Sign Illinois Assignment of Partnership Interest Now

Document type sign assignment of partnership interest illinois now

welcome to today's webinar co-hosted by illinois extension in the illinois office of broadband we're hosting matt schmidt who always presents these webinars with the numerous funding opportunities from the office of broadband today he's hosting and presenting for this forum on connect illinois infrastructure infrastructure grant round two this is an applicant forum will he where he's going to present additional information and updates and take questions from the participants for sound quality i have muted the mics but you're all encouraged to use the chat space to ask questions at any time during matt's presentation as you think of them just enter them into the question into the chat space if you're having technical issues you can also put those there as well or direct message me with your issue and we'll work through that during the webinar and after today's presentation i'll be sending a follow-up email as well with the slides from today and um the recording from today's session if you did not register for today's session and you're hoping to get those slides just uh direct message me your email address and i'll make sure to include you in the follow-up email and the other thing i would want to add is that i'll be putting in an archive in the chat box that's unique for the past broadband webinars so users can look to see if there's a specific webinar that matt has given in the past if you want to review something okay so i just want to say thank you to matt again for being here today with this important information and i'll hand it over to you now all right well thank you so much nancy and as always it's a pleasure to join you and thank you and uh university extension uh for making this possible you always make it so easy for us so thank you i guess just uh for folks out of the gates here this webinar is devoted to our connect illinois broadband grant program which is our infrastructure grant program uh in recent months we've also announced a digital equity program that has a number of funding opportunities we will not be talking about any of those today but rather we'll be focusing on our connect illinois broadband grant program the infrastructure program and so if if you're interested in the the equity programming we have a whole catalog an increasing library that nancy just referenced of great webinar content available on the extension website you can link to it through our connect illinois website also much of this information is available directly on our connect illinois website and so i just wanted to mention that right of the gates here today uh the goal of today's webinar because we have had now this will be the third for our connect illinois round two uh grant opportunity is to do an overview of the information that is available on our website and so we'll talk about our notice of funding opportunity uh the map uh uh supporting documentation and the application process and so if you feel like you have a good handle on that um use your description and whether or not you want to listen to me for the next hour or so but we are looking to start the new year here with kind of a higher level overview of all the content that's available uh if nancy's willing we'll plan on having a follow-up webinar here in the coming weeks to get into a little bit more detail about the application process and some of the the specifics and as always we really want to make this uh interactive and so please feel free to enter questions in on the chat box and we'll try to provide some answers along the way here otherwise we'll leave ample time at the back end to address your questions if we don't get to any questions today our hope is that the discussion today is going to inform a revision to our frequently asked question document or faq that's available on our website and so one way or another we'll try to get you a good answer to your questions and so with all of that said i guess one one final thing i'd like to say before i jump in here is you know the whole goal of the webinar is to to bring to life our funding opportunity or connect illinois program i'm going to try to be as accurate and consistent in the way i talk about everything as possible but if for some reason there's any confusion created by our conversation today what is included in our nofo the notice of funding opportunity and related documentation that's the final word on our program not necessarily what i what i say today that being said i'm going to try to be as consistent as i possibly can and uh and be helpful and not cause confusion and so with that said we can dive into this um as always i like to begin the conversation uh by directing folks to our connect illinois website uh we really take seriously the the idea of sharing information that we have and being transparent about what we do and so we update this fairly regularly it doesn't mean it's a perfect site but nonetheless we do our best to get useful information up there that's uh that's useful to you and to other stakeholders around illinois and so as you can see on the website we do have a number of resources available along the vertical column at the right here description of our connected eliminated program opportunities for low-cost broadband subscription some word about our computer equity network that was recently launched in december another uh effort to address the digital divide are making connections resource to try to connect uh communities or providers or other stakeholders with one another who are interested in perhaps partnering on broadband projects a word about our federal broadband opportunities which will be updated here given recent developments in washington with the new uh kobe 19 relief funding some good broadband opportunities there and then we have our strategic plan and of course our newsletter if you haven't signed up for that that's a great way of staying informed on what we're up to and so as you scroll down here there's more information on maps and data in our digital equity programming that i referenced a moment ago but as it relates to our connect illinois broadband grant program here we have the broadband grants header at the upper