Delaware Gov. John Carney Discusses New Broadband Infrastructure Investments Throughout State

early for sussex county it's about midday right senator wilson but i'm delighted to be with here with two-thirds of our congressional delegation center corporate representative rochester our lieutenant governor most of the elected officials here from the general assembly we're going to hear from senator penny john and representative van der waan where's jason jesse there he is we also have representative bruce king representative postals and senator wilson and senator richardson who's sitting in the back todd lawson a partner representing sussex county a partner with the state and extending broadband access across sussex county joins us as well i know todd said that mike vincent wanted to be here with us again they've been a strong partner this is not a new thing we've been working on this for some time prior to my tenure as governor but it's really exciting this morning to announce our first major investment as part of the american rescue plan act and first we need to thank our president president biden our own joe biden sometimes i have to pinch myself to to realize that and our congressional delegation for their work uh particularly over the last very difficult months over the last year and a half of as we've tried to respond to cover 19 in our state and we remain focused on getting every delawarian vaccinated so we can kind of operate uh in a more normal circumstance and we're making good progress we've met the president's goal of getting all adult delawareans vaccinated or 70 percent by the fourth of july the last mile if you will is a little bit more difficult and we appreciate all the partners that we have here in sussex county across our state and getting folks vaccinated so we can uh fully uh go back to to kind of a more normal way way of life one of the things that we have learned over the last year and a half is something that we already knew which is increasingly broadband internet access is important to our families our students our businesses and that we have deserts if you will across our state mostly here in sussex county in western sussex jason clark is here as the secretary of the department of of technology and information i always want to say an innovation it maybe should be on innovation but he's going to talk more about the details of our efforts the state's efforts over the last several years and explain to you the maps that are here in front of us that really show geographically and uh graphically where those internet deserts are essentially we're making this investment that is specifically uh identified in the arpa legislation as eligible for an expenditure and so it is being a very important commitment that we've already made as a state we thought this was the best first investment to announce to the public claire de manias is also here she has been designated as our point person to do the outreach to manage the funds to get all the state agencies together around to make sure that we spend these federal dollars efficiently effectively and that there's tremendous outreach that goes out to the public to our elected officials and others and we've been spending the last several weeks making presentations two members of the general assembly your leadership to the mayors we've had a conference call with the mayors to the business groups across our state to inform them of the limitations of the spending what the targets are and again the two big ones are broadband access and water and wastewater facilities another one which significantly benefits the lower part of our state and with which we have already have allocated significant resources in this capital budget 50 million dollars to our water and wastewater efforts and again our partners there are the three counties sussex county in a big way as well as the cities and towns so that will be something we'll talk about later but today we're going to talk about the investment in the broadband deserts that we have across our state and here in in sussex county one of the things i think that's most important to me as i think about i was in new york city yesterday meeting with site selectors and these are folks that work with companies across the country determining where they're going to locate their businesses and so it was a really good opportunity for me to to go look back from the outside on what we have to offer here in our state and some of the areas where maybe we don't match up with some of the the competitors that we have and as i think of my job as governor and our job as elected officials there's nothing more important than making sure that we have that we are competitive for those uh business locational decisions and uh to enable our businesses here in our state to be successful when you think about the ingredients of that broadband connectivity is a critical part of it we're delighted to have uh our uh partners with with comcast here and you're going to hear from kevin uh later about that and even we when we talked about our first investment uh series of investments we went to a r.c williams farm which is not too far from here uh kind of north west of here and uh and southwest of of seaford and rc showed us our c and his sons showed us how everything that they did on the farm required uh significant broadband connectivity and so it's not just it's importantly for us it's about making sure our children get connected particularly in an environment of remote learning it's about enabling families to have entertainment to brought to their home but it's also a significantly important thing for family farmers and businesses across their states delighted to be here with all of you with our partners in addressing these challenges and now i'd like to to introduce jason clark he and his team have the other jc i think i heard said senator carper said he and his team have been doing just a tremendous job again working with members of the general assembly working with our local partners uh sussex county in particular in addressing this issue he's going to get into the details talk about the maps here talk a little bit about our our efforts one last thing i would like to say and that is part of our investment here so we're talking