The Digital Divide Is a Civil Rights Issue: The Fight for Digital Equity and the Battle Against Dark Money- Episode 9 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:16)
Hey, we’re back with another episode of Unbuffered. So clear those buffers. We’re about to get to it. We’ve got a fun group of folks here to talk about a number of stories. We’ll be talking about digital discrimination in the main, and then we’ll be talking about a few other topics to follow up with that based on the time left. But I’m Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. I’m in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the sun is shining, but it will soon pack its bags and we’ll get some rain, apparently.

We’ve got Sean Gonsalves, who is my Associate Director of Communications here at ILSR. Welcome.

Sean Gonsalves (00:51)
All right, good to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (00:54)
We’ve got Doug Dawson back in the normal seat where he is ⁓ down there on the Charter Spectrum connection. So anything that goes wrong, we know whose fault that is. Doug’s with CCG Consulting. Welcome.

Douglas Dawson (01:07)
And I am completely unbuffered today because that’s what Charter does.

Christopher Mitchell (01:12)
Right, they leave you unbuffered.

Douglas Dawson (01:14)
They do.

Christopher Mitchell (01:16)
And then we’ve got as a special guest, Bill Callahan, who is the Director of Connect Your Community in Ashtabula, Ohio, which is in that northeast corner there. Welcome, Bill.

Bill Callahan (01:27)
⁓ Thanks for having me.

Christopher Mitchell (01:30)
And for people who aren’t familiar, Bill, you you wouldn’t describe yourself as a legend, but a man who spent a lot of time organizing for the rights of folks, making sure that people have dignity in their lives and can actually take a part in modern society type stuff. But lately really with a focus on the Internet helped to found the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and been around for a while doing cool work.

Bill Callahan (01:52)
Only a man and a myth, not a legend.

Christopher Mitchell (01:55)
Sounds good. All right. So we wanted to talk about digital discrimination because, ⁓ I don’t know, it’s super important and we’re going to, we’re going to talk about this. Sean’s going to introduce it in a second here, but I also wanted to say that like, we’ve been working on this more at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and, trying to get a better sense out of, you know, all the stuff that we’ve done working on Internet access. ⁓ it’s been pretty clear what the problem was.

But increasingly in the middle of 2026, it feels like, I don’t know, it feels like it’s a harder problem to define than ever. And so we’ll wrestle with that a little bit, but we’re going to lead into it by talking about what the federal government has done. So Sean, ⁓ you pushed to talk about this and I was like, I don’t know if there’s a story there and you were like, Hey idiot, let’s talk about it. So, so now you got to make it interesting for the listeners.

Sean Gonsalves (02:42)
Haha

Right. I mean, well, first of all, I mean, I get it because like you said, this is something that, ⁓ you know, folks in the space have been working on for decades, literally. ⁓ And so sometimes it can feel like, what more can we say about this? But I do think it’s important to recognize this, like, regressive moment that we’re in. like, before we get into, the details of, the Eighth Circuit ruling and the FCC, et cetera, and how you kind of deal with these issues, it’s like when you look at

the context of what’s going on. Like what I would consider to be sort of this transparent rise in like the seeds of like Jim Crow 2.0. You got the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act. The maps are immediately being redrawn to disenfranchised black voters across the South. You know, the Trump administration has directed the Department of Justice to drop like all civil rights litigation. ⁓

then last year was the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act. And I just came from a press conference, a lot of folks that we’re involved with just rallying around trying to restore that, which was illegally canceled, the refunding for that. And of course, if the president’s budget passes, it will rescind those funds. And in that press conference, I think a link ⁓ emerged tying on.

Christopher Mitchell (04:03)
Sean, before, let’s

come, before we dig into the press conference, cause that’s going to launch us into the conversation. I, sometimes we have people that write into us to ask for some clarification. And I think it might be useful to note that we’re talking about digital equity. We’re talking about everything that can stop a person from having access to modern technology. And so, you know, historically we’ve focused a lot of attention on the infrastructure, whether or not people have a connection that they can actually use in their house.

Sean Gonsalves (04:09)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (04:30)
And other components of that include whether or not people have the skills, if they have a device to use a connection that is appropriate for them, if they have ⁓ the ability to pay for it, if it’s reliable, all those sorts of things. And so that’s the whole big thing we’re talking about right now. And so that’s a little bit of helpful knowledge. And then the other piece that’s helpful to know, I think, is that we don’t know how many people that is. But I think we would say, and Bill and Doug just briefly.

Sean Gonsalves (04:46)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (04:55)
like more than 10 million people, maybe more than 20, 30 million people. Like we don’t really have a sense, but it’s in that neighborhood of like, I would say between 10 % and 25 % of the United States.

Bill Callahan (05:07)
In the last American Community Survey, it looked to be in the neighborhood of 30 million folks who don’t have access to a normal Internet connection. Although the edges of that are getting a little iffy with 5G, but that’s really a wireline number. But it’s in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 million.

Christopher Mitchell (05:29)
Yeah, because then we have people who just don’t have the right devices and training and things like that. So Doug, any other context before we dive into it?

Douglas Dawson (05:37)
Yeah, and I agree with Bill’s number because what we’ve been seeing is depending on who’s counting the numbers, we’re seeing somewhere between 88 and 89 % of people who do have a connection. So, you know, the 25, 30 million is that’s the other remaining 10, 11, 12%. So that number has been pretty consistent now. We climbed and climbed and climbed to get up to 88 and now we’re kind of stuck there. It’s been maybe three years in a row where it hasn’t gotten any better. So, yep.

Christopher Mitchell (06:03)
Okay, so that’s the world that we’re talking about. And now Sean, this is relevant today because of why.

