Fiber's Role In Closing The Digital Divide

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to today's episode. Before we dive in, a quick shout out to our new sponsor, AGL Information and Technology. If you're serious about staying ahead in broadband infrastructure, AI and everything shaping the digital ecosystem, AGL Information and Technology is your go to source. We're bringing you cutting edge news, insights from industry leaders and practical knowledge on the trends and tech transforming our world. Make sure to check out aglinfotech.com for your weekly dose of thought leadership and stay empowered in our fast evolving digital landscape. Now let's get started. [00:00:47] Speaker C: Welcome to Closing the Digital Divide, the podcast dedicated to creating meaningful conversations and sharing valuable insights from industry leaders, policymakers, equipment manufacturers and others on Closing the Digital Divide. I'm your host, Charles Thomas and together we'll explore policies, challenges, triumphs and innovative solutions that are shaping the digital landscape. Welcome everyone and I'm so excited for our guests we have here today. I want to welcome Gary Bolton, President and CEO at Fiber Broadband Association. Gary, welcome to the show. [00:01:24] Speaker A: Charles, thanks for having me. [00:01:26] Speaker C: Absolutely looking forward to this. Gary, tell tell our audience a little bit about yourself and give us a brief overview of Fiber Broadband association before we jump into the questions. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Yeah, no, I've been hanging around the industry for over 40 years, so I'm a newbie. But yeah, so you know, I did some public companies, some high tech venture backed startups back in the beginning of the Internet and then some turnaround startups and then I was CMO at a private public company and then on the board for fba and I took over as the CEO, gosh, about five years ago, just a little bit about fba. So the Fiber Broadband association, really our focus is about accelerating deployment of fiber broadband networks in an effort to advance the quality of life for generations to come. In North America we have over 635 member companies. About half those are the Internet service providers, all from the big ones, the AT and ts, Verizon lumens on down to, you know, municipalities, rural co ops, rural incumbents, tribal, you know, broadband and so forth, Google Fiber and so forth. And then the other half our membership was on the supply side. So all the big fiber manufacturers, the equipment manufacturers, the consulting engineers, see all the guys that build pedestals and all that conduit and all that kind of stuff. And so basically we represent the entire fiber ecosystem. [00:03:13] Speaker C: Well, awesome. So you're the perfect person for our discussion today. And that topic is fiber's role in Closing the Digital Divide. Talk to us a little bit and explain Fiber Broadband association core mission and how it supports the efforts to close the digital divide. [00:03:37] Speaker A: Well, as I mentioned, you know, we're our goal is to, you know, make sure that we accelerate. So we want to connect every home in America with fiber. Every home in business as we believe this will, you know, level the playing field, give every home, family, business the same opportunity allows us, you know, for you to be doing this podcast from Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg. [00:04:01] Speaker C: Fredericksburg, yes sir. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Fredericksburg, Virginia. And I'm here on Tybee Island, a little island off of Savannah. And you know we all, I can work in D.C. and live on an island. You know, I hear it all the time, you know, people, western Kentucky. That said I have a Silicon Valley job and I can live in rural Kentucky. So there's amazing places to live and just being able to allow us to be able to have access to world class education, healthcare and jobs opportunity. And so that's what we're all about. [00:04:35] Speaker C: Yeah, and I think you touched on this a little bit, you know, as, as new policy has come out. We'll get into a little bit of more of that here in just a second here. But why is fiber considered the gold standard for broadband infrastructure and helping us to close the digital divide compared to other technologies? [00:04:54] Speaker A: Well, I mean I think we've seen that fiber has an incredible track record. You know, when the fiber was put in the ground back in the last century is still around. So fiber has a very long Runway. If you think about in the 20th century, the critical infrastructure was twisted pair. As we had our telephone networks and then as we saw with Internet come on in the early 90s, data took over voice and voice became an application. And so now we need a different network that had mass amounts of capacity. And so fiber became the gold standard. Fiber optics deliver the highest performance on every single metric, whether that's speed, capacity, super low latency, high security, resiliency, durability, sustainability. What we're seeing is that it's very accretive. Wall street loves fiber. So ISPs of all sizes are investing their private capex in the fiber deployment. As fiber wins market share and reduces customer churn, increases average revenue per user, reduces OPEX and enables convergence. What Wall street likes to say is the first with fiber wins the broadband subscriber. But now they say first with fiber also wins the mobile subscriber. So this whole convergence part, as new services become available, it's really critical. And then most importantly, as we like to say, when fiber leads, the future follows. And really what that means is that fiber is ushering in the emerging Technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum networking, Metaverse applications, and it's providing the critical infrastructure for mobile wireless. 