Yes, ma'am.

Miss Clever.

Here.

Mr.

Green.

Absent.

Mr.

Hugo.

Present.

Miss Hughes.

Here.

Miss Thomas.

Mr.

Tillich.

Here.

Mr.

Walker.

Thank you.

All right.

Next up on the agenda are the minutes.

We have a motion to adopt.

Move to adopt.

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed.

And I call the no.

Oh, sorry.

It's all right.

It's okay.

Ms.

Glover.

Here.

Mr.

Green.

Mr.

Hugo.

All right.

Thank you.

Miss Hughes.

Hi.

Miss Thomas is absent.

Mr.

Tillage.

Yes.

I'm just saying I'm present instead of yes.

It's okay.

The minutes are down on the positive.

It wasn't a no, right?

I heard you say yes, but then I believe up next we are moving to the discussion portion.

I think this is the follow-in from our last meeting.

Go forth.

All right.

So thank you so much, Chair Hughes, and members of the authorities, the manager.

You have also before you copy of the official digital opportunity plan for the city of Portman.

That's something that we want you to take with you and thoroughly just kind of look through and then we'll follow up at the next meeting if you have any questions or comments in reference to the digital opportunity plan.

Day's presentation is somewhat of an overview and a summary of what you will find in the plan.

All right.

All right, so presentation this evening.

Mr.

Mouse.

Thank you, thank you.

Our agenda this evening is uh first off to kind of touch on our next generation network project and provide an update to the uh authority.

Uh then of course we'll go over uh Bede program in the Commonwealth, uh which is actually a national program, uh, and talk about the status of where that is.

And then we'll round up with the digital opportunity plan overview.

In the way of the next generation network project update, um we'll touch on our community anchor institutions, the design of it, and the connection.

Um you'll recall that I mentioned, I believe it was the last meeting, um, that we had applied for a grant, which is this Southeast uh economy uh and infrastructure development grant that we applied for to assist us with some of the funding of what's going to be necessary as we build out a local ring here in the city.

Um we as a city have applied for other infrastructure projects as well, so we'll just kind of see uh where we land with uh our request to them.

That announcement is scheduled to come out September the first.

Uh the design um for all three phases, which includes a hundred and nineteen community anchor institutions that we have.

Um at least ten of those community anchor institutions we will have lit up by the end of this year.

So that looks like this.

So by the end of this year, as I mentioned, we plan to have those ten uh first ten of those lit up and being used.

Um by the end of October, we'll have the sheriff's civil process division building uh online.

We'll have social services and corrections and parole office online.

And of course, we'll have the fire rescue and emergency medical services station one by the end of October.

October.

By the end of November, we plan to bring four more.

We'll bring the parking authority online, Water Street Garage Online, as well as the main library that we have downtown, and the public defender's office.

And then during the month of December, we'll finish it on up with three more, and then that'll be the 10, the first 10 that we have.

Of course, that'll include senior station.

It'll include the sportsplex, and then we'll close out with pretty light lift.

All of those will be the heavy lifting, if you will.

So the fiber is already there in that facility already.

Just sitting waiting for some to go from dark fibers to lighten it up.

Again, uh different authority now.

So we'll mention what beats stand for.

Bede is the broadband equity access and deployment grant.

Originally that was released, and Virginia was to get 1.48 billion dollars of federal funding as part of its allocation.

That has since changed.

There's a different administration federally, and so they are looking at new definitions as well as what that funding is going to look like.

So the process is already in motion, but some of the components of that process has changed.

Virginia closed the benefit and bargain negotiation round.

I'll go over with you what that looks like for the city of Portsmouth in just a moment.

The negotiation round, uh what those provisional awards will actually look like.

That was announced Wednesday, and I think the 22nd is when the public hearing of that will actually be closed.

So Virginia's draft plan by DHCD has been put together.

It's now open for public comment, and we'll close out on the 22nd.

At the closing of that on the 22nd, that public comment period, Virginia will submit its final plan to the Feds to say this is what we would like.

So when I refer to it tonight, it's it's just a draft of what Virginia is proposing.

This has been somewhat of an effort in a partnership between Broadband Telecom, DHCD, and of course the city of Portsmouth.

So the state in its draft plan is saying that Amazon has been targeted or noted to get 10 of those locations for the city of Portsmouth.

GTS Spark, which is an organization that's an ISP that also is working in concert with the regional ring has 65 passes, 65 locations that belong to us here in the city of Portsmouth.

SpaceX is a company that has gotten three of our passes.

Verizon, a total of 85, 85 locations.

And so our total is 163 of locations here in the city of Portsmouth.

And when you begin to look through the actual plan, it's in there, you'll see it when you're at you know, at your leisure, you'll be able to pick up on some of those.

