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Rural Broadband Today is a new podcast focused on one of the most important issues facing Rural America. It tells the stories of those working to bring broadband internet access within reach of every citizen. This interview-style show presents conversations with elected officials, industry experts and business leaders at the forefront of America’s efforts to solve the rural broadband challenge.
Intro:
Rural Broadband Today is a production of Pioneer Utility
Resources.
Broadband – we need it for work and for school, for our health
and our economy.
What's being done to bring broadband internet access within
reach of every American?
Let's talk about it now on Rural Broadband Today.
Andy Johns:
Thank you for listening to Rural Broadband Today where we take a
look at the issues and the people shaping the rural broadband
story across America.
I'm your host, Andy Johns, and this program is produced by
Pioneer Utility Resources.
Please share this episode with your network and help us tell the
rural broadband story.
I'm delighted to be joined on this episode by Jordana
Barton-Garcia.
Jordana, thanks for joining me.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Thank you, Andy. It's wonderful to be here.
Andy Johns:
Great. Now, we're going to talk quite a bit about digital equity.
We're going to talk about the digital economy, or lack thereof,
in places like South Texas and the Mississippi Delta.
But first, I wanted to get into a little bit about Jordana.
Jordana serves as the senior fellow with Connect Humanity and the
principal at Barton-Garcia Advisors.
Her resume includes roles as senior advisor to the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas and vice president of Community
Investments at Methodist Health Care Ministries.
So very, very impressive resume, and you're doing great work at
every stop along the way it seems like
. Jordana, most of your stops at some way or another, involve
some form of focusing
on equity for rural areas and particularly digital equity.
So let's kind of start with that word.
How do you define digital equity?
What does that mean, and why is it something that you've
committed a lot of time in your life to working towards?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Yeah, well, you know, equity is about fairness.
It's about giving, you know, providing opportunity more broadly
in our society.
And I come from a rural South Texas, colonia Benavides, close to
the
border in Laredo.
And so it's just part of what I believe, right?
I grew up in a school system that didn't have very high
expectations of the children.
And indeed, you know, didn't have kind of the rigorous coursework
of other schools.
So I always had that sense of fairness and equity kind of
ingrained in me and
the desire, right, to help rural areas, low income communities,
to be able to have
opportunities and a more equitable – we'll never get to perfect
equity, but to a more equitable, you know,
opportunities in their life.
Andy Johns:
Definitely. And I think that's what's a little bit different
about this episode, is most of the episodes that we record on
Rural Broadband Today, we're talking about how fast broadband
can be expanded and how quickly different states
and different organizations are taking steps to grow it.
But in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about the
areas that have been left behind traditionally, and without folks
paying attention going forward, run the risk of being left
behind again.
One of the stats that I had seen on your website is that even
with all of the money coming in for federal broadband
funding that's going through the states and all the different
programs going on right now, you're thinking it's
still – you and your your group are thinking there's still –
about 30% of the folks who lack Internet access today may still
be missing out even after this money is used up.
Am I reading that right?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Yeah. You know, the head of Connect Humanity is citing one
of the statements of the head of NTIA who said that, you know,
even with the billions of dollars of current funding
under IIJA and other programs, they're still not going to be
able to cover 30% of people who are not
connected today.
And so we are looking at Connect Humanity and, you
know, my work in general is how do we have long term solutions,
right?
Not short term fixes, but long term solutions where we really
invest in communities.
And that's why digital equity is so important.
So digital equity is the condition in which all individuals and
communities have information
technology needed for full participation in our society, our
democracy, and as you said, the digital economy, whether
we like it or not or know it or not, you know, we are deep into
the digital economy.
You know, the fourth industrial revolution, you know, people
kind of consider about 2018 the transition.
And then, of course, COVID pushed us ten years into the digital
economy, right, in people needing to adapt in all the
ways that we did with remote learning and telehealth and so
forth.
There was something like, I just quoted it in an article that I
wrote, you know,
38% increase in telehealth in the during the pandemic.
And so we are deep into the digital economy, so to have the
ability to
participate in the economy, and, you know, from the basics,
access
and skills that you need to be able to climb up the ladder and
economic opportunities
is all dependent on digital equity and having the digital
background and skills and access
that affluent places have.
And the reason we talk about equity rather than equality, right?
It's about fairness.
It's about we have systemic issues that prevents some people
from being connected,
right, from having a high speed Internet service at affordable
prices.
And the knowledge and skills, as you said, and the tools to
use the Internet and the digital skills broadly.