right and a number of resources that are available to our grantees and so we we begin with the broadband eligibility map um that has been updated with recent data the latest uh fcc forms 477 data that is available to us as well as updates from our round one projects uh we do not have art off results in here yet just because we well those are not final and there are a number of questions regarding the world digital opportunities fund so this is the updated map you can see here that the areas are in dark blue or those that are considered served of service of at least 100 by 20 mega bits per second speeds light blue are the areas that we consider to be underserved somewhere between 25 by 3 and 100 by 20 service and then the areas in green which the federal communications commission fcc form 477 data tells us lack service at that 25 by 3 level i say this often as much as we appreciate having some mapping available to us it is far from perfect and so we don't want you know any stakeholders or potential applicants to look at this map as you zoom in it isn't interactive after all you can plug in your address or zoom into your area if if the map indicates that you are served and you feel or know otherwise you know please feel free to reach out to us you certainly can submit an application anyways making your best case and we'll have a conversation with you and so i just want to make clear to folks uh that this map is not certain it's certainly not the the end of the conversation on broadband eligibility but rather the beginning of that conversation and we do look forward to having some updated uh more accurate more granular data and mapping available to us here in illinois it will just will not be available uh before the march one deadline for connect illinois round two and so it's something that we will be using for our programming moving forward just not for round two and so a lot could be said about mapping but i will uh move on to the next slide we certainly can come back to this if there are any questions so as you go back to the the connect illinois website you you can scroll down in this upper right hand corner uh we just went through in brief the grant eligibility map you can also click on the round one map that will show you the projects that were funded in round one of connect illinois likewise if you scroll down you have summaries that will describe the projects funded in round one if you go down here to the round two nofo the notice of funding opportunity and if you click on that you'll open up a page that looks like there's not a whole lot of great information here of course you have our broadband illinois.gov email address if you have any questions for our broadband office that's kind of the one-stop shop for for learning about our broadband grant program but as you scroll down here uh there's a number of options uh in that you can you can open up in terms of the supporting documentation and each of these basically represents a component of what's required for a complete application for connect illinois round two and so you'll see at the top in no particular order here we have a mandatory disclosure forum that's required i'm not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about that in fact no time talking about that today it's pretty self-explanatory once you open it up as you move down here there's a uniform application uh the fourth item down and this is pretty straightforward just gives us an opportunity to better know you as an applicant moving down there's a budget template we'll spend a little bit more time in a future webinar talking about that uh and then also a conflict of interest disclosure form uh those are all pretty straightforward of course the budget template is going to take a little bit more time to fill out than the rest we'll come back to that down the road but for today's purposes we want to spend a little time about on this nofo supplements the actual articulation of our uh grant program and its funding opportunity which we did treat in in depth during our previous two webinars on connect illinois round two so we're not going to spend a whole lot of time on that today but you get into some of the supporting documentation uh the application packet and this is linked both here uh and also on that vertical menu on the previous slide but if you click on the the no fo supplemental link on that prior page it'll take you to our notice of funding opportunity again we've covered this in in more detail in previous webinars so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this today but round two uh we have up to 50 million dollars available with a maximum grant amount of 5 million per project we can receive multiple submissions or proposals from a given applicant but each individual project cannot ask for more than 5 million dollars in state funding the application period officially opened on december 1 and it will extend until march 1st of 2021 so we've got a couple months here we feel like this is a good time to re-engage after the new year and start a conversation with interested applicants about our program and how to participate one thing that i just want to mention here uh before we we move on is the importance of of understanding uh data the the grant accountability and transparency act its requirements and your need to be pre-qualified and so this is referenced in the notice of funding opportunity the nofo itself uh but to be a eligible applicant you have to be gather pre-qualified and so this isn't something you can save until after march 1st but rather you've got to do that before that and so i would advise interested applicants to make sure that you are data pre-qualified and along the same vein understand data and so uh you'll have a link in uh in the the previous nofo uh uh slides here that i had shared and also on our website and in the notice of funding opportunity itself uh to learn more about the the grant accountability and transparency act we just want to stress the importance of looking at that now and understanding that now and we'll come back to that in more detail in a future webinar too um and finally you know just some words i guess in terms of preparing a grant application we really stress that you read the nofo carefully uh we're trying to