Sean Gonsalves (06:11)
Well, you know, as I said, it’s part of this overall ⁓ really assault on equity. And by equity, you know, that word, I think trips people up. It certainly tripped up the Trump administration where they got like, you know, AI to like go through any kind of grants that had the word equity in it. you know, I think some people hear the word equity. They think about like everybody should have everything the same. And equity just really means equality of opportunity, access to the very essential things that people just need to participate.

meaningfully in modern life. That’s what we’re talking about here. And so with the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act, there’s been a lot of ⁓ coalition activism work that involves there were at this press conference, there were some, you know, Congress members, were some senators, was a Chris Lewis from Public Knowledge was there. And, you know, one of the things they were talking about in the context of all of this, and I think it’s related to digital discrimination, digital equity,

was just that participation and how these things impact things like voter engagement, countering misinformation, those kinds of things. And as Chris Lewis mentioned in the thing, just the decimation of even local media. And so these online spaces and digital spaces have become very important, especially for those that are left behind to be able to organize and connect and…

⁓ and move forward. And so that I think is sort of the broad context of when we see, which I don’t think was a surprise that with the Eighth Circuit ruled. And so we can kind of get into the particulars around that. And Bill is really, I think, super knowledgeable. The story that I wrote was, he was a huge help in sort of trying to understand this and look at this thing kind of in hindsight.

Christopher Mitchell (07:55)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, so the Federal Communications Commission passed rules. And one of the things that people like us that are deeply concerned about making sure everyone has access, wanted to see those rules recognize ⁓ a problem if there’s disparate impact, which is to say, if you can observe, as Bill did in Cleveland, in many city blocks of high poverty, of mostly minority neighborhoods where ⁓

note where AT&T has refused to invest. you don’t have to find a smoking gun email from AT&T saying, we’re not going to invest where all those black people live. You can just say, we can see clearly that in the neighborhoods that have different characteristics, there is investment. And in these neighborhoods, we see higher prices and lower services and it’s pretty rigorous. And so that was the FCC. They had a digital discrimination rule that basically said,

⁓ that they are going to be on the lookout for that and there would be penalties attached to it. I think at the time we, and I on Connect This! and other shows that we were doing said, okay, it seems like a pretty good definition for what is digital discrimination, but the dog’s not going to hunt in that like, we’re not going to see any actual action from the FCC that that actually ever uses this rule for anything.

⁓ And so nonetheless, the industry appealed it like the big cable and telephone companies appealed that rule said that the FCC had overstepped its authority and the Eighth Circuit just agreed with them and has said that the FCC could come up with a new rule, but it can’t enforce the old rule.

Anything else in terms of context?

Sean Gonsalves (09:36)
Well, just what it’s also well, just one small thing, which is that the FCC has never and had never used this rule to hold any ⁓ ISP to any any account, which kind of speaks to the point you were making. but so this ruling came saying, even though you’ve never done this ever, don’t.

Christopher Mitchell (09:55)
Doug or Bill, Bill, go ahead first.

Douglas Dawson (09:57)
Well,

Bill Callahan (09:58)
Well, in fairness to

Douglas Dawson (09:58)
wallet?

Bill Callahan (09:59)
the FCC, guess this rule was under litigation within about five minutes of its adoption. So I don’t know that even in the last months of the last administration, they really had the ability to attempt to carry out the process. But the process that had been defined was essentially staff review. It was, you know.

Send us a letter saying why you think.

There’s digital discrimination going on in your community and our staff will take it under advisement and look into it. ⁓ And the first thing we’ll do looking into it is contact the provider and ask them about it, which is a very standard FCC way of dealing with consumer complaints. ⁓ So I don’t think people who are familiar with that process really thought you had much traction, but it certainly would have taken years to ripen into something that was a genuine working practical.

system and it never took the first step.

Douglas Dawson (11:06)
Well, in the bigger context is that there was never anything at the FCC before this law finally got enacted to do anything like that. The FCC really didn’t have any mechanism. Bill mentioned consumer complaints. 20 years ago, the FCC had a very rigorous consumer complaint division. You complained to the FCC, and they actually jumped right on it. They got heavily involved if it was a really egregious issue. But they have softened that so much.

under recent FCCs to the point where a lot of cases they don’t even refer the complaints onto the ISPs anymore. They just go into a bucket. I mean, they really don’t do anything with them anymore. So they had already weakened a little bit of power that they had, but the FCC never really had a tool. There’s other laws in the economy as a whole against discrimination, but there was never a specific broadband discrimination. this law got enacted because…

You know in Cleveland and you know the consumer advocate in California did several studies showing massive discrimination by Charter and their pricing by neighborhood And so you know everyone’s always known this like there was a study how many years ago Bill showing this in Dallas I mean under AT&T along that was probably 15 or 20 years ago. Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (12:21)
No, I do. I want to,

I want to know. I don’t know, both Bill and Doug, you know a lot about Charter Spectrum because you both have the service you’re in areas where they dominate. We dug into San Antonio to try to get a sense of this and, ⁓ and study thousands of addresses across several neighborhoods that were low income and higher income and found fairly uniform pricing. And so I don’t know if they fooled us or if they’ve changed practice or just Texas was a different market, but we did find that. And I don’t want to, I don’t want to hide that.

Bill Callahan (12:50)
No, actually when the ⁓ California study came out, ⁓ I attempted to replicate it in Ohio and I couldn’t. ⁓ So I will say that the work on digital redlining that I’ve done with NDIA ⁓ has really focused on the telecom side and reflects a real history of

you know, the old baby bells onto the current system.

being very deliberate about kind of removing themselves from universal service jurisdiction. From the moment they started taking advanced services seriously as the business that they were going to be in, ⁓ and they pretty much succeeded almost completely. So what we’re really looking at is going from a situation in the 70s, for example, where AT&T basically was serving everybody

in every neighborhood in Cleveland and there are poles and lines to show it ⁓ and to a situation where they now have clearly set off some neighborhoods where they don’t think it’s going to pay and they have the permission of all the authorities to go ahead and ⁓ practice that business strategy on the basis of so-called feasibility.