So the stakes are so high right now, right, because
you need it for every area of of life.
From having an equitable opportunities in education, job
opportunities, the ability to move up in
one's job, you know, access to financial services and to be able
to start a
business. We know, you know, if we didn't know before, we know
from the pandemic, that as a business you had to be able to be
online and be able to, you know, transition to
e-commerce. And, of course, many businesses now are based on IP
protocol.
We have a very huge transformation in business.
And then, of course, manufacturing is more and more automated,
right?
So it requires more and more digital skills.
And like I said, retail, you know, has transitioned to
e-commerce.
And so the big creators of jobs in our economy, it's all changed
.
It used to be retail and manufacturing.
That's how people could enter the middle class.
And then their kids would go to college, and you'd have that
upward mobility, opportunity for upward mobility.
But all of that has changed in the job market.
And now health care is the biggest creator of jobs in our
economy.
And think about it.
At the same time that we have closure of rural hospitals, and you
mentioned South Texas, which is where I'm
from and where I do a lot of work is, and we have one of the
greatest digital divides in the
country. We have the highest cost of health care.
We have the worst health outcomes.
And along the Texas-Mexico border, it's a persistent poverty
region.
We have a dearth of providers, right, like specialists and
primary care physicians and physician assistants and mental
health providers.
And those are all areas that telehealth has been proven to be
very effective at, right?
So just for the productivity of that industry, that's now the
biggest creator of jobs in our economy, we need to have broadband
connectivity for people, right?
Because telehealth is not just connecting hospital systems and
clinics.
It's connecting the very people that they're trying to reach.
For what the FCC calls connected care.
So for all the things that that we need it for.
And so the promise of telehealth_
Andy Johns:
I think that's a point.
Let me just kind of underscore that point that you were making
before you continue that I think it's important for folks to
realize that what you said, the cost of of delivering health
care is the highest in some of these areas
with the worst health outcomes.
So clearly, the people who need it the most, but those are some
of the folks also having the toughest time getting access to
telehealth. The people that could benefit the most from
telehealth are some of the ones having the most trouble getting
access to it. I just wanted to underscore that point.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
That is so true, right?
It's a double trouble, and a deficit for our economy, for our
people.
Because we care, right, about the health of the people.
But also it matters how healthy they are to the economy, plus
the productivity of the industry that is the biggest
creator of jobs. And in fact, on the border, the Federal Reserve
has shown in its Heart of Texas
Report that health care is one of the top two industries right
on the border region.
So it's important for people in the quality of life and access
to care in rural areas is critical,
right, because of the closure of rural hospitals and the need to
kind of rethink how we provide rural care.
We have new models coming up where you can have a clinic where
people go, but the specialist or, you
know, could come in through video conferencing right.
Where you generally you have a primary care or you have a
mid-level provider at least right there,
or in some cases a social worker if it's for mental and
behavioral health.
But you have somebody there at the site, and and then you can
videoconference and other methods o
f telehealth. So that's what we're needing to do, right?
Reinvent and rethink the way we provide care, and it's vital to
the vibrancy of
rural communities.
We have this gorgeous, amazing landscape in this country.
And this rich human capital in rural areas and, you know,
underserved areas.
You know, some of the most amazing innovations come from those
areas like on the border and affordable housing in different
areas. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?
But what we're losing, we're not investing properly in that, and
we're not taking full advantage of all of that human
capital. And that's what broadband offers, right, is that you
can
work from rural areas and maybe have a job in a city, and you
can build businesses in rural
areas because geography is not as necessary anymore for reaching
a customer base when
you have broadband and the Internet.
So you create many more opportunities.
You want to create as many opportunities for entry into the
middle class and beyond as you can.
And that's what we have failed to do.
That's why we have these extremes in income and wealth
inequality in our country and this job
polarization. And so and we know from all the statistics that,
you know, this was before
the the pandemic, 85% of middle skills jobs, those not requiring
a college degree, but offering opportunity
for upward mobility.
You know, 85% of those jobs require digital skills.
And we know from studies that, for example, children are more
likely, if they have
high speed Internet at home, they're more likely to do well in
school, to go to STEM careers and all of that.
So that's why it's so important and vital to people and to our
economy, the health of our
economy and our middle class.
Andy Johns:
Yeah. Now, you used a term there that I was not familiar with.
I think you kind of unpacked it a little bit there.
