Tag: "transcript"

Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 471

Posted October 4, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 471 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this week's episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast, host Christopher Mitchell is on vacation and the writing team takes over the show to talk about what brought them to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance as well as the communities they’ve spoken to recently. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Maren Machles: I'm just really excited that I get to be a part of the journey of documenting how communities across our country are doing this.

Sean Gonsalves: Welcome to the Community Broadband Bits podcast, the writer's takeover edition episode 471. I am LeVar Burton, sitting in as a guest host for Chris Mitchell in his absence. Okay. I'm not LeVar Burton, even though I'd love to host jeopardy or the reading rainbow, but it's just me. Sean Gonsalves, senior reporter and editor on the Community Broadband Networks team. And I have the con for this episode to borrow a bit of submarine lingo from one of my favorite movies with Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman, Crimson Tide. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. We have not committed mutiny. Chris is, believe it or not, on vacation. It does happen.

Sean Gonsalves: And so that's why I've got the con, but I'm not alone here on the submarine today. I've got two of my distinguished illustrious colleagues with me, Maren Machles, the Shonda Rhimes or the Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia Coppola of the team, if you will, one of our researchers writers and video editors, extraordinary, and Ry Marcattilio-McCracken, the grizzly veteran researcher and writer of our team that we affectionately call Dr. McGyver. He's a five tool player with a perfect name for baseball. And he's the oldest millennial on the planet. Welcome guys.

Maren Machles: You just dragged Ry so hard.

Sean Gonsalves: But was it accurate?

Maren Machles: It's accurate. I mean, I'm not going to object to the description that you gave.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: It's good to be here, Sean. Thanks for having us.

Sean Gonsalves: So I use the submarine metaphor for a reason, well, first of all, I never metaphor that I didn't...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 470

Posted September 24, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 470 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, Christopher Mitchell is joined by Executive Director of the ConnectMaine Authority, Peggy Schaffer to discuss strategies that might make Maine and other states successful in solving connectivity issues with the $42 billion in broadband funding the new infrastructure plan sets aside to go directly to states. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Peggy Schaffer: There's money coming, take a breath and figure out what it is you want for your community for the next 50 years because that's what you're going to be able to get.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Today I'm speaking with Peggy Schaffer from one of my favorite states, don't tell anyone, from Maine, the executive director of the Connect Maine Authority in fact. Welcome back to the show, Peggy.

Peggy Schaffer: Thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here.

Christopher Mitchell: Yes. And I've, I have to say that, obviously my organization has deep roots in, in Maine, in the Portland area particularly, but Maine has been one of my favorite states for broadband to. The main Broadband Coalition that you've been involved with, historically that you still are involved with, but so many great folks, so many great partnerships, really interesting approaches throughout the state. Let me just start with a general question. You've also been active in helping to shape the broadband piece of the infrastructure bill. How are you feeling right now, now that that language is sort of written in and maybe kind of quickly curing concrete?

Peggy Schaffer: I think it's a huge win. I really do. And here's, here's why, I mean, I think there's holes, right? They're always going to be holes in federal dissertation, but to me, the huge win is the significant shift from moving away from federally run programs to state run programs, because I'm a huge believer that the states are the people doing this work. It'...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 469

Posted September 24, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 469 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this week’s episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, Christopher Mitchell and ILSR Senior Reporter, Editor, and Researcher Sean Gonsalves talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate in August. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Sean Gonsalves: The sausage making is never pretty.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although I am ordering materials to go back to my office in Minneapolis, so who knows where future shows will come from today? I'm speaking with my colleague here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Sean Gonsalves. Welcome back to the show, Sean.

Sean Gonsalves: Good to be back.

Christopher Mitchell: Sean is one of our main writers. The one that when we have hard things, we force him to write about them. We've had a lot of fun on our podcast before, so Sean's back. If you really don't want to hear Sean's voice on future podcasts, you should tell me and then I won't tell him. So, I want to bring you on Sean, because you had no shortage of reactions and feelings about the infrastructure bill, the Senate version of it.

Sean Gonsalves: I did. My initial reaction was that it was all bad.

Christopher Mitchell: Because you hate bridges.

Sean Gonsalves: Okay, so let me clarify, the broadband portion of the infrastructure bill. I love-

Christopher Mitchell: Right, you love you a bridge.

Sean Gonsalves: I love good bridges, especially since I have to cross one to get on or off the Cape where I live here, Cape Cod and I like good transportation and roads and those kind of things. But as it related to broadband, I had my hopes up that what would come out of this would be what President Biden said he wanted to see in it.

Christopher Mitchell: We can go back further than that. I mean, you spent a lot of time researching the Affordable Accessible...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 468

Posted September 24, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 468 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, Christopher Mitchell is joined by Bruce McDougall, Anacortes City Council Member to speak about the journey to build a 21st century infrastructure in this small community in Washington by advocating for a municipally owned and operated fiber optic network. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bruce McDougall: It's good to have some technical resources that know the industry, whether that's within the activist's portion of it or within the elected officials, or even if there's IT staff in city hall that want to take this on.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. And today I'm speaking to Bruce McDougall, who is a member of the Anacortes City Council. That is a part-time position. And so like many people who are working to better their communities in an elected position, he also works as an outside position, and he works for Cisco systems as well, where he is a consulting engineer. Welcome to the show, Bruce.

