Good afternoon, everybody. Comptroller Hegar, thank you for having us and for coming down to Edinburg, Texas.
I am a native of Brownsville, Texas, and I have the the great privilege of not standing here before you as a stakeholder or listener but… I made the decision, along with a couple of partners back in 2019 to co-fund a company called LIT Communities. What we wanted to do when we created this company was to do something… we learned a lot about how things worked and where they (telecommunications companies) were leaving things on the table. And, one of those areas was really partnering and building a stronger relationship with the community and building it from the core out, rather than just doing things on your own.
We had the privilege of working with Brownsville, Texas, in the very early days. I was born in Brownsville so I was very invested in kind of solving this problem and having this company, LIT Communities, being able to not only do the studies but understand the mechanics of what it is going to cost, and the modeling and all these other aspects of it. We were actually fortunate enough to have private capital equity partners that are coming in and are investing in fiber to the home and they have done this all over the country. We are doing it in Ohio. We will be doing it in Brownsville, Texas, very shortly and I am very proud of that work.
Just to go back and echo a little bit more. We provided some testimony this morning at the State Affairs hearing and obviously we are very thankful and excited. As Noel mentioned earlier, you cannot imagine the state without some of those core agencies and broadband, moving into the 20, 30, 40 years, is going to be a huge part of that. We know the mapping is going to be important, we know the planning is going to be important, and we know all that is going to feed into the five-year plan. It think it is an exciting time to be part of this industry. It is an exciting time to be doing work with communities.
I stress that for communities that have not started doing anything yet related to this, to do some surveys. It is important to take a litmus test in your community in terms of an appetite for a fiber solution. In the case of Brownsville, 93 percent of the community surveyed wanted fiber. And that was not available there. So, that is a good affirmation.
Also, we found during the speed tests that were uniformly collected, that almost a third of them fell below 25-3. So, for a community that is being told, we don’t have problems, we don’t have issues, and then we are bringing empirical data to the table, it presents a little bit more of a baseline of where these (city) leaders have to make their decisions.
So, I know we are running out of time. I appreciate you all. And as you are working on your statewide broadband plan, we really would like for you to think about workforce development opportunities where we could be training a generation of people, residents in the South Texas area that are going be taking care of millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of assets for the next ten, 15, 20 years. I think there are going to be great opportunities to create jobs and what better people to take care of the network than its own residents and bring in these upward mobility opportunities.
So, thank you so much, Comptroller.
Editor's Note: The above guest commentary was provided by Rene Gonzalez, chief strategy officer for LIT Communities, at a meeting convened by Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar. The meeting was part of Hegar’s listening tour of Texas, during which he and his staff take recommendations from various stakeholders in preparation for a new statewide broadband plan. The event took place at the UT-Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine in Edinburg.
Editor’s Note: The above guest commentary is the second in a series of stories and guest columns related to Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s recent visit to the Rio Grande Valley to discuss the state’s broadband program. More stories and columns will be posted in our upcoming editions.
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