Time for a Retrofit! – Episode 20 of Unbuffered

Christopher Mitchell (00:15)
Welcome to another episode of Unbuffered, a show without a proper intro yet, but I’m I’m working on it. Sean, do you have any magic for for our intros here?

Sean Gonsalves (00:26)
You know, I’ve been thinking about it too. I need to sleep on it some more though.

Christopher Mitchell (00:30)
This is the 20th episode. I feel like, you know, it took me several hundred episodes to get that intro for for

Sean Gonsalves (00:34)
I was gonna ask you about that. Really? Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (00:37)
for community broadband. But yeah, I mean it was like it evolved quite a bit. but you know, now that I have 800 shows under my belt, you think I would be better at this?

Sean Gonsalves (00:46)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (00:47)
I’m Chris Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, talking with Sean Gonsalves, my my partner in crime on the podcast often.

Sean runs our communications as Associate Director for Communications in the Community Broadband Networks program at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, which he does from Cape Cod. Welcome.

Sean Gonsalves (01:04)
That’s right. Cape Cod, it’s raining today, boy. I tell you, but we’ve had a a beautiful summer season so far. So I I I can’t complain too much about the rain.

Christopher Mitchell (01:15)
Yeah, I’m sure you’ll find a way to though. today

Sean Gonsalves (01:17)
Ha ha ha.

Christopher Mitchell (01:18)
we’re gonna talk about we’re gonna talk about piece that Sean was working on in Massachusetts there, where the state is doing some pretty cool stuff around the oldest housing, well, the oldest apartment buildings and things like that

Sean Gonsalves (01:31)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (01:31)
in the state, which means it’s some of the oldest stuff in the nation because that’s how it rolls in Massachusetts.

Sean Gonsalves (01:36)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (01:36)
so we’re

Sean Gonsalves (01:37)
so

Christopher Mitchell (01:37)
also gonna talk about Windomnet, which is a network in Minnesota that is selling itself one of the smaller networks in the nation. And it’s being purchased by a local provider. And they’re probably gonna talk a little bit about upstream capacity growing a lot, and then we’re gonna we’ve gotta What the Tech!?

Sean Gonsalves (01:53)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (01:54)
And

Sean’s got something and a little surprise for folks. So and and as I understand it, it’s gonna actually have a visual component. So if you were thinking about that YouTube feed that we got, your primarily audio, you might wanna might wanna hop over there. but

Sean Gonsalves (02:07)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (02:08)
before we go into it, Sean Sean’s just ready to get going. I wanted to say this. So I don’t always I’m terrible at self promotion. and I think it’s because of my my deep seated feelings of inadequacy. Like I don’t wanna tell people to support me, but like

We’ve done 20 of these shows and some people have said that they like them a lot, but like we haven’t had a review. And I’ll just say that like if someone wants to put a five-star review up on some of this stuff, I mean, I don’t know. Well, maybe there’s a site where we’ve been reviewed, but the ones I was looking at, we we had no reviews. So you want to hook us up, you could write a check. You can go to ilsr.org/donate for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, ilsr.org/donate.

but if you can’t do that, you could do a review and and give us some support there. So we would love it. and then also

Sean Gonsalves (02:52)
Love

Christopher Mitchell (02:53)
if you listen through to the end of the show, there’ll be several other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self Reliance. I think all of whom get more listens now than my shows. So I

Sean Gonsalves (03:01)
yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (03:01)
was I’m the on the oldest, but I’m still the worst at this work, it seems like. So Sean, we’re gonna talk about Massachusetts. What’s going on there?

Sean Gonsalves (03:11)
So last month, late last month, the the officials from MBI, Mass Broadband Institute, which is the state’s broadband office, and Community Broadband Networks America, no relation to us actually. They are an independently owned

Christopher Mitchell (03:25)
you didn’t know? That’s what pays your salary.

Sean Gonsalves (03:27)
That’s right, I wish. they’re an independently owned fiber Internet service providers. But they were at this event at the Southbridge Housing Authority, two properties there, about 150 residents live in both both of the buildings.

elderly fixed income, some living with disabilities, and they were there to celebrate the state’s residential retrofit grant program, which is really about paying the cost to rewire a lot of of the old housing stock you were talking about in Massachusetts. You know, this is part of the country where a lot of apartment buildings have a lot of old wiring. And so believe it or not, there’s there’s a a good amount of old apartment buildings across the state that

Even though they have high-speed Internet access available to them, meaning like the networks available like right outside their walls, right by the building, but the wiring in the building does not support high-speed Internet connectivity. So it’s a real problem. So if you’ve got this money going out the door, you’re building these new networks, you want, especially in these dense affordable housing units where a good chunk of people who do not have Internet access live. And so this program was designed to address that. And so it

Started off it we first wrote about it, I think it was in April of 2024 when they launched it. It was going to be this 22 million dollar pilot, and now it’s grown to 74 million dollars statewide. So it’s it it it’s really off like gangbusters over the past couple of years, and most of that money’s committed now. what is it, 99 housing operators, six providers?

The initial target was twenty two thousand units, but now they think the program will cover thirty two th thirty two thousand affordable housing units across the state.

