Wired for Good: Exploring Rural Connectivity in West Virginia - Episode 597 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Derek Barr (00:07):
Everybody wears so many hats in a small provider. Nobody has a hat job description here. Everybody has multiple things that they get into, and so that does make it difficult if you're going to be in this business. Few things are as important to people nowadays as broadband.

Christopher Mitchell (00:27):
Welcome to another episode of the Community [00:00:30] Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Today I'm speaking with Derek Barr, the assistant general manager at Hardy Telecommunications in West Virginia. Welcome to the show, Derek.

Derek Barr (00:46):
Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me.

Christopher Mitchell (00:48):
Well, I am very excited to chat with you. Our organization has been working a bit with some of the folks across Appalachians, which touches about 13 states, but I've [00:01:00] been involved with some of the folks from Eastern Kentucky and not too far away from you, which is the heart of the area, the hardest areas to serve in the country, depending on who you ask. And so I'm deeply curious to learn more about your cooperative. So tell us a little bit about what Hardy Telecommunications is.

Derek Barr (01:17):
We're pretty interesting in how we're set up. We are a nonprofit cooperative. We were formed way back in 1953 in an area of our county where the bigger players just wouldn't come in and [00:01:30] do phone service. So the citizens got together on their own. We opened up our first lines in 1957, and so since then we've kept going. And basically one of the big things for us happened back during the Obama administration with the BIP and BTOP programs that they had broadband initiatives program, and that allowed us to build a fiber to the home network in our county and Hardy County. And so since then, we've continually [00:02:00] built up on that. So we have about 6,100 access lines and almost 5,100 broadband customers now. And we serve mainly Hardy County, and we get into bits of Hampshire and grant counties in our area. So where we are, West Virginia, by the way, is the only state that is entirely located within Appalachia.

(02:21):
So we have those typical struggles. You've got a lot of mountains, you've got very rocky territory. But at the same time, we are a border county with Virginia, [00:02:30] so we're only about two and a half hours from dc. So we actually see a very good mix of the type of customers that we have. And since COVID hit, we've actually seen a good many of Northern Virginia people and DC people that are having weekend homes, vacation homes that were here, and now they're turning those into full-time residences. And so with our fiber, we're able to give them the type of speeds that they need. [00:03:00] So we got a little bit of mix of everything, basically.

Christopher Mitchell (03:03):
Well, I'm fascinated at where co-ops sprang up, and one of the things that I've found is that the co-ops have been more common in areas where the private companies didn't want to build the electricity and then didn't want to build the telephone lines. And we don't see much in the way of electric co-ops or telephone co-ops in West Virginia to me suggests that there was enough money probably coming out of the mines. I'm guessing that private companies were investing in some areas [00:03:30] of West Virginia enough that you didn't see more. I don't know if you've dug into the history of that at all. I

Derek Barr (03:35):
Don't have a whole lot of the details, but I do know that for a long time, co-ops were not actually allowed. New co-ops were not allowed. We were grandfathered in for several years, and it was only about in the last three or four years that they actually changed the West Virginia code to allow for co-ops to be formed. Again, I haven't seen very many pop up. I have seen [00:04:00] some counties get together, and we have regions here that include multi-county areas, and we've seen several of those grouped together to try to get some broadband projects, but not actually to be the broadband provider. And we've been asked a lot since that law was changed, but as far as our experience and how do you get something started, but it is difficult if you're basically a municipality or something or a group of [00:04:30] citizens to actually cobble together and start an Internet provider from scratch.

(04:35):
I mean, we've been lucky along the way that we've got some very talented people that work here and want to be in this area. And that's almost everybody that works here is from here, my boss, and we all went to school together. We've known each other since we were kids. So if you can attract that type of talent to come back, you can run [00:05:00] the network. But to help people get started from scratch, it is difficult. I tell people, you can't just say, okay, we're going to be an Internet provider, and suddenly you're doing it. So I think that once you start digging into it and realize all the regulations that are involved, especially as much as they change, we're in the middle of that right now with a lot of the proposals coming out of the FCC, I think that that does inhibit the formation of new co-ops.

