0:01

And on the third day, they

0:03

went to McKee, Kentucky. From

0:06

American Public Media, this

0:09

is Market Class. In

0:18

Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdahl. Wednesday,

0:20

today, 28 August. Good

0:23

as always to have you along, everybody. We

0:25

have been talking these past two

0:27

days about high-speed internet for our

0:30

series Breaking Ground. That's as

0:32

the federal government rolls out the $42

0:34

billion Bead program that's

0:36

broadband, equity, access and deployment, part

0:38

of the bipartisan infrastructure law. And

0:41

we have focused on the supply

0:43

chain. Fibers

0:45

Future proofs, these cables that I've showed you that

0:48

we've made today, we're making those to be able

0:50

to survive outside for

0:52

decades. The behind-the-scenes work that

0:54

the state government in Frankfort, Kentucky is doing with

0:56

the feds to get the money out the door.

0:59

There's a gentleman that works for the state

1:02

government here who has coined a phrase that

1:04

I love. And he's talking about

1:06

the program. He says, internet for all

1:08

means every hood and every holler.

1:10

And we're going to wrap things up today

1:12

in a place that sticks out for being

1:15

ahead of the curve. We

1:19

don't have so many things, but

1:23

now we have something that

1:26

not a lot have. And it's high-quality

1:29

broadband in the

1:31

middle of nowhere. We

1:35

left Frankfort and drove about two hours southeast,

1:37

up into the Appalachian Mountains. There

1:40

are big stretches of this drive where

1:42

it's just this windy, narrow, two-lane highway

1:44

surrounded by trees and mountains and limestone.

1:47

Eventually, we got to the town of McKee,

1:49

population as of the 2020 census, 803. He

2:00

did with broadband what the federal government is trying

2:02

to do now, ten years ago.

2:07

We're up on a hilltop, great view, tons of trees.

2:10

We walked up the driveway into a brick

2:12

colonial home. Hi. Hi,

2:14

how are you? Very well, thank you. How are

2:16

you doing? Fine, thanks. I'm Kai. Hi,

2:19

I'm Rayda. Nice to see you, Rayda. How are you?

2:22

Nice to meet you. Greg, how are you? Good

2:24

to see you. Doing great. Thanks for the hospitality.

2:26

Yeah, you're welcome. I'm going to say it anyway,

2:28

given that this is a B&B.

2:31

Reedeth and Greg Lakes run Clover Bottom Bed

2:33

and Breakfast out of their home in McKee,

2:35

and we took a seat out by the back porch next to the pool.

2:38

This is nice out here. Thank

2:41

you. Lovely, actually. Man.

2:44

First thing I want you to do is tell me who you are and where we are.

2:47

Well, I'm Reedeth Lakes,

2:49

and we

2:52

run a bed and breakfast, and I don't really know what

2:54

to say. I'm

2:56

the nervous one. It's all right.

2:59

How's business? It has

3:01

been fabulous. We have met so many wonderful

3:03

people, a lot from other

3:05

countries. Greg and Reedeth have

3:07

been in the B&B business for five years. The

3:10

other reason why we feel like it's been

3:12

successful is this one here is a killer

3:14

cook. Oh, there you go. So I

3:16

hang out in the kitchen and stay out of her way and

3:19

do whatever she asks. I hear

3:21

that. So I guess I could introduce myself.

3:23

My name is Greg, and I work for her. Yes.

3:27

You're from around here, right, Greg? You're born here? Yeah,

3:29

born and raised right here. We

3:31

met at Eastern Kentucky University, and

3:35

one thing led the next way. We wound up back here. We

3:39

built our retirement home, I guess you could say.

3:42

This land where our house is sitting

3:44

now was his first home. Their house

3:46

burnt when he was a small child.

3:49

And when we first got married, we bought a

3:52

little used trailer and put it on this lot.

3:54

So this land means so much to

3:57

us. They own 60 acres

3:59

now. constantly making improvements adding

4:01

ponds and hiking trails and a gazebo.

4:05

I want to talk about how you run the business

4:07

and what technology has meant for you. And

4:09

I want to talk about people who come

4:11

here to actually do business and stay and work

4:14

off the grid, as it were. Okay.