But "job polarization." So explain what you mean when you talk
about "job polarization." That has to do with
the income inequality you were talking about?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Yeah. Yeah. So, and I'm kind of not looking at the details around
that, but
the growth, you know, the share of the income, you know, now is
going to
the very, very top of our job, you know labor market.
And when you have a shrinking middle class – and PEW just last
year
released kind of the latest data where our middle class is is
clearly shrinking.
So that has a lot to do with jobs, right?
So now there are low level jobs, right?
And then there are a lot of high level jobs.
But the middle jobs, those are all changing.
So we're not preparing people well.
So you have that mismatch.
And that leads to income and wealth inequality.
Andy Johns:
Got it. Now, a couple of other things to unpack.
When I looked at the Connect Humanity page, it says that your
work
helps organizations and communities achieve full participation
in the digital economy.
And I like that phrasing.
What does that look like? What does it look like when a
community achieves full participation in the digital economy?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Well, I think that creates – I'll say the first part of it,
right, and that is
in order to attract industry and jobs to region.
Now one of the main things they're looking for is high speed
internet, right?
And you can see it in the huge companies like Amazon, right?
They state it right out.
For them to come to a city, they have to have a high speed
Internet, people with digital skills, you know, they have their
list, right?
And likewise, in any business now.
And I had to learn that the hard way.
You know, I was a community development banker in a big part of
my career, trying to invest in
low income areas and work with community-based organizations to
do so.
And we wanted to attract industry to the border region to create
jobs and vibrant economy.
And what I didn't realize is that without broadband
infrastructure, we would never be able to do that.
We have old legacy copper infrastructure we have – and people
may be still able and the old
legacy cable systems, a network design that might provide DSL in
/3, but they're not sufficient for businesses and certainly not
for homes or residents either now.
But there's an underinvestment in the fiber-based infrastructure
that is needed for
industry and commerce.
And indeed, so there's that.
The ability to attract jobs.
And not only that, in rural South Texas, we always talk about
the brain drain.
In order for our kids to make a life, go to school, make a life,
they have to go away.
And sometimes they stay away their whole life.
Like I interviewed a young woman from a colonia in Las Milpas in
South Texas, which is now part of Pharr,
Texas. And she went to community college, got her engineering
degree, and then
she went to Stanford, and she got a scholarship to go to
Stanford.
She got, you know, engineering and design.
And she started a telehealth company in Silicon Valley and very
successful.
She got in the 30 under 30 of Forbes and all kinds of really
great distinctions and is doing great.
She could have had that business in South Texas, but there's not
the infrastructure there to support it, right?
I mean, I'm not saying what she would have done, but we need
young people growing up there, don't even have that option to
build their business in that region.
We're trying to change all of that, of course.
And in fact, Pharr, where she is from, is now a broadband
provider and partnering with incredible co-ops in
others to serve everybody in the region, including Las Milpas.
Andy Johns:
Outstanding. Let me ask you a question that we definitely could
jump off the deep end and spend three or four hours unpacking.
But when we're talking about the areas that, as you said, are
underfunded when it comes to infrastructure,
the places that have some of the same challenges, whether it's
health outcomes, educational opportunities,
you know, the ability to start a business.
A lot of the, when we look at the country, a lot of the places,
the same places keep coming up, whether it's
whatever the stats are, obviously it's all connected.
But you talk about the South Texas area, you've talked about the
Rio Grande Valley, the Mississippi Delta, the mountains of
East Kentucky, some of the tribal areas out in Arizona and New
Mexico.
It's a lot of the same places that keep coming up on those
lists.
And, you know, not to paint with too broad of a brush, but are
there some things that you have seen?
I know you've done some work in the Mississippi Delta as well.
Are there some common threads or are each of those areas kind of
facing
completely their own challenges, or are there some
similarities, reasons why each of those areas always
winds up on the same list?
And we work with some folks in East Kentucky that are doing
great work to bring networks, you know, broadband networks to
that area. Same with New Mexico and everywhere else.
I'm not not trying to pick on those areas, but you see them come
up a lot.
And I'm wondering if in your work, you've found some things
that, the reasons why that underinvestment has
happened and could continue unless more folks listen to what
you're saying.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Yeah. No, I do see a lot of similarities.
And in fact, you know, throughout my career in the field of
community development in general, I've worked in these areas.
And what you did was, you listed the four persistent poverty
regions of our country, right?
That is places where 20% or more of the population has
been under the poverty line for the last three decades.
So you said it right, Central Appalachia, Mississippi Delta,
Texas-Mexico border and tribal lands.