Christopher Mitchell (14:18)
Right, Ohio.

Bill Callahan (14:18)
But

that’s a particular history with the telecoms. I think the ⁓ major cable companies, if not all of them, ⁓ were all covered in their most recent franchise rounds when there still were franchises by universal service ⁓ requirements. ⁓ They kind of…

failed to get in under the wire with the new regime in Ohio, for example, with Charter. so Charter has the ability to serve basically every place in the communities where it ever had franchises. And so it goes ahead and does because why not? Right. So it just isn’t as much of an issue. I’m not sure. I don’t exactly understand what the California findings ⁓ reflect in the way of differences out there, but I couldn’t find them in Ohio.

Christopher Mitchell (15:07)
Well, one of the things I think,

Douglas Dawson (15:09)
I can address that, People don’t realize this, but both Charter and Comcast don’t have universal.

Christopher Mitchell (15:09)
one of the things that, okay, you go first and I will.

Douglas Dawson (15:18)
administration of their businesses. They’re broken into regions and the regions have full absolute marketing authority and they all take different paths. They have different pricing authority. have different, you know, when to write people off authority. so, so the folks in California were obviously very aggressive in some of the areas of the country they’ve not been. So, you know, I mean, I have to, what I’d really love to know is after they got caught by those reports, if they’re still doing it, but who knows what that’s an interesting, but they certainly kept doing it from the first to the second.

Bill Callahan (15:25)
Mm-hmm.

Douglas Dawson (15:48)
in California. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (15:51)
Well, additionally, Doug, you and I have dug in and found that I feel like the amount of people in Southern California and LA County and the surrounding areas that only have Charter Spectrum as an option is shockingly high. If you look at San Antonio, it is not as common for people to only have Charter as an option. So there’s a competitive dynamic there as well. Now,

Douglas Dawson (16:02)
All right. Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (16:10)
Well, Chris,

also, you had Ernesto on recently and a lot of the work that the CPUC has done recently, I think has kind of done a lot to curb that practice with Charter in California anyhow.

Christopher Mitchell (16:23)
Yeah, last week’s show talks about some of the studies that they did out there and how the regulator in California, the CPUC is trying to address these things. And so ⁓ I would be curious if we did that study again today, if it would be similar. ⁓ Doug, it looked like you wanted to say something quick. I want to move us under the.

Douglas Dawson (16:38)
But the

point being, because they do that and there’s no universal administration, even if they fix their behavior, the next VP of marketing in California in five years might go back to it. mean, there’s no guarantee that it’s a permanent sort of behavior. So, yes.

Christopher Mitchell (16:56)
But I want to get at like, where how do we win? Right? And this is where Bill has given a lot of thought. And I know that Doug hasn’t and Sean has as well. And Sean, I’ll hand it off to you in a second to describe our approach. And let me just set you up by saying that I’ve had this concern that like, I don’t want to put effort into basically, ⁓ the Federal Communications Commission trying to beat AT&T into investing in a million new homes in areas where they’re just going to offer

bad service, bad customer service, not able actually to meet the additional needs that people have when they’re coming from ⁓ neighborhoods that have historically been marginalized, know, people that have, ⁓ that can’t wait in line all the time, that don’t have credit cards and all this in that we would need to have a different approach. And I don’t think it’s enough to just say there’s redlining and we need AT&T to invest more and that will solve the problem. I never felt like that would do a whole lot for the people in those areas. Sean, what do you say to that?

Sean Gonsalves (17:53)
Yeah, exactly. I agree with you ⁓ in looking at that. I guess I would call it a less federal stick, more community carrot. The communities that really, where you don’t see at least wide scale, city-wide or community-wide ⁓ digital discrimination are communities that build their own networks. mean, because they have a totally different business model, they have totally different incentives.

they’re building these things to get to universal connectivity. And so it was one of the reasons why we were initially excited when like even prior to the infrastructure Bill being passed, but the Biden administration had kind of wanted to put their thumb on the scale to really ⁓ incentivize some of the BEAD dollars to go to community networks. And that, know, in the sausage making, you know, got left out. And here we are where, you know, BEADs even

been, I think, degraded even more. ⁓ And so I feel like that approach is one where you look at different cities, whether it’s Chattanooga or Longmont and Loveland and communities like Wilson. Yeah, exactly. And so that to me feels like a more ⁓ wholesome. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (19:04)
Yeah, or San Francisco or Newark where they didn’t go citywide as well, where you can do targeted approaches.

Sean Gonsalves (19:16)
better way of tackling this issue instead of, as you said, relying on the FCC to beat AT&T over the head. So.

Christopher Mitchell (19:22)
Yeah, so

Bill, just need a whole much more Josh Edmonds to start ⁓ totally unique ⁓ networks like on DigitalC, right? You can’t just replicate the conditions that create a DigitalC, unfortunately, we know that.

Sean Gonsalves (19:26)
That’s right.

Bill Callahan (19:31)
Can’t be, the digital sea.

No, you sure can’t. Don’t

nobody, most people aren’t going to start with $3 million to play with. But, ⁓ but nonetheless, ⁓ I will say that ⁓ you can replicate the strategic determination to do something like that. And, and you, if you’re serious about it, you can try to create the capacity in the community to allow you to do.

