The Federal Communications Commission estimates that 93% of U.S. residents have access to high speed internet. But that could be overstated. According to a new report by the Urban Institute, rural and Native American communities continue to face barriers to broadband access. KUNM spoke with two researchers from the project Amanda Hermans and Gabe Samuels. They say broadband internet is still critically needed in many tribal communities.
AMANDA HERMANS: It's something that we often take for granted, but it enables so many other things, from education to healthcare to the ability to work, economic development. We also know that certain parts of the country, including Indian country and other rural communities, among others, have less access to broadband than other areas. So we know there's a huge need there. At the same time, Gabe and I and our team have been studying for the last few years the funding that's been coming out of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that was passed in 2021 and this included historic levels of investment in infrastructure, including broadband, including also a first of its kind investment, specifically for Indian country, in the form of a $3 billion tribal connectivity broadband program. So we thought that it was really critical to take a look at the extent to which these recent investments are beginning to close that digital divide that we know exists.
KUNM: Were you able to find any statistics that show the gap between Native communities and US residents in regard to access to broadband?
HERMANS: It's a little tricky, because we know that the data sources that are out there are limited. We include a couple of statistics in our report from some FCC reporting. However, the FCC maps around broadband access have been broadly criticized for overstating how much access there is in rural communities and Native communities. For example, I think they consider a census track to be served if even one household is receiving access in that census track. And in rural areas where census tracts are really large and spread out, if one household in one corner of that census track is receiving access, there could be a whole community on the other side of that census track that isn't receiving access. But these maps are kind of counting them as served.
And that can literally block people from being able to access funds. The federal government, many of the federal broadband programs have some rules and requirements around, not overbuilding. They don't want to duplicate efforts, right? They don't want to fund the same project twice. And so they're looking at these maps that we know are overstating access, and, you know, pointing to a community who may have applied for funding and saying “Our map shows us you already have access. You don't need these funds.” In recent years, we've seen the FCC come to, you know, the realization that there are issues with these data, and I think there steps being taken to correct them.
KUNM: What have been some of the obstacles that Native communities face when wanting to expand broadband access?
SAMUELS: These physical boundaries, I think in rural areas, you're further away from where a lot of the internet infrastructure already is, which means more miles of physical infrastructure, which is just more expensive per mile. There are other factors as well. And I think Amanda touched a little bit on the inconsistency in the reporting of the internet access, and something we heard in a lot of the interviews that in a lot of cases, service providers, like private providers in these areas, will over report the access that people have in these communities as a way to sort of like maintain their role as the main service provider, and so as a result, there's not as much transparency into how good internet access is, and even if it's there, whether it's reliable and high speed.
KUNM: What does the report suggest for these Native communities in terms of building broadband infrastructure?
HERMANS: We saw a ton of super creative solutions out in the field for how to make broadband projects work and in these areas that are geographically really challenging to build in, I think the broadband industry kind of holds up fiber as the perfect solution, as the best solution, as the most cost effective solution, or the most sustainable solution. But fiber is really hard to build in places that have mountain ranges, where the ground is frozen for six months of the year that are on an island, and so I think we saw some really creative solutions, where tribes were combining fiber cables and fixed wireless towers to make sure that they could get service to more remote areas of their communities. We saw some tribal internet service providers become licensed to offer satellite broadband service to reach those more remote households, and so we hope that we captured some examples in our report that show that there are solutions out there for tribes, and there are ways to kind of strategically pick the right technologies that will fit the circumstances in the context of each community.
KUNM: How crucial is the need for broadband on tribal lands?
SAMUELS: It's really crucial. It's important everywhere, obviously, but especially on tribal lands that are often, again, as mentioned, like rural and road areas. You know, it's everything. It's health, telehealth, you know, it's really valuable to have good access there with jobs and remote work opportunities, it's just a massive driver of, you know, economic opportunities, education. It's still an opportunity for a lot of people to attend remote school and maybe stay at home. We actually heard in one interview about someone that they knew in their community who had to, like, drive down the road and then go stand in the corner of somebody's lawn that had, you know, better, Internet access to, like, take their classes online during COVID. It's not just about being able to watch like Netflix without buffering. It's really, really important to have, again, not just any internet access, but high speed, reliable internet access. That you can trust.
Support for this coverage comes from the Thornburg Foundation.
