Bribe at times because it cost money. I cant thank you enough for coming and speaking and being part of the incompass summit. Thank you for the broadband caucus and we look forward to working with you on legislation affecting the broadband deployments around the country and in michigan. Look forward to it. Chip, thank you. Thanks. [applause] [inaudible conversations] if i could have your attention please, we are ready for the next panel to begin. If everyon c seats, please. [inaudible conversations] all right. Welcome, thank you for joining us morning. The 11 00 oclock session is called bridging the Digital Divide using all the tools in our tool kit. Im your moderator katie, partner here at hogan levels and im joined by esteemed panel of great speakers who have a lot of ideas on how to make sure the promise of Broadband Connectivity is delivered nationwide to the benefit ofef all. To my right is evan fienman, director, broadband, equity access deployment better known as the bead program. Next to him is carl guardino, Vice PresidentGovernment Affairs and policy at torona and then alana dish and then director u. S. Public policy at amazon. Thank you all for being here today to talk about thisimporta. Its a pleasure to be on the panel with you. So to get us started i thought it would be helpful for each of our panelists to talk about what their respective company and product and services and offerings and their Innovative Technologies can be viewed asd longterm solutions for solving the Digital Divide. Carl, would you like to kick us off . Thank you, its really an honor to be here and i just want to start with thank you to evan and team at ntia and the federal Program Officers who i think are just doing job to make this work with our state broadband and stakeholders. Appreciate it. Its two words you probably dont hear enough. Thank you. There are other words we hear more frequently. But not in Polite Company and thank you. I would love to answer your question and if this works since you asked about technology, i wanted to put this up. We had the rotary phone and aree sophisticated in the Communications Methods and thats the same with generation wireless. Our biggest challenge is helping people to understand that Technology Actually has advances, advanced in very proven ways and for us after a 15year journey, 400 million in private whether i■k funded research started by 3 ph. D graduate students at u. C. Berkeley 15 years ago with thate in bridging the Digital Divide, well, how do you do that. When it came to fixed wireless to answer your question directly it was to it was to two major obstacles. Obstacle one was what do you do since four out of five American Families dont have thf sight between their home and vertical asset, cell tower, water tower, grain tower, top of the building. The second is whether youre licensed or unlicensed spectrum about interference cancellation. And with those two goals in mind, again, 13 years solely research and development, this is why i put up jay who was at a trip in lake tah is a deployment of our base notf previously unserved and underserved families 15 and a half miles across the lake. That is so important and here the trees you see are in the forest city of the United StatesCleveland Ohio where we are partnering with an amazing nonprofit called digital c and their goal over just the next 12 to 18 months to make sure that 23,500 underprivileged families have 100, 100 for 18 a month and they pick wireless again again because tree canopynd a hundred symmetrical is no problem 2 for 300 engineers that e torto Wireless Team that they have put together and bring one Political Science major. [laughter] what about the technology that is youre working Digital Divide. We are proud to build the nations and the worlds first stand alone 5g cloud native, open ram network. As some of you may know we are into the wireless space and back in 2019 we did not have a single 5g tower and today we are proud to have more than 20,000 towers with covering more than 250 million americans and with Network Certified by the major cell phone manufacturers, apple,y samsung, motorola and we were able to actually deploy our network in record time which we are proud of and when we were first thinking about how to build our network we made this very deliberate decision to build our Network Using architecture because we wanted our network to be more resilient, more secure, more Cost Effective and more easily upgradeable and tra built on these end to end close systems, relying on one major equipment vender and we wanted to be able to have a choice and among which Vendor Service which parts of the network. We thought that was really important and its for innovation, its for, you know, greater Cost Effectiveness for different part of the network and we can pass on the benefits actually work with more than 80 venders to build our network so we are really proud of that and we see this as a critical aspect of closing the Digital Divide because we are able to have a network that is more upgradeable over time where we can incorporate new technological development, network thats more resilient and more secure. ,we are able to and most Cost Effective we are able to provide a better and more Innovative Network and that is something that truly all americans an consumers deserve and that we feel is very critical to in the long term, in the short term closing the Digital Divide. To. I think im miced all good. It actually requires this mic. Is mine■ working . Yes. I dont i have a pocket one, so director of connectivity