Christopher Mitchell (05:15)
Yeah, and it’s a big deal because, like you said, if you want to talk about families that are on the edge, families who are in poverty where you know their affordability is a big issue, they’re generally not living in single family homes, right? And they’re probably in a pr in an apartment building. And the apartment building owners, whether they are public housing or whether whatever that means anymore, by the way, they might be a city agency, it might be some nonprofit

Sean Gonsalves (05:41)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (05:42)
corporation.

I I don’t I don’t fully understand all the different permutations we’ve developed for it. But like I’ll just say that my experience in dealing with these folks is we have and I don’t wanna we’re not gonna get into the politics of housing, which I’m not equipped to to deal with a lot, but my perception is is that there’s not been enough funding allocated for these facilities. And so when people have to make hard decisions and you’re dealing with like, we got a looky a looky reef, we’ve got a leaky roof.

When you’ve got the roof leaking and you’re thinking, all right, well, this month we can afford to fix the roof or we can rewire the building, I can see how the roof is gonna take precedence. So,

Sean Gonsalves (06:22)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (06:23)
so I just feel like it’s difficult for a lot of these facilities to to get on top of Internet access and programs like this make the difference. Not many states have done this. And so we really wanted to note that. I mean, this seems like a program that is working, not just from the perspective of the state, but it also seems to be working.

From the perspective of the Internet service providers and from the residents. That’s the most important part there at the end. And I think you maybe you have a story or two from some of the residents.

Sean Gonsalves (06:50)
Yeah, I mean, so you know, with one of the residents there you just talked about what it really meant for them on fixed income and you know being able to do telehealth and stuff like that. Part of the program too, and part of the incentive. So they did five competitive grant rounds and and so they built into the you know awarding of the grants or the you know, you get extra points for doing different things like on site digital skills training and things like that. So CBN America is doing that at Southbridge.

you know, device programs, you know, things of that nature. so that was cool about the story. And then the other thing I thought that was kind of interesting is that since they launched this program, three independent service providers have come into the state that previously hadn’t even been in the state. So this was like enough of a carrot to get them to set up shop. I think it’s what Aervivo, CBN America, and I think Hawk Networks is is the other one, which I’m not familiar with, but

But those three came into the state. There’s six overall. it, you know, the these projects touch all, you know, all regions of the state. And like you said, not you know, I so Massachusetts has this retrofit program. I haven’t yet, or we haven’t yet followed up to see kind of like where New York’s similar program is. There’s a similar program in in the state of New York. And then if memory serves, I think Las Vegas, not Las Vegas.

Nevada tried to establish a program like this some time ago. I think we heard rumors that it didn’t, you know, they weren’t getting a lot of bites.

Christopher Mitchell (08:24)
Yeah, they d

they ignored my email and requesting, you know, I asked Mr. Mitchell, guy who runs the the Nevada office or did at the time, and he ignored me. I guess maybe he thought I was like his brother seeking like to argue about the inheritance or something like that. I don’t know.

Sean Gonsalves (08:38)
Right. Right. Well, so so to me, like if we pull the lens back on this a little bit, I think it’s interesting because it it reminds me of something that you talked about going back to when I first came to the ILSR, which is what, six years ago now, which wow, time flies. but just how so there’s all this federal dollars, all these programs out there to try to build new networks across the country. And we knew early on with the BEAD program that a lot of

non-rural communities weren’t gonna see a lot of BEAD dollars. And yet a lot of folks who do not have reliable Internet connectivity don’t live in rural America. They live in, you know, urban communities or suburban communities and what have you. And so, you know, when we talk to different communities, I know that you that was something that you like to talk about is that, well, instead of like thinking about like, say even building a municipal network for the whole city or citywide network, target areas where you can really do something and

And and you know, multi-dwelling units, affordable housing units are some areas where you can really move the needle. So I I think this program is smart. you know, it’s new, so we’ll see how it goes over the years. I mean, one of the benefits of the of of the program as well that they had built into the grant program was that anyone pr any ISP that participated would offer like a low-cost offering. So

You know, you’re talking in the range from say 10 to 35 bucks a month, which is pretty good for a hundred symmetrical connection. You know, it’s not a gig, but a hundred symmetrical, especially in some of these units where you’ve got, you know, maybe, you know, a senior living by themselves or something like that. I mean, that’s that’s plenty of connectivity and and and it’s reliable because we’re talking about in all of these, pretty much all of these instances, we’re talking about fiber connections. There are I think there are some wireless stuff mixed into this, but it’s mostly fiber.

Christopher Mitchell (10:33)
Right. I think you talked about there’s a preference for or requirement for Cat six or fiber.

Sean Gonsalves (10:37)
Right. Right.

Christopher Mitchell (10:39)
and I there’s always nuances around this. I mean, one of the things I’ve learned about this is to be humble. The number of problems you run into trying to put wires in these buildings, it

Sean Gonsalves (10:47)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (10:48)
staggers the imagination. but Cat six Ethernet is gonna be able to get you 10 gigabit anywhere in the building. And so even if that plan right now is is a hundred megabit and we agree, you know, I would say that like it’s reasonable for

for, you know, like a person living alone or something like that. that’s not limited by the technology at this point anymore. It is that is a business plan and so the the building is wired for decades to come, which is a key point.