Christopher Mitchell (05:26):
Yes. Yeah, no, that's one of the things that we've seen is whenever I talk to a small ISP [00:05:30] who's been doing it for a while, you realize that it's still hard work every day. There's all kinds of things going on. You generally don't have all of the positions filled that you might like to have because you're constrained by the revenue coming in. And now imagine that you don't even have the revenue coming in. You're trying to figure out how to make that work. It's really hard to get it started afresh,

Derek Barr (05:49):
Right? Everybody wears so many hats in a small provider. Nobody has a pet job description here. Everybody has multiple [00:06:00] things that they get into. And so that does make it difficult if you're going to be in this business. Few things are as important to people nowadays as broadband. If broadband goes down, that is something urgent that a person wants back up as soon as possible. So I've mentioned this to people before, but it's absolutely true. It's not a cliche in the sense that if somebody has a problem, because I mentioned earlier that we are local and we grew up here, I'm going to hear about it wherever [00:06:30] I am. If I'm going to a high school football game, if I'm at Walmart and somebody's got a problem with the service from Hardy Telecommunications, they're going to let us know. So to be able to be responsive enough to that, to give that kind of customer service that you want and all the other things that go along with the changing regulations and the increased need for speeds and bandwidth, and to keep up with all that, it is one heck of a commitment.

Christopher Mitchell (06:55):
Yeah. So let's talk about just one of the other things you mentioned, which was [00:07:00] the BTOP program that came about in 2009 or so. I was surprised to hear you describe that because most of the BTOP projects were not fiber to the home. They were mostly more Middle Mile projects. So you were one of the rare ones in which you got to connect homes then, I'm guessing?

Derek Barr (07:17):
Well, we actually had both because there's BTOP and BIP. BTOP was designed more for anchor institutions and middle mile projects like you said, and we did have one of those, which was a much smaller scale, [00:07:30] but then there also was the BIP as part of that, and it was designed more for last mile fiber to the home. So that was a huge one for us because that was about more than 32 and a half million dollars, nine and a half million dollars of that was a loan that we're paying back over 20 years. The rest of it was a grant, but the BIP one is particularly what allowed us to get the fiber to the home out there. And since then we've spent probably up to 13, $14 million [00:08:00] more of our own money since that time just to keep expanding the network out into more areas.

Christopher Mitchell (08:07):
And it sounded like if you have 6,100 access lines or so and 5,100 fiber customers that you've gotten to most of your original rate base, then to give them that option.

Derek Barr (08:18):
As far as what was basically our home territory, we've pretty much got the fiber out all into the last very few inaccessible areas or new developments [00:08:30] that have built up that we're working to get towards. So most of our expansion right now is into brand new areas that we've never been before.

Christopher Mitchell (08:37):
And in the article that Carl Bode wrote recently about the project, which you interviewed with him on, it mentions that you have what I would say is a trivial number of fixed wireless access customers. Is that like an experiment or is that someone that was just really good at getting you on the telephone and begging for something?

Derek Barr (08:55):
It is kind of a last resort for us. I mean, we only have about [00:09:00] 66. I'm looking here, fixed wireless customers. We will do it, but it's not our focus. I mean, we prefer fiber. Nothing really compares with fiber that we've found if you can get fiber to the home, but there are areas, especially if it's not contiguous to our existing service territory or it's just in an area that is too inaccessible to get fiber to, we will look at fixed wireless, but we have the challenges. As you mentioned Appalachia earlier, fixed wireless [00:09:30] works a whole lot better in a flat area that doesn't have as, I mean it works better in the plain states and things like that. Here it's very difficult. West Virginia is nothing but up and down and up and down and one valley to the mountain. And so that line of sight is often very difficult to nail down for our area. And what might work well in the winter goes away when spring comes and the leaves pop out on the trees. I mean, we have a lot of trees, so it is difficult [00:10:00] to get that kind of connection to the home. It does need to be a clear line of sight. So we will do it, but it's not what we focus on. And when we have our resources available to us, we will build fiber.