80% of every call and video that you watch, you'll see your little WI fi thing on here. It jumps off your mobile phone and on the fixed network at the first available point. So this is all going over at the fixed network. And if you want robust cellular connectivity, you got to have fiber, fiber backhaul. But also things like smart grid modernization, public safety. So basically IT is the 21st critical communications infrastructure. [00:07:19] Speaker C: Thank you. And we touched on this a little. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Bit. [00:07:23] Speaker C: Looking at the federal programs like BEAD and Ardoff. How is fiber deployment strategies and how they changed or not changed in underserved and rural communities? [00:07:39] Speaker A: Well, you know, outside of the USDA rus Reconnect, the federal broadband programs have really struggled. The FCC spent billions on federal broadband subsidies for the Connect America Fund. CAF is what it was called, because they ended up subsidizing the same areas over and over and over again. Because what they did is it was a race to the bottom, using minimum speeds as a proxy for broadband. When CAF first started, the definition of broadband was 4 megabits downstream and 1 megabit upstream. And so you subsidize those areas and then they change the definition to 10 meg by 1 meg and so you subsidize those areas again, bring it from 4 meg to 10 meg and then they are 25. 3. And so everything that's been deployed was for this 25, 3. And now the FCC saying, well, maybe it's 100 by 20, still way too low when average American is getting multi gigabits. Fiber networks today are all 10 gig symmetric and above. And then you saw, okay, the SEC brought in something called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, Ardoff, which was supposed to deliver $20.1 billion of broadband funding, but unfortunately the FCC didn't qualify the bidders until after the auction. Not a good strategy. And so roughly only 9 million was awarded and around 5 billion was deployed. And we continue to see Ardoff defaults. And then, you know, back in, way back when 2021, Congress passed the bipartisan infrastructure law, which promised 42.45 billion in funding broadband funding to address the underserved and unserved locations, with 100 meg by 20 meg being the proxy for broadband. And so now we're closing on four years since 2021, and since that infrastructure law was passed and still not a single penny has been deployed for broadband deployment. And so we're hopeful that we'll begin to see some meaningful deployment by 2026 from this program. But the good news is in the interim, the private investment has led the way. As I mentioned, fiber is viewed as very accretive. In June, AT&T hit a milestone, passing 30 million homes with fiber on its way to its target of 60 million homes by the end of the decade. Frontier added 321,000 passings in first quarter reaching 8.1 million homes of fiber and is on track to get to 10 million homes. Together with Verizon, they're going to pass 35 to 40 million homes. My good friend Xu Shen, president of Hawaiian Tel, they are investing $1.7 billion to connect every home in Hawaii with fiber by the end of next year. T Mobile is targeting 12 to 15 million homes. BrightSpeed has over passed over 2 million homes and has targeted past 5 million homes. Ziply, Altes, Consolidated, TDS, Google Fiber all have deployed and have targets to pass over 12 million homes collectively. So and we got countless other regional local providers deploying fiber. So the good news is that you know, people are, you know, companies are investing their own money to try to get people connected. And then more recently, you know, we had the one big beautiful bill act, the OBBBA that just passed and that has a 100% depreciation tax provision that is going to, you know, AT&T already earlier this week announced that they are going to take their free cash flow that's benefit from that tax provision and be able to deploy 1 million more homes per year. 1 million more homes a year with fiber in addition to what they're already doing. And we believe that we're going to see an uplift in capex deployment in the range of around 4, maybe $4.5 billion a year from that provision because that is just a fiber kind of is well suited for companies to take advantage of that. So again, while the government's kind of fallen down on these broadband subsidies program now I mentioned rus, Reconnect has done a great job and that's because utility guys think long range. You know, when they are, you know, when they're putting in capital, when they're putting in sewer and they're putting in power and they're putting in water, you know, they're looking at 50100 year timelines. And so they put in fiber, they deploy fiber day one, they've never, no one's ever had to try to, you know, they haven't had any problems of trying to shoot for these minimal speeds and things like that because they're building critical infrastructure. They know how to build critical infrastructure. And again, so all the money that's been deployed has been in fiber. So it becomes a very durable asset and as I mentioned, very accretive. And why would you not spend government money the way you spend your own money? [00:13:01] Speaker C: Sure. Well, I think my next question, I think based on your previous answer there, I think I