And so the process is that the FCC will ask, and that's what happened, they ask many of the providers to send to us how many houses in your area under your coverage have internet high speed internet.

Again, depending on what administration is there, the change the definition at one time, say in 2015, the definition was 25 over 3.

25 megs over three, right?

Three megs up, 25 down for high speed internet connectivity.

Well, here we are today.

I've been struggling with that all week.

Because it can be a problem if we don't move the target along with the times.

You have the opportunities to have high speed internet activity for telehealth reasons.

You have telework examples of the use.

You have companies that our economic development team they're talking to, they want to be a part of Portsmouth to connect to the local ring that we have because our local ring is going to connect to the undersea cables and give them high speed capacity for internet service, and they'd like to talk to some of those companies that are there as well to be their ISP.

I mean, all of these things are going on at the same time.

For instance, trying to have a Zoom meeting or WebEx or whatever, a virtual type meeting, if your speeds are not adequate to handle that, then you're gonna get choppy meetings, audio being cut off, you have it.

And so if we're relying on that definition of 2015, we only needed 25 down and three up, as opposed to now.

I mean, websites now today aren't what websites were in 2008 or 2000, right?

You're dealing with much more text.

Now, when you go to a site, you have all kinds of video that you can watch for learning purposes or economic development purposes, etc.

And so the minimum in certain situations like that, the definition changed to 100 over 25.

So the expectation went up along with some of the digital requirements that go along with the technologies that we have today.

All that to say, with the change in those definitions, what we'll see now is that in order to have high speed internet and a map that the FCC has that shows where coverage is, that map is going to look like it's full.

Because we probably want everybody here.

And if you're lowering the standard, just to say that we have more cover, then you can see where the frustration is waiting for us all.

I'm gonna go over what the status of that is in the delivery, the plan outline as well as the survey discussion of the citizens that have participated in the survey that we distributed and gave access to online to our citizens.

The idea was to plan and document this whole process via the city's website.

We worked along with our GIS folks as well as public communication and marketing to make sure that this was on the city's website.

And we invited public comment as well as feedback with regards to the city's infrastructure or our citizens either lack of access to what they need, or if they had what they needed, then they would have said so in the survey, those who participated.

Survey itself is still sitting there, but the input was cut off July the 4th.

Plan outline, um it's important to know what the target was initially.

Um it was for digital opportunity, and what we're speaking about when we say digital opportunity, we're literally saying that every person, every community, should have the information technology bandwidth to fully participate in the economy, the uh democracy, and our overall uh community needs planned status and delivery, of course.

First off, as I mentioned, access is important, and that's an area that we want to make sure that each household has that access.

And an important point to make there is having the access and the connectivity isn't just for those who are raising their hand saying, hey, what about us over here?

It's for any and everybody.

We want to close the digital divide and give that opportunity for any citizen that we have, right?

Whether they want to hop on or not, because it's believed that at some point they're going to want.

So we need to make sure that that infrastructure is already in place.

Affordability, of course, is another issue.

So there are certain um categories that the federal government has put a label on to say these are groups covered populations that we need to make sure that they are not hindered by not having access to the internet.

Adoption, of course, if there have been communities that did not have access previously to internet, then of course there's some educating that's gonna have to happen.

So we're going to have to, in a comprehensive way, as a saying goes, as the tide rises, it lifts all boats.

We want the entire community to be at a place where we're all understanding the basics when it comes to digital participation and digital competence.

Then, of course, advancement, we want to be able to deploy other technologies around and throughout the city.

So with this infrastructure that we have, we'll be able to take advantage of other technologies if we build this infrastructure out.

Other IoT devices, whether it's our camera infrastructure in the city, or you'll recall I mentioned something about being able to detect floods in certain areas of the city.

If all of those types of technologies are connected and utilizing our infrastructure, there's a tremendous benefit.

An important part of what we'll need to do for our entire deployment, these first ten geographically are close together.

But overall, there's going to have to be an overall needs assessment done to close the gap with regards to that definition that I mentioned earlier of the digital divide, those locations, those places, those neighborhoods that may not have had the infrastructure to have high speed connectivity.

We were able to take a look at what broadband infrastructure, excuse me, is available versus excuse me, our entire population.

If you look at the table that we have here, you'll see halfway down those broadband service areas with 25 over three, you'll remember that I pointed out that metric.

Now you're talking a hundred percent of our city has that according to the former ISPs that were the only games in town, they reported that information to the federal government that everything is covered at those speeds.

Since then, DHCD has done its own objections to that map, and we have done surveys with the citizens to see what the problems actually are.

Now, if we're looking at a gig over a hundred, then of course we know that that's a speed or acceptable level.