And because the digital divide impacts low income people, and
that's where we get to the
equity part of what we're talking about, which is we have
systemic barriers to everybody having
access to broadband.
And that is that in our country, the way policy has been made in
general
is that if the companies will go first, especially the big
national telecom providers.
They'll go where they can maximize profits.
They have to answer to their shareholders, and that is their
fiduciary duty.
So they're going to go to the affluent neighborhoods.
So low income people are disproportionately on the wrong side of
the digital divide of people of
color, because there's a link between income and
wealth and BIPOC or communities of color.
And historical laws and policies that have created persistent
poverty which we might
not have time to go into now.
But it's really systemically the way we've made policy and law
has created that situation
. Because, you know, Internet is not regulated.
It's not a regulated industry, so companies tend to go where they
can make the maximum profit.
Now we have the legacy telephone co-ops and the electric co-ops
that are now providing, many of them, now providing
Internet and small ISP's and regional ISP's – very different for
them.
I've interviewed a lot of them and and seeing the work, the
impact of their work.
They have a different bottom line.
They're trying to have a more reasonable rate of return on
investment, and they're part of their
communities. So actually Christopher Ali the writer who writes
about this subject in Farm
Fresh Broadband.
Andy Johns:
That's it.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
And so he talks about this, and this is one of my primary
training
in community development is that as you invest in the local
communities.
So not only is it important to have high speed broadband, but
think about the digital
economy, right? We want a diversity of companies and
communities to own
the infrastructure, to own the assets of the digital economy
because that also is what creates
wealth and assets in communities.
And we have those because of our awesome history of
electrification of our country and
telephone, getting telephone to all where it was regulated,
right?
So everybody had to be covered.
So they know how to cover these places.
They have access to the rights of way.
You know, they have a lot of the assets, and now we just need to
expand that and invest in those rural
companies. Because their primary goal is not to necessarily to
maximize profits; they're
going to do well and do good, right?
And they're part of their communities.
That's what I have found.
They're motivated by different things, and they want people
connected.
And that's why we're seeing; they're providing fiber-based
networks.
And, you know, when Christopher Ali talks about the politics of
good enough.
And so that's a very important concept because, and I've been
told directly to my
face in a congressional hearing, you know, "Hey, y'all might not
get fiber, but, you know, you'll get
something, and you should be happy with that," basically, right?
That's the message.
Well, actually, we have companies that know how to serve and
know how to bring – What you should be shooting for is the best
possible for rural areas and low income.
They don't need less than others, and we want to be reasonable.
You know, because of geography, all the things you have to
consider.
But guess what?
We know how to do it.
And guess what?
We have community development in this country, too.
So it's not just federal grants, but we have the Community
Reinvestment Act, which is about attracting
investment into low income and underserved rural areas and
communities.
And together we have all the tools we need to finance broadband
networks and bring what people need and no
less than what they need.
And so this the shooting for the minimum is a little disturbing,
right, because it's kind of saying the politics of good enough.
Well, actually, it's not good enough because guess what?
The world is moving so fast.
And if we don't invest now in the kind of networks that people
actually need, we're just going to be creating the next digital
divide. And guess what?
This concept of 5G, the actual standard 5G, that
creates the Internet of Things, that makes that possible.
And we talk about smart cities, smart rural and, you know,
precision farming and all of that.
That all is going to depend on equity at the very base of, did
we invest properly in the infrastructure that
we need – actually need – in this country for that?
So then big data, and then artificial intelligence, all of that
is built on each other, right?
5G is going to create, even expand big data even more.
And all of that matters in the economy and in equity in the
economy.
So if we don't get it right, right about now, then it's going to
be it's going to be harder and harder.
We're not going to have equity in artificial intelligence and
the other areas.
And we know when people are included and people are, you know,
have digital skills, when we look at this very holistically and
create programs that do that, then we have people that can be at
the table and make decisions that we're
going to be having – you know, the digital divide is just the
first, ethical or not, maybe not the first, but it's one of the
first ethical issues of technology, technological advancement.
And if we can get this right and deal with the complexities of
where we are in this country on this issue,
then we can also have conversations because more people will be
at the table.
Rural areas, people of color will be at the table making
algorithms.
Are they fair?
Should we use them until they are fair?
You know, it's all based on – we talk about algorithmic bias.
So it's all about having people from diverse backgrounds at the
table to be able to create the knowledge
and the assets of the digital economy and to make those policy
decisions.
