Year in Review 2025 - Episode 670 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

Christopher Mitchell (00:12)
Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and this is our unwieldy mega Year in Review. How do we do on predictions, mega extravaganza, super fun, happy time. We've got the whole team here actually

Angelina is off mic, so she's just here observing, taking notes for me to punish and reward people later. So I'll go through the crew that is here. First of all, we have someone that I've not seen before in these circumstances, a Jordan Pittman.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (00:47)
you

Jordan A. Pittman (00:47)
Hey, thanks Chris. Yeah, I I just thought about it, but like I think every single prediction show I've been like MIA for various reasons so Been on the podcast last couple times, but finally glad I'm here for a prediction show. So

Sean Gonsalves (00:47)
You

Christopher Mitchell (00:58)
Excellent. So we're going to be evaluating predictions. You made one ⁓ and we'll come to that at some point. ⁓

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (01:03)
you

Jordan A. Pittman (01:03)
Yeah, yeah,

I think I solved the world. Yeah, for sure. You talk about it.

Christopher Mitchell (01:08)
All right, we

got DeAnne Cuellar, who is the boss of Jordan, actually, sitting over there as one of our Associate Directors of, or associate, I don't know what you do. DeAnne, what do do?

Sean Gonsalves (01:17)
You

Christopher Mitchell (01:17)
DM mutes herself. That's what she does.

DeAnne Cuellar (01:19)
DeAnne amuse yourself and what do do? I am writing a biography about what it's like to work with Christopher Mitchell.

Christopher Mitchell (01:28)
Wow, I hope you enjoyed reading it because you'll be the only one. DeAnne and Jordan are the core of our Outreach team. DeAnne being in Texas, Jordan in Atlanta. And then we've got Sean up there on the East Coast doing our communications work. How's it going, Mr. Sean Gonsalves

Sean Gonsalves (01:41)
All right, very good, very good.

Christopher Mitchell (01:43)
Excellent. You were, I think you made the best predictions. You and Christine had great predictions. mean, there was a lot of good predictions, but I liked how bold you are, Sean. So I'm looking forward to roasting you for that.

Sean Gonsalves (01:50)
Yeah, I

was looking over him and there was a couple that were sorta close and then there were some that were like real way off.

Christopher Mitchell (01:57)
Yeah. All right. Let's, jump into our research team. our research team is composed of Jess Auer. Welcome Jess. You, when you, when you started, noted we were just in Iowa and you had a little bit of snow on the ground and now here we are again.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (01:57)
Let's jump into our research team.

Jess Auer (02:10)
in Iowa with a little with some snow on the ground. So happy to be here.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (02:14)
you

Christopher Mitchell (02:15)
Excellent. We appreciate you coming on. We've got our mapping maven and data doula, ⁓ Christine Parker, also map lady, the woman of many titles coming to us from Maine. How you doing?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (02:19)
and then have a doula, Christine Merger.

I'm good. It's cold. I also have snow here, but happy to be here.

Christopher Mitchell (02:32)
And then finally we have Ry Marcattilio who's coming to us from Mankato, Minnesota, where I will assume that he is judging me while putting a fake smile on his face. Welcome back, Ry.

Ry Marcattilio (02:43)
Always Chris, good to be here. Good to see all of your smiling faces.

Christopher Mitchell (02:46)
All right, we went through the predictions. We'll talk about them. We'll talk about stuff we missed and generally, you know, we'll count them up, but this is like a way, wait, don't tell me. No, it's not like way, wait, don't tell me. It is like whose line is it anyway, where the points don't matter because the points do matter on way, wait, don't tell me. It turns out we're going to talk about BEAD We'll talk about some data and mapping type stuff. We're going to talk about market conditions and things like that, but mostly we'll be reviewing the year and talking about what we thought was going to happen versus what really happened.

⁓ Sean, you kicked us out of the gate with a BEAD prediction, so let's go over BEAD first. Your first prediction, Sean, was what?

Sean Gonsalves (03:21)
well I had two BEAD prediction, so I'm not sure. Probably the Starlink one we should talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I actually said that Starlink was gonna be among the top five providers to be awarded BEAD funds. I said that they wouldn't be higher than AT&T or Comcast, but in the top five. And then I remember Ry asking me if I wanted to put a number on that and.

Christopher Mitchell (03:25)
Yes, yeah, you talk about Starlink right away.

Sean Gonsalves (03:45)
I initially said 8 to 10 billion and then I revised it to say 6 to 8 billion. So I don't know that we're able to figure out exactly how much so far we think Starlink has gotten in some of the proposals, state proposals that we've seen, but I kind of feel like that prediction was kind of on the money, which wasn't really that bold of a prediction when you were looking at the relationships involved. yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (04:07)
I've been

trying to find the accounting. I have not found a good accounting with recent numbers, but I think Jess might have.

Jess Auer (04:14)
Well, there's a number of ones out there. I don't know how quickly they're being updated as certain new figures come out. the Connected Nation counter says that they got just over $700 million. But I believe they are in the top five in terms of locations and possibly money.

Ry Marcattilio (04:30)
The number

Sean Gonsalves (04:31)
Mmm.

Ry Marcattilio (04:31)
four

Sean Gonsalves (04:31)
Mmm.

Ry Marcattilio (04:31)
in terms of money as far as that dashboard says right now. I just went to the website and looked at the dashboard. There's a couple filters you can apply. ⁓ Yeah.

Sean Gonsalves (04:34)
Woohoo!

Christopher Mitchell (04:34)
How do know,

on Connected Nation? Okay.

All right. So the thing that I got, I took away from this and we'll talk about BEAD here. But like when I looked at this, because I think I said I was expecting more like five to six billion. And I was just struck at how naive we were. You know, I made the I made the correct prediction, although I didn't stand by it, that that they would potentially totally disregard the law.

And then I predicted that there would be a local freakout that would force them to actually spend this money on what Congress intended and the way the law requires and the Constitution demands and that we would have a fairly normal system. boy, did I overestimate the Trump administration and all of the people in rural America who apparently don't mind having tens of billions of dollars pulled out of it.

⁓ I don't think Sterling is gonna get that target Sean, but I do think that will remain in the top five So I feel like we got to give it to Sean So so we'll take that we get the first win Sean. What was your other prediction related to BEAD?

