The Power of Empowering Marginalized Communities - Episode 600 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Dwayne Douglas (00:07):
What I see is well being in it. Right? You know what it takes to empower yourself. When I look at devices, telephones and such, if you don't have digital literacy skills, you're not digital skilled, all you're doing is consuming, you're not engaging. And I need to have people engaging so we can close that divide. Because if you're not engaging, then you're not empowering yourself to all of the opportunities that exist.

Christopher Mitchell (00:29):
Welcome [00:00:30] to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell. I'm with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and I'm seeing Kevin Clay walk by. Hey, we're going to catch up later, I hope. Yeah, he's on the phone. I'm here with Dwayne Douglas who's wondering how professional this operation is. Welcome.

Dwayne Douglas (00:52):
Thank you. Thank you.

Christopher Mitchell (00:54):
So you are with, is it the Quilt?

Dwayne Douglas (00:56):
The Quilt Corp? Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (00:57):
Quilt Corp. Alright. So you and I met [00:01:00] in Gary when my colleague Jordan and I went over there to talk broadband with folks and do what we call a little broadband bootcamp with a RP. And you came down and shared that you are doing some cool work marrying physical infrastructure, mesh Wi-Fi kind of approach. I'm going to ask you what mesh means in a minute, but with also digital equity training and that sort of thing.

Dwayne Douglas (01:20):
This is true. This is

Christopher Mitchell (01:22):
True. So tell me about it. So what are you doing?

Dwayne Douglas (01:24):
I work in several communities and what we're doing right now is we started off with a point to point [00:01:30] fiber connection and then we're doing point to multi multi-point going into a property going point to point, multi-point around the community. And now what we're doing is we're actually looking to acquire dark fiber within marginalized communities, only work in marginalized communities and then implement solutions within multi-dwelling units throughout the city of Chicago.

Christopher Mitchell (01:50):
Okay. When you say point to point, what we're talking about is you got fiber in one location, you're taking it to another location, and then point to multi-point, you're going from there to many endpoints like [00:02:00] homes, units and apartment buildings, I'm guessing or

Dwayne Douglas (02:04):
What? Yeah. Well when I say fiber, point to point, just a DIA. So coming from a data center to a location in a community, which would be a property, and then we take that and we go up to the rooftop with a fiber cable and then we put a point to multi-point antenna on top and then we go point to multi-point from there to the surrounding properties.

Christopher Mitchell (02:22):
So it would be harder and more expensive to do that in a few places. Do you just like the climate here? You didn't pick Chicago? [00:02:30] It was easy,

Dwayne Douglas (02:31):
Didn't do it because it was easy. I tell you, some of those supposedly spring days that were about 30 degrees didn't work so well for the person on the roof, which is usually me and another guy at the other end.

Christopher Mitchell (02:43):
Yeah, we do cable crimping and some of our events and I'm always like, alright, you're doing it now in 68 degrees. Imagine doing this in 35.

Dwayne Douglas (02:52):
Yeah, you have to make those timelines.

Christopher Mitchell (02:56):
So you're getting dark fiber now and we can and just remind people [00:03:00] what that is, but when you say point to point, did you build a fiber route or did you know that there was one already close by and you could extend that? How did it work?

Dwayne Douglas (03:09):
Yeah, so because my background is in IT and telecom, I've been doing telecom for years, I have quite a few fiber maps and so I knew certain carriers had fiber within the communities I was working in. However they just passed through. So when I did the point to point or communicate with them, what I had to have them do is to bring it to a point in the community or [00:03:30] from a point in the community where they're already at. Then I had to pay to have it brought from that point to the property.

Christopher Mitchell (03:36):
Did you work with the community? How did you know, is this a place? Well, how did you know where to do it and that people would be receptive to you doing this?

Dwayne Douglas (03:45):
When I first started, I only partnered with community partners. I didn't tell any of the politicians what I was doing, just the community partners. And so those community partners directed me to property owners and so we formed that partnership.

Christopher Mitchell (04:00):
[00:04:00] So at this point I think people have to understand that you're hemorrhaging money. Not only are you doing an expensive approach, this is something where if people had money it wouldn't work out. And so this is something that I am guessing is a philanthropic type activity.