So, yeah, so when we're creating like I'm working on the regional
plan for South Texas and going to be working with
Mississippi Delta as well, and we're building in the, you know,
the digital equity programs that are part of IIJA and working
with the local ISP's, the co-ops and others, you know, they want
to
serve as apprenticeships and internships, paid internships, to
build the networks, to run the help desk and get IT training and
certification. We're also including law and policy, right?
So these young people from rural areas or underserved areas,
they're going to be the policy makers.
They're going to need to understand, so I created a whole
curriculum to help young people know
how we got here.
There's so many terms, you know, like access and technology
neutral
and things like that get into policy, but when you really
analyze them, oh, that might not be a good
policy. You know, it might be a thinking too small or scarcity
minded, right?
So how do we have young people really understand from all the
major laws that have
impacted, and of course, we're still in the laws created during
the telephone era pretty much.
So we need to catch up.
Yeah.
Andy Johns:
Yeah. Well, you mentioned several other the things there, and
there was so much, so much good stuff in what you just just
shared. I was actually looking, I believe we had interviewed
Christopher Ali in one of our earlier episodes.
We'll try to put the notes to that in the show notes of this
episode.
There's so much good stuff, and you got into where I was headed
next, which is, you know, we know the problem.
Folks like yourself are doing a great job of highlighting the
problems there.
And I think folks are starting to catch on, starting to get it.
What has to happen next?
And you talked there about kind of training that next
generation.
You talked about raising awareness.
You've talked about the policy makers not shooting.
I like the way you said it, shooting for the minimum, you know,
aiming the goals higher.
There's also some funding mechanisms that I know that you're
working with as well.
What are some of the things that as we're going forward to get
this right, that from where you're sitting, we need to make sure
happen?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
So, you know, there are going to be some major challenges like
with IIJA, you know the
FCC maps came out.
And according to the maps, if you said they're purported to be
able to tell us about
the digital divide. You would think you would see that all of
South Texas is completely 100%
covered, and Texas is almost 98% covered.
And so that kind of
flawed information is one of the challenges, right?
So how does the poverty region if the Mississippi Delta and the
border region, for example, which I've looked at all
the data there, is completely covered or
has access to the Internet and is considered served, then they
might not be
able to get the funding because the funding is determined, you
know, first goes to the unserved, and then to the underserved and
so forth. So and the problem is that the purpose of
the FCC maps is to show, quote, "access." And when I, lay people
or, you know, others think about access, they think, "Oh, that
you have it." You know, not that you can be served, but that you
are served.
And so it's not about broadband subscriptions.
How many in that community have broadband subscriptions and
actually have service, and what kind of service
. But it's just that they can be served within ten days.
And that was the problem with the FCC 477 data.
Right? So I always had to use the US Census American Community
Survey.
So robust. And you could see how many people had subscriptions,
actually had fixed Internet in the home, and all the reasons why
that's important if you're talking about the digital divide.
Now, the FCC and other entities might need the information that
they produce, but it just doesn't tell you about the digital
divide in Mississippi Delta, in the Texas-Mexico border region.
We've already documented, Microsoft showed by, and I'm a
researcher, right?
I was a researcher with the Federal Reserve, and I have that
background.
And, you know, you have to triangulate when you're doing
research.
You have to use research from different sources, and then to try
to tell the complex picture.
But if you just tell a piece of the picture, like you have a
whole elephant, and you're just describing the tail.
Well, the FCC current maps describe the tail of the elephant.
And this says nothing about whether people actually have it,
what it would cost for that particular
person to get it; the line extension or the the cost of
service, and the US has some of the highest cost of service
. And Thomas Philippon, really, the economist, has a publication
that
really demonstrates how we don't have competition.
So you end up with for the US we have some of the highest cost,
almost
double the other developed countries, like Germany.
And so we're dealing with a complex problem, right?
Maps that are supposed to determine billions of dollars.
Yet that show that, at least two that I've looked at, two
persistent poverty regions are completely served
. And we know that that's not true from our best scholars and the
best research of the Federal Reserve and the National
Digital Inclusion Alliance, and Jon Sallet that did some very
important work with the Benton Foundation.
So we're having to suspend what we know and, you know, make
sense
of these maps.
And it's too much pressure on lay people to understand what that
means, that
access and being served does not mean the same thing to the
industry or the FCC as it does to regular people.
Regular people just want to know, can I get great service that I
need for school, for all the things I need to do?
So even UTRGV they did a study, the University of Texas, Rio
Grande Valley.