Sean Gonsalves (11:16)
That’s exactly it. It’s wired for decades to come. Which, of course, is a big reason why we were always, you know, have always been so hot to trot on why we wanted the fiber prioritization to remain in the BEAD program. Because when you’re building these kind of connections, you want them to last for decades and not have to, you know, shoot satellites into the air every few years and and and you know, that kind of thing. So right, out

Christopher Mitchell (11:39)
you shoot the satellites out of the air, technically, Sean

Sean Gonsalves (11:42)
of the air, rest right.

Christopher Mitchell (11:44)
I I did when you were saying that, I did previous thing. I just wanted to note, like, I mean this I come back to this frequently and I have nothing but respect for the organizing work that was done in Seattle around municipal broadband. And you had a mayor who ran probably ten, f twelve years ago now on

Sean Gonsalves (12:02)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (12:03)
municipal broadband and then through big big city politics, decided not to do anything. you

Sean Gonsalves (12:10)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (12:11)
had a citizen movement that pushed for it.

And at that time, I don’t know, I had learned a few lessons. And I th I we’d watched what happened in San Francisco with this thing of just like, why would I go small with something that will work when I could do something big that almost certainly won’t? And the the point being that city council members cannot become President of the United States without being governor of their state. And they can’t be governor of their state if they don’t do something huge in the city they can take credit for. And so the incentives are often wrong for people to pursue.

re meaningful projects that will make a difference that have a reasonable budget. Instead they reach for unreasonable things. not unreasonable perhaps, but things that are just so much harder to align and get everything together. And I just come back to this, you know, you have Massachusetts moving forward here. You have Newark having done such good work that we’ve covered in the past because they were incremental

Sean Gonsalves (13:00)
Mm, that wouldn’t work.

Christopher Mitchell (13:02)
rather than in in Seattle where folks, I feel like you could have you could have argued for Seattle to set aside

A few million dollars, maybe $10 million a year to go after discrete public housing projects and stuff like that in in neighborhoods that really could have used it. And they went for a billion dollars instead in terms of going citywide, fiber optics and man, you know, it would be great if the city’s if the city that you know, it’s one of the cities that have municipal electricity, and if that utility had wanted to go in that direction and everything had lined up, it could be amazing. I don’t know, it could have could have ended poorly.

But like the simple fact is in a lot of places, a simple plan that targets the people that most need the help with some sort of plan where you can then build trust and expand upon it, it’s a smart move that we don’t see often enough.

Sean Gonsalves (13:48)
Mm-hmm. And I mean, look, I’ll say this though. you’re absolutely right. Accept that, not accept that, but also that I have a lot of sympathy for that mayor. You know, I’m kind of like a go big or go home kind of person. So I would have been really tempted to be like, we’re gonna do it all. We’re gonna we’re gonna build municipal network across the city. It’s gonna be great, you know. Like even like I’m low key rooting

Christopher Mitchell (14:07)
Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (14:09)
for New York City to, you know, they’ve kind of, you know, brought this idea, or at least the public advocates office there in the city have brought this back to the fore, this idea of a municipal network.

Probably never gonna happen in New York City, despite Mamdani doing a lot of things that nobody thought would could be done, but I doubt it’ll we’ll see it in New York. But but to your point, to your practical point, I think it’s really important to not be, you know, what’s that phrase about not letting like the perfect be the enemy of good enough or some or the good, you know, and and

Christopher Mitchell (14:40)
Yeah, that’s basically it, yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (14:41)
yeah, like if you can really make a difference.

in ways that that are really meaningful to places like people that are living in a affordable housing and things like that without, you know, necessarily going all, let’s build a municipal network and no and who cares what the market says or who cares like what the, you know, what the landscape looks like. We’re just gonna try to do it. And, you know, and then it blows up in your face. That would be

Christopher Mitchell (15:04)
Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (15:05)
not good.

Christopher Mitchell (15:06)
I mean th the the other thing that if I was to argue your point against mine, you frequently argue against me in this way of you know, like people don’t want to rally around some sort of incremental little plan, right? It’s like, what do we want? Like a little bit better. When do we want it? Ten years would be nice.

Sean Gonsalves (15:25)
That’s

right, that doesn’t have the same ring, right?

Christopher Mitchell (15:29)
Yeah, so you know, but I’ll just say like tens of thousands of people’s lives being improved, it’s a pretty big deal, you know, in in Massachusetts here. So all right, I want

Sean Gonsalves (15:35)
Yeah, it is. It is. No doubt.

Christopher Mitchell (15:38)
to move on to to a place where there are not 10,000 people, where I believe there are 4,600 people.

Sean Gonsalves (15:45)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (15:45)
Windom, Minnesota, which is southwest Minnesota, where we have a state park that has bison. And if you want to get there from the metro, you gotta go through Windom, which is a nice

It’s a pretty cool little town. They’ve got public power. And in like 2002, they had a referendum to say, our they had a actually a municipal cable network back in the day. And and it had gotten to the point at which they needed to replace it. And they were like, I don’t know if we really want to do this thing or not. But like the Internet was really important and they had very poor Internet access. And at that time, the telephone company that served them was Quest, and which was US West before that and later became CenturyLink.