It's actually exceptional to be able to have or hit that level of internet connectivity.

For our median income for the city, those covered populations that I talked about earlier, the federal government, one of the components or criteria that they use is those persons at 150% of the poverty level or less as their income.

Two to four individuals for a single household, then that works out to be roughly twenty-two thousand dollars.

Those burgundy or dark burgundy areas on the map are those areas that fall below twenty-five thousand dollars in annual income.

And of course, the scale continues right on with others.

And again, under your leisure time, you'll have the opportunity to kind of thoroughly go through and see what Portsmouth is actually looking like.

Then another one of those covered population areas is the disability community.

And so compared to the national average of 15%, then we begin to look at the city of Portsmouth with a graph that will tell us how we measure up to the national average across the entire city.

And there's a scale, a graduate scale there that depicts what that experience is here in the city of Portsmouth as well.

Then another one of those covered populations to close the digital divide is those persons that might have barriers to language.

And so you can see probably the highest or the greatest barrier for language happens to be those speaking Spanish between the age of 18 and 64.

And the other groups are listed here as well.

You'll be able to look at those, find those in your leisure.

And then of course, the implementation of our projects and keys to success.

Some of those areas, as I mentioned before, that we want to be able to provide for our citizens across the city again, everybody should be able to have the benefit of these tenants that we're aiming for.

Telehealth access community digital navigator with digital literacy focus.

So we're going to have these digital education forums and community groups talking and teaching our citizens about digital access and its use.

One of the covered groups, targeted population groups, is those who have been incarcerated.

So in order, the federal government says, in order to slow down the recidivism, is to help prepare folks if they've been incarcerated for the job opportunities or education opportunities that are available today.

If they've been incarcerated, then they may have missed a certain time period where some of these things have been rolled out.

And there's a special effort to try to make sure that those people are brought up to speed as well.

So we need to make sure that we're legitimizing the initiative, and that's going to happen by hiring specialized staff to take on this issue to establish a locality-based covered population GIS resource.

So we'll make sure that that's a public-facing piece where everybody in a transparent way will know what some of those covered population areas happen to be in the city.

Conduct regular outreach with our residents through surveys and input sessions.

And of course, I mentioned to you we've already done the surveys, but we're going to continue with those input sessions to see what other ways we can.

We're just trying to make sure that no community in our city gets left out.

Some of the key takeaways, technology is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace in a way that it intersects the people's lives in some groups, such as rural inhabitants, that's a focus.

Obviously, that does not apply to us here in the city of Portsmouth.

But then again, it's also focusing on those who are over 60, and they need special consideration to be able to keep up.

So if some communities are taking advantage of telehealth experiences via high speed internet, we want to make sure that that's a an available tool for everybody in the city.

Digital opportunity relies on the support of local leadership and community partners.

I mentioned before about Bede and trying to find ways to not only help build out that infrastructure, but also to make sure that we are educating peace.

That's a part of that Bede funding and allocation as well.

Not just the physical deployment of the high speed connectivity, but also that there's a part of this where we're educating the public.

As a part of the survey discussion, some of the questions that were asked were whether or not you were covered by which carriers for your broadband in your home or your mobile service.

And as you can see here on the left is the fixed broadband at the residence.

Cox and Verizon were the main two.

But you can see there are some that are experiencing and have accounts or customer relationships with other providers.

When it comes to cellular, Verizon T Mobile AT.

Then in that survey, and you'll be able to see that in the plan as well, is what's the most common technologies that are in the available to people in their homes?

The affordability program, familiarity.

So we wanted to try to find out if all of our citizens are aware that there are special programs that are made available to them that they can take advantage of.

And this depicts and will show you in the plan what that looks like across the city of Portsmouth.

Then of course, we asked the broad question: is your access to the internet sufficient to use those services that we just asked, those variables that we were targeting.

And then we asked, what's your biggest complaint?

What's the biggest complaint?

What's the biggest obstacle or complaint that you have about your internet service?

Many of them have emphasized that how slow it is or their speeds, price, that it's expensive or it's too costly in that survey.

When we put this out, we announced that those participants have a chance to be drawn and receive a gift certificate for their participation.

And the individual that was chosen by that random drawing was Lyra.

We've already reached out to that young that person.

And that concludes the presentation.

As always, we invite you broadband authority to submit to us any questions, any items that you'd like to see presented at our broadband authority meetings.

No questions.

All right.

So the idea is you have that question.

So back to uh the NGN project update timeline slides.

So we've got ten initial sites that we're aiming to get connected between now and the end of the year.

And we have a total of a hundred and nineteen.

Um are these the ten most important easiest to ten most convenient to access to the ring.

So these are locations that are in proximity also to where we are here at City Hall.

