Broadband funding for Native communities could finally connect some of America’s most isolated places

Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by. For decades, people who live in places like the Blackfeet Indian Reservation have made do with low bandwidth delivered through obsolete copper wires, or simply gone without. The covid-19 pandemic underscored the problem as Native communities locked down and moved school and other essential daily activities online. But it also kicked off an unprecedented surge of relief funding to solve it. Now many Blackfeet and other Native communities face a different kind of problem: figuring out how to spend the billions of dollars in US federal funds they’ve received to catch up or even leap ahead. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Antiquated networks need to be upgraded. Vast distances mean technologies like 5G aren’t always good options. And costs are soaring. Still, it means some parts of the country that have long been cut off from the internet are finally coming online.