10 year strategy to get from a middle mile nonprofit to something that’s actually consumer oriented. It took a lot of time. took a lot of money and determination. It’s not impossible to do. I think that, I mean, just for people who don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (20:25)
Shame. Shame if you don’t know Joshua Edmonds

Bill Callahan (20:26)
We, yes. Well, we have, ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (20:27)
Thank

Bill Callahan (20:29)
I was involved in 2016-17 and doing a study ⁓ using the old form 477 data from the FCC, ⁓ which led to the conclusion that AT&T when rolling out its first round of upgrades ⁓ sort of in the city of Cleveland,

simply left out of the central office areas and they were the poor and largely minority non-white central office areas. So that’s the east side, the northeast side of Cleveland and a few other places. ⁓

if people will remember the names Glenn Villeneuve as ⁓ important black neighborhoods in the city. So those areas are still largely without fiber, right? That has not changed 10 years later. And…

In 2023, the city of Cleveland, after two years of pursuit on the, the, ⁓ and, experimentation and pilot projects and a lot of private money, agreed to put $20 million into the development of a nonprofit 5g wireless network, ⁓ run by an organization called DigitalC they call it their canopy network. And, that is.

now pretty much built out in terms of the infrastructure citywide and they’ve got about 9,000 customers on the network. They charge $18 plus tax a month and they get pretty much uniformly 100 Mbps service if not better. So that’s the city strategy.

Christopher Mitchell (22:16)
and they are consistently.

Bill Callahan (22:20)
I mean, because the concentration of that development was in the redlined East side neighborhoods. ⁓ And so it’s very definitely a response and it is the city’s response ⁓ to so. So that’s what we’re talking about. And it’s a very hard thing to do because you need a lot of capital upfront and, you know, also need to have $20 million in ARPA money sitting around.

Christopher Mitchell (22:33)
And along the way.

Well, and then you also have to the thick skin of dealing with ⁓ inquiry after inquiry coming from elected officials on behalf of Charter Spectrum, trying to undermine your efforts. There’s a history of shenanigans around public options in Cleveland. I’ve talked about that before on my shows and there’s a lot of interesting politics in Cleveland on the behalf of monopolists. So for people that are interested, it continues.

Bill Callahan (23:10)
Well, and the other thing to remember is that in the background of all this, we talk about AT&T, but the reason why this matters is that it leaves people dependent completely on Charter. And Charter is 90 to $95 a month. And that’s $30 more than fiber in general. And it…

Sean Gonsalves (23:10)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Callahan (23:33)
also means that you don’t have access to AT&T access, which is probably the single best long-term, well, maybe Comcast is better. But it’s been a very reliable source of low cost service, particularly with fiber in last couple of years for low income folks. But you don’t have that if you don’t have them. So it’s all those disadvantages, but it’s Charter that stands to lose business.

And so, yes, they’ve very much been behind the scenes on this. So I don’t know what you do if you’re in Youngstown, which is 70 miles away from Cleveland and has never had any improvement of its network of any kind in most of the city.

AT&T is still selling 10 Mbps DSL all over that city. Never put in anything better and has no apparent plans to do so. ⁓ Youngstown is a very poor city. Nobody is going to have $3 million to come up on the front end. And there is not a public power system. So it’s really very hard to figure out where to start there, except hope that some overbuilder will come in.

Christopher Mitchell (24:43)
Right.

Bill Callahan (24:57)
And that’s really what the city’s doing.

Douglas Dawson (25:00)
And it’s going to get worse there because AT&T swears they’re going to get rid of all the copper by 2030. And it’s going to go dead. I think we have a bigger problem going forward. AI is giving the carriers the ability to very selectively build profiles. And they can say, from a rating to 1 to 10, I rate this customer, these guys who are 10s, they’re my wonderful long-term customers, pay their bills on time, they buy extra products.

They go to the front of the customer service queue. They go to the front of the repair queue. You’re a two. Maybe we’ll come fix your problem if you have it. Maybe we won’t, right? And we’re starting to see that. And I believe that’s going to become the predominant new model. And that’s one of the things this law could have helped to address. There’s really not, without this discrimination law, there’s really no rules against that. Not that I know of. I don’t know about you, Bill. There’s no rules against that at all.

It’s just their choice of how to do customer service. And I think we’re going to see massively selective customer service based upon your customer profile.

Sean Gonsalves (26:08)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (26:09)
I mean, I do think it is hard, right? If I’m arguing on behalf of the private companies that don’t want their investments second guests, it is more expensive to do business in an area where you’re gonna have a higher rate of non-payment and have to go through collections. It is more difficult to invest in areas where you may have more security issues for the people doing the work on the street. You know, there are real expenses.

and the federal government and the states just kind of wave their hands to ignore this. I mean, I remember this because the report that Bill did, you did in Ohio in that area there in Cleveland, it was accompanied by the fact that the state had chosen to tell AT&T invest where you want to invest, know, like we trust you. And I think it’s a reminder that when you have these big monopolies, if the state is just going to say, we’re not going to have any tools except for hoping for the best.

Well, this is what happens. We have entire communities that are left behind. And sometimes those are neighborhoods within a city of Cleveland. Sometimes they’re entire communities in Youngstown. Sometimes it’s rural areas. It varies. ⁓ But the simple fact is this is something that no one seriously disputes is an essential utility. And yet we keep acting like just hoping that the private sector, which is heavily monopolized, is going to somehow fix the solution or find the solution for this.

Douglas Dawson (27:35)
Bill said it earlier, agreements used to take care of that and now they’re not even around anymore in places. So that’s how we solved that problem. said average your cost, high cost, low cost, average. And so we got rid of it, so yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:36)
Good Doug,

Bill Callahan (27:50)
Yeah, no question. Yeah, the inflection point in Ohio and in many places was the elimination of the video franchise requirement, the local video franchise requirement, which had been the…

only mechanism to really guarantee universal reach or close to universal reach. And it was thrown out on the premise that you needed competition and you weren’t going to have competition if cities were allowed to get in the way. So of course, what that meant is that in the absence of the cities having any leverage, you then have areas where there is zero competition, right? That’s the impact. But also this has to do with

the premise that ⁓ it’s only the federal government’s business or the state government’s business if people don’t have one provider, ⁓ It’s the whole light touch preference, which is in terms of experts in the industry seems to be one of those, know, believing in the Holy Trinity. And ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (28:44)
the assumption.