So primarily our decision to uh build the ring had to do with making sure our government services, the quality of that goes up tremendously, and then that our cost goes down tremendously.

So we want our government facilities to take advantage of that, and obviously a city hall is going to be one of those.

So you'll notice that some of those locations are in and around downtown, and as we are going to those ten, there are opportunities to for others to hop right on.

So that's how we just kind of focused on those ten first.

Yeah, so I I I guess the reason I'm asking is because the philosophy was we wanted to get the city talking to each other on our own network and and ultimately save money, not using somebody else's uh infrastructure, but using our own infrastructure.

So it seems that we would want to decide which are the most important of our city things to get interconnected, and maybe there's a thread here because you've got the sheriff, you got social services, you got um public defender and the city jail, so there's maybe a thread to uh to those locations, but then you know what is the water street parking garage have to do with it, other than it happens to be maybe along the trunk of the of the ring and and it's easy to connect, but out of the 119 things that we need to be connecting to take advantage of cost savings, uh I don't know that I would have picked the parking authority or the water street garage as any of the first ten to go connect.

So if you think about with the I think it's called a crime commission, there's been extreme interest in making sure at those parking garages that there's a feed back to the real-time crime center.

Yep.

I'll tell you that would turn into more of a challenge than we than it really should have been, but those areas for instance the harbor street garage, the equipment and so forth that was over there was so old, a server crash during that process.

Um you also have um connectivity speed.

So if you want this to go on the real-time crime center, you have several cameras that need to feed back to the real-time crime center.

So now you're talking about bandwidth that's gonna be needed, right?

In order to have a quality feed back to the real-time crime center to make it worth them even trying to pull up certain cameras or cover certain areas.

So the 911 center back here is on it because of priority.

Our police department, I think that's 206 high street with their main location, that's already on it as well.

It's the real-time crime center on the road.

Yes, sir.

Okay, well, so the manager's monthly report for July indicated that the three downtown garages now have cameras connected to the real-time crime center.

Correct.

So uh so is that simply reporting that Water Street's already done or the service that we have between Water Street and the real-time crime center isn't good enough, and we wasted our time and energy connecting things that aren't gonna serve us until we until we uh use the ring.

So the one gear is not actual our fiber.

So what we were trying to do is to make sure that there was at least a feed back to the real-time crime center for use, right?

So that's what's there now.

But as we advance this, we're gonna put it on that fiber as opposed to, for instance, I mentioned speeds.

So when we first hooked the Water Street garage, we were getting something like three meg.

Now we're getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 60.

So we're able to pull more feeds back to the real-time crime center with better quality.

They can actually see what's going on over there.

But that is not our fiber.

Once we hook them up to our fiber and we light it up and connect to an ISP that's connected also to those uh undersea cables, and then that's connected to our ring.

Now you're talking about um up to 10 gigs coming across our network.

People will have access to that type of those type of speeds at the same time.

So I doubt we need international access at the Water Street Garage.

But I get it that we need the Water Street garage and all of our other garages to be to be communicating to the real-time crime center.

Right.

I think one of the biggest issues is just proximity to the network.

It's close.

Um anytime you're building a network this way, that low-hanging fruit will always go be your first option.

Yeah.

So this is the first 10.

And as I recall from last month's brief, uh, we're gonna spend all of 2026 connecting 10 more.

No.

Not necessarily.

Uh I would say that we will have more than 10 for the next round.

Uh this was a goal by the end of this year, um, starting, you know, I think around June.

So another six months to get by the end of this year to have 10.

Um to get them online because this whole discussion has been around and around about getting them connected since 2019.

And it hasn't moved.

And so we wanted to make sure that we focus on getting it started, identifying what those 119 locations were, and a plan towards uh making that happen.

Okay, so do we know yet when the 119th thing gets connected?

Well, you know how long it's gonna take us to connect the city to the city.

So you're just talking about internally the assets that we own.

Yeah, that's different than all of the uh things that they've got listed to try and get connected.

Well, but aren't the 119 CAIs, those are all city things, right?

Not necessarily it includes some others, like that way.

Yeah, we we can dictate what we're gonna get on.

Yeah, all right, but I gotta sell your service for you to get on.

So although I'm you know, you you have an option of me and 10 other places, right?

Can I give it to you?

Absolutely.

Will you agree to it?

Maybe, you know what I mean?

So we have the goal of 119, right?

But that doesn't mean necessarily mean a hundred and nineteen will will actually get on.

And it also means doesn't mean that 119 that we've identified or the actual 119 that will be established.

Because as we pass by other places, all right, uh, if I'm trying to get from here to you, right?

I'm gonna pass by these other people on the way, uh, they become opportunities also.

