Homeroom with Sal & John Stankey - Tuesday, December 1

Hi everyone, Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. Welcome to the Homeroom live stream! We have a very exciting guest today: CEO of AT&T, John Stankey is here. So start putting your questions on Facebook and YouTube, wherever you're watching it, and I will try to get as many of them as possible to John.

A lot to talk about, but before we jump into that, I will give my standard announcements. Reminder to everyone that we are not-for-profit, so if you can make your way to khanacademy.org/donate, and if you're in a position to do so, please think about making a donation. It really, really makes a difference.

I also want to give a special shout-out to several organizations that have stepped up really over the years, but especially during COVID, when they realized that the world was more dependent on Khan Academy than ever. But also, our costs have gone up; our traffic has increased. We're trying to put more content, support programs, training for teachers and parents. So special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, and Novartis for that support. It's really, really been a big deal. But if you’re in a position to do so, all of you listening, please think about continuing to support because we continue to need help in filling our gap.

I also want to remind folks that a version of this live stream is available wherever you get your podcasts at "Homeroom with Sal," the podcast. With that, I'm really excited to introduce our guest, John Stankey, the CEO of a small startup called AT&T.

John: Thanks for joining us, Sal.

Sal: Thanks for having me. You know what, big fans we are of the work you do at Khan Academy at AT&T, so it's a real treat for me to be part of the curriculum today.

John: Well, no, and I do have to thank y’all. I mean, it is a really big deal the work that you all do, on a bunch of levels. And we're going to talk a lot about things like internet access and the digital divide because obviously we can't do our work and reach the folks who need it most without that existing. But y’all, over the years, not just during COVID, have been big supporters of Khan Academy, and that really means a lot. So everyone listening, if you're able to benefit from Khan Academy, it's AT&T and organizations like it that really allow us to do this work.

Sal: But, you know, John, maybe a good place to start; you know you are relatively new in the job at AT&T. AT&T is a storied institution. For the younger people who didn't know, it's not a startup; it's a very, very well established company. What was kind of your thought process as you’ve taken the role at AT&T? I would call AT&T one of the institutions of America or the world. How are you viewing that?

John: Well, you know, it's interesting you use the analogy startup, and I know you kind of did it in jest, but the reality is, while it's a storied institution that's been around for a very, very long time, just about every line of business that we operate in right now is in a major state of transition and transformation. And so even an established company like AT&T, I think there are so many different industries and so many large established businesses because of not only COVID but what's just going on in the economy in general that are all undergoing some pretty rapid and significant change. We’re no exception to that.

As a result of that, while it's a big company and we have several large lines of businesses, each one of those inside the company is going through its own transition and transformation. It's a very exciting time to come into this role. It’s a bit of a humbling time, as you indicated, which so many of the things that we do right now in this COVID environment are dependent on the networks and the infrastructure that we provide. I’m reminded of that every day, sometimes by positive comments coming back from our customers talking about how they're surviving, living their lives, and doing the things they must do because of the services we provide. But I also hear about that moment when the service doesn't work on a given day and just how significant an interruption it is to somebody's well-being in their daily existence if that happens. It puts a lot of pressure on the organization.

But I've been really pleased with how overall the business has performed and how our employees have stepped up to ensuring services work during this critical time. I couldn't be happier about the new relevance that I think people have found in our services in this moment.

Sal: And where do you see your focal point? I mean, given what's going on in COVID, you've written a lot about the need for solving the digital divide issue. Obviously, you all have been key actors in this. You've really been doing great things when it comes to getting communities through this COVID period, especially communities that did not have internet access, making it far more accessible. What are the programs that you've done in the short term, and how are you thinking about this long term? How do we solve the digital divide issue?

John: You know, it's interesting because, in some regards, there's that old analogy of the old house that needs a lot of structural work that sometimes you put a little bit of plaster or spackling over cracks to hide them. And I would say maybe pre-COVID that might have been the state of internet access in the United States in some regards. Some very robust and capable wireless networks have been built, and many individuals were getting their access to the internet and, frankly, living their life in a pretty okay fashion with wireless as their answer to the problem. They made a basic utility and value call and said for what they need to do in their life and the things they need access for, having a smartphone is adequate. And that's given that they've got to worry about putting food on the table or going to see the doctor next month. It was a luxury to think about having both a wireless connection and a fixed connection, so many people chose not to do that.