Dwayne Douglas (04:17):
Yeah. You can tell by my clothes. No, it is. So when I originally started, I did have a sponsor, so Microsoft sponsored my first three [00:04:30] pops, so on the south side of Chicago. So it came at no cost to me. They sponsored the fiber, they sponsored the equipment and all. And the whole goal is so I can keep the price down.

Christopher Mitchell (04:42):
So let's go back to how you got into all this. You now have connections, you've had connections in the industry. How did you get into broadband originally?

Dwayne Douglas (04:51):
On the philanthropic side or in general?

Christopher Mitchell (04:53):
In general, yeah, I'm curious.

Dwayne Douglas (04:55):
So in general, so I had an IT consulting company and a training company. So [00:05:00] we were training individuals for a network and project management and computer programming

Christopher Mitchell (05:04):
Early two thousands.

Dwayne Douglas (05:05):
Oh man. No earlier. Anyway, what had happened was you

Christopher Mitchell (05:12):
Lived through the bus.

Dwayne Douglas (05:13):
Yeah, the bust. So while I was doing one of our clients, which was an accounting firm, I met their telecom person. And so through those conversations we decided to partner. And so at that point in time he was doing hotels [00:05:30] and we were, we had about 340 hotels around in the Midwest that we were actually doing telecom for their phone systems, their security, and their Internet. But we were using T one lines back in the day and then we did one of Motorola's canopies first implementations down in the city of Gray for their transportation centers. And that started my journey in the telecom.

Christopher Mitchell (05:53):
Alright. I'm not going to get too caught off and go off stream with this, but I am curious now we associate hotels [00:06:00] with national contracts with big carriers and things like that. Is that how it was back then?

Dwayne Douglas (06:06):
No. So we were doing mid-range hotels as well. So there were no national contracts until wireless became a hot commodity.

Christopher Mitchell (06:17):
Okay. Alright. So you were involved in both telephony as well as wireless then? Yes. Alright. So if we move forward, you loved working with Motorola's Canopy.

Dwayne Douglas (06:29):
Oh, [00:06:30] loved it.

Christopher Mitchell (06:32):
You stuck with it?

Dwayne Douglas (06:33):
Well actually I'm with Cambium now, so I guess I did.

Christopher Mitchell (06:39):
Okay, so how did you just had more opportunities and got more clients to stay in this space then? Basically?

Dwayne Douglas (06:45):
No, what happened is, so we got out of the telecom business, I lost my partner, so I lost my partner and so then we turned that business down and then in 2017 I was [00:07:00] back in Chicago and talking to someone and my elder aunt, I shouldn't say older aunt, and what she asked me

Christopher Mitchell (07:09):
Question, so actually we can just do a clean edit there and just say, start that part over again. You don't have to worry about correcting yourself,

Dwayne Douglas (07:16):
But she probably won't even hear this. You never know this is true. I thought I was the only person listening to you, but

Christopher Mitchell (07:23):
I feel like that might be the case sometimes. So you're back in Chicago?

Dwayne Douglas (07:28):
Back in Chicago and just visiting [00:07:30] and she asked me a question, I was trying to exchange some information with her, some photos, and I pull out my iPhone. She pulled out a flip phone, obviously I'm it. I was going to fix this problem. I said, where's your printer at? I'll Bluetooth to it and boom, print you out some pictures. I don't have a printer. Where's your computer? Then I don't have a computer. I said, do you have Internet? And she says, what do I need that for? So that alone, it just caused pause and I told her, I said, you know what, I'll bring some the next time I'm down. And when I left, bring some Internet, Internet and [00:08:00] some pictures, but when I left, I walked out and I just thought it was on the west side of Chicago. Does everyone feel this? Does anyone else feel this way about whether they need the Internet or not or what do they need it for? Went home, did some research and it's pretty prevalent in all the communities that look like those communities that this was a huge problem.