know how you're going to answer this, but I'm going to ask this question anyway. What is your perspective on the new guidance that we've just got out from NTIA on bead, on the technology neutral funding approach versus the fiber preferred models when we're aiming for closing the digital dividend? [00:13:33] Speaker A: Well, I'd say the good news is that NTI, so basically what you're talking about is the $42 billion bead funding that's administered by NTIA, part of the bipartisan infrastructure law. The good news is Secretary Lutnick had issued a revised policy guidance on June 6th. And what we're excited is that they recognize that the state broadband offices, there's 56 state broadband offices across each state and territory. They have the best visibility and the staff that's prepared to make the right decisions, ensuring the correct technology deployed based on topology, the local challenges and their budget to be able to make sure that every unserved and underserved location in their state is addressed properly. And so again, we applaud NTI for putting faith in the state broadband offices. These guys have been looking at, studying their unserved and unserved locations for now, three, four years. And they know the families, they know their budget, they know the topology. They are the guys in best position to do that. So then you ask, well, okay, what about, you know, the previous administration had a fiber preference? Well, in the statute, the law states that to have a priority broadband project, it must meet two criteria. One is it has to be scalable for future applications. And the second, it has to support 5G, 6G and other future emerging technologies. Well, so fiber is the only technology that can do that, that can achieve those metrics. And so the previous administration said, rather than trying to make it difficult on states, we'll just say it needs a fiber preference. And there, there it goes. Secretary Ludnick wanted to not make that determination. He wanted to leave that up to the states. Again, the states are highly equipped to know what's best. And again, they have to meet this, you know, they have a statutory requirement to meet the scalability requirement. And so again, if so, that puts the burden of proof on the operators that so If a operator proposes a project with some other technology so they know that fiber is going to do it, there's no question. So they don't have to spend a lot of burn, burn a lot of brain cells figuring that out. But for any other technology they need to make, that puts the burden on that provider to provide enough evidence that they are going to construct a network that is capable of delivering that scalability and to support the wireless, you know, so 5G, 6G and merging technologies. So, you know, theoretically you could do that with two cans and string if you engineer a network robust enough to do that. And so that's. So you can't just, you know, what the problem with anything that's wireless, satellite or anything, you start drawing circles and claiming everybody served. And it doesn't take into consideration whether it's rain fade or environmental issues or trees and buildings and mountains and all this stuff. So again, if you do your homework, if you are a highly reputable provider and you engineer a super network that can do that with some other technology in fiber, then it should pass and that state broadband office will allow it to be a priority broadband project. So again, very difficult for technologies other than fiber, but not impossible. So it does. You know, Secretary Ludnick's giving the benefit of the doubt to providers that want to, that may want to use something different. But they, it'll be their job to provide sufficient evidence to state broadband office to convince them that something other than fiber is capable of the scalability. [00:17:39] Speaker C: Yeah, and we don't, we don't envy the folks in the state broadband offices. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Well, again, that's why it was a lot easier. You know, I was talking to a state broadband officer back at our conference and she was saying that, you know, she really liked the fiber preference because it didn't put the burden of trying to explain to applicant on why they, you know, denied their application. You know, so it having something more clear and concrete was easier for them to do. But again, the states have tools to be able to, a framework to be able to check and evaluate scalability. So again, they're up to the challenge of just makes their job a little harder. [00:18:27] Speaker C: Yeah, and you know, we'll just do a real quick shout out to all those state broadband offices because they do a tremendous job, tireless work. Let's focus a little bit on the fiber side of that. Now, as you see it, what is the biggest obstacle for fiber provide that fiber providers face today in reaching those rural, unserved or economically challenged areas? [00:18:54] Speaker A: Well, the simple answer is politics. Broadband's about people and when it's not, it's about politics. This would be a super simple job if we just focused on people and doing what's right for subscribers. We saw with the previous administration they packed in a lot of unnecessary obligations. So the new administration came in and got rid of all those obligations. But then the put on some of their own not necessary obligations but other policies and so forth and again it just becomes a political football. So if we just again, this is where the real RUS money has done really well and it's just people focused on what's the right investment to build out critical infrastructure and get