about an investment of 110 million dollars part of it will be for hardwiring uh of these residences and communities another part of it would be is to make it affordable for students who are coming from households that from lower income households so that they can do that building on a program that we already have in place connecting delaware students uh to their schools and and other activities and we are we are have a strong partnership with the internet providers with comcast and others and in achieving that objective so jason clark is next to the to the podium [Applause] thank you very much governor thank you to everyone for being here today this is an exciting time to be involved in technology you know this announcement reflects an extraordinary opportunity for delaware i want to thank the bridgeville fire hall for hosting us today and a special thank you to bonnie from the ladies auxiliary for helping us pull this together we made a couple last minute shifts worried about the weather so thank you very much [Applause] she gave the sign up all right so i'm particularly proud to be a part of the department of technology and information um and the reason being is that we've been working on this expansion for well over a decade and i think it's important that i take a moment uh first to say governor carney has made this a clear day one concept affordability and accessibility being a top priority for the administration and i want to thank him our federal delegation our state delegation and uh for supporting these efforts to make this happen for delawareans uh just a quick history of what we've done as we've gone through this process whether it was health spill 96 in 2013 uh that funded a high speed line running from middletown to georgetown additional investment in 2015 going from georgetown to seaford and then across to louis those investments led to 30 million dollars in private sector advancement and expansion adding an additional 700 miles of fiber across blanketing our state that brought broadband closer each and every time to the homes into delawareans across the state but it wasn't enough we continued in 2017 with a fixed wireless project aimed at overcoming the last mile so one of our biggest challenges is on the map here you'll see these dark blue areas where we have pockets or broadband deserts as the governor referred to these are areas where it's very difficult we may have only a few homes on a stretch the last mile is that complete kind of completing the fiber connection to the home so that you can connect whether you're in a community of 500 or you're a house on your own on a farm that's 50 acres further investment in 2019 commercialized that wireless and so what we did was we brought 15 towers across sussex county and kent county online to support over 1 500 customers those are all key components that drove us to this point today the pandemic hit as we still evidenced today wearing mass in the audience our homes became offices they became classrooms and whether you had broadband or not whether you had a great signal or not you needed more and if you didn't have anything well i mean it was no longer an option students had to learn the cares act helped us address this the student need the cares act helped to stress the student need and thanks to investments made by governor carney dti was able to coordinate with the department of education and our partners at ctc technologies to establish connect delaware students it provided over twenty five thousand seven hundred students with access and those those services were extended to not only students educators throughout delaware providing the ability to continue with remote learning from the home we also had during that time coordinated with a diverse group of state legislators county officials technologists internet service providers the farm bureau private sector and economic development leaders along with k-12 and higher education representation we work towards developing a strategic plan to address broadband once and for all in the state of delaware we published that in may and you can find that in all the details at broadman.delaware.gov i want to thank everyone who partnered on that chris cohen specifically dti's chief of policy and communication along with along with the dti project manager kristen schirler for leading the initiative and i think it's important that i reference uh all the team members who who participated uh senator brian petty john from district 19. representative christa griffith from district 12 representative ruth briggs king from district 37 representative jeff spiegelman from district 11. sussex county administrator todd lawson sussex county's director of information technology dwayne kilgo newcastle county's chief of technology and administration michael nikki kent county executive director for economic partnerships linda parkowski richard wilkins from the delaware farm bureau the former director of information technology at the department of education patches hill the executive director for delaware charter schools kendall messet the business development and energy services manager from delaware electric cooperative kevin yingling the director of information technology from delmarva power russ erlich the director of economic research with the delaware prosperity partnership john taylor the director of network services from the university of delaware mark cabre and finally government relations from comcast sean looney and government relations from verizon bonnie mets our comp our combined efforts identified over 11 600 residences and businesses that lack broadband and they are represented in those blue areas on this map one key output from the plan is that we have leveraged data that provides detailed information on the exact areas where investments need to be made that is something that we did not have definitive detail on prior to going into 2020 and once we've created that we now know exactly where we need to target and we have developed a strategy that allows us to leverage our primary edge out strategy where we are able to extend wired services to each and every one of these homes the strategic plan provides the direction to close those gaps and today the 110 million dollar allocation is the is the