WASHINGTON, February 23, 2023 – Tribal Ready, a Native American-owned company, on Tuesday announced its launch – together with a new effort to encourage Indian county to be accurately mapped for broadband access and deployment through a “Virtual Tribal Broadband Office.”

“It is incumbent on Tribal leaders, citizens and allies to gather data on a scale large enough to ensure that Tribal nations receive the billions of dollars that are available and necessary to complete broadband expansion projects,” said Joe Valandra, CEO of the new entity.

Hear Joe Valandra of Tribal Ready during Broadband Breakfast Live Online on March 8, 2023: A Status Update on Tribal Broadband

Valandra, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, said that Tribal entities should receive at least $5 billion of the $42.5 billion of federal funds available under the bipartisan infrastructure law’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program.

The $5 billion number, he said in an interview, is “a very rough calculation that I did based upon the priority being unserved” individuals, and based open the gaping lack of available broadband in Indian County.

Valandra has more than 25 years of experience in executive-level leadership roles in the public, private, government, and non-profit sectors, including an extensive background in Tribal economic development.

Virtual broadband office aims to speak for Tribes

Valandra was highly critical of the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband serviceable location fabric, which he said dramatically undercounted locations and availability for broadband in rural and Tribal areas.

“If the FCC’s fabric were the only tool that were used to allocate these funds, Indian country would be left out,” he said. He cited the broadband map’s representation that the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota was served, which he said wasn’t accurate.

In the view of Tribal Ready, the solution is for Tribal Nations to sign up for the Virtual Tribal Broadband Office at TribalReady.com. The new entity works in close partnership with Ready.net, he said, which gives Tribal Ready access to data and other broadband tools.

Just as every state and territory has a state-wide broadband office, Tribes need to be represented through a voice in Washington focused on their needs, said Valandra.

“We hope to become or to acquire a number of ISPs so that we can partner with Tribes to give them the type of knowledge and expertise and regulatory framework to really run those networks and to preserve ownership and control for Tribes,” he said.

Others on the team emphasize the crucial role of broadband data, and other broadband resources, to ensuring maximum funds for Indian country.

“High-speed broadband is a resource – a means to an end,” said Scott Dinsmore, vice president of external affairs at Tribal Ready. “It takes resources to achieve sustainable high-speed networks and the world-class access to economic, education, healthcare and other benefits that come with it.”

Tribal Ready said that it believes the best way to achieve this is to create data and guidelines that help states design fair and inclusive challenge processes. Tribal Ready also emphasized ensuring that Tribal data sovereignty is secure and protected.

Before launching Tribal Ready, Valandra worked in the Indian gaming industry for more than the decade of the 1990s, before coming to Washington. In 2005, he became chief of staff for the National Indian Gaming Commission, a position he occupied until 2007. He subsequently worked extensively in the field of in the Tribal communications.

From the 12 Days of Broadband:

• On the Ninth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
  $9 Billion Universal Service Fund
  8,132,968 census blocks and a national Broadband Fabric
  7.7% annual inflation rate
  Wi-Fi 6E
  5 Federal Communications Commissioners
  $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds
  Section Two-30 of the Communications Decency Act
  24 Reverse-Preemption Pole Attachment States
  and A Symmetrical Gigabit Network.

The Federal Communications Commission this summer waived away the issue of revamping the Universal Service Fund, pointing to the need for Congress to give it the authority to make changes to the multi-billion-dollar fund that goes to support basic telecommunications services to low-income Americans and rural communities. 

Up to this point, the agency had a virtual megaphone to its ear with critics saying that it needs to make the changes necessitated by the fact that the nearly $9-billion fund this quarter is supported only by dwindling legacy voice service revenues as more Americans move over to broadband-driven communications services. 

 Download the complete 12 Days of Broadband report

Over the past year, the conversation over what to do with the fund has reached ever-increasingly levels of urgency. The contribution percentage — the tax on voice service providers that is often passed down to consumers — climbs with the demands of the fund. In other words, there is an inverse relationship with taxed revenues and the contribution percentage — the lower the voice revenues to draw from, the higher the percentage demanded from fund, which is adjusted by the Universal Service Administrative Company every quarter. 

Critics have urged the FCC to make significant expansions to the contribution sources of the fund, including taxing broadband revenues and forcing Big Tech to pay because they benefit from internet infrastructure. 

Still others — including AT&T — have recommended that Congress step in and have the funds come from general taxation, which was met with concern that the fund’s pot of money would fluctuate with constantly changing political personnel. 

Meanwhile, a bill that would require the FCC to study and report on the feasibility of having Big Tech pay into the fund made its way out of the Senate Commerce Committee in May. But nothing since. 

Hence the concern as to what the FCC did when it temporarily handed the hot potato over to Congress — how long will it take? 

Congress must move legislation forward, which takes months as it has other business to deal with. Even after the many months of bill passage, the FCC must draft its own proposal that must go through a public comment process. 

This was the concern of critics who said the FCC already has the legal authority to act unilaterally, without the intervention of Congress to get the process started. One of those critics includes Carol Mattey, former deputy chief of the FCC, who last year published a report saying the agency must expand the contribution base to include broadband revenues. 

Following the report’s publishing, Mattey and advocate Public Knowledge argued that the FCC has the legal authority to expand the base on its own. 