Public Policy at amazon. Thank you for having us at the chip and incompass, we are working on range of service that is promote connectivity, support connectivity whether its aws, open Ram Solutions like dish or mesh network, wifi devices or obviously project which is our broadband consolidation which we are developing. We launched our first two satellites in october. We are proud not tut 10 100 mission and helping solve the digitalant topic for us. All of our customers, all of our businesses rely on connectivity and its an area where we feel we can bring our scale and success to help solve an important issue and help be parn of the solution through a new World Technology and we are excited about the capabilities providing that from orbit to orbit. Excellent. Im hearing a lot of enthusiasm about the new technologies. An these companies or each of the different t types of technologys role in helping to address the Digital Divide . Sure. From their home to the internet and back. And the key is to make sure we are efficient and effective in deploying, especially public friends we subsidize one another or the third sort of approach to getting folks online. One of the really strong aspects of the program and one of the Things Congress really got right was it asked us to do phone a project but then said buto please create rule sets to support the use of technology that makes the most sense given the economic poverty and population density and settlement patterns where we are building the network. So what we are going to see across the country if we drive completion we are very much still in the car at mthis moment. Butut we drive for completion every single americans will have ce affordable reliable highspeed internet connection. That connection is going to be utilizing the technology it makes the most sense given again the economics and physical realities of the location. I am really excited that everyone who iss committed to getting folks access to the internet. Whether it be through satellite, or wireless technology, oro fie really stepped up and are meetig the challenge of the moment. This is a onetime program that spins up and spins down at that conclusion everyone is online. Weve gotten an enthusiastic reception from all these folks were trying to meet that to get them on our side. Enthusiasm for technology and solutions with a practical approach you are taking the economic based approach. Im wanting for the private sector side your Company Solution how do you see the Competitive Landscape playing out . Whats it going to take twos stand out in broadband deployment . Do you want to start . I satellite provider to complement the Technology Networks that are represented on the panel. We see that Consumers Want connectivity. They are agnostic on how they get it. We know we have to offer a affordable option. We also highperforming service as well. So really focus on those factors adopted at a low price in their Offering Highspeed service device■s and applications of their choosing. We need to stand out we will be able to use existing capabilities and Customer Service are full Service Offering make sure customers have the service. Thank you. I love the title of this panel abusing the right tool in the toolkit. Heard in those state broadband offices as well. That kind of blur in my mind. But they captured it well and i will paraphrase. We are going to focus on objectives rather than specific technologies. Again and hearing within the overall goal of one 100 of unserved American Families. We will continue to play a positive role with technology tf been commercially available are surging. Twentythree countries next month we have 47 states. Think lots of snow. 20 million homes past 2000 families every single h week for isp partners. 800 per secondd we are now moving forward with 1. 6 gigahertz per Second Period 18 22 miles i love the last of my own because to blow that away. Ten 12 miles its on my roof the dog had to eat the dog food of three 5 miles. We can do this together with the money we have because finances are finite if we created the approach we use geographies. Very informative. Since we all gathered at the summit to discuss policy i thought it be useful to discuss policy recommendations. When you are having these conversations with policy officials and regulators whats your message whether at the federal or local level question of what is action you like to see implemented or addressedo make a positive difference and help your company achieve its goal of addressing the Digital Divide . . Quick sure, thank you so much for the question. One thing we think is really critical to address the near term and to address it to it quy for the fcc to move forward with optimizing twoway high powered fixed Broadband Service in the lower at 12 gigahertz band 12. Two 12. Seven for this is critical code released 500 megahertz of upper mid bend the spectrum that help further the Digital Divide. It would helpgi promote and help promote spectrum sharing. This i r important for three reasons. Which makes acting to make this band available by the commission quickly really, really important. So the first reason as it was outlined with available as they finalize and implement their plans in early next year■i it was great to hear you guys are thinking about diverse set of technologies. We are glad to see some states are considering broadband as a that. It is important broadband providers are able to participate in these differe ess make the projects available. The lower at 12 gigahertz band would really allow for