Little Progress Made Getting Broadband to Indian Lands, Says Levin
FCC broadband plan coordinator Blair Levin called the lack of broadband connectivity in Indian country a “tragedy” and said the FCC is well aware of the problem as it works on the National Broadband Plan. Levin said little has changed since his previous tenure at the FCC, as chief of staff in the early 1990s, when he was chief of staff. “One would hope that there would have been some progress, but there actually has been very little.” Levin spoke Thursday at a New America Foundation event marking the release of a long-awaited report by the foundation and Native Public Media on new media and Internet use in Indian country.
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“Ultimately those without connectivity are disenfranchised,” Levin said. “They are unable to interact fully with their own communities. Without connectivity it is difficult to be an engaged, informed citizen of any nation that you're apart of, or any community. This is a challenge, which looms especially large for tribal communities.” The problem isn’t new, he acknowledged. “Telephone penetration is at less than 70 percent in Indian country. There’s actually very little reliable data on broadband penetration but I've seen some estimates suggesting it’s as low as 5 percent. And there’s only sporadic deployment of cellular service.”
No one-size-fits-all solution will get broadband to Indian country, Levin said. “Each tribe looks different,” he said. “There are unique terrain challenges, geopolitical challenges and business environment challenges. There’s a difficult existing infrastructure. Sometimes there is a telephone system. Sometimes there’s cellular.”
The report said: “As digital communications and the Internet become increasingly pervasive, Native Americans continue to lack access to this digital revolution. Native Americans are among the last citizens to gain access to the Internet, with access to broadband often unavailable or overly expensive in Native communities. … There is a fundamental lack of qualitative or quantitative empirical research on Native American Internet use, adoption, and access, stifling the Native voice in broadband and media.” The report includes results of a survey of Native Americans across the country about Internet use and a study of how broadband was built in six places.
Business models centered on tribes “have the greatest chance for sustainability, in terms of both adoption and ultimate profitability,” the report said. “Tribal lands are communities with their own unique institutions and operations. As sovereign local governments, Tribes are uniquely and intimately knowledgeable of their own communities and needs. When the Tribe itself is thus engaged, and its institutions and families are central to the planning, chances increase for the success of robust broadband networks.”
The study supports including a tribal broadband plan in the national plan, forming a tribal office at the FCC and creating a joint task force on broadband between the commission and Native Nations. Most of the recommendations had been put forward last week in a filing at the FCC by Native Public Media and the National Congress of American Indians (CD Nov 12 p5).
“We've all heard the jokes about smoke signals,” said Geoffrey Blackwell, the chairman of the telecommunications subcommittee of the National Congress of American Indians. “In Indian county we suffer from not only historical, but modern stereotypes that we are lazy, uneducated, that we do not participate in the national economy. … That is simply not true and this study finally dispels that.” Blackwell said the Communications Act and the Telecom Act don’t mention tribal issues. “The commission has done an admirable job when they've had the bat in their hands to write tribes into the rules,” he said. “But we need to start a new initiative … to determine whether or not the current regulatory frameworks operate successfully to address the issues.”
Levin said studies like the one released Thursday are critical to development of the national plan. “This is the kind of thing that we really need in order to have a successful plan because we have too limited time, too limited resources to really come up with the best ideas ourselves,” he said.