The Divide: Navajo County on building middle mile fiber in an 'Internet desert'The Divide: Navajo County on building middle mile fiber in an 'Internet desert'

This episode features Grant Evans, capital projects manager for Navajo County in Arizona; as well as Glenn Kephart, who previously worked as the Navajo County Manager; and Jay Jorgensen, chief operating officer for eX² Technology, which recently kicked off construction on a new open access, middle mile network for Navajo County.

We discuss Navajo County's overall connectivity challenges, why the county was encouraged to build a middle mile network and how federal funding helped make that happen.

We also discuss the importance of the new middle mile network to the county's eventual success with the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, concerns about broadband affordability and much more.

Here are a few topics covered in this conversation:

For a lightly edited transcript, click the caption button on the podcast player.

**[Ed. Note: At the time of this podcast recording, and as mentioned, the US Senate was considering including ACP funding as an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill; however, that legislation was later passed without the ACP amendment attached.]