to the predictions in a second. First, I want to say something that I just don't say often enough, which is that the five of us do this for a salary. We work for a small nonprofit organization and we do need subscribers. We'd love to have subscribers. We don't have a subscriber plan right now, but you can send us money anyway. And one [00:12:30] of the things that has warmed my heart is that in the past we've encouraged people to make a weird donation. Don't just donate a hundred thousand dollars, donate $97,642, pick a number, and these have come in two and two figures, three figures, four figures, but just come up with something a little bit odd and say thanks for the community broadband networks work. We're the only program that gets weird donations, so [00:13:00] it's great to see those coming in.

(13:02):
And anyway, our work is something that we're a 501c3 nonprofit and we get by with a combination of philanthropy donations from people and contract work, and we're never really sure how long we'll be able to keep the team together. Right now we have very good runway for a nonprofit, but we really need to keep that up when we have such high capacity people. [00:13:30] When we built the team back when I was at Dimwit before I got a little bit sharper on this stuff, it was just me and then it was me and Lisa and Lisa and I did this work, and now we have people that actually know stuff and it's really great. We like to keep able to keep maintaining that. So please do that ILSR.org/donate or if you come to a page that doesn't have a donation link on it, let me know and we'll put it on there because it should be pretty much anywhere you go on community nets.org or anywhere else.

(14:00):
[00:14:00] Okay. One last thing is that Title II was not as big of a deal as I think it has ever been in the past net neutrality. It has come up briefly. I don't know. It seemed like industry is more or less the big companies are more or less focused more on tax policy, I guess, to try to lower their taxes than violating net neutrality or else we're just at a point where we just expect that we will have a federal focus on net neutrality [00:14:30] and proper regulation authority at the FCC under Democrats and under Republicans. The Federal Communications Commission will decide not to do that, but the states like California and others will step up and do it anyway, and so little will change for subscribers, but that was a prediction that I think I made, and I'm going to score myself one for that Ry.

Ry Marcattilio (14:53):
Yeah, I mean I don't really think I have anything to add there. I was surprised at the lack of conversation about Title II last year.

Christopher Mitchell (14:59):
Sean came in [00:15:00] saying that he thought he'd be wrong about most predictions and he got that right, but it wasn't the only one he got. So

Sean Gonsalves  (15:06):
That counts as one, by the way. Right. Prediction,

Christopher Mitchell (15:09):
I actually specifically said it would not.

Sean Gonsalves  (15:13):
Oh, really?

Christopher Mitchell (15:13):
I predicted that you would try to do this now as we go through this, we'll go through some of Sean's predictions and as they touch on other people, y'all should just dive in and then with this list we'll become unmanageable and we'll just round out the show trying to figure out what we missed. But Sean [00:15:30] called for a big merger, so this was a big win for you, Sean, you said there would be a big merger.

Sean Gonsalves  (15:34):
I didn't call for it, I just predicted it.

Christopher Mitchell (15:36):
Right. Sean was begging for a big merger. He thought that's what we really needed.

Sean Gonsalves  (15:41):
Right. Verizon and Frontier Merger and there were other smaller in comparison mergers as well, but pretty big. I mean, you've got Bell Canada and Zippy and those kind of merger varieties, but I think that was sort of a safe prediction, but I made it anyway and I was trying [00:16:00] to run up the score early if I could.

Christopher Mitchell (16:02):
I thought there'd be more and I thought the cable companies would be involved in some. And so I think it's interesting that we did not see as many, I mean, perhaps it has to do with Lena Khan and the new resurgence of anti-monopoly, which is welcomed I think for many of us.

Ry Marcattilio (16:19):
And in 2025, we may see some of those cable companies as they decide that BEAD funds are out of reach or they want to change their plan, they decide to [00:16:30] go for sale anyway. So 2025 may be the year. Sean, if you want to get in that prediction nice and early.

Sean Gonsalves  (16:35):
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (16:36):
You said the first subscriber for BEAD would be connected and it would be in Louisiana.

Sean Gonsalves  (16:40):
This was definitely my most wrong prediction. I mean by far, I don't know what I was, I must've been in a super rare optimistic mood when we did this last year. I don't know what, maybe I had too much eggnog spike with Kanye or something, but man,

Christopher Mitchell (16:55):
I mean, I think Christine and Jess have a better understanding of the program and [00:17:00] then we did. Any reactions to that, Christine?

Christine Parker (17:03):
I just agree it was very optimistic, although I had my own related BEAD optimism for this point in time. But

Christopher Mitchell (17:11):
Go ahead, Jess.