4:19

I will say this, to run

4:21

any small business, it's very tough, especially

4:24

right now. So what

4:26

you have to do is try to take

4:28

advantage of those small things that's around you

4:30

in order to hit the bottom line,

4:32

right? So one of our

4:34

claim to fame here in this area, we've got

4:36

some of the best broadband of anywhere in the

4:39

United States. We can

4:41

afford opportunity for folks to take an extra

4:43

vacation if they can work from their vacation

4:45

spot to where, you know, something they can

4:47

bring their family or whatever, you know, we've

4:49

had that. We've had folks hang out here

4:51

and do their work and kids

4:54

in a pool or whatever it might be. The

5:01

lake's business has only existed since

5:03

McKee has had fiber internet. People

5:06

book their stays here online. So broadband has

5:08

been critical in growing the business and reaching

5:10

new customers. You

5:13

know, this company, PRTC, a

5:15

little co-op, a small co-op in this area

5:17

here, you know, 20 years ago, had the

5:20

foresight to say, you know what, we need

5:22

broadband. We need some of the best that we can get. And

5:25

now we're reaping the benefits of that. McKee's

5:29

had every home and every business connected to

5:31

fiber internet. So exactly what the Bead program

5:33

is trying to do now since 2014.

5:40

We went to talk to that little

5:42

company that Greg mentioned, PRTC, the People's

5:45

Rural Telephone Cooperative that finished installing fiber

5:47

in this town 10 years ago.

5:50

We got back onto Main Street. That's U.S. Route 421. If

5:53

you're in the neighborhood, there's a Dollar General,

5:55

some municipal offices, a bunch of other

5:57

buildings owned by PRTC. There

6:00

you go. It says it right here on the sign.

6:02

Gig certified. Part

6:04

of the rural broadband association. The

6:07

headquarters are in a brick building right next

6:09

to a cell phone store called Appalachian Wireless.