As a result of COVID, I think what we've seen is, well, that might have worked before when somebody's at home and is having to live on the internet 24 hours a day, sit in a classroom, watch a teacher, and keep their attention on maybe a multi-screen format with a speaker and other content showing up. There are limitations to that three-and-a-half or four-inch screen that everybody depends on and carries around in their pocket every day. There are limitations in the robustness of a wireless network compared to fixed networks. So we've really seen that this dynamic of the 17 million students who don't have access to fixed broadband becomes a problem in this environment.

When you think about all the work that organizations like yourselves have done in building great curriculum that can be consumed at home, you really need that robust infrastructure. You need the ability to sit with a larger screen and have an experience. So, you know, we're looking at this two-fold. One is there's a public policy issue that needs to be dealt with, and we're leaning into that at AT&T. In fact, I'm starting to orient the company and all of the work we're doing around our charitable giving, what we're trying to do in policy advocacy, how we're engaging our employees and their working communities to start working on the issues that affect those 17 million students and probably 24 million households that really don't have that robust fixed access to the internet.

That's policy shifts that need to occur. In some cases, we’ve got a lot of subsidies that are part of our tax structure that maybe are not being directed as effectively as they could. In some cases, maybe we need new ways to subsidize service for those who can't afford to pay for it and trying to get that policy structure proper.

I would also tell you there are certain things that we need to do to facilitate the ecosystem. We know that just providing discounted access isn't enough. We provide $10 a month access for low-income households as one of the services we've provided at AT&T. We found that wasn't enough because many homes don't have access to the tablet or laptop computer that they need to really use that access effectively.

So we’re putting vehicles in place where we started to donate money into entities that help solve that complete ecosystem of what a household needs for distance learning and access to the internet. We want this to be done in a sustainable fashion, and we think that you need good robust infrastructure. While we're continuing to invest aggressively in the core parts of our business, the core parts of our network, and we'll be making some announcements here shortly about stepping up fiber investment, there are parts of the United States that just aren't that dense.

As a result of that, we need to think about policy that supports access into rural areas with adequate broadband to be able to do most of the things that many households take for granted in suburban or urban areas. We’re starting to try to drive policy adoption in that regard.

Sal: I’m curious, actually—I want to double click on each of those—but on that last point, just kind of the telecom nerd inside of me wants to make sure I understand things. For everyone listening, you can dig up the ground and put fiber in it, which is a very expensive proposition, and that can get really good quality access to a lot of folks. But, to your point, if you're in some rural place, it could be very cost-prohibitive to make sure that every what's called farm has fiber running through it.

But you think that there are ways to do wireless access that could get us close or have sufficiently high bandwidth and reliability to meet those folks' needs?

John: If you think about it from a public policy perspective, you go back decades in the United States and had a policy that felt like everybody should get access to the telephone network—and that universal access construct was established many years ago with overt policy around subsidy around how do we make sure that even the farmhouse in a rural area could get on the network.

But if everybody paid their true cost of that service, there’s no way that farmhouse ever would have been connected. The cost would have been so prohibitive that nobody would have ever built those small twisted copper wires to that home. So we averaged pricing across the United States with the deliberate policy approach to ensure that we eventually got 98% of U.S. households onto the telephone network. We're at that same moment for the internet.

When we think about solving that problem, if that's the case, there's probably going to be some degree of subsidy that comes in, which may mean public money—taxpayer money. I don't think the answer to that is that we want to go and overbuild and have fiber out to a farmhouse, where it might cost 10 times the amount it does in a suburban or urban area.

But can we get the benefits of getting on the internet with adequate bandwidth and maybe a lower cost alternative? Maybe something that's only two times as expensive as what it might take in our urban or suburban area, but still get most of the benefits of being on the internet.

One of the policy positions we believe is important is a technology-agnostic point of view: get the most effective way to get the right amount of bandwidth out to every home. In some cases, to your point, it might be using the latest technology around wireless services like 5G.

But in some cases, the answer may be a different technology, possibly low Earth orbiting satellites and what's coming up with LEO capabilities. That might be the more effective way to get to some highly rural households. In some areas, there may be an opportunity as infrastructure is being deployed for power or electricity to also piggyback fiber in there.