Finally we have a medical school too on the border, and they
surveyed their students during the pandemic because they want to
see how well they were going to be able to transition to remote
learning, and 45% of those students didn't have an Internet
connection at home.
Andy Johns:
Wow.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
That's just, you know, and we have many surveys now.
I've been working with some of these communities on the border.
They have community surveys.
They have actual evidence, right?
Actual, yet these FCC maps, totally out of context.
Totally. And I would propose a different title for the FCC maps.
You know, we can't pretend that they talk about digital divide
because they're talking about
something else. It's ISP.
I gave it a new name.
Incumbent ISP Reports on Minimum Speed and Infrastructure
Availability, Regardless of Type of
Infrastructure, Quality of Connection, Actual Subscriptions or
Cost of Service.
And you know, how –
Andy Johns:
That's going to be quite an acronym there.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Nobody will title it that, right?
But that is the accurate title.
But it's going to be deciding billions of dollars.
And persistent poverty regions are, Congress said, make sure you
you serve in this
IIJA persistent poverty regions and colonias, like of South
Texas, are also designated
places, so we're going to have to have another strategy.
And Congress also said that the FCC would create the maps that
would determine funding.
So there's a contradiction there.
So those are some of the complexities that we have to deal with
as a society and come to, so
at the same time that I get kind of frustrated because I'm like,
"Okay, why don't we just tell people what this really says, what
this really is?" Well, we are actually.
We're all working together, and now elected officials from small
towns and are having to understand
what these terms mean, and they're going to be able to make
better policy decisions.
So we're having one of the biggest civic participation exercises
in our country that is focusing on
rural and underserved places, at least in what we know we need
to
be serving right to create more equity.
Yet it's not easy, right, because there's a lot of teaching and
a lot of
powerful structures in place that make it hard for it to be
easy.
Andy Johns:
Yeah, and that's a really important perspective, and I really am
glad that you framed it that way.
I like that a lot.
Two final questions for you.
One of the things that I've heard a little bit of concern from
folks about, and we've seen it on the state level, I know we saw
it here in Tennessee on the state level a little bit a few years
ago, is that there's, at times, there's an
attitude that, you know, here's rural broadband advocates.
Here is money that we're throwing at that problem, and then it
should be done, right?
I know in Tennessee, the first round of broadband grants was $10
million, and there was kind of the attitude for at least a little
while, like the state legislature, like, okay, we did that.
We did rural broadband. Now, let's move on to the next thing.
It's like, no, $10 million is not enough to do it.
There's still a lot of people without.
Are you concerned at all that after this big wave of of federal
funding comes through, and we've got the
BEAD grants coming out later this year, it's going to be
tougher for whether it is 30% or whatever, the folks who are, who
may be left behind, even after this wave, it's going to be even
tougher to find the funding sources.
Or do you think that's a faucet that is open and is going to
continue to continue to pour for a little while?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
So I do.
Everything about the way the rules have been written and
the amount, you know, the rules about who is going to get the
funding.
And what we've seen so far about who is being awarded the
grants, which, you know, many have gone to
big telecom industry.
And they have, some of them like in the – I don't know if you
follow the East Carroll,
Louisiana kind of story and Connect Humanity worked with East
Carroll, where
the big cable company protested their grant to work with another
Internet
builder to bring connectivity to that region because they
weren't served.
They had surveys.
And then an email that he sent accidentally got
out, so the news covered them saying that one of their biggest
challenges
and efforts is going to be in protesting any kind of
grants that might go to smaller providers or our local
communities or smaller providers or any other, you know, any
competition that they're –
Andy Johns:
Have to play defense.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Yeah, defense. So it's not looking good, and then you see the
maps, right, that came out, and then people were given
35 days to challenge, the official challenge, with three
national holidays in between.
I mean, it's almost absurd if you really think about it.
It's really, are we supposed to just jump and jump and jump and,
you know?
Well, those things don't look good, right?
And then this scarcity mindset, where they're talking about
minimums, when rural
co-ops, regional ISPs and certainly municipal ISP's, and we have
a few, you know, are proving that
they're building fiber networks.
They know how to do it.
They know how to make it work.
They have been doing that.
They just need support.
Right? And they're, you know, some of them are people of color,
locally-owned, you know, and other.
And then the way we're also not supporting entrepreneurship in
ISPs, you know, with this new funding because, you know, newer
companies aren't the ones that they're shooting for to give the
grants to.
We're losing out, right, and an opportunity to really serve at
the speeds and capacity
that communities need.
And what you want to shoot for, like I said before, is the best
you can.
