Small Towns, Big Advocates: Municipal Broadband & Access with Michael DeChiara

How can our communities adapt to an increasingly online world where broadband access, computing devices, and digital literacy are necessary to fully participate in society? This season of Public Hearing is tackling all things Digital Equity - from small towns to national organizations - to better understand the obstacles and pathways to achieving digital equity.

In this episode of Public Hearing, Josh speaks to Michael DeChiara, Coordinator for the Alliance for Digital Equity in Western Massachusetts about the challenges faced by rural communities trying to get online, and the most sustainable solutions.

Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities facing Massachusetts' Gateway Cities as they work to create more equitable, liberated, and sustainable communities. Listen to all of our episodes at https://publichearing.buzzsprout.com/ and follow us on Twitter @PublicHearingMA to keep up to date on all things Public Hearing!

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Transcript

Joshua Croke (00:00):

Hello, Worcester and the world. You are listening to Public Hearing on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm your host Joshua Croke, and we're excited to be back with this new season of Public Hearing. Public Hearing is Action! by Design's podcast and radio show, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities facing Massachusetts Gateway cities as they work to create more equitable, liberated and sustainable communities. Each episode we bring you stories of community change work, featuring the people and organizations working to make a difference in their communities. We dive into issues like affordable housing, accessible transportation, equitable education, and hear from experts and community leaders about the solutions they're creating to address these challenges. Whether you're a policy wonk, a community organizer, or just someone who cares about creating a more fair and just world, this podcast is for you.

Joshua Croke (00:52):

So hit subscribe, keep listening, and let's get to work. Learn more about the show at publichearing.co. This season, we're focused on closing the digital divide and ensuring everyone in our communities has access to reliable internet, devices and resources to learn how to effectively use these tools to access everything from healthcare to education, to job opportunities. Our guest today is Michael DeChiara. Michael is the Coordinator for the Alliance for Digital Equity based in Western Massachusetts. Shout out Western Mass. The Alliance understands that digital equity is an essential right for people in today's world where access to the internet is necessary for full participation in society. The Alliance recently re-received one of the first regional partnership grants from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to advance digital equity programming in Hampton, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire Counties. As a resident of a small r- rural town that until recently had insufficient broadband, Michael has been working on digital access issues since 2004 following the written bio. Welcome, Michael. It's so great to have you here. Following that written bio, I always invite folks to share any additional information about themselves, their identity, social location, anything you feel may be helpful to share that might give our listeners a bit more insight into you and your connections to the topics that we're talking about today. So Michael DeChiara, welcome and thank you so much for joining us here on Public Hearing. Anything you'd like to briefly add about yourself for our listeners?

Michael DeChiara (02:19):

Uh, well thank you Joshua, for having me. It's, it's a privilege to be part of this conversation. Um, I think the only thing I would add is that we in Western Mass have a, you know, a close relationship to Central Mass and many of the things that we experience out here, you guys experience in the middle part of the state. Um, so I I think in many things that is true, including digital equity.

Joshua Croke (02:39):

Absolutely. And, and while the show focuses on what we call the Gateway Cities, um, a conversation that you and I had previous to this was the importance of not forgetting our small towns and the communities that, uh, exist within this statewide ecosystem. And so I want to just uplift and amplify the importance of our, of our, our, like smaller communities. But small does not mean as important or as mighty, right?

Michael DeChiara (03:04):

Correct.

Joshua Croke (03:05):

Awesome. And so I wanna pick up where we left off, um, with our first guest, Paul Matthews from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, and we began a discussion about the idea of access to high quality internet as a human right, which I know The Alliance takes a stance on. So can you talk about what that means for you?

Michael DeChiara (03:24):

Sure. Um, it really is, um, a core civil right, the way we see it. Um, you know, there's a definition from the National Digital, uh, Inclusion Alliance, which, um, talks about digital equity as, as you identified in the intro, as being crucial for a participation in society broadly. So whether it's education, finding a job, healthcare, just connecting with family and friends or entertainment, um, you know, so that having a full life, high, high quality life that's connected and meeting your your needs is something that we understand. And in our research, um, in 2021, it was clear that, you know, digital equity was essential regardless of what people were doing. Um, so I think at this point, fortunately that has risen up as the conversation that, you know, there's two words in digital equity. People I think initially thought about digital, it was sort of an add-on, but equity really centers the person.

Joshua Croke (04:23):

Beautiful. And one of the other pieces that I don't know if we defined with Paul was closing the digital divide. And that's something that is kind of the common theme of these conversations. And could you elaborate on that a little bit?

