We Hear You, and We’re On it
By Matt Polka, President and CEO
All of us at ACA Connects are here to assist you with the new challenges you are facing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost overnight, you have been called upon to meet the nation’s increased demand for high-performance broadband and asked to do so with fewer workers as you safeguard their health and safety, and they do so for themselves and their communities. Layer on top of that the proliferation of statewide, stay-at-home orders and orders for closure of “non-essential” businesses, or more localized quarantines, curfews, and geographic area access restrictions, as well as nationwide shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE). Without doubt, these obstacles combined make meeting your customers’ needs more challenging for you and your employees who must be out in the field maintaining and upgrading your network; be in consumers’ homes installing or restoring connectivity; and be in the office ensuring your operations are coordinated and your customers tended to with the same top-notch service you always provide.
We have heard from many of you about the challenges you are facing on the ground, or expect to face in the coming days and weeks. On Wednesday (March 25), we sent you a member advisory laying out and explaining guidance recently issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) geared toward assisting state and local authorities’ decision making about the types of workers, including many of your own, that deserve special treatment during the pandemic so they may continue performing their important work. Yet, we know issues still remain. You seek greater clarity regarding what privileges your personnel may reasonably expect to obtain from state and local authorities. Moreover, we are aware that many of you are hampered by a lack of access to PPE and by the uncertainty of what proper protocols are with respect to in-home visits.
Through our active participation in the Communications Sector Coordinating Council (CSCC) and the Communications Information Sharing and Analysis Center (COMM-ISAC), we are participating daily in meetings with DHS and/or with our industry partners to share these concerns, hear the challenges that other providers are encountering, and press for solutions. The government is hearing your concerns. Indeed, we expect, for instance, that some further clarifications to the DHS guidance will be forthcoming imminently.
In the midst of this unique, highly fluid operational landscape, we are here to help you get answers and find solutions to your rapidly developing challenges and needs. We are exploring new ways to engage with as many of you as possible, so we can learn about the on-the-ground circumstances you are encountering. This, in turn, enables us to surface your issues via the COMM-ISAC and CSCC. At ACA Connects, COMMUNICATIONS is our middle name, and our mission is to CONNECT; the more we COMMUNICATE, the better we will CONNECT.
We continue to be in this together every step of the way! We urge you to respond when we reach out to you, and likewise, for you to reach out to us with any issues you are facing on the ground, and any questions you may have about them. We hear you. And we’re on it.