6:12

The office has about six customer service

6:14

desks. Well,

6:16

this is definitely a telecommunications company. They got TVs

6:18

all over the place. There's

6:20

also free phone books up front. When was the last time you

6:23

saw that? Come on in. Hey,

6:26

sir, Kyle Rizdahl, nice to see you. Hi, I'm Keith

6:28

Campbell, nice to meet you. How are

6:30

you? I'm great. Pay no attention to

6:32

the microphone. All right. Keith Gabbard

6:34

is the CEO of the People's

6:36

Rural Telephone Cooperative, PRTC. His

6:39

office has a ton of computer and TV

6:41

screens as well, monitoring the various offices and

6:43

warehouses. There's a big old

6:45

school wraparound desk and a bunch of antique

6:47

phones, the business that PRTC started in. And

6:50

what is the PRTC? Well,

6:54

a lot of people have heard of electric

6:56

cooperatives back in the thirties when a lot

6:58

of people didn't have power, electric cooperatives were

7:00

started to get power in

7:02

rural America. And then in

7:04

the early fifties, that program became

7:06

available for telephone cooperatives as well

7:08

for the same reason. So

7:10

we're a nonprofit cooperative. We have a seven-member

7:13

board. We originally were created to serve

7:15

two very rural, very poor counties

7:17

in Eastern Kentucky. You're

7:19

not gonna see a lot of big

7:22

brand-name internet companies out here, which is

7:24

why PRTC exists. It's got

7:26

about 55 employees. It's

7:28

based in Jackson County, of which McKee

7:30

is the county seat. According to 2022

7:32

census data, the median

7:34

household income in McKee is around $18,000, less

7:38

than a third of what it is for

7:40

the state of Kentucky as a whole. You've

7:43

been here, you've been at this company a long, a long

7:45

while. I actually graduated

7:48

from college, went to Eastern

7:50

Kentucky University. My

7:52

wife and I decided we wanted to come back. Not

7:54

many jobs here. We were both lucky enough to get

7:57

one. I started here in 76. I

7:59

had a business degree. and management, but I

8:01

started out answering the phone and been here

8:04

48 years. In his

8:06

almost five decades at PRTC, Keith has

8:08

seen it go from just a telephone

8:10

cooperative to a business that does television

8:13

and internet services now too. First they

8:15

did dial-up and then DSL. We

8:18

were constantly having to try to rebuild

8:20

and upgrade because you just wouldn't get

8:22

in the speed to DSL wasn't that

8:24

people wanted. So 2008 we decided, you

8:27

know, we'd hear a little bit about fiber to the home. We

8:30

thought we're going to borrow. We had always

8:32

borrowed from USDA or US. So

8:34

we borrowed $20 million to start a fiber

8:37

to the home system and it's part of

8:39

our area. You

8:41

were super early. 2008 is crazy early to be

8:44

doing fiber, especially out here. Well, yeah,

8:46

we were one of the first in Kentucky for sure.

8:49

And I'm one of the first in the country. History

8:54

reminder here for a minute. The

8:57

economy was in a shambles in

8:59

2008, the Great Recession when PRTC

9:01

started its fiber project. But

9:03

there was also the $800 billion

9:05

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the

9:07

Obama stimulus. And for PRTC,

9:09

that law meant more federal

9:12

grants and loans that they used to

9:14

keep building out fiber. So

9:16

that was $45 million. We thought we could do both

9:19

of our whole counties with that, but it took

9:21

about $5 million more and we used our own

9:23

capital for that. That was $50 million to do

9:25

both counties. The

9:27

combined population of the two counties that

9:30

PRTC serves is about 18,000. And

9:33

again, it cost $50 million to

9:35

connect them all 10 years

9:37

ago. The

9:42

thing about string and wire out here is

9:44

that you can go, well, maybe not

9:46

miles, but you can go a long way without seeing more than

9:48

two or three homes in two or three places, right? The

9:51

density just isn't there. So make that make sense. Well,

9:55

partly the fact that, you know, part

9:57

of this was grant money helped.

10:00

It certainly wasn't all grand money. But

10:03

we don't have to make big profits. We're

10:05

a non-profit. So if we can break even

10:08

and in the long run provide the

10:10

services our people need, that's what we're

10:12

about. And we just felt like

10:14

this would be a game changer for our community. I

10:18

don't think we realized how much of a

10:20

game changer though. I need you to describe

10:22

for people who haven't seen it the terrain

10:24

around here. Because that's the thing. Yeah. We

10:27

have a lot of mountains, a lot of rock. We're

10:29

not able to bury much of our cable most of

10:31

its aerial just because of the rock. A

10:34

lot of forest, a lot of trees, a lot

10:36

more trees than there are people at homes. Give

10:39

me a for instance on how hard it is to

10:42

lay fiber around here. Well, we've

10:45

got a little notoriety when one of our contractors

10:47

was using a mule to go up a mountain

10:49

to pull the fiber on the

10:51

poles. And I think

10:53

the irony of that caught a lot of people's

10:55

attention because using a mule to

10:57

do this state of the art fiber. We

11:00

don't use that as much anymore. We use

11:02

four wheelers or ATVs or things like that.

11:04

But the mountains here are up

11:07

and down and you have to go across them and you have

11:09

to go across the valleys and up and down the mountains. That's

11:11

where the people live. Jackson

11:15

County is exactly the kind of place

11:17

we were talking about yesterday with Chip

11:19

Span from the Commerce Department where installing

11:21

fiber is really hard and

11:23

really expensive. That's why

11:25

a lot of companies haven't invested to connect

11:27

rural America to fiber internet. Do

11:31

you have a sense, I'm sure you do

11:33

actually, an exact sense of what

11:36

it costs per mile to stream all that fiber? Yeah

11:40

it was about 50,000 a mile at that

11:42

time. Now

11:45

it's more like 70 to 100,000 a mile. And

11:50

that 50,000 took into account that

11:52

we already had the buildings, some

11:54

of the electronics, the poles, all

11:56

that infrastructure was already in place.

12:00

expensive internet plan from PRTC

12:03

is about a hundred bucks a month for one gig

12:05

both upload and download. The cheapest,

12:07

still well above the FCC's definition of

12:09

broadband, costs about 50 bucks a month.

