Extending Broadband Access in Rural and Native Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Representatives of rural and Native communities share stories about the experience of lacking a broadband connection when the service is necessary to work, study, and obtain healthcare, safely. These brief anecdotes illustrate the negative impact that substandard service or lack of service has on the safety and wellbeing of rural and Native communities in general, and particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors offer the Federal Communications Commission 12 recommendations:

Short-Term Recommendations

1. Require Lifeline providers to offer unlimited voice, text, and data services to Lifeline subscribers during the pandemic and for six months after to ensure subscribers can rely on these services during recovery efforts.
2. Extend the 2.5 GHz Tribal Priority Window for tribes to access unclaimed spectrum licenses over their lands.
3. Encourage telecommunications companies to suspend all fixed and mobile broadband data caps and usage overage charges during the pandemic and for six months after to allow for connectivity during recovery efforts.
4. Encourage ISPs to offer subsidized or free broadband service to tribal governments, radio and television stations, first responders, and hospitals on reservations, during the pandemic and for six months after the end of the pandemic during recovery efforts.
5. Delay the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction 904.
6. Allow tribal lands that have received separate funding to be eligible for RDOF.
7. Require Auction 904 winning bidders that receive funding to build in tribal lands to demonstrate an established collaboration with the tribal governments of the lands where they received funding, within 180 days of being announced as winning bidders.

Long-Term Recommendations

1. The FCC should establish a Tribal Broadband Fund to provide targeted funding for broadband planning and deployment on tribal lands.
2. Collect affordability and outage data, crosscheck data reported by providers, and survey consumers.
3. Establish interagency cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of Interior, Indian Health Services, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
4. Extend E-Rate networks. 
5. Hold a Tribal Priority Filing Window for every spectrum auction.