tremendous opportunity that stands before us to execute and achieve our goal our goal is being the first state to provide wired services and connections to every delaware residence and business here in the state of delaware we will achieve this through a series of grants with program application and funding details that will release here in early october and for us this is going to be just of one one of many events where we have the opportunity to get out to showcase our vendors who will be participating and how we will make this a reality for delaware at this time i'd like to turn it over i'm going to introduce senator carper tc better known as tc uh round of applause for jason is his team at dti i was remiss in not recognizing our state treasurer importantly she and her office are responsible for managing the funds which actually have been transferred from the u.s treasury to the state uh we appreciate uh her being here and her work uh you're going to hear now from two-thirds of our our congressional delegation and i want to personally thank them for their work on this initiative for their work on cares act which resources have been invaluable in our response to coven 19 and accelerating out of it senator tom carper thank you governor i was privileged to be a be governor from 93 to 2001 those were great years uh we started in a recession and just upward and onward and did amazing things by by working together john carney was our lieutenant it was our deputy chief of staff for the first term and then he was our secretary of finance for the this the second term but uh he has uh provided leadership along with great leadership from our lieutenant governor and along with a bunch of legislators that are here that are not here democrats and republicans they are carrying our our state through maybe as challenging and difficult at times since maybe the great depression and uh with the worst recession since the great depression the worst pandemic since uh from 200 years and uh we're coming out we're coming out on the right side and things are getting better it's just grateful to be here with everybody today and be able to see so many people haven't seen for for a while and uh let's just put our hands together and just a word of celebration we're getting it this far by working together nothing like it nothing like there's an african african proverb that goes something like this if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far i'll go together and here in delaware we go together we go together we're going to continue to do that and as long as we keep that in in our hearts we'll be just fine i was coming home last night on the train lisa and i was pulling into uh we're getting close to biden station which for some reason they named after him i i know my staff and i raised like millions of dollars to overhaul the tr the train station make it beautiful they named it with their joe biden are you kidding no i don't i don't mind i don't mind i'm almost over it uh but they were pulling into biden station and uh there's a lady sitting in the right like the seat there next to me and i said well welcome to delaware she was wondering what i did just interesting phone calls and i would move away from her when i made some of the phone calls so i had some privacy but i said welcome to delaware the first state and she said why is that why is delaware the first state and i said we ratified the constitution before anybody else and for one whole week delaware was the entire united states of america and uh and i said so welcome to the first state and as it turns out we're first in a lot of things we are first in a lot of things one of the things we're first in is the value on a on a a sort of like a per capita basis on the value of the agricultural products that we create i think nobody else is even close to to where we are in terms of value i we have more five-star beaches than any state in in america half the fortune for 500 and half the new york stock exchange are incorporated here i mean if you happen to have a credit card in your pocketbook or your purse we have a like it's a 60 chance that it's literally from a bank in delaware so we're first in a lot of things and uh one of the things that we're going to be first in is as the governor said and and the other jc jason have said is we're going to be first in access to to the internet and it doesn't matter if you're a farmer on a tractor it doesn't matter if you're a kid trying to go to elementary school middle school high school college it doesn't matter if you're a doctor a nurse a patient who needs access and you can't they get out of your house you can't get to a doctor or hospital you're going to be able to use telemedicine to be able to we are going to be first across the way sometimes when i travel martha and i were out on west coast during our recess last week we spent a lot of time focused on china the threat from from from china but one of the one of the things that in terms of working together the president announced last night is a partnership with australia the uk and the united states of america with respect to the south china sea when i was a naval flight officer in the vietnam war my stocks my crew was we flew a lot of missions in the south china sea and uh the uh the idea the chinese are trying to push everybody else out take over the the the passages there the south china sea the east china sea and and southeast asia that doesn't work and the way the way we're going to beat them back is through partnership partnership with the uk with australia and the united states and all and the way we're going to prevail here and strengthen our economy and make sure that the kids have the opportunity to be as successful they can possibly be is is again that that partnership going back to the lady on the train nagashi she said to me well uh why do you call you the first date and i told her why but uh the teamwork it's the teamwork that makes this place so unique at least nice chris and i are privileged to serve with folks from 49 other states nobody's partnership frankly comes close to what we have here in this state you know you hear people talk about the delaware way and uh it's thank god it's still alive thank god it's still alive last thing i'll