Christopher Mitchell (10:13):
When I saw some of the grant awards, it looked like people sometimes look at those and they'll average out the cost. It looks like it was around 5,000, $5,500 per home a lot of times, which is a reasonable cost. When we talk about really high cost rural homes, there's this fear we're talking about 25, [00:10:30] $30,000 a home.

Derek Barr (10:31):
Yeah, it all depends. I mean, we have some builds that we're looking at that are easily in the 10 to $15,000 range, but as you said, average, it typically will average out if we have some places that people really want to get isolated and build. And it is difficult because you might have their address and their driveway starts here, but the home is three miles back the driveway. That's not a paved road and [00:11:00] that type of thing. But in general, when developments spring up and you get several homes near each other, it all will average out in the long run. So we do more expensive builds if we can, and lots of times we'll work out things. I mean, we have people that are moving into the area that are desperate to get it than we will do whatever we can to try to get to 'em. I'm

Christopher Mitchell (11:24):
Not sure how much of the audience has been with me through all of the years of talking about RDOF, the [00:11:30] Rural Digital Opportunity Fund rush through in 2019, 2020. I feel like we've, every now and then, this is like, and actually this just came up on the Bluey, the television show. There's an adage about a farmer who his horse runs away, and the neighbors were like, oh, that's so unlucky. And he says, well, who's to say if it's good or bad? And then the horse comes back with other wild horses and they're like, oh, it's so lucky your horse came back. And then his son falls off the horse and breaks [00:12:00] a leg. And then that avoids him being conscripted into the army. And it's just this thing about you never really know if something's good or bad, it's just going to play out the way it plays out. And so I saw comments you made about RDOF where I feel like I was deeply frustrated at how some companies seemed to game the system in order to really maximize their games and prevent others from having a foothold. It looked like Frontier prevented you from getting any real RDOF wins. And I'm [00:12:30] just sort of curious now as you reflect on that, is that a good thing? Would you have been able to build or did they save you some hassle of being caught within that program?

Derek Barr (12:41):
Yeah, unfortunately, our experience with RDOF was not good. We did not win any census blocks. We bid on several, almost all the ones we bid on were actually won by Frontier. Well, I can say that when we went into RDOF, we looked at the obligations and [00:13:00] we took those obligations seriously, and that was to build out to every location to get to all your locations. So when the bid started to get down, and you mentioned if your listeners are familiar with the reverse auction process, basically they had a set price and they said, who will go 90% of this, who will go 80% of that? We went down to where we thought was a viable project and beyond that would be unrealistic and would be dangerous to the cooperative from a financial standpoint. [00:13:30] And at that point, we dropped out, but they kept going down.

(13:34):
And so we saw some that were down as low as 20%. I think there were a few that were 10%. There's no way from that standpoint, there's no way in the world we could have built a project like that, but we were responsible enough to drop out before we got down to that amount. The fact that that was done right around the COVID timeframe and everything shot up price wise. I do know that several RDOF companies now are looking for amnesty [00:14:00] and asking the FCC to relieve them of their, or give them some kind of out from their obligations. The idea behind that is that it would make BEAD more locations accessible for BEAD funding. But I guess all I can say is that RDOF, I have not seen any gains from it whatsoever. And our area, it certainly didn't help us. We were smart enough not to hurt ourselves with it. But now the fact that there have been [00:14:30] so many defaults, and I think of the original 20 billion, they only awarded nine point something billion anyway,

Christopher Mitchell (14:40):
And I think even half of that is only going out the door.

Derek Barr (14:43):
And so a third of that has already been defaulted on just of that amount. So I don't know how anybody could say that was. I mean, it may have been good intentions on the FCCs part, but it just seemed to, I think a lot of the problem was that there wasn't enough [00:15:00] attention paid to who was bidding and what their financial situations were at the time.

