California's Broadband Program Awards Funds to Tribes and Public Entities

As federal broadband funding sources face continued uncertainty, California’s massive last-mile grant program continues to plow ahead, looking increasingly like a vital lifeline for communities hoping to ensure that every individual has access to robust, reliable, and affordable Internet access.

Cold Springs Rancheria of Mono Indians was among the applicants celebrating a winning grant application in the California Public Utilities Commission’s latest Federal Funding Account announcement.

The grant marks the eighth successful application by a Tribal nation in this program and another in a long list of community-focused projects led by public entities like municipalities.

Cold Spring Rancheria’s application, for up to $1.5 million dollars, will bring much-needed connectivity to a total of 94 units, including 5 anchor institutions, on the Reservation in Fresno County with 100 percent of the households served by this project qualifying as low-income.

Many residents on the Reservation lack access to a terrestrial Internet service offering speeds anywhere near the definition of broadband, or 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) Upload * 20 Mbps Download. Those that do have access to purported “broadband” speeds must rely on out-of-date DSL connections and, as a result, struggle with slow and spotty connections.

After working for several years to find a viable solution to these connectivity challenges, Tribal officials can now look forward to the fastest and most reliable Internet access via fiber-to-the-home technology.

The new, Tribally-owned broadband network will help the Tribe achieve universal access.

It will also ensure that essential government services aren’t disrupted by prolonged and frequent outages, and that critical emergency management and first response communications can be relied on in moments of need.

“Due to historical underinvestment, many communities across California lack access to fast, reliable, and reasonably priced broadband service, which is now a necessity to fully participate in work, school, and daily life,” CPUC Comissioner Darcie L. Houck said in a statement touting the new awards.

“I look forward to seeing the benefits of these investments that will provide opportunities for many generations to come,” Houck added.

According to the announcement, the Tribe has elected to work with Ponderosa Telephone Company on the project. Leveraging the regional ILEC’s middle mile network, the Tribe’s plan calls for approximately two new miles of buried last-mile fiber.

Cold Springs Rancheria also anticipates partnering with Ponderosa to construct and operate the network until Tribal staff are prepared to take on day-to-day management of the network.

The Tribe is in good company with this strategy of taking a gradual approach to becoming its own service provider. Several other Tribes taking on this critical service over the past few years have used a similar approach, including the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Local communities rising the occasion of California's program

Over the last six months, ILSR has chronicled many of the grants coming out of California’s last mile broadband program program.

Established in 2021, the FFA program will ultimately invest $2 billion to bring connectivity to unserved areas, with a special emphasis on areas deemed “disadvantaged communities or Environmental and Social Justice communities.”

The CPUC reported that it received nearly 500 applications over the roughly four-month grant window in 2023, totaling more than $4.6 billion in asks.

Awards have now been trickling out since June of last year, largely on a county-by-county basis.

With the grant to Cold Springs Rancheria and other projects at the January 30th CPUC meeting, the state has approved over $1 billion in grants to serve nearly two million California residents.

As we noted in a previous story, the CPUC appears to be offering a fair hearing to community-led broadband projects. This is despite initial concerns that the program would amount to another massive hand-out to incumbent ISPs, especially since giant telecoms like AT&T and Spectrum were responsible for 73 percent of applications - with AT&T alone asking for an eye-watering $1.4 billion in grants.

But those fears have proved unfounded.

In total, 47 percent of the FFA awards announced thus far have gone to community broadband projects.

Besides the awards to Tribal entities, an additional 43 have been designated for community-led broadband initiatives, including those led by city and county governments and consortia like Golden State Connect Authority.

Plumas-Sierra Telecommunications, a subsidiary of an electric cooperative, has won an additional $75 million in grants to connect locations in Sierra, Lassen, Plumas, and Nevada counties.

Taken together, these grants promise to transform the broadband landscape in rural and urban California communities alike.

Thanks to competitive grants in 29 of California’s counties, more than 200,000 formerly unserved residents from the northernmost reaches of the State to the southern border will soon be able to get Internet access from democratically-accountable networks designed to value the community’s needs over profits.

Despite these successes, plenty of money has still flowed to national telecoms, including in the latest round of awards. In fact, Cold Springs Rancheria represented the only community-owned prospective project in the latest announcements.

One other applicant, WiConduit, is a nonprofit working to bridge the digital divide through public-private partnerships.

Though it does not appear that the network will be community-owned, several members of WiConduit’s Board of Directors boast deep roots in the Sonoma County area where the nonprofit will build, so it will be interesting to see how this project develops.

An additional $800 million remains available in the FFA program, though it is not clear what portion of the total will ultimately be awarded in this round.

According to the January resolution, Fresno County, where the Cold Springs Rancheria is located, has an additional $44 million remaining from the amount originally earmarked.

Several other counties are in a similar situation while six others - Orange, Inyo, Monterey, Calaveras, Contra Costa, and Trinity - have seen no awards announced yet.

While numerous other community broadband projects await word on whether the state will approve their grant applications, Cold Springs Rancheria can now move forward. In only one year’s time, residents of the Rancheria will join the millions of Americans with the most reliable and fastest Internet available - thanks to the efforts of their own community.

Jessica Auer is a Tribal Broadband Policy Analyst with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Networks Initiative. She supports the team’s work to promote Indigenous-led broadband initiatives. A version of this article originally published by ILSR on Feb. 17, 2025, and is reprinted with permission.