Broadband networks allow co-ops to share data that keeps them more efficient on the electric grid, said William Graves, fiber optic network manager at MidSouth Electric Cooperative in Texas. 

High-speed broadband connectivity enables the smart grid, a network that allows for two-way communication between the utility and its customers, to ensure that electricity is being managed in the most efficient way, said Graves.  

Pete Hoffswell, superintendent of broadband services at Holland Board of Public Works in Michigan added that fiber can connect city systems – such as parking meters – to avoid backlog that occasionally occurs on less efficient networks.  

Smart infrastructure will be critical as demand for power increases as use-cases continue to grow for electric vehicle charging, smart home technologies, and more, said Hoffswell. He added that connectivity is more than just connecting renewable energy systems, it is now about building a smart city. 

“Smart cities are full of smart people, smart people want their cities to be smart,” he continued. Consumers will make more demands on network providers and this demand will change the way that the networks operate, he said.  

Hoffswell added that investor-owned utilities can cover a huge space in the co-op broadband space. Co-ops have the necessary capital for large broadband projects and are a good match for fiber, he said.   

William Davidson, director of strategic initiatives at NextEra Infrastructure Solutions in Florida, said that providing fiber services to customers provides incremental value to the cooperative. He added that cooperatives have the unique ability to be patient with long-term projects that take years to break even.

Some experts have touted electric co-ops as the ideal grantee for the $42.5 billion BEAD program – which funds are expected in 2024 – because they are well suited to build public owned networks that then can either be operated by the co-op or leased to private providers.  

In her opening remarks, Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, highlighted the importance of advancing US leadership in the field of autonomous vehicles, which can help drive down traffic fatalities, support people with disabilities, and strengthen US technological competitiveness, particularly over China, she said.

Despite these possibilities, the federal regulatory landscape has not been able to catch up with innovation, said John Bozzella, president of trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

The absence of a national standard has led to “a labyrinth of state laws and regulations” which spurs uncertainty among companies and hampers deployment and innovation, warned Bozzella. To that end, he urged Congress to swiftly pass a bipartisan, “balanced federal AV framework” that includes “safeguards, oversight, rules and regulations” to govern the future of autonomous vehicle technology.

“It’s rare that somebody from the private sector comes to plead for their businesses to be regulated by the federal government, but this is exactly what we are seeking,” he said.

Lawmakers have taken a shot at regulating autonomous vehicles in 2017 with the SELF DRIVE Act introduced by Rep. Robert Latta, R-OH, which would have established a national regulatory framework for automated vehicles and encourage the testing and deployment of the technology. The bill passed both the committee and the House but stalled in the Senate.

That legislation now makes up the bulk of legislation considered during Wednesday hearing, along with another bill drafted by Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-MI, to strengthen safety rules regarding automated vehicles and hold manufacturers accountable for adhering to those standards.

“I don’t believe anyone thought we would be back to square one today in 2023, re-examining similar legislation that had previously passed the House unanimously, and that many members of this Committee on both sides cosponsored,” said Innovation, Data and Commerce Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis, R-FL.

Gary Shapiro, president of trade group Consumer Technology Association, said a large number of exemptions should be granted so that companies can start testing new vehicle designs and safety features. Currently, manufacturers are only allowed to deploy up to 2500 vehicles for testing on a temporary basis, a constraint he said would limit the scalability of the technology in the future.

However, Philip Koopman, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, sounded a cautionary note regarding “overly-permissive” regulations that would allow vehicle manufacturers to “cut corners on safety.” He argued that automated vehicles are not “a silver bullet for safety” because computer drivers do not necessarily make fewer mistakes than human drivers but rather in different ways.

“If we want to still have an automated vehicle industry in the future, Congress needs to act to require transparency, accountability, and adoption of the industry’s own safety standards,” he said.

The hearing took place against a backdrop of growing dissatisfaction among industry groups and AV advocates regarding the slow-paced regulatory process for driverless transportation technology. Government officials explained that taking time for regulation is necessary to ensure public safety.

Currently, private companies are not interested in financing manufacturing loans in the U.S., said Shah. He urged the private industry to show more ambition by investing in infrastructure programs as federal investments come down the pipeline. 

Don’t miss the discussion of the connection between green energy, semiconductor manufacturing and infrastructure investment at Broadband Breakfast’s Made in America Summit on June 27.

The Build America Buy America Act, strengthened as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, requires that all iron, steel, manufactured products and construction materials used in federally funded projects to be produced in the U.S.

Additionally, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 which invests $400 billion in federal funding to clean energy and the CHIPS and Science Act which invests $280 billion into U.S. domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Semiconductors are the microprocessors that power all electronic applications. 

These investments, paired with the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which invests in various American infrastructure projects, play a central role in the administration’s strategy to revitalize the American industry. They invest in a more sustainable, consistent, and dependable supply chain for the U.S. economy, said Shah. 

Investing in American manufacturing will increase investor confidence that the U.S. is capable of large manufacturing projects, he added. 

By passing these acts, Congress has moved forward to improve American manufacturing, said Shah. It is now up to private industry to make the most of these investments and reinvent themselves to improve American global competitiveness. 

In April, the Federal Communications Commission approved a joint waiver by 14 automakers and equipment manufacturers to use CV2X technology in the 5.9 GHz transportation safety band after nearly two years of review. Since then, numerous similar applications have been submitted and due to review.

“The point of filing was to say, we don’t have time to wait until you finish with the rule making, FCC,” said Suzanne Tetreault, partner at the law firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer, a counsel to the 5G Automotive Association.

The industry’s shift from dedicated short-range communication to CV2X has prompted authorities to figure clear guidelines on the use of this emerging technology. While both allow for vehicles to broadcast signals, CV2X enables more robust connection between vehicles and infrastructure through high-speed cellular networks such as the 5G wireless standard.

These signals can be used to avoid collisions, traffic congestion and support the development of driverless vehicles.

The FCC is currently working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Department of Transportation to come up with final rules for the widespread use of CV2X technology in addition to spectrum allocation.

Charles Cooper, associate administrator from the NTIA, explained that regulators need to find “a common basis for technical evaluation,” saying “it may take time and effort, but the payoff is tremendous.”

Karen Van Dyke, a spectrum management official at the Department of Transportation, added taking time for regulation is necessary to ensure “zero fatalities.”

Experts in the field, however, pointed out that it is unrealistic to guarantee total safety before moving to the implementation phase. Instead, regulators should aim for more attainable, short-term goals or “low-hanging fruits.”

“You don’t have to solve the problems 100 percent,” said Bryan Mulligan, president of Applied Information Inc. “Let’s focus on vision 50 – how can we get 50 percent of the fatalities saved in the next five years.”

Trial and error are the only way to generate the innovation and data necessary to guarantee safety, according to experts.

“The key thing is moving quick to get deployed and taking those advantages to feed information to the other vehicles,” said John Kuzin, vice president of spectrum policy and regulatory counsel at chips maker Qualcomm.

Meanwhile, the FCC is still waiting to regain its spectrum licensing authority, which has expired for the first time in the agency’s history.

Together, these measures will invest more than $2 trillion of federal funds into American manufacturing, infrastructure (including broadband) and advanced energy.

REGISTER FOR THE MADE IN AMERICA SUMMIT

As Broadband Breakfast’s Made in America Summit takes shape, we encourage you to register now to attend this important event on Tuesday, June 27, in Washington. The summit’s four sessions will explore the intersection of these vital big-picture topics:

• (R)e-building Energy and Internet Infrastructure
• Semiconductor Manufacturing and U.S.-Chinese Tech Race
• Challenges to Reorienting America’s Supply Chain
• Making Cleaner Energy and Enhancing Green Industry

Early-bird registration of $199 until Friday, June 9 + government and Broadband Breakfast Club rate.

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Tuesday’s hearing, convened by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, came just one day after the Department of Energy announced that it would no longer be awarding a $200 million grant to Texas-based battery company Microvast, following intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over the company’s ties to China.

Subcommittee Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., praised the decision but expressed continued skepticism about the department’s vetting processes — emphasizing the absence of Office of Manufacturing Director David Howell, who declined an invitation to testify.

By failing to appear at the hearing, “the Department of Energy not only refused to provide transparency to this committee, but they’re refusing to be transparent to the American people, who deserve every assurance that their tax dollars are not being funneled to China,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., chair of the full Energy and Commerce Committee.

But Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., argued that the award reversal was proof that the department “is taking its stewardship of taxpayer money very seriously.”

Pallone also blamed the Republican majority for Howell’s absence, claiming that the hearing had originally been planned for June and that department officials were working to coordinate the schedule “when all of sudden the date changed earlier this month to today.”

The proposed Microvast award would have been part of a $2.8 billion investment in battery manufacturing funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, intended to accelerate and strengthen a domestic supply chain. The United States currently accounts for just 10 percent of global electric vehicle production and 7 percent of battery production capacity.

By contrast, China produces three-quarters of all lithium-ion batteries and is home to the majority of production and processing capacity for several key battery components. China was responsible for half of the growth of the electric vehicle market in 2021, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

While the Biden administration has taken steps to bolster U.S. manufacturing through the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Republicans have broadly criticized this approach — particularly the IRA’s focus on clean energy.

Because of the current manufacturing imbalance, the administration’s emphasis on electric vehicles will largely benefit China rather than the U.S., argued Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment.

“Heavily subsidizing renewable energy and shoveling money in the form of financial awards out the door is not the solution,” McMorris Rodgers said. “These policies undermine our energy security and financially burden Americans already struggling with high cost of living — and would leave us even more reliant on China.”

However, a study commissioned by Third Way and Breakthrough Energy indicated that these pieces of legislation, alongside the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, are “fostering investments in and a reshoring of the clean energy supply chain and the associated manufacturing base,” said Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, senior resident fellow for the climate and energy program at Third Way.

Hughes-Cromwick urged lawmakers to allow time for supply chain restructuring, saying that policy stability over multiple years is crucial to allow companies to make sustainable adjustments.

In order to achieve domestic clean energy goals, Congress should first modernize permitting, said Jeremy Harrell, chief strategy officer at ClearPath.

“The single largest mover of private sector investment is regulatory certainty,” Harrell claimed. “Never has the phrase ‘time is money’ been more appropriate — developers can only build new energy infrastructure as fast as federal, state and local governments can permit them, and right now that’s not fast enough.”

Learn more about clean energy infrastructure and the U.S.-China tech race at Broadband Breakfast’s Made in America Summit on June 27.

Amazon has long developed Amazon Prime Air, its drone-based delivery service. Then-CEO Jeff Bezos made a dramatic TV reveal in 2013, and limited customer-facing operations are scheduled to begin this year.

Allowing radar applications in this band would improve “a drone’s ability to sense and avoid persons and obstacles in and near its path without causing harmful interference to other spectrum users,” argued Friday’s letter, signed by Jaime Hjort, head of wireless and spectrum policy, and Kristine Hackman, senior manager of public policy.