Christopher Mitchell (15:06):
That wouldn't have stopped Frontier though. And that's where for me, I was just frustrated because, well, I mean, frankly, because Frontier was in bankruptcy,

Derek Barr (15:13):
They were in bankruptcy, and that was something that was quite a

Christopher Mitchell (15:18):
Right

Derek Barr (15:19):
For our side. But

Christopher Mitchell (15:20):
Yeah, no matter how many, so my parents were on Frontier, I have very strong feelings about Frontier, and we don't have to get into that here, but [00:15:30] from my point of view, it's more just I felt like it was such a slap in the face for West Virginia, which has been so harmed over the years by Frontier making promises and not fulfilling them, that I would've liked to have seen communities and counties be able to, to have a say in who would get it. In that case, I suspect that even though there would've been the inflation, you would have gotten enough money through that process. You would probably have built in many of those areas by now. And now we're [00:16:00] talking about whether they might get built through the BEAD process for something. It's really an indictment of a program, I think.

Derek Barr (16:06):
Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, you can look back in the history and there've been other programs, and we mentioned BTOP West Virginia had a project statewide for that that went to Frontier, and people can look this up, so I'm not just kind of a sore loser type person, but basically they [00:16:30] built a network that an independent analyst said, this is really only benefiting Frontier. It's not doing what it's designed to do for other providers being allowed to get on. Plus, there were several costs, about $5 million that the state ended up having to pay back to the federal government because it was determined that there were charges made that were not eligible for the funding, but yet they were made and West Virginia paid out of them. So West Virginia was the one left holding the back and [00:17:00] having to pay that back. So I know there were a lot of concerns at the time.

(17:03):
I mean, it was about two thirds of the entire state RDOF went to Frontier because we're small. We do compete with them, but we certainly aren't out to get the whole state, and we know we're not going to get the whole state. So from that standpoint, I mean, we'd be happy for them to fulfill their obligations. That would mean more people would get hooked up. It's just one of those things, the history is there. I do know that there were communities that were [00:17:30] upset. I know some people that are on our West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council that expressed concerns at the time. And again, these are stories you can find out there as well. But yeah, I do not think it was what West Virginia was looking for. And at this point, there's still a lot of areas out there. We were one of the per capita biggest recipients of BEAD funding because areas still aren't getting broadband. So to me, I kind of whittle it all down [00:18:00] to look at, is the problem solved yet? Do people have broadband yet? And the answer is no, they don't. Not enough people have broadband. So from that standpoint, as RDOF is now several years down the road, I don't think it's accomplished what it was supposed to do.

Christopher Mitchell (18:16):
Now let's talk about your co-op, specifically about Hardy Telecommunications because I feel like you're pulled in a lot of different directions. One of them is, I think you want the region to be more viable. You want more opportunity [00:18:30] for people. You want to make sure people have that Internet access and that sort of a thing. And so if there's an opportunity for you to expand, you have to take a good look at it. I'm sure at the same time, all those expansions have risks. You're with 5,000 subscribers. You're in a place where I feel like then if you could double in size, you're going to really benefit your fixed costs. You're going to really have that revenue that you need to fill in more positions that you might not have right now, but at the same time, [00:19:00] you just have that risk of then expanding and things going wrong, inflation going up and being on the hook for expansion. So how do you weigh those things as you think about how aggressive to be?

Derek Barr (19:10):
Yeah, I mean, all those things come into play. I would say that probably I would characterize us as pretty careful that we don't try to overextend ourselves because we do recognize that it's one thing to get the service out there, but also we're in an area that it's an older [00:19:30] population for the most part. A lot of people are still getting used to a lot of the things that you can do with Internet. So we have a great customer service in my mind. So I do not want to expand to the point where all of a sudden that personal touch that we can give goes away. And plus, I mentioned the type of workforce that we have. We do have great employees, but as you get into a wider and wider area, you still have to be able to respond as quickly as what you respond in your main area.

(19:59):
So [00:20:00] we have to be careful with that. Plus the whole idea of being a nonprofit co-op means that we do pay capital credits. And so we have obligations to make sure that we can honor those commitments too. So I will give credit to the low Earth orbit satellite people out of the last few years. All of a sudden that's become a whole other competitor that never existed before. And in this industry, that is something else we have to look at. I mean, a lot of people would look forward to having us, and especially in the area that we are [00:20:30] where they know us well, but if we get in the new areas, a lot of the things we just talked about may not matter. They don't care if we're a co-op, that type of thing. They don't even realize know what a co-op is. We can tell 'em, but that doesn't register.