Bill Callahan (29:02)
So on some level, the only people who ever really ⁓ push back against those are people who are outcome driven at the community level. Cause if you’re at the, the area of principle and regulatory principle and practice, you just have very little support in, at the federal level or the state level for broad reforms of that, of those premises.

Sean Gonsalves (29:12)
Hmm.

Bill Callahan (29:31)
But if you get down to East Cleveland doesn’t have any Internet for anybody, you may actually have the Republican administration in Ohio putting some money in to try to help solve the problem, which has happened. But only because it’s a particular sore point story that they can see a political reason to help with. so I think the bottom line is what…

Christopher Mitchell (29:53)
And that’s where we need to take it.

Bill Callahan (29:57)
What Sean was saying, these are going to be community solutions or no solutions.

Christopher Mitchell (30:02)
Yeah, we need to move on the ⁓ but I was one last thing, which is that this is something where we also need philanthropy and local government to pony up some because some of the states are doing a decent job and putting some money in most of them are not most of them are in a difficult situation. And the federal government Well, considering we have a debt that’s greater than our GDP. Now, I am curious to see if the economy tanks again, we may not see as generous a response as we did five, six years ago. So

We can’t necessarily expect that that a democratic administration will just find several billion dollars. I think it would be a wise investment for them to do it that would offset many more billions of dollars of future federal expenditures. I don’t know that we can count on it. But like if we don’t organize at the local level, none of that’s going to happen anyway. So like whether it’s pots of money from philanthropy, local government, and then ultimately demonstrating that there’s a reason for people elected at the national level to then put money into it. ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (30:49)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (31:00)
that’s all the stuff that needs to happen. So people need to keep working on it. ⁓ This is related to an interesting topic, which is the ⁓ NTIA administering the BEAD grants has been playing kind of a game of stupid chicken, I want to say with states, right? So California was looking at enacting a law like North, like North, like New York, in which they would have required a low income service and ⁓

and the person in the General Assembly that was pushing that in California heard from NTIA that they would be putting at risk their BEAD dollars. And NTIA said, no one’s going to get BEAD dollars if you’re violating these principles. ⁓ Now, let’s bear in mind that in New York, ⁓ they had a law for six years now, I want to say seven years, perhaps that you have to have a low income plan. And ⁓ NTIA says, we’re not going to give you the money if you still have it. Well, turns out, NTIA has given them the money.

And Pennsylvania wasn’t going to get the money because they have a long complaint about poorly enacted ⁓ work prevailing wage laws. And Pennsylvania has one that artificially significantly increases the costs of certain fiber technicians because Pennsylvania doesn’t know how to measure it and what a fiber technician is. And Pennsylvania said, we’re not changing the law. And the NTIA said, you’re not getting the money. And then NTIA just gave them the money.

And basically it sounds like behind the scenes is saying, well, you can’t spend the money until you change those things. so we have an interesting conflict. And I think we’re all just expecting NTIA to keep talking tough and not actually do anything. So Doug, think you’re the one that’s closest on a lot of this. Is that what you’re seeing?

Sean Gonsalves (32:28)
and

Douglas Dawson (32:40)
That’s my guess because what NTIA has done not only just in the rates but all sorts of issues related to permitting, they’ve simply come out and made rulings that NTIA have zero authority to make. They have no legal basis for making any of these decisions. You could argue that they have a little bit of basis on the rate issue, but not much, but they have zero basis on the other issues. so they simply, they’re trying to regulate through the back door and…

Bill Callahan (32:54)
Right.

Douglas Dawson (33:10)
You on the permitting issue, to give a quick example, they’re saying states must have a 90-day shot clock on local permitting. Well, state broadband offices have zero ability to agree to that because they have nothing to do with permitting, nor does the state have anything to do with permitting. It’s a local issue. you know, so what I think is going to happen, you know, what NTIA just wrote is if ISPs don’t like what’s going on, they’re supposed to come and squeal to the NTIA. ⁓

I don’t think hardly any of them will do that because all it does is put their own particular granted risk of being slowed down. So my guess is this is nothing. You know, the only place where this could be an issue would be New York. You know, if Charter decides they want to use this as a mechanism to re to re litigate the low rate one more time, they’ve already lost twice. But if they want to try again, they could use this. But meanwhile, their BEAD money would be put on hold. So so, you know, I see

I don’t see any little ISPs caring about any of these issues. It’s simply never going to come up. And it’s really unlikely for the big guys to come and say, I don’t like what the state’s doing. Please put my grant on hold. Why were we resolved this? So I mean, that’s the, so I think this is a nothing. I haven’t, still am trying to figure out why the hell they did this. it’s possibly the silliest regulatory document I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying a lot.

Sean Gonsalves (34:21)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (34:29)
mean, I just,

I don’t, I don’t like casting expulsions like this because I’m well aware of my deep gaps of knowledge in many areas, but you cannot escape the conclusion. When you look at this, these are not people with a plan. These are people with an agenda and they haven’t thought much about how to get from A to B. They’re just there to basically stuff their pockets of them and their friends as long as they, as long as they have an ability to do so. And then to get out with a pardon. That’s what I, from what I can tell it’s gross.

Sean Gonsalves (34:50)
Yup.

You know what

I think is a great example of that, Chris, is I went and actually looked at the hearing in February where they had Lutnick in, and we actually have sitting senators like Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana saying, why don’t you just use satellite Internet service for 600 bucks, you can buy a Starlink terminal, why don’t you just do that across America and save a bunch of money? This is what’s driving a lot of the policy, and it’s just crazy. And then I just have

two other questions really, which is what legal authority does NTIA have to require states to overturn or not enforce their own laws? And really at this point, why would states or ISPs even participate in being at this point? Like seriously.

