Fiber Broadband Association: Education, Research Advocacy

Lisa Youngers:   We participated this year in the FCC proceeding, RDOF – the Rural Digital Opportunities Fund – which is looking at providing dollars to rural areas for the building of broadband networks. And to that end we told the… we participated in the proceeding and we submitted a couple of studies in that proceeding as well. And that’s going to get to your point about satellites. So first we submitted a report by Cartesian. They did a cost study for us and what would it cost to roll out broadband, even to the rural… Fiber broadband even to the rural areas because the satellite and other industries like to say fiber is too expensive, you should do these other technologies even though we know on a performance basis the numbers are bad. As you just said.

Cartesian did a study for us and they found that we could reach 90% of US homes with fiber over the next 10 years for a cost of $70 billion and that we could do that through targeted government support. More municipal bills or electric Co-ops bills private sector innovation, public private partnerships and more innovative deployment methods and let me comment on that $70 billion. While that might sound at first like a big number, it’s very feasible, very doable. We talk about other numbers elsewhere. Congressman Pallone from New Jersey in his Lift America Act in May, that he introduced in May, proposed 40 billion to get broadband out to rural areas. The RDOF, which we are participating in, is a $20 billion fund. The RUS and the FCC already give out millions of dollars at least a year and certainly a lot more over a 10 year period, which is what we’re talking about here.

And even all the presidential candidates right now, obviously we’re in that season, every one of them has broadband in their platform, which first of all, it’s fascinating because you wouldn’t have seen that a few years ago.  But even some of the candidates are more specific in their proposals and at least one of them says, we need to get broadband out to everybody. And I propose an $80 billion package to do that. So our 70 billion number, it’s over a decade. And these are numbers we’re already talking about. These are dollars that people are already willing to look at. So let’s look at it in the right way and let’s roll that broadband out in terms of fiber, right. So our Cartesian study, the punchline is we can reach 90% of the US homes with fiber in the next 10 years for $70 billion very feasible, very doable.

Secondly, then in that same proceeding the RDOF, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, the FCC said, when we give out money we should use a weighting methodology to achieve our goal of utilizing the dollars we do have and to the best way we can.

And you, all of the commenters, why don’t you tell us what’s the best methodology to make sure we’re doing that? We’re capturing the best use of our money and we’re also ensuring that consumers are getting the best experience and the best speeds. So we proposed a weighting methodology in which we found that the FCC and their CAF II auction, by not using the right weighting methodology, disincentivized gigabit providers. And so our weighting methodology would incentivize gigabit providers and we looked at the socioeconomic benefits produced by different access technologies and use cases. So example, telecommuting, remote health, learning, distance learning, e-commerce, video streaming, working at home. All of those use cases bumped up against the different acts of technologies – Fiber to the Home versus Co-ax versus Fixed Wireless versus Satellite. And we came up with a scoring mechanism and asked the FCC to adopt that.

The bottom line is that to ensure the best experience for a broadband customer, to allow them, sort of, to ensure the best experience with these particular use cases. And then looking at, sort of, the different access technologies available, the weighting methodologies should favor all fiber networks. And so we put in that weighting methodology and will tell you of those that participated in the FCC RDOF proceeding, it was only two of us that put in a weighting methodology.

We’ve asked the FCC to adopt that and certainly the outcome should be that the dollars more seriously favor the superior quality of a fiber network and therefore meet the FCC goals of utilizing the dollars to the best of their ability to ensure a better experience and a better speed experience for broadband consumers. So we put in the weighting methodology as well. So a lot of studies from us recently, but it’s all, I think to your initial question, how do you interact with the FCC? Well, we put in this research so they can make informed decisions. And then how do we best advocate for the outcome of fiber networks? I think these studies all altogether in lined up so that fiber is the best use of the dollars and ensures the best broadband experience and the most reliable one for the consumer.

FIBER BROADBAND ADVOCACY

Lisa Youngers:   We are focused on the digital divide in the rural broadband and community broadband arenas. 19 million Americans lack access to broadband and the vast majority of those are living live in rural communities. So what we are seeing at the association… we’re seeing more municipal networks being formed. We get a lot of questions from state legislators or cities, they want to build their own fiber networks. And then we also see electric co-ops getting into the business of building and providing building fiber networks and providing broadband over those networks. I think in total we see that is driving fiber broadband deeper into our communities and we’re seeing it, we’re seeing it from these small players, which I think is important.