12:13

PRTC is expanding its coverage into other

12:15

counties nearby, places where they're not already the

12:17

phone company that owns the utility poles, that

12:19

makes a difference, means the whole process costs

12:21

more and takes more time. It

12:23

means PRTC is going to need to hire more and

12:26

to get it all done they're probably going to apply

12:29

for bead funding to finish those builds, sending

12:31

their bids to make it Sanfis who we talked to

12:33

yesterday at the state broadband office.

12:38

Where would this company be without federal

12:41

money? We

12:45

started 1950 borrowing money from the

12:47

federal government so I don't know that there

12:49

would be a company without federal money. You

12:52

know we've borrowed money from them from day

12:54

one and hundreds of millions of dollars from

12:57

them over the years. Couldn't

12:59

have done it without the feds. No, I

13:02

don't see how. This is

13:05

one small example of government in

13:07

this economy changing one small rural

13:09

area of Kentucky. It's

13:12

also a story about how Keith

13:14

and PRTC used a patchwork of grants and

13:16

loans from 15 years ago

13:18

that doesn't compare to the 42 billion

13:21

bead dollars available today.

13:24

What did it do for the people of this county to

13:27

have this service? You know I

13:30

grew up in this county and of course

13:32

people are always going to complain about what you don't have and

13:34

and we always complained about okay we don't have

13:37

a four-lane highway, we don't have a hospital, we

13:39

don't have a college,

13:42

we don't have a Walmart, but

13:44

now we have something that

13:47

not a lot have and it's high-quality

13:50

broadband, gigabit capable broadband

13:53

in the middle of nowhere and

13:56

it's just allowed from economic development

13:58

standpoint and education. standpoint,

14:02

from a healthcare standpoint, you know, we've just

14:04

seen all kinds of things improve

14:06

and change and allow our people to

14:09

do things not only just as good

14:11

as our neighboring towns that are

14:13

bigger, but even better. This

14:15

is your life's work. You've been

14:17

here damn near 50 years. What

14:21

are you, 71, two? Just turn

14:23

70. Just turn 70. You

14:26

look good. My guess is you're going to be here another 10. At

14:29

least, right? My wife says no, but... If

14:32

order directors will have you, my guess is you're going to be here. Here's

14:34

my question. Why has

14:37

this been the thing

14:39

that does it for you? I

14:42

was taught early in life to try to give

14:44

back to your community, and

14:46

it's very rewarding to me. I'm

14:48

very passionate about that. I know that this

14:50

company is not the one thing

14:53

that makes everything wonderful here, but we play

14:55

a role. There

14:59

is, of course, a whole team of

15:01

PRTC employees who get this broadband up

15:03

and running. The labor side of

15:05

the story after the break. Man,

15:47

when we leave the house, it's phone,

15:49

wallet, keys. How's my hair look? If

15:52

you're experiencing hair loss, you might not feel

15:54

so confident stepping outside. It's

15:56

time to restore your confidence with hymns. Hair

15:59

loss is common. or

18:00

sparsely populated rural areas like we've been talking about

18:02

in Kentucky the past couple of days, it

18:05

is something that's going to affect every part of this

18:08

country. There

18:10

just aren't enough people who can work with

18:12

fiber in the field. Keith

18:18

Gabbard drove us out to another company building

18:21

in McKee, the PRTC distribution center where some

18:23

of the staff that installs the fiber is

18:25

based. Oh yeah, it's

18:27

a warehouse. Oh, look at all that fiber.

18:29

That's a lot of cable. Yeah, that is

18:31

a lot of fiber and all different sizes.

18:33

These huge reels are just

18:36

like we saw at the Prismian manufacturing

18:38

plant earlier this week, but PRTC buys

18:40

from Corning, another of the three manufacturers

18:42

that do fiber and cable that meets

18:44

federal domestic manufacturing requirements. We

18:47

left the warehouse floor, went up the stairs to a

18:49

narrow hallway, lots of little offices coming off it.

18:53

Map back here anywhere, brother? He's

18:57

getting ready to get invaded. Here

19:03

he is. We're founders, man. You're gonna get in with my...