You know what I mean?

Okay, I'm tracking with you now.

I wasn't before, because my understanding is the CAIs were all city-owned things.

Yeah.

So I I got it that that we can't force somebody else to buy our service.

So, how many city-owned things need to get connected out of the 119?

You know how many assets are city owned assets?

I think that out of the 119, I don't want to give you a wrong number.

I can I'll circle back.

Okay, and I guess my interest is uh we're gonna sell what we're gonna sell.

Right.

But the kind of the philosophy here is we want to get the city talking to the city on this thing so that we get off of somebody else's infrastructure and and we save money.

Right.

Well, the only way we're gonna get there is get the city talking to the city.

So if those are the things that we're gonna connect first, good, how do we connect those things faster so that we get off of somebody else's infrastructure sooner and start collecting the savings because we're using our own gear instead of instead of some other provider.

So you'll recall I mentioned about the assessment, yeah, the study that needs to be done.

As that's done, it's going to not only tell us specifically how we'll be able to do that, but and from an engineering standpoint, the directions for getting those connected.

So regardless of whether or not we get that grant or not, it'll just be nice to help financially if that uh September 1st announcement gives us that funding.

And if we don't, we've budgeted for the ring already.

Okay, and so let's assume that the feds pull all their money back, then presumably we're gonna do this connection with CIP funds, yes?

Or other funds, we'll figure out a way to get out our process connection.

Yeah, so so but I mean if nobody else, if there's no grants, if there's no outside money, uh CIP money that we're gonna have to spend to get ourselves talking to ourselves, right?

Not necessarily Skype money, but yes, it'll be our internal money, yes.

Yeah, okay.

Um okay.

Can I help you a little bit here?

Yeah.

I think if um, and I don't know the number for this off the top of the head.

Do you guys have a cost per uh you you're you're in the in the distribution piece of your network now?

Okay, do you know how much it costs to do a drop at a uh any facility, you know, and just an average cost, not uh you know, uh nothing I hold your feet to the fire on, but you know, if it costs, you know, I don't know, $20,000 to get off off your distribution network to a to a to a facility.

Do you have any idea what that cost is?

I don't have that available right now.

That's more of a because of the design that needs to be done for us to understand that.

Yeah.

So yeah, so that the cost is the main part of this is understanding the fiber design that actually has to be done.

Because once you get an idea after all the anchor institutions and the fiber design, then you're able to actually put a cost and analysis together and break it down over how many years you want to put to get this bill done.

But you can't do it without actually doing an actual network engineering design, showing which fibers go where, which fibers you're gonna lease, which fibers are going for traffic control systems, which fiber are going to unserved areas.

All that has to be done.

That's why we put that as part of the initial plan to get the design done and these 10 facilities.

Once we have that, we'll be able to we can do 50 facilities in 2026 based on funding and the capability.

Well that's the reason I was asking, you know, if you and again, I'm not I'm not looking for the detail of you know, you've completed an analysis, but you should have some kind of idea of it costs X amount to light up the facility.

Well that's the reason I was asking, you know, if you and again, I'm not I'm not looking for the detail of you know you've completed an analysis, but you should have some kind of idea of it costs X amount to light up the facility, and then you multiply that by how many facilities you want to do, and then how much money you got to spend it on that.

That'll tell you how quickly you can move through it.

It's really it is it's that simple.

Yeah, once you figure out how much it costs to do each facility and what your pot of money is, how much money you have to spend, that's how much that's a quick recupero.

Yeah, and the design design will tell us that because then we can decide what the equipment we're using for pond equipment active E, where we're doing you know, different kind of technologies, that'll give us a good baseline.

So that's our goal if it is here.

Okay.

So the target date for the delivery of that assessment is end of year.

Correct.

Okay.

Can you go to the next slide, please?

So third bullet.

Uh DHCD's uh award proposal available for public comment on August 8th.

So we where does the public go to comment?

How have we advertised to the public?

So now I'm I'm fast forwarding to one of the last slides that said we did a survey, and the good news is we got more than anybody else, and the bad news is out of 40,000 households, we got 11 to actually respond.

So 112, I suspect isn't sick isn't statistically significant.

So we got graph after graph after graph of 112 responses that mean nearly nothing in my mind because it doesn't represent a decent sample size of the number of households that we have in the city.

It doesn't represent a decent sample size of all the household, but it does represent a decent simple size of people that's willing to respond.

Because that's really what you're dealing with.

Now when you're doing a survey that way, you're not you're not looking for 100% pop, you know, participation.

What you're looking for is I'm with you.

We're not looking for 100%.

But my point is, I don't know where the public comment is, and I know probably as much about what's going on in the city as uh as the average citizen.