Jessica Auer (17:12):
I do think Louisiana is, you're on the right track with that one. They've been out front already and they've already sort of secured all of their bins.

Sean Gonsalves  (17:21):
They ready to go. That's the reason why I made the prediction. I saw them kind of out front, but little did I know that not a single dollar for a BEAD [00:17:30] would be out the door in 2024. And

Christopher Mitchell (17:33):
I think in a few weeks we'll be back talking about perhaps handicapping when we think that first subscriber will get connected, and then we can start answering Travis in the Connect This show. When he says how many people we connected, we can say five, 5,000. Oh five. I started dashboard for that.

Ry Marcattilio (17:56):
We need a custom website, Chris, that just is a BEAD subscriber connected counter [00:18:00] and send it to Travis every day.

Christopher Mitchell (18:01):
I hope the first connected is like an orphanage so we can be like 12 orphan children. We're connected. Okay. Christine, you had BEAD related predictions. Let's tackle BEAD.

Christine Parker (18:14):
Mine was about some states doing better than others in terms of, I think that they were bidding success based on how they designed their project areas. So those states that went a more analytical route [00:18:30] and considering a whole bunch of different factors in designing their project area geographies, I presumed those would do better than states that chose county or zip code or school district as their baseline geography. And we don't have enough data to say anything about that. I thought about half the states would be accepting or had received all their bids by this point and I was very wrong.

Christopher Mitchell (18:56):
I expect that you'll push that and we will [00:19:00] negotiate it next year. So you should remake that prediction the same way. We'll give you credit for it. And one of the ways that this touched on us actually is Jess and I were with at Fort Belknap, a tribal reservation in Montana and talking about how some of the Montana doesn't follow rivers, it doesn't follow the tribal boundaries, and so you have these areas in which some locations within this similar area might be very [00:19:30] different from each other and inappropriate to group together. So I'm hoping that we will learn more about that, although I'm not really sure when we'll use that knowledge for good again in the future because probably not going to go through this kind of a process again. Any other BEAD thoughts?

Christine Parker (19:47):
I don't know if it's necessarily BEAD, but I predicted the FCC would change their broadband definition, which they did.

Christopher Mitchell (19:53):
You nailed that. Sean said they wouldn't. So it's another mark against Sean. Yes, [00:20:00] it was good. I'm glad that they did it. Jess, your main prediction, I think your big prediction was related to challenge processes, which I would say is very much about BEAD. So what did you say and how would you evaluate it?

Jessica Auer (20:14):
I said that the vast majority of challenges in the BEAD process would come from ISPs and communities would not really participate. I think that was a little bit of a layup there. I think that was kind of an easy prediction to make, and my knowledge [00:20:30] is not necessarily systematic, but from looking at a lot of the challenges coming in, I think that's correct. We got a couple of nonprofits out there doing a heavy lift, but otherwise very few communities participating directly.

Christopher Mitchell (20:43):
Yes, and I will just use that to note this is predictable. When the Federal Communications Commission encourages tacitly, encourages companies to be responsible, it's also [00:21:00] refusing to punish those who are irresponsible. And so there is an incentive for Internet service providers to lie for some of them that are less honest or else less good at managing their own data. And the Federal Communications Commission just wants to push that on local communities to try to fix, and that's ridiculous. The Federal Communications Commission should be trying to figure out some way of validating this data and should be not punishing those who make honest mistakes here and there. [00:21:30] But for those who have systematically made errors, there should be some kind of a threat in which the ISP would have an incentive not to put up tons of incorrect data. Now, Christine, you have developed maps to give us a sense of whether there are some areas in which ISPs have put out really, really bad data because we've seen correction after correction. Any quick reflections on that?

Christine Parker (21:56):
I would say it's been really, it's taken a [00:22:00] while to get those data in a useful format because it's the same kind of download process as the other availability data. So I don't know that I have any conclusions from that per se, but I will say I recently was listening to folks from the Louisiana broadband office and I asked about these issues with ISPs and problematic claims and development and such, and they, I believe wrote into one of their proposals that they [00:22:30] can withhold BEAD funds for ISPs that are causing problems. So something to keep an eye out for. I am sure there are probably other states that have this written in there as well. Whether or not that happens I think will be something to look for

Christopher Mitchell (22:48):
The maps that you've produced, understanding that if you want to have a well-grounded high confidence statement that it's caused by one thing and not just some states having a better challenge process [00:23:00] than others. Fine. My read on the data you've put out is that there are some areas where there is just a lot of successful challenges because a company was way overclaiming and got busted with. Its trying to get its hand in the cookie jar.