the job done. It's not jerking people around swinging one way or the other. And again, you know, hats off the state broadband offices for enduring, you know, the political footballs here and you know, just they are doing a fantastic job of staying focused on people and doing what's because at the end of the day, politicians, they come and go. Yeah. These other people, they live their account. That's why I love rural communities, rural providers. They are, you know, when you meet with a electric rural co op, then you go to lunch with the gm, everybody in the restaurant has a comment to say about their service. You know, they can't go to a football game, they can't go to church, they can't. They see their customers every single day. There's no hiding. And they're 100% accountable. And again, you know, accountability is king. And so the state broadband offices, they live in these communities and they are, you know, they are are serving their subscribers or the people, the taxpayers of those communities to make sure that every unserved and underserved location is so we have the utmost respect and confidence in each SPO on their ability to make good decisions. [00:20:59] Speaker C: And I echo the sentiment. It's always been about people for me. As I shared with you earlier, I've always worked in rural communities and certainly all about people. And you touched on this. So how can local governments and utilities better support fiber deployment in their regions? [00:21:20] Speaker A: Well, you know, again, as I said, every state and territory has a state broadband office. They fully understand where every underserved location is in their state. They know the topology, they know the local challenges, they're accountable. And so I always, you know, when people reach out to me, providers, communities, I connect them with the state broadband office because these are great people. And again they, and they always know the person I'm connecting with. They know the project, they know the people they're trying to serve because there's not A corner of their state that they haven't either visited or studied. And so it's just that's the first place to start. And those are the folks that can really help you. And you know the states have also not just waiting around for NTI money, but they've been able to deploy the capital projects fund again, $10 billion. Joey Winder got out with four people in less than a year. That money all got deployed and is doing amazing things with fiber. No one blinked an eye. The ARPA money that's done a great job. So there's been a lot of programs and state funding that has got a lot of broadband deploy and you know the other thing just to add on to that is middle mile. So you know, NTI had a middle mile fund that was way oversubscribed, you know, so proportionally they didn't really the, this, the law didn't allow enough money to go towards middle mile. And so the one good news is that of non deployment funds, middle mile is an eligible expense. And so hopefully NTI and Secretary Ludnick will leverage the non deployment funds. They don't want to do any dei, so let's put it into workforce development and middle mile. I think that's a great use. But again, any opportunity to put in middle mile fiber is going to make it just that much better to one have the ability to bring in AI data centers and any kind of critical infrastructure support new economic development. But it also makes it much easier to be able to connect communities and last mile access. So that's a great investment for every state. [00:23:48] Speaker C: And you touched on programs a little bit there. Can you refer to any tangible economic or social impacts that you've observed in communities where fiber has been deployed? [00:24:03] Speaker A: Well, I think the easiest one is Chattanooga. Chattanooga. It's kind of interesting. I think it was Walter Conkright had gone on national news saying that Chattanooga was the dirtiest city in America. And their community leaders did not like that characterization. And so they really took matters in their own hands. They put in an aquarium and then also epb. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga became the first gigabit cities. They launched fiber optics to every member in the city of Chattanooga and you know, kind of taken the armpit of the east and made it a world class city, world renowned for connectivity. They became the first 10 gigabit city. They became the first commercial quantum network. So they've just continued, they're doing the first 25 gig city. So now they've been able to upgrade to 25 gig. So again they can continue to do this. So University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, Professor Lobo did a 10 year study looking at what was the economic impact and it turned out that by getting fiber connected to every citizen in Chattanooga delivered a $2.7 billion economic impact with 9,500 direct jobs. Then it also as a utility, electric utility, it provided the smart grid modernization to help to reduce their energy costs and to provide more stable energy through storms. So they were able to save hundreds of millions of dollars from storm damage and restoration issues that they would have had to pass if they hadn't done all their smart grid modernization. So again, just been a great model and there's lots of others. We've done economic studies from anything from Charlottesville, taking a picture of Virginia to out to the Pacific Northwest. So we have lots of case studies on economic impact. But again, anywhere that there's fiber, it's going to increase home values, it's going to provide more economic activity, small business growth, small business intensity activity. There's lots of different metric metrics. [00:26:39] Speaker C: Well, taking a look at staying on this topic here and taking a look especially in rural areas, how has fiber connectivity. Easy for me to say, right. Contributed to education and health care, which are huge, huge issues in rural areas. [00:26:57] Speaker A: Well, I think we all, you know, during COVID really understood really quickly the benefits of having access to world class healthcare and education online. You know, I spent 12 years teaching at the university and you know, I got a call on a Friday night saying the whole university is moving to online learning on Monday. You know, so you have a weekend to figure out how to use the, you know, online tools and that they just put up. And we all became experts on zoom and teams and all that stuff. And you know, we all work from home overnight. And so, you know, it's really important. If I here I am on island, my doctors are in Nashville, Tennessee at Vanderbilt Hospital. And so I'm able to do telehealth sessions. I don't have to drive, you know, 10 hours to go to the doctor. You know, when you, if you have to go to the doctor and you look around the waiting room and you see people with, you know, older people that have spent all day sitting around the waiting room with their walker. And then they have to have a family member that has to take the day off work to come drive them over there. And you know, if it's snow or ice or any other, you know, it just becomes very dangerous. I know my parents have skipped doctor appointments when it's raining because they can't See well enough to drive in the rain again, you have to be able to see your doctor if you want to have better health outcomes. And when you don't have access, easy access, people tend not to go to the doctor and you're not going to have that. We had on fire for breakfast, my weekly podcast. You know, I've had guys from Harvard on mental health talking about mental health outcomes from being able to just leverage data from their smartphones so the connectivity is able to better track patient health come. And when you have better patient accountability for making sure they're following the protocols the doctor is recommending, you're going to have better health outcomes. [00:29:09] Speaker C: Sure. And you touched on this and we're quickly running out of time. Gary, this has been awesome. I'm getting an education as well as our audience. How does fiber deployment today prepare communities for emerging technologies? And you touched on this a little bit earlier, such as 5G AI enabled devices and future smart city applications. [00:29:37] Speaker A: Well, as I said, our tagline is when fiber leads, the future follows. And any community that has fiber, I said Chattanooga, the first commercial quantum network. And what does that mean? Well, first of all, it provides access. Any company can have access to quantum computing, cloud based quantum computing. Every company is not going to be able to sit there and have their own quantum computer. So now being able to move into Chattanooga, it's allowing people to be able to leverage quantum technology. We see AI is the things we know about AI is that it takes mass amounts of fiber, mass amounts of power, mass amounts of water. And so if we're AI is going crazy around the world. I went to, I was in Kuala Lumpur last summer. That's right outside of Singapore. What Malaysia's economic development strategy now is AI data centers. They're able to take advantage of fiber's low latency to be able to support a big city or area like Singapore and be able to do that in a way with more in the rural areas to have big AI data centers. If we start getting more distributed AI, fiber is going to become more and more critical. As we start getting into Metaverse applications with training and medical applications and so forth, that becomes really important. We talked about health care. We already have robotic surgery where the doctors literally within arm's distance of the robot doing the surgery. Well, there's no reason with fiber connectivity that they couldn't be anywhere in the world performing that surgery. At our conference at Fiber Connect, we had the CEO of SaskTel, she did a great video on the rural areas of Canada where people were having to Take three days off work a pregnant lady and would have to fly a commercial airline to fly hours to get to an ultrasound. And they show now they have in these rural communities a remote ultrasound so she can just go into their local clinic and their doctor could be, you know, a three hour flight away, but still be able to do the same, you know, robotic ultrasound. So these things are going to, again, really transform the way we live, work and play. [00:32:16] Speaker C: Well, we are quickly, quickly running out of time. But I would be remiss if I didn't ask you a quick question about workforce. With the surge of all these fiber projects, as you so eloquently shared with us, how's the industry addressing workforce development to meet the growing demands for skilled labor? [00:32:37] Speaker A: Well, you know, that was about four years ago. We looked at the trajectory with all the money coming in from ARPA and capital projects and eventually BEAD and, and then private investment. And we're seeing this huge mountain of growth. And we've, you know, we've been going from about 8 million homes a year to 9 to now over 10 million homes a year. And but the workforce line can grow about 15% a year. So we're like, okay, this isn't going to work because the deploy fiber, it's about 66 to 72% labor, depending aerial or buried. And, and so it's a high, high labor component. And so we launched OptiPath, a fiber optic technician training program. It's 144 hours with department of labor apprentice program. And so this is ramping out to every state and territory across the nation. Again, we need to train about 75,000 fiber optic technicians. We started with a cohort of 18 students at a community college in Wilson, North Carolina. Now we're gone from that 18 student cohort to, you know, we are getting the point where we're training, you know, over 1,000 students and we expect to ramp that up to 10,000 students. Getting on our way to get to the 75,000. So, you know, workforce development is really, really important. The other challenge, and I was talking to Adam Cassidy at NTIA the other day about this, is, you know, one of the unintended consequences of pushing out. So we had the staggered start date for the NTI B program. You know, as states would put in their initial proposal, they had a year to get in their final proposal. And so we had, at the end of last year, Louisiana put in their final proposal. Then we had Nevada and Delaware and then Pennsylvania and West Virginia and a number of other states were ready to go that would have had this nice staggered start and we would have had by July, maybe about 17 states start and then Texas would be at the end. Well, the revised notice that went out on June 6, it push the start date to a shotgun start. So if you picture like a golf tournament instead of Everybody starting off T1 and just kind of lining up to go, now they're starting all 56 states and territories roughly at the same time. So that's going to put a big stress on getting construction crews every state and territory across the nation, plus construction equipment, plus supply chain. So rather than having this nice, smooth staggered start, we're going to have this shotgun start. So the other part of this is it also has pushed out. States have been slow to start up their workforce development efforts because until they know that they're getting ready to start the programs, projects, they didn't want to train up people that didn't have a job, you know, that weren't, weren't ready for a project to start. Because where are those people going to go? They're going to go to another state. So they don't want to train people for someone else's state. And so, you know, they've kind of stalled to kind of line up the timing, which the problem is when you need to train 75,000 people, stalling is not a good strategy. So again, it's this catch 22 of, you know, having people waiting for the jobs to start versus job starting and not having people ready to go. But we're working through all those things. [00:36:27] Speaker C: All right, Gary, we are flat out of time. Again, thank you so much for taking time out of your extremely busy schedule. I know you guys are getting ready for another a show or event here. Coming. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to Alaska. Be in Alaska, heading out next week. Looking forward to that. And then we'll be in Toronto and then, you know, continue around the nation. So we'll be in. We also I'm responsible for Latin America, so we have Buenos Aires is in August. So again, just lots of great stuff going on. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Before we wrap up today's episode, let's talk a little bit about our new sponsor, AGL Information and Technology. If you're passionate about broadband, tech, innovation, infrastructure and how federal programs are reshaping the digital landscape, AGL Information and Technology is your essential resource. Each week, AGL InfoTech brings you deep insights, timely news and expert perspectives on the front lines of digital transformation. Explore the latest articles on broadband advancements, AI applications and strategies for navigating the evolving tech ecosystem, all with One goal, empowering you with knowledge. Ready to stay informed and inspired? Visit aglinfotech.com and be part of the conversation that's shaping the future. [00:37:51] Speaker C: Well, on that same theme, tell folks how they can learn more about Fiber Broadband association and the shows and the other events that you guys have coming, coming up. [00:38:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so go to fiberbroadband.org and you'll see our list of our events and schedules. And, you know, we have, not only do we have 637 companies that are members right now, but we have individual members and we have elected officials that and so forth. So tribal tribes and so forth. So there's a membership for anybody who wants to get involved in the industry. And we have about 21 working groups that are putting out industry best practices and research and policy and all kinds of fun and interesting stuff. [00:38:40] Speaker C: All right, well, thank you again, Derek, very much. Appreciate it. It's been a huge education for me, and I'm sure it's been for audience. And, you know, as the, as the bead projects kind of get rolling out there and we get some more activity out on the ground, I'd like to circle back around and maybe get an update of how things are going. [00:39:05] Speaker A: All right, Well, I have to say I'm very impressed with our industry. It's very resilient, and they're really stepping up to do whatever it takes to get, you know, every American connected with fiber. And so it's exciting. [00:39:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And that. That's the important thing. Let's get everybody connected. Gary, thanks again, and we look forward to talking to you very soon. [00:39:27] Speaker A: All right, very good. Thanks, Charles.