say is is is this sometimes when people ask me what i do when i'm in other parts of the country and i tell them um i uh i help people sometimes i just say i'm a servant and they say like are you a butler i say no i'm i'm sorry who do you serve i serve the people of delaware and i help people and one of the best ways you can help people is make sure they have a job and the governor's mentioned being up meeting with the site selectors yesterday and folks that are looking to locate businesses in delaware and any other state across the country they're interested in a lot of things they're interested in workforce they want to make sure that the folks that we're training folks to fill the jobs that need to be filled they're interested in common sense regulations they're interested in a reasonable tax burden they're interested in a good transportation system and you know what else they're interested in they're interested in access to the internet that's what they're interested they are interested in beaches they love that they love you know great state parks all that stuff they want to have access to the internet and in delaware we can give them the full package we can give them the full package uh governor and lieutenant governor lisa probably know uh heather gerk who worked still works with us used to work in the governor's office but heather and his uh sister amber are the king sisters the king sisters they grew up in dover and they there's three of them in all they're they're they're terrific they have this family motto and it goes something like this dream work makes a teamwork teamwork makes a dream work teamwork makes the dream work and uh it always has and it always will in this case this will keep us at number one and uh number one with a bullet and that's something we can all be happy and proud of chris cones can i be with us today and is anybody here on on chris's team anybody new staff yeah stand up and take a bow chris coons has been animally involved in the legislation thank you very much the cares act and now we're working on legislation that's past the senate that my committee environmental public works committee provided a lot of the the foundation for the bipartisan infrastructure act that includes drinking water wastewater water sanitation roads highways bridges climate all kinds of stuff that's the really the the foundation of which the bill the the the broader bill is built so we're proud to have all had a chance to work on and all that chris has been integrally involved in every bit of it as well and uh i think do i get to introduce lisa lisa list right now let me know take a little more time no no stay right now stay right here yeah none of this goes back to my wife i love this woman it stays right here uh lisa lisa came to to work with us and as an intern and later in the in the uh my congressional office in uh constituent services he helped julie the point person in my administration on strengthening families the family services cabinet council and then the deputy secretary of health and social services secretary of labor and then on and on do all kinds of things and she still looks about the same age she hasn't changed at all and she has usually worn all the hats carried all the banners and uh now we get to watch her in the uh the house representative she's got 435 people over there and they don't know much about some don't know much about delaware they know a lot about her and i say to them i say uh the her colleagues are asking have you had a chance to get to know lisa rochester i could ask republicans or democrats and you know what they all say i mean i like to a purpose we love lisa you know something we love lisa and we love her here in bridgeville we love her in sausage county and all over delaware love working with her kalisa blind rochester thank you senator thank you good morning everyone good morning it is um it is wonderful uh first of all to be here in the at the bridgeville fire department and um i think the governor was right we were all hoping for chicken and dumplings for lunch so i don't know maybe we can make that happen but it is just a pleasure to be here it's exciting to be here for this announcement and um i want to first acknowledge the leadership of the governor first of all for his vision from day one and secondly um i think this announcement today being the first announcement really is symbolic because it represents his care and concern for the entire state through whether it's a pandemic or just for us to be able to live and play and work broadband is necessary it is necessary and so i want to first salute the governor and his entire team claire dti all of the team that is working to make this a reality please let's give them a round of applause thank you governor i'd love to also i gotta shout out the lieutenant governor and i know i i guess i get a chance to introduce her when it's her turn okay well i want to shout out the lieutenant governor as well for her leadership particularly during this pandemic with covet 19 and all of her work on the opioid crisis in our state and mental health the members of the general assembly who are here you are where the rubber meets the road um you know the senators and i we do our part to make sure we bring the resources here but we know that you're here daily from your constituents you get to see and feel the pain as well as the joys and so we want to thank you for your leadership and being here as well the county executives all of the partners the private sector because as was said we could not do this without you as well and ultimately the people as i uh thought about coming here for some of us we've rearranged our schedules to be here because this is such an important announcement um i and and i know john does not miss it being in congress some days but [Laughter] but on monday our committee energy and commerce which these issues run through health care broadband these issues come through our committee we had a committee-wide markup meaning we are looking at the build back better act right now the senate has done their job with the bipartisan infrastructure package and will continue to work with us but we had a markup and we started at 11 in the morning and we went to about three in the morning on monday