Unedited Transcript

Todd Reed: [00:00:00] Welcome to Keeping the Lights On. I'm your host, Todd Reid, and on this podcast I connect with the owners and pros who design, build, and maintain our electrical communications and industrial world to explore the best ways forward. In this episode, I'm joined by Jim Baller, an attorney at Keller and Heckman, the specializes in communications and BroadB.

He was the founder and president of the US Broadband Coalition and has been a key figure in fiber projects in places like Chattanooga, Tennessee, Lafayette, Louisiana, and more. Jim is a legend in the fight to make high speed broadband accessible nationwide in this episode. We are talking all about broadband, why it's needed, the key ingredients to successful high speed broadband projects, how the private sector can make a significant impact in widespread broadband adoption, and why the US will fall behind as a global competitor without it.

You'll also find out where you need to stop for a bite if you pass through Lafayette, Louisiana. [00:01:00] Let's get into the show.

One of my goals with this show is to bring all the communities together that we serve, and one of the things that we all have in common is meals, right? We share either breakfast, lunch, or dinners together when we, when we visit and make calls together. And so I wanna start each episode by asking my guests to share their favorite go-to restaurant, whether.

For their office work crew, or maybe just for themselves. And so Jim, what's your favorite go-to spot or one that you've had in the past, and how did you hear about it?

Jim Baller: Well, I particularly enjoy going with clients to their definition of their favorite places and their hometowns. And so I've had many wonderful, uh, meals around the country.

But if I had to choose a single, uh, location that stands out to me, it would be Lafayette, Louisiana. The home of Cajun culture, uh, in North [00:02:00] America. And, uh, in particular, uh, two restaurants stand out to me, uh, prs and vermilionville and just wonderful, wonderful food and Lafayette's a wonderful place.

Todd Reed: So how did you discover those?

Jim Baller: I was taken to those places by our. Terry, the head of the, uh, Lafayette Utility System of Mayor Joey Dorell and several, uh, members of the l US and uh, city government organization.

Todd Reed: So did you go there? So was it a long-term project and if so, how often do you think you ended up going to those two places?

Jim Baller: Well, it was a long-term project. It lasted. About 15 years or so, and, uh, we went to those places many times and several other excellent places in Lafayette. There were many other engagement [00:03:00] activities over the years, but that ultimately pulled back to lots of great food and good music and, uh, a wonderful relationship with our.

Todd Reed: Yeah, that's great. If I were to go there to one of those places tomorrow, what would you suggest? I order?

Jim Baller: Well, uh, seafood is there. I think they're crowning offerings in both. In both cases. Soray, crayfish, dishes, uh, lobsters, shrimp. All done with, uh, uh, Cajun.

Todd Reed: That sounds great. Uh, now I need to put that on my list of places to go.

Jim, I love that you found that restaurant while you're actively working on a fiber broadband project, since the main focus of this episode is all about increasing access to broadband around the us. So I want to ask you, why do you believe access to a solid fiber broadband signal is so important to our rural communities [00:04:00]

Jim Baller: like electricity, affordable access to.

Communications capacity now is essential to modern lives. Those networks now are increasingly becoming platforms and drivers for simultaneous progress in just about everything that matters to communities and businesses and institutions. Just think about. There the platforms on which we build economic development, uh, educational opportunity, public safety, healthcare, transportation, improved government service.

The list goes on and on. What part of life these days is not touched by, uh, communications. And if you don't have access to advanced communi. It's not just a [00:05:00] question of not being able to sustain a Zoom call. It means that you're not able to create the benefits of progress in all of those areas that are capable of happening to you, your community.

And we began, uh, you know, some of have been, uh, delivering that message for a very long time, but the covid epidemic really brought home to. America, the need for the ability to communicate. We saw businesses, uh, shut down and people able to continue to work in some capacity over the internet, uh, people educated themselves, uh, when folks could not go to school.

The internet became the vehicle for social media for, for te. And so it got through at last, our [00:06:00] message got through not just to America, but around the world, and it certainly got through to Congress in many states and, uh, private investors, which have now made tens of billions of dollars available to accelerate the deployment, adoption, and use of advanced communications.

Capabil.

Todd Reed: Yeah, I'll tell you, when we did a, we're talking before and you talked about comparing it to the electrification of our country back way back. It really got me thinking about it and kind of just made me realize, and I also read a little bit of a document you that you participated in and way back in 94.