The point is, you want to do the right thing at the right time in the right house but not overspend taxpayer money to gold-plate things that ultimately don’t need to be gold-plated. We’re trying to provide some frameworks now as we work with policymakers on understanding where those cutoffs are and how we think about that deployment of infrastructure moving forward.

Sal: A quick technical question: what's the LEO capability?

John: So, if you think about satellite technology that's been in place for many decades, typically you put a satellite way up high in orbit, and it sits over a particular part of the United States and it’s geostationary. It follows that particular part of the geography constantly. With LEO, these satellites are much smaller and lower, less expensive.

You put them up much lower in the atmosphere; they don’t last as long, but because they’re so much less expensive, you can cover a much broader part of the United States, allowing them to work in a non-geostationary fashion to encircle the globe. This new technology opens up some opportunities in some rural areas that weren’t there before.

Sal: What you just described is essentially saying: there are multiple ways of getting internet access. It could be fiber; it could be low Earth orbiting satellites; it could be 5G networks. Is there resistance to this, or do we just have old laws on the books that tend to be very focused on landlines essentially?

John: You know, I think any time you get into a policy debate, sometimes there are those who are very knowledgeable about a policy and very well-informed. There are others who maybe tend to gravitate more to the sound bite, and the sound bite is, you know, everybody needs fiber. Certainly in an ideal world, would it be great if every household in the United States is connected to fiber? Sure, that'd be wonderful.

But again, I don't think that's the optimal use of public funds. One of the things that people like to reference is they say, "Well, you know, look at Korea. How can so many homes in Korea be connected to fiber?" Well, you know, Korea actually isn't quite the size of the United States. They don’t have square states sitting in the middle of it with a lot of open territory and pasture land like the United States has.

So when you have a vertical society, the ability to get fiber into most households is quite different than when you have a more horizontal society like the United States. You have to use different solutions to that.

I think those who are informed and know the engineering and the economics behind it understand that this needs to be a technology-agnostic solution. We need to use all the tools that we have in the toolbox to address this effectively and frankly fast because you know trenching fiber everywhere takes time, whereas some wireless solutions may get a lot of bandwidth out fairly quickly because of the nature of how that infrastructure is deployed.

But I think it’s just informing folks with the fact-based information so that everybody can have a fully informed conversation about it.

Sal: One thing you've alluded to is this kind of notion of public-private partnership. Growing up, telecom was one thing that I always got confused about. It’s like, okay, who's digging those trenches? Is that the government or is that the AT&Ts of the world? Who is providing the subsidy? Explain how that works.

John: It’s a complicated question, and there are a lot of layers to it. I would tell you, if you think about it at its most basic level, the policy up to this point in time in the United States, which has largely been a market-based policy for broadband infrastructure deployment, has actually worked quite well. If you think about what's happened coming into the pandemic with these dramatic increases in traffic, people are not sitting around talking about the fact that you and I can’t conduct this session at the same time and that I'm still not able to watch my Netflix down the hall. Most of that’s working pretty well if you live in an urban or suburban setting in the United States.

So policy has been really good where markets are competitive, driving that level of investment. But there are places in the United States where, because of the density characteristics of how people live, that market approach isn’t quite enough to incentivize that investment in broadband. There have been subsidy models coming in to try to incentivize companies to go get some help from different government funds to offset the additional costs and then go in and build in these territories, and they've been successful to a degree.

But they haven't been quite as successful as they need to be. If there’s still a large number of rural households—maybe 24 million non-broadband connected, I bet 70-80 percent of those are in rural areas of the United States—we clearly need to think about a little bit different subsidy structure.

This is where, as the government starts to deal with things like infrastructure deployment, in the early stages of a Biden administration, getting those incentives right and explicit—setting companies like AT&T or cable companies or other telcos to go in and build that infrastructure—that opportunity is in front of us.

We've had great success with some of those programs in the past. Another subsidy program that you may be familiar with is E-rate. E-rate was targeted at getting all of our schools in the United States connected. It was a deliberate subsidy program that caused for low-cost infrastructure to be deployed into every school and library in the U.S.

It's been tremendously successful, and everybody thought, "Well, you know, check that box; it's great. We've solved the problem in education." Until all of our students started leaving the schoolhouse and going home to learn. Now the school was connected, but we couldn’t get to the endpoints—the students at home—and this is the next stage we kind of have to deal with.