uh to pri provide opportunities and make this as relatively user friendly as possible to interested applicants that being said you know there's a couple of really important big pieces here that you're required to undertake and so we want to help you understand how to get there uh in terms of the thoroughness we give you a little bit more detail here in terms of uh completing your project analysis and other documentation uh we will provide templates for you to fill out as an applicant and also ask that you attach and label appendices accordingly more direction on on each of those bullets is provided in the supplemental application packet material but i just wanted to take a moment just to stress um that those are things that we that we find important if not required for an applicant to be eligible and so please take the time on the front end to make sure that you've got those ducks in a row and so now if you were to go back to our connect illinois website and you were to click on the application packet it would be the part one of that two-part packet it'll take you to a a document that gives you a little bit of guidance in our or towards our connect illinois round two notice a funding opportunity this program part one is a detailed overview of the program it includes project categories grant selection criteria scoring categories and a word about our fed celebrator framework part two actually gets into the application itself and provides a template for applicants and so we'll just take a moment here to review uh part one of that application packet uh again it does describe the four project categories that are also included in the nofo broadband access broadband equity broadband innovation and urban broadband these are four distinct categories that we are asking applicants to essentially self-identify under and applicants will be scored by a merit review team on a competitive basis we have the same scoring criteria applied to these four categories but awards may be given within each category and so just to ensure that there are apples to apples comparisons so projects that are identified as broadband access that focus primarily on new or improved connections to homes businesses community anchors institutions and unserved or underserved areas will be scored and awarded competitively within that category likewise for our broadband equity broadband innovation and urban broadband categories and so on previous webinars we've spent a little bit of time talking about these four categories so again i'm not going to get into too much detail here unless there are questions but one change between round one and round two is that the broadband equity category recognizes that there are parts of illinois whether they are the the most rural of the rural where population sparsity is an issue or other areas that might be more population dense where adoption rates are lacking in either case you may not have an a strong economic position for the requisite 50 50 sharing public uh connect illinois state grant dollars and the otherwise requisite 50 non-state match and so for applications that come to us under the broadband equity category we are willing to relax that 50 percent non-state match requirement but the applicant is going to have to make a very strong case uh that because of project economics or demographics or adoption rates that that that particular area and the deployment the broadband deployment proposed for that area uh does not require a 50 non-state match uh for those projects in the broadband access category broadband innovation category or urban broadband categories a 50 non-state match or greater is required and so i just wanted to stress that i i would anticipate quite a few of our applications a majority of them in fact likely will be in the access innovation or broadband categories we will apply you know very trict kind of scrutiny if you will to the broadband equity uh applications that are asking for more than fifty percent uh uh a state grant uh to uh uh to get that project done and so just wanted to spend a moment reviewing that um third here we have selection criteria and scoring and the next slide will actually provide a little bit of an overview on on how these 200 points are allocated to project impact non-state match and demonstration of need community support project readiness project viability and sustainability affordability and adoption assistance and open access shared use and business strategy and we talked about this in more depth in our previous webinar uh but nonetheless i wanted to to remind folks these are the the scoring categories uh that we uh that we will be making you know making decisions off of in large part uh and so please you know look at the application packet part one we'll get into much more detail on on each one of the uh selection criteria categories again we just ran through those project impact all the way down to open access shared use and business strategy and likewise the application template in part two of our application packet will will help guide applicants to to understand these categories and take advantage of those point opportunities so just wanted to mention um we have that was part three of our i'm sorry that was section three of part one of our uh application packet for connect illinois round two uh we do give uh some additional uh consideration to the the factors and selection criteria uh in section four of part one uh section five of part one uh talks a little bit about our fedcelerator framework and and that's our attempt to recognize that there are increasingly promising federal funding opportunities for broadband and that we want to position applicants to connect illinois and other broadband stakeholders in illinois to take full advantage of those federal funding opportunities and where it makes sense to match federal dollars with state dollars and local dollars whether they're public or private dollars and so we have this framework included both in our application packet for connect illinois round two as well as on our website and so i won't spend too much time getting into uh the the details of the fed celebrator framework but the point here is we are trying to put our applicants and broadband stakeholders in a position to maximize federal