So if I don't know, then there's a hundred percent chance that everybody like me doesn't know.

And what when you did the survey and got 112 responses, I didn't respond because wasn't on my radar screen reminded me to go find the survey and respond.

And maybe you didn't want my response because uh because I got uh a thousand over a hundred from Cox available to me.

But yeah, so my point is we're this this thing is aiming to get uh high speed internet into every household in the city.

And I'm willing to bet 99% of the households have no idea what we're doing.

Okay, can I restate that for you?

Yes, sir.

The actual aim is to make it available to 100%.

Okay, but but but um if it's available and they don't know anything about it, what good is that?

Well, it becomes available and people start realizing it in stages.

Meaning, if I'm in your if you don't know anything about it, but I start building in your neighborhood and your neighbor gets it.

All right.

That's that's kind of how it kind of permeates in the neighborhood into the the city.

There won't be a blanket everybody can know it one time and everybody's gonna jump on it one time, or everybody, or anybody wouldn't even consider it at one time.

We can't build out that way, so we don't even really want it to happen that way.

What we want to happen is in the stages that as we get to the neighborhoods of facilities that we can, yeah, we want to go ahead of them, let them know that hey, is coming.

You know what I mean?

So you have a good information to make decisions about so that as we pass by you, either we give it to you or we don't, you know, based on what you want to do.

But then we go to the next phase and we do that exact same thing.

Project's getting there, we'll tell everybody we're coming, and and then we'll build into that neighborhood, and they'll have an opportunity to to see what's happening.

Okay, so this is that all addressed in here how we're gonna.

I have to read this before I can tell you that because I got it when you got it.

Okay.

So I mean, marketing's gonna be key here.

Yes, sir, because if you build it, they don't won't necessarily come.

Oh, absolutely.

They know about it, and the evidence so far would suggest ain't too many people know about it.

And and uh DCHDs, they they would do their own campaign to get people uh comments on this.

It won't be a local thing that we're trying to do for it.

And to follow up to Mr.

Carter's uh comment, um there'll be other ways that they can help determine where it's needed as well.

So the survey was just one of the ways.

You ever call back with March or so I um made sure that the folks knew that there was gonna be an opportunity for them to log on, test your speed, and then you know, log on to DHCD, they are actually testing the speed of that particular household, and then from there they're gathering information of whether or not that was acceptable or not.

And from your chart, it looks like all over the city were acceptable.

Now spreadsheets.

He needs a hire.

I need indeed.

Indeed, you do.

Um can you go to the next slide, please?

So on this slide, you said that Amazon and a bunch of other folks are are coming to uh uh uh uh ultimately to 163 locations in Portsmouth.

Where is that location?

I mean that is so that that's what you talked about when you were on this slide, so what what what's a hundred and what 163 locations are Amazon and I know what you're talking about now?

I would you know that was um the dra the draft plan that DHCD has put together that they're going to send to the federal government to say these are the ISPs that we've accepted and we want to include in our plan.

So Amazon was one of those.

Verizon was one of those.

GTS Spark was one of those.

But I thought you said that that in that plan there are 163 locations in Portsmouth.

Yes, sir.

So is a location a house is location.

So how did DHCD decide what 163 houses were gonna get out of 40,000 houses in Portsmouth?

How do they decide what 163 houses are gonna get served by Amazon or SpaceX or whoever?

So those ISPs sent to DHCD, the locations that they have already survey and found that the speeds were not adequate according to the definition of what high speed broadband was at that particular time.

Remember, I said that that definition moves, shifts according to whatever administration on the federal level is controlling the FCC.

Okay, I'm still confused.

I think what's happening here with this, normally the way these processes work is uh we need to use allowed large parts of money to to fund these type operations.

Um they're gonna put out a survey to see what is served and unserved, uh, underserved.

And the government don't do that analysis themselves, they they require there they rely on the ISPs to report what's served and unserved.

Well, I think there's a couple of flaws in that, and I won't get into that.

But what's gonna happen is they have to break these things down into census trucks, and and ISP will if they're if they provide service in that ISP and in that area, their report that that area is served, right?

And whatever capacity that they can do it at.

So that's where you're gonna get these reports that a uh these central census trucks and do these are the areas that's already served, these are the ones that's underserved, and these are the ones that don't have service at all.

Okay, could you go to the last slide, please?

It would help get numbered slides because then we could just tell you slide number 23, but anyway.

Oh, there we go.

Okay, so according to this slide, we have a hundred percent of our households served.

All right, and understand what 100% serve me.

Okay, that means if all of us live in the same census truck, yeah, you got service.

That means this whole census truck is served.

That don't mean everybody here got service.

That means you have access to service, so we count that as served.

And it also needs to be examined what's the level of that service.