That really opened my eyes honestly to the importance of it. I mean, I think I realized it just kind of on a, you know, cuz I'm impacted by it too, just like we all are, but just really kind of putting into a true context. What it means. And I wouldn't deny someone access to good clean energy, right. To run their life.

So I really need to look at it like that. And, and [00:07:00] I, when I think when we look back on it, I think people will be saying, we should have done this sooner. Like you talked about it in 94, instead of questioning whether or not we should have done it at all. So I guess that leads me to this question, Jim. How does broadband access happen?

How has that process initiated and what are some of the steps, uh, a community has to go through to make it possible?

Jim Baller: I will answer your question, but let me go back to something we said just a moment ago and address that. Okay. Uh, you said, uh, we should have done this sooner. And I look at this, this set of circumstances today, in much the same way, we know that we are heading eventually to big, robust fiber-based broadband.

There will be supplemental, uh, wireless will be satellite supplemental, uh, bandwidth, but we know we need to head in the direction of. More affordable, robust broadband. [00:08:00] We know the rest of the world is going there as well. So why don't we just bite the bullet and get there faster? The faster we get there, the sooner we're gonna reap the benefits that it's coming with it, and the more competitive we'll be on a local, national, and international basis.

But now to answer your question, so how does, how does a broadband. Happen. What, what are the steps in it? Uh, there are lots of different ways that can happen, but here's a pattern that I've seen over and over again in last 30 years. Step one, some local champions emerge. These are people who are visionaries.

They're persuasive, they're very curious. They're energetic. They work, uh, 25 7 a week. They get. The idea in their heads that the community can benefit from a broadband [00:09:00] project. They learn from available resources and there's a lot of available resources. What's involved? Uh, they persuade their colleagues in the community, uh, to think about this, this possibility.

They, uh, read widely. They get a sense of where they're going and eventually they bring along enough people that the community gets serious about the project.

Then at some point they get serious about the project and, uh, do an assessment of what they, their community needs, what their assets are, what their resources are, what the level of competition is, who, uh, potential partners might be. Uh, they, uh, they get a sense of themselves in that process. They figure out what they have and what they.[00:10:00]

How the, how to get what they need on reasonable terms and conditions from those who can supply it. Uh, assuming that all happens, the next step is, uh, how do you, how do you launch this project? Uh, in our experience, quite frequently, a community will issue a request for qualifications or request for information that lays out who they are, what they're looking.

And asks for interest parties to make suggestions to them. These suggestions often give them a lot of useful information. Sometimes it changes the uh, perspective they had when they started the project. Eventually they figure things out and they issue a more formal request for, uh, proposals. They get proposals, they negotiate.

And, any number of things can happen. [00:11:00] increasingly public private partnerships emerge out of processes like these, uh, each of them different, uh, each depending on local, uh, circumstances. But eventually projects get going. They get designed. They get constructed, they get up and running.

And the community eventually, uh, The benefit of, uh, today's infrastructure of, uh, critical importance.

Todd Reed: So what are the obstacles that are preventing us from increasing the broadband around the country?

Jim Baller: Okay, so in some states, uh, there are, legislative obstacles. There are approximately 20. That restrict the ability of, of local governments, cooperatives, partnerships of various kinds. Uh, the list of of different kinds of legal hoops through [00:12:00] which one must jump is much larger than 20. So, uh, we need to, uh, address, uh, legal, hoops that need to be jumped over second.

Understanding of the benefits of broadband networks. As I said earlier, uh, COVID has had an enormous positive impact in helping us understand, uh, what the opportunity here is and, what the need for it is. But there's still, a lot for many areas in the, in the US and around the world to underst. So there's an information gap.

Uh, for example, we tend these days to focus on the challenges of rural broadband, but there are also very significant challenges in urban broadband where, a number of cities have [00:13:00] populations that could benefit from, uh, access to computers and computer literacy and knowledge of how you can use the internet.

Your benefit job training, that sort of thing. So information is a challenge. Uh, the projects are, um, expensive. Uh, we now, as I noted before, have tens of billions of dollars out there and more in the pipeline that will be available for broadband projects and various kinds. So the financial, uh, burden is being decreased to an.

But even, uh, the major funding opportunities that we're looking at are still no panacea. You still have to have projects that work economically and in many cases, that's going to continue to be a challenge. Uh, we're [00:14:00] much, much better off now in terms of the opportunity of facing that challenge than we were two to three years ago.