In an October filing, cited in Friday’s letter, Amazon laid out its case more fully, stating that the proposed drone activity in the band would not clash with the existing operations of earth-exploration satellite services.

The company urged the commission to adopt a new perspective on drones, a novel technology: “A drone package delivery operating near ground level operates much more like a last-mile delivery truck than a cargo plane,” the October filing read.

Spectrum allocation is a top priority for lawmakers and experts, alike. Many believe increased spectrum access is vital to the development of next-generation 5G and 6G technologies as well as general American economic success.

In August, the FCC and National Telecommunications and Information Administration – overseers of non-federal and federal spectrum, respectively – announced an updated memorandum of understanding to better coordinate Washington’s spectrum policy. In September, the FCC announced the winners of the 2.5 GHz auction and approved a notice seeking comment on the 12.7–13.25 GHz band the next month.

A senior NTIA official in October stated his agency would create “spectrum strategy” that will rely heavily on public input.

The FCC finalized rules in February that prohibit internet service providers from entering exclusive revenue sharing agreements in which landlords get a cut of service provider contracts in order to increase service provider competition.

But the rules will mean managed Wi-Fi will suffer, according to a technologist at a Broadband Breakfast panel on Wednesday. That’s because such smart tools require a core group of subscribers – often done through a “bulk” purchase – to be economically viable. The result is more complicated community networks as competition between providers increases, he said.

“A lot of providers are building networks that only deliver internet to the home,” said Ted Maulucci, president of SmartOne Solutions, a smart tools developer from Canada. “They are not building networks that allow you to segregate networks within the building . . . The biggest problems we face are solved by network. The networks have to be created right.”

Maulucci called for the government to push for network building standards necessary for this technology.

Screenshot of Ted Maulucci, president of SmartOne Solutions, in 2017

Smart devices are becoming increasingly popular in multi-family units. Smart buildings are pre-engineered with this technology to promote sustainability, convenience, and safety in multitenant dwellings.

A shared interface allows residents to control thermostats, let people into the building, and view security camera visuals. Machine learning helps communities modify consumption behavior to promote sustainability and alerts residents of possible security threats through analysis of aggregated data.

Networks supplying broadband internet support these added benefits, making a community network essential for functionality.

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. You can also PARTICIPATE in the current Broadband Breakfast Live Online event and REGISTER HERE.

Wednesday, May 4, 2022, 12 Noon ET – The Future of the Smart Home, and the Future of the Smart Apartment Building

Americans are increasingly integrating smart technology into their homes and digitizing facets of everyday life. Going forward, what aspects of digitization in the home may need to be regulated by government policy? Are there any changes people are making to their homes that the tech industry should be concerned by? With all the issues surrounding broadband access in many multi-dwelling units, is there any hope for the possibility of smart apartment buildings for residents as standards of technology continue to advance? Join us for this Broadband Breakfast Live Online event from the Broadband Communities Summit to look at these questions and more.

Panelists for this Broadband Breakfast Live Online session:

• Kevin Donnelly, Vice President, Government Affairs, Technology and Strategic Initiatives, National Multifamily Housing Council
• Amy Chien, Director of Strategic Innovations, BH
• Kurt Raaflaub, Head of Product Marketing, ADTRAN
• Ted Maulucci, President, SmartONE Solutions – A Smart Community Company
• Guillermo Rivas, Vice President, New Business Development, Cox Communities
• Drew Clark (presenter and host), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

WATCH HERE, or on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTube channel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. 

See a complete list of upcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Online events.

To make cities and transportation truly “smart,” industry stakeholders must ensure that technologies enabling autonomous vehicles are fast and ubiquitously deployed.

Blaine Leonard, transportation technology engineer for Utah’s department of transportation, said at a session on “Smart Cities and Transportation” that public safety was his office’s top priority when working to connect autonomous vehicles to physical infrastructure.

“As a state agency, people often ask us why we are interested in automated vehicles, and the bottom line is safety,” he said.

“We lost 40,000 people to car crashes in 2020,” noting how 97% of all crashes are caused in part by human error.  “As an agency, our focus is zero –– we want to get to zero fatalities.”

Leonard discussed how low latency and data speeds are critical to connecting vehicles to traffic systems. “From a state agency perspective, if we’re going to prevent crashes, we need that millisecond advantage.”

However, he stressed that harder-to-reach places may have to wait longer for these services. “That technology is important,” he said. “How quickly it’ll be here depends on where you are.”

While industry leaders push for faster deployment, Leonard says “It’ll take a number of years, maybe even a decade or two, to update all traffic systems” across the country.

In its Notice of Inquiry released September 30, the agency seeks comments that “consider and evaluate various related factors” that will hinder the growth of IoT, including “barriers that may hinder the provision of spectrum needed to support uses relating to the IoT” and the role that unlicensed and licensed spectrum plays in the growth of IoT.

The IoT broadly refers to network-connected devices that can collect and transfer data. The number of IoT devices has grown over the past few years. Experts expect this number to continue rising as more households and industries use IoT technologies and as the connectivity-dense next-generation 5G networks facilitate more connections.

According to the FCC, a large amount of spectrum has been licensed using a flexible-use approach that allowed licensees to develop technologies and services according to consumer demand since the 1990s. The FCC asks whether the licensed spectrum made available or “will be available in the future is adequate to support the needs of the IoT.” The commission also asks whether there are spectrum rules that could be modified to facilitate greater spectrum access for IoT deployments.

In a statement, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said the the Internet of Things is “transforming our way of life.”  While reaffirming his commitment to addressing the digital divide and internet inequality, the FCC noted that “many Americans will not realize the benefits of IoT; until broadband service is available and affordable to everyone, those without broadband will be left behind during the IoT revolution.”

Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel issued a separate statement emphasizing that although the possibilities for IoT have yet to be fully developed, “[i]t’s still early days in the Internet of Things.” The Chairwoman remarked that because 5G wireless systems and low-orbiting satellites “expand the availability of high speed and high-capacity networks, we can expect the pace of innovation to increase” but that the FCC should allocate adequate spectrum for this purpose.

The FCC seeks comment on these issues as directed by Congress in the William Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act. The Act directed the FCC to inquire into the spectrum required to support IoT growth. This comes as the FCC begins auctioning 3.45 GigaHertz mid-band spectrum this week for licenses for 5G use.

For those of you who might be living on a remote island – wait, there are even drone-flying YouTube celebrities there. Okay, for any of you who actually don’t know what a drone is and can do, a drone is also known as a UAV or unmanned aerial vehicle. While drones themselves are obviously a technology, what is important about them are the other technologies a drone can house.

A drone can have GPS, lasers and many other technologies that are controlled by a user or users on the ground through ground control systems (GSC). In short, a drone can pack whatever the latest technology is. Think of James Bond’s spy shoes, except they fly, look cooler than a pair of brogues, and can easily surveil or even kill you.

Drone usage started small and is getting big. Back in 2016, there were bold predictions that drone usage would triple by 2020. The reality has exceeded that number. A report from June shows that the commercial drone market is growing fairly rapidly with no signs it will slow down:

“The drone manufacturing industry is maturing – and so are drone customers.  As the capabilities of drones increase, they are used for more sophisticated and specific applications.”

While almost anyone could buy and fly a drone a few short years ago (obviously not very close to an airport or a takeoff or landing path) there are a lot more rules today than there ever have been:

• New FAA rules require all drones to be registered unless they weigh less than 0.55lbs and are used recreationally. There are two types of registration in the United States, part 107 and recreational.
• You must now mark your drone physically with the registration number.
• For business usage of a drone, FAA suggests you keep a flight log. They can request information if there is a situation they choose to investigate.
• It is now illegal to shoot down a drone even if it’s over your own property and you suspect it of recording you. Drones are protected by the NTSB as aircraft.

Tim George, an Erie, Pennsylvania lawyer, cautions us against believing we are still in the Wild, Wild West of drone flight:

“Anyone choosing to operate a drone needs to follow all registration and licensing requirements where they live. It’s important for every drone operator to remember that there might be municipal law they need to follow, as well as state and federal law. Being unaware of applicable drone laws will be no defense to criminal infractions or potential civil claims.”

But how well are people following the law?

Not very, as this iPhone picture I actually took while writing this story highlights. This was taken at the observatory on the top of a mountain in a large North American city, with the premise being that this athlete and his team were using a (pretty intrusive) drone to film him running down a set of stairs.

It is worth noting that I had the same permission in taking that picture as did the person in the pic and their team did in capturing my image, as the drone circled above and around me. In other words, absolutely none.

Ricky Leighton, a Maine-based certified drone pilot and video expert, cautions us that this type of poor behavior will lead to together regulation:

“There are two things to consider here. The first is that drone pilots need to closely observe any rules and legislation where they choose to operate their drone. The second is a bit more nuanced in that there has to be common courtesy as to where, when, and how we operate our drones. The less courtesy we give, the stricter the regulations will eventually be.“

And don’t think that drones are or will be limited to consumer use. While relaxing in the park and having someone send their drone to hover ten inches from your face is pretty annoying, more serious drones for enterprise use are dramatically on the rise.

A year ago, Skydio announced that they had raised an additional $100M financing round to continue what many fees is controversial work with governments and private enterprise. More simply put, some fear that this rockstar ex-MIT and GoogleX team are making mass surveillance drones and less than savory deals.

Given that one of their competitors, DJI, owns nearly 80% of the commercial drone market, multiple aggressive startups flush with cash are seeking to shake loose some of that market share as they grow their market cap.

As drones become more prevalent in our daily lives, our initial pushback against them may be dulled by their ubiquity. Like any other new technology, even one that can be pretty scary when we consider all of its dimensions, time usually gets us comfortable with things we expect would always stretch our comfort zone.

Aron Solomon is the head of digital strategy for Esquire Digital and has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania. Since earning his law degree, Solomon has spent the last two decades advising law firms and attorneys. He founded LegalX, the world’s first legal technology accelerator and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the world’s leading legal innovators. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

Broadband Breakfast accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@breakfast.media. The views expressed in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of Broadband Breakfast and Breakfast Media LLC.

The fabrication lab’s mission is to bring in startups and new technology ideas that can test and deploy new software and hardware products for smart cities, said Peter Jay, director of economic development at the Business Resource Center at UVU, speaking at a Thursday meeting of Utah Ignite.

Smart cities, he said, are those with “technological networks, internet of things, and data analysis to increase efficiency in our systems and improve our everyday lives–but on a larger scale.”

The UVU initiative is aimed at improving community transportation and utility operations, and the lab has partnered with Utah Open Source, a network boasting over 15,000 software engineers, to run the lab.

Giving the local community a lab to try out new technologies and refine them as they grow is the goal, said Jay. There was a gap between tech companies and cities in Utah, and the lab bridges the gap.

Jay also highlighted the work of Utah Ignite, a local chapter of the national non-profit group, U.S. Ignite, which is designed to promote the adoption and high of high-speed broadband applications and capabilities.