But in the FCC report to Congress on the USF this summer, the agency wasn’t so sure. 

“On review, there is significant ambiguity in the record regarding the scope of the Commission’s existing authority to broaden the base of contributors,” the report said.

“As such, we recommend Congress provide the Commission with the legislative tools needed to make changes to the contributions methodology and base in order to reduce the financial burden on consumers, to provide additional certainty for entities that will be required to make contributions, and to sustain the Fund and its programs over the long term.”

The deference to Congress pleased the two Republicans on the commission, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, both of whom — no less interested in the sustainability of the fund — preferred the legislative body make the determination.

In July, the Biden-Harris administration announced another $401 million in funding for high-speed Internet access in rural America. This was just the latest in a string of government initiatives aimed at helping close the US digital divide.

These initiatives have been essential for encouraging traditional broadband providers, communities and utility companies to deploy fiber to rural communities, with governments cognizant of the vital role broadband connectivity has in sustaining communities and improving socio-economic opportunities for citizens. 

Yet there is still work to do, even in countries with the most advanced connectivity options. For example, fixed broadband is missing from almost 30 percent of rural American homes, according to Pew Research. It’s similar in Europe where a recent European Commission’s Digital Divide report found that roughly 18 percent of rural citizens can only get broadband speeds of a maximum 30 Mb, a speed which struggles to cope with modern digital behaviors. 

Appetite for high-speed broadband in rural areas is strong

There’s no denying the appetite for high-speed broadband in rural areas. The permanent increase in working from home and the rise of modern agricultural and Industry 4.0 applications mean that there’s an increasingly attractive business case for rural fiber deployments – as the first operator to bring fiber to a community creates a significant barrier to entry for competitors. 

The first consideration, then, for a new rural fiber deployment is which passive optical network technology to use. Gigabit PON seems like an obvious first choice, being a mature and widely deployed technology. 

However, GPON services are a standard offering for nearly every fiber broadband operator. As PON is a shared medium with usually up to 30 users each taking a slice, it’s easy to see how a few Gigabit customers can quickly max out the network, and with the ever-increasing need for speed, it’s widely held that GPON will not be sufficient by about 2025. 

XGS-PON is an already mature technology

The alternative is to use XGS-PON, a more recent, but already mature, flavor of PON with a capacity of 10 Gigabits per second. With the greater capacity, broadband operators can generate higher revenues with more premium-tier residential services as well as lucrative business services. There’s even room for additional services to run alongside business and residential broadband. For example, the same network can carry traffic from four G and five G cells, known as mobile backhaul. That’s either a new revenue opportunity or a cost saving if the operator also runs a mobile network. 

This convergence of different services onto a single PON fiber network is starting to take off, with fiber-to-the-home networks evolving into fiber for everything, where homes, businesses, industries, smart cities, mobile cells and more are all running on the same infrastructure. This makes the business case even stronger. 

Whether choosing GPON or XGS-PON, the biggest cost contributor is the same for both: deploying fiber outside the plant. Therefore, the increased cost of XGS-PON over GPON is far outweighed by the capacity increase it brings, making XGS-PON the clear choice for a brand-new fiber deployment. XGS-PON protects this investment for longer as its higher capacity makes it harder for new entrants to offer a superior service. 

It also doesn’t need to be upgraded for many years, and when it comes to the business case for fiber, it pays to take a long-term view. Fiber optic cable has a shelf-life of 75 or more years, and even as one increases the speeds running on fiber, that cable can remain the same.  

Notwithstanding these arguments, fiber still comes at a cost, and operators need to carefully manage those costs in order to maximize returns. 

Recent advances in fiber technology allow operators to take a pragmatic approach to their rollouts. In the past, each port on a PON server blade could only deliver one technology. But Multi-PON has multiple modes: only GPON, only XGS-PON or both together. It even has a forward-looking 25G PON mode. 

This allows an operator to easily boost speeds as needed with minimal effort and additional investment. GPON could be the starting point for fiber-to-the-home services, XGS-PON could be added for business services, or even a move to 25G PON for a cluster of rural power users, like factories and modern warehouses – creating a seamless, future-proof upgrade path for operators. 

The decision not to invest in fiber presents a substantial business risk

Alternatively, there’s always the option for a broadband operator to stick with basic broadband in rural areas and not invest in fiber. But that actually presents a business risk, as any competitor that decides to deploy fiber will inevitably carve out a chunk of the customer base for themselves. 

Besides, most operators are not purely profit-driven; they too recognize that prolonging the current situation in underserved communities is not great. High-speed broadband makes areas more attractive for businesses, creating more jobs and stemming population flows from rural to urban centers. 

But rural broadband not only improves lives, but it also decreases the world’s carbon emissions both directly, compared to alternative broadband technologies, and indirectly by enabling online and remote activities that would otherwise involve transportation. These social and economic benefits of fiber are highly regarded by investors and stockholders who have corporate social responsibility high on their agendas. 

With the uber-connected urban world able to adopt every new wave of bandwidth-hungry application – think virtual reality headsets and the metaverse – rural communities are actually going backwards in comparison. The way forward is fiber and XGS-PON. 

Björn Capens is Nokia Fixed Networks European Vice President. Since 2017, Capens has been leading Nokia’s fixed networks business, headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium. He has more than 20 years of experience in the fixed broadband access industry and holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, from KU Leuven. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

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