And is now AT&T. And there was this referendum. And in the community, Quest was like, I think it was Quest at that time, was like, was like, no, vote no and we’ll but we’ll build you a better system. And so they voted no on a fiber optics system. And Quest was like, Cool, we’re gonna build you DSL next year. And the next year came and they were like, maybe next year, maybe not. Who knows? Like it’s complicated

Sean Gonsalves (16:49)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (16:50)
out there. It’s a whole world where we have to make these complicated investment decisions.

And so the city was like, well, fool you fooled me once. All right, you know, but like the second time they voted on it, they built themselves a fiber network. And I learned a lot about this over the years because it was a boogeyman for CenturyLink, or Quest, whatever they were at the different times

Sean Gonsalves (17:08)
Quest at that time. Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (17:10)
in the legislature, who would be like, you don’t want to be like Windom, Minnesota, where it’s this horrible, horrible disaster. And so I talked

Sean Gonsalves (17:16)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (17:17)
to Dan Olson, the guy who built it, who really did a great job.

And then there was a falling out a few years back. He went to Finley Engineering and then he actually passed away, I believe. and he’s

Sean Gonsalves (17:29)
man. R.I.P. damn.

Christopher Mitchell (17:30)
a great guy. I learned a lot from him over the years. And we wrote about him in one of the reports. We did two reports on Minnesota. I think we referenced the story in both of them. And the thing was is that like they actually did very well financially. this is a tiny network, right? I mean, it has like 1900 subscribers, which is like

Sean Gonsalves (17:45)
Mm. Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (17:48)
4,600 people means there’s like two thousand.

people living there. There’s like like every last

Sean Gonsalves (17:51)
Right, right, right. That’s a big

Christopher Mitchell (17:52)
person had a service from this network. But

Sean Gonsalves (17:55)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (17:55)
like it’s very hard to run a network on that size. And so they they had a business plan and they came close to meeting it. And around the time that they were supposed to to break even, there was this company called Fortune Trucking. And Fortune Trucking had a facility a little bit outside of town. Does this sound familiar? I’ve told this story a couple of times. Cause it’s so

Sean Gonsalves (18:15)
Exactly, yes. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (18:17)
for me it just really it it it’s it’s such a good example.

Sean Gonsalves (18:20)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (18:21)
And

Fortune Trucking, around like I want to say, like it was like 2009, 2011, something like that. this was a time of IT changes. The trucking industry was going through a lot of changes. And they needed to have a fast, reliable connection that would support a new IT package so they could do immediate bidding on trucks and loads to move from place to place. And so they talked to the the telephone company, which may or may not be the same one that was in the town, and

Sean Gonsalves (18:46)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (18:47)
because they were located just outside of town.

And that company was like, Yeah, we’ll totally hook you up. We’ll do a great job, you know. Like, you should buy that IT system. So they put all this money in this IT system and they they ordered the service. And that that big company was like, turns out we didn’t really do our

Sean Gonsalves (19:02)
We can’t do it.

Christopher Mitchell (19:02)
due diligence. We were not gonna build that for you. So you

Sean Gonsalves (19:05)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (19:05)
could have this DSL or something, you know. And Fortune Trucking, they called Dan. And the way Dan relayed it to me, Dan said, literally, get your butt out here, because

Sean Gonsalves (19:13)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (19:14)
like we’re gonna be moving like 50 jobs to New Mexico.

If we can’t work something out. And and so you know, for a small network like this, building a new fiber line, you know, like a couple miles to get to this facility, it’s a big deal. And it’s the difference between breaking even or not.

Sean Gonsalves (19:30)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (19:31)
And so they decided, and I don’t know who, I assume there’s some sort of like, you know, exposure to like local leadership, but they were

Sean Gonsalves (19:38)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (19:38)
like, Yeah, we want to keep these jobs in the community, we want to keep them here. So they built the fiber line out and like that.

Cost was a significant part of the reason that they did not break even when the business can’t the business plan called for them to break even. and so they you know, they had to go into a little bit of a deficit, I guess, and they got some public dollars. And frankly, this is exactly the way we want these systems to work, right? Like it’s charging a low, reasonable price, not enough to have like a big war chest to like build out a town suddenly. But like they made a decision, and it was the right decision to keep these jobs in the community.

And then they get savagely roasted in the Capitol over and over again as though they’re fools that don’t understand how to run a network. So anyway, Windom is like it’s this network that like they hung on, they figured out how to make it work. They were they had this fiber to the home network and they were limited in the speeds they could offer because at that time in southwest Minnesota, you couldn’t get a fiber line at a reasonable price to get back to Minneapolis to get the the real nice contracts to get back haul to Chicago and to have really fast connections. So

So they struggled, they made it work, and and now they have decided to sell the network. they’re selling it to a yeah, I

Sean Gonsalves (20:48)
Yeah, the story makes me sad. It it makes me sad actually, you know.

Christopher Mitchell (20:51)
agree. Now it looks like they’re getting a good deal with it. And I I think it’s worth talking about because a lot of communities, when they sell their network, it looks like they’ve screwed up.