The monthly discussion also highlighted potential Utah state legislation – H.B. 218, called the “Regulatory Sandbox Program” for Utah businesses – that would allow startup companies to create new products without having to abide by certain regulations.

However, according to Utah State Rep. Cory Maloy, “anything related to public safety, consumer safety, those kinds of regulations are not waived.”

There are approx. 18 companies incubating right now at the lab, and UVU President Astrid Tuminez expressed support for it.  Jay said the lab center is even going to host an extension office to the state’s World Trade Center office.

The lab itself will be equipped with 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) broadband connections provided by UTOPIA Fiber. It powers the servers handling artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and high-end graphic simulations.

That’s why electric cars have been eyed as a solution for improving deliveries by drivers, yet guaranteeing battery efficiency is still in the future.

Additional alternative energy vehicle options such as fuel cell-powered may serve as a complement to electric vehicles, said Amy Adams, vice president over fuel cell and hydrogen technologies at Cummins Inc. Fuel cell-powered cars may be better equipped for larger vehicles that need to travel longer distances, especially in rural areas, she said.

Despite the potential electric or fuel cell-powered cars bring, they do have drawbacks. For example, a delivery driver who drives an average of 65 miles per day makes up to 200 stops or more per day. That’s equal to 1,000 foot motions on the brakes, and that can deteriorate knee health and decrease efficiency.

Electric vehicles for delivery drivers should incorporate regenerative braking systems to capture all that lost energy for each stop made, said John Lindsey, head of electric vehicle sales for Schneider Electric North America.

But electric and fuel cell-powered cars haven’t been readily integrated into the U.S. economy compared to other countries like in Europe. That’s why delivery companies need to balance neighborhood safety with delivery driver safety, said Duane Hughes, CEO of Workhouse Group. Hughes called for the integration of lane departure and lane collision warning systems for delivery drivers to protect both themselves and others around them.

To combat additional costs from incorporating these ideas, the experts supported a standardized, universal-like nozzle fill-up system for electric and fuel cell-powered cars to reduce customization costs. Reducing the overall core weight of vehicles would also improve battery efficiency.

And incentives and grant programs are needed from the federal government to jumpstart more research and development to achieve this, said Thomas Jensen, a senior government relations executive at UPS.

As cities grow and become more connected, partnerships between the public and private sectors will become more necessary, said Ashok Tipirneni, director of product management and head of platforms for smart cities at Qualcomm.

Such partnerships require dialogue and vision. Moreover, everyone involved needs to buy into that vision, added Lauren Love-Wright, vice president of network partnerships at Verizon.

Derek Peterson, chief technology officer at Boingo, said that his company developed such partnership with Google, Amazon and other businesses in Kanso Twinbrook, a community development project in Rockville, Maryland.

“One of the things we’re all getting used to is the digitization of all our experiences,” Peterson said. As more people move to urban centers, those cities face new challenges, such as traffic, energy and manufacturing, all of which require more “smart” technological connectivity to solve, he explained.

Solving those types of infrastructure problems will be different in difference cities because their populations and ages are different, said Love-Wright. For example, Verizon implemented a wireless network in Oklahoma City to assist with traffic issues. It worked well because of the town’s size, she added, but other cities may need different approaches.

Qualcomm’s Tipirneni highlighted three key aspects to smart cities: First, citizens want to get everything they need wherever they live; second, cities want to safe and smart services to all residents; and third, businesses and city departments must work together easily.

Just as everyone today uses and relies upon the convenience of a cell phone and new technologies that come from it, consumers want that same innovation in their cities.

Technology is core to the smart city concept, but policy is also a key aspect, said Love-Wright. That means that affordability is as important as accessibility to technology, she explained.

To discuss the benefits fiber optic sensing technology has to offer, Lisa Youngers, CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association, was joined by two members of the Fiber Optic Sensing Association, Stan Fendley, director of legislative and regulatory policy at Corning, and Michael Hines, market manager for industrial sensing at OFS, in an FBA webinar on Wednesday.

Hines described fiber optic sensors as a problem-solving smart city technology, “ideal for providing 24/7 monitoring of infrastructure assets.”

“Fiber optic sensing technology promotes education, safety, and commerce,” he said.

The technology is unique in its ability to distribute sensing points over very long spans, allowing it to monitor infrastructure spanning far-reaching distances.

The flexibility of technology enables it to solve issues with a range of critical infrastructure.

The technology has the potential to aid power cables, as it can detect faults and monitor smart grids. It has the ability to promote safety and efficiency in railway operations and maintenance. It can detect fires, manage roadway traffic, and so much more.

The fiber optic sensing technology works by measuring changes in the “backscattering” of light occurring in an optical fiber. Backscatter occurs naturally as laser energy propagates and interacts with a glass fiber core.

When the fiber encounters vibration, strain or temperature it changes, and these changes are recorded.

A “fiber interrogator” detects the returning backscatter and analyzes it to pinpoint event locations.

Embedded algorithms interpret raw data produced, converting it into alerts, alarms, and identifying events.

“The learning systems get smarter with time spent on an asset,” said Hines.

“There are good technical reasons to lay fiber optics along power conductors,” said Feldman.

“It is an upgradeable technology, which is great for protecting large assets,” he continued, “there are already incredible fiber resources in the ground, we should learn how to expand them.”

The coronavirus pandemic has made social media and other technologies indispensable, and Timmerman said smart cities offer a unique opportunity to continue technologizing modern life.

Smart cities would enable businesses and other organizations to have surveillance cameras wherever they wished, he said. The cameras would rely on high-quality infrastructure, and subsequently, high-speed internet.

“The more connectivity they benefit from, the better the cameras,” he said.

Speaking at an event of Utah Ignite, a “smart city” group affiliated with the national non-profit organization U.S. Ignite, Timmerman also said that smart cities could assist with the efficient allocation of resources amid turbulent natural circumstances.

“This is a really urgent thing in Utah because we are low on water,” he said. “…So the better we can manage that resource, the better for our conservation of water.”

The employment of smart meters can help to measure resource usage in the cities, and are ideal for sustainable use, Timmerman said.

“They don’t use much bandwidth — they’re pretty insensitive to delay and jitter and things like that,” he said.

The meters could utilize artificial intelligence to monitor for suspicious usage levels, Timmerman added.

“I don’t know how many of you had that happen to you, but… the ability to put these systems in water is one that’s very common for cities.”

Smart cars could offer new possibilities for autonomy and other advancements, Timmerman said,  allowing smart cities to get creative with new applications.

“Now they want to have as much of [the new technology] as possible so that you want to buy the car, but at the same time those types of connectivity are available. They want to leverage those,” he said.

Other technologies like LED smart lights and smart facilities that sense when people are using them can all help to make the lives of the smart cities’ residents easier, Timmerman said.

However, he admitted that smart cities and the surveillance systems they employ often raise important questions about privacy.

“They use technology almost like what Amazon has — their little stores where you go and pick up stuff and walk out, and it knows what you did,” he said. “[It’s] really cool when it’s Amazon, it’s not so cool when it’s the government.”

The technologies carry both risks and rewards, but Timmerman claimed that the rewards outweigh the risks as well as predicting that UTOPIA Fiber will play a crucial role in their rollout.

UTOPIA stands for the Utah Open Infrastructure Agency, and providers Gigabit-level symmetrical broadband services through its fiber network. It is the largest open access network in operation in the United States.

The healthcare industry has been one of the first to utilize commercial drones for better service.

An unexpected effect of the pandemic was the increased public acceptance of delivery drones, said Dontai Smalls, vice president of global public affairs at UPS, adding that a portion of consumers have grown to prefer drone delivery.

Drones have the ability to go places so that people, vulnerable to infection, don’t have to. Commercial drone services have become necessary in delivering critical supplies, like testing kits and prescription medicines.

UPS Flight Forward Inc. received the Federal Aviation Administration’s first and highest-level certificate to operate a drone airline just over a year ago.

The UPS subsidiary immediately launched the first drone delivery flight under the agency’s standard at WakeMed’s hospital campus in Raleigh, N.C.

The flight was flown under a government exemption allowing for a “beyond visual line of sight” operation.

This exemption was a result of the Integration Pilot Program, which works to enhance community outreach, seeking to bring state, local and tribal governments together with private sector entities to evaluate and accelerate the integration of drone operations.

The stakeholders delivered mutually beneficial regulation recommendations to the FAA.

The members said that they are currently waiting for rulemaking from regulatory bodies to further drone operations.

“Technology moves very quickly — we need the regulatory framework to move at the same pace,” said Smalls.

The FAA is set to enact future regulations, including proposed regulation surrounding night time operations and remote identification, which would require drones to have license plates.

A further obstacle impeding drone operations is the lack of spectrum allocated by the Federal Communications Commission for drone operations.

While the agency has proposed the usage of the 6 GigaHertz (GHz) band for commercial drone operations, no spectrum has yet been reallocated for this purpose. Currently, drones operate on unlicensed spectrum.

Smalls said that unlicensed spectrum is a suitable initial solution but called on federal agencies to provide additional spectrum for future operations.

“We need the dedicated resources to make this work and regulations will enable us to do more,” Smalls said.

The agency proposed repurposing the lower 45 megahertz of the band for unlicensed operations to support broadband applications. 

If enacted, the new rule would take a second look at spectrum allocation on the 5.9 GHz band and propose appropriate changes to ensure the spectrum is employed to its best use. 

The 5.9 GHz band (5.850-5.925 GHz) has been reserved for use by dedicated short-range communications for the past two decades, which is a service of Intelligent Transportation Systems designed to enable vehicle-related communications. Unfortunately, DSRC technology has evolved slowly and has not been widely deployed. 

Under the newly proposed rule, the FCC would continue to dedicate spectrum in the upper 30 megahertz of the 5.9 GHz band to meet current and future transportation and vehicle safety needs, while repurposing the lower 45 megahertz of the band for unlicensed operations, such as Wi-Fi.

Since the initial deployment of DSRC technology, C-V2X technology was created, allowing vehicles to communicate with each other, as well as infrastructure, bikers and pedestrians. 

According to Matthew Hardy, program director for planning and policy for AASHTO, C-V2X technology far surpasses the capabilities presented by DSRC. Hardy argued the technology is crucial because it can prevent life-threatening crashes from occurring.

Sean Conway, a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP, contended that retaining all 75 MGHz is necessary for innovation, as 25 MGHz in the upper band would be utilized by 4G C-V2X, while another 50 MGHz in the lower band would be necessary to advance 5G C-V2X. 

Angel Preston, director of safety at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, argued that the actions proposed by the FCC could hinder global competitiveness, as the U.S. is decreasing C-V2X technology deployment while other countries are increasing construction. 

Preston cited that 13 Chinese automotive makers committed to utilizing C-V2X technology in their models in coming years.