Right now, we need to shoot for not minimums, but for the best
that we can.
Right? Where are the companies?
So if, and then the rule that says no overbuilding.
Well, that's a best practice.
It makes sense to people.
It seems fair.
You don't want to build a fiber network over a fiber network.
But guess what? You do want to build a fiber network over a
copper or legacy cable
network. However, a company can protest and say, "No, you can't,
you can't do that."
And this concept of technology neutral, which is not true.
Technology is not neutral, right?
And when we say fiber-based networks, it can be fiber to the
home, certainly.
And some rural co-ops are just doing that because they know it's
the right thing to do, and they know how to do it.
But even, you know, fiber wireless is 99% wired.
So if you have fiber as close as possible, say, geography
doesn't allow you, then the fixed Internet, the
fixed wireless, is going to be much more effective, reliable and
speed and capacity.
And so that's what these terms are terms of the industry, right?
Like no overbuilding, just means no competition.
You know, it sounds so fair and right and technology neutral.
That sounds very fair, as well.
Because, hey, you should be able to build what you can, and what
you know.
Oh, no, no, no. But it's the way we discriminate against
communities by not investing in high speed broadband in those
communities or in the upgrades that are necessary.
That's how we got to the digital divide.
So if we're building that into our policy and not employing best
practices in community
development and the broadband industry.
And we're putting into law and policy things that we know are
discriminatory
or deficit thinking or, you know, scarcity thinking, then we're
limiting our possibilities.
So, yes, I see a big danger.
Now, you have people like Christopher Ali, Jon Sallet, who wrote
for the Benton Foundation –
goodness, I can't even put my self in their company – but
myself, you know, I'm not giving up, and
others. Who are trying to write about these issues, teach
constantly
and bring these ideas to people's attention.
Because otherwise, we will shoot ourselves in the foot and, you
know, we're not going to get the impact.
And also the way we make policy, we tend to make it in very,
very, again, scarcity kind of
thinking where you think that's – like what we can do in
community development say, with a $5
million federal grant, you can leverage that and create 25
million with the tools we have in community developments to
finance broadband networks.
And back in 2016, I worked with the interagency group that
regulates banks under the CRA
to include broadband and digital inclusion as part of CRA.
So it's an area, we have new market tax credits.
We have a different kinds of business loans, very low interest
patient capital.
We have supporting digital workforce development, all of that we
built into the law of the Community
Reinvestment Act. So we have more tools than we're pretending we
have at this point.
And we need to think much bigger about what rural people and low
income people can have.
And if we really, if we truly understood the human capital that
we're underinvesting in and that
we're not unleashing their brilliance in the world, then we
wouldn't do this.
Nobody.
I don't care what party, you would not do that.
We need to unleash all of our great resources in people and
ideas and entrepreneurial ideas into
our economy and into the world to create solutions to some of
our greatest problems.
An I do, long story short, I think it is a danger.
But you have very committed people.
You have amazing local regional ISP's, co-ops.
You know, we have this whole history in our country and people
who are so committed and they're, you know, many of them
social enterprises.
You know, they're doing well and doing good, and I think we have
that model too, very strongly in our country.
We have nonprofits that work with banks and others to bring
investment into low income communities.
We have a whole toolbox.
But if you don't embed that into the way a program is
implemented
– like you could give extra points for somebody who brings in 10
million with your 10 million, you know, the federal grant of
10 million. And really value that.
Because that's the truth of our economy.
The way we get to equity in a capitalist society is you build in
these mechanisms to create equity.
And people in the area of community development are working on
this every day.
So why not unleash, not have these compartments and how do you
say silos?
This is all part of our economy, right?
That's how we've created this great
United States of America is because we're a capitalist society
that can be
limiting, as far as shared equity.
But we also have, at the same time, working side-by-side.
Community development and community development finance for
good, and together we c
an create a strong economy where we have shared equity and not
extremes in income and wealth inequality.
Andy Johns:
You got into a little bit of what I was going to ask you here
just in closing, but
to kind of end on a high note.
You had good momentum going there, but we've talked about a lot
of the challenges, and I know we've run a little bit long, and
I really appreciate your time and the time of the folks
listening.
We've talked about obstacles.
We've talked about the challenges.
This is complicated work.
This is as soon as you think you've got something figured out,
then the rules change and there's something else.
Somebody with your experience, you could be doing a lot of
different things.
Why is it, and you mentioned some of the folks that keep
advocating, why is it that that that you keep fighting, that you
keep moving forward on this, that you keep bringing it up?