then we started at nine i think or 9 30 on tuesday and went to about one or two in the morning and then we started again yesterday but i made sure i got back here because this is such an important announcement the ability for us to do this really gets to the word connecting and if there were to be a theme today it is that we succeed when we recognize that we are all connected and so it took all of those partners that i talked about to make this a reality and that we have to connect people to each other we are connected and that's what this announcement is about is about connecting us we have a once in a generation opportunity right now with the american rescue plan and the work that we were able to do but also with the build back better act we have a once in a generation opportunity jim clyburn the congressman from south carolina always talks about broadband as being the electricity of our time this is not just a nice thing to do this is a must-have and we if we didn't know it before the pandemic showed us that we must be connected schools health care telehealth the governor the senator and i did telehealth press conferences you need to be connected farming i remember being in uh one of our farmers uh kitchens and she was showing me on her ipad how she looks at the irrigation system of her of her crops banking jobs you name it it's all connected and we need to make sure that people are connected to it so again sustainable affordable reliable and equitable equity equity making sure that all of us have access and i know a lot of times we really we talk about equity whether it's environmental justice or from a perspective of gender or race but even geography kent county sussex county parts of new castle county deserve to have access to real reliable affordable broadband and so this is an issue of equity as well i um again i'm going to take my seat i i just wanted to say i'm so proud of this moment and i really believe that this is symbolic of the fact that if we don't recognize that we are connected it doesn't make sense if you have a a a line but you don't get to the last mile it's no good if you have it to the last mile but a kid doesn't have a laptop it's no good all of us democrats republicans independent black white br whatever you are wherever you come from we are connected to me broadband is part of that connection and i'm so proud of the work that we've done i'm excited i'm excited i'm i'm i just woke myself up that's how excited i am about this announcement and i just want to say um there's more to come there's more to come as we strengthen our economy as we recover from this pandemic and as we restore hope in delaware and the american people thank you and i turn it back over [Applause] thank you madam congresswoman i jumped up to the podium just to to be clear about who's next uh because we've invited our local legislators to speak and they're going to do so but after kevin broadhurst who's who's representing the private sector here in comcast and again one of the partners that are helping us make all this happen uh kevin we're delighted to have you here with us uh thank you everyone uh good morning it's really hard to follow the congresswoman after such an impassioned speech but really thank you for your for your service and really such an incredible advocate for the entire state of delaware so i'm going to try my best to follow her but i can't say i'll be quite as dynamic as our congresswoman so uh so good morning everybody i'm honored here today to represent comcast to talk about our investment in the state of delaware and our focus on world broadband expansion in particular the importance of public-private partnerships to address the rural digital divide our public-private partnerships with the state of delaware will lead to more than 300 homes getting access to broadband spare of service with speeds up to 1.2

gigabits these residents will also have access to the full suite of xfinity products and services including the award-winning x1 video platform businesses can also get the full suite of comcast business products and services including ethernet network speeds up to 100 gigabits per second so senator carper talked about the the delaware way and and the teamwork here and that is really important to emphasize because i think that's so important i work in multiple states and and i think delaware is such a unique place that people really all kind of align on common goals and can tackle issues in a way that other states just can't really do so the delaware way the the teamwork you see here in delaware is something that that's very unique and should be celebrated so thank you for for all the work that goes into these kind of things so comcast has invested more than a half a billion dollars in capital expenditures employee wages and benefits taxes and fees and charitable giving in delaware over the last three years we have over one thousand employees in delaware and our advanced broadband network passes hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across the state we also have over ten thousand public wi-fi hotspots in delaware that have been open to everyone since the start of the pandemic since 2011 we have connected a total of eighty four thousand delawareans through our internet essentials broadband adoption program for low-income residents and our offer of sixty days of free service has been extended to june thirtieth two thousand twenty two in addition we once again formed another partnership with the state to help connect low-income students who can't afford broadband through your connect delaware program and we are here today in bridgeville close to sunnyside road which is the first phase of our cares projects to complete construction just this week we enter the operational phase for over 100 homes that are now going to be able to get access to broadband service which previously did not have that we are on track to activate more than 250 additional homes in the next coming months as a result of the partnership that we've formed with the state so there's a lot of work that goes into networking expansions especially in more rural areas that have significant infrastructure challenges and i'd like to thank and recognize governor carney his staff and the team the