Opposition to the automotive experts was raised by Danielle Pineres, vice president of the Internet & Television Association, who argued that no more than 40 MGHz should be reserved for automotive safety, alluding to the fact that the 5.9 GHz band has been relatively unutilized for more than 20 years.

FCC inaction on the matter continues to stifle the progression of both broadband deployment and the automobile industry.   

The webinar focused on how smart city initiatives could improve sustainability and quality of life, including broadband access, featuring panelists from the Global City Teams Challenge Smart Regions Collaborative, such as Dominic Papa, vice president of the Smart States Initiative for the Arizona Commerce Authority.

“With the rise of COVID, one of the first big challenges that we saw was the inequality of remote education, and students not having the broadband connectivity at home to really download and complete their homework assignments,” Papa said. “Add on the fact that places like Starbucks and our libraries were closed due to the pandemic, it makes it extremely difficult for these students to keep up.”

“We actually saw kids sitting with their backs against the wall of the library, trying to access the internet from the outside in,” he added.

In response, the region formed a partnership with Cisco and announced a new initiative to expand Wi-Fi internet access at state libraries. The proposed solution is being tested at five libraries, Papa said, with the goal of improving the technology and then commercializing and scaling to libraries across the state.

This process of going from pilot to scale has proven difficult in the past, with Papa calling it “the main challenge that we’d really hit on in our region” and citing limited funding and staff as major roadblocks.

The model that has ultimately proven most successful in scaling, he added, is that of bringing several separate jurisdictions together in a consortium comprised of industry leaders, university researchers and greater Phoenix communities.

The consortium collaboratively designs and develops new innovative technology pilots to ensure that all communities in the region have the necessary tools to prosper in the digital age, Papa said.

Bringing technology to the urban environment can have both positive and negative outcomes, said Jonathan Fink, Director of the Digital City Testbed Center, Portland State University.

“We can make resources more accessible and get better health outcomes, which is something we’re focused on quite a bit right now around the world, reduce carbon emissions and so on,” he said. “But the negative aspects of bringing technology into cities are that there are privacy issues, there are questions about monopolization — who owns the data, how equitable is the access to the new services that can be provided?”

In order to evaluate these competing concerns and plan for successful smart city integrations, Fink presented three questions.

First, among all of the options available, how do cities evaluate which technologies are best for their urban environment? Second, how can the general public be involved in asking that same question?

Finally, how does the private sector foster collaboration and align the various components of smart city technology with each other in order to meet the needs of both the cities and the public?

All three of these groups — cities, the general public and the private sector — rely on careful testing and cooperation, Fink said.

Smart region technologies include possibilities for improved mobility, sustainability, education, cybersecurity, agriculture and more, said Mark Fisher, President and CEO of the Council of the Great Lakes Region.

The Great Lakes Region contains a third of the combined workforce of U.S. and Canada, Fisher said. If it were a country, it would have the third largest economy in the world. The scope of the binational region makes the process of demonstrating and scaling smart solutions all the more important.

“A key to this project’s success is being able to leverage and connect to the many strengths and assets that these partners have and really trying to work on these problems in a collective collaborative way,” Fisher said.

The region’s initial pilot project was undertaken was in Defiance, Ohio, which Fisher noted was an ideal location because Gov. Mike DeWine has made goals such as state-wide broadband a top priority.

According to Fisher, the next steps for the region involve vision development, funding procurement and the launch of a webinar series to share best practices.

The region will also attempt to promote and scale the Defiance pilot project by inviting new collaborators and funders to support it.

Panelists discussed the measures that their communities and organizations took to support small businesses and the common good during the coronavirus pandemic.

US Ignite is a national non-profit seeking to promote high-capacity broadband. The organization’s Smart Gigabit Communities project — of which the discussion was a part — is a network of dozens of communities developing applications for “Smart City” services.

Joaquín Torres, director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, said that the city’s steps have been effective, with a main focus being bank transparency.

“In terms of our engagement with the financial institutions, [we’re trying] to make sure that they’re being very clear about how they’re prioritizing their clients,” Torres said.

The city is also facilitating transitions for those who do not feel that their bank is treating them fairly.

Additionally, Torres said, community-based financial institutions are essential in providing assistance and awareness of government stimuli.

Sybongile Cook, Director of Business Development & Strategy as well as Planning and Economic Development for Washington D.C., echoed Torres’ sentiments.

As U.S. officials weigh reopening, there is a raging debate over whether increased death rates are necessary for the economy to survive. These discussions are critical, Cook said, and must take care to not be shortsighted.

“What does recovery look like not just three months from now, not 18 months from now, but three, four, or five years from now?” she asked.

Torres said such decisions required a boots-on-the-ground approach, adding that when city officials establish a relationship with their communities they are better equipped to make good decisions.

“If you do not have those relationships prior to this time, you are already behind the curve…,” he said. “If you’re not paying attention to the very specific needs of our communities on the ground, then you’re not meeting their needs. And if we’re going to do that, we need to maintain that dialogue.”

Visit Broadband Breakfast’s event page for the most up-to-date information about the Digital Infrastructure Investment mini-conference.

Originally announced in February as part of the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston, Digital Infrastructure Investment will take place on August 10, 2020, from 1 p.m. ET to 7 p.m. ET (or 12 Noon CT to 6 p.m. CT, for those located in Houston).

It will feature programming on “Last Mile Digital Infrastructure,” “The Experience of Infrastructure Investment Funds,” “Federal Funds and Opportunity Zones” and “The Neutral Host Infrastructure and Small Cell Deployments.”

Register, for FREE, for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

With Tuesday’s announcement, in addition to taking place live in Houston, Digital Infrastructure Investment event will also take place Live Online. It will join Broadband Breakfast’s growing #broadbandlive series of programming, including “Broadband and the Coronavirus.”

“This exciting program will continue in person and online,” said Drew Clark, Editor and Publisher of Broadband Breakfast, a 12-year old news organization based in Washington building a community of interest around broadband policy and internet technology.

Broadband Breakfast’s motto is “Better Broadband, Better Lives,” and strives to put in place its belief about the vital importance of broadband communications.

“Uncertainty surrounding the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic means that many who are interested in enhancing broadband networks are concerned about travel,” he said. “At the Digital Infrastructure Investment Physical/Virtual Event, panelists and attendees alike will be able to participate either in person or online and be on an equal footing.”

Those who plan to attend Digital Infrastructure Investment in person should also use this link to register for the summit. The in-person version of Digital Infrastructure Investment is free to all registered Broadband Communities Summit attendees. Those who are unable to attend the summit in person can still register for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

“We’ve heard a lot recently about the dynamism of open-access networks, particularly in this time of the coronavirus,” said Clark. “High-capacity symmetrical fiber networks are more important now that ever before.”

“But there remain several crucial questions about how the digital infrastructure builds of today scale beyond municipal-level deployments,” he said. The Digital Infrastructure Investment event aims to gather the infrastructure investment fund managers, institutional investors, private equity and venture capitalists, and senior leaders from fiber, mobile, and data center solutions providers to bring clarity on the next business model for advanced internet infrastructure.”

“The Broadband Communities Summit is the leading event for community leaders, multifamily property owners and network builders and deployers interested in the building, managing, marketing and monetizing of high-speed broadband technologies and services,” said Barbara De Garmo, CEO of Broadband Communities. “It is focused on the successful delivery of high-speed broadband networks to communities – from multifamily properties and planned developments to the city or town where you live.”

On March 17, Broadband Communities and the Rural Telecommunications Congress announced that Broadband Communities Summit and its rural broadband track, which were previously scheduled for late April, have been postponed until August 10-13, 2020 because of concerns associated with the coronavirus.

The event remains at the Marriott Marquis Houston, Texas. For those who have already paid the registration fee, Broadband Communities will roll registrations over to the August dates.

For more about the summit, visit the home page, and learn more about the Summit Chairmen.

Digital Infrastructure Investment Topics Areas

• TOPIC 1: Last-Mile Digital Infrastructure
  Ownership models are evolving. Who will play the lead role in constructing? What entities, including cities, will own digital assets? Who will manage the networks?
• TOPIC 2: Infrastructure Investment Funds
  Infrastructure financing is available for broadband. Will it dwindle or accelerate with the coronavirus pandemic? What is the experience of institutional investors?
• TOPIC 3: Federal Funds and Opportunity Zones
  The FCC is making $20.4 billion available for rural broadband. The U.S. Treasury’s Opportunity Zones help urban projects. Can these funds make a difference?
• TOPIC 4: Shared Infrastructure and Small Cell Deployments
  Cellular towers were once proprietary, before carriers partnered with infrastructure owners. Will the neutral host infrastructure also take over small cells and 5G?

Register, for FREE, for Digital Infrastructure Investment.

Editor’s Note: The original post on the Digital Infrastructure Investment conference was published on February 27, 2020; This post was updated on April 28, 2020, and on May 17, 2020.

Broadband Communities and Broadband Breakfast have released the agenda for the Digital Infrastructure Investment mini-conference at the forthcoming Broadband Communities Summit on Monday, April 27, 2020, in Houston, Texas.

This year, for the first time, Breakfast Media (publisher of Broadband Breakfast) is hosting a half-day mini-conference focused on “Digital Infrastructure Investment for the 2020s.”

This pathbreaking event will bring together the broadband infrastructure and financial communities to fill a crucial gap: The lack of an existing United States conference that provides all stakeholders in the broadband community with a focus on the digital infrastructure and investment profile of assets, including fiber, small cell and data-center assets, required to support a 21st Century information economy.

Use this link to register for the summit. “Digital Infrastructure Investment for the 2020s” is free to all registered conference attendees.

“We’ve heard a lot recently about the dynamism of open-access networks,” said Drew Clark, Editor and Publisher of Broadband Breakfast.

“But there remain several crucial questions about how the digital infrastructure builds of today scale beyond municipal-level deployments,” said Clark. “The Digital Infrastructure Investment event aims to gather the infrastructure investment fund managers, institutional investors, private equity and venture capitalists, and senior leaders from fiber, mobile, and data center solutions providers to bring clarity on the next business model for advanced internet infrastructure.”

After a welcome and a visioning keynote at 12 Noon on Monday, April 27, the first panel at Digital Infrastructure Investment will be “Last Mile Digital Infrastructure: Who Will Build It, Who Will Own It, and Who Will Operate It?” The session will be moderated by Drew Clark, and it takes place on Monday, April 27, at 12:50 p.m. CT.

In addition to various case studies — including the European experience with wholesale, open and business networks — the second panel is on “The Experience of Infrastructure Investment Funds.” It will take place at 1:55 p.m. CT.

Next up is “The Role of Cities in Establishing Digital Real Estate Investment Trusts: Who Owns Them, and How Will the Digital REIT Market Develop?” It will take place at 3 p.m. CT.

Other case studies will also be featured. The final panel, “Is the Neutral Host Infrastructure Coming to Small Cell Deployments?” will begin at 4:05 p.m. CT. The program will conclude with a closing keynote. A brief closing rap session/call to action will facilitate key next steps for parties in the Digital Infrastructure Investment industry.