As an association then we try to support them and provide resources and educate them on how to build those fiber networks. But it’s to your very point, how do we close that digital divide? How do we address the homework gap? It also does other things it helps provide or allow for the entrepreneurial work, work from home remote work when somebody can stay in their more rural community and maybe they work for a big company elsewhere, but they’re able to do it remotely. And then also as the Attorney General of Colorado just spoke at one of our events in Colorado, as he said, communities need broadband to stay community. We don’t want to see people move away just because they don’t have access to reliable high speed broadband.

We are seeing that trend as I know you are of more broadband being that are driving deeper into communities and new networks being built even by smaller players. We follow that of course, more than a half dozen state legislatures last year change their laws to allow municipals or electric co-ops get into the business of building broadband networks and providing broadband service where they might’ve been otherwise prohibited. So we do track that as state legislatures try to address those laws and make it easier for these entities to get into broadband networks.

Pete Pizzutillo:  Where there is legislative obstacles for municipalities or utilities to get into that business, is the Fiber Broadband Association trying to help convert those states or in dialogue with those legislators?

Lisa Youngers:   Absolutely. So what we’ll do is as those legislative efforts get underway and as the bills are keyed up and considered more seriously, we will definitely weigh in. That’s exactly right, because we are agnostic as to who build or runs the network. But we just want to see the networks be built and provide broadband further into all of these communities. And so we are on the side of making sure those laws get changed to allow for those entities to provide service.

WOMEN IN FIBER ADVOCACY

Lisa Youngers:   The Fiber Broadband Association tries to be responsive to our members but what is so awesome is our members come to us with things they see and things they want to change or things they want support around or ways they think we can best represents our members. And we have a big annual show you talked about. And at that show we’ve always had a Women in Fiber lunch and this last year the Women in Fiber lunch kind of exploded. It had grown from a 25 people on it’s beginning to almost 90 people this year and there was a great energy and a great set of connections in the room and the participant… We did have a couple men and that’s fine, but the, the women in the room came to me afterwards and said, we want to keep this going.

So, we formed a Women in Fiber group. We have a LinkedIn group where we share sort of supportive articles and raise topics that are on the minds of the people in our group. But also right now we’re doing quarterly webinars on topics of interest, but we are still in the formation stage and so we’re happy for this to grow and expand and develop into things that the women want. Right now, the plan is that the Women in Fiber group will be run by a steering committee and I have a handful of volunteers from some great member entities that want to do that. We had our first quarterly webinar in October about developing sponsors in your workplace. There is mentoring and then there’s sponsoring and a sponsor can occur at any stage of your career.

And those are people that go to bat for you, your advancement, the great things people say about you… And that can happen at any point in your career. And we all need sponsors. So that was a great session we had a former FCC commissioner and another telecom executive on the line to walk us through what is sponsoring in your career. And then in December we’re going to talk about at our webinar… We’re going to talk about avoiding the burnout. And that is there are many demands a lot of my members both in their work life and at their home life. And how do you avoid that becoming overwhelming and how do you avoid the burnout? So we’re going to have a life coach with us in our webinar in December and talk about that.

But I think the important takeaway is we’re growing. If people are interested, they should reach out to me and it is still developing and evolving, and it can become whatever the members of the Women in Fiber group want it to become. As you pointed out, I’ve been in telecom and tech a long time and we just want to make sure we’re promoting and supporting women. It’s been largely a male dominated area, especially as you climb up the ranks and we want to make sure we’re supporting women in this field as well. And this group aims to do that. And as I said, we responded to the members’ interests and the members wanted to form this group. Women in Fiber is up and running and I’m happy to answer questions or if people want to join, they can reach me.

Pete Pizzutillo:  I mean I’m exhausted just listening to all this stuff that you’re involved in, so I appreciate your time.  From the research and the education, in advocating for communities and citizens and the US – that’s great work so keep it up. How can our listeners find out more?

Lisa Youngers:   They should go to our website indeed and we are at fiberbroadband.org and there’s a lot there. I will highlight obviously we have meetings or educational workshops. As you mentioned we have an online fiber-optics magazine called Optics for Content about Fiber and also our fiber broadband starter kit for an entity that wants to build their own fiber network. We are also all over LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn and I speak a lot of places so it’s fun to follow me because you can see all the different places we are at the table, which is great. And Fiber Broadband Association and Women in Fiber are all on LinkedIn and LinkedIn has become a dynamic and interesting place for industry information. So I encourage people to either go to fiberbroadband.org or follow me or the association on LinkedIn.