dollars available to them whether it's in current federal funding opportunities or federal funding opportunities that we anticipate in the future and so if a applicant to connect illinois were to select the fed celery framework category you would be positioning yourselves to take advantage of those federal dollars down the road and apply them to a connect illinois round two grant so you can see here we have our fed seller framework the same language articulated on our connect illinois website you can actually see the link here actually it's not on this page but nonetheless the language here is in front of you and i anticipate there may be some questions regarding this so we're happy to come back to this if there are and so now back to our website we have the connect illinois application packet 2. this is what it will look like you scroll down you can see what a complete application includes broadband i'm sorry broadband application will include an application overview essentially a cover page articulating your project who you are what you're trying to accomplish a project dashboard an executive summary a map and location data articulation of project impact non-state match community support project readiness viability and sustainability affordability and adoption assistance open access shared use and business strategy those are all the categories that we just mentioned in terms of our scoring criteria and you can see them right here as component parts of our broadband application and then as well we have an invitation for including appendix appendices for key attachments so that's the broadband application uh portion of your connect illinois round two application but as i mentioned earlier there's also the uniform grant application that is required by uh department of commerce and economic opportunity that was referenced previously the uniform capital budget the capital i'm sorry the conflict of interest disclosure form and the mandatory disclosures as well as a w-9 form and so you can see a b c d e f those are the six parts of a complete application for this funding opportunity within the broadband application section a here you can see how that's arranged and so part two of our application packet essentially is an application template for applicants to to fill in uh their answers to the questions being sat the information being sought and it was designed for round two to be more interactive more user friendly for applicants and so hopefully you'll find it to be as such if there's any feedback folks have on the application packets part one or part two we welcome that otherwise we do expect that part two essentially is going to be the application template for addressing part a here the broadband application components so hopefully that makes sense here i didn't mean to confuse matters there probably could have said that a little bit more artfully but just wanted to lay out what's included in in part two of that application packet and again i'm not going to go through the whole thing here today it's uh it's not short uh but uh it's it's not worth scrolling through every page here uh on the webinar today and so at that stage i wanted to open it up for any questions and make sure we're prioritizing areas that folks would like to talk about again this was more of a high level overview just to kind of revisit our connect illinois program and to uh to start the new year i think looking at the opportunities ahead of us uh we will plan on following up and getting into a little bit more detail about specific aspects of the application pack uh process and again if there are questions that come up during the course of our conversation today or if uh if there is any interest among uh listeners uh please don't hesitate to shoot us an email at broadband illinois.gov and we'd be happy to talk uh about or consider including content in a future webinar at minimum we have that faq frequently asked question document that we'll be updating after today's conversation and there may be a couple of additional um revisions to that before the march 1 deadline we just want to keep that as current as possible with useful information for potential applicants and so with that said we've got a good amount of time here for for questions and discussion if there are any other ways hopefully folks found this more helpful than that thank you matt um right off the bat we had an early question come through that was from jim edwards and he's wondering how can a municipality take advantage of this grant opportunity partnerships with providers like comcast or at t and so if you could speak to that a little bit i'll um curate some of the other questions that will be coming in i encourage others to put questions in the chat box as well great and thank you this is a good question and basically as we've talked about in previous webinars and certainly this was the case for round one we invite uh applications from a variety of different kind of applicants in illinois so whether you're a broadband provider uh traditional you know telco isp a uh rural cooperative a local municipality a local community or a non-profit you know or another form of partnership uh we're willing to work with you i think the key here is you know we want to be you know very careful and in protecting you know taxpayer dollars uh in the interest of our program that that we're going to look at applicants with with a high level of scrutiny and make sure that those applicants you know can do the work and that they're in a position to to take state dollars match them with non-state funding uh and build out broadband networks that are going to stand the test of time and deliver great uh high quality affordable broadband uh to uh illinoisans and so i think the question about uh whether there's a local government or municipality interested in applying for connect illinois around two dollars we welcome uh your participation in our program i would just emphasize that i think it's important for a local government to be talking to folks who have experience in broadband deployment whether it's the providers in your area or a provider that you would like to invite to your area it's really important that we have grantees and partners for the connect illinois program that have a demonstrated