“The Broadband Communities Summit is the leading event for community leaders, multifamily property owners and network builders and deployers interested in the building, managing, marketing and monetizing of high-speed broadband technologies and services,” said Barbara De Garmo, CEO of Broadband Communities. “It is focused on the successful delivery of high-speed broadband networks to communities – from multifamily properties and planned developments to the city or town where you live.”

Don’t forget to use  Register for Broadband Communities and attend the Digital Infrastructure Investment with your admission!

For more about the summit, visit the home page, and learn more about the Summit Chairmen.

In March 2018 in Mountain View, California, Walter Huang was playing a game on his phone as his Tesla Model X barreled down the highway. His car’s autopilot mode failed to detect a traffic barrier and crashed head-on into the concrete, killing Huang and trapping two other cars in a vortex of metal.

Investigators of the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent government body, have found fault with the company’s ’partially automated” label  in light of the accidents. They have also proposed pro-active steps Tesla and the Transportation Department should take to save lives from faulty technology.

NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the conclusion of a hearing on Tuesday in Washington: “We urge Tesla to work on improving its Autopilot technology and for NHTSA to fulfill its oversight responsibility to ensure that corrective action is taken when necessary. It’s time to stop enabling drivers in any partially automated vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars. Because they don’t have driverless cars.”

Facebook investigating suspicious posts linked to Bernie Sanders supporters

Facebook is investigating accounts linked to suspicious posts that support Bernie Sanders, according to an article on The Wall Street Journal by Emily Glazer and Dustin Voz.

This news comes after U.S. Intelligence has confirmed that Russian operatives are using information to try to get Bernie Sanders nominated by the Democratic primary.

Facebook has yet to substantiate these claims.

“We investigate each credible claim we receive, just as we did in this instance when an outside researcher contacted us,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told the Journal. “To date, we have not been able to substantiate the researcher’s claims and we have not been notified by the intelligence community.”

USDA’s ReConnect grant program makes more awards

The Agriculture Department this week announced the awarding of $9.1 million, $3.3 million, and $2.2 million for broadband in rural communities in South Carolina, Montana, and Nevada, respectively.

The funds were dispersed via USDA’s ReConnect program attempting to shrink the digital divide between rural and non-rural communities.

“High-speed broadband e-Connectivity is critical to increasing access to health care and educational opportunities and strengthening economic development efforts in rural communities,” South Carolina Rural Development State Director Debbie Turbeville said.

“Under the leadership of President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Perdue, USDA is committed to being a strong partner to rural communities in deploying this critical infrastructure, because we know that when rural America thrives, all of America thrives.”

The Reconnect program was passed in 2018. It allocated $600 million to USDA to expand broadband infrastructure and services in rural America. Since last summer, the department has received applications requesting a total of $1.4 billion in funding.

By the same token, drones will require similar speeds and connectivity of 5G telecommunication services. The current 4G standard allows drones to move, turn, and perform other simple operations. “You don’t need a lot of spectrum” to operate today’s drones, Kuzin conceded.

But 5G technology – and spectrum – will be required to unlock the potential for drones to do things like put out forest fires, track objects of interest, and communicate with other drones. Kuzin argued that the cellular network will provide the best framework for inter-drone communication, and panelists agreed.

Others vented their frustrations with government regulation.

Melissa Glidden Tye, associate general counsel of emerging technologies at Verizon, lamented how the Federal Aviation Administration took two years to release a proposal for a system of remote drone identification.

Remote identification is the technology that would allow the FAA to digitally assess a drone in the same way a cop can check the license plate of a car to find its owner. Kuzin also summarized the top-priority roadblocks that the FAA has yet to tackle: Finalizing the rules for remote identification, flying drones at night, flying drones above people, and flying drones outside of the operator’s line of site.

Joe Cramer, director of global spectrum management at Boeing, said that the FAA may be holding back its approval out of a desire to see stronger assurances by industry regarding oversight.

Specifically, he said the FAA wants drone operators to use an “aviation safety spectrum allocation.” This allocation would preserve a small slice of bandwidth for emergency drone operations, such as movement and landing and prevent property from being damaged and lives from being lost.

Cramer said that if the U.S. doesn’t work on securing parts of the 5 GigaHertz (GHz) band of spectrum for unmanned aircraft systems soon, then other countries will launch satellites that take that bandwidth. That would be nearly-impossible to undo.

As Tye said earlier in the panel, ” there’s not a lot of spectrum just layin’ around.”

Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro and National Federation of the Blind President Mark Riccobono agreed. “Accessibility and innovation go hand in hand,” Riccobono said. Companies are encouraged to create and innovate if exemptions are available, Riccobono stated.

Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety President Cathy Chase said the NHTSA is in need of additional help as its budget continues to decrease. The regulation for automated vehicles doesn’t exist and “minimum performance standards” are imperative, said Chase.

Chase advocated for an increased focus on safety right away. In her written statement, Chase wrote, “the race to ‘build it first’ should never overshadow the need to ensure readiness for broad public use in real life scenarios.”

But Shapiro said exemptions are crucial for innovation because automated vehicles will save lives regardless, and performance and regulation will never be able to guarantee no deaths.

In 2018, more than 100 people died daily from car crashes, said John Bozzella, CEO of Alliance for Automotive Innovation. He asked congress to consider a “regulatory framework” that would help decrease fatalities through safe automated vehicles.

American Association of Justice State Affairs Counsel Daniel Hinkle said automated vehicle legislation should hold producers accountable for damages or injuries inflicted on AV customers. “The difference between an automated vehicle and a human driven vehicle is a promise—a promise from the manufacturer of the automated driving system that their system can perform the entire dynamic driving task without in-vehicle supervision,” Hinkle said.

Hinkle also asked that the public “not be forced into arbitration.” “The one-sided and secretive nature of forced arbitration is established at the onset wherein companies, rather than individuals, choose the private company which will administer the forced arbitration proceeding, the payment terms, and the rules,” stated Hinkle.

Riccobono boasted the unparalleled prospects automated vehicles would open to the blind community. “100 percent of accidents today are caused by sighted drivers,” said Riccobono to laughter.

Riccobono is pleased that accessibility has been included in the automated vehicle discussion because it is usually an afterthought, he said. He asked congress not to enforce regulatory restrictions that might exclude the blind from accessing automated vehicles.

Not only will automated vehicles provide feasible transportation for the blind community, but increase workforce participation, said Riccobono.

As part of a competition, Smart Cities Connect chose 50 innovative projects with current or future wide-scale civic impact. Applicants represented more than a dozen countries.

An evening gala will be held in honor of the projects that won in one of the five categories: community engagement, digital transformation, smart mobility, urban infrastructure, and urban operations. Some of the awardees will speak on panels or present at the conference, which will take place in Denver, Colorado.

We. Ride, powered by Moovit is a group from Kfar Saba, Israel. It won a mobility award for its mobile application that facilitates finding the best transportation option to get to work. The app decreases traffic during commuting hours by maximizing time constraints and eliminating the frantic search for coins or a metro card.

The goal of the event is to reach across the private and public sector, as some of the projects were spearheaded by civic leaders. But public and private enterprises have to work together on smart city projects at a municipal level.

Laura Benold, managing editor of Smart Cities Connect Media & Research, said that the number of projects and phases in development has increased over last year.

“When you look at projects involving infrastructure or measured results, time is on our side” she said.

Limor Schafman, senior director of Smart Buildings Programs at the Telecommunications Industry Association, said as buildings digitize, human experience will improve.

“A smart building uses an interoperable set of technology, systems and infrastructure to optimize building performance and occupant experience,” said Schafman. Smart buildings are not just for megacities. Rather, everyone shares resiliency and wellness concerns, and smart buildings are the answer, she said.

The purpose of a broadband-focused smart building is to digitize the infrastructure while maintaining occupants’ needs at the forefront of the innovation. Smart building infrastructure includes a focus on basic infrastructure, connectivity, power and energy, data, interoperable systems, and intelligence and cognition, said Schafman.

Smart buildings function through wireless or fiber connection and streamline data sharing across departments, combating or inter-departmental stagnation.

Wireless infrastructure also solves the problem of spaghetti wiring, said Benny Lee, Councilman and Director of San Mateo County Public Wi-Fi, in Northern California.

While wired building need dozens of switches on every floor, wireless buildings only need one or two.

Most 5G deployments using higher radio frequencies pose problems because such signals cannot travel through walls, said Lee. The “FCC has been discussing adding 6 [GigaHertz] spectrum to Wi-Fi, which promises connectivity speeds upwards of 5 [Gigabits per second]s,” he said.

Jiri Skopek, of a group called 2030 District Networks, argued that smart buildings save money while improving occupants’ quality of life. Speaking of smart buildings, he said, “we expect them now to respond to our needs, and even our wishes.”

Productivity increases, he said, because users can control the environment: lighting, air quality, temperature, occupancy sensing, shade control, white noise control, etc. These factors foster health and convenience.

Because smart buildings operate through microgrids, Skopek said, they run on direct current, which can integrate renewable energy.

In the case of natural disasters or emergencies, first responders can arrive quicker and know where the exact danger area is.

Schafman said municipalities can view the status of the building’s infrastructure because it has a virtual image. The buildings can also be run remotely, added Skopek.

Indeed, public safety needs to be a significant priority for smart city innovation, said participates on the panel at the trade show hosted by the Consumer Technology Association in Las Vegas

FirstNet Senior Director Jennifer Harder said public safety improvements are a major aspect of smart cities. Smarter infrastructure can improve response times, save lives, and lower crime rates, she said, stressing the importance of technology that responds to the needs of first responders.

Further, implementing technology that detects various health issues for first responders is crucial. Harder said there are ways to use basic, wearable technology to care for first responders.

Regarding privacy concerns, Harder said that body cameras on policy officers have been found to be beneficial. She proposed finding a logical and safe lines that do not infringe upon medical or other privacy.

Mike Zeto, vice president at AT&T, echoed Harder’s focus on public safety. He commended FirstNet – the First Responder Network Authority that is a quasi-public entity within the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration – as a positive example of collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Panelist Edward Knapp, chief technology officer of American Tower Corporation, highlighted examples of functioning public and private partnerships in Paris keyed to the Summer Olympics four years from now, in 2024.

As Paris improves user experience in their urban environment before the Olympics, private sectors are experimenting with the infrastructure, while in communication with the public. LED lighting, public Wi-Fi, 5G, and bridging digital divides are important elements that go into the creation of a “smart city.”

Knapp said Paris intersections are appropriate places to put sensors and cellular infrastructure.

Investments must be made in all levels of education, said Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., so that the workforce is prepared for future infrastructure. Both large and small communities will benefit from smart-city solutions, and this is the time for people to learn more about cybersecurity and infrastructure, she said.

The effects of smart cities are beginning to take their toll, Clarke said. The city of New York, for instance, began phasing out its phone booths for Wi-Fi kiosks, which have already yielded game-changing results.

