You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
June is Equality Month here at Bloomberg, So every Monday and Thursday in the month of June we're looking at all aspects of equality. Today, our focus is on the lack of equal access when it comes to connectivity, something we often talk about at Bloomberg. And I feel, like you know, Matt coming off the pandemic, when we saw kids working from home or trying to work from home and then you know, parking in a lot outside of McDonald's or something because they just didn't have internet access.
I thought things were going to get a lot better, but as you remind me, it takes time.
Well, look, that's the biggest problem with the lack of broadband nationwide is that when schools sent all the kids home and said, you know, work from your laptops or you know, telecommute with your iPads, not everyone could do that for various reasons. It's expensive right to own that kind of equipment. And even if you are a rich person, if you're living in some remote area of the country, you just can't get online. So do we have to
roll out fiber is there are there other options. We just saw for Elon Musk getting approval from the Pentagon to provide starlinks to Ukraine. But we also talk about wireless broadband spreading the joys of high speed connectivity across the country. Still, it's a big country. It's a very very very big country, and I don't think a lot of Americans realize just how big it is.
You're right, You're right, things we take for granted in big metro cities is not the same across the country. Well. Heidi Binko is co founder and executive director of the Just Transition Fund, established in twenty fifteen by Rockefeller Family Fund in the Appalachia Funders Network. They are about helping communities tap into federal funding opportunities, including those in connectivity
and broadband. She joins us on Zoom from Charlottesville, Virginia. Heidi, good to have you here, and you've been listening to us rant on a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your organization, the work that you're doing to connect more Americans.
Yeah, thanks Carolyn, Thanks Matthew for having me today. I'm really glad you're talking about broadband. I think there's a sort of a quiet crisis in America that you're right, Carol, that those of us in metro areas really don't think about. So the Just Transition Fund is a nonprofit philanthropic organization that I founded a number of years back, and essentially we help communities affected by the downturn of the coal
industry diversify and grow their economies. So we're helping them realize, they realize their own vision and vision for a thriving, vibrant economic future. And we realized along the way that we cannot work on economic development. You know, as you said in your opening statement, you can't work on workforce development. Kids can't access the internet for educational purposes if there is not a good broadband connection in these places. And people in urban areas don't realize this. I think most
people don't realize it. But this problem is particularly crude acute in rural America. It's very It's even more acute in the rural communities in which we work. So the third of the coal communities that we work and don't have access. And it's even worse than some places like West Virginia the nation.
It's interesting, I'm thinking right now, you know, we're on radio obviously, but we're also on YouTube, and we're on Bloomberg Originals are streaming service, and for something like here, you know, people take it for granted again, like being able to kind of tap into us on multiple platforms. But you're right, it's not the case across certainly rural parts of the country. What are the government programs that are out there in a week where we're talking a lot about governments.
Well, we have the big broadbands, true, what's it called broadband equity, access and deployment deployment, right, the Bad Program, which is Bad Program forty two billion dollars.
So at least it's like a lot.
At least the government realizes that there's a problem, right and are trying to do something about it.
Yeah, that's exactly right, Matthew. The Bad Program, which is administered by the the NTIA, the National Telecommunications Information Agency, is one of several agencies that is receiving a lot of money for broadband to speed broadband adoption across the federal government. Actually, I don't think people realize it, but there's over one hundred billion dollars available through this administration
to support broadband access access. The problem is it's not that easy for communities, particularly rural communities or low capacity communities, to access those funds. So that's that's where that's where the Just Transition Fund comes in.
So what do you do? I can imagine because this country really is so big that it's not just West Virginia or I don't know, Kansas, but there are multiple states where you know, the population per square mile is less than one, right, So how do you you can't roll out fiber to all of those places? Right? Is it about fixed wireless access?
It's about a lot of different technologies and in your right, right, the problem is particularly particularly acute in places like southern Illinois, Western Colorado, different places in Ohio, all across the.
Country, Wyoming, Mexico exactly.
Right, Like the tribal communities are hit particularly hard the Navajo Nation. In some areas, ninety percent of the communities can access can't access the internet. Right, So it's it's it's it's particularly bad. And essentially what we do is we act as an early stage investor to help communities access the federal capital capital they need to build out and access broadband infrastructure. So whether it's you know, fixed wireless or or broadband or fixed wireless or or starlink
or what have you. There, there are different ways to access the federal programs. Do you guys into some of our Yeah, some of our communities out in out in tribal areas are working on that are using that. The problem with starlink is that it's really expensive now, right, and that's another problem, right, I mean that's what makes this broadband problem so hard to deal with, right, Like, it's not only a problem of physical infrastructure of access, but it's also a problem affordability.
What's a successful project that you guys have done and we've just got about thirty seconds.
Yeah, great project that we worked on was in West Virginia. We helped a series of communities access more than forty five million dollars in federal funds and it ended up connecting over thirty thousand of the most disconnected households in West Virginia. So those kids that you heard about during the pandemic that we're going to the McDonald's Wi Fi right parking lot to get Wi Fi to do their homework, that's what this project helped.
Wow, that's amazing, that's very good.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, because what a disadvantage, and it's tough that some families, so many families had to endure that. Hopefully they don't have to go through that again anytime soon.
Yeah, and especially in a world, especially when it comes to things like school. I mean, that's how kids, that's how they work. It's just very different, certainly from when I went to school, and maybe when you went to school.
A little different from back in the seventies.
Here, Heidi, thank you so much. I'm glad we were able to check in with you. Heidibinko, she's co founder and executive director of the Just Transition Fund, joining us on Zoom from Charlottesville, Virginia. No, I just remember with my own daughter, Like it's like all these assignments came in on, like laptops and everything, and how they communicate with teachers and great, like it's just different.
We should revolt, all right, Okay.
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