Given there are likely to be multiple rounds of stimulus going forward over the next several months, what are the two or three policy levers that you hope happen over the next few months?

John: I think we have to think about the subsidy and look at how it’s used today and have it come together in a more focused approach. There’s, you know, $10 billion over here in rural subsidy; there’s $2.5 billion over here in what we do for the next version of E-rate in schools; there’s what we do in the universal service structure that comes in.

I think, in some regards, stepping back and saying, “If our goal is to get everybody on the internet, let's make sure we take some of those programs, aggregate them, and focus on that.”

Two, look, if you're going to have to go in and do overt subsidy, then we should think about what the right mechanism is to do that. I think, in an appropriations fashion, Congress ought to be realistic about it. Whereas today, some of these subsidies are set up on dying infrastructure. For example, the universal service fund that supports voice service for access today is built on top of fixed telephone line service.

Well, if fixed telephone line services are declining and there are fewer and fewer subscribers, what happens to that subsidy pool? It disappears eventually as everybody goes to wireless services for voice.

So we need to step back, make sure that those subsidy structures are on mechanisms that are sustainable and that are fair to the industry in total. I don't think we should be limiting our thought process around how we attach that tax structure to a particular product or service.

The internet has changed so much how people make their money and what services they use. When we think about how the edge providers—the Facebooks, the Googles, the Amazons of the world—who have benefited so much from infrastructure deployment and the capabilities of the internet, maybe we need to think about the base under which we subsidize to come back on a broader set of services as we move forward that are more relevant for the future.

Not based on the decades-old model when we think about voice telephone service. So I think that’s a dynamic we probably need to come to grips with.

And then look, understanding exactly where the problems are—believe it or not, a country as effective and capable as the United States—we actually don’t have really good data and information around where our problems are on how infrastructure is deployed.

You know, AT&T has a point of view on the markets that we serve in and the homes that we handle, but nobody really has a good picture of what the United States looks like in total. Because there are places in the U.S. we don’t service; we don’t have infrastructure. So knowing where we need to put that subsidy, have that policy change to drive the right kind of investment, and where the market will take care of it is based on really good data. That data, and funding the ability to ensure that we've got a good mapping of what the circumstances are in the United States, is another key element I think of what happens to inform really good policy moving forward.

Sal: What do you think the odds are that it’ll happen? Do you think people you're talking to are aligned?

John: You would think there’s a good probability it can happen, although, you know, I'm the last person to prognosticate on something coming out of Washington. It’s oftentimes hard to get the calculus of things.

But if you think about it today, it’s truly a bipartisan issue. As you know, many people you’ve had as guests here will talk about this; everybody's in favor of education. I think everybody understands that it’s a key issue to equality and opportunity. It shouldn’t be a Democratic or a Republican issue; it should just be good for our society as a whole.

So you start from that point of view. The second thing I would say is that the dynamics kind of line up really well. If you think about red states today, many of those tend to be rural in nature—they have an internet access problem—and if you think about urban dynamics, which tend to be more a Democrat stronghold, they also have an internet access problem.

So if the two sides can get together and figure out what we do in urban and what we do to deal with rural, then you would think you have a natural coalition of folks that want to solve that problem. Infrastructure has traditionally been a bipartisan issue.

So, you know, if there is something that it would seem like there might be an ability to not only get some good policy done but figure out how we drive spending in the right place to come out of the COVID dynamic to equalize education, stimulate the economy, and help telehealth, it feels like there’s enough good news there for everybody that they should want to be part of solving this problem.

Sal: I couldn't agree more. I feel like there's the energy behind this issue; I've never seen more energy. So fingers crossed.

In the remaining time, you know, there are a bunch of questions that have come in, and some of them are just on your journey. Susannah Garcia Dominguez from YouTube is asking, "Hi Mr. Stankey, please tell us about your journey to become CEO. Who are your heroes and how do you reboot or re-energize to keep your life in balance during these trying times?"

John: Yeah, how did you get to where you are, and how do you handle it?

You know, it's a really good question, and I’m always reticent to answer this because I tell my children this: I grew up at a different time in a different United States, in a different way of learning than what is the norm today. Certainly, I went through a different social contract and different set of companies that were relevant in the United States than what a young aspiring professional might encounter today.

So, you know, when somebody asks me for advice, I say, "Don’t do it the way I did it," because that probably won’t work anymore. What I did is I ended up spending a lot of time and becoming quite deep in an industry and building expertise in a particular industry.