department of technology information for having the vision to work collaboratively with the private sector to tackle the rural digital divide and a special thanks to chris cohen and his team over at dji who has been incredible partners really from day one so i want to thank you chris and your team you've been really great to work with but i'd also like to thank our federal delegation for securing the funds for these projects it's so important and really is game changer when you think of the work that's going to be able to get done because of the the work that you have all done for us in washington so those are really the end of my remarks but i would like to invite everyone to uh visit our uh we brought essentially a show-and-tell we brought some uh construction equipment network infrastructure in our technology so after this event you're all welcome to come out and meet some of our employees who are working every day to connect delawareans so thank you [Applause] thank you very much kevin thank you for the partnership that we have with you and all the other internet providers as well there's no more important partnership than that one that we have and that i personally have with the members of the general assembly we are in senator penny john and represent vanderwen's district so i'm going to ask both of them if they would come forward and offer a few remarks we appreciate again their support uh over the course of of our initiative to to bring a broadband access to a rural areas in our state uh an expected partnership as we move forward with our projects and funding uh the incredible partnership with respect to the largest capital budget that we've had in the history of our state past this year and all of those efforts will be geared towards spending this dollar in a way that's efficient and effective and makes delaware more competitive and enables all of our children all of our families all of our for the whole farm community to be successful thanks for joining us today thank you governor carney um you know our congressional delegation uh jason and and i actually want to put the spotlight on on chris cohen for just a second you know his his name's been mentioned here a couple times today but i've got to say during the past year i've been talking to chris a whole lot chris has really been leading the charge over at dti with connecting our constituents all of our constituents with the providers that were needed in order to get services to families for school to businesses to be able to run their business during the pandemic and chris has just done a fantastic job and has been a huge asset for all of us in the general assembly so thank you chris so much for your efforts must be must be something with that last name you get rock stars with that last name i'm not sure what it is but uh you know thank you all for for being here today uh broadband has kind of been a crusade of mine ever since even before i was in the general assembly i remember there was a newspaper article that my parents were interviewed for back i think it was 2009 before i was in the general assembly they ran school bus business in georgetown they had payroll but they used dial up and they were what about 150 yards away from the last comcast address i think comcast wanted to charge 15 000 for them to get hooked up you know in in its economics it's economics and and without uh they ended up you know paying the money to do it but what a lot of people don't realize it's not just a matter of well let's just run a wire out there there's a lot that goes into providing good quality reliable internet services especially to our rural areas high density areas it's pretty simple you know a mile you can get a lot of customers you know here in sussex county a mile you might get two people and the numbers just don't balance out a lot of times without help from the government and we saw that uh during uh the rural electrification process back in the 30s we saw that with the expansion of telephone service in our rural communities now we're seeing that with this next utility the utility of the 21st century and that's broadband broadband is absolutely key to to our education system it's key to our businesses it's key to our health care it's key to so many areas of our daily lives right now that the proper investment from the government side whether it be state local federal partners is vital for for bringing this service to everybody and i like that we're using the term investing because it is an investment it is going to generate a return it's going to return generate a return in our schools uh we saw that with with the pandemic uh you know with the access to information our children are able to get knowledge with addition of knowledge and experience they're able to gain wisdom and they're able to become more productive people within our society uh on on the health care side telehealth has has exploded in the last year and it's great to be able to connect our rural communities with great quality health care that might be in the cities a couple states away they can see specialists they can be interacting with specialists that they would never be able to have access with before uh with this telehealth systems and then businesses you know we have local businesses that can enter the the global marketplace now because they're able to connect to the internet you know the internet is the great equalizer and and making this investment for the for delawareans is is definitely going to pay uh dividends in the long term and it's going to help the quality of lives of so many people so i want to thank the federal delegation for their advocacy for it this is something that is is great for a lot of us great for our rural communities and great for our disadvantaged communities as well so thank you for your support on that thank you governor carney for your support you know we had a conversation before you even took office about broadband and the problems that we had here in sussex and it's good to know that that those concerns of our rural communities have been heard and we're taking action on them so thank you all very much and this is a this is a great day for sussex thank you well i'd like to welcome everyone to bridgeville this is the biggest part of