Christine Parker (23:14):
Yes. And also though the areas where you don't see anything doesn't mean it's not happening there. It just means no one has necessarily looked for issues there or been able to handle that kind of a task. It's not an easy [00:23:30] thing to do these bulk challenge processes.

Christopher Mitchell (23:33):
Right. Your top prediction was that there would be three states way ahead in program design and not the ones that we think. And before I savage you for how wrong you are, what's your own analysis of your performance? Right.

Ry Marcattilio (23:52):
Well, I think you've already implicitly accepted that I'm right. You didn't go after Sean for Louisiana. Yeah, I think we could [00:24:00] say that there are a handful of states that are way further ahead. I think Louisiana was the one we all knew though. I don't think I said anything about doing a better job. I think I just said that that would be ahead, that we didn't know. Sure. Louisiana. Montana. I don't think anybody would've had Montana on the list. I think we would've said. So that's one.

Christopher Mitchell (24:18):
I'm not giving you Louisiana, but I'll give you Montana. How

Ry Marcattilio (24:20):
About Colorado, Chris? They're pretty far ahead.

(24:22):
Colorado is one of the best run states in the nation probably. Well, I mean sure you could say that now having the hindsight of 12 months. [00:24:30] I think if you had polled us at this time last year, and I wasn't a part of the prediction show last year, but I think we would've said Virginia, they've got the vadi program is strong, they work with lots of providers. They've got a relatively strong framework in shape, and the broadband office has been around a long time. Illinois, another state that had a strong broadband office before didn't seem like they would be playing catch up. Both those states are like middle-ish of the pack Minnesota's towards the end as well, despite having the border to border program [00:25:00] for many years. So I'm going to hold on strong to that one. I'm going to say I give myself a strong plus

Christopher Mitchell (25:07):
One. Jess and Christine, are you going to let your boss get away with that and in their silence?

Ry Marcattilio (25:13):
Chris, you have your answer.

Christine Parker (25:16):
I will say, I think a lot of the states, their timeline right now is largely a function of how much happened in their challenge process. Some states are still processing all the data that they have to review [00:25:30] and process to actually confirm or throughout a challenge. It's a lot of work, so a lot of empathy for those folks processing all of that stuff.

Jessica Auer (25:40):
I would say Virginia WA ahead, they got kind of held back a little bit by that low cost kerfuffle. But the other thing I would say is the ones you mentioned, they're going slower. Is that necessarily wrong? I don't know. I don't know that we should say fastest is always best.

Ry Marcattilio (26:00):
[00:26:00] No, no, a hundred percent. And that's exactly what I'm saying. There are many states that are farther ahead that we might wish would go slower instead of saying, let's get this BEAD money out the door and close up shop as fast as we can. The states that are taking a more measured, thoughtful, nuanced approach are going to be slower. Like in Virginia where they try to do a little bolder stuff with the low cost plan, they end up getting into it with NTIA and it slows the whole thing down. The other thing I would say is we talk about the challenge process, and [00:26:30] it's certainly right to try and get as many things right on the ground as we can. But let's remember that the whole reason this challenge process was such a mess in 2024 is because we paid conquest or $50 million or to build the maps. And then afterwards, they're still so bad that the FCC says, now let's crowdsource fail testing this map and let's put some additional responsibility not only on state and local governments, but ISPs and small providers, medium providers, large [00:27:00] providers, to then fix the errors that we could have probably caught if we had done this right in the first place. So no map is without errors, but we could have done a lot better for the money we spent.

Christopher Mitchell (27:12):
Sean, any reflections on that?

Sean Gonsalves  (27:14):
No, I'm just anxious to get to the list of correct predictions that I also made that we haven't covered yet.

Christopher Mitchell (27:22):
Okay. Well, we'll have plenty of time for that. That's not going to take so long to get through. Sory made a prediction that we would be surprised at the problems [00:27:30] in BEAD, and I notated this internally with capital letters because I just feel that this was, if I let you wiggle out of the last one, I'm going to be very harsh on this one. I feel like all the problems in beat is exactly what we expected.