I think I had some lessons along the way when I was young that taught me at an early age the value of hard work and, you know, keeping your head down and trying to do things well. If that happened, then eventually you would be recognized for it.

I was fortunate enough, in some cases maybe even lucky enough, to come along in my career with a couple of individuals that took an interest in my career, that helped me out, that gave me opportunities, that allowed me to stretch and maybe do some things that were beyond what my capabilities might have said on paper. I lived up to those expectations and succeeded in increasing levels of responsibility as a result of that.

Those lessons probably aren’t any different for today’s environment, but what is different is, you know, I went through the traditional degree structure—get an undergraduate degree, have some pedigree in it, get an opportunity to do a job, maybe go get an advanced degree, have some pedigree in it, and get an opportunity to do something more significant. I think that’s so passé.

It’s not that I don’t value education; it’s quite the opposite. What I value is a lifelong discipline to learning. The reality is I think successful generations moving forward are going to be individuals who are very disciplined in thinking about, in every day as they wake up, in every month, in every quarter, and every year, what are their objectives for their own personal learning?

How are they going to build a curriculum on a variety of tools that are available to them to ensure they’re dedicating their time and energy to do that? And they have to realize that as this economy, as our environment has become more global—the internet has done that—you’re competing with people all over the globe.

Every day, they get up and have access to some of the most remarkable sets of information they’ve ever had, and if they’re more motivated to get it, digest it, and learn it than you are, they’re probably going to be more competitive professionally than you are.

So you’ve got to think about that; you’re your own chief learning officer. You’ve got to think about all the tools and capabilities available to you, like Khan Academy and others, and how you're going to engage every day to learn more. If you do that, I think you’ll get more opportunity, you’ll get increasing levels of responsibility, and you’ll keep your skills current as things are moving and changing.

And that, I think, is going to be an incredibly important part of people's success moving forward.

Balance—boy, you know, I always talk about it internally as you have four dynamics in your life. It’s like a box. You want that box to be a perfect square. The reality is, very few of us are ever really good at making that box a perfect square.

It's your personal relationships and those people that are important to you—family, close friends; that’s one side of it. It's your personal professional commitment, what you do at work and what satisfaction you get out of that. That’s one element of that box. The third element is: why do you get up in the morning, and what is your reason for being?

It might be a set of religious beliefs, but you better be getting up every day and thinking about the fact that there's some greater entity you're serving—either your co-workers, your fellow man, or somebody that’s more important than you—that drives you. The final and the fourth area of that box is really your physical well-being. How healthy are you? How well do you take care of this vehicle that you have to get through life in?

You know, everybody would rather probably drive a Porsche than ride a scooter because the Porsche performs better, and your body needs to be a Porsche, not a scooter. So, your job is to think about your life every day across those four dimensions, and when one side of that square is out of balance, work to get it into balance or try to keep it in balance.

I have to use a lot of discipline; it’s self-evaluation across those four dynamics. It's about setting limits—limits to how my professional life creeps into my personal life, how much time I reserve in a given day to ensure that my body still functions, what am I doing for my own mental renewal. You have to be very disciplined around thinking about those things and not being shy about building the coping mechanisms and specifics to ensure that you're spending time in all four of those areas.

Sal: Well, John, I could talk to you for a few more hours about actually each of these topics, but you need to help keep the nation’s telecom infrastructure going so that we can help the nation keep learning. Thank you so much for this incredible conversation, and thank you again for all of your support over the years.

John: Sal, thank you for everything you do at the Khan Academy. I'm more than happy to be affiliated, and proud I could spend some time with you this afternoon.

Sal: Thank you so much, John. Well, everyone, thank you for joining. Hopefully, you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. I find John to be an inspirational figure. I have light in my eyes now; the sun has moved.

I really, you know, hopefully we can get him on in the future again to talk about some of the life-work balance stuff, which is something that we’re all trying to struggle with these days. But anyway, thanks for joining—we covered a lot of important issues there. Our next live stream will be on Thursday, where we have a surprise guest.

We're going to actually announce and meet the winner of the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which is this incredible challenge where students from around the world submit these videos explaining new concepts in math and science, and the winner gets hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of prizes and scholarships. So it’ll be a pretty fun conversation, I predict. I will see you then!