[Senate Hearing 108-119]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-119
TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN INDIAN COUNTRY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE STATUS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN INDIAN COUNTRY
__________
MAY 22, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
87-495 wASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512-1800
Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL, Colorado, Chairman
DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii, Vice Chairman
JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, KENT CONRAD, North Dakota
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico HARRY REID, Nevada
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota
GORDON SMITH, Oregon MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
Paul Moorehead, Majority Staff Director/Chief Counsel
Patricia M. Zell, Minority Staff Director/Chief Counsel
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements:
Dejordy, Gene, vice president, Regulatory Affairs, Western
Wireless Corporation....................................... 44
Edelman, Marcia Warren, president, Native Networking Policy
Center..................................................... 14
Fast-Horse, Valerie, cochair, Telecommunications and Utility
Committee, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians,
Portland, OR, and director, Management Information Systems,
Coeur D'Alene Tribe of Idaho............................... 38
Fohrenkam, Robin, chairman and president, Gila River
Telecommunications, Inc., Chandler, AZ..................... 18
Inouye, Hon. Daniel K., U.S. Senator from Hawaii, vice
chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs...................... 1
Johnson, Hon. Tim, U.S. Senator from South Dakota............ 43
Legg, Hilda Gay, administrator, Rural Utilities Service,
Department of Agriculture.................................. 5
Levy, Kelly Klegar, associate administrator, Office of Policy
Analysis and Development, National Telecommunications and
Information, Department of Commerce........................ 7
McDowell, Nora, chairperson, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe........ 20
Monette, Gerald ``Carty'', president, Turtle Mountain
Community College.......................................... 30
Narcia, Richard P., Governor, Gila River Indian Community.... 18
Shaddox, Roanne Robinson, senior advisor/External Relations,
Privacy Council............................................ 47
Snowden, K. Dane, chief, Consumer and Government Affairs
Bureau, Federal Communications Commission.................. 2
Standifer, Jr., Ben H., chief information officer, Tohono
O'odham Nation--executive branch........................... 55
Strand, Mike, chief executive officer and general counsel,
Montana Independent Telecommunications Systems............. 51
Turner, Denis, executive director, Southern California Tribal
Chairmen's Association, Tribal Digital Village............. 27
Twist, Kade L., president, Kade L. Twist Consulting.......... 10
Whiting-Hildebrand, Cora, Oglala Sioux tribal council member. 42
Yawakie, Madonna Peltier, president, Turtle Island
Communications, Inc........................................ 24
Appendix
Prepared statements:
Dejordy, Gene (with attachments)............................. 158
Edelman, Marcia Warren....................................... 104
Fast-Horse, Valerie.......................................... 142
Legg, Hilda Gay.............................................. 80
Levy, Kelly Klegar (with attachments)........................ 85
McDowell, Nora............................................... 118
Mescalero Apache Telecommunications Inc...................... 185
Monette, Gerald ``Carty''.................................... 132
Murphy, Charles W., chairman, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe...... 122
Narcia, Richard P............................................ 109
Shaddox, Roanne Robinson..................................... 173
Snowden, K. Dane (with attachment)........................... 64
Standifer, Jr., Ben H........................................ 177
Strand, Mike................................................. 61
Turner, Denis................................................ 126
Twist, Kade L................................................ 94
Whiting-Hildebrand, Cora..................................... 152
Additional material submitted for the record:
Grosz, Albert, CEO/general manager, West River
Telecommunications Cooperative, Hazen, ND, letter to
Senator Conrad............................................. 35
TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN INDIAN COUNTRY
----------
THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Indian Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m. in
room 485, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Inouye
(vice chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Inouye, Conrad, and Johnson.
STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. INOUYE, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII,
VICE CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS
Senator Inouye. Good morning. This morning, the Committee
on Indian Affairs meets to receive testimony on the status of
telecommunications in Indian country. Last year, this committee
held a joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Communications of
the Commerce Committee on some of the issues related to
telecommunications serving Native America. Today, we have
structured a more comprehensive hearing. I think it is clear
that whether it is characterized as a ``gap'' or a ``digital
divide'' or some other term, Indian country lags far behind the
rest of America in some of the most basic services that most
Americans take for granted.
Thirty-two percent of all Indian homes nationwide lack
basic telephone service. In some areas of the country, like the
State of Arizona, 50 percent of tribal homes have no access to
telephone services. A study conducted by the Economic
Development Administration in 1999 informs us that at that
time, only 9 percent of Indian households had computers and
only 8 percent had access to the Internet. As always, Indian
country has been resourceful in trying to bridge the gap in
telecommunications capacity, and some tribal governments, after
assessing their communities' needs, have elected to start up
their own telephone companies to serve reservation communities
and both the Indian and non-Indian residents of those
communities.
