South Bend at the National Spectrum Strategy Listening Session

Remarks from South Bend CIO Denise Linn Riedl

Good afternoon.

My name is Denise Linn Riedl. I am the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of South Bend, Indiana. I am head of City’s Department of Innovation & Technology. I’d like to thank the NTIA for coming to our backyard for this listening session. I’d also like to thank the City’s close partner and collaborator, Notre Dame SpectrumX, for hosting this important conversation about the National Spectrum Strategy. On behalf of my boss, Mayor James Mueller, I’d also like to welcome you to the City of South Bend.

In my position I am appointed not only to pursue technology excellence and ease regarding city services, but also pursue technology excellence for our broader community. My team thinks about urban sensing, smart city infrastructure, but — perhaps most importantly — getting more residents online and trained to thrive the digital economy.

But in South Bend, innovative spectrum models are not hypothetical. This year, the South Bend Community School Corporation deployed a pilot private LTE network over CBRS in partnership with the city government. This shared city-schools network is dedicated primarily to student use and secondarily to future smart city and urban sensing projects. It’s a new pilot and we’re eager to learn from it and scale it if the solution warrants. Thanks to our neighbors here at Notre Dame, we have some of the top minds in the country helping us monitor the health of this new network and advise us on its future. So far 32 Terabytes of data have been transferred on the network and about 100 low-income families have been served.

The City also manages a robust open WiFi network to serve residents and visitors in public spaces. For those visiting us today in person, you can sign on to the network when you visit Downtown South Bend, the East Bank, several neighborhood corridors and fire stations, as well as our destination parks.

And South Bend is by no means the only community that uses WiFi and CBRS to supplement community connectivity. Many communities have seen these projects as important parts of a broader digital equity and smart city portfolio. These projects are crucial complements to the traditional data plans and at-home internet solutions available in our markets. These projects mean that a class can happen outside, a resident can be productive at the bus stop, citizen science projects can happen in a park, or a student can do their homework at a community center.

In this spirit. I ask that you consider local governments’ voices and interests when crafting the National Spectrum Strategy.

Spectrum sharing frameworks like the CBRS model have given local communities flexibility to take their wireless future in their own hands and without an auction. While ensuring that private networks are strong and serve customers well in the future is also in every city’s best interest, that interest should be weighed alongside unlicensed spectrum and new, shared use models. When I think of the National Spectrum Strategy’s implications for my community, I think about the person who will have my job in 20 or 30 years. What will their challenges be? Their opportunities? Will South Bend have the network capacity it needs to fuel its educational and responsive city goals while also meeting consumer needs? Will there be room for innovative civic use cases we have yet to dream up?

It should also be emphasized that municipalities, tribal governments, and regional planning entities can provide critical input on how the wireless needs of their residents are evolving. States and local governments are making digital equity plans and engaging with residents as they prepare to catch and distribute BEAD and Digital Equity grant dollars. Wireless projects can activate last mile solutions for neighborhoods on top of these federal investments. When engaging on the National Spectrum Strategy, I urge the federal government to take advantage of the moment proactively invite local voices to the table.

Another feature that makes cities an important stakeholder for the National Spectrum Strategy: cities are proving grounds for innovation. Cities can stand up pilots relatively quickly, collaborate with universities, as we do in South Bend with SpectrumX, and turn that experience into transferable lessons that can shape policy. Please leverage this natural strength of local governments. In South Bend we like to refer to ourselves as a Beta City because we’re not afraid to challenge established process or pilot new technology that might generate public value for our residents. That attitude has fueled our CBRS work in partnership with Notre Dame and the South Bend Community School Corporation., among other things.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration today. Enjoy your visit to South Bend.