How boot camps are helping to address the historic gap in internet access on US tribal lands

Recently participants gathered in a home movie theater on Matthew Rantanen’s ranch in Southern California to shine a beam of light through more than 55,000 feet (17 kilometers) of fiber optic cable coiled up in the corner. The demonstration took place during a hands-on broadband training for tribal nations where participants handled fiber made up of strands of glass as thin as human hair that transmit energy through pulses of light. The session was part of an initiative founded in 2021 by Rantanen and his business partner, Christopher Mitchell, to help shore up historic disparities in connectivity in Indian Country. If broadband expansion is to succeed on tribal lands, it will happen because people understand how to make it work in their communities, and that’s where nuts-and-bolts training sessions like this come into play. Tribal nations have struggled to connect to the web for a variety of reasons ranging from living in remote locations to lack of investment by internet service providers. The solution Rantanen and Mitchell came up with was the Tribal Broadband Bootcamp, a hands-on way to help people understand the technology through three-day sessions.