19:05

Yes, would you? There you go,

19:07

man. How are you? I'm Kai. Good to

19:09

see you. Matt Bingham. I'm

19:12

supposed to hold this? Just do thanks for your time. I really

19:14

appreciate it. Thank you, bro. Really appreciate it. Yes, you are. Hold

19:16

up nice and close just like this. Uh,

19:19

I'm gonna sit over there. Go ahead, have a seat

19:21

anywhere you want to. Tell me

19:23

who you are and what you do. All right. Matt

19:25

Bingham, installer, PRTC

19:28

supervisor for people's rural telephone.

19:31

How many people you got working for you? Some

19:33

more around 20. Matt's office

19:35

wasn't all that big. He's got

19:37

some frame certificates, mostly having to do with his

19:39

work in fiber, but mainly the

19:41

space is covered in framed photos of

19:44

his wife and kids. You got three

19:46

boys, huh? Yeah, three

19:48

small boys. They're gonna grow up with this in their

19:50

house. Oh, yeah. It's

19:54

from compared to the way I grew up.

19:57

Oh, I've heard my iPad,

19:59

my... Alexa, my three year

20:01

old was talking to Alexa the other day, trying to

20:03

get her to do something. I'm like, when

20:06

I was three, I was playing with a stick

20:08

in the yard, you know? Tell

20:13

me about yourself. Where'd you come from? How'd you wind

20:15

up here? I was born and raised here. Went

20:19

to school, to county school. I

20:23

had all intentions of going to college

20:26

and doing something else. I

20:28

guess I was probably junior in high school

20:30

and I really got to think about it seriously and

20:33

thought, you know, I really

20:35

don't want to go through four, six,

20:37

eight more years of school. So

20:40

I started thinking about, you know, what can I

20:42

do and stay in

20:44

the county. And

20:47

being the type of person that I am, wanting

20:49

to work outside, that was a

20:51

big thing. I didn't want to do

20:53

factory work or anything like that. Probably

20:57

the only options you had was the

21:00

local electric co-op

21:02

over here. Matt

21:09

left town after high school to get some

21:11

experience as a contractor. In

21:13

2011, he got a job at PRTC doing

21:15

maintenance, worked his way up to the supervisor

21:18

position he's in now. His

21:20

crew mostly does installs, also lots of troubleshooting

21:22

if there's an outage or some other service

21:25

problem. All the training for

21:27

this work happens in-house since there's nowhere near

21:29

McKee that teaches this kind of thing. You

21:33

know, from when I started, we were doing copper.

21:36

From there to where we are now, it's

21:39

not even remotely the same.

21:43

When they said to you, we're going to train you how

21:45

to do fiber and you're an old

21:47

copper and coax guy, what were you thinking? Well,

21:50

the first thing was, teaches. It

21:53

was the first thing that come to my mind. I

21:55

remember a guy, we

21:58

held a cable, really. out to

22:00

a job and he pulled off the end of

22:02

it and he said, this stuff

22:04

ain't as bad as everybody says and he

22:06

took it and just bent it double and

22:08

he said, when you hear that, you've

22:11

ruined it. I

22:13

thought, oh my gosh, we'll never be able to do

22:15

this, but learning to do it,

22:18

wasn't that hard. It's unrealistic

22:21

in the way that it works and

22:23

how it works and what it does,

22:25

it's unreal. Just the

22:27

information and the data. Yes, I mean,

22:31

when you think about it and you

22:33

think about the information going across the

22:35

piece of glass, the size of hair,

22:37

it don't even seem real. I

22:41

kind of said the same thing when I visited the

22:43

fiber manufacturing plant and Matt's a guy who does this

22:45

stuff for a living. Can

22:47

you see the change, like in people coming

22:49

and all that? Oh yes, yes. I mean,

22:52

I can think from whenever

22:54

I was in high

22:56

school and I was dating

22:58

my wife. She lived about

23:00

15 minutes away from me and as I

23:02

drove out the road, I could have told

23:05

you every house, everybody's name. Now,

23:08

you know, it's, well,

23:10

they're from Texas or they're from

23:13

Wyoming or Oregon, wherever. Before,

23:16

if they were somebody from another

23:19

state, moved out the road, that was a big deal.