track record of doing this work and so that leaves open a lot of different kind of partnership models uh certainly leaves open the opportunity for communities to be a lead applicant uh and kind of take charge of improving broadband connectivity and options in their area and so again i just want to emphasize we uh we're as very inviting of different kinds of applicants and we just stress that uh you know any dollars that we're investing through our connect illinois program we want to make sure that we're partnering with uh with uh grantees that that have a track record of doing this kind of work and and we have full faith that can get the job done thanks our next question is can connected illinois dollars be used as matching dollars for a federal grant would the 50 percent limitation on federal dollars still apply so what we're looking for here and this kind of harkens back to our feds accelerator framework and and uh i could have jumped into a little bit more detail with this i anticipated a couple questions might be coming and so the point here is that we're we're trying to articulate kind of guidelines or a framework by which we anticipate there being federal state and local dollars at play and so the short answer is yes and and we anticipate in the year 2021 certainly in light of the pandemic and i think priorities in washington as we anticipate them we we look forward to significant investment in broadband uh and some of that maybe investment that has been announced that's coming through programming for which the details are being worked out uh we also anticipate some of that's going to be programming that has not been announced in dollars that have not yet been appropriated and so the point is here we're willing to be flexible in terms of where a non-state match comes from i think the lion's share of our projects are going to require that 50 non-state match and if those dollars can come from federal sources we're certainly willing to invite those but we also want to make sure that our local providers or applicants or communities have some skin in the game so to speak to two and so the general rule of thumb here is we don't anticipate uh you know dividing the federal state in local whether it's public or private shares uh more than one-third one-third one-third so to speak and so basically we're going to ask that that a uh a state provider or a community or an applicant that becomes a grantee to connect illinois they put up at least a third of the total project costs um i think there may be some cases where um where we may be open to uh to making exceptions to that but that's the guiding principle here i don't want any uh potential applicants to think oh geez i'm going to go get 50 from the federal you know programming that that's available i'm going to get 50 from connect illinois i don't have to have any skin in the game myself and that's that's what we're trying to avoid we really want to you know at most probably strike that one third one third one third kind of balance but again this is a framework uh and the the goal here is to put stakeholders and applicants and uh in those who want to invest in broadband in a strong position to go after federal dollars and to think creatively and innovatively about how to leverage connect illinois and those federal dollars to get the job done thanks matt um the next question was in regards to the round one applications um i had put a link in the chat box uh to the online pdf that talks about the round one projects and there was interest in knowing about those round one grantees and what providers they were working with that were open to working with the community so i put that in the chat space i think most of the summaries in the pdf do mention the providers but i wanted to see matt if you had anything to add about providers and partnerships in general yeah i think you know a good rule of thumb i would say is if you look at whether it's the connect illinois program or if you look at other federal programs where you've seen a provider in your area seeking public dollars to expand broadband networks that's a good place to start if you're a local community looking for a a provider partner um i think it demonstrates on the part of those providers an interest or willingness in that kind of public private partnership model uh where you you bring in some some public dollars to extend networks to hard to reach areas and so i certainly think that that's a starting point if you're a community looking for a provider to to serve your area that being said i'm also aware of a number of providers that uh that may have sat out round one of connect illinois just because well there was a lot going on uh this time a year ago and also um perhaps they wanted to see what connect illinois was all about and what it looked like and so i expect that we'll see in round two some uh some familiar faces so to speak of providers that have have uh in applicants that uh that have applied for round one i also would expect that there will be some uh some new entrants into the uh the connect illinois market so to speak and so hopefully that helps what we'll do is and we're trying to make this a little bit more i think interactive and and sophisticated but that making connections tab on our that vertical menu that we've ran through several times here on our connect illinois website um what we're trying to do there is if there's a community that is looking for a a provider partner they certainly can can let us know and we'll try to to share that in a public setting so that hey if there is a provider out there that would like to expand to a certain part of the state they know that the office of broadband has heard from that community and and certainly the the inverse can be true too but we just want to uh we try we want to try to you know tactfully play matchmaker where we can but uh we we obviously don't we don't do much more than uh you know share information regarding our connect illinois round two funding opportunities and walk folks through the opportunity uh together in a public setting and so i think that matchmaking is it's something that we we want to be helpful but we also we you know we we kind of know our limitations there too thanks matt i i see that you saw that second