Jessica Auer
Mapping Digital Sovereignty Across Indian Country As Tribal Broadband Soars
In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) celebrates the growing number of Tribal nations exercising digital sovereignty by building Tribally-owned broadband networks.
What We Can Learn From the Low-Cost Option That Was, Then Wasn’t, Then Was Again
Few people dispute the vital importance of affordability in closing the digital divide.
Native Nations and Federal Telecom Policy Failures: Lessons from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund
As Tribes work in record numbers to close the significant digital divide across Indian Country, they need good policy that facilitates self-determined and sustainable solutions. To the contrary, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), administered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), became, for many, yet another lesson in the dangers of investing significant sums of federal money into new Internet networks on Tribal lands without regard to local knowledge or priorities, leaving Tribal governments to spend their own time and resources to fix broken processes. This report exami
Blueprints for BEAD: Stakeholders May Use Rebuttal Power to Prevent New Errors in BEAD Maps
By mid June, we will have blown past the halfway mark in the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment challenge process—with more than thirty states having completed their “challenge windows” and another handful set to close imminently. But the “challenge window” is only part of the overall challenge process, and there are reasons for communities to stay engaged with the process even after that window closes.