my district here in the 35th district i'd like to welcome and thank the congressional delegation lieutenant governor and governor for coming down all my colleagues that i serve with in the general assembly if you look on the map to my right two area codes one nine zip codes one nine nine five zero and one 19933 is where i serve and if you get close enough to the chart you can see where that's probably the highest percentage of the underserved when it comes to bandwidth it's such a such an important issue for not only our kids which is huge hugely important but as a business person on the agriculture side of things i can pull out my cell phone and i can check on my poultry houses i can monitor where the harvesters are in the field as we speak and i can also look at at irrigation systems and to make all that technology come together and be profitable for us as a family as a business and as an industry we need this last piece to make this happen so i think this is definitely a wise investment i think the governor hit the nail on the head when he made the comment something about taking delaware to the next level when it comes to economic drivers and i think that is so important and i'm just we're very thankful for the opportunity and i'd like to thank everyone here for their support and it's making all this happen i would like to tell chris he does a great job you know when we have constituents that reach out and they say that they're having trouble and and he's our go-to guy and he certainly takes a lot of emails from me and and i certainly appreciate him trying to work through that for us so thank you all very much [Applause] all right great thank you wow great to book in when our governor carney has been acknowledged i have to again give a shout out to our governor for leadership during this incredible time being boots on the ground in the field uh thank you surfer helping keep us safe so that we could be here today and uh for the press we'll be doing questions at the end after after we've closed out we'll take those separately correct governor okay i just wanted to say it's great to be home um as our sussex county delegation knows uh the sussex soil is here in my shoes and my feet forever and with family and i do want to recognize and start to say to jason and to chris i'm not going to call out on all the government affairs folks who are here representing the incredible internet media com broadband atlantic i get in trouble with verizon if i leave anyone off the list but hopefully after these funds roll out you're not going to hear from us quite as much i think some of them probably cringe they know when we're calling and texting we've had a lot of concerns for our children and thanks to the incredible leadership of our congressional delegation our senator carper senator coons marcus who's here for senator coons today and our congresswoman thanks for these funds these are once in a generational opportunity that we have and as we listen today i have to say to colleen davis who's worked hard with our local governments the four i heard like four e's today i heard the economics the impact on investment as our treasurer she has worked hard with our local municipalities and uh two i have to give a shout out to my colleague bethany town manager and dr marlene saunders our commissioner in bridgeville and mr john who's here as well as pat creel she's always going to be on the heart of bridgeville they've worked closely with you and our congresswoman i understand on some of the treasury funds and notes so i wanted to make sure to give you that shout out and as claire to mattius knows when you have this opportunity which we have today with the ark funds thanks to our president and the leadership not only are we looking at the economics but we're looking at developing that whole infrastructure with education and is touched on by our congresswoman the equity and the equality that is so important and so necessary so today as i'm here with my colleagues that from the general assembly where i get to preside in the senate we're excited and i'm excited for our governor and our team as we go out and check out uh kevin's equipment with comcast in a moment that we're going to actually see these opportunities i know my nephew has to get because he's on a sussex farm all of his lesson plans before we were open in school had to have everything delivered at home he had no internet um i know with dr marlene saunders we've worked hard on the telehealth we actually had to change the law thanks to legislators to include just phone service because we didn't have the ability this is life-changing this is life-changing today and so i'm excited to be here i'm pleased that we're going to be having future announcements governor to come not only of the broadband infrastructure but the work that you are doing with our congressional delegation to look forward to other infrastructure whether it be clean water as you mentioned the beginning electric vehicles all the things that we know are going to make a real difference for our state so i just thank you all for being here i'm thrilled to be back home and i really look forward to going out and checking the equipment and governor i think the next time we'll time it at noon we'll time it at what is known in sussex county as dinner time and we'll have some dumplings at dinner time so thank you so much i'll turn this back to our governor now again thanks to our congressional delegation thanks to the other elected officials thanks to our partners in the general assembly this is really the first announcement of many we will continue and claire will continue to reach out to leaders in communities to elected officials obviously one of the other priorities in the legislation one that's specifically identified as eligible for funding as as water and wastewater a huge priority for all of us particularly here in the lower part of our state and we look forward to talking more about all of those things so to our partners in the general assembly thanks for coming to our our friends here at the bridgeville fire hall i don't know if you got any chicken dumplings back there but my mouth is still watering have a great day you

2021-09-19 07:44

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