Tribal

The Pueblo of Zia will use a newly awarded broadband planning grant to support fiber connectivity to 193 unserved homes and 12 Tribal community institutions. The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion has given the Pueblo in Sandoval County a $100,000 grant through OBAE’s Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. The state grant will help provide high-quality internet connectivity for the Pueblo of Zia’s Tribal Administration and community, installing 12 miles of fiber and related infrastructure. 

The Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and the Native Entity Grant Program, designed to support Native Entities in implementing essential broadband adoption and usage programs, are open for application. Indian Tribes, Alaska Native entities, and Native Hawaiian organizations are eligible applicants for both programs.

Last week, we covered some of the broadband and digital equity initiatives launched by the states this summer. From digital equity resources in Louisiana to historic investments in broadband infrastructure funding for the Navajo Nation, here are some more notable broadband news bites we've seen from states and Tribal governments around the country.

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and National Telecommunications and Information Administrator Arielle Roth joined Chairman Tom Cole in the Chickasaw Nation near Ada, Oklahoma, to see firsthand how the Nation is using a range of broadband technologies and NTIA funding to connect its communities. During her visit, Assistant Secretary Roth toured a fixed wireless tower that delivers high-speed internet to Tribal residents, learned about the drilling equipment used to deploy fiber, and discussed how the Chickasaw Nation is incorporating satellite connectivity,

Tribal land in southwestern New Mexico could soon get its first broadband connections. The Fort Sill Chiricahua-Warm Springs-Apache Tribe near Akela in Luna County is in line for fiber broadband infrastructure following two $100,000 state broadband planning grants awarded by the state’s broadband office through its Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. Fort Sill, headquartered in Apache, Oklahoma, currently operates a convenience store and owns about 1,910 acres of an expanded area in Luna County.

From 2020 through 2024, Congress appropriated over $82 billion to programs across multiple agencies to expand broadband access. In a number of reports in recent years, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’s watchdog that investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, recommended that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration better communicate the financial sustainability of broadband projects to Congress and improve collaboration with the other federal agencies that fund broadband deployment.

Alongside the third round of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration opened a companion Notice of Funding Oppor

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration opened the third—and, given the dollars remaining, likely final—competition for funding under the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the Department of Commerce announced two new notices of funding opportunity: one for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and one for the Native Entities Grant Program, the native entity set-aside under the Digital Equity Act. Together, these NOFOs will make $790 million available to Tribal and Native communities to advance broadband co

In February 2022, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance received a grant from Google.org to create the National Digital Navigator Corps, a pilot program intended to build and advance local digital inclusion work in rural and Indigenous communities and strengthen the digital navigator model in those contexts. NDIA supported Digital Navigator programs in 18 community-based organizations serving rural and Tribal communities across the United States while gathering lessons learned, identifying best practices, and developing replicable resources to share with others.