Michael DeChiara (04:36):

Sure. It's, it's actually interesting with The Alliance, you know, we started out talking about the digital divide and we, we migrated to digital equity, which, which felt like it was a, a better fit. Um, you know, there are haves and have nots, um, so people who don't have connections and people who do have connections, people who have, um, effective equipment to access the internet, people who don't. So there is an effect and there's have a divide of haves and had not, but really it's a, it's a framing of can you equitably participate and you have the tools and the, the abilities to do that, whether, um, connection is ability or skills as an ability or anything in between. It's a combination.

Joshua Croke (05:16):

Yeah. And, and so I think for a lot of folks who have, um, varying layers of, of privilege and don't, didn't necessarily think about what access to or not having access to the internet really looked like until it became a much more visible conversation through the pandemic, which unfortunately a lot of, uh, you know, oppression and marginalization and access issues became more visible throughout the pandemic, but that didn't mean that they weren't there already. And you've been working on this prior to the, the pandemic, and so I'd love to learn a little bit about your journey and you've been involved in this work for, for a while. And so what led you to this, this, and, and what are the, how has this evolved through the, the years that you've been, uh, advocating for digital equity?

Michael DeChiara (06:04):

Um, I would try to keep the journey short in my description. Um, but as you mentioned the intro, I live in a small town, uh, Schutesbury, Mass just north of Amherst. We have a population of 1700 people and like most of rural Western Mass, if not rural America, um, we did not have adequate internet connectivity. So up until 2019, so just a little before the pandemic, approximately 40% of our town had dial up. And some of your listeners might not only even remember what dial up is, um, but it's insufficient for doing business in any way on the internet. Um, so I got involved in 2004 because it was clear that, um, small towns of Western Mass needed to have internet. And at that point we didn't have this pandemic aha moment. And so we would talk to policymakers, um, and if they were in Eastern Mass and they had great contact connectivity, they didn't understand it.

Michael DeChiara (07:00):

And really the discussion then was about connectivity. Um, what ended up happening, and I was a part of was this state put forth money, um, then it was matched by Obama stimulus money to build out what was called the middle mile. So connecting town halls and libraries in 32 of the towns at that point, um, the internet, so you could sit outside your library in your car and connect. Um, the next step was the last mile, which is just wrapping up now, which was I think 53 communities in both Central and Western Mass to actually connect people to the home. So that was a long laborious process. Um, you know, I, I did start in 2004. From my personal experience, I got, um, connected to Fiber in our town in 2019. And uh just as an asterisk, one of the things that I'm very proud about in our situation is our, our community owns our internet. So we have municipally owned internet. So it's, we went from having very inadequate to high class and it generates revenue and the town owns it. 

Joshua Croke (08:03):

Um, so, so can I pause?

Michael DeChiara (08:04):

It's a whole journey. 

Joshua Croke (08:06):

Can I pause you there cuz I'm fascinated by that and, and congratulations on what I imagined was a, a significant feat to accomplish because I think one of the things that folks, or at least myself doesn't think about all the time in the world of like wifi devices other than like plugging it in and unplugging it to try and, you know, kickstart it so it works again, is there, there's a lot of infrastructure behind building, you know, broadband and getting that access into, into communities. And the one of the challenges that we talked with Paul about in, in Worcester is that the Charter Spectrum has essentially a monopoly on internet access and service in Worcester. And I was shocked to find out that the actual internet service itself isn't even part of the contract the city has with the charter. It's all about cable TV access.

Joshua Croke (08:54):

And so I'm like, when my mind was like blown away, I was like, we have no, like, protections in place for how we manage and access the internet in, in the city. Obviously Charter has a financial incentive to continue to provide internet access to to families, but, um, that was shocking to me. So could you talk to me a little bit about the process for like advocating for municipal broadband and like owning that and what was the staffing challenges and like the funding challenges to make this happen? I'm just fascinated kind of across the board.

Michael DeChiara (09:27):

Um, well I'll say two things just in advance of that. Um, one of the things that is very interesting and hopefully will change is that not only does Worcester not have control about how internet happens, but Massachusetts doesn't really either. So, um, there's a state division Department of Telecommunications that has some regulation, but that's mostly around cable, not about internet service. It really is the feds. And so, um, even if a state wants to be more assertive or more creative, there's limitations unless federal law changes. So that's limiting in, in many regards in terms of this digital equity and deployment. Um, and then the other part is just that the access and the way it's built really comes down to um, you know, it's infrastructure, but it's profit, you know, so if you look at, and when I started doing the tooth work way back when, what I realized is earlier in the 19 hundreds, uh, it's this exact same parallel to electrification.