Christopher Mitchell (08:21):
Let's spend a minute here. This ranges from, I mean, and this is something that listeners to this show probably familiar with, Sean Gonsalves, my colleague who is [00:08:30] African-American and he's actually from Cape Verde, so I don't know exactly how he identifies, but at any rate, he talks about young black entrepreneurs and they say, I have everything I need on my phone. And he's reminding us regularly that there's a number of people who don't see a value in home Internet access. Now there's also a number of elderly people and we see this all across various different demographics who feel like it's not that important to them. Your response [00:09:00] to that wasn't to say, well good for her, she can keep doing things the way she'd done it. Your sense was that that's a problem to be solved?

Dwayne Douglas (09:06):
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (09:07):
And why is that? I want to just talk about that for a second. Yeah.

Dwayne Douglas (09:10):
Because what I see is well being in it, you know what it takes to empower yourself. When I look at devices, telephones as such, if you don't have digital literacy skills, you're not digitally skilled, all you're doing is consuming, you're just consuming. You're not engaging. And I need to have people engaging so we can close that divide. [00:09:30] Because if you're not engaging, then you're not empowering yourself to all of the opportunities that exist, even reducing your own barriers that are preventing you from getting to those opportunities. You now expose yourself to other organizations in your own community that can provide you those services, but you're not going to find that on your phone.

Christopher Mitchell (09:47):
I find that compelling. I have, I have an angel on my left or maybe I have a devil on both sides, I don't know, but I got a voice on my left and that's agreeing with you and saying, studies suggest that people that are not on the Internet, the [00:10:00] impact on their health is equivalent to smoking a pack a day or something like that. People who are not on the Internet literally have worse health outcomes and it's not just a matter of the neighborhoods that they live in because the people that live in those neighborhoods under similar incomes, if they're on the Internet, have better health outcomes. On the other hand, there's a part of that's just like, I don't want to get up in people's business and force them to change the way they live, especially when there's risks of fraud and things like that on the technology. And so ultimately I think it comes down to we have to have effective [00:10:30] ways of making sure people have the training and the devices, but I just want to bring that out. People sometimes skip by that and assume it.

Dwayne Douglas (10:37):
Yes, exactly. So I'm from those communities, but I'm not currently of those communities. So I live out in the suburbs. I've been out there for 30 years. So when I come into those communities, I have to change my mind. I live in a bubble much like everyone else out there that I live with as well, because we assume that everything that we have everyone else has, or they have it maybe not as good as us, but they actually have it. [00:11:00] You would never conceive before COVID that people were not going to be able to go to school or get their medication or even understand what was going on or not be able to be contacted. But the reality of it is, is that they live entirely different lives than we do.

Christopher Mitchell (11:19):
Okay. I interrupted you. You were going to talk about what you did Now after you found out that there was a significant number of people that had this issue and you wanted to get involved.

Dwayne Douglas (11:27):
So what I wanted to do, [00:11:30] what had happened was I was going to go home and write up a solution and then bring it back and give it to the community and say, Hey, it's for free. I'm not going to charge you. It's all yours.

Christopher Mitchell (11:39):
So who are you going to give it to?

Dwayne Douglas (11:41):
I was going to give it to the community organizations that I felt they were doing the work in the community. What happened is that when I did that and I brought it back to the community, I found out that those organizations that are delivering the services themselves have their own digital journey issues. So their technology stack [00:12:00] was non-existent. So they weren't networked, weren't in the cloud, computers weren't talking to each other. They were doing a lot of things manually, still delivering great service, but it just wasn't the most efficient.

Christopher Mitchell (12:10):
People doing social services often aren't using a lot of RFIDs.

Dwayne Douglas (12:13):
Exactly. And even their internal systems, they weren't even connected. So they print off from one system and then type it into another system and then print off from that system and then type the cumulative document into another one. And so I say, okay, and

Christopher Mitchell (12:28):
They have precious little time, [00:12:30] and when things break, then someone needs to figure out how to fix it. And as soon as they come up with anything that'll work, they got to move on with that, I'm guessing.

Dwayne Douglas (12:36):
And it is usually somebody's cousin or somebody's brother or son who's their IT person. So in turn, what I did was I said, okay, fine, I can't give this to them. I need to do something about this. So I paused my career and started Quilt, the nonprofit and the nonprofit's goal was to partner with community, help those community organizations with their technology stack, helping them understand how they can be more efficient [00:13:00] in doing the work that they do, but also utilizing them as my trusted partner to reach out to those community, to those residents within those communities to actually deliver digital literacy, digital equity services.