Smart city components are not as robust as they should be, she said, yet they provide a solid foundation for future infrastructure.

The concept is not about the cities themselves, but about solving big problems, said Hicham Abdessamad, chief executive of Global Social Innovation Business at Hitachi. Data sits at the core of smart city infrastructure, he said, which consists of multiple layers of development.

These layers can range from dynamic scheduling to data harnessing, Abdessamad said. However, lawmakers still need to address how privacy fits into the data, for the sake of governance as well as innovation. Machine learning can be beneficial, he said, but it requires enough regulation.

If citizens cannot trust their government, said Microsoft Executive Director of State and Local Government Solutions Kim Nelson, then there is no foundation for smart city technology.

Digital transformation is key for cities, Nelson continued. Technology and hardware are not as crucial as obtaining the information that smart devices are collecting. There are no such things as “non-tech” companies or “non-smart” cities, she said, as all these entities possess unharnessed information.

Transportation is a common element in smart city discussion. Jeff Marootian, director of the District Department of Transportation, said that the District of Columbia aims to be at the forefront of smart transportation infrastructure.

The city is working to improve public transportation, he said, increasing the quality of Metro Rail and transit signal priority to help speed buses in and out of traffic. The Department is also planning to redesign roads in order to make traffic flow more friendly to drivers, pedestrians and other road occupants.

Connecting communities to one another is essential, Marootian said. The fusion of infrastructure and technology will help achieve that goal.

Current federal regulations are written with the assumption that a pilot is operating the aircraft, said David Russell, program analyst at the Unmanned Aircraft System Integration Office, an arm of the Federal Aviation Administration. The a webinar was hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

The 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act reiterated Congress’ interest in national airspace safety, he said. Under Part 107 of the Code of Federal Regulations for unmanned flights, aircraft weighing less than 55 pounds is allowed for “limited recreational operations.” These small UAS aircrafts also do not require any certifications for use.

Russell outlined several recommendations for non-commercial UAS users. Through the FAA DroneZone website, owners must provide the make, model and serial number of each small UAS. UAS larger than 55 pounds require paper registration.

Furthermore, the Reauthorization Act gives the FAA full authority over all UAS operating in national airspace. The FAA is also in the process of developing UAS knowledge and safety tests as well as establishing a list of “fixed site” model flying locations.

Ben Snyder, director of business and development at Consortia, presented an outline for a UAS operations manual. The ideal manual, he said, would result in safe, standardized and auditable operations across business units and regions.

AUVSI’s Protocol Certification Manual provides guidance for UAS standard operating procedures. Additionally, it outlines operational safety framework and training criteria for flight. Snyder said that the Trusted Operator Program would make UAS programs safer and help mitigate risk.

Despite the safety precautions employed with noncommercial unmanned aircraft, it is unlikely that drones will be used for personal delivery in the foreseeable future, panelists said.

In the opening keynote address, Kenneth Leonard, director of the Transportation Department’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, said that the Department of Transportation has worked to develop the promise of connected and automated vehicles to solve some of transportation’s biggest challenges.

There are about 40,000 fatalities on U.S. roads each year, he said. The U.S. close to significant changes in the vehicle industry. However, in the rush to utilize spectrum for transportation purposes, the potential vulnerability of information sharing among vehicles has been overlooked.

The Transportation Department will lead efforts to address potential safety risks, advance the lifesaving potential of automation and seek to strengthen public confidence in these emerging technologies, said Leonard.

Consumer safety and trust are crucial for Autonomous Vehicle acceptance, said Sanjay Ranka, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Florida. That is why data-driven approaches are key as well as the use of centralized computing to manage privacy and stability.

Regarding AV regulation, Former Under Secretary of Transportation for Policy Derek Kan said that safety is the number one priority. For that reason, the federal government needs to modernize vehicle safety standards to determine how to measure the value of safety in this era.

But government action is a hurdle as the current administration does not consider AV development inevitable, he said. Although the federal government has the authority to pull defective vehicles off the road, it has no “clear” role in insurance liability, forcing states to assign liability on their own terms.

To ensure safety, we need to know what specific metrics we want AV data to report, said Kan.

Part of that problem, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be a consensus definition of “safety” within the transportation industry, said Marjory Blumenthal, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Both the public and private sectors don’t know how to efficiently test and measure safety.

The public sector knows even less information, she said, because autonomous developers do not disclose all the details of their research.

Given how competitive the automobile industry is, innovation resulting from that competition is vital, said Cliff Winston, senior fellow at Searle Freedom Trust.

Private sector competition is at the right level, but the problem is the policy stance, he said. Regulatory delays combined and constraints on technological innovations hurt automotive advances.

The public sector needs more input into this technology, said Blumenthal, because AVs are not yet consistent with their design and operation. Policymakers need to think about AV safety from a system perspective, where different factors make up the mechanics of the vehicle itself.

Winston agreed that the government needs to establish a testing framework for AVs on a national scale. In turn, developers will push for the infrastructure needed to smoothly operate the vehicles.

Policymakers should instead emphasize the cost of not having these types of vehicles, said Rick Geddes, founding director at Cornell University’s program in infrastructure policy. It would be a “huge advantage” if people started to think differently about how they pay for and use roads.

The “status-quo bias” towards traditional vehicles, said Winston, deters the government from authorizing manufacturing and fully autonomous driving.

The technology is not changing as fast as people like to think, said Blumenthal. Projections for AV deployment are further than anticipated due to setbacks from accidents. She said that these accidents provide a poor outlook on the industry as a whole.

(Photo of Brookings Institution event by Masha Abarinova.)

For law enforcement to properly meet the needs of the community, they we must make sure that they have the most up-to-date tools at their disposal, said ITIF Vice President Daniel Castro.

The optics on today’s cameras and phones are so advanced, said Eddie Reyes, director of the Office of Public Safety Communications for Prince William County, Virginia. And yet law enforcement is hindered by outside groups critical of this technology.

It’s “clear” that machines are better than humans at matching a photo to a person, said Michael Hardin, director of policy at U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The availability of facial recognition permits the people to conduct other, more meaningful activities.

Moreover, said Reyes, any image recognition requires some form of human intervention to ensure that investigations run smoothly. Regarding policies that address facial recognition software, policymakers need to evaluate five key components. Image capture, image usage, retention period of records, the accuracy of the image and human oversight.

Recently three cities have banned government and law enforcement usage of facial recognition technology: San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville, Massachusetts. These bans, said Maureen McGough, national programs director of the National Police Foundation, may stem from a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how that technology is used.

When facial recognition is outlawed, said Benji Hutchinson, vice president of federal operations at NEC Corporation of America, it becomes portrayed as solely a video-surveillance technology. This ignores its potential benefits.

We try to demonstrate facial recognition’s facilitated benefits, said Hardin, in addition to the security benefits. For example, facial recognition allows people to “use their face as a passport” when passing through customs, thereby expediting the process and making it more efficient.

In these types of cases, said McGough, people can agree that this is a useful technology. The main concern, however, is the threat of abusing facial recognition for routine data collection, said Reyes.

When discussing the implications of facial recognition, said Hutchinson, there is a lot of hyperbole over what can go wrong, rather than looking back at what has gone wrong.

Nevertheless, said McGough, community involvement and transparency are important in order to eliminate the fear of this technology. If successfully applied, facial recognition can facilitate cooperation across multiple jurisdictions, allowing them to work more efficiently.

A Smart City roadmap is invaluable, laying out a direction to help set expectations. However, it shouldn’t define specific cross-system technologies and implementation details, nor plan for all projects to launch or complete simultaneously. They must instead be created as separate solutions for each problem, then stitched together by open standards and open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and each built as an independent service. That’s how they must grow if we want them to succeed — learning by iteration.

Today’s problem

In the rush to “capture the market,” companies are selling “complete visions” — though incomplete solutions – of how their systems can solve the ills that plague the modern city. City planners, managers, and officials get sold the idea that these companies have some kind of silver bullet that, in a single solution, integrates all city functions and enhances their capabilities, thus making them work together efficiently. But this belies the true nature of the problem: none of us are smart enough to fully appreciate or understand the complexity of managing all the functions that go into making a city work. The sheer diversity of the systems ensures that no single technology can be applied as “the” solution. In addition, the timeframe for implementing these disparate programs can vary widely, meaning that technology selected at the start of one project will likely be obsolete by the start of another.

Worse yet, these companies are also selling and deploying products that are based on closed, proprietary systems. They include proprietary radios, single-purpose hardware, proprietary software and protocols, and closed web applications and portals. These designs constrain innovation and interfere with interoperability between newer and older systems, often saddling the new with the constraints of the past. This is like the Trojan Horse — a solution that requires all future systems to use these proprietary systems and thereby locking the city into that particular vendor for the rest of their days, limiting design and technology choices and stifling innovation and adoption of newer technology.

It’s not all gloom and doom. With the application of open systems and implementation of a service-oriented architecture, future technology can be built that’ll integrate more seamlessly with previous technology investments.

Choose a different path

We’ve learned from the lean-agile community to build success in small, incremental steps rather than one grand leap. But with the different needs, design patterns, and timeframes, how is it possible to accomplish building a Smart City in small steps? It’s done by leveraging the nature of the internet itself, complete with open standards and open APIs. By decoupling every system and eliminating hidden interfaces, we can relieve the pressures of time and technology interdependencies, thereby allowing greater innovation in each separate project while “future proofing” the design decisions.

We use different materials and architecture to construct buildings with differing purposes (hospitals vs. homes vs. high-rises), but there’s a consistency even within these varying buildings for standard electrical and plumbing connections. Smart City projects can adopt this same design pattern. This means that for a parking project, the city can pick the most appropriate communication technology but require that the system be built on open standard protocols that underlie the internet (for example, HTTP, IP, TCP, and MQTT), use data formats such as JSON or XML, and have open APIs.

Greater than the sum of the parts

Instead of a complete Smart City that’s decades in the making, city managers can instead look for “low-hanging fruit” or “greatest pain point” and more quickly build a point solution, knowing that it can simply be connected to any future systems in a scalable and secure manner. A smart parking system for city streets or a parking garage built using LoRa today can be connected to a city traffic management system built using NBIoT next year, as long as both use open APIs and avoid closed, proprietary solutions including “walled garden” cloud solutions.

The next city improvement project — a smart street light system, for example — might require a completely different communication technology from the previous parking system. Streetlights are up high and more distributed than parking meters or parking spaces in a garage. Streetlights have power, whereas a parking sensor will likely be battery-operated. These different requirements would necessitate the use of different communication technologies, but both systems can be interconnected through common protocols and APIs. Through open APIs, this interconnectivity doesn’t need to be designed in from the beginning but can be added after each of the separate systems is installed.