Sean Gonsalves (21:00)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (21:00)
And you know, like there’s like this debt that has to be repaid, and maybe the sale doesn’t cover all the debt, and there’s people that make all of these

Pronouncements about like, it’s failed, you know, because of this, that, and other thing. And

Sean Gonsalves (21:12)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (21:12)
they’re often not actually taking into account the full costs of the full costs and benefits of the network. And it’s often they’re they’re just coming up with some silly thing based on their their whatever the idea they woke up with in the morning, they just applied it to this issue without doing the research. So you see that sort of a thing around this analysis. But when we looked at it, it looked to me like it’s it’s a pretty good deal.

The city’s gonna get some services. The the the text, there’s I think there’s four people working at the network. They’ll be able to continue working it under this new entity. I think it’s a local co-op, but I wasn’t totally sure. And like

we decided to talk about this before I had a chance.

Sean Gonsalves (21:46)
okay. So so at least it’s a locally based

operator.

Christopher Mitchell (21:50)
Yeah, no, it’s totally regional in Southwest Minnesota. And

Sean Gonsalves (21:53)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (21:53)
and you know, it’s it’s one of things. Like they had helped to build Southwest’s, I forget exactly what it’s called, but there was a a program. There was eight local small towns. I mean, these are tiny farm towns in Southwest Minnesota. They built a fiber network and they actually used the Windomnet head end for a lot of their services for a lot of years while they were getting established. That was with the ARRA program under under Obama.

Sean Gonsalves (22:16)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (22:17)
And and so like there’s it catalyzed a bunch of stuff. This region is better off. I mean, Toro, which is a major manufacturer in Minnesota, they bragged about how their facility in Windom had like better Internet connectivity than their factories in the Twin Cities. You know, like I think like their their manufacturing facility in Windom or around Windom had better Internet access basically than like their corporate headquarters or something. Like I just I don’t recall exactly what it was, but like this is a network that did well. And at but at the end of the day.

If you have 2,000 subscribers, it is hard to keep that working. And

Sean Gonsalves (22:50)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (22:51)
so, you know, like you gotta find a way to work with others. In this case, they’re privatizing it. It’s I think it’s sad. Like you, I have that negative reaction, but I also feel like, you know, it’s their decision. They made it. It seems like they negotiated from a position of strength. And and so I’m I just I’ll just say like it one of the weight things that woke me up in doing this work was how much people lie. and and by that I mean the lobbyists, right? Like

This lobbyist for a CenturyLink, he would just say whatever he felt like in in in in St. Paul. And I I forever will have a feeling about elected officials that I just I appreciate their sacrifice. And I want to respect the fact that they’re doing that. Someone needs to step up and make decisions and things like that. I respect that. But

Sean Gonsalves (23:32)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Christopher Mitchell (23:34)
like when you just sit there and you listen to people who lie and then you make decisions as though you can trust them.

I don’t I I just for me, like I feel alienated from the process. Every time I would see this guy speak and be treated as though he was saying something that was true. When everyone knew that if he went for to work for the cable company, he would say something different the next week. And if he went to work for the cities, and some people did that. They would switch and work for the cities

Sean Gonsalves (23:53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (23:55)
after that, and they would just contradict themselves. And I I don’t know, like Travis

Sean Gonsalves (23:59)
Well

Christopher Mitchell (23:59)
and and Kim and Doug would make fun of me for like my whole like, I don’t know, like naive wave sort of thing, but like

Sean Gonsalves (24:06)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (24:07)
It’s gross. And like there’s facts out there. And the facts are Windom had a network that provided a lot of local benefits. It didn’t always pay for itself, but it always seemed worth it to me.

Sean Gonsalves (24:17)
Yeah. Well, if when your job requires for you not to see the truth or whatever, and your livelihoods c attached to it, you know, amazing lies can happen. But speaking of lies and and this story, it makes me wonder maybe we need to get ahead of this and write like a post mortem kind of a thing because I just f have this feeling because we’ve seen these campaigns pop up about how municipal broadband’s a failure. This is probably gonna join the list of of of examples. And so it might be worth, you know, at least

Providing

kind of some the you know, some of the context and the nuance that goes into these things because otherwise you’re liable to see this pop up a an example of failed municipal broadband and why government owned networks, you know, are never a good thing.

Christopher Mitchell (25:00)
Yeah, I agree with that, except for one key detail. There’s no us, there’s you. You should write this. I’d be willing to do an interview or two with you if you’d like.

Sean Gonsalves (25:03)
Hmm. Right, right. Okay. All right.

So let me add that to my to my list of things to follow. But yeah, that it, you know, like you said, it seems like it worked out, you know, it’s gonna work out well for them. And you know, at the end of the day, if you’re a subscriber, if you’re a resident, you just want your Internet to work.

and for it to be reasonable in terms of cost. So if you know, if that is, you know, what was gonna happen, then then, you know, it’s kind of like let the chips fall where they may, kind of a thing. It’s just like I say, I it’s it’s always makes me a little sad when I hear these stories that I don’t think happen very often, but where, you know, you’ve got, you know, a municipal network that, you know, ends up being privatized. But in this case, you you said you it may be a local co-op or something, but or at least if it’s a, you know, an independent

you know, community based provider, then that, you know, oftentimes is you know, that that still gives the, you know, that kind of that accountability to the community and the tie into the community and not like just people that are just trying to like send money to shareholders someplace, you know?