Ry Marcattilio (27:45):
Well, okay, so let's fight about this for a second, Chris. I think a year ago if you had asked us, we were talking about supply chain issues, we were talking about letters of credit. We're not talking about, we didn't talk about really either of those things throughout the majority [00:28:00] of 2024. We're talking about these days the last 3, 4, 6 months. We're talking about the devil being in the details. We're talking about the challenge process and how whether states are allowing area challenges or not, whether they're allowing reliability and latency challenges or not. Those are not the things that we talked about at all last year. We

Christopher Mitchell (28:19):
Didn't, I mean, Jess made a prediction about them, so

Ry Marcattilio (28:21):
Well, I try not to, no. If there's a prediction I have to contend with from Jess, then I could do so at that time. The other thing I want to say is we weren't talking [00:28:30] about extremely high cost threshold or alternative technologies at this time. I was

Christopher Mitchell (28:34):
Last year, I've always been talking about this and how it was really interesting how different states would set the difference. So you could have one state in which you're building fiber out to a $10,000 cost build in another place. You wouldn't necessarily, so I don't know. I'm inclined to round down on this one. I see Sean nodding along with me.

Sean Gonsalves  (28:55):
I root forry at all times, but I have to agree with you here. I mean [00:29:00] that.

Ry Marcattilio (29:00):
All right. I'll take my lumps if I deserve 'em, I guess.

Christopher Mitchell (29:04):
Alright, any other BEAD ones that I'm forgetting? I think I had one, which was that we would see a showdown where some states were just basically daring the NTIA to cut them off or do something. And I would say that that is, I'm not going to mount a ridiculous defense like Ry has. I'm just going to say that I think I got that one wrong, although perhaps I was early. Sean, [00:29:30] you disagree. You think that someone's going head to head with the NTIA?

Sean Gonsalves  (29:34):
Yeah, I just mentioned it, Virginia and the whole low cost beef.

Ry Marcattilio (29:40):
I think Chris is talking a more like, we dare you not to give us the money despite openly defying you, and that was a much more negotiated process.

Sean Gonsalves  (29:48):
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (29:48):
Yeah, which is good. I mean, we're not rooting for the breakdown of the relationship between states and the federal government on this show, so I'm glad to see that and I hope that we still avoid it, although that would [00:30:00] smile a little bit on the inside that I was so smart if it did happen. One of the things I forgot to mention was that in some of Emma's predictions, she did predict regarding ACP that we would see localities or states filling in the gap some and trying to create their own programs. I think that hit budget realities that this is not something that is affordable. And so Illinois looked at it, California looked at it, and I think they've generally found that [00:30:30] they cannot move the needle. It just is too costly to try to subsidize the failure of this broken market for service to so many homes. Also, Emma had noted that she would expect to see creativity around apartment buildings and such, and we have seen that in New York, Maryland, Massachusetts. We saw Nevada try to do it and sort of step back, although I think there might still be some local things happening in the Vegas region. And so definitely I saw a lot of creativity there [00:31:00] and we'll continue to see that. I hope, I mean,

Sean Gonsalves  (31:03):
I actually think that that was one of the better predictions that anybody made, and she was right on the money.

Christopher Mitchell (31:08):
Yeah. Christine

Christine Parker (31:09):
Maine is also working on pushing some policy through that would allow folks in MDUs to have choice versus what landlords are saying.

Christopher Mitchell (31:17):
Yeah. So that's going to be a continued hot area. Let's get back to Sean, different subject. Sean, what are you excited to brag about? What'd you get? Right?

Sean Gonsalves  (31:28):
I know you're going to disagree with this, but I predicted there'd [00:31:30] be a staggering number of P3s. And the reason why we're going to disagree is because we have a different definition of staggering. I meant it in the relative sense.

Christopher Mitchell (31:37):
We pinned you down with a number, man. I said what, 10, 15? You were like 50. You were like five zero. That's what you said

Sean Gonsalves  (31:45):
There weren't 50.

Christopher Mitchell (31:46):
I mean, it would've been most of the major metro areas of the United States if there was 50.

Sean Gonsalves  (31:52):
Oh, well, here's the problem is I don't know what that number is, but I still think it's closer to 50 than zero.

Christopher Mitchell (31:59):
Okay. What are some of the top [00:32:00] ones? What would you highlight?

Sean Gonsalves  (32:01):
AOE in Boulder. Alright.

Christopher Mitchell (32:05):
Coming through right at the end there.

Sean Gonsalves  (32:06):
Okay. Right, right at there. So that's where I start there.

Christopher Mitchell (32:09):
Yeah. I mean we've got a few in LA that I'll give you through the California Public Utilities Commission.

Sean Gonsalves  (32:14):
Right. We've got a handful in New York.

Christopher Mitchell (32:17):
No, no. Erie, you got one maybe in Buffalo we're talking about, you weren't just saying any old Podunk town that happens to

Sean Gonsalves  (32:25):
Yeah, no, I was, I'm casting a wide net here. I think that aren't there Ry? [00:32:30] Help me out here. Aren't there a bunch in Vermont?