Michael DeChiara (10:30):

So if you were in say, a small rural community where there weren't a lot of people, the electric company didn't run wires to you because it building the infrastructure for a handful of people didn't make sense. And so it's an exact same parallel. Um, and so if you think about, um, in the thirties, Tennessee Valley Electric electrification and building the dam and sort of providing rural southern US with electricity, that was the government intervention. And so this is very similar that with the stimulus money and the Biden administration investing in broadband and digital equity, it's the same kind of investment saying no matter what nook and cranny you are located in, in America, you deserve to have adequate digital access because we need it in today's society. So it's, you know, it's almost a hundred years later and it's the same dynamic. Just a different topic.

Michael DeChiara (11:20):

Um, in terms to answer your question briefly, um, it was all volunteer. Um, what I would say about Massachusetts, which is one of the things I find really cool is that there's vibrant municipal local level volunteers. And that happens, I know, especially in the small towns. Um, and that's exciting. It's also a limitation because, you know, these issues are both complex and they obviously take a long time. Um, the businesses that are involved in serving internet, whether they're a cable company or they're an internet service provider, um, that's their business. So they would prefer to maintain control and be able to sort of figure out who their customers are and where their investments are. So doing it at the local level is always a challenge. Where, where Shutesbury ended up being able to take advantage of this is, as I mentioned, the last mile.

Michael DeChiara (12:11):

There was state money that got put forth and communities had a choice. You could either have the cable company build out to your town, um, or you could use that money and match it with your own and build out. And so because we'd been doing this work for years previous, we both had head start in terms of thinking about it and we had people who were knowledgeable about it. Um, I was on the committee for a few years at the very beginning and have not been since, but, um, it's, it's a heavy lift. And just to give you an example, cuz this might blow your mind too. Um, one of the, the biggest things is telephone poles. Utility poles. So if you are gonna run fiber, which is really the technology that people need, they have to go somewhere. So they go on utility poles, either the utility or the phone company owns those poles. So you have to ask them permission to utilize them and pay them, and then also to study where they can be. So even something as little as how do you string the fiber can be more than a year bureaucratic procedure. Um, so it, it takes determination. It also takes understanding the regulations. And fortunately in Massachusetts, you know, we had partnership with Mass Broad- Broadband Institute to do this stuff. So there was a public sector voice saying, you know, we prioritize this and that was the health municipalities.

Joshua Croke (13:38):

And so now that it's up and running, is it a, is it a like profitable enterprise? Is it, is it growing and expanding and,

Michael DeChiara (13:46):

Well, we don't necessarily have to expand because it's only the, the base of the residents in town. But I think the, the term is, um, take rate of how many people are taking up the service. And so I believe our take rate in town, which I, you know, we have 1700 residents, I forget how many households that is, maybe 500 or so. But our take rate is about, I think 93% in that ballpark. So most everybody has it. Um, and the nice thing we actually, because we own it, our rates went down this year, that never happens. 

Joshua Croke (14:23):

Wow. 

Michael DeChiara

So <laugh>, 

Joshua Croke (14:24):

Yes. 

Michael DeChiara (14:25):

So it was cheap, it was cheaper than it was before. Um, you know, and if you're in a rural area, for example, prior to this, and you'll have it in Worcester County too, people were reliant on satellite surface, for example, if you can't get it, which is very expensive and very limited in terms of quality.

Michael DeChiara (14:40):

Um, so some people were paying exorbitant rates, um, beyond just, you know, what a regular internet service provider plan would be. Um, we started out of the gate being cheaper and then as I said, it just went down this year. So, um, and the town is, is very, from a public policy perspective, municipalities across America, but especially Massachusetts are always short on the cash, whether it's for schools or roads or whatever. And so the, and there's very few opportunities to generate revenue. Um, and so this is for generation, um, mode where we're actually bringing money into the town.

Joshua Croke (15:12):

I love that. And, and as I asked the question of like, is it profitable, we're also having the conversation of like, make internet free for everybody <laugh>, right? So how, what's the balance look like there? And this, maybe this gets into some of the work for the, with The Alliance for Digital Equity, but what is that, that balance of like providing folks reliable and high quality internet access while also recognizing that there is a cost burden to municipalities and, and folks that are, are providing these services, you know, providing the customer service, et cetera.

