Broadband Infrastructure, Female MBA Enrollment Hits a Record High

for telecom operators and enterprises. He joins us on the phone from plain Oe, Texas. Charlie, great to have you with us this afternoon. What are what do you at DCS ink see from this infrastructure bill. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, and certainly it's a great opportunity for the entire industry to achieve Biden's goal of providing affordable broadband for everyone and inching us a bit closer to building one century from a broadband perspective, so

we're pretty excited. Well, what does the Infrastructure Bill or in law essentially do, specifically when it comes to giving um wider broadband access to Americans as it will it really move the needle in your view? Well, I mean, there's been many studies, you know, several years ago that we anticipated that would take about eighty billion dollars to deliver broadband everywhere. And when you look at America, there's about thirty million Americans that have either no broadband or

very limited broadband. And in broadband, you know sort of UH mapped in in this sort of category of having less than three megabits of of up speedies in meg down and and now with the new guidelines, UH, service buyers are going to have to enable a hundred mag down in twenty meg up, which is which is still slow relative to what most of US and major potent markets are available. And specifically when you look at what companies like DCS are offering, you know, some of the

large tier ones today. So tell us about about DC yes, and specifically how you work in different cities around the country in order to bring broadband to Americans. So we UH we deliver the core edge broadband access technology to the service providers as well as provide in home WiFi technology. So we we deliver fiber access UH to homes and businesses not only here but around the world. We're in

about seventy countries around the world. But we've been very active for the last twenty years and delivering services here in the United States, and I can I can speak volumes this this bill speaks volumes too. I think the opportunity to provide services where it's fundamentally just been too expensive. I mean, the construction costs to dig up streets and deliver fiber access to direct homes has has frankly been

one of the most inhibited costs. Is that a necessary costs for when we think about the future and when we think about getting these Americans access to broadband? After all, Elon Musk is able through Starlink to get broadband to people all over the United States and indeed even in some parts of the ocean, as he was tweeting about over the weekend. Uh So, is it is this really the right way for to deliver broadband access in this

day and age? Well, I would tell you the answers. Yes, I mean we we've been delivering you know, subspeed broadband, you know, using legacy copper for the last twenty five years. But if you truly want to get to a place where consumers and businesses can enjoy the mega trends that we're seeing from you know, just simple high def video collaboration, video gaming. That's that's taking on new heights. You know, you've got augmented virtual reality, You've got megaverts that Facebook

is promoting. You know, the Internet of things is growing in and when you look at all these challenging bandwidth required services, you know, to to really be able to keep up with uh these services. Uh, we believe um that fiber based broadband is the only way that consumers are really going to get the services that they want.

And the services that you know, consumers are able to get through satellites that you've been referred to are still very limited, you know, che I mean, Charlie, I'm sure that you've seen some of the research out there, and that is, you know about of adults with incomes below thirty dollars a year report not having home broadband services in comparison to about seven percent of adults with household

earnings over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Low income, elderly populations, people of color, those who live in rural and tribal areas disproportionately likely to lack broadband access. We've seen this research come out from Brookings and others. UM, are those the people that you think ultimately will get served. Well,

I think they will. And you know, as part of the sixty billion dollars, I think there's fourteen billion dollars that's being allocated as financial support for those in needs. So I do believe that this bill is you know, is achieving both the infrastructure aspects of it, which you know there's forty two billion that's going towards infrastructure and and you know there's other funds being allocated to support those in need. And so I look, I mean I've

been in this industry for thirty years. We've never seen anything like this, and I think this is a great step forward. Uh. Does it get us all the way there, We'll see, but it certainly is a really good start. What what does this mean now for your company specifically? UH,

in terms of business, I'm just curious. Well, it certainly is going to help fuel not only existing service writers, but I think that there's a new breed of service for writers that based on technology and technology that's available today, UM is going to enable new companies and opportunity to provide you know, communities and and UH residents around the United States an opportunity to get services where they weren't

