DALLAS, March 31, 2023 —Tribal lands remain among the areas in the United States that most lack broadband access, but an influx of federal funding could help to close the divide if Tribes are able to build successful partnerships and navigate a challenging grant application process, according to speakers at Connected America on Wednesday.

“We’ve been promised for decades by the biggest carriers in the world that they’re going to bring good connectivity to southeastern rural Oklahoma, and they haven’t,” said Rob Griffin, Tribal broadband coordinator for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “They’ve failed, so we’ve worked with regional operating carriers, we’ve worked to build our own fiber networks, and we’re working to gain access to applications and grants over the next couple of years to work with other ISPs and other regional operating carriers.”

Much of this development is being bolstered by federal funding. On March 23, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced two new grants through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, bringing its total to more than $1.75 billion awarded to 135 Tribal entities.

Several Tribal entities are also hoping for funding through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, although the map being used to allocate BEAD funds has been criticized for inaccurately representing Tribal areas.

Although the federal grants present a significant opportunity, Griffin noted that the lengthy application process can be a barrier, particularly for Tribes with limited resources.

Smaller Tribes “might have a part-time IT person if they’re lucky… They don’t have technical resources,” agreed Lisa Hanlon, CEO of the Teltech Group and Cherokee Nation citizen.

Another layer of complexity comes from the number of different federal agencies offering grant funding, each with their own specific requirements and nuances, said Paul Narro, director of public policy for local internet service provider TekWav.

As the grant programs continue, Hanlon advocated for Tribal entities to work with local providers to maximize federal funding, benefiting both parties. In order for such partnerships to be successful, she said, providers must understand the structure of the specific Tribal nation they are working with and then to listen to what the Tribal leaders actually want.

Griffin advised providers to take a long-term approach to working with Tribal nations.

“We’re thinking in terms of how to build things for the next 100 years,” Griffin said. “And when you think like that, your economies of scales are different and your planning stages are different. So if you’re in the process of working with a Tribal nation, just gear your thinking around, ‘How can I help this Tribe and really build a partnership over the next 20, 40, 60 and 100 years?’”

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.

A new study from the Phoenix Center finds that as the federal government pours tens of billions of dollars into shrinking the digital divide in tribal areas, much of that gap has already been eliminated.

The report, and a second from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, are more indications that regulations and economic factors that include income levels continue to hamper efforts to get broadband to all Americans.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 allocated $45 billion toward tribal lands. This was done as part of a massive effort by the federal government to extend broadband infrastructure to unserved and underserved areas of the United States.

George Ford, chief economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies, wrote in the recent policy bulletin that while there is still plenty of work needed to be done in terms of connectivity, efforts in recent years have largely eliminated the broadband gap between tribal and non-tribal areas.

Ford examined broadband deployment around the U.S. between 2014 and 2020 using Form 477 data from the Federal Communications Commission, comparing tribal and non-tribal census tracts.

Ford points out in the bulletin that the FCC has observed several challenges for broadband deployment in tribal areas, including rugged terrain, complex permitting processes, jurisdictional issues, a higher ratio of residences to business customers, higher poverty rates, and cultural and language barriers.

Ford controlled for some of these differences in his study comparing tribal and non-tribal areas. He reports in the bulletin that the statistics suggest nearly equal treatment in high-speed internet development.

Encouraging results about availability of broadband in Tribal areas

“These results are encouraging, suggesting that broadband availability in Tribal areas is becoming closer or equal to non-Tribal areas over time, and that any broadband gap is largely the result of economic characteristics and not the disparate treatment of Tribal areas,” Ford wrote.

But he also notes that unconditioned differences show a 10-percentage point spread in availability in tribal areas, which indicates how much poverty, low population density, and red tape is harming the efforts to close the digital divide there.

“These results do not imply that broadband is ubiquitous in either Tribal or non-Tribal areas; instead, these results simply demonstrate that the difference in availability between Tribal and non-Tribal areas is shrinking and that this difference is mostly explained by a few demographic characteristics,” Ford wrote.

In a recent report, the GAO suggests that part of the problem lies with the federal bureaucracy – that “tribes have struggled to identify which federal program meets their needs and have had difficulty navigating complex application processes.”

GAO states that 18 percent of people living on tribal lands lack broadband access, compared to 4 percent of residents in non-tribal areas.

The GAO recommended that the Executive Office of the President specifically address tribal needs within a national broadband strategy and that the Department of Commerce create a framework within the American Broadband Initiative for addressing tribal issues.

“The Executive Office of the President did not agree or disagree with our recommendation but highlighted the importance of tribal engagement in developing a strategy,” the report notes.

That goes together with the GAO’s dig at the overall lack of a national broadband strategy by the Biden Administration in a June report. As the Taxpayers Protection Alliance reported, the federal auditor noted that 15 federal agencies administer more than 100 different broadband funding programs, and that despite a taxpayer investment of $44 billion from 2015 through 2020, “millions of Americans still lack broadband, and communities with limited resources may be most affected by fragmentation.”

President Biden has set a goal for universal broadband access in the U.S. by 2030. These recent reports show that the federal bureaucracy under his watch needs to do a better job of getting out of its own way.

Johnny Kampis is the director of telecom policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. This piece is exclusive to Broadband Breakfast.

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