Douglas Dawson (35:37)
You’re out.

Christopher Mitchell (35:42)
I did talk with an ISP the other day and I was just like, or a large one. And I was like, are you really feeling vindicated at your decision not to touch this process at all? And he was like, ⁓ man, so much though. But let’s also, I mean, I just want to say we call out bad leadership a lot. I’m glad to see Governor Hochul not even considering backing down on this in New York state, you know, they passed a law. I’m not saying it’s my, not my favorite law. I think it’s necessary perhaps. And, ⁓ but like they passed a law.

And they defended it and the Supreme Court decided not to review it twice, which is like fairly rare. And they have a law that the state of New York has passed. and, you know, and for them to like, just say that the Trump administration acting, you know, unconstitutionally in many cases, trying to tell New York it has to change its law after all that is ridiculous.

it’s also true of Pennsylvania, which I think is a dumb law, but is there right? Go ahead, Bill.

Bill Callahan (36:35)
Well, with respect to New York, ⁓ the state has spent so much money ⁓ in this area and is spending so much money that the benefit of keeping BEAD is considerably less than the benefit of having something to offer a million people in the way of low income rates.

Hochul can count votes for sure. And many of these states are very, very scared of not delivering for rural voters. I don’t think that’s actually a big issue for Democrats in New York. I mean, they care, right? They’re a congressman who care, but so I…

Christopher Mitchell (37:18)
Yeah,

we don’t have to talk about all the shortcomings of New York’s various systems.

Bill Callahan (37:24)
Well, I’m just saying that New York is a place, I mean, it’s also a lot of work that’s been done, organizing work that’s been done in New York that contributes to this. But fundamentally, the balance of power here is the ⁓ kind of urban population. honestly, there aren’t that many more rural locations that BEAD is serving. And most of them at this point are going to end up with

Starlink, so who cares, right? So on some level, I think this is the state kind of saying, well, okay, do your worst, And I think all that Lutnick and company are doing is trying to impress their ideological friends with how tough they are, right? I don’t think they actually have a plan, as you said, so.

Douglas Dawson (38:01)
Yeah. There is one nasty… Yeah.

Yeah.

There is one very nasty rule in here that it’s got the co-ops upset because it says in here that if you got a BEAD grant and you own polls, that your polls are now subject to either state or federal poll rules. And they’ve always been exempt from those. And if they don’t soften that rule somehow, there’s a whole lot of co-ops just going to walk away from BEAD now that they’ve won the awards.

Bill Callahan (38:36)
Yeah.

Douglas Dawson (38:38)
You know, to give you an example of how dumb of a rule that is, I know a co-op who through their own money and through three state ⁓ capital project fund grants has already built 90 % of their area, they applied for a BEAD grant for 5 % remaining of their area. If taking that money makes them subject to poll attachment rules, they’ll simply not take the BEAD money. There’s co-ops who got BEAD money to do their entire co-op and I think some of them will just walk away here. That’s what the…

That’s what their associations are recommended that they do. ⁓ you know, again, they have no authority to make that ruling. They simply can’t, that’s a state decision. They cannot force these co-ops into getting pulled into, ⁓ in fact, there’s a federal poll legislation that says they’re exempt. I mean, there’s a federal law that says they’re exempt for Pete’s sake. yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (39:29)
great. Once again, my ignorance. ⁓

I think it’s also worth noting that the penalties of walking away from this are different than the penalties from never having participated. Because what other ISP is going to want to come in and scoop that up to try to take that over? Like, these are just, it’s the people that are going to be harmed by this, the residents.

Sean Gonsalves (39:40)
Mm-hmm.

Douglas Dawson (39:45)
Nobody.

Well, no, if a co-op walks away from this, the next guy knows he’s not getting on the polls. The co-op’s going to go, hell no, go away. So yeah, this is really insane.

Christopher Mitchell (39:56)
You

⁓ we wanted to talk last about, ⁓ dark money. And this is something that we are seeing. Sean, ⁓ wants to, to note a, ⁓ a piece of, of good news, ⁓ in terms of those of us who are deeply concerned about dark money, which I’ll just note, like, I mean, there’s, when we talk about dark money, there’s people who have all kinds of solutions. And I will say at the very minimum, I would hope we would all agree that this stuff should be documented and a public record and not hidden.

Disclosed is the word there should be disclosure on money for these public things. So like, don’t think that just because we’re talking about dark money, we’re all necessarily saying that like, you know, we’re going to prohibit all private money in elections or something like that. There’s a range of ways to deal with this. So but there’s a rose recently another attack on a municipal process in Massachusetts that used some one of these groups showed up with all kinds of mailers and scary stuff to try and scare people in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, they voted

against the financing plan that had been developed by it wasn’t a super close vote. I would say there’s 6040 if I remember the numbers. And there’s some local politics that looked like in there. But like, these groups are out there waiting for a community that looks like they’re going to move forward. And then they’re dumping a bunch of mailers on it to try to scare people and motivate the just say no people that in any community to make sure that they’re out there. Sean, what’s going on?

Sean Gonsalves (41:28)
Yeah, well, the good news that you were alluding to is, and I don’t want to overstate it because it’s not like, you know, it’s, well, first of all, it’s not a law quite yet. So I call it the Hawaiian punch to the face of Citizen United. So, you know, Hawaii lawmakers passed this Bill that essentially would redefine corporations and prohibit them from spending any money on elections. And that would include dark money.