Michael DeChiara (15:42):

Um, I know when we rolled it out, um, you know, in order to do it, as I said in Shutesbury we needed a town meeting so we had to get two-thirds votes. So you have to get people on board understanding the issue. It was one of the most unifying town meetings I've ever been at. Everyone wanted it for the most part. Um, and in terms of the price structure, it was really a matter of what it costs, um, and what was affordable for people. Um, I don't know cause I have not been part of that conversation. If there's any opportunity for sliding scale, I think that's probably the, the next part, um, what we may or may not be able to talk about is the Affordable Connectivity Program, which is this new federal, um, subsidy program that gives $30 a month to eligible households. I know that there's some municipality itself, for Greenfield for example, they have community owned internet. And so the Greenfield Network participates in ACP. I actually don't know if Schutesbury does. Um, but there's nothing pre precluding, um, any ISP whether you're municipal or a privately owned from participating in ACP.

Joshua Croke (16:45):

And so I know that through ARPA a lot of dollars came in to support people getting online and getting connected. And now like everything related to ARPA, people are like, but what is gonna happen once the money is no longer there? So what does sustainability look like? I, I'm really interested and we actually have started working on a season around like transforming philanthropy because I'm really interested around like philanthropic responsibility in, in providing access to these civil rights issues such as the internet. So what is the, what's your kind of areas of concern as a long-term advocate in this work around funding and sustainability?

Michael DeChiara (17:26):

Um, I wouldn't say it's a concern. I think it's more of an opportunity slash challenge, um, in a, in a real way, which is that true sustainability means integrating it into service provision, however that looks. Um, so as an example, what we've talked about at The Alliance is there's an initiative that's coming up soon through Mass Broadband Institute to see about wiring older houses that are not prepared to have internet. You know, because they're so old and just it, it can't take fiber. Um, you know, maybe it was wired for cable in the 1970s, for example. Um, so one could, you could do a one-time fix for those, you know, buildings and get people ready. But really it's a matter of looking at the Department of Housing and Economic Development to, as part of its funding mechanisms for all its programs to make sure that if, whether it's public housing or private loan programs or you know, whatever it might be, that the understanding that both the buildings and the units within the buildings are adequately wired for people to get access.

Michael DeChiara (18:30):

And so you're shifting policy where you're expanding it. Um, same thing in education, you know, so if you're talking about service delivery for kids, um, what shifted in the pandemic was all of a sudden people had to do online learning and online teaching and the teachers were not prepared cuz they didn't necessarily have to do it before. And the kids and their house households were maybe not prepared cuz you had, you know, parents who were working and three kids who were trying to do classes. And, um, so building in the integration, both the funding for it and the planning support for it is real sustainability both on a programmatic level and a financial level. And I think it's really that's where the digital equity mindset comes in, that you have to sort of expand and say, this is a civil right. The complete package means that people have to be able to participate fully online.

Michael DeChiara (19:17):

And if we're the government agency does housing or the government agency does education or the government agency does transportation, something that doesn't even seem like you would have digital in it. If you think that way, you can then integrate it, um, in a similar way because I also professionally have been in philanthropy. Um, I would say one of the things that is interesting is foundations for example, or funders generally often ask their grantees for, you know, reporting and, and statistics about, you know, who were served and it was what was served. The big black hole, um, that I think was discovered during the pandemic is people didn't know who were not connected. And you know, if you, you know, The Alliance did, uh, an assessment report for the three counties we were primarily working in then in 2021 to say what's the extent of the digital inequities so that people were experiencing, but no one knew.

Michael DeChiara (20:12):

No one knew across the country. Um, but one of the suggestions we've made to our local funders are, if an organization's getting a grant, maybe you build into that intake process a question of do you have adequate access to the internet? Or if you ha- do you feel comfortable having skills enough to use the internet? Whatever it is. But, again, it's integrating into the, the workflow that people normally do. So if you're in the pro, if you're in the business of giving out money and getting information about what people's needs and communities are, you add that to as a question. So you're gathering information and then you can respond with grants that are targeted.

Joshua Croke (20:47):

And this is why I, equity is such a crucial thing to build as a foundation for any group, for any project. Asking like, who's benefiting from this? Who's not benefiting from this? Who's at the table making decisions, who isn't? Cuz then I think we are able to close that gap of who's left behind in and not have to go through a catastrophic global pandemic <laugh> to realize that uh, there are people, um, with limited and some cases no access at all to, to things like the internet. And you've also been very involved in like, ed in the education space. And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit about how that intersects, um, with some of The Alliance work and, and mostly I'm thinking about the kind of the three legs of the stool as I've come to learn as we've been producing this season, which is devices access to the internet and access to training.