in the past. So for us, it's a certainly an opportunity for our existing customers to get financial support to accelerate the pace at which they would have historically not you know, taken on this challenge just because of the cost structure. And then I think there's going to be a lot of new fiber over builders that you're going

to see also participate. Hey, Charlie, I do wonder are you guys already thinking about hiring an expansion plans just to meet maybe the greater demands of the infrastructure spending on this We are and in fact, you know, as you probably know, we trade on the nastack and I get a lot of questions from analysts and shareholders about, you know, our spend and where our spend has been this year, and and we have been investing you know, at a at a much higher pace in one and

and we certainly anticipate, you know, that is going to give us the same opportunity like like many in our industry. And our backlog is up three times what it was this time last year. So, uh, you know, if we if we can successfully navigate you know, the world of getting semiconductor chips um you know that that I think is the real question here is is you know this is this is designed to be deployed over the next

five years. And I think you know what gets us somewhat comfortable is that you know the process will probably take hold over the next six months, you know, from a filing perspective, and then you look at the awards that will probably take place in the latter part of two and that means that you know, deployments will start in our view, and I think that's about the time we believe that the chip shortage will will begin to alleviate. All right, that's a really important point and I'm glad

you brought that up. Uh. He's the president CEO of dz S. Charlie Vote, joining us on the phone from Plano, Texas. We mentioned last week about female NBA enrollment hitting a record high for the school year. That staff the results of some research that was released on Friday by the Forte Foundation. It's a nonprofit working to create gender equity and business. So great to have joining with us. Forte Foundation CEO Alyssa Sankster. She's on the phone in Austin, Texas. Alyssa.

Good to have you here on Bloomberg Radio. Tell us a bit about the work you guys did, and then the results you found. Sure, so, we look every year at women's enrollment in full time NBA programs, and this year what we found was that three schools had actually reached gender parody UM and that was George Washington University, University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, and Johns Hopkins University's Kerry

School of Business. But overall, these numbers for all of our schools had gone up from thirty nine percent last year to this year. Wait, okay, let me let me take a step back here, because when Caroline I talked about this last week, it was our Bloomberg Business Week by to the day, and we were both shocked that we're not even close to parody, even though this is

a record. Let's start with what those three schools that you mentioned are doing to get to gender parody and then go into why there is still a lack of gender parody. Sure, So, you know, we first started tracking this UM back in earlier and gotsh two thousand five the number was around twenty percent. And so what we've been monitoring over the last couple of decades is how that's tracking toward purity. And it's a slow going It takes usually a half percent one percent up and then

it will take a step back. And depending on how the economy is going. Um, sometimes NBA enrollments are counter to that, and so you never know exactly how it's all gonna play out. But the things we know are that women need we need more women in that pipeline, and in order to make that happen, you need to be talking to women more earlier in the pipeline, and you need to also be able to make sure that they are ready to go and ready to apply to

the business school. So, um, we're just going to continue monitoring, and it is shocking that it's taking us this long, especially when law and medicine were there back in the early two thousand's. Well, the other thing though I always think about to listen, we talked about this women generally, where men and women like coming out of undergraduates in general, like in uh, you know, early programs, training programs, whether it's on Wall Street now, so where they tend to

like track fairly equally. It's then when you start to get into the higher positions that something comes undone and whether it's women pop out of the workforce to have kids or the perception of them in the workforce that they will ultimately pop out to have kids. Like, there's things that just go on dynamics are also not having a sponsor someone to really kind of watch out for you and move you along, or men just wanting other

men because they relate best to other men. Uh, there are just some things that it feels like still need to be dealt with. There are, and I think that this is one of the levers that we can pull, and that is reaching gender parity in the classroom and NBA programs because those are key pathways into those business leadership positions. But you're right, that doesn't mean the work

is done. That means that we have to depend on our companies to be tracking and measuring performance, setting gold for their managers about how they are investing and um engaging with their employees and building them into the next leaders that they want to promote and so um there's a lot of work that companies have to do once those women enter the workforce in making sure that the environment and the landscape for their future leadership is being