Christopher Mitchell (13:11):
Okay. So we've talked a little bit about the fiber, so if we can jump back into there. Now you're leasing dark fiber, which is, you can imagine different companies have fiber throughout, especially in the city of Chicago all over the place, although less so likely in some of these neighborhoods. And you're going to be able to get to different, [00:13:30] let's call it different streets with fiber. What next?

Dwayne Douglas (13:34):
Now that I'm leasing that dark fiber, there's a couple of things I'm going to be doing. I'm beginning to those streets and working with the utilities to look at assets. So they're poles in the alleyway looking at those poles in the alleyway, looking to do third party ingredients with them. So I dunno if we mentioned that I started an ISP.

Christopher Mitchell (13:52):
No,

Dwayne Douglas (13:52):
We didn't. Yeah, I'm not doing that through the nonprofit. I started an ISP and so I have IT certified as an ETC through the ICC. [00:14:00] So I can do all the things that all these other individuals can do as well.

Christopher Mitchell (14:03):
So you didn't just start an ISP, you went through all the paperwork and bureaucracy to be able to be eligible for a variety of programs that would then benefit people that might subscribe like Lifeline?

Dwayne Douglas (14:14):
This is correct. Yes. I am Lifeline certified as well, and it was the whole purpose, whatever solution I brought, it had to be affordable. Affordable by whatever means that is right. And for whatever programs that would exist. So that's when I did that.

Christopher Mitchell (14:27):
It's one thing to lose money on building something out, but [00:14:30] you can't have a situation in which there's no money coming in or there's too little coming in to be able to keep operating in. You want it to be sustainable. And that means tapping into these programs, I'm guessing,

Dwayne Douglas (14:40):
Right? You have to have some kind of sustainable stream of flow that's coming in E-Rate certified, I get certified for every program that I could to help the community as a whole.

Christopher Mitchell (14:51):
Okay, so you have an ISP, you've got dark fiber,

Dwayne Douglas (14:54):
ISP and I got dark fiber.

Christopher Mitchell (14:58):
I feel like we're falling. It's appropriate [00:15:00] here, but it's 106 miles of Chicago. We got half a pack of cigarettes, full tank of gas, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. We're all set. That's right.

Dwayne Douglas (15:10):
You got to go jump off that building with the Blues Brothers or something. So yes,

Christopher Mitchell (15:16):
Half of the audience has no idea what I'm talking about. I'm so sorry right now. I'm sorry that they haven't seen it. I'm not sorry that I brought it up.

Dwayne Douglas (15:25):
So now what the plan is, is community by community is to deliver [00:15:30] last mile solutions. And so I'm in approximately 10 communities now in partnership with the community organizations and anchor institutions. And so our goal is to build strategic plans, work with communities and those property owners within those communities and deliver last mile solutions. Now, ideally my ideal solution would be an open access solution because the issue with our incumbents is that they are not inside of the buildings. They go to the unit. So in a six unit building, [00:16:00] they have one line running directly up to unit three A, for example, and say if that was AT&T and that person in that unit says, I don't want at t anymore, I want Comcast. Comcast has to now go run a separate line from that pole in the alley back up to that building. So there's two long cords hanging off the side of a building. So what I want to do is to put it in a central location in the building wire are the building, and then allow open access to utilize those solutions so they can have their choice. They can use anything that they want within those properties.

Christopher Mitchell (16:30):
[00:16:30] I don't know if someone here would know, and by the way, we're at Connected Illinois 2024. I should have mentioned that at the beginning where we're doing this interview, but some states are looking for building owners and the state will pay them to work with you to make that connection like Massachusetts and New York. Anyway, they have these programs specifically for that sort of a thing because there's [00:17:00] an expectation that the landlord doesn't want to pay it. And so right now I think you're volunteering to pay it, I'm guessing, right? That's correct. Yeah. So anyway, I think people should be aware and people should be asking their state offices to have a program like this because we're talking about these neighborhoods. I'm guessing there are more people living in apartment buildings than there are in single family homes.