Sean Gonsalves (05:34)
I'll take, I'll take.

that, ⁓ that the, this is where I was like so ridiculously wrong. said, ⁓ I predicted that the Trump administration was going to take credit for millions and millions of households being connected as if they had created BEAD. And it would include like households that were connected with rescue plan money and USDA money and stuff like that. you know, prior to, ⁓ them coming into the office, but I would say that that one is just completely wrong. Cause not only has the Trump administration not taking credit for everything they've

I think it's not hyperbole to say they've pretty actively tried to dismantle this program as much as possible.

Christopher Mitchell (06:12)
Look,

let's talk about this for a second. Let's talk about what we thought was going to happen with BEAD versus in general what really happened. Because I feel like we all got taken down a peg or two. Like nobody cares, right? We're talking about a bunch of people who live in rural America, a lot of people that don't have a lot of power, a lot of low-income Americans, and nobody cares that they are not connected. mean, there's a whole mix of people that are being screwed, but it's mostly people that don't matter to the elites.

and I don't know, like, I mean, feel like we've gone from a situation where we were like, like this money may not be wisely spent to where I don't know, like I may have misread the news, but I think Kansas might actually be paying the federal government rather than spending money at this point. They've decided to spend so little. Like they're literally being like, no, we don't want broadband. We want to pay you to have us not have broadband. I don't like it's bizarre. so let's just reflect on that for a second. Like the different tone. I, am I, am I normal hyperbole over speaking or is this like fairly close to reality?

Jordan A. Pittman (07:07)
No, I will agree with you Chris to say this. It feels at least to me, it feels like reality. ⁓ It goes back to I feel like we've been beating this drum for a while now to where this idea of, we're trying to save the American tax dollar people, their tax dollars and stuff. And reality is people are not getting connected. People who really need the most are not getting connected. And we're going to have the same issue again to where five, six, seven years from now, some, I don't know if it'll take God forbid like another pandemic or something happens where somebody's like, my God, we

have no connection for these people what shall we do and it's just like well we've been to this road before I just don't know how many times it's gonna take for us to finally come to the conclusion that we just need to get this done yes there might be a little bit money up front that we have to put but in the long term it's just save so much people so many people's time and effort just to go ahead and invest now so yeah I don't think is overstatement what you're saying I think I think is around the money personally but maybe that's just me

Jess Auer (08:00)
Also, like, I feel, we see some occasional news stories that probably don't play in anything other than the broadband media that we all read pushing back on some of these things. you know, people on Connect This! talk about how hard it must be to be a state broadband leader and all this. But I have to say that, as someone without inside knowledge, it just feels like so many people are just...

Sean Gonsalves (08:08)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Auer (08:24)
Continuing the news cycle of just like celebrating. we we've got our you know If I have to read another press release from a senator saying like our state got our our plan Approved. Yay. We've done it when like you've left billions of dollars on the table and None of this was by like none of this was according to the plan that you passed it. I don't know I just I am I am also a little bit stunned at the level to which like

our political leaders are just so interested in taking credit for something that they don't seem to want to push back about what's been lost in the meantime.

Christopher Mitchell (08:58)
feel like we're heading in direction of 2025, insert fart noise here. Like, Christine, would you like to follow that?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (08:58)
Also.

you

Jordan A. Pittman (09:02)
Good.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (09:04)
Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, it's hard to just kind of keep track over the past year too. We've had so many proposals of different variety be submitted and various stages of approval. And then, you know, it's just at what point are things actually approved and finalized? And we're still not there. Only one state is there at this point.

Sean Gonsalves (09:26)
Right. Right. And I don't know if now's the time to talk about it. And I don't know if anyone else has any thoughts, but, you know, just, you know, looking back over the year with BEAD, you know, this administration is one where, you know, me, I'm usually the one that's like the most pessimistic and thinking like the worst is going to happen. But this administration has a way of like, even when I think I said the worst thing that could happen, it's actually worse than that.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (09:26)
It's exhausting.

Sean Gonsalves (09:49)
⁓ And I feel like, you know, we've seen so many things in relation to BEAD that where like, I'm not even sure that all states are going to end up getting their money. Like there's a couple of issues that are hanging out there, whether it's this, I don't know, this AI executive order, whether it's the affordability legislation that states are filing. I'm not even sure that, and maybe that I'll save for a prediction for when we do our actual predictions for 2026 show, but I'm not sure that every state's going to end up getting their BEAD allocation.

Christopher Mitchell (10:16)
⁓ I think that's a reasonable prediction that we can come back to in January at the appropriate time, Sean. I mean, it's entirely possible that by the end of the day, Kansas might spend more money on government people developing the maps and all the work they did than they actually spend on expanding infrastructure. Ry, do you want to bring us back from the brink?

Ry Marcattilio (10:36)
I do not. Nope, I feel the same way about 2025.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (10:37)
you

Christopher Mitchell (10:39)
So regarding predictions, we had another BEAD prediction. This is relating to tribal nations. Jess, you made a prediction.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (10:43)
you

Jess Auer (10:45)
Oh yeah, I said that 15 tribal nations would be BEAD recipients or and you I said 25 and you were much closer. went back and read and I counted 33 at least. Some of them might have slipped by going by different names or something but a lot more successful than I anticipated.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (10:46)
you

Nice.

Christopher Mitchell (11:07)
That's it. And that's exciting. That's one of the hopeful threads, I think, is that the tribal nations are taking this more seriously. I mean, I will say that like separately behind the scenes, we are seeing that some of these tribes are getting money and then turning it over to AT&T to build a network owned by AT&T or something like that, which is remarkably disheartening. ⁓ And I think will ultimately prove to be really destructive. So there's a variety of things happening out there that are hard to track. We're trying to track some of those, but like,

It is great to see these sovereign nations getting more involved and in many cases making really wise investments into their futures, I think. Sean?

Sean Gonsalves (11:40)
I mean, that's great news. mean, I'm actually surprised that it's 33. Although when we look back over the past year, like that should be tempered by the stuff that we're hearing that Jess wrote about recently that gave us some real insight into what's going on with the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program. you know, there's so it's like, it's this weird combination where it's like, okay, you got these number of tribal entities who have.

who look like they're lined up to get BEAD money. And then you've got these, ⁓ a number of other tribes where their application for their tribal, this program looks like the money is like tied up or we're gonna be, know, maybe rescinded, or it's like this push to like make tribes, you know, use Starlink instead of getting money to build their own networks.