So when you look at the area the point that you were pointing out, that's only 25 over three.

Well, one, two, three, is the next to the bottom line says that we're we have 100 over 20, but not a thousand over a hundred, and a hundred percent of the survey locations that 100 over 20.

Right.

That means there is a ISP in that area that can serve at that speed.

That don't mean everybody in that neighborhood has that.

So I get that, but but going back to a year ago at the broadband meetings, I asked the question, so is the goal that every household has service, whether they can afford it or not, and the answer was no.

Well, that's what this question is answering.

This question says, is there service in this area and is it at this level?

Yeah.

All right.

The answer is yes.

That doesn't mean you have or you can afford it, but that means it's in that area, and it's the individual household's problem if they don't have it or not, is how this is kind of worked.

So when you see 100%, that don't mean every house in there has it.

Okay.

It just means based on how they divide these census tracks up, somebody in that census track has it.

So that means everybody has opportunity.

Okay.

And nothing's changed at the end of the day, just because service is available, there's nothing that we're doing that's ultimately gonna provide that service to a homeowner that doesn't have the service because they can't afford it.

Is that true?

No.

There are things that even the government does in these areas that well, I'm I don't know if they're still doing they used to be a kind of like a rebate or something that the government would do, depending on your income level and uh you know what kind of service you have, they'll give you some money back on those.

Uh but I think one of the things we're trying to do uh is drive competition into these areas.

Where if it is it costs you a hundred dollars to get whatever service it is today, well, if there are three providers in that area, you could probably get that same service, maybe seventy dollars, you know what I mean, just because you have more competition in the area.

What we're trying to do is build out the infrastructure so that some ISP don't have to incur that cost.

All they gotta do is jump on the end of it and take care of the last piece of it, uh, which drives down how much they gotta invest in in the infrastructure, which should drive down how much they have to charge for the service itself, which should make it even though even though there's access to internet in all those places, it should make it more affordable in those places.

Hopefully the goal is to get more people on it because they can afford it better.

That's uh pretty much what this question was about that 52% of those respondents skipped the question.

So it's probably because their uh incomes are such that they don't need those special programs, but we do know that the ISPs themselves offers special plans as well, and everybody that qualifies doesn't always you know participate for some reason.

Yeah, our job, the ISP's job is to educate the public about these opportunities.

It's almost like the toll relief situation where you know a lot of money still sitting on the table because folks are.

So it is the ISP's job to advertise, but it's our job also to advertise what's available, right?

Indirectly, yes.

All right.

We're not we're not we we can't be an ISP, you know what I mean.

So we I get that, but but we do want to make it the the information available for the households that today are not connected because they can't afford it to point them to programs that have the affordability of them to be able to afford it, yeah.

Well, I would think social services and senior services would have that information or if they don't that's kind of a niche thing.

People don't really know you there's probably no place you can go to there's a heck a fire about no no no what I'm saying is i if if I'm going to apply for whatever no, my first stop is not local social service office, which is feds, but anyway, um, or the senior services that are offered, you know, or the Beasley Center.

Anywhere that some that any kind of counseling or conversations are happening that that knowledge is just shared, or is available that if you're talking to whoever you can ask the question or it if they're asking for assistance for other things, if they're needing help with groceries, phone utilities, to me that's a utility as well.

It really is because it's kind of difficult to live life without it exactly.

But I but I don't know that that's actually available as far as education is concerned.

I think we're gonna have to create something right.

Oh no, no, no, and and and I understand it, and that's what I was saying.

I think that can be part of our community outreach is making sure the people in the community have that information to say and and and working with the ISPs that offer the low income packages to share that information.

And Mark, you were you were asking, you know, how do we get the word out?

I there will be signs when when all of this gets because the the Verizon and Cox, they're gonna start going to war and the prices are gonna come down, and they're gonna why are you only paying the why well because whatever.

And to that point, uh Ms.

Cobbler, um you can already see that competition already.

You know, we we started out with a situation where there were only two major uh ISPs and providers in the area since um this discussion about lighting up our uh ring here in our city, regional ring.

You have all kinds of ISPs that are flocking to the area.

Some were interested in trying to partner with the city to get some of that bead funding to help them build out where originally they wasn't they weren't willing to bill out on their own, but then when the federal government provided that 1.48 billion dollars to the Commonwealth, now they're saying, okay, well, maybe we can get some of that uh to help us build out to where we need to build out.

And so you have those opportunities coming and then the cost that has driven the cost down.

You understand too that you know we as an ISP, uh you're chasing a dollar just like everybody else.

Your decisions are profit-based.

If I know that there's a neighborhood that really can't afford my service, all right, there's there's no incentive for me to build out in that neighborhood.