question that was sort of like the the previous one but wanted more information on those pending applications so thanks for addressing that the next question is how can cities best leverage this opportunity with private equity providers to expand pre-existing community isps yeah so there's a there's a lot of talk uh and in opportunities i think um regarding you know private equity investment uh and i i certainly think that's gonna be true uh where we're right now in this broadband moment so to speak in light of the pandemic i think the the realization among just about everybody that uh you know if you don't have connections to high-quality high-speed affordable broadband you're at a significant disadvantage whether it's for education or healthcare or just competing uh in the 21st century economy staying connected um you you know the drill uh this is as important as ever and so i i think because of that plus the the promise of of current and in in new public investments in broadband i see there being some opportunities there you know i think from our standpoint we're willing to we're willing to to share information if it comes to us in a public setting so that you know communities and others know what's out there and who might be interested in partnering that being said i think you know you look at our program we are really open-minded to innovative approaches we encourage uh whether it's communities or providers or other stakeholders that would like to to play a role in connect illinois to to come to us with their ideas and so we look at each round of grant funding as kind of a a read of the market or or listening to what stakeholders are telling us and so um we don't anticipate that round two is going to be the end of the show here with connect illinois but rather very much the beginning of it and so ideas that come to us whether it's informally or formally through the grant application process i you know we would like to try to find a way to partner with with them one way or another moving forward and so i think that's one way for ideas to come to us um i think i'm going to stop myself there but i think the whole point is we want to hear from you if you've got some good ideas on how to how to expand broadband uh networks innovatively uh whether it's through public-private partnership models uh or innovative finance models you know we certainly want to have that conversation if you've got some you know detail in mind and you're in a position to put an application together you know obviously read through our nofo uh understand and adhere to our requirements uh and uh you know i think that they're well they're certainly at minimum a start of a conversation there great we've got another question uh how do i get the details on the grant that is closing on the 11th of january i have a non-profit that would like to go for the grant didn't know if you wanted to take a moment to talk about that matt sure i can revisit the idea of our digital equity package and uh back in november we announced uh three programs that are focused on on basically digital equity so not infrastructure necessarily um but the idea of broadband you know affordability broadband adoption um broadband utilization and so we have three three funding opportunities i'm sorry three partnership opportunities outside of the connected illinois infrastructure grant program and so one is our round two of our illinois connected communities program the application window for that closes on january 25th and that's really focused on engaging communities whether it's neighborhoods or you know maybe counties within the state or any kind of footprint in between with better understanding broadband access adoption and utilization it's it's focused both on short-term kind of connectivity and access expansion but also uh on community planning and capacity building and so that's a deadline of january 25th up to 15 000 grant is available as well as around 50 hours of expert consultation and access to best practice curriculum uh so it's it's really for growing capacity at the community level uh we have another grant program it's actually not a grant program though it's a partnership opportunity it's called uh our digital navigator notice of collaboration opportunity and so if you look at digital navigator on that vertical menu on our connect illinois website you'll see more information about that opportunity and what we're trying to do there is essentially engage organizations or local communities that are willing to devote a certain portion of employee time to going through some training on digital equity and being a local resource for individuals who want to better understand maybe the providers that are available in the area the subsidized or low cost broadband service programs that are available in the area how individuals in that community might wanna might be able to take advantage of our computer refurbishing network uh likewise for other opportunities for uh digital uh literacy uh in skills building and so that's our digital equity package it's not the focus of today's uh conversation necessarily but information on both of those is available on our website and i'm sorry i don't have an actual map that shows this but this digital equity header right here if you were to open that up and scroll down you will see more information about um yeah i just don't have it on here more information about the connected communities program as well as the digital navigator program yeah and so i i went ahead and clicked on that uh link that you just mentioned and put that url in the chat box so you can see the digital equity um home page there with the different opportunities that matt was um mentioning and we do have some extra questions here that came in how to oh no let's see um i don't see any additional questions i can give a few moments to folks who maybe are thinking of any additional questions matt if there's anything you are thinking that you would like to give as a takeaway to everybody today um you can go ahead and mention that and i'll um we'll give everybody maybe like 30 more seconds to see if there's a another question that can come through sure and again nancy i think the the goal here was uh in the start of the new year here to revisit our notice of