Christopher Mitchell (12:21)
Yeah, I guess it shouldn't be surprising that given all of the discussion on Donald Trump's hair over the many years that this is the rug pull administration, where they pulled the rug out from under the so many tribes with this. And yes, that's a reach. And that's what I try to do. The article that Jess wrote, which is available on our site, and we're hoping to spread this further and wide is about, you know, in part the Trump administration just deciding to pull back a bunch of awards that have been made.

as well as making claims about streamlining future programs, which I don't know, there's no reason to believe that that is what they're doing. And it's frustrating to see the telecom press and others repeating that verbatim as though this is an administration or these people should be believed in any way with the various things that they've said and done. So it's frustrating. I'll say that like from my point of view, what's important to know is that we do need programs that are focused on Indian country.

that are designed differently from programs for rural America. We've seen programs that are designed for rural America not working well in Indian country on tribal lands. And so I think we do need to continue having that ⁓ be a focus. And I hope that we will see that in the future. Jess?

Jess Auer (13:30)
The one thing I was going to add was a caveat about, you know, we can celebrate how many tribes won BEAD awards, but, you know, when I talked to some tribal nations, they were really concerned about the new rules for BEAD and how it made their award much, like, even if they had won an award or could win an award, it made it much less feasible in the long term and sustainable. you know, we can celebrate these wins, but also understand that maybe these are half wins in some cases in the first place.

Christopher Mitchell (13:58)
Right. Anything else on BEAD and tribes? I think we had one more prediction, is around ⁓ Christine making a prediction about states wrapping up selections by the end of the year and just tinkering around the edges. And it turns out to be right, I think, right?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (14:12)
Yeah, yeah, whether or not they were ready, yes.

Christopher Mitchell (14:16)
I don't think

we expected that not a single connection would be made at this point. ⁓ but you know, there's people that are celebrating this somehow the Trump administration has sped this program up by slowing it down. And, it's just more of a connection of how 2025 is, ⁓ down is up people. So, you know, enjoy that. Sean, you made a prediction that I started off evaluating thinking that you were wrong. And now I feel like we're going to say that maybe it's difficult to say whether you are right, but I think you were right.

You said the number of homes connected will decrease over the course of 2025. Now you said it would be because of tariffs. I don't think tariffs have had much of an impact, that number, there's credible evidence that number has decreased.

Sean Gonsalves (14:49)
Right, right.

Really? Okay, so I wasn't able to find it because when I was looking at that, I was like, because it was kind of like a two part prediction. It was like, I said that broadband prices were going to increase for consumers, which is probably like the most safest prediction of all time. What if they not increase in year over year?

Christopher Mitchell (15:07)
I don't know, you haven't

read the latest US telecom piece. They have numbers to say. So I'll throw out there my numbers and then Christine can share the numbers that she found that will temper. And it'll just say, there's no way to know because we don't take data seriously in the country on this. The numbers, but because I am so committed, Sean, to not only ever finding fault with what you do, I wanted to prove you right.

Sean Gonsalves (15:12)
right. Yeah. Prices are dropping. Yeah. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (15:33)
And ⁓ Pew has released numbers that say one, the number of people reporting a home broadband subscription peaked in 2023 at 80%, went down to 79 % last year, 78 % this year according to their surveys. And they also report that the number of people that report being smartphone only has increased this year.

Sean Gonsalves (15:54)
Hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (15:54)
So I'm

Sean Gonsalves (15:55)
Hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (15:55)
gonna say that like, don't find that to be definitive because these are not significant movements, but Christine also had different data sources that she looked into, I think.

Sean Gonsalves (15:58)
Right.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (16:03)
yeah, I just looked at the Census Bureau, which inherently, you know, I have some issue with how they collect information about high speed Internet connections because it continues to include DSL. but they saw, about a one in per one percent increase in households with broadband of any kind and, a decline, a 1 % decline in households without any subscription. So.

Sean Gonsalves (16:26)
Right. You know, I was thinking that part of what would affect this, and I haven't seen any that I can remember. I know there's been a couple of studies on the value of the Affordable Connectivity Program, but with 23 million households having lost that benefit, I would imagine that, you know, a sizable number of people, it ended up meaning that they couldn't afford home Internet service. And therefore, like say, maybe the numbers would go down a little bit. Maybe. I don't know. But I haven't seen

Christopher Mitchell (16:54)
I think they

have. mean, think if you look at like Charter and Comcast subscription have certainly declined. That's been a problem. It's not huge numbers. We've seen people switching, presumably for cost reasons, to mobile Internet service as their primary home connection. And I think also statistically speaking, Sean, it's hard to capture that because if we're talking about whether people have home Internet access and whether that's changed over the course of the year, well, for some of these families, it's changed four or five times.

They've subscribed and they've unsubscribed and they've subscribed and they've unsubscribed. So, you know, it's like, and that's, that's again, a sign that we don't take this seriously as a utility because before we can fix these issues, we have to have a handle on what's actually happening out there. And, you know, I feel like we're sort of, you know, looking at, I don't know, entrails of chickens in like, ⁓ in some sort of like ceremony as opposed to actually using math and spreadsheets.

Sean Gonsalves (17:22)
Right, yep.

Christopher Mitchell (17:43)
Anything, any, any, any, any comment about like how things change with regard to people being connected to the Internet over the course of the year and prices?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (17:52)
I don't have any information about prices and well those percentages are like from 20 and I wanted to caveat my change was about 23 to 2024 Because ACS doesn't have 20 25 up yet But from 2020 to 2024 it was nearly an 8 % decline in households that don't have a subscription so a good thing to see but Still it's

Christopher Mitchell (18:18)
Certainly not

catastrophic this year. It will be curious to see. mean, if, I suspect, and I think many of us are concerned about, we do see a significant economic downturn in the future, it will be curious to see how many people fight to keep that home Internet connection because that's their main use for Netflix subscription or something like that, because that's their form of entertainment for the entire month. And so that may increase the importance of that connection.

Ry Marcattilio (18:19)
Thank

Christopher Mitchell (18:45)
⁓ Right.

Ry Marcattilio (18:46)
Yeah, I could just put some numbers on broadband price increases in 2025. Charter announced a $2 price increase on legacy plans in July. AT&T just announced a December 1st $5 price increase. And if you are lucky to be a Comcast customer, you have the privilege of opting into paying them more to lock in a five-year price guarantee, $10 to $30 a month more, depending on your plan. And so it's good to see Comcast out there looking out for its customers.