Ry Marcattilio (32:33):
I'm quickly pulling up the database shot to try and help you out

Christopher Mitchell (32:35):
Here. We're talking about real big, my impression and this, I just re-listened to it before we came on here and my impression was that you were talking about big cities.

Sean Gonsalves  (32:45):
No, no, no. If I conveyed that then that was my bad, but I was trying to go for to be right. I was just thinking that there's all this interest in public-private partnerships and that there would be a bunch.

Ry Marcattilio (32:57):
Okay. Yeah. I think we saw a couple [00:33:00] new Western Massachusetts towns partner with Citi. Really? I'm trying to help you out here, Sean. A couple of tribal partnerships. Maybe Jess can correct me if I'm wrong. And then a handful of medium to small size towns. I don't know that I can get you to 50 Sean, but if people know about partnerships that we haven't written about, please send them our way.

Sean Gonsalves  (33:23):
Right, right. So I'll give up the ghost on that one. Okay, fine.

Christopher Mitchell (33:26):
You said that the Federal Communications Commission [00:33:30] would be defanged on digital discrimination. I think we all pretty much agreed on that, that we wouldn't see much. I mean, it's in the courts. Certainly the courts are dismantling a lot of authority that these agencies can use, including one that we're deeply concerned about moving into the future about whether the Federal Communications Commission would need to go to a jury trial to impose penalties on some of these companies who are engaging in egregiously bad activities. [00:34:00] That is a recipe for just grinding things down and not being able to penalize these companies for things that they do wrong deeply, deeply concerning.

Sean Gonsalves  (34:11):
So I guess about a half point on that. I guess officially it hasn't been defanged, but it's certainly moving in that direction and I think it lays the groundwork for a prediction for me for next year.

Christopher Mitchell (34:23):
Christine, you said that we would see more fiber deployment from smaller ISPs than bigger, and I wrote [00:34:30] how are we going to evaluate that?

Christine Parker (34:31):
I don't recall this, but I did see it in the transcript and I don't really know. There have been a lot of new small lake municipal networks since I just refreshed our municipal cooperative and tribal map. There were a lot of additions to that since the last version I put together. So I'm going to say kind of yes.

Christopher Mitchell (34:54):
I don't know. I mean, I do think that the big companies have scaled back my recollection of announcements [00:35:00] over the course of the year. Ryan, do you have any doubt on it or just a feeling?

Ry Marcattilio (35:04):
I think I generally agree with you that it seems like we saw a bunch of big announcements in the early part of the year and then throughout we saw things scaling back from the top five or so

Sean Gonsalves  (35:16):
Fiber to the press release.

Christopher Mitchell (35:18):
But at the same time, the partnership AT&T has with BlackRock for that open access network. I think that's passed. I don't a lot of prem, I want to say hundreds of thousands maybe. I'm totally [00:35:30] misremembering. There is a challenge in just that AT&T is a very large company can hire a lot of contractors and it can build relatively quickly. So I'm not as sure, Christine,

Christine Parker (35:44):
Neither are I really.

Christopher Mitchell (35:45):
I want to agree with you, and I think if at some point you wanted to pull some of the data to see change over time, that might be an interesting analysis, but your time is valuable and it might not be worth it to win a [00:36:00] bet that is meaningless.

Christine Parker (36:02):
We'll see. We'll

Ry Marcattilio (36:03):
See. Plus we've got to give AT&T a little bit of a break. They've been spending a lot of 2024 getting ready to abandon a bunch of people on their old copper lines, and I'm sure that takes a ton of internal energy.

Christopher Mitchell (36:16):
Yeah. One of the things I thought was interesting was that AT&T, its stock is doing much better now that it's not trying to be a media company. I saw some headlines saying it's getting back to what it does well, and I was like, maybe [00:36:30] I'm not really sure that at and t does a lot. Very good. So let's see here. The FCC broadband definition was changed. We talked about that already. Whether or not there would be a big campaign against municipal networks, I thought there would be. I thought were laying the groundwork. I'll again say that I just think that was wrong. There was not a major campaign. There was quiet campaign. Sean, if you think this is a major campaign, then [00:37:00] let me just regale you with tales of 2011 and 2006 and 2005 sometime, because I wouldn't consider what we saw to be a major campaign. I would consider it to be a half-hearted attempt by a bunch of think tanks to try to get some more money out of at and t and Spectrum.

Sean Gonsalves  (37:16):
So by major campaign you meant television commercials and stuff like that?

