Legislation and new regulations may open access to the Internet for remote Native American and other rural communities. Are developers listening to tribes?
On March 15, Ms. Belinda Nelson reported to the House-Senate Roundtable on “Building America Together” that 41 percent of residents on tribal lands lacked access to fixed broadband, compared to 10 percent nationally. Her company, Gila River Telecommunications, had managed to take over an exchange area from a telephone company that was not adequately serving the Gila River Reservation community, and ultimately to provide telephone access to all Gila River tribal households.
Nelson and other members of the panel reviewed some of the barriers to communications access in remote areas, including a lack of start-up capital, a need for coordination among federal agencies to support communications projects and public-private partnerships, and a need for a change in the Communications Act to require common carriers to reach into tribal areas.
In previous hearings, educators from tribal schools and federal officials have testified about the need for broadband access to support connections for schools with the wider world of information available through the internet.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (CA-36) has introduced H.R. 1581, the Tribal Digital Access Act, to accomplish one of the panelists’ recommendations – to amend the Communications Act to add a specific reference to Indian Country to the section that requires common carriers to provide universal service, including in rural, low income and high cost areas. (See H.R. 1581 in the “Economic Development” section of our “Watching Congress” bill list.)
Now the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is stepping into the challenge. On March 31, the FCC issued a “notice of proposed rulemaking” on Accelerating Broadband Deployment by Removing Barriers to Infrastructure Investment and Revising the Historic Preservation Review Process for Wireless Facility Deployments.
While the general intent of this rulemaking process may be beneficial to tribal communities and other remote locations, proposed changes to laws that protect tribal traditional sites are potentially troubling. Visions of cell-phone towers on traditional sacred sites and access roads through traditional burial or ceremonial grounds are deeply offensive to many tribal members and communities.
Before public or private entities make decisions on placing telecommunications infrastructure on tribal lands, they need to engage in meaningful consultation with tribal governments in the region. This consultation is essential, whether the lands are specifically reserved for tribes or are used traditionally by them.