Christopher Mitchell (19:10)
That's creative. You gotta, you gotta take that bet. How long am I going to live in this place?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (19:12)
You

Ry Marcattilio (19:17)
You

Christopher Mitchell (19:17)
Okay, we talked about preemption. Angelina was aggressive on this when we made our predictions and, you know, I think we are all hopeful at that point. I'm not going to say like naive and out of touch with reality like I was on some of these predictions, but we were ambitious. I don't think preemption changed a whole lot over the course of the last 12 months.

Jordan?

Jordan A. Pittman (19:38)
Yeah, I mean I guess this is more of a broader statement but like Chris you keep on mentioning that I think we were naive about it and maybe so to a degree but I think Christine said it before it's like did we really expect any of this that has happened this past year to happen how it did like I think anybody can predict and assume and maybe make assumptions but like I don't know man like I know we just got off BEAD but like

The hope was like, yeah, Trump administration has the tendency potentially to do X, Y, and Z, but like, this is the law. Congress has already approved this. They clearly won't do it, right? It's like, I feel like that's the whole story of this year. It's like, they're doing that? they're just getting a slap on the wrist? Okay, cool. This is just the norm now. So it's like, we should give ourselves more grace.

Christopher Mitchell (20:16)
Yeah,

years of history and the Digital Equity Act is just declared unconstitutional by a truth social post and it's over. know, like, I did not see that coming. I mean, I kind of expected something like that, but I also thought it wouldn't fly and it's flying.

Jordan A. Pittman (20:34)
Yeah, that's my biggest thing. It's like, not them reacting like this, just everybody else being like, yeah, cool, man. Yeah, we're doing what we can, but like, you know, it's almost like business as usual. So I'm losing my mind here. So.

Sean Gonsalves (20:34)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean,

Chris, that's a good point. mean, we've been talking about BEAD but the Digital Equity Act did get terminated over this past year and it left folks reeling and people still are. It was a gut punch. mean, and so, you know, yes, there's this lawsuit that NDIA and I forget who else may have filed a lawsuit about that, but you know, just as we're building new networks and there's a case to be made for why you want more people to

subscribe to these networks to make the investment that much more worth it, we're getting rid of the very program that was designed to really beef up programs that would help broadband adoption. And so it's just nuts, but that's just, but the Digital Equity Act being canceled is what was a serious blow. And I think it left a lot of people reeling this past year.

Christopher Mitchell (21:27)
And to be clear, I this isn't just like, I think a bunch of people bemoaning that, you know, a number of veterans and, ⁓ and, people who don't speak English well and people that are living in rural areas without a good source of income, that they're going to be screwed. We're all screwed. Our taxes are going up in the future. Our taxes will be used more for inefficient reasons because we decided to save $2.5 billion by not doing the Digital Equity Act And we are going to have.

like five, 10, 15 billion dollars of harm over the years from people having more claims with Medicare and Medicaid. They're going to have much higher costs of interacting with the federal government. We're going to pay those prices. Like the fact that we don't have, we cannot move to being a digital society. Like we're going to pay those prices. We're paying it now. We're going to pay it tomorrow. We're going to pay it for years. And so like it drives me nuts. Whatever I hear anyone talk about this as being some form of savings. This is not a savings. This is a taking from our future.

Sean Gonsalves (22:24)
And I didn't mean to throw us off track, because I know we were talking about state preemption, which is a separate issue. um, Oh, no, no, we'll see. We're not completely, completely done because for the record, I wanted to be noted that I was right as rain on that one. I mean, granted, it wasn't a hard prediction, but I just want to get credit for being right that there would be zero movement on the preemption front, which is what we saw. You can see there we go. So let's, you know, let's tally, let's tally that up.

Christopher Mitchell (22:28)
I think we're done. Preemption didn't- I mean we didn't see many changes in preemption. I don't know if anyone has-

Jess Auer (22:44)
Me too!

Sean Gonsalves (22:50)
And it reminds me to say that this is an issue that we're probably looking at more closely with at an upcoming webinar, I think that we're planning to do with AAPB We haven't put it all together yet, but there is likely going to be a webinar that we'll do in the beginning of 2026 that looks more closely at preemption. Now, as it relates to preemption.

Christopher Mitchell (23:08)
And I'll just

say, Sean, because not everyone tracks this as closely, preemption is where the states stop communities from being able to invest in networks and things like that. They're usually very anti-competitive laws, right? Municipal networks, but also partnerships and things like that. And co-ops have also been implicated over the years. And then Gigi Sohn is running the American Association for Public Broadband. We'll be doing more webinars with her ⁓ in the future.

Sean Gonsalves (23:13)
⁓ yes.

municipal network.

Right, no, that's good context. I was just gonna say that the only thing that you could say would be close to movement, although we never classified this as a real barrier, which is in Massachusetts, there is a bill that hasn't been passed yet to get rid of, in other words, and make it so that you don't have to create a municipal light plant in Massachusetts in order to move forward on broadband. Creating a municipal light plant isn't a real barrier, but two things.

Christopher Mitchell (23:58)
Not in Western Mass,

but in Eastern Mass it might be.

Sean Gonsalves (24:00)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, the way town meetings and stuff work like that. But at any rate, no state, which, and you know, even though we said zero movement, I could see people saying there would be movement, especially given, you know, that people were starting to say, all right, we're getting ready to build, like, let's get rid of, you know, unnecessary barriers.

Christopher Mitchell (24:16)
Alright, Sean split a hair I want to move on to ⁓ the low cost requirement plans. We talked about this. Boy, this is where I was just in cloud cuckoo land with Jordan. New York had begun using their Affordable Broadband Act and ⁓ we're in touch with states that are considering it and working through it. We're talking about how many could pass that over the course of the year.

And Jess said five, Christine said seven, DeAnne came in at two, Ry, Mr. Pessimist said one, Angelina was at eight. I said nine because I just wanted to capture anything in between. And then I pretended that Jordan said 45 just to make fun of him. it turned out Jordan was not correct, unfortunately. But he makes us all look worthy wise in comparison.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:02)
Yeah, I mean that was the goal, right? I wanted to make it seem like you guys are just all the way, way better on this than I am, which at that point, probably a year ago, you know, I probably would have still thrown up like 30. So like, in all fairness, I probably would have still gave a pretty high number, which in hindsight, like, I don't know. It's a, I kind of do hate that there's like no movement on this at all, because I think we've been talking about it throughout this whole podcast. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (25:24)
I mean, was

movement. mean, there was definitely activity, ⁓ but none of the laws were signed by a governor.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:27)
Right.

