Brent Legg, executive vice president of government affairs at Connected Nation (CN), joins the podcast to discuss the organization's partnership with entrepreneur and investor Hunter Newby to build and operate 125 new carrier-neutral Internet exchange points (IXPs), and its application for an NTIA Middle Mile grant to fund five of those projects.

The $1 billion Middle Mile program, funded through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), received over $5 billion in grant requests when it opened for applications last year. NTIA is expected to make awards on a rolling basis in the coming weeks and months.

Legg shares more about the importance of IXPs in closing the digital divide, which regions and communities are well suited to both support and benefit from IXPs, other partnerships fueling these buildouts, barriers to building these facilities and much more.

Here are a few topics discussed in this episode:

For a lightly edited transcript of this podcast, click the caption button on the video player above.