For example, the streetlight system that’s installed today could be connected to traffic flow sensors installed tomorrow. The two systems may use completely different communication technology and set of protocols. This new combination — streetlight and traffic flow sensors connected through open APIs — could offer an innovative solution for reducing streetlight energy usage by dimming lights when there are no cars, but increasing the brightness prior to the cars arrival based on messages from the traffic flow system.

The use and adherence to open APIs and microservices brings another benefit — decoupled velocity. This means that even concurrent projects can be built at different speeds and rolled out at different times and yet combined when each is completed and functional. As in the example above, the smart streetlight project might end up taking longer to deploy because of the sheer number of devices. Where as the traffic flow sensors might be installed sooner. Open APIs release each system from timing interdependencies and implementation speed.

Vendor lock-in and future-proofing

Another benefit of open standards and APIs is the elimination of vendor lock-in, which is when a vendor wins all future business because they alone are holding the keys to the design and the data. Vendor lock-in squelches innovation: you’re only as innovative as the vendor wants to be or lets you be. If a city needs a design or solution that isn’t in the vendor’s current portfolio, the city’s choices become wait, pay more to have the vendor add it to their roadmap, or go outside the ecosystem and use some sort of gateway (but gateways are evil, see below) to translate protocols and data and interconnect the systems.

Instead, open standards and APIs bring the ability to incorporate and evolve with newer technologies and systems. But, much like vendor lock-in, you can run afoul of technology lock-in. Imagine having built a Smart City project requiring the use of videotape and now not being able to adopt streaming technologies because they’re incompatible. Technology changes rapidly; in just a few years, we’ve moved from 2G to 3G and now to 5G in the cellular environment. By using open standards to decouple the higher-layer protocols from the lower layers, technology can evolve and systems using older tech can easily interconnect. In this way a system deployed using 4G today can interoperate with 5G systems tomorrow and 6G and 7G systems in a few years.

The underpinnings of innovation

Avoiding vendor and technology lock-in is critical to allow for innovation. Nothing will be more detrimental to a city’s infrastructure and future than to be bound to a vendor and have to ask for permission to enhance or extend the systems’ functionality. As new technology comes to the market and new services are brought out to solve other city issues, the ability to quickly test and connect them to existing solutions is the necessary for offering evolving solutions and bringing more opportunities for innovation and cost reductions. When you embark on your next project, ask your vendors — “do you use open standard protocols?” and “how are your APIs and data published?”

Avoid these traps — the ‘evil’ gateway and ‘private clouds’

One tool that many vendors attempt to leverage to show openness and interoperability is the “gateway.” They claim that they provide, or can build, a gateway to connect to other systems. Gateways are a never-ending trap on so many levels:

• they’re a single point of failure;
• they’re a single point of attack for hackers;
• they require complex coordination between systems;
• maintenance and updates are costly or non-existent;
• updates need to be managed;
• they add extra costs for hardware and power; and
• they’re closed and proprietary.

The second trap is private clouds and walled gardens. The vendor will claim that they use “all of the open internet standards,” listing protocol after protocol, but they use these protocols only to send the data (your data) into a closed, proprietary cloud system — locking it away so that only they have the keys. This is akin to building a road that leads to a cul-de-sac, which is blocked by a locked gate that only lets traffic in. Then, new systems must be built to connect through this cloud, likely via closed and proprietary interfaces. In the end, only other systems in this closed ecosystem can be used for future projects, thereby limiting innovation and increasing time and costs. Sending data to the cloud isn’t a panacea, as many vendors would like to suggest.

Who owns the data — that is, your data

In Smart City projects the goals of improving city services or infrastructure are the leading driver for implementation but the greatest benefits will come from the availability of the data gathered from these projects and new systems. Unfortunately, many of the Smart City systems being proffered today lock away access to the data in walled gardens, as mentioned before. It’s imperative that the data is sent to city-owned and managed servers, or the city’s data lake or available without license through open APIs. Only in this way will the city and future Smart City projects be able to use and leverage the wealth of information and the underlying real value of these types of projects.

A related concern surrounding data ownership is the rights to the use and sale of the data created by the Smart City project — a valuable commodity. Throughout the life of the project it should be clear that the city owns all rights to the data. The vendor may not access, distribute, or sell any of the data whether in raw form or aggregated without the explicit permission of the city. Only in this way will you be able to protect the rights and privacy of the city and it’s citizens.

Choosing the right project

By adopting open standards and APIs, you’re now able to embark on a Smart City project without having to solve all other city projects at the same time or constrain them with the choices made today. But choosing the “right” project is important. In some cases, it’s prudent to choose a small, fast, low-cost project. This allows you to get your feet wet, test vendors, accomplish a project in a short time, and hopefully succeed; but if you fail, fail fast, learn, and move on. There sometimes is a problem with these projects though: they may have little impact and they may cause others to look upon them as “ho hum.”

An alternative is to choose a project that’s a large “pain point” for the city. By definition, these projects have great visibility and impact, but may have far greater risk and take much longer to complete. They don’t generally meet the rules for lean-agile, but the small “safe” projects may not show off the true benefits that a Smart City can bring. Solve this by using divide and conquer. Rather than implementing smart parking across the entire city, choose to focus on a particularly congested city section or single parking structure.

Building success

When a city is becoming smarter by investing in a Smart City project, use this checklist to evaluate the project:

• Does it start small and scale well? This is better than a monolithic solution that requires a gigantic investment.
• Is it locking the city into technologies, or, even worse, vendors? Does it exclude other vendors?
• Is it open? What protocols are used? Are the APIs published and open?
• Did the vendor mention or require (evil) gateways?
• Does it solve a problem for the city quickly, even if it’s only a small problem?
• What will the city be able to learn from taking on this project?
• Who owns the data?

Through the strict application and requirement of openness, your Smart City project can be delivered in a way that’s quick, beneficial, evolvable, and scalable. Our cities can and will become smarter and better places to live through small steps and open standards — open APIs and microservices are the foundational stepping stones to that future.

Geoff Muilligan is IoT Practice Lead at Skylight Digital and CTO for IIoT at Jabil. Past founder and Chairman of LoRa and IPSO. Former White House Presidential Innovation  Fellow on IoT. Creator of 6lowpan. This article originally appeared on the author’s web site, and is reposted with permission.

BroadbandBreakfast.com accepts commentary from informed observers of the broadband scene. Please send pieces to commentary@broadbandcensus.com. The views reflected in Expert Opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of BroadbandBreakfast.com and Breakfast Media LLC.

Ramirez is not the only one with a cynical outlook on 5G’s nationwide rollout.

“Deep deployment of fiber optics is a national imperative. The success of 5G wireless will hinge on deep fiber. The next transformation in infrastructure is 5G but the US is not well prepared to take full advantage of the potential, lacking needed fiber infrastructure close to the end customer (deep fiber),” Deloitte stated in its 2017 report titled “Communications Infrastructure Upgrade – The Need For Dark Fiber.”

Ramirez highlights several points demonstrating the necessity for fiber optics investment. First, the antennas on cell towers that carry wireless network traffic are all backhauled by fiber optic cables, resulting in the fact that 90% of mobile data traffic travels via wireline networks. Second, current 4G antennas cover roughly 10 square miles, whereas 5G antennas will cover only 500-750 square feet. Also, short ranged 5G signals will not pass through buildings or even dense trees.

This means that for a community to have a 5G network, it would require high capacity fiber cables on every street and access points with antennas every 200-300 feet, depending on physical obstructions. An estimated $150 billion in infrastructure is needed to meet future broadband needs, according to Deloitte’s report.

Some believe that mobile network operators are knowingly suppressing fiber projects by downplaying the need for fiber to the premises networks while hyping 5G, but Ramirez believes that MNOs are simply acting in a logical fashion. It makes sense for these companies to focus their expenditures in densely populated areas rather than sparse rural territories, where the return on investment is significantly lower.

Anchorage, Alaska, proposes 5G network

GCI announced a partnership with Ericsson to build a 5G network in Anchorage, Alaska.

This summer, Ericsson will begin deploying 3GPP standards-based 5G New Radio hardware and software to 82 macro cell sites across the city. GCI’s metro fiber network will provide backhaul services to these sites. The project is estimated for completion in 2020, with initial 5G service coming online in the first half of that year.

GCI has a history of leading in technology to provide telecommunications services to Alaskans. CEO Ron Duncan anticipates that GCI will roll out 5G to “all the fiber-served areas of the state in the next few years,” including Juneau and Fairbanks.

Ericsson President and CEO Börje Ekholm believes that 5G will be “the fastest scaling mobile technology ever.” Ericsson’s latest Mobility Report predicts there will be 1.9 billion mobile 5G subscriptions globally by the end of 2024.

The budgeting system that helps Fort Collins, Colorado, achieve its goals

The publication Route Fifty writes about the biennial spending plan known as the “budgeting for outcomes” system allows the citizens of Fort Collins, Colorado, to weigh in on the city’s municipal budget and encourage the allocation of funds based on “measurable results,” Including a significant fiber network.

“Budgeting for outcomes has been transformational and has been an excellent system that helps us become more results-driven versus just funding local government,” said City Manager Darin Atteberry.

According to city officials, the practice was adopted in 2005 after Fort Collins lost a hefty share of sales tax revenue, resulting in a series of difficult budget cuts. Budgeting for outcomes has allowed citizens to understand what their tax money was paying for, adding transparency to the process.

The session by the Commerce Department’s NTIA, “Building Smart Cities and Communities at the Regional Level,” discussed the challenges and progress of ongoing smart region initiatives.

Maci Morin, program coordinator for the National Association of Regional Councils, introduced the Global City Teams Challenge Smart Regions Collaborative. One of the group’s goals is to create a blueprint that empowers local, regional, and tribal leaders to build their own smart region strategies.

The GCTC was launched by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “establish and demonstrate replicable, scalable, and sustainable models for incubation and deployment of interoperable, standard-based solutions using advanced technologies.”

The Smart Regions Collaborative will also present opportunities for peer-to-peer networking among these leaders and provide participants with access to information and technological assistance as well as connections to relevant industry professionals.

One of the initiatives discussed was the Greater Washington Board of Trade’s Smart Region Movement. The movement was announced in June of 2018 and backed by a partnership of over 300 companies and organizations, 24 local governments, Maryland and Virginia state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, and 17 colleges and universities.

The Smart Region Movement is also partnered with the Regional Transit Authority and various other regional organizations, nonprofits, startups, and financial institutions.

Program Lead Karl Darin cautioned that there are significant challenges to be overcome before Washington can become the nation’s leading digitally enabled region. The region is extremely fragmented between 24 diverse city and county jurisdictions, with “some of the most affluent and some of the most socioeconomically challenged communities adjacent to each other.”

In order to create a smart city solution that can be applied to the entire region, Darin emphasized what he called “soft infrastructure”—the legislative policies and regulations that need to be in place to make the program successful.

Although the smart region movement considers the community, the private sector, and the public sector to all be key stakeholders, Darin said that the community unequivocally comes first.