(20:43):
They're thinking, what kind of speeds can I get and what are the prices? And so there's a lot of options out there for people that we have to think about. Is a competitor going to come in? Is Frontier going to build their art off? And then all of a sudden we've put [00:21:00] a lot in for a project and we're not able to get back for that. So it is something that we also keep in mind. We rely heavily on federal funding. So Universal Service Fund has been absolutely critical for us during our existence. We never would've accomplished what we've accomplished without the Universal Service Fund. So it does weigh all those factors. And also just in terms of getting bigger as your workforce grows. So all of a sudden there's all kinds [00:21:30] of other laws that come into effect too. Family medical leave, things like that.

(21:35):
I mean, when you hit a certain number of employees, there's just a whole lot of other things that come in with that. We've always been, I think, very generous on our benefits here. And so can we continue to give those types of benefits as we get bigger and bigger and bigger? The hope obviously is that you're making the money from the new places you're building to help continue or expand upon all those things you're providing for your workforce. But those are [00:22:00] chances you have to, you consider all that. The COVID really drove prices up. At one point, fiber orders were a year. We had an order that was about a million dollars that we had to wait more than a year to get that order. Now that's all fine. Right now, the supply chain seems great. Is BEAD going to bring that back again? Something like that. We know where being a small provider would we be on the short end of the stick when we're trying to get materials. And a bigger provider [00:22:30] with a lot of BEAD territory is just swallowing all that up for themselves. So all of those are things you have to think about in the end. You try to make sure your organization's protected and do what's best for your customers.

Christopher Mitchell (22:43):
Yeah, that's one of the things that people don't always realize. You add more subscribers and you think, oh, now we can afford another outside plant person. Well, maybe you have to spend that money on an accountant.

Derek Barr (22:53):
Yes, exactly. I mean there, there's needs all over the place, so you just got to weigh everything.

Christopher Mitchell (22:59):
Yeah. [00:23:00] So I'm curious about partnerships with some of the counties as you're expanding. That's one of the things I saw that you're doing. How is that working out?

Derek Barr (23:09):
Oh, that's been fantastic. Yeah. We've worked closely with all the counties in our area, our home county, we were kind of already here and established, and so they're used to having us, but they're in Hardy County, but they're also very supportive of everything that we do. And in Hampshire, one of the reasons that we've been able to expand [00:23:30] in neighboring Hampshire County is because we have entered into public private partnerships with them. They help us a lot in terms of they have a wonderful GIS mapping expert. And so when we're looking at applying for projects, that's another thing that takes a lot of time and takes a lot of expertise. If a county has that type of information already available for us, then we can work together, come up with a project. We [00:24:00] split the costs on things as we can build. So their county commission and other officers of that county specifically look to us and say, Hey, where can we build? What can we do? Can you expand your network here? They're an area here. And so we have a great relationship with them. And anybody the phrase, put some money up, put some skin in the game. When you have a county that's willing to put forth the effort and has the expertise [00:24:30] and has money that they'll put forward toward a project, then for an organization like us, yes, we want to work with them. And it helps us get a lot more accomplished.

Christopher Mitchell (24:39):
One of the things that I did appreciate in working with an ISP to put in a state application, and one of the programs recently is it's a gamble, right? You're going to spend hours and hours of your time, and it's time that you don't have, right? It's not like you suddenly have extra hours that week to put toward it. So a lot of times you're working in your own time maybe [00:25:00] and trying to figure out how to do it, and that's a gamble that you may or may not get back.