Christopher Mitchell (37:21):
Yeah, I mean a coordinated effort to go after municipal broadband, and I don't think we saw it. I still don't understand that campaign of [00:37:30] a million dollars in the utopia footprint. In retrospect, it still doesn't make sense why they just suddenly went after utopia fiber, a network that is doing extremely well. And I thought it was setting the ground for something else, but if it was, it's a long play and we've not seen it yet,

Sean Gonsalves  (37:49):
Which is a good segue to the various predictions we made around preemption.

Christopher Mitchell (37:53):
Let's save that for the end. I had said that fixed wireless would slow down and not pick up as many subs. I was wrong. [00:38:00] It might've slowed down a little bit, but it has grown. I think I more or less suggested that the number of new broadband subscribers would be more or less, we wouldn't significantly increase it. And I think that's mostly right, but it's hard to know because the data won't come in for another several months. But I did have a question out that I've not had an answer to yet. And maybe when we do the predictions, we can revisit that. I think it would be interesting to know what the trend was for 2024, but I think in general we saw people switching more than we saw [00:38:30] a lot of new people coming on. Ry, you try to pay attention to this too.

Ry Marcattilio (38:35):
Yeah, I think you're right.

Christopher Mitchell (38:36):
Yep. I had said that if ACP did die, no one would face any consequences for that. And I was right. The Federal Communications Commission, no one had a plan and no one is saying, why didn't you have a plan except for people like us. So whether it is the people that were the warriors for ACP or those who are content to cut 22 million households off [00:39:00] of this subsidy, no one faced any consequences for the people that wanted to preserve it failing or those who wanted to see it collapse, collapse. But the consequences are being felt by the digital divide folks, the people who are working on that certainly, but the actual decision makers at the top, once again, kind of get off without they get a pass.

Sean Gonsalves  (39:26):
You scored on that, but in the same way, somebody where there's no defenders [00:39:30] within an entire half court and the person puts a layup right under the basket. Yeah, you scored.

Christopher Mitchell (39:37):
Yeah, thanks. Most major metros would still be just hoping that someone else would fix this. Yes, most major metros don't have a plan. We see some, I would again point to Los Angeles. I think there's people in New York City that are really trying to figure out what they can do after the mayor shut down their investment plans and [00:40:00] then he just gave $90 million to the big cable and telephone companies to do nothing. They did nothing. And now they're scrambling to try to figure out what the new plan is. But that mayor is like, whatever is not my problem, I'm not going to be around much longer. So he wrote a check to his fans and I got that done. There's some places that are taking action, but Newark is one of the ones. Cleveland have people that are making smart plays. Baltimore has some startup groups that are doing a good job and the city's [00:40:30] been developing a plan, but a lot of places just they're heads in the sand trusting

Sean Gonsalves  (40:37):
Oakland. Also, we got to give a little shout out to Oakland.

Christopher Mitchell (40:39):
Yes, Oakland. And again, the CPUC, the California Public Utility Commission. I said the head of the show. I think that's one of the best things about 2024 I think is the California Public Utility Commission. Last year, we were deeply concerned that they would be prioritizing rural, wealthy homes at the [00:41:00] expense of more urban areas that have been really locked out of the investment that they need. And I think the CPUC has done a really good job balancing their awards that they've made so far. Jess has been the one that's really been tracking it for us. So thanks for keeping us in the loop, Jess. The two big things that we have left then are the preemption, how many states and how many new networks there would be. We always save those for the end. We were all wrong on the number of cities. So

Sean Gonsalves  (41:30):
[00:41:30] Some of us were more wrong than others though,

Christopher Mitchell (41:32):
For sure. Yes, yes, of us were more wrong. Christine said 33 before we say how many there were. Christine said 33. Jess predicted 19. I predicted 17. In fact, Jess just picked 19 to just really prices his right me out. Ry predicted 25. Emma picked 26 to prices his right, him out. And Sean, you predicted 10. So Ry the keeper of the data. Who was the closest?

Ry Marcattilio (41:59):
Oh, I thought [00:42:00] you were going to say who's a loser? And I was going to say we're all losers, Chris, because it was only for,

Christopher Mitchell (42:04):
But by that we actually mean new networks that turn people on.

Ry Marcattilio (42:08):
Yeah, yeah. And so to be clear, there's some good news to be had, which we could talk about it, but networks which started construction and turn people on in 2024 for whatever reason, maybe it was folks assuming BEAD would come and save them. Even though we, among others, we were telling folks BEAD is not coming to your city. Whether it was [00:42:30] them using the cloud cover of BEAD to just not take action, which is certainly a thing that could happen.