Far more than we, uh, used to be over the course of the last couple of decades. But, uh, funding still remains a challenge. And my last point is there's supply chain issues on multiple levels, and one of those levels is, uh, that there are, I won't say small, but a limited number of people who have experie.

With projects I've done, many of them have learned lots of lessons and there, uh, there's more demand for that kind of expertise than there are experts to fill that. Hopefully that's going to change as people have much more experience in this area than they had before. But it's an amazing [00:15:00] time, surreal time in many ways, and very optimistic about how this is gonna.

Affect us going forward.

Todd Reed: Okay. The other question that kind of came up while you were talking is, and I don't even know how you'd measure this, if it's population or what, how many communities or population or, or would you say are in the need of this?

And like I said, I'm not even sure I'd ask that question really.

Jim Baller: Uh, I don't know what the current figures are. I'd say, uh, how many communities are there? They're all in need of it. Uh, how many have, uh, adequate service today is anybody's guess? There are many different ways of having service, and what we define as adequate service varies from context to context.

The one thing that I'm sure that most experts including you would. Is that the fccs definition of broadband, [00:16:00] 25 megs down, three megs up is woefully inadequate as a standard. Uh, you're not gonna produce economic development and all the things that I talked to talked about earlier with 25 over three, we need much more, uh, robust definitions to be, uh, talking about what adequate services these.

Todd Reed: So can you share one of a story of one of the biggest challenges or crisises you faced while working on a one of these projects?

Jim Baller: Well, I'll have some fun with this one. . I was working with the, uh, fiber network in Bristol, Virginia, which was due to go on stream a few months down the road when I got a desperate call from, uh, its general counsel.

That we can't get Atlanta Braves games because the [00:17:00] border between Braves territory and Baltimore Orioles territory is Main Street, Bristol, Bristol, Tennessee could get the Braves games, but across into Virginia, that was outside of the, uh, territorial. Uh, limits of, of Braves, uh, games and Crystal made clear that they're closer to Atlanta than they are to Richmond.

And the Braves are the, the team that the locals root for. And if they can't get Braves games, that's going have a very significant impact on their ability to, uh, go forward. In the meanwhile, in Bristol, Tennessee. Uh, charter had its head end in Tennessee and it was able to get Braves schemes and its system [00:18:00] was across both sides of Bristol.

So it was able to use its network, uh, to provide Braves schemes into Virginia. So this was a very serious competitive issue. Well, at the time, uh, my younger daughter was playing soccer on a travel team. Another girl whose father was outside council to the National Football League, and uh, he introduced me to his counterpart with Major League Baseball, who in turn introduced me to the General Council of Major League Baseball in New York.

And, uh, I told him about this problem. It eventually took months, but we found a way to work out the problem and, uh, Bristol got its Braves games and time for the, uh, season to open and the fiber network to go on stream success.

Yeah, that's great. I, I, I probably haven't [00:19:00] underscored as much the, the sense of panic at not being able to get Braves games that Bristol felt at the time, but it was palpable.

Todd Reed: Well, I can imagine people, yeah. Their communities, that, that is very important to them. But I, I think it, you know, while it's baseball and some people might like, yeah, it's baseball.

It's like, well, but that kind of, I think, speaks to bigger things too. Really bigger issues.

Jim Baller: Yeah. I was just going to say this, this was in. 2001, 20 years ago, we didn't have over the top services at that point in time. We couldn't go to multiple sources of information. You either, uh, we were talking about broadband services as being part of a triple play and voice, video and, uh, data.

And if you couldn't deliver cable service, Competitive cable service, you were really in trouble. So that heightens the concern over a level that we would [00:20:00] experience today. Cause we can go so many other resources to get the uh, uh, video services that we, we prefer.

Todd Reed: Right. So you had mentioned, uh, COVID obviously, I think people.

pretty aware of the, the awareness it brought, but what would you say is, is there some, is there anything else that's working in our favor now with adopting broadband nationwide?

Jim Baller: Well, I, I think the biggest factor is that people get it now and, uh, there seems to be a new sense that this is the right time to move forward.

There are lots of opportunities out there that will be lost if, if they don. Produce results. Now. There's a lot more interest in the private sector than we've ever seen before. There's a lot more interest in public private partnerships than we've ever seen before, [00:21:00] and so that, I think what we have that is a great advantage is that we've got lots of wind in our sales right now, and this seems to.