Christopher Mitchell (26:14)
Yeah, there’s a network out of Iowa, I’m on that you know, we watched what they were doing. They’re a private company, and it seemed like they were making good investments. And I was just talking with someone in the industry and I was mentioning Duluth had been considering building a a targeted network to connect the lowest income neighborhoods, starting with apartment buildings, and then

Sean Gonsalves (26:35)
Mm.

Christopher Mitchell (26:36)
had a new mayor. The mayor pulled back on that project. And and I was saying I was surprised and I was hoping that they would pull it back. And that

Person came back to me that I was talking to and said, I Mon is actually building there. And I was like, really? I was like,

who owns them now? And I was like, some private equity. It’s like, yeah, they’re called Goldman Sachs. Maybe you’ve heard of them. so I’m predicting that I Mon won’t be that great moving forward, unfortunately. Like

Sean Gonsalves (26:59)
man. that’s too bad. Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:03)
on the other hand, they can build much faster. And Charter Spectrum desperately needs to to not be the only option in Duluth.

because people in Duluth deserve much better than what Charter’s been giving them. I’ll tell you that.

Sean Gonsalves (27:14)
Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (27:15)
Speaking of which, cable companies have been improving their networks. And this is something that we probably I’ll probably bring up with next time we bring Doug on.

Sean Gonsalves (27:23)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (27:24)
but there’s another open vault report about how people use their connections. And Sean, as the cable companies have significantly increased people’s ability to upload things, do you know what is happening?

Sean Gonsalves (27:37)
I’m gonna guess that they’re getting better at maybe not the symmetrical stuff, but getting better at at at delivering more upload capacity, which

Christopher Mitchell (27:47)
But what’s happening as they do that?

Sean Gonsalves (27:50)
What do you mean what’s happening?

Christopher Mitchell (27:51)
So what’s the dent what’s the effect then for the families that are suddenly having more upload capacity?

Sean Gonsalves (27:56)
that means that, you know, you’re not, you know, pausing like this in the middle of a Zoom every, every, you know, two seconds and stuff like and stuff like that. I mean,

Christopher Mitchell (28:03)
Yeah, they’re using it.

Sean Gonsalves (28:04)
you know, you gotta now with so much, you know, zooms and and and you know, your work from home where you have to send stuff upstream, you need that capacity. and and so it it kind of had to happen, I guess, at some point, right?

Christopher Mitchell (28:21)
Well, yeah, I mean, I think it’s an interesting question because the argument from the think tanks, I work for the big cable and telephone companies, had been there’s no killer app. People don’t want to upload a lot. Look at how little they upload. And

Sean Gonsalves (28:33)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (28:34)
every time they increase the upload speeds that are available, people upload more, which to

Sean Gonsalves (28:39)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (28:39)
me suggests that the limiting factor is not the applications.

Sean Gonsalves (28:42)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (28:43)
It is a s you know, fiber users use more upload than than cable users. Why? Because they can.

Sean Gonsalves (28:50)
Because they can. But you know something

else too? It’s like, you know, I one thing that bothers me about like, you know, what you’re hitting on about the, you know, downloads the only thing that matters kind of thing is it’s like we’re only supposed to be consumers. We’re only supposed to get stuff, you know, you know, everything is a one way street. Sell you stuff, sell you stuff, you download, you’re the recipient. There’s no productive capacity on you know, there’s no expectation that people actually wanna contribute or

Or move

Christopher Mitchell (29:18)
Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (29:18)
stuff in a different direction. So

Christopher Mitchell (29:20)
Well, you and I you and I have touched on stuff like this before. I mean, I’ll just say it’s the two hundred and fiftieth celebration of the the Declaration of Independence. Like it’s a big freaking deal. And the founders, they got a number of things wrong, but like they wanted us to be a nation of producers. They set it up. And like, you know, they also wanted free speech. And then as soon as they got in power, they started passing laws to restrict freedom of speech. What’s

Sean Gonsalves (29:42)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (29:42)
interesting is like they wanted us to be a nation of producers, but they also held true to that.

When they were in power. And so there’s a lot of things they did, the Northwest Ordinance, in terms of how we redistributed the stolen land from from the Native Americans. you know, I I’m not saying that this is like, you know, all great history, but the simple fact

Sean Gonsalves (30:03)
Right, ’cause I mean.

Christopher Mitchell (30:04)
is they wanted to make sure that that it was settled by by people and not by corporations. They wanted to make sure that it was like, you know, peep families had a chance to like develop the land and things like that.

They recognize the importance of distributed power. And so, you know, I feel like this whole idea that you’re hitting on is just like that’s what we’re building for. We want people to have really good Internet connections so they can they can consume if they want to, but they can produce if they want to and that they’ll be inspired

Sean Gonsalves (30:30)
Exactly.

Christopher Mitchell (30:31)
to produce.