Sean Gonsalves (25:29)
Yeah.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:29)
Right. That, yeah,

Sean Gonsalves (25:30)
Yeah.

Jordan A. Pittman (25:30)
that's what I mean. Like just actual, like, yeah, there was movement moving California. I mean, you know, me and Sean do a lot of work with folks kind of talking about these laws and there's movement, but it's just like no finality on any of this, which is bad only just cause like talking about affordability stuff is getting more expensive than people want to start making choices. So.

Sean Gonsalves (25:47)
Yeah, California, California came closest. I was with Ry that there would be one and I was the one that said it would be California, but not even California was able to advance a bill.

Christopher Mitchell (25:47)
Christine?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (25:55)
Well, well, I guess my question is, isn't this a function of NTIA I can't remember if they explicitly said it or indirectly, but if states are establishing some low cost plan threshold, like they may not be eligible to receive their BEAD funding. So an understandable hesitation.

Christopher Mitchell (25:55)
Christine?

Sean Gonsalves (26:00)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ it wasn't much of a green-out, but they won't get it.

Christopher Mitchell (26:12)
And this is still slowing down states.

Right. So there's no congressional authority for NTIA to threaten states that they would lose their BEAD funds if they regulate prices for low income families in general. But ⁓ the Ariel Roth and the Department of Commerce have gone out of their way to say that they will punish states that dare to try to make connections affordable for low income folks.

So yeah, I I don't think we saw that coming. But I would say the traditional power of the cable and telephone companies is probably what stopped most states as opposed to that threat. But I don't know that we can know. But I will tell you that as of right now, as of last night, I know that at least one state has a person that's still concerned about that. And it is definitely something that is being discussed at high levels because

They agree that like the Trump administration doesn't have authority to do this, but like, um, I don't know. I wouldn't be, you know, boating off of Venezuela anytime soon either, if it was, uh, if it was my choice. So, um, there's a lot of, I mean, there's just, didn't see that coming, but I also feel like we were hoping there would be a big outpouring of support out of a recognition that people needed home Internet access. And I just feel like people were concerned about tariffs. They're concerned about the economy. They're concerned about inflation.

And all those things. They're concerned about the fact that the economy is shrinking if you take out the data center investment and stuff like that. And the stock market has been pretty poor if you're not in the biggest AI related stocks. that's what people are freaking out about. And Internet access has really fallen between the cracks.

Sean Gonsalves (27:51)
Right. I mean, I picked one only because for different reasons, because I figured, you know, state legislative processes could take a while, et cetera, and all the other reasons that bills like that could get held up. I did not see coming, like you pointed out, the NTIA saying, especially since New York's law was challenged in court all the way up to the highest appellate level, which upheld the law, and the Supreme Court twice refused to intervene. So it was like, thought,

From a legal perspective, this stuff is settled. States can just go full bore. But so I did not expect that the thing that was gonna really muck things up was this threat from NTIA that if you pass these kind of bills, you're not getting your BEAD money.

Christopher Mitchell (28:32)
We are now seeing similar threats regarding AI that states that have any sort of law that requires AI, what's it called? Notification, ⁓ like awareness if one uses you have to, boy, there's one particular word that's a perfect word and I can't think of it, disclose, AI disclosure laws or,

laws that would otherwise, you know, potentially restrict AI development. So there's a variety of things that are being threatened to put BEAD. So I think we will continue to see that. Anyone else have any thoughts about like the low income plans over the course of the year?

Sean Gonsalves (29:06)
Well, just one which we should know because I think we talked about it briefly about whether or not we'd see an ACP 2.0 move forward and clearly that didn't happen. ⁓

Christopher Mitchell (29:15)
I think

I ridiculed whoever brought that up.

Sean Gonsalves (29:17)
I think I brought it up. Like the idea itself was, it was ridiculous, right? But still, as we're talking about affordability, a big reason why these States are making these moves and considering these bills is because the ACP is kaput and it didn't look like it was.

Christopher Mitchell (29:29)
Yeah, no, I mean, think no

one's taken this seriously, right? I mean, the Democrats haven't taken it seriously. They've been willing to like try to, try to include this in terms of when they were during the pandemic throwing money at everything. And then when it came time to make hard choices, the Democrats were willing to keep it going, but they didn't fight hard on it. And they haven't been strategic in terms of trying to figure out ways of subsidizing this at the federal level. You know, so, and then on the other hand, the Republicans have been

⁓ antagonistic and like actively trying to undermine in many cases not entirely obviously like there's a number of Republicans that have fought hard including ones I'm not particularly big fans of you know like and so like you know like what's his name Josh Hawley I think has been really supportive of this perhaps JD Vance had been very supportive of some of these things and But we're not seeing any movement on it

Sean Gonsalves (30:14)
Right.

Well, on the Democrat side, it's almost like we need ⁓ a Mamdani broadband person, like, you know, talking about affordability and include broadband as part of that affordability thing. But you're right. Like Democrats, think broadband broadly has dropped down a few notches on the radar screen in terms of like the significance of it. And, know, which is sort of understandable given all of the other hair on fire things that seem to be going on.

Jordan A. Pittman (30:40)
I mean, I'll go as far as there's not even a couple of notches. Like it's in hell. Like I'll just don't think it's an issue. I don't think people are thinking about it. And you know what's going to happen? Nobody's going to think about this with other people like us who constantly talk about this and do research on this and think about this until the next crisis happened. And then we're going to be like, Oh, why haven't we thought about this before? And it's just like, I know it's not on the top of people's priorities completely understand, but if we all agree that everything's going digital, we got to put some sort of plan in place for this. We can't just wait until the bad thing happens and then try to fix it after the fact.

I don't have to...

Christopher Mitchell (31:10)
Yeah, you can't move

this on a dime. You gotta plan it out. this is the thing, that like you said, Jordan, the other thing people won't notice, it's a leaky bucket with a whole bunch of really small leaks. And this is killing our budgets as we're spending on less effective government and then as government programs cost more and more to try to deal with the fact that people can't do anything online in many cases.