Bruce McDougall: Thanks, Christopher. Great to be here.

Christopher Mitchell: This is one of those shows that I wanted to do two years ago. I knew that good things were happening, but we always like to let things simmer a little bit so that we can talk about what's been done rather than what you plan to do. And it seems like now you're in a good stage to do that.

Bruce McDougall: Yeah. Timing is good. We've made some progress on construction and turning up customers here in the last 12 months. So yeah, so we have real things to report at this point.

Christopher Mitchell: Excellent. So let's start with Anacortes. Anacortes is in Washington State for folks who are not familiar with it. Tell us a little bit about it, and what one might expect if they've visited.

Bruce McDougall: Yeah. Anacortes is about an hour north of Seattle, along the coast. It's kind of the gateway to the San Juan Islands. A lot of boating around here. It's a...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 467

Posted August 18, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 467 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode, we're joined by Sascha Meinrath, Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Pennsylvania State University and Director of X-Labs.

The two discuss an exciting collaboration they are working on with Consumer Reports and other allied organizations that crowdsources monthly Internet bills from actual users. The aim of the project is to look at the differentials in the speeds and prices ISPs offer across a variety of geographical locations to see if there is a correlation around race, class, and location. The findings will hopefully clarify the problems and solutions around digital equity and steer policy-making, regulatory authority and consumer protection law conversations to improve Internet access for all. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Sasha Meinrath: We really want people to be able to make informed decisions, apples to apples comparisons, between the offerings of different Internet service providers.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Today, I'm speaking with Sasha Meinrath, the director of X Labs and the Palmer Chair in telecommunications, not just communications, but telecommunications at Penn State.

Christopher Mitchell: Sasha, it's been too long. You've been on a few times before. It's great to talk to you.

Sasha Meinrath: It is awesome to be here again and I can't wait for what crazy shenanigans were going to get up to.

Christopher Mitchell: Yes. And let me just say first that you did not hear an introduction to this podcast, noble listener, because I think we're going to streamline things and for future episodes of Community Broadband Bits, take a few process pieces out and just make it a little easier to manage. So, you'll probably just hear me launching in and you won't have a short summary of what you're about to hear. It's going to be a surprise to you.

Christopher Mitchell: We take listener feedback seriously, though. If it's important to you that we have someone...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 466

Posted August 18, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 466 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode, we'rejoined by Matthew Rantanen, Director of Technology for the  Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association along with Maren Machles, ILSR Senior Researcher and Multimedia Producer to talk about the first iteration of the Tribal Wireless Bootcamp, which took place from June 30 through July 4. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below. 

Matthew Rantanen: Oh, my God, it was 130 degrees. And we were cooking. But we were in the zombie bunker in a desert. And we were setting up wireless. And it was apocalyptic. And it was cool. And they catered it. It was crazy.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: Welcome to Episode 466 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. This is Ry Marcattilio-McCracken here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Today, Christopher is joined by two people to talk about a project ILSR is involved with called the Tribal Wireless Bootcamp, a three-day experience which aims to support skills training and the sharing of knowledge for tribes that are at differing stages of deploying networks from the recently dispersed 2.5 gigahertz spectrum license by the FCC, and who are also seeking funding to build sustainable, resilient networks back in their communities.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: This first iteration of the Tribal Wireless Bootcamp ran just a week ago. Matthew Rantanen, Director of Technology for Southern California Tribal Chairmen's Association, helped organize and guide the effort, also opening up his home in Southern California to make it work.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: Joining us also is Maren Machles, ILSR Senior Researcher and Multimedia Producer, who captured video of the effort and collected interviews from those who came together to participate.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: Chris, Matt, and Maren talk about the bootcamp's goal of filling in a missing link in community broadband by providing a hands-on experience, but equally importantly of bringing people together to talk and learn from one another and build new skills. To do so, the group built a fixed wireless network and then, using the tools they learned onsite, figured...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 465

Posted August 18, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 465 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode, we're joined Sean Gonsalves, ILSR's Community Broadband Senior Reporter, Editor and Researcher to catch up on some of the most interesting broadband stories in recent weeks. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Sean Gonsalves: The digital divide in this country, isn't rural versus urban. It is really all over the place.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the community broadband bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell, and I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota, at least for a little bit longer. We're going to start doing some traveling again soon. But today we're going to cover some recent news, some interesting stories that we've been seeing. It's going to be a shorter show than normal. We're going to highlight some of the stuff that we have on our site. And frankly, if you want the longer piece, you can go check it out and read it real quick. Today I pulled Sean Gonsalves our senior editor, researcher, writer, cheese aficionado.

Sean Gonsalves: I like that. I was going to say connoisseur, but yes.

Christopher Mitchell: Yeah, I would say you're a connoisseur as well and just generally all around person who does interesting things at ILSR.