monitored and established. So what's the thing that holds women most? Holds them back the most because they can come out of you know, getting an m B A. But I do wonder what are you hearing from the work that you guys are doing that holds women back the most when it comes to really getting to those senior positions. What is it? UM? I think it's we often hear that you leave a job because of a manager, not

because the company. And I think that companies, UM would be uh, it would be good for companies to focus a lot on how they're training those managers and how they are setting those goals. Like I said, UM, I think that the environment in the landscape was really built by men for men a long time ago, and so we are trying to adapt and change, um the workforce and it's a much more diverse workplace now, so companies have to really monitor and track that. Okay, Well, speaking

of monitoring and tracking. According to Catalyst it's a global nonprofit UH as of August of one, only thirty positions of CEO at SMP five companies were held by women, So that's just six percent of companies in the SPI were held by women. Help us understand the path from a graduate education in business and NBA to the executive ranks and when we will start to see more gender parity in the executive ranks as a result of what

we're seeing at the NBA level right. And when we first started, there really was one CEO at the time when for Tape began, and so we we've definitely seen some improvement there one woman ceo UM and we've seen some improvement there. Again, it's slow going and there are a lot of steps that have to happen between graduate business education and the c suite and UH. It can be opportunities, it can be assignments, it can be domestic

or global, it can be the number of reports. It's all kinds of different experiences, and it's taking risk and and stepping out there and saying I want the job. So I think on the side of the companies, they've got to be UM giving these opportunities to the leaders that they want to see at the top in ten twenty years. And the women and the men have to say what do we want leadership to look like? And they have to take those steps and they have to raise their hand and say I want to go forward

and be a leader. Um. I think there's a lot of work being done right now to create those opportunities, and so i'm I'm I'm not sure we're going to solve it, um in you know, the next twenty years necessarily been improvement. I know. Oh my god, how long have we been talking about this? A long time? A long time? And you've seen movement on boards, right, You've

seen the board numbers really change and shift. It's just that in the c suite, especially at that CEO position, that's one position out of all the positions, and so it's hard to um make gender equity happen in in those positions. But it wasn't a lot of group progress on boards. Well, Alissa, has the pandemic set women back? Maybe I'm asking the obvious question, because we certainly have seen stories that say yes, indeed they have. And I

thought it was interesting. At the beginning of the pandemic, we thought this was going to be a great equalizer because everybody was working at home and it could be easier on women, and yet it hasn't turned out that way, right. I think I think what maybe made things easier at work made things more difficult at home, and so having to balance everything that was going on in your home life, if you had children or others in the household with you. I think that women took on, as they often do,

a larger amount of that work. And so where we've seen it impact, I think, you know, in terms of across the ECONO me, I think definitely women had challenges. I don't think we saw NBA women leaving their jobs necessarily getting laid off, But I do think that the

challenge now will be getting back to normal. And if we are going to go back into this post pandemic work style, how are we going to make sure that those at home who are working from home remotely taking advantage of flexible opportunities are actually included and thought about as in the same way that those who are back in the officer thought about. Lissa, what's the message for

the top NBA programs around the country. It's something that we look at really closely at Bloomberg and at Business Week, and I'm wondering what the takeaway is from this survey about how can they can get to gender parody. I mean, where does it start. Does it start at the dean level, does it start at the faculty levels? Do they need representation there. Um, yeah, they definitely need representation at the

faculty level. And I think paying attention to the role models that you put up in front of the classroom is important. I think thinking about the inclusive inclusivity of your campus and looking at what's happened in the classroom and um, knowing what kind of cases are being taught.

Are their female protagonists, Are you bringing in women leaders, Um, are you making sure that women are heard in the classroom and that their perspective is also valued and shared with the rest of their classmates, And that the men are learning as much from the women as the women

are from the men. So I think all of those things are important, and I think deans have their eye on this, and I think that's why you've seen a significant improvement in the last five years around these numbers, and we are starting to see purity in the classroom. All Right, We're gonna run, Hey, listen, Thank you so much, appreciate Alyssa Sayingster She is Chief executive officer Forte Foundation, on the phone from Austin, Texas.