Joshua Croke (21:43):

Uh, if I get those correct. Cuz I remember this back in 2017, I sat on the steering committee for the Worcester Public School strategic planning process that sought to be community informed. And one of the challenges that we faced were that educators were saying that they didn't feel equipped or weren't prepared to offer virtual schooling. Um, we were getting folks in the place to respond to emails in, in some cases, right? And, and build a relationship with with their, with their inboxes. So what is The Alliance doing as and what are you doing as it relates to education training and at what level can we finally say like this is an expectation for our educators, for staff, uh, that are providing services, community-based services. Cuz I think that's also a really critical piece is there's a level of time in which training and resources need to be supported and recognize that we're in 2023 and this is how young people are, are engaging and learning and connecting.

Michael DeChiara (22:42):

Yeah, there's so much there. Um, I, one thing I would say it is, it's a moving, evolving target. So as technology changes, the the need for digital skills will, will change as well. Um, I think with The Alliance, what we've looked at is a variety of approaches because not one approach works for everybody. Um, so for example, there's a very well established program out of Toronto called Cyber Seniors and it's a me- a mentoring program where they work with young people to develop their skills as mentors and then they partner with older adults who are interested in getting digital skills. Um, and the fascinating and powerful thing that they've said to, to us is that young people know a lot, but they don't know that they know a lot. And so, you know, they, they're digital natives. Um, so the things that they take for granted, they can see a screen and they can move around.

Michael DeChiara (23:32):

If you're 70, 80, that's not the intuition that you have. Um, so understanding that, so there's a mentoring model that I think works. Um, we're working with community colleges where they've been very good at stepping up with their students during the pandemic, but what they've told us is they didn't have money to develop a curriculum and offer to community members who were not enrolled as students. So probably, you know, many of the same profiles of students, they just happened not to be enrolled. They're community members doing something else. So working with them to figure that out, I think that's, you know, and then we've got some other programs where we're trying to either bring stuff in from Eastern Mass or develop it our own where we can provide more traditional classes. Um, but there's a lot of twists. So for example, if you think about who's left behind older adults, for example, who maybe can, where transportation is difficult so they're home bound or it's not easy to get to a class, um, or someone who's living with disabilities where there's either, um, hardware issues that are challenging or transportation is challenging.

Michael DeChiara (24:38):

So delivering support and homes is also a, a whole different approach. Um, and what we've recently learned from conversations is that the retention level of skills is much better one-to-one, for example, in those settings, but you know, it, it costs more and it's less effective cuz it's one-to-one of special class. And so I think the lesson learned, whether it's, you know, an outside of K-12 setting in other education venues, that you wanna have a mix of approaches because people are going to respond differently in terms of their learning and also their needs. And then I think getting back to what you're talking about with teachers, um, and I think it's true for service providers too and the nonprofit sector especially that you, there needs to be the support for the people who are facilitating that process, whether there's to teacher teaching a class or a social work worker, um, running a, a group of some sort that you can't, you have to be comfortable enough and fast enough in the digital space to be able to take on that leadership and do the work that you wanna do with whatever group it is. Um, and historically up until the pandemic, that really was not adequate. Um, so, and to your point, you have to have the right people at the table to ask the questions about what it takes to feel comfortable to running those things. Whether you're the teacher or the social worker, they're gonna tell you different things.

Joshua Croke (25:58):

Absolutely. Well, I did that thing I told you before this that I wasn't gonna do and say we have about one minute left <laugh> in in our in our conversation, um, I could talk to you for, for much, much longer. For listeners, what's something you hope folks are taking away from today's conversation? What do you hope they'll do with this information? And, you know, is there anything that I didn't ask you that I should, that folks should be thinking about?

Michael DeChiara (26:22):

Um, I would say that based on my knowledge, um, you know, we're doing a lot in Western Mass. I think there's a lot of opportunity in Worcester County, um, both the city of Worcester and then the, the entire county to be working on digital equity. Um, the state is funding municipal digital equity planning, and so the city of Worcester, but every municipality can take part in that. And I think that's an opportunity where, you know, regular people living their lives, if they care about this issue, if nothing else can reach out to the, their municipal government and say, are you looking at this issue? Because there's free money to be had to understand how to do it at the municipal level. Um, so I think that's an opportunity there. And I think the optimistic thing is the world woke up to the fact that, um, you know, digital equity is something that we need to be looking at in, in America, um, and that if we really wanna support equity gener- equity generally, then looking at digital equity is a really important component of that.

Joshua Croke (27:22):

Thanks so much, Michael. We've been talking to Michael DeChiara, Coordinator for the Alliance for Digital Equity based in western Massachusetts for our series on digital equity. Uh, thank you listeners for listening to Public Hearing, our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 fm Worcester's only NPR affiliate Station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. You can learn more about the show at publichearing.co. Our audio producer is Giuliano D’Orazio. And thank you to our production team, Kellee Kosiorek and Jack Tripp, who also make this show possible. The work continues, folks. Thanks for listening.