Tribal Advocates Back Native Nations Broadband Fund, Self-Governance in Spectrum
The FCC should give native tribes priority in allocating and licensing spectrum, create a special “Native Nations Broadband Fund” and take on a “tribal-centric” view of economic development, Native American groups said in comments in docket 11-41. The National Congress of American Indians, Native Telecom Coalition for Broadband, National Tribal Telecommunications Association, American Library Association and Alexicon Telecommunications Consulting endorsed some form of a broadband fund for tribes. “The FCC must take extraordinary measures to provide parity of communications service with non-Native communities,” the Tribal Telecom Association said in a joint filing with the Gila River Telecommunications Association. “Since the passage of the 1996 Telecom Act, only three Native governments have attained full regulatory self-provisioning [eligible telecommunications carrier] status.”
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Any native broadband fund must be “future-leaning,” the Library Association said. “The creation of a Native Nations Broadband Fund can assist native nations in coming up to speed, but the fund should be devised such that the forward momentum continues and keeps pace with the increased demand for high-capacity broadband and the services it enables,” the group said. “As other federal initiatives are under way to bring one gigabit of service to anchor institutions and the repositioning of the high-cost fund to focus on broadband, the Commission should include native nations in each and any future initiative."
AT&T and CenturyLink urged the commission to take a long look before diving into any major reform. “While there is some data to suggest that broadband availability and subscribership on Tribal lands is lagging national averages, that data has thus far been mostly anecdotal (and in some cases contradictory) and sheds little light on both the extent of the lag and the underlying causes for it,” AT&T said. “Thus, AT&T believes the Commission’s first step in addressing broadband availability and subscribership issues on Tribal lands should be to publish a more complete and refined analysis of the data it has at its disposal.”
CenturyLink said that “we appreciate the qualitative improvement” that high-speed Internet can bring to tribes but that it “intends to carefully review the comments” in the docket. The proposed native broadband fund “may have promise,” CenturyLink acknowledged. “But until the parameters of such a fund are articulated, it would be premature for service providers to endorse it, particularly if they are considered to be a primary funding source. Moreover, any such fund should not thwart private investment; but should operate rather as a tool to encourage collaboration between private providers and Native Nations.”
Satellite companies touted their abilities to serve tribal lands. Satellite is especially well suited for improving communications in tribal areas, said the Satellite Industry Association. To ensure that satellite services can play this role, the FCC must “apply any support mechanisms on a truly technology-neutral basis,” said SIA. The commission should eliminate artificial barriers that preclude satellite service customers from receiving support program benefits, the association said. Access to the Lifeline and Link-Up funds for satellite service will promote adoption in the tribal lands, said SIA.
Satellite links are “likely to remain the only economically viable method of demand aggregation for sophisticated digital communications services” in remote areas, said LightSquared. Mobile satellite services/ancillary terrestrial component networks are perfect for tribal lands because terrestrial-only networks can’t reach the most remote areas and satellite-only networks can’t serve population centers, the company said. The FCC should consider extending the tribal lands order waiver policy that allows waivers based on agreements between tribal authorities and satellite providers, said LightSquared. Globalstar can also provide service to tribal areas over MSS, the company said. The FCC could facilitate satellite service by adopting flexible framework for terrestrial operations in the big low Earth orbit MSS band where Globalstar operates, it said. Terrestrial use of Globalstar’s spectrum will let the company defray capital costs of deploying satellite infrastructure and operational costs of providing MSS, said Globalstar.
The federal government should “adopt policies and devote resources to subsidize the cost of broadband service and subscriber equipment,” said a group of satellite broadband companies. Dish Network, EchoStar, Hughes, ViaSat and WildBlue said such funding could come through the native nations broadband fund, proposed as part of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. The companies said they would support such a fund, as long as satellite services are deemed fully eligible for funding.