Rather than leaving industry alone to dictate the terms of this infrastructure, the program is looking for a “comprehensive societal answer,” said Darin, while also acknowledging the importance of having industry “come to the table.”

(Aerial photo of Washington, D.C.)

It’s not the first thing that’s unusual about this particular merger review. In a Tuesday piece on the Benton Foundation’s “Digital Beat,” noted telecom consumer advocate Gigi Sohn cataloged the growing elements of intrigue:

• For the FCC to “go it alone” was unprecedented. When the FCC and the Antitrust Division are both charged with reviewing mergers in the media and telecommunications industries, the two agencies will announce a decision to grant a merger almost simultaneously. In the nearly four weeks since Pai gave his blessing to the transaction, the Antitrust Division and the Assistant Attorney General who leads it, Makan Delrahim, have made no official announcement. There have only been news reports that Delrahim is not satisfied with the Pai’s decision and instead is trying to create a new, viable, fourth national mobile wireless carrier by requiring the merging parties to divest spectrum and other assets, a task that few believe is possible.
• Why did Chairman Pai get so far ahead of his Justice Department colleague? Many observers believe it was to put political pressure on Delrahim to approve the deal, against the reported wishes of the career staff of the Antitrust Division. In addition, Fox Business has reported that senior White House officials have also voiced their support for the merger, though it is unclear whether they have spoken directly to Delrahim.

Sohn, a critic of the merger, highlights how the complaint of the state attorneys general demonstrates that the merger will raise prices and reduce competition. She also said that the companies’ promises to roll out the next generation of 5G wireless in rural America are “promises the companies made to rapidly rollout next generation 5G wireless services and serve large swaths of rural America are speculative, unsubstantiated and unenforceable.”

Facebook announces new crypto-currency app Calibra, and Spotify joins Libra Association

Facebook’s crypto-currency foray will allow the social network giant’s users access to the Libra network, the company said in a Tuesday statement. Facebook’s first product, Calibra, will serve as a digital wallet for the open source blockchain currency. The wallet will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a standalone app, and the company expects to launch it next year.

Also on Tuesday, Spotify announced its partnership with the Libra Association, the non-profit organization that manages the cypto-currency.

Spotify highlights how about 1.7 billion adults worldwide have no access to mobile money, a bank account or payment card. Libra’s reserve-backed currency will enable people to send, spend and save their money through a financial ecosystem powered by secure blockchain technology.

“One challenge for Spotify and its users around the world has been the lack of easily accessible payment systems – especially for those in financially underserved markets,” said chief premium business officer Alex Norström, “In joining the Libra Association, there is an opportunity to better reach Spotify’s total addressable market, eliminate friction and enable payments in mass scale.”

Utah hosts Smart Cities Lunch

Utah Ignite and the Point of the Mountain Chamber of Commerce in Lehi, Utah, is hosting a monthly Smart Cities Lunch on Thursday, June 20. The event will bring the tech community and city leaders together to discuss the opportunities and best practices of smart city initiatives.

Because of the existence of robust fiber-optic networks through the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency in 11 cities, and Google Fiber in Provo and Salt Lake, Utah already has one of the most-advanced fiber-optic infrastructure anywhere in the country.

Glenn Ricart, the founder and chief technology officer of US Ignite – and an instrumental force in the creation of the Utah-based Utah Ignite – will speak at the event. Ricart was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013 for implementing the first Inter-net interconnection point, the FIX in College Park, Maryland.

One witness, Catherine Cahill of the Alaska Center for UAS Integration, said that the Chinese company DJI dominates the U.S. market for small, commercial UAS.

“DJI is the most cost-effective system available for many uses, including law enforcement, but the data from DJI UAS was automatically being sent back to the manufacturer in China,” she said. She was speaking at the Commerce Subcommittee on Security.

In a statement, DJI strongly disputed the allegations, and said that DJI does not share any data from a DJI drone back to the manufacturer.

At the hearing, Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, stated that the Chinese government is “stealing” American trade secrets and “not opening up their markets.”

Part of the problem with the security of drones involves “looking at open source and invigorating our own market here in the United States,” said Harry Wingo, faculty at the National Defense University, in response to Scott’s comment.

“What we need to do is look at drones as infrastructure and consider a Manhattan Project-style investment because this relates to smart-driving cars and trucks, the Internet of things,, the internet of everything, really,” Wingo said.

However, Wingo also said that the Defense Department banned the use of DJI drones in the military.

“The Federal Aviation Administration considers cyber and data security risks and mitigations in every aspect of our mission, including as they apply to aircraft certification and systems as well as to protection of our own air navigation services infrastructure,” said Angela Stubblefield, the agency’s deputy associate administrator.

As with manned aviation, the FAA takes a “risk-based approach” regarding system and data protection regarding unmanned systems, she said.

Because of these data security issues, the FAA needs to “develop a holistic framework for detecting and mitigating UAS” and to put in place procedures for “how to respond to national security threats, which includes clarity about who has the authority to engage,” said Brian Wynne, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

China has been “very clear that they want AI dominance over the next couple of years,” said Wingo. With their capabilities put together, this results in a “very damaging information set that puts the nation at risk.”

DJI Corporate Communications Director Adam Lisberg said: “The speculation about the security of DJI’s technology presented at today’s hearing is false. As a privately-held global technology company, DJI gives customers full and complete control over how their data is collected, stored, and transmitted. DJI drones do not share any data with DJI, over the internet, or in any other manner unless the operator deliberately chooses to do so. The security of our technology has been independently verified by the U.S. government, and our products meet all of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s data management recommendations.”

Editor’s Note, June 21, 2019: This story has been modified to reflect DJI’s denials of some testimony at the hearing, and to include a comment from their corporate spokesman.

(Photo of DJI drone from pxhere used with permission; photo of Senate subcommittee hearing by Masha Abarinova)

“Increasing competition is one of the best ways to improve quality, lower prices and lead to more people getting online and addressing that digital divide,” said New York University professor Robert Seamans to the Lowell Sun.

SiFi Networks, a private company building open access networks that multiple providers are able to utilize, in April announced that it will build such a network in Fullerton, California. It expects that to be the largest private open access network in the country.

The company’s proposal to Lowell includes the option to use the network to create smart city applications.  That permits the network to be used to improve security, maintenance, and traffic management, provide remote health services to treat patients at home, reduce snow days through e-Learning apps, and more, according to SiFi Networks President Scott Bradshaw.

New task force will bring connectivity to farms and ranches

On Monday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the formation of a new task force to support broadband deployment to unserved agricultural areas. The task force, which stems from the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, will work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop specific policy recommendations.

“As I’ve traveled the country, I’ve seen the amazing efficiencies, innovations, and improvements that high-speed internet brings to today’s farms and ranches,” said Chairman Pai. “This is the present and the future of American agriculture, and we must do whatever we can to support these producers and enhance precision agriculture.”

The FCC hopes to include agricultural producers, Tribal agriculture representatives, internet service providers, precision agriculture equipment managers, and more in the 15-member task force.

(Photo of Lowell by John Phelan.)

The Democrats’ staff memo on the bill estimates that between 21.3 million and 162.8 million Americans lack access to the internet at broadband speeds.

Citing a white paper produced by the Federal Communications Commission in the waning days of the Obama administration, we gain insight into the Democrats’ logic behind the $40 billion number. “The FCC estimated it would cost an additional $40 billion to extend high-speed broadband internet service to 98 percent of the country with another $40 billion being required to reach the remaining two percent,” read the staff memo, citing the white paper authored by Paul de Sa, former chief of the agency’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

In addition to funding for broadband, a separate subtitle of the package focused on smart cities would provide $850 million over five years to spur the development of clear energy solutions through technical assistance, grants, and training.

FULL COMMITTEE HEARING ON “LIFT AMERICA: MODERNIZING OUR INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE FUTURE,” from House Energy and Commerce Democrats:

Source: Full Committee Hearing on “LIFT America: Modernizing Our Infrastructure for the Future” | Democrats, Energy and Commerce Committee

With 202 city members, the non-profit Next Century Cities helps municipalities leverage gigabit-level internet for economic development and enhancing civic participation. The organization also recently announced that Executive Director Deb Socia, who founded the organization in 2014, has been selected as the CEO of the Enterprise Center in Chattanooga, effective July 2019.

Socia started the non-profit Tech Goes Home in Boston a decade ago and will succeed Ken Hays, who is retiring, as the director of the center. The Enterprise Center capitalizes on Chattanooga’s role as a gigabit city in promoting the 140-acre Innovation district in downtown Chattanooga.

In a blog post this week, Next Century Cities highlighted three key things that states can do to promote broadband: Don’t interfere with cities, spend broadband funds, and help streamline One Touch Make Ready, which has also recent been dubbed “Climb Once” legislation to facilitate pole attachments by new telecommunications entrants.

Among the state programs highlighted included (as described by Next Century Cities):

• Minnesota’s Border-to-Border Broadband Infrastructure Grant Program funds expansion to un- and under-served portions of the state. Eligible entities – notably, including municipal networks and cooperatives – are able to receive up to $5 million to cover up to 50 percent of a project’s infrastructure cost, including project planning, permits, labor, and more. Projects funded by the grant have ranged from connecting a dozen locations to connecting thousands.
• Maine’s ConnectME program offers infrastructure grants up to $100,000 for projects that build out last mile service to communities currently unserved by 25/3 Mbps speeds. The program also offers planning grants to municipalities and local or regional community organizations in order to fund plans to identify and pursue local broadband needs.
• Colorado’s Broadband Fund provides grants to private ISPs or to telephone or electric cooperatives for new infrastructure builds in areas not currently served by 25/3 Mbps. Colorado’s program is unique because it incorporates progressive right of first refusal language, in which an incumbent provider must match the speed and price of service that a new entrant is offering in order to exercise its right of first refusal.
• New York’s Broadband Program uses a reverse auction method to allocate $500 million worth of grants to un- and underserved areas. Eligible projects must involve a partnership with a private entity, and funds can be used for up to 80 percent of capital expenditures for new investments or network upgrades.
• West Virginia has funneled Community Development Block Grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into supporting broadband deployment throughout the state. Most recently, the state announced that a total of $2.4 million in CDBG funds in West Virginia would go toward broadband projects.

With regard to the West Central Mountains High Speed Internet Conference on Friday, May 17, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. MT, panelists at the event will include Andrew Mentzer, executive director of the council, and city officials Bruce Patterson from Ammon, Idaho; Mike Knittel from Emmett, Idaho; Jeremy Pietzold from Sandy, Oregon; Rich Sykes from Mountain Home, Idaho; Chris Curtin from McCall, Idaho.

Others participating in the program will be Robert Peterson from Entrypoint Solutions, Mark Erikcson of the Economic Development Authority of Winthrop, Minn., and Deb Socia, Chris Mitchell and Cat Blake from Next Century Cities.

(Photo of Deb Socia while at Tech Goes Home, from the Christian Science Monitor.)