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Alright Audrey, so I'm going to come out and just say it. I'm pretty dang excited because we're going to be kicking off something that I just cannot wait to get to. We are going to be launching with our friends at Comcast. Audrey. We've been calling it man, Summer of 50, Pittsburgh tech stories. And you know me and storytelling, I can't get enough of it. And so we can tell everyone, man, there's so much positive news going on in Pittsburgh. We're doing a dedicated campaign to get these stories out in the entire summer. So starting on the first day of summer here in Pittsburgh, only the last day of summer in September, positive stories 50 of them are doing with Comcast. We got Bob Grover here to talk about why they're sponsoring and to talk about all the great work Comcast has been doing when it comes to keeping us connected and keeping the city just keeping Pittsburgh and the whole region just running in a river zooming in and we're using every connection in the world and Comcast is playing a huge role in that Bob. Thanks for hanging out with us today and thanks for being a big part D major Part of telling our 50 stories.
Well, Jonathan and Audrey great to be on with you, as always, we're proud to partner with the tech Council on such a great ideas. I mean, the this is an incredibly challenging time for businesses. I mean, if you think about it, they've had to change how they interact with customers and employees. Yeah. They had to adjust their budgets. Of course, some were closed and had to understand how and when to reopen. And some haven't even gotten there yet. So one thing I know is that Pittsburgh businesses, they've already been creative. They've already been determined, they're flexible, they're coming up with the answers for both customers and employees. And so I know that I look forward to hearing their stories about what they've done, how they've coped, how they're thinking about their future, and let's face it, how their business might change, knowing what they earned.
Absolutely 100%.
You know, things have changed, right? They're not going to go back to the way they quote unquote, war. And Comcast, I'm sure there are a ton of stories. inside the organization, even here in southwestern Pennsylvania,
Yep. In terms of what what you've been doing, not just even the contributions you've made to the community. But what about the inner workings of making sure that people have access during the immediate shutdowns? Can you talk a little bit about part of that journey?
Well, I can certainly talk Audrey about the fact that, you know, our network has been up to the challenge. Let's face it, we've got we've got more people on our network, right. I mean, usually, broadly, through mid April about 33% nationally on our network, so we've got people at home who are working, they're learning and they're relying on the internet like never before. And I can tell you that our network has been up to the challenge. We've not had any issues whatsoever. We you know, we do a lot of network monitoring to begin with, but we increase the number of speed tests we were doing to probably 700,000 nationally on most days to make sure that the service was performing as it was expected. So, you know, on that side of the house and the residential and the business side of the house, the network's been up and performing well, for our customers, I mean,
Internet has literally become our lifeline. Like, without it, if this were to have happened 10 years ago, this pandemic, we would have been a lot worse shape because the bandwidth and the speed of things this is such now that we can do zoom calls like this, and we can connect like never before. So to end the day, it's like, man, we wouldn't know what to do without it. At this point, clearly an essential thing. No, that's absolutely right. And you know, that's why we always talk about the fact that we've built our networks on both the Comcast business side and on the residential side to meet not only the needs of today, but the needs of tomorrow and that's why you know, we do almost annual speed increases. We've been doing those for 20 years. Every every single resident in our footprint in western Pa in the greater Pittsburgh, they've got access to gigabit per second internet speeds. And those will be you know, we'll be we'll be increasing those in the years to come. So it's about keeping up with the needs today and preparing for the needs of tomorrow. So Bob, the whole point of connectivity is for everyone to get it. And part of the initiative that we're doing here with this 50 tech stories of summer is to raise awareness around the digital divide and raise some money towards the beyond the laptops, which is just a really great cause that Comcast has had a great alignment with and providing the internet essentials to the Pittsburgh public school students who are now getting laptops because of the tech community stepping up and donating money. And then now we have your rehab your internet essentials, giving them the connections. And so the stories that we're going to tell are gonna help raise money to get more laptops in the students hands. Tell us about the about why Comcast is just so much into making sure that we can close this divide and that we can use the internet essentials to get this hardware connected together. Kids learn it.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, you've talked, you've talked about it before with us and you hit on it just now again, the internet is absolutely essential. It is absolutely essential for everyone. And so that's why we've asked in sponsoring the summer of 15 Pittsburgh tech stories we've asked the companies are telling their stories to make a donation to neighborhood allies beyond the laptops initiative to help closing the digital divide in our country here in Pittsburgh in the country. I mean, look, neighborhood allies has already done some great work, the laptops that they've provided, and they're going to continue to do great work. And you may remember that we just made news last week when we announced a partnership with neighborhood allies in Pittsburgh schools. It gets free internet essential service to Pittsburgh public schools, families that don't yet have broadband in the home, and certainly we will have more such partnerships coming. But if you think about what we've done, it's what what neighborhood allies is doing, quite frankly, is the perfect complements internet essentials, because right now they're working on the device piece of that, right? I was partnering with us on internet essentials, and we're the connectivity piece. And remember, the internet essentials, it's nine years old now. I mean, it's the largest. Crazy. It's the most successful broadband adoption program in the United States, we've connected in nine years, 8 million Americans, more than 680,000 people in Pennsylvania, more than 120,000 people in greater Pittsburgh in those nine years. So the closing the digital divide, we have a role to play. And it's a big, big focus for us. Because it's so important to everybody. And that's one of the reasons why for instance, in mid March, right when the pandemic hit, we offered eligible families two free months of internet essentials that they signed up through mid May, we extended that through June 30. And hey, tune for more news on that. But we also increased the speed from 15 to up to 25 three, and we forgiven past that for those who are applying for the program. So Closing the digital divide is a big, big job. We can't do it alone. And we're proud to partner with you with neighborhood allies, Pittsburgh public schools and others. And to close that gap, it's such a cool story houses all kind of coming together. And we're going to tell a bunch of cool Pittsburgh stories while we're at it, which I'm really excited about. And the stories will be across all of our social media, they're gonna be house on on PGH tech.org. Our new website is going to be up and running with this page. And every like literally every other day, a new story is going to be posted, which I'm just so excited about. And better yet, we're going to try to raise more money to get more laptops and connect these students up. And because they're going back to school before we know it, and we know that they're going to be needing these laptops, they're gonna need the connectivity because they're gonna be going back and waves and in stages, and if something comes back, they need to be prepared and work with Comcast to make that happen to me. Audrey is just blown my mind and like, This, to me is gonna be the most outrageous, most fun I've ever had in the summer and tell you another 50 tech stories. What's going right here, Pittsburgh. The other thing my hat's off to you is that, you know, the, the digital divide is so wide. And the leadership that you've stepped in to make it happen is something that many people did not have their eyes open to. And I think now we have our eyes open. Good point, you're gonna be blind again. So no, that's why I thank you for for getting us to that point.
Well, I thank you, Audrey and Jonathan for allowing us to tell these stories into and to have discussions about the digital divide, because, as I said, this is so critical and the, you know, when you have students at home who don't have the internet, this has always been a focus for us since we started the program nine years ago, but now, all the students have been at home. And so was there ever a better example? important for them to have have an internet connection and quite frankly, remember to that Our internet essentials program also provides a computer for $150. So if you're not one through through an ally like neighborhood ally, such a great job, you have a chance to do that. But it also it gives you some digital literacy learning so that you can go online and this is something we discovered is that people, they also need to be educated, how to use how to use the internet secure, how it can help them exactly and so we provide that as well in the program.
Awesome stuff cannot wait to partner. story started. We're all out of time go to PGH tech.org. As we start posting, D tech stores summer with Comcast bottom you guys the best. I'm so fired up right now I can hardly contain myself.