Sean Gonsalves (30:31)
Right. And not obviously not that consumption is like inherently evil or or or a bad thing, but but yes, we want a society of folks who have the ability to produce, to contribute, and not just be passive, you know, receivers of whatever the corporations are handing down or what have you. So, you know, I’m all for that that that that founding that founding ideal. It’s almost as if, you know, people have forgotten that. Not everybody, but man.

Christopher Mitchell (30:59)
I don’t know, I never learned it. I had to read it like a few years ago. Like like the Northwest Ordinance. I was I was just like, how did I not know about this thing? I’m like literally looking it up on there like ’cause I’m like, I’m reading this book and I’ve talked about Liberty from All Masters. Like I love it. It’s big focus of that book.

Sean Gonsalves (31:11)
Yeah, that’s a good book. Yep.

Christopher Mitchell (31:13)
And but I was just like, how did I this was never anything that was taught to me? And you know, like, you know, you learn about like the the gold or the the land rush in like Oklahoma and stuff like

Sean Gonsalves (31:22)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (31:22)
that, but like not why it’s important.

Sean Gonsalves (31:24)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (31:24)
And again,

I’ll just say like gross that like it wasn’t like it’s not like it was land that was unused. you

Sean Gonsalves (31:30)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (31:30)
know, just so all right, Sean, you have something for us. I think I’m supposed to say, What the Tech!?

Sean Gonsalves (31:40)
What the tech? All right, I I’m I let me get my prop for this.

Christopher Mitchell (31:47)
I’ll just say that for the for the listeners. we suddenly have Sean wearing a pair of aviators, shaded

Sean Gonsalves (31:52)
That’s right.

Christopher Mitchell (31:52)
sunglasses. You’re you’re going out to Fallon Air Force Base to take part of Top Guns and that this is this is what we’re talking about, right?

Sean Gonsalves (32:00)
We’re talking about how the FCC recently approved this company Reflect Orbitals application to test this single satellite, Arendelle one. It’s gonna be this like you unfurl this giant mirror that’s designed to like beam reflected sunlight down to a spot on Earth. So imagine like this big gigantic flashlight on I I think something about five kilometers wide, I think at at and here’s the their vision is this is the first step towards what they’re calling sunlight on demand.

And

the company plans to have more than 50,000 of these mirror satellites in orbit by 2035. So the FCC approved this despite opposition from astronomers, the public, you know, you know, all and all of these like real safety concerns. So why this is a bad idea?

Christopher Mitchell (32:47)
I mean it literally

it literally sounds like something where like Austin Powers is gonna like show up and be like like you want me to turn off the light at night? One billion dollars.

Sean Gonsalves (32:51)
Right? Freaking lazy. Exactly.

So why it’s a bad idea, here’s my quick rundown on that. Besides the fact that the American Astronomical Society warns that this reflected light could cause real eye damage to amateur astronomers, there’s sudden flashes that during mirror repointing, which by the way has to happen every four minutes, could disrupt pilots and drivers. The reflected light could disrupt

Circadian rhythms, plants, animals, and humans, that’s pretty important. Sensitive detectors on like research telescopes, it could jack all of that up. At full scale, the constellation is expected to disrupt circadian rhythms broadly, not just in isolated test areas. And the FCC, they essentially punted like on the broader risk assessment and basically said, yeah.

We’ll get to the fifty thousand satellite. We don’t even really regulate this stuff and we’ll worry about the fifty thousand satellite constell constellation, I don’t know, like next generation or leave it, you know. So there’s like this huge regulatory gap. So when I first saw this proposal and then the quick what seemed to be a quick reproval, I was like, like what what could go wrong? Like and also I’m thinking this could be totally used as a weapon.

Christopher Mitchell (34:09)
Yeah, I I’ve I’d have some sympathy for the Federal Communications Commission basically being like, well, we’re only supposed to review this one aspect of it. And so the fact that it’s a bad idea is actually not a part of our review process. I have some sympathy for that.

Sean Gonsalves (34:23)
I guess.

Christopher Mitchell (34:24)
but but I do feel like someone needs to be able to hit the brakes here. you know, I just I one of the things, one of the articles I saw about this suggested that that person was like, Yeah, maybe a farmer would like to have like their sun, their plants always in the sun. And I’m like,

I’m pretty sure I learned in like eighth grade biology that like that doesn’t work well. Like plants have, I don’t know, a billion years of evolution to like night and day and like it’s a thing, you know? Like I’m just I’m

Sean Gonsalves (34:51)
That’s it. I mean

Christopher Mitchell (34:52)
amazed at at the at some of the stuff that I see. But yeah, like I mean, it’s just I mean, the they talk about, you know, being able to like use photovoltaic cells at night. I could yeah, that would be kind of cool, I guess, if not for the huge downsides.

Sean Gonsalves (35:05)
That’s it, man.

Like, I don’t know, toying with, you know, like you said, you know, the planetary history and evolution and, you know, scientific laws and the way life kind of the rhythms of life, it just feels like, you know, this is just one of these like money grabs of like it sounds like it’d be a cool like sci fi idea to be able to like, there’s a emergency in this area. Let’s shut the let’s turn the lights on in this like one little area so that, you know, they can rescue, I don’t know, something. But I

To me

Christopher Mitchell (35:35)
It’s always

public safety, Sean. That’s why we need flock because people’s dogs run away, so

Sean Gonsalves (35:38)
yeah, right, right, right.