It passed in the Senate 24-0 in the House there. It was 50-1. The Governor hasn’t signed it yet. Not sure if the Governor of Hawaii will, but it’s that kind of thing that I think is at the root of pretty much all of the stuff that we’re talking about. It’s really, it’s not about so much the technology. It’s about the political will and where the power centers lie. And so if states can find a way to get money out of elections, that could…

potentially change everything across the board, including things like we see in Longmeadow, which is another community in Massachusetts who was trying to do like, what, the like two dozen or so communities in the Berkshires that have built out municipal fiber networks. And, you know, something that was that was going to require they raise ⁓ taxes on folks in that town about 90. Yeah, I think it was going to raise, I think property taxes, maybe something like 97 bucks a year. Anyway, it went down.

Christopher Mitchell (42:43)
with that plan.

Sean Gonsalves (42:51)
⁓ And as you said, I’m sure there were complicating factors, but it was another instance of this group mass priorities, which is like, you know, another one of these front groups and they’ve popped up other places in Bountiful, Utah. We’ve seen, you know, Gigi in the American Association for Public Broadband has been really, you know, tracking this stuff and been out front, but these campaigns, we saw it happen in Maine where, you know, they, you know, these kinds of campaigns proceeded.

local votes that convince folks ultimately, and you don’t need a lot of folks at these town meetings to switch a vote. We’re not talking about tens of thousands of folks.

Christopher Mitchell (43:22)
Well, yeah, I

mean, and it’s worth noting these town meetings, it’s a really interesting way to go forward. And I would say it’s not easy for a mailer to just change people’s opinions. I looked into it cause I was curious and in Longmeadow, there’d been a bunch of votes at town meetings to move forward, to establish a municipal light plant. And then you have to have that across two votes. And these are things where no money was at stake and it was 90, 10, you know, over and over again, in terms of percentages.

And, ⁓ which actually is like fairly close because a lot of these things are 95 or 99 to one, ⁓ in those towns. And, ⁓ this is one where it does seem like there was a local issue where they were, some people are uncomfortable with how much they knew about this plan and, you see some of the talking points, right? And so I do wonder if this is confusion that could get resolved if people were able to talk to each other normally, but they’re not.

being shouted at constantly with all this scaremonger tactics.

Sean Gonsalves (44:18)
Right, well, one of the things that limits Longmeadow in some ways, and I don’t know all of the particulars, and I think this is probably true of a lot of towns, is that there’s often rules that you can’t do any marketing and spend the public education campaign. So you’re at a real disadvantage when you’ve got groups that are $10,000, $20,000 in a campaign. And if you’re a local town official, you’re not allowed to do that kind of stuff. So you have to be really smart about…

Christopher Mitchell (44:25)
Everyone.

Sean Gonsalves (44:46)
inoculating people against the stuff in in the planning process and at meetings and stuff where you’re you know talking about this public

Christopher Mitchell (44:53)
Yeah, I don’t think Longmeadow is done though. So I mean, I’m not gonna I think they’re they may still have a number of shots at a plan that would get a lot of support in the community, Doug.

Douglas Dawson (45:02)
This has been around since the very first municipal networks. Heck, you and I were involved in some of those early ones. And so anytime there’s been a vote, these folks have showed up. They often failed. I mean, they came to Lafayette, Louisiana, and the people there just laughed at office. They made big jokes about it. They put out these great videos and make you fun of them. then, a ton of work, a ton of work. No, no, it was a ton of work. was it ⁓ South St. Paul, that little town in your area?

Christopher Mitchell (45:21)
But was a ton of work. mean, they didn’t just they didn’t just laugh like it was a ton of work.

Douglas Dawson (45:31)
They were gonna win it North St. Paul. They were gonna win it and then the busloads showed up and knocked on all the old people’s door and they lost soundly on the vote. So I mean they’ve been successful probably 30 40 percent of the time. So it’s a good tactic for them. You know, they also do that when there’s not a vote and when there’s not a vote going on and they’re just lobbying against it, then it’s not dark money because it’s not an election issue. I mean they lobby against them. They lobby often just to convince

Christopher Mitchell (45:31)
North St. Paul.

Douglas Dawson (46:00)
the board to vote against it. But when the people get to vote, that’s election interference. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (46:04)
Yeah, no, I

Sean Gonsalves (46:06)
Doug, I got a question for you.

Christopher Mitchell (46:06)
always think issue Sean, I you’re a communications guy, Sean. So I’ll just I’ll say this to you publicly because I know you got thick skin, like, I think you’re wrong to use the language take money out of politics, not gonna happen. And I feel like a lot of people are like, you just you’re just got your heads in the clouds. I would accept the normal background radiation level of corruption, right? Like that’s what we’re talking about. We are in a period of heightened corruption in which our laws encourage way more than the normal amount of corruption. And so like

Sean Gonsalves (46:32)
Fair point,

but here’s the thing, Chris, fair point, but this is why you’re not a comms guy. And this is why Republicans are so good at messaging. You want to be nuanced and you want to be, you know, academically sound and everything. This is about hitting, this is about emotional language and about hitting people at a base level that they immediately understand and identify with. It’s not about whether or not, know, it’s specifically in every instance, taking money out of politics. It’s, just touching on that.

Christopher Mitchell (46:37)
True.

Douglas Dawson (46:37)
you

Sean Gonsalves (47:00)
that live wire inside of people that folks are legitimately frustrated about, which is all of this money that floods into the political system that works against their interests. And so that’s all I’d say about that.

Christopher Mitchell (47:12)
I think if Jordan’s

on point, he should just have like a little emoticon of me going up in flames as you say that, because I feel like you just torched me.

Sean Gonsalves (47:22)
No, I mean, you do, but you make a fair point. And so it’s always a balance. It’s always a balance. I’m curious.

Christopher Mitchell (47:27)
So Bill,

Bill, you’ve given this a lot of thought over the years. I want to hear your thoughts.