What is it that keeps keeps you going, looking at such a
complicated problem, knowing that it's going to be a probably an
entire generation of networks being built now?
It's a big problem, and it's a big thing to solve.
What is it that keeps you you plugging away and working on it
every day?
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
I think that the stakes are really very high, and I think
I truly believe that how well we do right now, with IIJA and
the funding, the federal commitment.
And in dealing with this is a very important ethical issue of our
digital
economy and technological advancement.
I just think the stakes are too high, and we all need to be
involved, and we need to all be all in.
And that people and our young people need a whole new set of,
you
know, knowledge, education, experiences, the experiential
learning that we're going to be creating in the digital workforce
programs. That's what they need.
They need hands on.
They need to work with engineers and utility – like in in my
field, I was in community development.
You know, and I started learning about the issue of the digital
divide from the lowest income communities in our country.
And I could have said, "Well, no, that's not part of community
development." But it is, you know, people were telling me it is
right, and it matters to the economy.
And then I started researching.
So utility lawyers and engineers became part of my colleagues in
community development.
So we have to constantly change and grow, and that's the nature
of the digital economy of the fourth industrial revolution.
And it's critical, right?
If we're going to be able to put humans first and create what we
want to create and use technology for good
to the maximum that we can.
You know, they're already examples of using technology for harm.
But how do we create great digital citizens that are equipped a
nd young people know how to navigate the Internet.
They know what's happening behind the scenes.
They know how big data is collected.
They know the dangers and, you know, Internet safety and
security.
Build all that into our education, and we have the chance to
create that right now with the digital equity grants and
programs. And we're creating that in South Texas and the
Mississippi Delta.
Very holistic programs.
And looking at our society broadly and saying, "Oh, no, the
mothers in the colonias.
Yeah, they can understand broadband networks." And guess what?
If Jordana Barton-Garcia can, anybody can.
No, no. You know, of course, I had to learn.
Right? I'm not an engineer, but I had to learn enough to know
what makes good policy, what are the best practices, what you
know. So yes, people can and need to know all of these parts of
of
technology and the digital economy.
And we will be a stronger country for it.
And we will survive the challenges that are so evident before us
and our young people from some
of the persistent poverty regions – guess what they're going to
solve climate change challenges, right?
They're going to solve some of our biggest challenges with
entrepreneurial ideas because they're going to have access to the
Internet. They're going to be knowledgeable about how to
navigate and be safe and secure and create great
policies. So that's the world that I am hoping to create, and I
want it to be
equitable, right? I want diverse companies to be owning the
assets of the digital economy and the big data.
And I want people of color, low income people, rural people, all
people to be at the
table equally to be able to make policy and products and so
forth that are going to determine the
fate of humanity and our ability to create more opportunity and
shared
prosperity and a strong, strong country and economy.
So that's why I'm committed to it.
I think it's actually you know, people always talk about we're
at an inflection point.
Guess what? We are in an inflection point.
And I think we all need to be involved.
And that's IIJA.
I'm hoping for the very best in the federal funding, and I'm
going to work as hard as I
can with all of my energy, and I'm not alone, right?
It's all these hundreds and thousands of people I'm working
with, local communities, to think not with
scarcity, but understanding what we can achieve, what we can
have when we partner, right?
Because when you partner, work together the way some of the
co-ops and small ISP's are partnering with
communities and community-based organizations, when I see that
commitment coming together, that synergy, that is wealth.
That is. We're not. You know, if we use all that we have, all
the assets that we have, and stop thinking in silos and we
have this finite pie to divide up, and then who gets what,
whatever.
No, actually, we can increase the size of the pie by partnering
together and creating those synergies.
And that's us in the United States and in the world at our best
as human beings.
We need something that's bigger than the sum of the parts.
And so that's what I'm committed to.
And that's my hope for our future.
Andy Johns:
Beautifully said and inspiring insights all the way around.
So, Jordana, thank you for joining me on this episode, and I
think we covered a lot of really good and important ground
there, so thank you for your time.
Jordana Barton-Garcia:
Thank you. Great to be here.
Andy Johns:
She is Jordana Barton-Garcia with Connect Humanity and with
Barton-Garcia Advisors.
I'm your host, Andy Johns.
Thank you for listening on this episode.
We hope you will tune in to the next episode of Rural Broadband
Today.
Outro:
Rural Broadband Today is brought to you by Pioneer Utility
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Rural Broadband Today is engineered by Lucas Smith of Lucky
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