Dwayne Douglas (17:21):
Yeah, and these neighborhoods, I'm talking about 90% of the homes are MDUs or multi-dwelling units.

Christopher Mitchell (17:28):
Okay. I like the solution. [00:17:30] 10 at a time seems hard. Have you proven it out in one or two so far? What have you gotten accomplished versus what the plan is?

Dwayne Douglas (17:39):
Yeah, so we have a pilot location over in the south side of Chicago where we've done two properties so far. We've done a 65 unit senior living facility and a 33 unit regular residence residency property. And so the ideal thing with this one here is that we have six properties on the same block, and so we're going to light up each one of those one at a time and then [00:18:00] we're going to move throughout the community from there. Have net being our base. Now we're using our wireless solution for that currently because what we want to prove through here is the multi-dwelling model is what we want to prove through and looking at how we can provide that open access inside the building, through the model that we're running

Christopher Mitchell (18:16):
Now, you want to have inside the building wiring to a central location and then wiring to each living unit.

Dwayne Douglas (18:23):
That would be the ideal approach. However, in some of these properties, we still have that issue with who [00:18:30] owns the infrastructure. And one of the properties that I'm doing now, the infrastructure, all of the infrastructures owned by two incumbents that I cannot use their infrastructure. So what I have to do in those is do an alternative solution, which is a property wide Wi-Fi solution utilizing psk. So everyone has their own private network. It's a private network setting, much like having a router in their home, but now they can roam throughout the entire building and still have their own private network and access to it. So those are the solutions [00:19:00] that we have to the loops we jumped through, right, to ensure that I can deliver service.

Christopher Mitchell (19:04):
Now, when you say that, there's two things that I feel like we often worry about in those situations, and I don't know enough about PSK to know if you've resolved it. One is can they talk to their own printer? Yes. Okay, so that's great because for the other reason, which is a security concern, often you isolate each device on the Wi-Fi network so they can't see each other, but within a home you'd kind of like devices to see each other. So your solution [00:19:30] resolves that.

Dwayne Douglas (19:31):
Yes, that was the reason that we went with that solution versus the hotel model where everyone can be on the same network. So this one here, it actually follows them around. They never have to ask anyone to go to a neighbor's house. What's your Wi-Fi password? If they go to another building, they can log directly in and do the same.

Christopher Mitchell (19:46):
Okay. So now you've done far more than almost anyone else on the sort of issues in these kinds of communities. You decided not to stop there, but to also do digital equity and trainings and devices.

Dwayne Douglas (19:58):
This is correct.

Christopher Mitchell (19:59):
You have a lot of energy.

Dwayne Douglas (20:00):
[00:20:00] I dunno, three hours of sleep is not working for me. It's just doing all right though. Yes, because what I wanted to do, so for me, it's not about Internet. That's why the cost is as low as I can get it. It's about my theory is that, so if I can provide them with a device, I can get them the digital literacy training and the digital skilling. Once they get digital skilling, they're employable, but now they move into my area of specialty, and that's workforce development [00:20:30] training and certification. So I went and got DOL approved apprenticeship programs, Cisco Net Academy, because I want to ensure that when I get these individuals access and the skills and the training, I can now get them employment because happens then is that I'm now starting to change the socioeconomics of those communities, ending that systemic cycle. That's the dream because now their kids see them doing something other than whatever they were doing before [00:21:00] they start to really start to engage with society on a different level to see more opportunities. Those barriers that they once faced are now reduced and they're moving through society much like we are, and that $10, I've charging them for Internet, I no longer need to do that. I can charge 'em 50 now because they can afford to pay what everyone else is paying and they'll be proud to do it because they can.

Christopher Mitchell (21:22):
And if everyone's paying $50, we're living in a better world that I'm forecasting. But who does the training? Do you do the training? Do you have [00:21:30] people you're already working with who actually does the trainings?