Derek Barr (25:04):
Oh, yes. And it's happened to us. I mean, we've received projects and we've been denied for projects. We were given a community connect project a few years ago in Hampshire County. That's worked out great, but we also applied for a ReConnect project that we did not get, and it is hours spent preparing all the information for one of those applications. And sometimes, depending on how small you are, you're [00:25:30] having to rely on outside consultant help to do that too. So that's a big expense, and you might go through all that and then be told, sorry, you didn't get it. It stings when that happens. But I mean, that's just part of how it all works. But yeah, we've experienced it both. We apply for a lot of different things. We've seen us get projects that were very helpful and then we've been kind heartbroken as how much effort we put in and then told that, sorry, we're no longer in the mix.

Christopher Mitchell (25:59):
One of [00:26:00] the things that you'll notice if you go back and look at presidential speeches or any kind of political speeches is that small businesses are the heart and soul of America. And as a small business dealing with a lot of the paperwork requirements and things like that, I'm just curious, you seem like someone who's not turned the resentful corner. I've talked with people who are deeply resentful of all the federal paperwork they have to do and just see all the time and question whether or not it's valuable. How do those FCC processes [00:26:30] that often are designed for the biggest providers that connect the most people, how does that hit you as a small ISP?

Derek Barr (26:38):
It is frustrating. One thing for a while there, we had a little claim to fame because West Virginia still has two senators that were from two different parties. Joe Manchin is Democrat and Shelly Moore Capto is a Republican. So we actually had two chairs of the FCC both brought by one of our senators to visit our area. So back under [00:27:00] Obama, Tom Wheeler was FCC chair, Joe Manchin brought him to our area when President Trump won the election, and Jit PA took over as FCC chair, Shelly Moore Capito brought him to our area. And so we were actually touted as look what a small provider can do and has brought a fiber to the home network to rural West Virginia. And so it was nice, and Tom Wheeler actually said to me, you all are the poster child for what we want universal service to accomplish. So it is [00:27:30] frustrating when you hear that.

(27:32):
But yet, as far as a nationwide thing, there's continually things being done or coming out of the FCC that might say, well, all ISPs try to do this. And they try to market and they try to take advantage of their customers and they don't give their customers this and that. And there's no evidence whatsoever that a small provider is engaging in that type of behavior. But yet we're caught up in the same wave of all these regulations [00:28:00] Right now. Everybody's talking about net neutrality. We've always practiced net neutrality. We wouldn't even be able to not practice net neutrality. I mean, you have to have the equipment for it. And plus if we were to go out to a Netflix or something and say, we'll, prioritize your traffic for a fee, they'd laugh. I mean, they're like, you guys are so small, I don't even know where you are.

(28:22):
So we have none of that market power, but we still have all the same responsibilities. I actually, I would like to see [00:28:30] more exemptions for small providers. And I understand the flip side of that would be, Hey, wait a minute. If you want a fair marketplace, everybody has to be treated the same. But also, I don't think you should do things that are determined to punish or to keep a close eye on companies that are commit offenses or consistently commit the same bad behavior and punish people who have no history of ever doing that kind of behavior. That's [00:29:00] very difficult for us. That's something that I've seen more and more lately is all of the reporting requirements and policies. And I understand some things like cybersecurity is absolutely critical. And so, hey, if there's things we got to follow for that, that's great. If we've got to develop policies, we got to file reports.

(29:18):
But it just seems to be more and more things come down the pike that takes us away from being able to focus more on just building more. And of course, that's what we'd like to do, is just keep building and keep adding [00:29:30] more customers and keep getting into new areas. But there's a whole lot more time now that we have to spend on filling out these forms and certifying this and that and type of thing that you're saying. So yeah, I mean, I appreciate it. If you say, I don't sound resentful, I'm certainly grateful for the funding that we receive, but it is a burden when I kind of feel like if we're not the ones that are showing the bad behavior, why are we getting caught up in the same thing?

Christopher Mitchell (29:59):
Yeah, no, I think [00:30:00] of this as the, I would really like for donuts to help me lose weight. There's a lot of things I would like in life, and we have to make hard decisions. And on this issue, it's one of those things that I do think there should be exemptions for smaller carriers. One of the frustrations I sometimes have is they'll say, okay, well it's exempt for everyone below a hundred thousand. And I'm like, well, okay, but maybe it should be below 10,000.