funding opportunity and for those um uh potential applicants that you haven't heard from us before haven't uh considered this program we wanted to kick off the new year talking about connect illinois and so higher level overview of the information that's available on our website uh we will be updating that frequently asked question document regarding uh some questions we received uh today uh and certainly have questions come to us at broadband illinois.gov we'll try to integrate those into the faq document as well just so uh everybody who's interested can benefit from the answers to those questions i know there's some interest in that that fed's accelerator program and i think that's the big great area here in uh in the year ahead is you know what is federal funding going to look like where is it going to go uh how are you able to leverage uh that federal funding for connect illinois and so we we recognize that there are some unknowns there and i think the takeaway on that piece is that that we want to empower our our stakeholders our applicants you know our folks in illinois that that want to see better broadband they want to leverage federal dollars we want to strengthen your hand to do so and so we're willing to partner with you in ways that that makes sense and so those are a couple pieces there i guess i would just um reach out to folks if there are questions regarding future webinar content things that you'd like us to get in the weeds on um we'd be happy to do that i think one one point that's worth reiterating it's just the importance of that that gatter requirement the grant accountability and transparency act and so as you look at that nofo understand what's included in there if you have any questions about that don't hesitate to reach out to us ahead of time it's uh it's much better to uh to i think anticipate that going into the uh application deadline than than learn about it after the fact i do see a couple questions about wireless and uh in the in the chat box here and i have to tell you uh round one included uh almost primarily fiber to the home projects and that that was reflective of the applications that we received uh we consider ourselves to be technology neutral here with connect illinois but we do have requirements that all projects are scalable uh up to symmetrical service of 100 megabits per second by 100 megabits per second uh that's the whole idea of going into an area once uh doing it right and not having to reinvest public dollars in that same area again and so there are different ways to get at that and include uh a wireless component and so i think uh emphasizing uh the the fiber for instance that connects those wireless towers is one way of doing that and so uh i think there's some some real opportunity i think there both in terms of kind of short-term intermediate term broadband expansion with you know our stated goals of long-term future proof investment and so uh just wanted to make mention of that that's something that we're definitely you know definitely willing to partner on matt we have one other question about if you wanted to speak to anything that specifically distinguished the successful projects from those that were not awarded in the first round yeah i think you know first of all we were really happy with uh with round one applications we thought a lot of thoughtfulness uh went into the applications that we received and you know i think if you look at the projects that were funded i think that they they were able to demonstrate um clearly what they wanted to use the state dollars for uh they were able to demonstrate the need uh for the public investment in extending broadband networks to hard to serve areas they also were able to clearly demonstrate that they were uh not only ready to do the work but they had a strong track record of doing good work and that the the investments that we we were partnering on uh would stand the test of time and that were scalable and so those are some of the themes that i've certainly spent more time in past webinars kind of talking about the vision of connect illinois and the sorts of things that that we uh that we emphasize there in terms of projects um but those are some of the pieces that stood out and i think um look we want to be as helpful as we possibly can to our potential applicants and so if an applicant would like to have a conversation uh about uh about understanding our program we're certainly happy to do that we'll probably tell you the same thing that we say on a webinar but we're able to maybe get in a little bit more detail and answer some specific questions and the whole idea here is we're trying to to help folks across the board better understand this funding opportunity and and to help you take advantage of it and so don't ever hesitate to reach out to us and we know a lot of time goes into the application process uh in a past life i was on that end of the equation and i uh i have always really appreciated you know being able to to call up you know somebody uh in a broadband office and get some answers to questions before i devote a lot of time to something so i think that's a really important part of what we do and so don't hesitate to reach out to us again broadband at illinois.gov is the best place to reach us thanks matt and i also put that email address in the chat box so people can see that there i don't see any other questions at this time so you can of course use that email address if you do think of additional questions after we get off the call today so before i just uh close this up i want to thank you again matt for for always doing this and being here to talk directly with folks and i want to remind everyone also that there's going to be next thursday on january 14th at noon matt's coming back on and he's going to give a report out on round one of the illinois connected communities projects and and progress and things like that so i wanted to make sure to remind everyone about that to attend for that i will include that information also in the follow-up email today with the materials and matt if you don't have anything else you want to say we can go ahead and close up for today well that's it thank you nancy thank you everybody we really look forward to working with you all thanks everybody