That's what all these other programs are for to make those neighborhoods more attractive.

Now in your you know, upper scale lucrative neighborhoods, absolutely, I build out in there all day long because I there's a possibility that I'm gonna make some money by.

But when I get into the income strapped neighborhoods or or you know, those areas that have you know uh a a low income ratio, uh there's no incentive for me to build out in that neighborhood.

I know everybody in that neighborhood.

Their kids go to school, they need internet just like everybody else, but there's no incentive for me as an IFP to do that.

Yeah, that's the reason all these other programs come along to try to equalize that a little bit and give some incentives to go into those neighborhoods.

So us building into those neighborhoods, is that part of the 119 CAIs that we're building to?

If there's a community anchor institution in that vicinity, the idea is if you're building and we are connecting in that vicinity, then it's easier to bring those people online at some point.

And and let me make sure I I understand the question you're asking.

Our goal in this local ring is not to build a your house.

Right.

We may pass by your house, and we're gonna give some other ISP an incentive to actually get to your house.

It's it's not our goal to build to your house.

I I I get that.

Okay.

My question really is if we have identified neighborhoods that are underserved, and I assume we have.

Yeah, then building through that neighborhood so that we can try to attract ISPs to use our our uh pipe.

And then got it uh so you know, from our pipe to somebody's uh TV set is the ISP's problem, not our problem.

But if we're not building our pipes through those neighborhoods so that we're making our pipe available to the ISPs in the underserved neighborhoods, then the underserved are gonna continue to be underserved because uh to your point, there's no incentive.

There's no incentive for the ISPs to build in there, so the only way that it's gonna be attractive is if we build at least build the trunk line and then make the that's accessible to the ISPs to uh tap into.

So one of the things I can do is follow up with and make sure the commission members, authority members, actually have a map of what our local NGM ring is, then that way you can see the neighborhoods that are nearby or in proximity to where the ring is.

I can tell you uh with the original layout, all of that was already considered when they built when they started putting a conduit in the ground.

I'm sorry.

What is the report?

It goes around the entire city.

Uh no, no, no.

I I I know what you're saying, but so you have the ring.

I've got a neighborhood that's over here.

How far away from that do I have to be to be considered I'm not part of that?

Well again, I think Mr.

Carter kind of touched on a couple of those.

If you're in a vicinity and your neighbor has it, then according to that map, you have it.

Well ISP would have to do that.

Right.

And I get that.

But I and I think the question she's asking is we have a ring build, right?

How far is too far for that guy to kick to me.

Gotcha.

So that's gonna depend on the ISP.

If an ISP is willing to hop on, it depends on that company.

What's too far for them?

Have I SP question?

Uh when it comes to the school systems, I know we talked about that a little bit.

Is there a um and I feel like they should be one of the customers?

Is there a requirement for an ISP to be in the middle before they get to the ring, or can they connect directly to the ring?

When it comes to the schools.

They don't if they're gonna be providing a service, then yes, they're gonna have to get an ISP.

Yeah.

I thought we couldn't say that to for point to point.

They may be able to just do their own thing, you know what I mean.

There's at least some fiber and connect two buildings.

But if you're talking about access to the internet, then that's a whole different thing.

There's a difference between I got fiber at my house and I got access to the internet.

Access to the internet only goes through an ISP.

Um and you can but just like for our our our own purposes trying to connect all our facilities.

All right.

We only need one ISP to get us on the onto the rest of the world, but we can use our own fiber to connect to each other.

Right.

So that means all the fiber has all the connections have to come back to a central point that you know that everybody share that ISP.

So even with the school system, they can they can make money by connecting buildings to each other.

But at some point, some somewhere on the network has to be a connection to an ISP.

Gotcha.

All right.

That was a great point.

I thought once you got on the ring, you had internet.

No.

No.

Not quite.

You have access.

Yeah.

All right.

And and and and just the reason I keep using that word is because that's what this ring builds.

It don't it would give you anything, but it gives you access to a lot of things.

Okay.

Alright, well, that motion to me close this meeting.

I was gonna say we are over time.

Um so just a quick reminder, our next meeting is gonna be September 9th at 4 p.m.

And uh we don't have any public speakers, do we?

Okay.

Okay, get them and make a suggestion to our presenters.

All right.

When we talk about things, we have to talk about it in a manner so that we bring people along with us.

All right.

So we you know we can talk our own talk and we know what we're talking about, you know what I mean.

But there are there's just nomenclature that we use and we know what it means, but to the average person, they have a whole idea of what that nomenclature means.

And we may need to exp you kind of peel back and explain some of those things so that we bring people along with us.

So we have a motion to adjourn.

Just need a second.

We got a second, all right.

This meeting is over.