23:21

Now, it's everywhere. Is

23:24

that a good thing or a bad thing? It's...

23:28

Or is it just a thing? It's just a thing. I

23:30

mean, it's a good thing. When

23:33

I was doing installs and I had a

23:35

customer that I knew was from somewhere

23:37

else, I'd ask them, you know, how'd

23:41

you end up here? Well, I

23:43

seen it online, you know, and

23:45

it was all of them. How'd you hear about

23:47

Jackson County? You know, because this is not the

23:51

middle of nowhere to me. Yeah,

23:56

it's a lot of opportunity, a lot of growth, and

23:59

it keeps you busy. Oh, yes. Very

24:02

busy. We're going to

24:04

out of your hair, Matt. Thanks a lot. We've

24:10

spent the past couple of days talking

24:12

about broadband and the $42 billion

24:14

BID program, just one slice of

24:17

the three Biden administration laws, the

24:19

Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

24:22

and the CHIPS Act that are getting

24:24

the government farther into this economy. There

24:29

are still a lot of variables. It's

24:33

an election year for one. And

24:36

we're not going to know the full impact of the BID

24:38

program on this economy for a long,

24:41

long time for another. But

24:46

the thing about policy changes and long

24:48

term investments like this is

24:50

that at the end of the day, it's not about

24:53

who's in the White House. It's about the

24:55

people on the ground doing the work. It's

24:58

Tracy Overcash and the crew at Prismian

25:00

scaling up fiber and cable production. It's

25:03

Chip and Megan driving around the state

25:05

of Kentucky, trying to find every location

25:07

that needs broadband. And it's

25:09

Matt and Keith and small companies you

25:11

have never heard of like PRTC doing

25:14

what they can to improve their communities. Work

25:17

being done now in the

25:19

hopes the investments pay off later. This

25:54

final note on the way out today, we spent

25:56

a lot of time for this story driving around

25:58

and talking to people. McKee, Kentucky.

26:00

And one of the big ideas that

26:02

kept coming up from basically everybody was

26:05

local pride. PRTC started,

26:08

as Keith Gabbard was telling me, with

26:10

telephone service back in the 1950s when

26:12

bigger companies just weren't all that

26:14

interested in a place like McKee and Jackson County. Fast

26:17

forward to today with all of

26:19

that bead money on the line

26:22

and a very, very different telecommunications

26:24

competitive environment. You know, a

26:26

billion dollars is a lot of money. It's attracting a lot of

26:28

attention. You are clearly

26:30

an ambitious guy with big ambitions for this company.

26:32

You're in surrounding areas and counties, as you've already

26:35

said. People are going to start looking and saying,

26:37

I can make some money there. What's

26:39

your advantage over the charters and the

26:41

AT&T's? The

26:45

fact that we know the area, we

26:47

know where the people live, we know what the people

26:49

don't have. And we actually

26:51

care about the people in

26:54

eastern Kentucky. Some of the big

26:56

companies understand why

26:58

they don't, but they care more about the

27:00

big cities and the stockholders and things like

27:02

that and what the stock price is. And

27:06

that's not really our motivation

27:08

here. We're trying to serve customers and

27:11

not lose money, but we don't have

27:14

to make millions of dollars. We're

27:16

trying to provide a service that can improve

27:19

our community, can make the quality of life

27:21

of our people better. That's one of the

27:23

things, this co-op, that's one of our missions.

27:26

Almost 50 years, Keith Gabbard has been there. Local

27:28

pride, like I said. Our

27:31

media production team includes Brian Allison,

27:33

Jake Cherry, Jessyn Dueller, Drew Jostan,

27:35

Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, Juan Carlos

27:37

Torado, and Becca Weinman. Jeff Peters

27:39

is the manager of media production.

27:41

I'm Kai Rizdahl. We will see

27:43

you tomorrow, everybody. This

28:03

is APM. Hi,

28:07

this is Phoebe in Honolulu, Hawaii. The

28:09

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