Christopher Mitchell (42:35):
No, no, it's none of those things. It's that in our minds, we were thinking of the number of cities that were going to be doing something and we weren't really thinking about the timelines. And so New York itself has more than four new munis that are going to be building networks that we learned about recently because of the state awards. California probably has 10 to 20, and we're not counting them. They've not turned on a sub yet. And so I feel like our [00:43:00] numbers were still fairly realistic. It's just the timing of when they turned on their first subs is a bit different.

Sean Gonsalves  (43:05):
Excuse me, we're breezing over something. You asked the question of who was the closest

Christopher Mitchell (43:12):
Sean needs this folks. It's been a rough year for him.

Sean Gonsalves  (43:15):
Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (43:16):
Pearl's gone and he's already smiling more. I'm glad to see. But his beloved chariot has expired, so Sean needs some victories.

Ry Marcattilio (43:26):
That's right. To be clear, this

Christopher Mitchell (43:27):
Is a car, not a horse that Chris is talking about. [00:43:30] It was a wonderful car I myself had ridden in it and it was wonderful. So the other prediction was around the states, how many we would see eliminate or create new preemptions. I predicted that we would end up the same, although Emma said we might have a few differences. Sean said there would be no movement. Christine said three states would eliminate their rules. Jess said there would be no change. [00:44:00] Ry don't recall what you had. Did. You

Ry Marcattilio (44:03):
Wisely stayed out of this one.

Christopher Mitchell (44:04):
Okay. Emma said that there would be zero or one new predictions. So the state of Minnesota removed its preemption.

Sean Gonsalves  (44:14):
Emma had it right.

Christopher Mitchell (44:15):
I don't think we give it to Emma.

Ry Marcattilio (44:16):
You can't say it's zero or I could say between zero and 25. I don't think we give.

Christopher Mitchell (44:20):
Yeah, we wouldn't allow that. But for Emma, we'll let it go through. And I'm prepared to say that. So we did go from 17 states with preemption to one. We did not [00:44:30] see any new states enact it, although I think there was some language that popped up here or there. And I expect that we'll see a bit more of that, but we'll save that kind of talk for the pre prediction show next year.

Sean Gonsalves  (44:42):
Emma, be glad that you're in grad school. You can see your former bosses, the Grinch who stole prediction points.

Christopher Mitchell (44:51):
Any last thoughts as we wrap up or look back?

Sean Gonsalves  (44:54):
We didn't cover the nutrition labels.

Christopher Mitchell (44:56):
Yeah, I mean it's a similar sort of thing and I don't know. I mean [00:45:00] still we could talk about them real quick. We should. I am flummoxed honestly at the Wall Street general story that Sean, you were quoted in Sasha Meinrath, who I hold in high esteem, continues to feel like the nutrition labels haven't accomplished what they were supposed to. And I will say this, and then Jess, I expect we'll be able to come back with a reason why I'm wrong. But I feel like the nutrition labels are more or less what I expected. It is clear. People can look at it. It is [00:45:30] not like they get thrown around immediately in your face if you're shopping, but it's there and it's an improvement and I'm happy about it. I think the Federal Communication Commission has done an okay job on this considering how bad they've done on everything else. I want to give them a pass on this, but let's go to Jess first and our reaction on the Jess says, no, she does not want to be gone to first. Christine,

Christine Parker (45:52):
I'm also not terribly surprised they are formatting the way they look and everything. I think they're [00:46:00] holding to that. But I think the rules were flimsy enough that the definition of point of sale is a big part of what folks are frustrated about because you have to put in your address or in some places we found you have to get it emailed to you. And so there are these little steps, but it's just how the company is defining point of sale because that was left. So there's some flimsiness in the rules around the labels that [00:46:30] have kind of left it some wonkiness in them. But also on the data side of things, it was really interesting on the dates of release for the big providers and then later this year for the smaller providers, seeing who actually was quick at the start and in terms of getting the labels out there. And also they're also meant to provide a spreadsheet with all of the different label data in it. And municipal networks and cooperatives [00:47:00] were among the best and most consistent in terms of when you search for those files online. They were the ones putting 'em out there initially and then some of the bigger providers came in eventually. But it was kind of interesting to see happen.

Christopher Mitchell (47:15):
Sean,

Sean Gonsalves  (47:15):
On that Wall Street Journal article, it was the most interesting stuff in there, wasn't the stuff they quoted me on. Although I do kind of make the point. Great. It's moving in the right direction. The things that I found most interesting in that article were the fact that there was a couple of people in there, one was a starlink subscriber and another [00:47:30] one was a broadband consultant. And they didn't even know that these labels were a thing or even existed. So that to me was one of the more telling things in there. And then I also thought it was interesting actually crying face laughing emoji that the FCC spokesman in the story says this is an iterative process. It's like, yeah, right.