⁓ And the fact that people have lower quality of life when they are required to do things online and they just can't participate. They struggle, their kids struggle. And so it's just, that's what's going to keep happening. And you know, that's our job. Like we can sit here and whine about it, but like our job is to creatively figure out how to get people to prioritize this and make meaningful investments. So, you know, we'll be doing that. And this is a good time to remind people, hey, it's the end of the year. You probably have too much money. We have too little money.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (31:54)
This is good time to remind people, hey, it's the end of the year. You probably have too much money.

Christopher Mitchell (32:00)
How can we fix this? We would love to have ⁓ support. You can come to ILSR.org, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. those of you who are listening to this, you're probably in a better tax bracket. The Trump administration has lowered your taxes. So you should take that and give it to a good cause of which we qualify. And we will put that money to good work.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (32:02)
you

Sean Gonsalves (32:02)
Right, right.

Christopher Mitchell (32:23)
⁓ I mean, I like to just keep it interesting because like people hear appeal after appeal, but we are funded by a mix of foundations and they have lost interest in this in many cases. We salute the foundations that have stuck with us and that have moved into this space. Other foundations have had to move on and change priorities and ⁓ it is hard to keep this going. And so we will be looking for more and more support from listeners, from people who care about this to be able to keep doing our work.

⁓ ILSR.org/donate is a great place to go ahead and do it and I'll try to probably hit that up again ⁓ at some point here, so

Sean Gonsalves (33:02)
Yeah, yeah, you're actually right. I was interested. There were a couple of as we're talking about affordability and ACP. There were what two studies this year that looked at ACP and like the economic value, right?

Ry Marcattilio (33:13)
Yeah, yeah. And I think the, you know, the takeaway from all that, if you don't want to wade through all this stuff is these kinds of programs have stacking effects, which you get to see the momentum build over and over and over again. And, know, five years down the road, you're, you're getting way more out of it than you're putting into those kinds of programs. So it's, you know, it's one of those things that is it kind of boggles the mind that we don't have 10 states that are doing some sort of affordable broadband lock.

Christopher Mitchell (33:34)
AT&T bought Lumen. I said there'd be a big year for consolidation. I will say that by my own standard, I don't think that really happened. I thought there'd be more consolidation than we saw. ⁓ know, I certainly were seeing media consolidation at a scale that is deeply concerning, but ⁓ I don't know. Does anyone have any thoughts? We talked about competition and things like that. I said the FCC would not do anything to encourage competition. They haven't. There's no plausible approach. ⁓ We talked about Spectrum.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (33:37)
I will say that by my own standard I don't think that really happened. I thought there would be more consolidation than we saw. know, I certainly were seeing media consolidation at a scale that is deeply concerning. I don't know. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Shocking

Christopher Mitchell (34:02)
⁓ Sean said the FCC would regain auctions and do an auction. And Ry pointed out that this could be used as part of competition policy and we could see some benefits there. I would say we've not really seen that. So when it comes to consolidation, it's not been as bad as I thought it might be, but I think it's still down the road. Part of it is, the last thing I would say on that is that part of it is I think also some companies like Comcast are out of favor with the Trump administration and there's an expectation that they won't be allowed

to buy anything that they will see significant barriers in the way until they get on better footing, which is why they're giving so much money to Trump's ballroom and things like that. So that's kind of the way things have been going. Christine.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (34:40)
Christopher for what it's worth, you also predicted there would be more homes passed by fiber and just eyeballing it from the FCC map. You were right about that.

Christopher Mitchell (34:51)
It's hard to imagine being wrong about that.

I'm relieved to know that that did that trend. Right. So thoughts about market competition and things like that. mean, certainly we're seeing more people are choosing home wireless service than I'm comfortable with because not like really good home WISP service, but just like a T-Mobile best efforts kind of doesn't work in prime time sometimes ⁓ service that I'm concerned about.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (34:55)
Just a little bit of optimism. We gotta take it.

Christopher Mitchell (35:16)
whether or not it meets people's needs and whether it harms our productivity as a whole as a nation.

Sean Gonsalves (35:20)
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned the AT&T Lumen thing at merger, that wasn't the only one though. mean, it was a Verizon and Frontier was another.

Christopher Mitchell (35:27)
I was trying to remember

if that was announced in the previous year or not. I don't remember.

Ry Marcattilio (35:30)
That was 2024,

technically. Fall 2024.

Sean Gonsalves (35:32)
Right, right. So it's right. It's right there. then, and then there's also been, you know, smaller ISPs have gotten bought up, right? mean, Bell Canada, what's it, Bell Canada or whatever bought Zipley and, know, so.

Ry Marcattilio (35:44)
T-Mobile

bought Metronet, T-Mobile bought USIFiber, Comcast bought San Bruno, California's municipal network, different scale. you know, the problem I think is, you know, there's not that many small mid-sized, know, single digit million ISPs left, wireline ISPs left. ⁓ So at some point, this conversation about consolidation, know, no news is not good news because, you know, there's no more bad news to come down the pipeline.

Christopher Mitchell (36:08)
Right, you're right, T-Mobile significantly made moves and it's worth remembering that,

We talked about disasters and I predicted that the FCC would not do anything to improve. I don't think they have. I think the Federal Communications Commission, I expected it to do little. ⁓ The fact that it decided to turn itself into a kind of like, I don't know, like Cuban style agency of just like punishing anyone who opposes the regime.

did strike me. have, I, can find, you can find people that have a lower opinion of, of Chairman Carr, think than I do. ⁓ but he, ⁓ his attacks on Jimmy Kimmel and others, and then just like the way he went about it without hiding the fact that he was going to use government power to restrict speech and to shape the markets in the direction that the Trump administration would be personally benefiting from as opposed to the interests of the nation. ⁓ that was something I didn't have my bingo card, obviously. So, ⁓

Anyway, like I found that to be just struggling. didn't think that we'd be losing this much ground on the FCC and see them using their power in this way. So although I will say that like, depending on what happens with the Supreme Court case that Joe has just heard, the Federal Communications Commission and the other independent agencies may never be the same. And so this might be the norm now for both administrations. I mean, I don't think that we'll see another Republican or Democratic administration being this out of character with the

Sean Gonsalves (37:24)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (37:32)
with the history of the United States except for the Woodrow Wilson administration, like in terms of the Palmer raids and stuff like that. Like, I mean, like most of the United States presidents, I have a low opinion of them, but they have like not tried to crack down in this way. And I think hopefully we will not see this level of bare power again.