Derek Barr (30:24):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what, even when they talk about, yes, they talk about things like that, [00:30:30] usually the numbers that they're referring to are so far beyond us. I mean, I'm like, yeah, you don't have to include this range. You could just say, we're going to include this range, and that probably would still be us that small. And so that's what I'm not asking for special treatment, but it's be more like just an understanding and an awareness of the kind of burden it does put on a small provider.

Christopher Mitchell (30:58):
And that's where I do feel like that [00:31:00] sort of, they're this whole thing, and I don't need to go into it for time reasons, but there's this question about how to deal with network slicing and 5G and how the FCC wants to deal with it. And they'll say, alright, well we'll just deal with it on a case by case basis. Well, okay, well then maybe that's what you need to do for the smaller providers is to have something like that. Now that still puts you on the hook for some real hassle if someone's going to be getting at you. But the FCC, if it wants to uphold this idea that small businesses are so important and [00:31:30] small ISPs are important, they have to come up with a process that will work for you where you're not facing all these risks. You don't have to bring in a whole team of lawyers to figure out how to do things. So anyway, I'm with you on that. I'm glad you've been able to succeed at this point. So I we're wrapping up. I'm just curious if you have any last thoughts.

Derek Barr (31:52):
Yeah, I would like for it to not be an automatic assumption that some bad behavior is being done by everybody because [00:32:00] we'll often see a regulation coming down and the press release will say, ISPs try to hide these fees, or they try to do things like that. But yet, whenever we actually talk to people, we'll often hear, yeah, but that's not you guys. But yet we still have to follow the same rules or change things that we've been successful for us, even though we haven't been doing it. So I guess as far as just final thoughts, I would hope that with all the attention being paid to BEAD [00:32:30] that, I will say this, I do think it's going to be very difficult, and it's kind of a pie in the sky to sit and say that after the BEAD program, every single location in the country will be connected because it's being touted that way.

Christopher Mitchell (32:45):
It boggles my mind. It's terrible politically. It's terrible. Honestly, there's no reason to be saying it, but I agree with you. People out there are saying that.

Derek Barr (32:54):
Yes. And so I would like those expectations to be more realistic. I mean, it has the potential [00:33:00] to do an incredible amount, but there's still going to be work to be done. And also I will say when you hook some people up and you might get them a network and get them connected, there are still going to be ongoing costs. Because quite frankly, if I spend, we were talking about $10,000. If I spend 10 or $15,000 to get the one home and they're going to pay me a hundred or 150 bucks a month in an Internet service, there has to be some sort of ongoing support, just network upgrades alone with customer [00:33:30] premise equipment and modems and routers and ONTs and all that kind of stuff that have to be replaced over time. There's going to be ongoing expenses. And I do tell people, I don't mean this in a bad way whatsoever, but I tell people there are locations strictly from a business sense that it will never make sense to build to

Christopher Mitchell (33:49):
Right. In northern Northern California, there was talking with a guy and there's two homes, it's like $174,000 to connect them. And I'm like, you know what? I'm fine leaving them behind. I'm sorry, [00:34:00] but Starlink is good enough for them. And if they need to cut down a few trees to do it, they'll be okay.

Derek Barr (34:06):
Yes, that's realism. Because you just have to say there is never going to be a business case where a company could survive and build on that. And if you don't expect some sort of ongoing support. So two parts to it, BEAD is not going to get every location understood, but I hope it could get a lot. But understand that doesn't mean that it's all done at that point. There's still going to be funding that needs to be [00:34:30] out there to continue to get these networks and keep 'em up in these really remote areas.

Christopher Mitchell (34:35):
Well, I think we've solved it

Derek Barr (34:39):
If it were that easy. Yeah, that'd be great.

Christopher Mitchell (34:42):
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Derek.

Derek Barr (34:44):
Yes, sir. Christopher, I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Ry Marcattilio (34:46):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available@communitynets.org slash broadbandbits. Email us@podcastmuninetworks.org with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle [00:35:00] is at Community nets. Follow community nets.org stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly newsletter@ilsr.org. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in [00:35:30] any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments.