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Waves with Wireless Nerd
The Digital Divide: When Politics Meets Internet Access
Recent funding cuts to digital equity programs threaten to deepen the digital divide in America, just as communities were preparing for infrastructure improvements that would bring connectivity to underserved areas. These decisions impact rural residents, small ISPs, and equipment manufacturers who were counting on these opportunities.
• $2.5 billion in digital equity funding labeled "racist and illegal" and eliminated
• Senate voted along party lines to kill FCC program distributing Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren
• Ted Cruz claimed hotspots would bypass parental controls, ignoring existing parental monitoring solutions
• COVID-19 exposed the digital divide as students without home internet struggled with remote learning
• Terra's free space optics technology promises 20Gbps connectivity over 20km distances
• IoT developments expanding beyond LoRaWAN with Ultra-Wideband gaining traction
• Fortinet quietly acquired Everest Networks to complete their Wi-Fi portfolio
• Upcoming industry events include Network X, WBA event, hospitality industry tech conference, and Cisco Live
If you have unused wireless equipment, consider donating it to community centers, churches, or nonprofit organizations where people can access Wi-Fi. Reach out to me if you need help connecting equipment to organizations in need.
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Howdy everybody, drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd let's see, it is May 20th today. Tuesday May 20th. What a day, what a week. So many things going on. I appreciate your patience as I was getting all this stuff up and running and going. It has been a couple weeks. I've been out and about, man. If you don't follow me on social media, look up Wireless Nerd. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can find me on X, you can find me on Instagram and all those places, and I post a lot of the stuff that I'm currently working on. So if you have any questions about any of that, please just feel free to reach out sometime and let me know what you want to know more about.
Speaker 1:I keep pretty active with a lot of the stuff that I'm doing, and right now I'm I'm right in the throes of it. There's a lot of really great projects going on, but I want to turn around and look at what's happening with the entire industry, because there's been a lot of stuff that's going on in the last you know, the last two weeks, and I dude, I don't even know where to start with all of it, because there's things that are near and dear to my heart, that that, you know, my loyal listeners know about, uh, and then there's things that are just popping up left and right. I mean, it's like you. You sit back for a week and all of a sudden, the entire world changes. You know, um, and politically, there's all these things going on, but then commercially, there's all these things going on as well. I do want to start, first of all, with the digital equity program being called racist and illegal. I don't even know how to feel about that, you know. I, I um keeping politics out of it, which is really difficult to do in this. In this case, um, this is just like a huge shocker, not only for what's happening in the internet industry and the connectivity industry, but then the equipment manufacturers and everyone else around them.
Speaker 1:You know, when the broadband equity act came out, the digital equity act, the bead funding was first announced, there were a lot of places that don't have connectivity that were super happy about this right. What a great opportunity to have. Um, federal funds have made available for broadband equity across the united states and it got everybody excited. You know what I mean. States got excited, independent businesses got excited, um, residents got excited, residents got excited, lots of people got excited and there were RFPs that were put out down the line to the point that that funds were starting to be set aside to be made available. So I mean, put yourself in the shoes of someone who's in, you know, in South Texas or in Kansas or in these rural areas where, as a citizen, you've never had great internet access. You've kind of watched the whole digital world fly by you. And now there's an opportunity where you know that your community is going to get some funding. And you know, you've got these partners, these local C-Lex or I-Lex and these local telephone companies that are now turning around saying, great, we, finally we're going to be able to do this. They work with their communities, they try and figure out how to come up with the you know, either matching funds or grants to help get them on their way. And now, all of a sudden, all of that just dries up. And it's not just the citizens that lose the benefit here. It's the small, independent businesses that we're going to have an opportunity to thrive and do some incredible stuff with some of this bead funding. And then it's also the equipment manufacturers who you know there's some companies out there that aren't doing as well as other companies who this may have been a great opportunity for them to get their product out there and help their company grow. Maybe they really needed this business.
Speaker 1:And now I've spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden-Harris so-called Digital Equity Act is totally unconstitutional. Trump wrote on Truth Social no more woke handouts based on race. The digital equity program is racist and illegal. Two and a half billion dollar giveaway I'm ending this immediately and saving taxpayers billions of dollars. Dude, that sucks. Man like must be nice to not have to worry about Internet connectivity, because there's a lot of people in the United States that do worry about internet connectivity. My wife is doing a telemedicine, telehealthcare call here in a little while just to check on normal stuff and to know that there's people out there that don't even have access to that or access for their kids to do their homework or access to basic internet connectivity so that they can at least be a part of the conversation with their classmates, and then calling it racist and illegal. Man, I don't even know. I don't even know where to go with that, other than to say I'm absolutely disappointed. So support the people that support programs like this. National Digital Inclusion Alliance, the NDIA, visit Broadband Breakfast to learn more about some of the things that are happening.
Speaker 1:But there's people out there that are trying to make the best of this and trying to figure out what to do with it, because this is $2.5 billion that are being taken away. Places like Indiana, alabama, arkansas, iowa, texas, you know where plans have already been put into place, they've already been approved, and now they're saying now we're, you know we're not going to fund any of this stuff. That is heartbreaking on so many different levels. You know, I don't. This isn't a radio show, this is a podcast, and so you know even things like this. Wireless people who listen to you know my silly ass sit here and talk about Wi-Fi stuff. If you don't have internet access, you can't download, you can't watch it, you can't participate. It's just so frustrating, man, so frustrating and then like double down, right, where are we as a country? Let's see. The next thing with this is here, from the great state of Texas, our chairman, senate Commerce Committee Chairman, ted Cruz, has passed the Cruel Republican Plan. So Ars Technica has an article, and this goes hand in hand with the bead funding thing.
Speaker 1:You know, in the United States, right when COVID hit the digital divide was exposed something awful and it wasn't just here, it was everywhere right, where people couldn't get online to have access to the things that they needed, because now that they were stuck at home, they didn't have a way to connect and, most importantly, school students didn't have the ability to get online with any meaningful connectivity. And so what happened was some places, like here in the city of McAllen, the mayor jumped into action and we set up a thousand Wi-Fi hotspots throughout our community, the city of Pharr, down the street from us. They went out and did this huge fiber initiative to start a program to deliver fiber to everybody's homes Across the country and across the world. Initiatives like that took place, but in some places that wasn't feasible. But what was was piggybacking off the carriers Verizon, at&t, t-mobile, whoever it is and whichever carrier it was and they said you know what? We're just going to sign these contracts with carriers so that kids can take Wi-Fi hotspots home with them. Now I hated that idea. I never thought it was a good idea because that was never a permanent solution. That was an absolute temporary solution that the carriers knew that it was temporary. They knew that they were eventually going to charge for it. The school districts knew that they were eventually going to have to pay for it, but it was a stopgap and it really bothered me because, instead of investing money in the future, they were like, well, we'll just throw some band-aids at it. And they did. And now that's going to come back and bite all these communities right in the ass.
Speaker 1:Because this, this thing that just passed, and I'm going to read from ars technica the us senate today voted along party lines to kill a federal communications commission program to distribute wi-fi hot spots to school children, with democrats saying the republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable internet access to complete their homework. The senate approved a congressional review act resolution to nullify the hotspot rule which was issued by the federal communications commission in july 24 under then chairwoman jessica rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the house passes, if the house version passes and president trump signs a joint resolution of disapproval. Now this means that now they can't use federal funds, e-rate funds, whatever it is to have kids use Wi-Fi hotspots at home. And the reasoning behind this? Senator Ted Cruz announced the plan in January, saying the FCC program would, quote impede parents' ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content. Ted, get a clue, bro.
Speaker 1:There are all kinds of parental controls out there that parents can enable on their kids' stuff. We use Bark here at home. If you're a Bark fan, great. If you don't know what Bark is, go look up Bark. If you're from Bark, oh my God, give me a discount code for my listeners. We use Bark at home. Disney has Circle. There's parental controls everywhere. Eero has parental controls built in. You know, all these different devices have parental controls built in.
Speaker 1:The internet is a pipe man and what you as a parent choose to allow your kids to have access to whether it's everything or nothing or some of it in my opinion, there's a way to control that. But destroying people's ability to have a connection to the internet, that to me just sucks. So if you couple this with the previous conversation about bead funding being lifted, where are we as a country? We've gone back to this place where now people don't have internet access and the federal government isn't willing to help them receive internet access. It's in stark contrast to what happened with Obama, what happened with Clinton, what happened with even W, with all these people trying to figure out ways to get people connected. Now it's just we've gone backwards.
Speaker 1:Today's Senate vote on the resolution of disapproval is 50 to 38. Senator Blumenthal said on Tuesday quote that this resolution will prevent millions of students, educators and families from getting online. It would be a disgrace if we provide their students and these families this vast resource of literally life-changing access to really necessary service that helps them not just now, but throughout their entire futures. We ought to expand internet access access, not constrict it. We ought to be enhancing it, not cutting it off. And this, just this isn't just about the carriers. This isn't aimed at verizon or t mobile or at&t or xfinity or whoever it is. This is Because if I'm running a local wireless ISP and I'm using a band like CBRS allows me to give out hotspots to my community, now that funding dries up for them too. So all these small businesses that are sitting here trying to figure out how to make a buck as internet service providers, they all get affected by this, and that, to me, is very, very frustrating.
Speaker 1:Again, what you can do is reach out to groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, the NDIA, and go find places where you can help provide connectivity. If you're listening to this. You are probably a Wi-Fi professional in some way, shape or form, or you want to get more involved in wireless. Here's what I would do Find ways to deploy wireless in your community. Help out where you can find ways to deploy wireless in your community. Help out where you can Get those old access points that are sitting on your shelf and figure out where you can repurpose them.
Speaker 1:Take them down to the Boys and Girls Club. Take them to community centers. Take them to nonprofit organizations, take them to churches, take them to places where people can use Wi-Fi, because, if you're like me, you've got a whole bunch of junk sitting in your room not doing anything, while now there's children in your community that don't have access to internet. It's a little bit of a call to action. If you've got the stuff, use it. If you need some stuff, call me. I might have extras. I can't promise everything to everybody, but if you're in a position where you say, hey, you know what, drew, I know you've got a stack of aruba ap sitting right behind you and I have a place that could really use them, reach out to me. Maybe I'll ship them to you. I do want to give away practically everything in my office. So so let me know, let me know what can help. Anyway, alphabet spin out.
Speaker 1:Tara teams with digicom to expand lightbridge deployment and this was fascinating to me because I went through some of that FSO stuff. I deployed a lot of that not a lot, but some of it and we looked at, we looked at Lightbridge, we looked at, you know, all these other. Well, it wasn't Lightbridge. Back then I want to say it was Lightbridge only because I'm reading it, but we went through some of those things. Man and FSO was fascinating. So when I saw this pop up, I was like oh joy, another entrant into free space optics. However, this one's a little bit different. They call it fiber over the air, which you know, heard that before. But what's different about it? Where is it? It's in here somewhere.
Speaker 1:A sophisticated system of mirrors, sensors, precision optics and hardware to steer beams of light effectively transmitting data through the air, of mirrors, sensors, precision optics and hardware to steer beams of light effectively transmitting data through the air. This technology is designed to deliver fiber-like internet up to 20 gig per second, reaching distances of 20 kilometers. Okay, awesome, but I mean, I really want to see it work. Tara demonstrated a silicon photonics chip capable of transmitting high-speed data through it. That's great. So they have a chip that can do it. It uses an optical phased array to steer, track and correct light beams with precision, representing a significant advancement over traditional methods employed by the Lightbridge system. Yeah, I guess Lightbridge was older. The company anticipates incorporating technology in its next product launch in 26. I am interested in this because I want to see it work. I've always wanted to see it work, and then they started talking about this.
Speaker 1:Terra's use case aren't limited to terrestrial deployments. The company teamed up with Vodafone, using drones equipped with Terra nodes to quickly restore communications after disaster. The drones can hover over areas affected by natural disasters, establishing temporary high-capacity links. The Terra nodes were mounted on drones and reestablished service by sending high-throughput light signals to fixed receivers. Okay, so if it can correct itself fast enough for a hovering drone to be able to maintain connectivity.
Speaker 1:That's the part of me that was really, really interested in this, so I'm going to be reaching out. I want to bring someone from them their company, them, their company onto the show and have them talk about this, and I would love to see a real-world deployment, because I think that this could be really cool as an alternative in the wireless space, light's wireless bro, so it doesn't have to be Wi-Fi. You know'm curious about it, so let's see. Let's see where that goes. What else, oh, the things industry had their their annual conference and that was uh, you know, one of these days I'm gonna make it out to that. I think that that's that. That's such a cool show.
Speaker 1:They focus on the iot component of stuff, and the iot solutions world congress happened. The things industry has their show, and one of my favorite things to look at there I'm going to pop it up on the screen here is they have their wall of fame. That's this huge wall that shows off everything that works in their world of IoT. Granted, they were mainly focused on LoRaWAN. I don't know what else they're doing.
Speaker 1:I know that there's been a whole lot of talk in the IoT space about UWB. Corvo had a great presentation at the Wi-Fi Now World Congress and they're continuing to make strides. I know that there were announcements at Mobility Field Day about more inclusion of ultra-wideband now in Juniper products, and ultra-wideband has already existed in Cisco products. So to see people moving in the direction of ultra wideband for things is pretty cool. I don't know if that's ever going to come to tracking devices like this, because you have to have the whole client software ecosystem thing working too. But ultra wideband now for directionality and locationing is pretty cool for directionality and locationing is pretty cool, but for things you know, large connectivity of things great to see them. Great to see Halo still representing Wi-Fi Halo representing at the Wi-Fi Now World Congress, excited to see Wi-Fi Halo grow more.
Speaker 1:I leave on a plane tomorrow morning to go to Network X in Dallas to go sit down on a panel up there and talk about connectivity. But I know there's going to be a lot of connectivity conversations there at WBA. Hopefully we see more from Halo. Hopefully we see more about UWB and the things that are going on there, because it's such a cool space that's now not just LoRaWAN, there's all these other alternative technologies that can be used and that's exciting stuff to think about. What else do we have going on here?
Speaker 1:Oh, I saw so a uh, a guy I work with showed this thing to me that's I'd never heard of this and I thought that it was interesting and I don't. It's like it's one of those things that you hear about that you're like man, I don't think that'll ever make it. And if it does, it'd be like, wow, that's crazy. I didn't think that that would ever make it. Fightunes products. So you know, there's always been the here. Before I jump into it.
Speaker 1:There's always been that idea that you could use leaky coax in buildings to supply wi-fi connectivity. I think george stephanik tried it one time, if remember correctly, and I thought about doing it at Railyard. I never did deploy it, it just didn't really add up and there was never any good results. If you know of anyone who had good results using leaky coaxes of Wi-Fi antenna system, let me know, because I would be interested in seeing that. But if it worked really well, I'm sure I'd see a lot more of it than we do out there in the industry. So, that being said, lot more of it than we do out there in the industry. So that being said, um, fight tunes. Check this out.
Speaker 1:High frequencies lose power, causing performance degradation. High frequency signals include 5g, wi-fi, 6 and future 6g services. While those frequency bands can deliver ultra low latency, you have to be close. You have to have a really good signal strength in order to do it. Fight tunes products are designed to support a universe of possibilities. Okay, you ready for this?
Speaker 1:They have these things that use existing cabling, I want to say to transport signal. This is like broadband over power line in a way. Okay, because the 5G signal goes around barriers within a building, users receive a high signal strength and therefore significantly enhance user experience. A single-wire bidirectional transmission technology, phytunes 5G, consists of two units the head-end IF node with the carries 5G baseband units. Neptune then modulates the 5G signal and transports it over the building's physical wiring, such as Ethernet, coax and fiber. The signal then terminates at several satellite RF nodes where it's broadcast as a secure and strong 5G signal to all the indoor smartphones, tablets, etc.
Speaker 1:Okay, so maybe I'm confused here, and this is just reading through this. Tell me what you think about this. Right, because it sounded like they were using the cable, the existing cable, to carry the signal and then transmit. But it's not. They're using, they're modulating across the copper and then breaking that down at the end user. So this is this reminds me of tut systems, this from wow dude yeah, I went there, I was just having a conversation about this reminds me of uh, hdsl and idsl using existing wiring, modulating over the wiring to to uh to get adsl. You know, adsl, hdsl, idsl, xdsl, they call it vdsl. Ah, vdsl is a big one that's iso had, so using the existing copper. This is saying that what they're doing is they're using the wiring to transmit the signal from a baseband node to satellite RF nodes. That makes more sense. Very, very similar to broadband over power line.
Speaker 1:I wonder if I can look at the data sheet. Oh look, nope, flagged. Yeah, okay, cool, phytunes right on. That looks neat, let me know. Oh shit, I mean, I'll try it at the house. It's like a DAS alternative. It seems like using existing copper instead of having to run fiber. John Rice, if you're listening, I wonder what your thoughts are on this, or you know, mike. Anyway, I'm curious if you think that'll make a difference in the data space. What else do we have going on Mobility?
Speaker 1:Field Day 13 happened and there were some. There was lots of conversation about let me see if I can load up my little notes here on that. There were lots of conversations around AI, around using different mechanisms in hardware and software combined. I think I don't know. Give me one second. Let me see if I can load up my deal here. Do, do, do, do, do. I had notes on this whole thing. So I don't want to mess up. I wasn't there, I wasn't a delegate. This year I'm back in what they called vendor scum, because now I'm back working for another vendor, so I usually don't get invited to things like that.
Speaker 1:Where is it Well? I don't know it. Where is it well? I don't know. It's in here somewhere? No, not there, not there anyway. Um, if you have any thoughts on mobility field day, let me know.
Speaker 1:I did an assessment where I was trying to understand really everything that was happening at mfd 13 and I didn't get to watch a lot of the sessions. But, um, the ultra wide band thing from juniper is interesting. Uh, ubiquities, uh program that they're working on, you know. No, it didn't seem like there were any big announcements. What was fascinating was to see the fortinet announcement of uh, what was the? The one that they just acquired, where fortinet didn't even mention it.
Speaker 1:But then francois broke the news on his, on his linkedin page. It was not, uh, not ever clear. What's the? The name of the network, everest Networks, the Fortinet acquisition where they just kind of like glanced over it and all of a sudden people who were paying attention, like Francois, were like, hey, wait a minute, no one's talked about that before and so I still don't think that there's. I'm surfing on LinkedIn right now to see if I can pull up that article. Where did it go? It was like, oh okay, didn't know that was actually happening. Look, here it is. Now we know why we haven't heard from Everest Networks in a while.
Speaker 1:So Francois busts out. He's like hey, just in case you missed it, last week at Mobility Field Day, fortinet announced they've fully acquired Everest Networks to complete their Wi-Fi solution portfolio. And fortinet announced they've fully acquired everest networks to complete their wi-fi solution portfolio. And it's like, oh, interesting. And then you, you know, you read the comments on here. You look at comments online. People like where was this announced? When was this announced? Um, all right, well, good, good to them.
Speaker 1:I would tell you that, out of all of the coverage, I'm going to give the shout out to francois for the coverage on Mobility Field Day. Really cool man. You know there's an article about what Niall did. There's an article about what Fortinet was doing. There's articles about Ubiquity. Francois always does such a bang up job.
Speaker 1:Make sure, if you don't already listen to the Clear to Send podcast, that you jump in and you listen to the Clear to Send podcast with Francois and Roel. What else, golly, I think, jump in and you listen to the clear descent podcast with francois and roel? Um, what else, golly, I think that's. That's about it. That's trying just trying to catch up with everything that's going on. Um, yeah, lots of time on the road.
Speaker 1:I've had some really fun projects that we've been working on. I got to do some really cool wi-fi in a in a stadium. Um ero announced that our sponsorship of the chicago cubs at wrigley field, so I got to go out and be a part of that, which was really awesome. Awesome to sit through a 120-day game. That was pretty cool too.
Speaker 1:And then lots of neat stuff this week Network X if you're going to be in Dallas, give me a hello and I'm going to be there with WBA and I'm going to be talking about connected communities and some of the work that I've done in Oxton, california, the work that I've done down here in McAllen, and why wireless makes a really good fit, in my opinion, for connected communities, for people are trying to get online. And then after that I'm off to Charlotte for race day weekend. If you are a NASCAR fan, be on the lookout. Sunday at the Coca-Cola 600. For a six foot five guy walking around with a spectrum analyzer in the pit, with number 21, josh Berry driving the Ford Mustang Team Pinsky Ford Mustang the Eero car is going to be in full effect so I get a chance to go out and hang out and see what Wi-Fi looks like in the pits at NASCAR. So that's going to be pretty neat to watch. Other than that, I think that's about it. Still, you know, wlpc call for papers is out right now.
Speaker 1:Wba event is happening this week. The next events I'm going to be at lots going on high tech. If you're in the hospitality, the hospitality industry technology conference is happening in indian. Yes, it's in Indianapolis and that's coming up, I believe, on the 16th, I want to say of June, and then Cisco Live. I'll see you all at Cisco Live. Drop me a note. We're still trying to figure out. We have to do something. I reached out to Alexis. I was like, hey, we have to do something fun to make sure that we take advantage of being there at Cisco Live. So if you're at Cisco Live and you have some creative ideas, let us know. All right, I'll let you get your Tuesday morning back. I hope to see you all at NetworkX this week and I hope to hear from you soon. I hope you all have a great week. From Drew Lentz of Wireless Nerd peace out. Enjoy the week and make sure to follow all the social media stuff, because I'm doing some really cool stuff this.