Christopher Mitchell (47:50):
Yeah. It'll iterate under the next Democratic administration. Yeah,

Sean Gonsalves  (47:55):
Yeah. Right. So like you said, I think it moves it in the right direction. But I agree [00:48:00] with what Sasha Minera said in the story, which is that there are things on the label that people that don't follow the stuff carefully, they don't know what speeds mean.

Christopher Mitchell (48:09):
Bigger number better. I don't know. I dunno what to tell you. People could do some research. They can do an AI search to learn that a megabit is something that is not actually make it a hallucination.

Sean Gonsalves  (48:20):
What would be better, instead of giving speeds is to have something like enough for you to download movies and do zooms. Oh, come on.

Christopher Mitchell (48:27):
People can relate to No, no, no, no, no. [00:48:30] You can download movies on any one of these connections. I don't know. You get what I

Sean Gonsalves  (48:39):
Mean? Meaning that the meaning that

Christopher Mitchell (48:40):
I do know what you mean. I mean you, that you are frustrated that the marketplace is not responsive and you'd like to see it be more. And the simple fact is there's not a magic switch. There needs to be some consumer education and things like that. But

Sean Gonsalves  (48:54):
No, what I'm saying is the idea isn't to educate people about what megabits per second mean. The idea [00:49:00] is the idea is to translate that into what people are using it for.

Christopher Mitchell (49:05):
And again, I'll just say, okay, you've got a hundred megabit connection. You could download and stream anything, anything. You can do it to lots of devices. You go to 500. It's the same thing. It's hard to explain what these connections are good for because they're a general purpose technology. But I'll go back to we've had nutrition labels forever and how many people actually know the difference between a carbohydrate and a fat? They do their purpose without people being [00:49:30] physiologists, if that's a thing, if that's mitochondria

Ry Marcattilio (49:34):
Are the powerhouse of the cells. Chris, that's all I remember from my high school biology class.

Christopher Mitchell (49:40):
That's right. So anyway, we get some good disagreement in here at the end there and I'm looking forward to making the predictions for next year. But I mean, as far as things go, there's like any year we had some real good things, we had some real bad things. [00:50:00] I just as we're moving into the future, I do hope that we can actually hold people to account on these issues because I feel like that's the thing that's still missing is that broadband high quality Internet access gets more and more important and lots of people just skate by elected officials by saying things not actually holding true to them and not being held to account for them. So it's hard. This is still kind of a frontier, but we're working on it.

Sean Gonsalves  (50:29):
I mean, at [00:50:30] the very least, they should be at least coming on the Community Broadband Bits podcast and explaining themselves for that level of accountability.

Christopher Mitchell (50:37):
I'm not the guy who founded a EO who's great at arguing our show's, not about arguing. And so it is hard for me to hold people's feet to the fire. We try to bring on people who are honest, who we think have a message to share with people, but maybe there should be a show in which we bring people on and shake 'em down and really get up in their face. But

Christine Parker (50:58):
Doesn't that Connect This! sometimes?

Christopher Mitchell (51:00):
[00:51:00] Maybe. I mean, my personality is one of trying to, can we all get along trying to figure out what the capital T truth is and I'm not as good at when I'm a host trying to really stick it to someone. I think

Sean Gonsalves  (51:17):
This show isn't about arguing. Forget it. I'm never coming on again.

Christopher Mitchell (51:23):
Well, it's the end of 2024 and we're going to be back with a bunch of new content at the end of [00:51:30] the year. No, at the beginning of the new year. And I want to thank everyone who made it this far, has listened through, and we're excited at the work that you all do because no one is listening to this show who's not involved in making the world a better place. I think if you're sticking through with me, it's because you're dedicated, not because you're the one other person that thinks I'm funny in the world. If you are though, reach out, please. I need to talk to you. Thank you, Christine. [00:52:00] Thank you, Jess. Thank you Sean, and thank you Ry. I'm looking forward to making predictions and we'll see if we can pull Jordan in at the very least for that. Sounds good. Good to see you

Ry Marcattilio (52:11):
All.

Sean Gonsalves  (52:11):
Yes. Cheers.

Ry Marcattilio (52:13):
We have transcripts for this, another podcast [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas. For the show, follow Chris on Blue Sky. His handle is at Sport Shot Chris. Follow communitynets.org [00:52:30] stories on Blue Sky, the handles at communitynets. Subscribe to this and other podcasts 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 [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps [00:53:00] us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through Creative Commons.