A very exciting time for people to get involved where they might have hung back before or not even had a level of interest that could have been stoked successfully.

Todd Reed: I think this kinda leads into my next question, and I know you have, you could prob, we could probably spend hours talking about all your stories, but why should a community consider broadband?

You have like a success story that, you know, a community that really saw some large benefits.

Jim Baller: Oh, I, I've got so many to tell. Let me just mention Chattanooga, Tennessee, for example. Uh, there was at one point in their history when the town was said to be the dirtiest town in the country for smog and pollutants and so on and so forth, and a [00:22:00] very bright group of people in the town of working with their electric utility and with various other offices in.

Decided to make a major commitment to a broadband project that would, on the one hand enable their communications services to benefit, and at the same time enable them to upgrade their electric grid with. Capacity to detect outages and recover from storms and all that much faster than we were able to do before.

Eventually, they spent a couple hundred million on upgrading their network for both communications and smart grid purposes. And a professor at the University of Tennessee named Bento Lobel over the years has, uh, been doing. [00:23:00] Of the economic and social benefits of the city's network. Uh, he produced a paper a couple years ago, which by that time had tracked 2.69 billions of dollars of economic and social benefits for their investment of a couple hundred million.

Now, I would not be surprised that if similar studies were done in dozens, scores, maybe hundreds. Communities that have access to advanced communications networks, either publicly owned or cooperatively owned, or public private partnerships, we would see similar tracking of the economic and social benefits of networks like this.

Todd Reed: That's a, that's a great story. So now we've kinda laid all this out. We've kinda laid down the framework here, or the foundation. Let's talk about what's next and how we actually solve this problem. [00:24:00] So, if we were to jump forward in time and broadband was successfully made acc, you know, accessible nationwide, what does that world look like to you?

Jim Baller: Well, I wish I knew, I'm not sure because I know that we will definitely see communi. That don't currently have access and do get access to experience the uplift that those who have, uh, gotten networks have experienced. Uh, so we will see definitely a change in the communities that are currently unserved or underserved in a very significant way going forward.

We will also see a transformation everywhere based on changes of assumptions that people have, uh, made over the years. I don't know how those things are gonna turn out, but [00:25:00] again, so Covid showed us that, uh, we can work successfully without going downtown into big office buildings and being there every day.

Uh, we've found out that we can. Very productive and even in some cases more productive because we save an hour or more of, uh, commuting each way, cities will transform themselves in, uh, ways that, uh, we can only begin to imagine. We're going to see revolutions in electronic electric vehicle. We're gonna see smart city applications of multiple kinds. Telehealth is going to significantly change access to healthcare. You're not gonna have to get into a car and drive 3, 4, 5 mile hours. If you live in rural settings, in order to have meaningful [00:26:00] interactions with the medical community, towns that might otherwise have become ghost towns, which is what happened in the age of electricity for lack of electricity, now may be able to attract whole new, uh, populations of people who don't wanna live in major students who'd like to live in, uh, smaller.

More rural, more neighborly in their view places, but need to have the capability of working from there successfully. As the story you told earlier, all of these things are happening in many more. I have colleagues who've been focusing on, uh, the future of work and they're, uh, seeing multiple ways in which we're beginning to adapt to a.

Phase of human existence. I'm hoping [00:27:00] that this transformation going forward will also have a positive impact on our way of communicating with each other. Our world today seems to be so, uh, divisive and, uh, antagonistic. And if you look at the broadband world, You might think that's true of the communications world as well,

but at the local level, we've seen so many. That advanced broadband networks is viewed at the local level as something that will promote common needs and common opportunities for the local community. Economic development is something that crosses political, uh, religious and other lines, and we often see communities coming together.

I mentioned Lafayette in the, the, uh, [00:28:00] referendum. My wife, who is very active politically here in Washington, came down with me for the, uh, referendum and she was absolutely amazed to see that in the particular, uh, room that we were, uh, monitoring across the city that day. You had the leadership of both the Republican and Democratic party and the 20 living.

Leaders past leaders of the local Chamber of Congress all working together to support this project because they viewed it as a, uh, source of economic development and quality of life for the community as a whole, as it happened to Lafayette a century before when they were thinking about electr.

Themselves. They did that and they [00:29:00] ended up getting a branch of the state university cause of that. So I'm hoping that, uh, working together at the local level on what communities needs and how they can benefit collectively will, uh, help bring us together, uh, as a nation or contribute to that in a way.

