Tribal

Osage senior citizens no longer have to pay for internet access, which means they can more easily enjoy online language classes, telehealth appointments and digital tribal news from the comfort of their own homes. To qualify for the new program through Osage Broadband, participants must be enrolled Osage members and have an active account. They must also live within the tribe’s reservation and be at least 55 years old.

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 conne

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the Commission will vote during its August Open Meeting to adopt a new event code that would deliver critical messages to the public over television and radio about missing and endangered persons.

In the fourth installment of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation’s Access America series, Jess talks to Brian Allenby, program operations and communications director for the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA). They chat about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, Maine's digital equity intensive approach, and how the state has been promoting regional broadband plans and activity. "The Regional Tribal Broadband Partners were convened as a working group to share information at what was happening at that local level.

A partnership between Osage Broadband in Oklahoma and Tarana, a fixed wireless technology provider, will bring broadband to 2,300 square miles of underserved and indigenous communities in Osage County. This broadband/fixed wireless partnership will combine technologies to deliver high-speed broadband connections to the residents and businesses of Osage County. Osage Broadband and their partner AtLink Services will provide connectivity—via fiber, in most cases—to Tarana’s towers.

This is the third in a three-part series about the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program announcement from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The third grant program funded by the Digital Equity Act of 2021 is the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. This information can guide organizations as they Get Ready to prepare their applications. The grant's purpose is to create the conditions where individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in the society and economy of the United States. Allowable uses of grant awards include:

American Indian and Alaska Natives living in tribal areas have among the nation’s lowest rates of high-speed internet access in the United States.

On May 14, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted a Rural Communities in Action event at the White House to highlight how the Administration is investing in rural communities.

The Forest County Potawatomi Community of Wisconsin had been generating electricity to run its community center using solar panels for years—they just didn’t have an accurate way of tracking their energy usage. Thanks to an Internet for All grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), they now do. NTIA’s Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) awarded the Forest County Potawatomi Community $125,232 to provide reliable high-speed Internet service to the Tribe’s solar arrays.