Sean Gonsalves (37:48)
Yeah, I mean, the FCC has basically dropped all pretense of being concerned at all about like, what's good for consumers and things like that. It's like, it's like totally just turned into this, know, punish people, you know, get Jimmy Kimmel fired and make sure that none of these mergers have any, you know, DEI language, you know, involved and everything else is, you know, full bore ahead. I mean, it's depressing.

Christopher Mitchell (38:12)
Right, mean people were concerned when there were allegations and then evidence of what they call jawboning, right? Which is the federal government during the pandemic interacting with the social media companies in ways to suggest that they should remove certain tweets that they thought were bad for public health or just misinformation or perhaps a result of a foreign nation intervening.

And that was seen by some as being a wall outside of the realm of what a presidential administration should do, that the presidential administration needs to let these companies do what they want. Those same people have just totally ignored. I'm talking about Barry Weiss and others who have made a lot of money off of talking about how the Biden administration went far too far and then just turned a blind eye to the administration telling companies publicly.

that they had to install a sensor approved by the federal government, you know, in order to like do a merger or something like that. I mean, it's, if I predicted this, you know, Juan Roman would have like, connect this would have like, would have just like, I don't know, stormed my house and told me I was being unreasonable. It's crazy.

Ry Marcattilio (39:16)
It kind of does feel like we're living in an alternate reality here. Go ahead, John.

Sean Gonsalves (39:19)
Well, we, you know, I don't know, as we're talking about the market, we did see one new entrant in the telecom. The Trump phone.

Christopher Mitchell (39:24)
Who's that?

We didn't talk about that, but if you want to look it up the reviews are not great

Ry Marcattilio (39:29)
Sean, I'm waiting for you to slowly

raise your gold Trump phone into the camera frame here. wait, you can't because it doesn't exist and nobody has ever seen one in real life?

Christopher Mitchell (39:33)
I'm well, no, no, I was going to say here's

the Trump phone that's made in America. You can see it right now in the video. you look closely.

Sean Gonsalves (39:43)
Right, the new invisible model, yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (39:45)
⁓ it's, mean, there's so much craziness. We're gonna be pulling this to a close here pretty soon though. ⁓ Let's see, we also had Lifeline usage. Christine predicted that we would see more utilization of the Lifeline program as people needed any kind of help to deal with telecommunications. Christine, what happened?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (40:04)
There was a little bit of an uptick, I mean it was only in wireless that we saw an increase so I don't know that it was really related to the things that we're talking about. I kind of expected we'd see an increase after ACP was shut down, but I don't think that's necessarily what we're seeing here.

Christopher Mitchell (40:26)
I think, do you think it's just, it's too complicated for too little benefit? I mean, any sense of what may be going on there?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (40:31)
What do mean?

Christopher Mitchell (40:32)
for why people aren't using Lifeline more. mean, less than half of eligible homes, I think, take advantage of it.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (40:37)
That's a good question. feel like, at least from our perspective with Internet access, I think it's like $10. And so I'm not sure, yeah, I'm not sure like the effort involved in getting certified and recertifying regularly is worth that little of a payout for assistance. So I think most people, and that plays out, you can see it in the numbers, most folks are using it for wireless purposes.

Christopher Mitchell (40:44)
Yeah, 925 I think.

Jess Auer (40:58)
Okay.

Christopher Mitchell (41:04)
Where it probably covers the majority of their bill. For like a track phone. Sorry, go ahead Jess.

Jess Auer (41:04)
Bye.

And the ACP, the providers didn't have to be an eligible telecommunication carrier to participate in ACP. And that is the case for Lifeline. So I think there's like a barrier on the provider side even more than on the customer side or subscriber side.

Christopher Mitchell (41:23)
All right, Christine, one last one from you, which is that you were questioning whether we would have, I guess, more splitting of map data. like, what would be the locus of truth? Who has the best data? The federal system where they continue to collect data from the providers or the states which have forked that data and may or may not be maintaining it. What's happening in that space?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (41:44)
I think it's playing out about as I expected. The FCC continues to do their thing. Not much has changed there. They added like a comparison tab on the national broadband map. But I think as far as the source of truth for availability, states have their, you know, they all have their respective maps. I think many, most will not continue to keep them up because

They, in many cases, they, and I don't know the number, but they contracted somebody else to do it, and I cannot imagine that they want to continue to pay out for that service. So those maps will become pretty ineffectual, I think, fairly soon.

Christopher Mitchell (42:22)
Sean?

Sean Gonsalves (42:22)
Not on this topic. if anybody has something to say, I just want to make sure that we don't leave this program without ending on a good note, which is about asking Ry about the number of new municipal networks we saw come online in 2025

Christopher Mitchell (42:32)
Right, was gonna,

no that's a good cue. We definitely wanna cover that and also I wanna see if there's other predictions that I didn't have down that I missed when I reviewed our show. So, I miss any predictions?

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (42:43)
don't think so.

Christopher Mitchell (42:44)
doesn't look

like anyone has a list. So Ry, we usually cover here the number of new municipal networks.

Ry Marcattilio (42:50)
Yeah, I will, I'll jump back real quick and just say I don't think we ever mentioned least predictions for 2024 or 2025, but she sent them to me. And ⁓ she was hitting about, she had two and a half out of four, which is I think a pretty good hit rate compared to what we normally see here.

Christopher Mitchell (42:56)
Yeah

Sean Gonsalves (43:03)
Mm-hmm.

Christopher Mitchell (43:04)
Right. Lisa, who was with us for a long time on the Community Broadband Networks team and went through multiple name changes of the team and then left in 2020 but continues to work in the industry. ⁓ So what did she predict?

Ry Marcattilio (43:18)
She predicted some state ACP ish programs. Some more private equities, small scale open access networks. Some BEAD shenanigans, some movement on usf, which didn't happen. Musk getting a whole bunch of government contracts, which I you know, I can't I saw a number recently for like total, you know, must government contracts across all the business segments. And it's it's the numbers. It's was large. I can't remember what it was.

And then, you know, I think it was maybe, hopeful, maybe not fully realized, but more, you know, Democrat led states asserting control over broadband in some way in the absence of federal action. And so I think we saw some baby steps in that direction, but probably not to the degree that we would hope that states would step up in the vacuum. Yeah.

Christopher Mitchell (44:03)
Sean.

Sean Gonsalves (44:04)
no, I just, my hand is up from earlier, but we didn't talk about the new networks. ⁓ So.