Definitely need it today.

Todd Reed: Yeah. Any opportunity to bring us together is, uh, very welcome. For sure. So let's talk a little bit how we get there. What are a couple of the key things that need to happen?

Jim Baller: Well, um, here's one thing. Under the, uh, infrastructure and Jobs Act, there will be some 65 billion being distributed on BroadB.

Activities of which 42 and a half billion are for broadband projects. The National INS Institute for Information and, uh, [00:30:00] technology Administration is administering the program and it has, it is going to be reviewing plans and proposals of states who actually get shares of. Funding and then redistribute it to various projects in their states.

One thing that I think is very important is that, uh, states develop criteria for distribution of these funds. So they go to the ones, to the projects that on their merits are the best available. We are going to be and already have seen efforts. Established carriers to try to, uh, persuade states to funnel resources in their direction.

And indeed, if they have the best proposals, they deserve it. But if they don't, uh, the rules and [00:31:00] guidelines should be constructed so that the best projects be they public, be they cooperative, be they public, private partner. Be unrestricted in their access to these resources. So I think that's a very significant impact that we're, uh, potentially going to have if the rules are done right.

Uh, mapping has been a real challenge. It will continue to be a challenge for some time. Uh, hopefully things will get better and eventually will be solved, I'm sure. But for now, uh, mapping still remains an issue. It remains an issue in part. What the numbers initially show are not necessarily what reality is.

Uh, in the past we've seen lots of fcc, uh, maps and charts and figures suggesting that broadband is being provided or is available in various areas according to the [00:32:00] folks who, uh, claim to be, uh, servicing those areas when in fact the reside. Aren't seeing anything like the uh, uh, claims that are being made and, and there are lots of complexities involved in that process, but mapping something we need to get right, and I think ultimately the biggest factor is we need to have a positive attitude about the accomplishments that are available to us.

I don't think there's any challenge that we can't. If we put our minds to it and steer our way through the challenges in a way that are designed to get the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people in the shortest period possible.

Todd Reed: I'm curious, uh, you've brought something up a couple times. I'm just curious if this is one of the, as things that will drive this, and that's the concept of [00:33:00] public-private partnerships.

Can you maybe explain what that means a little bit and. Why they're so necessary to make this happen, and then just to make it even a longer question how they're formed.

Jim Baller: Sure. Well, let me start out by my own journey into this area. 30 years ago, in fact, exactly 30 years, beginning in December, a month from now, I got involved in helping the American Public Power Association, which is a national association representing the.

Of the nation's publicly owned electric utilities, municipal utilities, utility districts, irrigation districts, that sort of thing. And they emerged century ago, uh, when the private sector was building out electric systems and major cities and, uh, profitable homes of the rich and famous and so on and so [00:34:00] forth, and left most of the.

Unserved at their peak. 3000 communities across the country stepped up to develop their own, uh, electric systems, and about 2000 of those are still operating today. They have certain advantages that a city as such does not have. They have their own network that's up and running already. They have customer relationships.

With residential, institutional, commercial, industrial customers already, they know how to run high tech, uh, projects. They have access to pole ducks, conduits, rooftops towers, uh, they know how to build customers, they know how to do customer service and so on and so forth. So for them transition into providing broadband service.

Still [00:35:00] challenging, but it's easier than it is for a community that has no experience with any of these things or those other kinds of assets. Now, uh, they do have many cities have substantial experience with constructing public works projects, of managing public rights of way with, uh, interacting with their communities, with, uh, in some cases, Aggregating demand, and so on and so forth.

In the meanwhile, you have private sector that may have more experience than, uh, some communities have with providing communication services, uh, with, uh, the technologies involved, the improvements coming, the, uh, unique activities that go on in communications field. So that's the beginning of the process.

There are also other considerations. There are funds available [00:36:00] to the public sector that may or may not be available to the private sector. Uh, there are, uh, resources that private entities may be able to, uh, bring to the table that, uh, local government might not have, such as, uh, buying discounts for equipment and other facilit.

And so as I mentioned before, when you ask me how a project happens, often it's the case that a community that doesn't have its own electric utility will discover early on that it hasn't a lot of needs the same as other communities do, but they don't have the experience or the resources to, uh, gear up to run a communications project successfully.