that. Acting quickly is really important for that. Of really exciting technological revolution right now with all of the ai with a lot of different opportunities for people so e to be connected quickly and broadband allows for that. No one should be left behind partic of different Technological Developments that ai brings. And 60 broadband is able to connect people quickly. And thirdly, right now as everyone knows unfortunately Spectrum Authority we think that is to be addressed. But this is an opportunity that the fcc could act on today. While its great to see the National Spectrum strategy different studies will be conducted in that spectrum will be made something the fcc could act on today. Its really comparative in time is of the essence for that. And policy recommendations or takeaways . Sure. Policy wise they want to make sure the federal government the feState Government as well use l the tools support all of the tools. Support satellite capabilities specifically the fcc appreciate the work this commission has th. To support space capability been a supporter of taking it abroad so we really appreciate that. We want them to continue promoting industry with smart spectrum sharing rules which they have done. With a 17 gigahertz proceeding and cpleting the proceeding on spectrum sharing rules. Great proceedings that taken. And continue supporting thehe industry and proceeding with they are doing here and also abroad. Note to partner with the u. S. Government geopolitical issues outside the u. S. We think the fcc and the u. S. Government can be a strong supporter of this technology and capability. Ill be brief on this answer we asked what we do for it if it wereally are asked why we do it. My why is to build stronger communities. So what i will add to my colleagues and i agree with their comments is we have too. We have to make sure. Ancan families cannot be cut off and put back in the Digital Divide. I hope that comes up later with the esteemed members of the house and senate that we will be here so we can try to get that across the goal line and extend the vital program. If you have a■ reaction to these policy recommendations . Sure my first is to say i am not going to comment on whatugh. My colleagues over there are taking a thoughtful approach. I will share a couple of thoughts though. First i think folks saw fcc announced acp will be extending the funds for i the last month d april. That the deeply disappointing failure to allow that of the many millions of americans who are benefiting from it. But selfishly to the extent my Program Success can be characterized that way its going to make my job a lot harder. The economic realnetworks became a lot worse when acp was not authorized. And in fact its require recalculation on the part of isp whats the net value inil highspeed areas . Or another. What were going to have to do in our site is increased subsidy to make that pencil out for folks its also going to take a bunch more places into areas where the op ex could be negative in the way for paying for cap next is going to be tougher to find partners will fight more missioa lower rate of return. I will also say i dont think its discuss often enough people who do a State Government that members who represent State Government be more thoughtful about what can be done at the state level. There are, and i have to be careful here at france was telling states what to or not to do. Im not going to call it specifics but what i will say there exists a tremendous number of good ideas. With this approach. The cross of pollinating when its about lowering barriers to market entry. Whether it is about supporting the expansion of the middle mile and leveraging other infrastructure whether its electrical or transportation define the efficiencies between those things. We theoretically got infrastructure coordinates in a restatement of measurement coordination is happening. Then there is a tremendous opportunity for states to get smarter. For state legislators not to notice a budget gap and see broadband funds but rather to focus on where our leverage opportunities. How we can getultiple across multiple columns if they exist. And we need to do a better job sharing that information from one part of country to another. Works great, its going to be drawing on the left knee brace a there. ■s point so were in the midst of this unprecedented federal investment. Wonder if he could take a step outside the present moment look toward tut well. In the next five or 10 years or even further down the road would you consider a success for your businesses in terms of solving the Digital Divide what is the e future look like to you . For your businesses in terms of solving the Digital Divide what does the future look like to you . As the provider that is brought open then to scale ivi think we just see open adoption for there to be increased demand for the services b both on the consumer side and also on the enterprise side the private sector and the government we think there are so many benefits to service that are detected and so i think we are very eager to see the ecosystem flourish and to become more robust both domestically and abroad. We think it is really important for u. S. ■< competitiveness. That is what we would like to see. Its current with the future needs of families, business ande Community Institutions that will grow over time. Thats why i mentioned our initial for the first 10 quarters 800 megabits per second. I now shipping 1. 6 gigabits and within two and a half years to get to threepoint to gigabits per Second P