Bill Callahan (47:32)
I haven’t had any great insights, unfortunately. I mean, I don’t think money is going to be out of politics. So I think people need to think about how to deal with the world in which it’s there. That’s all. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (47:46)
But you, Bill,

you talk about like, you and I have had many conversations about how to motivate people to get out. like, and then also I think like how to make sure that you’re taking, making good use of their time. Like as we’re wrapping up, like what is the advice you have for people that want to work around this?

Bill Callahan (48:02)
Well, in the long run, think…

for a community to be able to make a real decision that it’s gonna be able to stick with, right? Those decisions have to be embedded in the long running life of the community, right? So it can’t just be, you know, five people decide that it would be a great idea to do something and we’re gonna do a campaign to do it. And that’s hard when you’re talking about…

issues or ideas which are in some ways third, fourth tier in terms of people’s lives. This is not the highways coming through and tearing down our houses. This would be a good thing to do to save us some money on a monthly Bill. People may well say, sure, but it’s not going to go to the top of anybody’s list, particularly politicians.

Sean Gonsalves (48:39)
You

Bill Callahan (49:01)
You gotta figure out a way to get past that. I mean, a lot of people in the field ⁓ are well aware to talk about…

the value of digital equity, you gotta connect it to healthcare, you gotta connect it to jobs and so on. I’m not sure people are quite as clear about the community organizing side of that, right? That you gotta embed these proposals in communities to do things to networks of people who are credible and thoughtful and understand all the balances within their communities. That’s a hard thing to do, it takes a long time. ⁓ And… ⁓

Sean Gonsalves (49:21)
Mm.

Bill Callahan (49:38)
And then you got to spend the money when the creeps come in from your neighborhood with a lot of money. I mean, I don’t think that’s nothing exciting, right? It’s just patience.

Christopher Mitchell (49:44)
It does seem like they’re from Minnesota. It’s weird.

Sean Gonsalves (49:54)
I wish I had one of those buttons, you know, we need to get one of those buttons Chris where you have the sound effects when so when somebody says something that’s fire or really good, you can just hit the button and that was good.

Douglas Dawson (49:55)
No, I want to go back. Yeah.

I

would like to go back to what Chris started with though. I have to wonder how different that election would have been if the people who put that money in were forced to identify who they were. So that you know who’s telling these stories about how bad it is because it’s surely the cable company or their associations. But they’ve never been identified. It’s always been a mystery.

Christopher Mitchell (50:23)
Yeah. I mean, you.

Sean Gonsalves (50:30)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (50:30)
From North

Carolina to Michigan to, I’m trying to think of other places in which they are positively identified. There was like the people who were leading the campaign who were consistently showing up were identified as the spouse of like high ranking Comcast employee or a Charter employee or a fricking Adelphia employee, right? Like it’s just, it is remarkable how even when they have a local person, oftentimes that person is on a payroll. It’s not a citizen volunteer who’s like,

Sean Gonsalves (50:56)
Ha!

Christopher Mitchell (50:59)
this concerned about it.

Douglas Dawson (51:01)
When back in Lafayette, yes.

Bill Callahan (51:02)
But it probably is somebody who nobody wants

to hear you smearing them. I mean, you want that information to be around and you don’t want it to be a personal attack. And that’s very difficult to pull off. ⁓

Douglas Dawson (51:07)
Right.

Sean Gonsalves (51:07)
Hmm.

Douglas Dawson (51:12)
Yeah. And Lafayette,

the Charter, that was Cox, Lineman, each showed up with a slip of paper with a hard question on it to ask to the council. They were employees. They were very, they were, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (51:27)
But that’s also good organizing.

Sean Gonsalves (51:27)
You know, one people should be asking

is, it’s a great thing to be concerned about how we spend taxpayer money. How come it’s only ever a question when it’s a local community that wants to decide how to spend their taxpayer money, but no one ever questions the taxpayer money that goes to these big corporations who just do whatever they want with it, whether they meet their promises or build with the money or not.

It’s never a question, but it becomes a question. that, need to ask that question more.

Christopher Mitchell (51:58)
Yeah. Well, I want to,

I want to end on this because we have to run Sean. I have to go to a big important meeting internally. But I forgot to include this at the time, but Karl recently, Karl Bode and his great newsletter that he does. He wrote to be clear, telecom monopolies, corrupt Republican lawmakers and quote free market libertarian types don’t believe the FCC has any authority to do anything.

Sean Gonsalves (52:04)
Okay.

Bill Callahan (52:11)
Hmm.

Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (52:26)
And I

think that is worth remembering is that like, and Sean, you can hit me with a fish sometime if you want to just get my attention, but like, like it’s worth remembering. It’s hard to have an honest argument with people who will say anything. And, and it is just infuriating because they don’t really believe anything except they do believe if the Federal Communications Commission wants to crush ABC for having the wrong comedian on, then it has unlimited power direct from God.

Douglas Dawson (52:28)
Yes.

Sean Gonsalves (52:37)
That’s right.

That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (52:52)
But at the

FCC wants to make sure that someone can afford to pay their Bill, they do not have any authority at all. And that is what these people believe in many cases.

Sean Gonsalves (53:01)
That’s right. That’s why I say we need to stop calling, we need to stop saying the word regulators and start calling it a competition authorities.

Christopher Mitchell (53:10)
All right, any last comments? We gotta run.

Bill Callahan (53:12)
No, but I like that one.

Christopher Mitchell (53:14)
Yeah, thank

Douglas Dawson (53:14)
Well,

Christopher Mitchell (53:15)
you. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Bill. Go ahead, Doug.

Douglas Dawson (53:15)
luck on your next meeting since you’ve been flame so badly. yes.

Bill Callahan (53:22)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (53:23)
Yeah, I gotta get some aloe vera. All right, thank you all.

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