Dwayne Douglas (21:33):
So what I do for the front end training is, that's one of the reasons we partner with communities because there are people already doing this work. They just don't have the individuals coming to them or the resources to go out and do the outreach. So when we partner with communities, I build out a strategic plan for them and so on the digital equity and inclusion portions of it, we put in digital literacy and I find out who's doing that, digital literacy. If there's no one doing the digital literacy, we find an organization that can't, and I help stand up that training program for them. I bring in [00:22:00] a digital navigator and help that digital navigator help them figure out what that plan is going to look like per the lens of who they're trying to train. So in those senior living facilities, as we know, we went down into Gary, there's a different training that's associated with that.

(22:13):
And then for the individuals who are looking for workforce development or reentry, those individuals, those are separate trainings as well. Reentry is an entirely different situation, and so we build out those lenses for them, but they're done by those community organizations. On the south side there we have a group that's called [00:22:30] the Woodline Resource Center. They have a lab in there and we're building our digital literacy training for them, and we're helping to stand that up and we get to the apprenticeship programs. I have partners that come in and help me train the trainer programs to get those going. My goal is to get individuals trained and have them come back and teach those classes. Right now, I'm using some of my partners from my fiber organizations as such. They're volunteering to help do some of the training as well.

Christopher Mitchell (22:54):
How do you cover the costs? I mean, obviously you said Microsoft helped out, you have other deep pocketed [00:23:00] partners or philanthropy. How are you making that work? Well,

Dwayne Douglas (23:04):
Another one of my great partners is QTS data centers. They've just been just outstanding, so they've been helped me out. They give me small grants, like 50,000 here, 50,000 there to help me move things along, just to keep things going until I can get additional funding coming through the preservation of affordable housing, or I should say the Woodlawn Resource Center. They help with some financing as well to keep things moving along until [00:23:30] we can get it to a state where I've proven through the pilot, and then they can go after and says, Hey, CEO, this is really working over here. Let's start funding these programs through. That's really where we're trying to get to right now.

Christopher Mitchell (23:41):
That's wonderful. Is there anything that we missed?

Dwayne Douglas (23:44):
We covered a whole lot. Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (23:46):
You've done a whole lot.

Dwayne Douglas (23:49):
Well, I know that, like I said, I'll be acquiring probably about 700 miles of this dark fiber throughout the city. And I'm also working in Cook County as well, which is to surrounding [00:24:00] county. And that my whole goal is to ensure that I'm connecting as many people as I can over the next five years to help to build this up to a more sustainable solution, but also inclusive of the incumbents. They aren't in these communities for a reason, and it's because they can't make money. It's not because they don't have enough money, but it's just, it's not feasibly responsible.

Christopher Mitchell (24:22):
No, that's what I mean. I've said this many times. Brian Roberts is the CEO of Comcast. Comcast is a major provider here in Chicago. [00:24:30] And if Brian Roberts said, you know what? We made record profits. We are going to put some of that money into making sure that the south side is better connected than any other part of any city in America. He would be retired quite quickly by the board. That's just not how it works. And so it's not a matter of them being bad. It's a matter of the system works in a certain way, and we don't expect McDonald's to end world hunger, and we shouldn't expect Comcast to end [00:25:00] the digital divide. So I value what they do. I'm deeply frustrated. I mean, we value what they do on digital equity. We're deeply frustrated at a few of their lobbying practices on competition, but we cannot count on those companies to solve the problem ultimately.

Dwayne Douglas (25:14):
That's right. I agree with you on that. Yeah,

Christopher Mitchell (25:17):
And if you didn't, you'd say that I would because I'm very threatening and intimidating in person.

Dwayne Douglas (25:23):
You're a five six

Christopher Mitchell (25:28):
Must be wearing my shoes with the lifts [00:25:30] in them today. Well, thank you so much, Dwayne. It's been really fun,

Dwayne Douglas (25:34):
Chris. I appreciate it. Thanks much.

Ry Marcattilio (25:36):
We have transcripts for this and other podcasts [email protected] slash broadbandbits. Email [email protected] with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter. His handle is at Community nets. Follow community nets.org. Stories on Twitter, the handles at muni networks. Subscribe to this and other podcasts from ILSR, [00:26:00] including Building Local Power, local Energy Rules, and the Composting for Community Podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives if you subscribe to our monthly [email protected]. While you're there, please take a moment to donate your support in any amount. Keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Sby for the song Warm Duck Shuffle, licensed through creative comments.