Sean Gonsalves: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Christopher Mitchell: Let's start with a story that's not even yours. Let's start off talking about New Hampshire quick and we'll run through it really quick. But I wanted to do this because I'm excited about this story. Jericho Casper on our team, she wrote it, she ran it down, she reported it out. We got it published in Gov Tech. It was sort of a little bit of a slim down version because Gov Tech doesn't want to run these 3,500 word pieces and then we've just published it on our site in a little bit more detail than it ran in Gov Tech.

Christopher Mitchell: Do you want to give a quick overview of what's going on in there and that Southwestern or Southeastern corner of New Hampshire?

Sean Gonsalves:...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 463

Posted August 18, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 463 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. We're joined by Douglas Adams, the CMO of Think Marketing (the firm which handles the marketing operations for the municipal network FairlawnGig in Ohio), Ernie Staten, Director of Public Service for the city of Fairlawn, and Angela Siefer, Executive Director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance.

The topic of the day is the amendment attached to the upcoming budget for the state of Ohio which, if included in the final version, would make Ohio the first state in a decade to erect barriers to the establishment, expansion, and continuing operation of publicly owned and operation broadband networks. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

Ernie Staten: For the state of Ohio, I mean, in all seriousness, we're talking about going backwards here. We're not talking about going forward. 10 and one is backwards, that's the irritation here.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Today I'm speaking with three folks that are going to help us understand what exactly is going on in Ohio. We've got actually two repeat guests, and then we have someone who's often been involved in inspiring us and getting us guests for the show, who's making his first actual appearance, and I'll introduce him first, Doug Adams, the CMO of Think, which handles the marketing for FairlawnGig and is someone who's always helping out at Mountain Connect and around a bunch of other places, helping broadband get its legs. Welcome to the show, Doug.

Doug Adams: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell: And then we have Ernie Staten, the Director of Public Service in the city of Fairlawn, which runs FairlawnGig. Welcome back, Ernie.

Ernie Staten: Thanks for having me, Chris.

Christopher Mitchell: And we have our audience favorite, Angela Siefer, the executive director of the National Digital Inclusion...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 462

Posted August 18, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 462 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. On this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Ernesto Falcon (Senior Legislative Counsel) and Hayley Tsukayama (Legislative Activist) from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to talk about how the announced $7 billion plan to increase broadband access across the state will be used to bring better connectivity to Californians. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below. 

Ernesto Falcon: A supervisor from a county took a photo of these two Latino girls in Taco Bell, I believe, doing homework on the street. That was the only way they could access the Internet. It was in Salinas, California, a big city. I think that hit home for a lot of legislators, the idea that children are forced to go to the streets to do homework right now, because of just the inequities that exist within the system.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: Welcome to Episode 462 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. This is Ry Marcattilio-McCracken here, at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Today, Christopher talks with Ernesto Falcon, Senior Legislative Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and his colleague, Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist for the nonprofit. They join us to talk about California's recent landmark announcement that it is devoting $7 billion to expand broadband access in the state over the next few years. Ernesto and Hayley help Chris unpack how the funds will be used, from the $4 billion earmarked for a statewide middle-mile open access network, designed to increase competition and expand access to areas that are unserved or underserved by existing providers, to the $500 million public financing program to assist local governments, tribes and non-profits financing new community-owned fiber networks.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: During the course of the conversation, Ernesto emphasizes the fact that there will always be zero-profit Internet access needs that will never be met by private entities, and that facilitating publicly-owned networks offers a commitment to reaching those...

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Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 464

Posted August 17, 2021 by Maren Machles

This is the transcript for episode 464 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. We're joined by John Windhausen, Executive Director of the Schools, Health, Libraries and Broadband Coalition (SHLB) and Alicja Johnson, SHLB Communication Manager. Windhausen and Johnson cover the wide array of specific projects SHLB has going on, from work on the Emergency Connectivity Fund, to telehealth efforts, to larger picture efforts they participate in, specifically, the future of spectrum and its role in expanding wireless networks across the country. Listen to the podcast here or read the transcript below.

John Windhausen: So if you really want to solve the homework gap, the best thing to do is to give schools and libraries that option to self deploy.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: Welcome to episode 464 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. This is Ry Marcattilio-McCraken here at the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Today, Christopher talks with John Windhausen, Executive Director of the Schools, Health, Libraries and Broadband Coalition, as well as the non-profit's Communication Manager, Alicja Johnson. SHLB, as it's called, has worked to advocate for to and through broadband infrastructure, not only to connect community anchor institutions, but to facilitate connections through those communities a way to bring better connectivity to communities as a whole.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: John and Alicja cover the wide array of specific projects SHLB has going on, from work on the Emergency Connectivity Fund, to telehealth efforts, to making sure community anchor institutions show up on broadband maps, as well as the larger picture efforts they participate in, including encouraging anchor institutions to cooperate and collaborate and the future of spectrum and its role in expanding wireless networks across the country. Now, here's Christopher talking with John and Alicja.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell, at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in St. Paul, Minnesota. Today, I'm speaking with a wonderful organization with the Executive Director, John Windhausen, from SHLB, the Schools, Hospitals...

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