Christopher Mitchell (35:39)
we can’t have privacy.

Sean Gonsalves (35:41)
Yeah, public safety and in children. I mean, you know, do it for the kids, right?

Christopher Mitchell (35:45)
Do you not want them to find the child that’s lost at four AM, Sean?

Sean Gonsalves (35:49)
I do but I want them to do it the old fashioned way, you know what I mean? With flashlights and dogs.

Christopher Mitchell (35:56)
Yeah. No, I I I can’t help but think that this is like one of those things that it’s frustrating that this is the way it’s happening. But also I don’t know if if I I don’t wanna pick on our listeners from I don’t know, let me just say Brazil, right? and if Brazil had done this and and okayed this launch, I I can imagine maybe other people more people being upset.

Sean Gonsalves (36:23)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (36:23)
But I feel

like the United States has this like arrogance of like, yeah, we can decide what happens to the planet. And but I

Sean Gonsalves (36:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely.

Christopher Mitchell (36:28)
am worried that if the if the United States says, no, we’re not gonna allow this, you will see mm powerful moneyed interests looking to places where they could build a space program. because you can do it with private dollars now and start to figure out how to do this stuff without permission. And there’s a the sci-fi stuff, you know, like I mean, there’s interesting sci fi books that have dealt with different scenarios, but

is not pretty. And, you know, there’s a I’m not a whole one world order UN guy. I don’t know if people realize that or not. Like I’m, you know,

Sean Gonsalves (36:58)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (37:00)
I’m not in support of black helicopters and I don’t think

Sean Gonsalves (37:02)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (37:02)
there are black helicopters out there, but like like at a certain point we need to figure out how to resolve this stuff.

Sean Gonsalves (37:07)
No no doubt. Other otherwise well, I’ll we’ll we’ll save that for another with the tech. I was gonna mention, you know, one of Elon’s rockets is supposed to slam into the moon sometime soon and we’re gonna see what happens.

Christopher Mitchell (37:16)
Yeah.

No, I saw that and so s so I think ship thirteen is considered mostly a success, although there’s some some issues. And fourteen is supposed to launch in about three weeks, I think is the expectation. This could be the first orbital launch where it actually is trying to get out of sub orb suborbital and then coming back into reentry in order to then be caught and to show that it’s reusable. And it’s

Sean Gonsalves (37:44)
yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (37:44)
a pretty big test that

I’d be pretty surprised if it passes. So

Sean Gonsalves (37:48)
Yeah. I well I’ll be looking

looking, I I lo I love, you know, I I love following this stuff and space and then so when I see even, you know, this giant mirror thing, it just just struck me as as bizarre. But fifty thousand satellites, I mean, you know, it’s not like there’s not a lot of stuff up there already. Like what could go wrong, you know?

Christopher Mitchell (38:05)
I’ll say here’s a bonus one. There’s I just saw a talk today. I had not seen this before, but like there’s talk about a number of people have said that we need to set up a decontamination facility on the moon, like a quarantine on the moon, because there’s two different programs that are aiming to bring back Martian soil to

Sean Gonsalves (38:24)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (38:25)
Earth. And people were basically like, Look, like we don’t want to mess around with this, like you know, and

And we should set up a station on the moon where we can just leave things for a while to really do some like science and study it to know if there’s some sort of like life form that could be extremely harmful to like again a billion years of evolution on Earth. Like it would be nice to know about it while it was on the moon rather than like after

Sean Gonsalves (38:49)
For sure.

Christopher Mitchell (38:50)
it’s in like, you know, China or or Houston or wherever they take it apart, you know. So

Sean Gonsalves (38:56)
Man, the wan the

wannabe sci-fi writer in me’s got all kinds of ideas, right?

Christopher Mitchell (39:00)
Yeah, I’ve I watched one or two of those movies and they they scared me too much. they’re like I get very tense. So I’m gonna sit this one out.

Sean Gonsalves (39:11)
No doubt.

Christopher Mitchell (39:12)
All right, Sean, thank you.

Sean Gonsalves (39:13)
All

right. Fun as always.

Christopher Mitchell (39:15)
So folks,

I was gonna say, folks, don’t forget illsr.org slash donate and five star reviews. I tried to interrupt Les this time. you know, so let us know how that’s going too. So Sean appreciates it.

Sean Gonsalves (39:31)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (39:32)
And I know Jordan appreciates it on the editing side. So

Sean Gonsalves (39:34)
you for sure.

Christopher Mitchell (39:36)
all right. Have a good week, y’all.

Jordan Pittman (39:39)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Unbuffered Podcast. We have transcripts for this and other episodes available at ILSR.org/podcast. While you’re there, check out our other podcasts from ILSR, including Building Local Power, Local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcasts. Email us at [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow us on Bluesky. Our handle is @communitynets.

You can catch the latest research from all of our initiatives by subscribing to our monthly newsletter at ILSR.org While you’re there, please take a moment to donate. Your support in any amount helps keep us going. Unbuffered is produced

by Christopher Mitchell with editing provided by me, Jordan Pittman. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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