Ry Marcattilio (44:08)
Yeah, so

eight new municipal networks came online in 2020, in 2025. That's, I think about average is a little lower than our like, you historical average. But it's good news to see. I think we're gonna see a bunch of California networks come online in 2026 and beyond. And so there's gonna be a ton of activity going on over there. And I was going to grab a couple other stats here.

⁓ Seven new communities got citywide service from a municipal network. And the average size of a municipal network is up a handful of percent in 2025. And so it's good to see that, you know, probably some of that is just like natural population growth or whatever, but it's good to see that, you know, we all want to see these networks get larger and more widespread.

Christopher Mitchell (44:51)
Yeah, ⁓ a good part of 2025 is New York's program, which the state of New York had a program specifically focused on publicly owned networks. I think that's been quite a success. And we'll see those benefits continue to reverberate around that state, which had previously had very few. So that was a bright light there, I think. And perhaps we could just end with a note that, you know,

we were told that by Elon Musk, that he was going to cut $2 trillion out of the budget. And I think he missed by about $2 trillion. He actually added money to the budget when you actually do an accounting. Which is how, even though, I mean, so if we talk about this apolitically, in a sense, which is to say that like a year ago, the Biden administration claimed that this was a good economy. And the Trump administration has claimed this is a good economy for the past year.

And there's a big question for me then why in a good economy we adding so much to the debt I'm one of these fiscal annoying people who thinks that we really do need to pay down the debt in good times so that we can run it back up in bad times and I'll just note that like if you want to do a Look at Elon Musk his time in government was a spectacular failure. He now says he regrets it basically in a recent interview That said I will constantly rag on him his starship did better than I've predicted there's a

plausible chance that it's able to do suborbital launches in 2026 with a payload that will get their V3 Starship, Starship will be able to launch the V3 satellites for Starlink, which will significantly improve their service. We'll see. I would not put money on it myself, but I'm also not so confident that I would put money against it right now. I feel like you could see it going either way with whether or not they're able to do real launches in 2026 with Starship.

⁓ but also I've been looking into the robots that Elon wanted to build and, his idea was totally dumb and it's been a total failure. So, in fact, I think the joke of the year that I loved was that like, ⁓ one of the people working for Elon on the robot program took less money to go work for, ⁓ Mark Zuckerberg. And I don't know what a bigger insult in this planet is than someone taking a salary cut to work with Mark Zuckerberg.

Sean Gonsalves (46:32)
Right.

Christopher Mitchell (46:54)
That's uh, that was sort of my year in review for a Mr. Elon Musk

Sean Gonsalves (46:58)
Right. Well, at least, you know, not to defend Elon in any way, shape or form, but at least he's got working satellites in the air because Project Kuiper, not only who I think got some BEAD awards, not only doesn't have anything up there, I just saw a story that said that they're probably not even going to meet their launch date. So I'm not even sure how they're going to even.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (47:16)
No,

Christopher Mitchell (47:16)
No,

well, they're behind, but I think there's some predictions that they will actually leapfrog over time and that they have a fairly reasonable engineering plan. So I do think some of the stories about them being behind are accurate, but like may prove ⁓ to be false also next year. So we'll see. I mean, it's fascinating. I'm not a rocket person, but like as I've dug into it and read some books and read some articles about it and things like that.

Mapping Maven And Data Doula (47:16)
well, they're behind, I think...

may prove to be false also next year. So we'll see. I mean, it's fascinating. I'm not a rocket person, but as I dug into it and read some books and read some articles about it and things like

that, there's a real interesting set of companies that are doing it right now, which I think will be too bad when we figure out that it's actually killing the planet and making all of our lives worse to put this many rockets through the upper atmosphere.

Christopher Mitchell (47:41)
There's a real interesting set of companies that are doing it right now, which I think will be too bad when we figure out that it's actually killing the planet and making all of our lives worse to put this many rockets through the upper atmosphere.

But in the meantime, you can enjoy the cool science. With that, once again, the more people we have on, the more talking I seem to do. So I have a lot of thoughts, and I run the program, so no one feels confident to tell me to shut up.

We need a producer. you wanna help out and like come tell me what to do, we would entertain that idea because we don't have the capacity on staff. But if someone to volunteer to help us produce things and tell me when to shut up, ⁓ I would take it under advisement.

Ry Marcattilio (48:17)
You do a pretty good job

of talking and shutting up when you need to. You do a very good job at this.

Christopher Mitchell (48:20)
I'm just always nervous. I hate dead air. I hate dead air in meetings. I hate dead air and shows. I hate dead air Yeah, yeah, I'm very uncomfortable silence is that a shock to anyone here

Jordan A. Pittman (48:25)
Is that true? That's so interesting.

DeAnne Cuellar (48:31)
I'm uncomfortable with silence too, but the truth is when I have the silence I like it. Hi, this is DM who's been quiet the whole time. But Chris, I think you did a great job today.

Christopher Mitchell (48:39)
Well, thank you.

Jordan A. Pittman (48:40)
Yeah,

I was about to say, yeah, it's good.

Christopher Mitchell (48:42)
Alright, the enforced praise of Dear Leader ⁓ segment is now closing. We will be doing a prediction show in January at some point and also I think I'm going to, I'm trying to get Blair Levin He's on vacation and I just suggested to him that he should not return from it. He should actually really consider that time with his family and whether he wants to come back to covering this world. But I'm hoping to review his predictions and things like that with him as well as talk about what we might expect in the coming year.

So that's on the tap and We have a connect this show that'll be This a couple days after this show goes live. We will be have our connect this wrap-up Which I believe is it Thursday, right at 2 Eastern time. Is that sound right? people can check Community networks org scroll down to the connect this section and you can find the final details on that But I hope you'll tune in for that

Ry Marcattilio (49:26)
Yes.

Christopher Mitchell (49:32)
⁓ You know, it's been a great year. I really appreciate working with all of you your professionalism the fact that ⁓ that you care so much and trying to you know help people help this country be the best it can be and You know, it's just it's a great group of folks and the people who are listening keep up the the faith I hope you can take some humor in in the difficult times

⁓ And I guess I should also say building for digital equity is also going to be right after this airs, so people should tune in for that. And yeah, good things happen during bad times and bad things happen during good times. So keep up the energy, keep up the good work, and we'll catch you all next year for another fun year of Community Broadband Bits.