They do have lots that they can bring to the table, but they need to work with a private entity. So for [00:37:00] some communities, even some communities that do operate their own electric or other utilities, uh, they may find they have other priorities or other interests, and even for them, a private partner may be a good idea.

Uh, but great public private partnerships emerged when one or more communities and one or more private, uh, sector entities, uh, realized that they have common interests.

One of the, uh, most important of these things is something that what we call. Asymmetrical boards, a local government, their goals may not be the same as a private sector entity, but they may, uh, reinforce the private entities, uh, needs and vice versa. So, for example, a community may have patient capital, [00:38:00] meaning that it's more important for them.

To support the success of local businesses and community residents, that may be their bigger goal than, uh, return, getting a return on their investment in broadband project. Whereas a private partner, uh, may need to show a particular return on investment within a recent period of time. You marry those two ups in various complicated.

And you have a partnership where each is getting the benefit of what they need, even though, uh, the other is benefiting in a different way. So, you know, you are right. I could go on all day and tomorrow about public private partnerships, but, uh, I hope that answers the question you just asked.

Todd Reed: Yeah, I did read some, um, some of your writing on, on that concept, and it is, it's amazing.

It opened my eyes out deep and [00:39:00] complex. The, the situation, situation is, um, so, you know, a lot of our listeners are gonna be in the private sector. They're not necessarily working for a municipality or something. Mm-hmm. . So I guess my question to you would be is if you, you're talking to them right now, what, what's the most important next step they, they should take as a owner, senior leadership in a private company in their c.

Jim Baller: Well, I would say do homework. Find out who's learning about what their options are, uh, what the state of their, their process is, and talk to them. Find out what their interests are, if they have, uh, a request for information or request for qualifications that they're in the process of develop. Look at their needs and think of how you can help fulfill them.

You might not be able to do it alone. You might find that it would be in your interest to form a consortium [00:40:00] with others who can fill out, uh, your basket of things to offer to the, uh, communities that are looking, uh, make sure that, uh, your skillset is known. Talked to the consultants to local government.

And cooperatives and partnerships, make sure they know how to find you when they're looking for support in various kinds. You won't have far to love. There are opportunities everywhere. It's just a matter of, uh, saying you wanna partake of them and get up and get active. .

Todd Reed: Okay. Well, Jim, we're nearing the end and I, I always like to close our conversations by refocusing on the why of what we do.

So what motivates you to do this day in and day out? What keeps you excited and passionate about this topic?

Jim Baller: Well, I feel like I'm the most fortunate attorney in the country to be able to do the kinds of things I do [00:41:00] every day. Working on important issues that are always challenging with great clients.

Great colleagues, great partners, uh, to be able to see projects that were a light bulb over someone's head come into being and deliver on the promises of, uh, better services and better quality of life, their communities. Incredibly rewarding. And, uh, I couldn't ask for more rewarding experience than I've been able.

Have over the last three decades?

Todd Reed: Well, I'll tell you, you know, one of the reasons I was excited about starting, uh, this show is being able to talk to, you know, people in areas that I'm somewhat unfamiliar. And I would say I was definitely unfamiliar with some of the. Uh, depth on this topic, and this has been an eye-opening conversation with you and some of the information you've shared and you've shared some [00:42:00] really cool insights into this topic.

And I'm gonna be sure to include some of the links in the show notes for listeners to connect with you and your work and see, uh, some of the great research and data on, you know, broadband access around the country. So Jim, thank you so much for being here and sharing your experience and thank you for the opportunity and uh, great job.

Jim Baller: I appreciate it.

Todd Reed: Well, that was my conversation with Jim Baller, an attorney at Keller and Heckman, and a legend in the efforts to make high speed broadband widespread. You can connect with Jim and what he is working on by heading to the links in the show notes. I think the biggest thing I'm taking from this conversation is the power of.

Public and private sector partnerships and the important role that companies of all sizes can play in adopting high speed broadband nationwide. Jim made both the benefits and the stakes very clear. Broadband access enables major economic growth. Scientific breakthroughs and can even save lives. [00:43:00] But if we don't act quickly, the US and all of our industries with it will fall dangerously behind.

I encourage you to check in with your community if there are any broadband projects you can get involved with, and see how you can help enable progress right in your backyard. If you enjoyed this episode, you can help us grow this show by leaving a five star rating in your favorite podcast player. So thanks for listening to this episode of Keeping the Lights On.

We'll see you next time.