There are new approaches being explored to connecting
Indian country to bridge the absence of sophisticated
communications infrastructure, because often the costs
associated with putting in land lines in remote rural areas are
so prohibitive that land-based communications simply are not an
economically viable solution. Then there is the interesting
fact that Federal agencies that have a physical presence in
tribal communities, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and
the Indian Health Service, have their own telecommunications
infrastructure on tribal lands, but because of various
regulatory restrictions they cannot make that infrastructure
available to tribal governments, schools, teachers, students,
or to any citizen. So you may have a high-performance computer
right next to your home that has no electricity and no
telephone service.
Clearly, this basic lack of telecommunications
infrastructure means that in an emergency there is no one who
can call 9-1-1. And naturally, there is no means for law
enforcement officers or emergency medical technicians to know
that they are needed. People have died because they cannot
reach help in a timely fashion, and tragically it is likely
that more people will suffer serious and life-threatening
injuries as long as there are no means of communicating with
the outside world. I am certain all of you will agree that this
gap must be closed.
Finally, we know that at the Federal level, there is no one
point of access, nor is there any agency that serves a
coordinating function to assure that those existing Federal
programs that provide support for community assessments and the
development of telecommunications infrastructures and
capacities are adapted to the unique needs of Indian country.
So we look forward to receiving your testimony this
morning. I would like to note that we have a long witness list
today, and a limited amount of time because of new scheduling
that was just issued by the leadership. I would like to assure
the witnesses that all of their full statements will be made
part of the record, and ask that you try your best to summarize
your testimony so that there will be time for all witnesses to
present their testimony and be heard.
With that, I would like to welcome the first panel--K. Dane
Snowden, chief, Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau, Federal
Communications Commission; Hilda Gay Legg, administrator, Rural
Utilities Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Kelly Klegar
Levy, associate administrator, National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, Department of Commerce.
Ladies and gentleman, welcome.
Mr. Snowden.
STATEMENT OF K. DANE SNOWDEN, CHIEF, CONSUMER AND GOVERNMENT
AFFAIRS BUREAU, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Mr. Snowden. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Vice Chairman. My
name is Dane Snowden. I am the chief of the Consumer and
Government Affairs Bureau for the FCC. I appreciate this
opportunity to again appear before you and discuss the FCC's
role in addressing the continued advancement of
telecommunications and information services in Indian country.
Just over 1 year ago, the FCC completed its reorganization.
My Bureau established an Intergovernmental Affairs Office in
part to honor and respect the government-to-government
relationship we have with federally recognized tribes.
Establishing this office has resulted in, one, centralizing
communications between the tribes and the Commission; and two,
raising the profile within the Commission of issues impacting
the provision of telecommunications services in Indian country.
Since my appearance 1 year ago, we have aggressively built
upon the foundation established by the Commission only 3 years
ago to promote telecommunications subscribership and
infrastructure deployment within tribal communities, taking on
the issues of outreach, consultation, and policy reform. We
recognize the need of tribal nations to have the tools and
resources available to help them increase access to critical
telecommunications services. As a result, the Commission
launched the Indian Telecommunications Initiative, or ITI. ITI
takes multiple forms--interactive regional workshops, meetings
with representatives of individual tribes to address their
unique telecommunications issues, participation by Commission
senior staff at tribal conferences, and dissemination of
educational materials to American Indian tribes and tribal
organizations.
Last July, as part of ITI and the launch of a national
outreach program to raise awareness of Lifeline and LinkUp, we
contacted more than 550 tribes and 25 tribal associations with
educational materials about Enhanced Lifeline and LinkUp.
Through these efforts and others, participation in Enhanced
Lifeline and LinkUp programs has increased almost seven-fold
since the year 2000. Commission staff has participated in
interactive regional workshops and conferences around the
country. Through our participation, we have witnesses first-
hand the state of telecommunication in Indian country. Last
September, Chairman Powell delivered the keynote at the
National Summit on Emerging Tribal Economies. This demonstrates
the depth of the Commission's continued commitment to outreach.
In February, Chairman Powell and each of the commissioners and
bureau and office chiefs hosted a meeting with the National
Congress of American Indian executives and members of the NCAI
Telecommunications Subcommittee.
A central element set forth in the Commission's statement
of policy is the goal and principle that the Commission will
consult with tribal governments. When tribes voiced concerns
about tower siting and historic preservation consultation, we
responded, devoting considerable time and resources to address
the issue. Commission staff have consulted directly with tribes
and their representatives, as well as the United South and
Eastern Tribes in the context of a draft nationwide
programmatic agreement. The draft agreement among the
Commission, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and
the National Council of State Historic Preservation Officers
proposes to streamline the national Historic Preservation Act
review process. Consultations thus far resulted in addressing
tribal concerns.
When we realized the initial wireless tribal bidding credit
rules may have been too narrow, the FCC improved the tribal
bidding credit mechanism by expanding the rules this past
March. The Commission also initiated a notice of inquiry, or
NOI, asking how to facilitate the provision of spectrum-based
services and promote opportunities for rural telephone
companies, including tribally owned companies, to provide such
services. In another recently released NOI, the Commission
seeks data on competitive market conditions with respect to
wireless service, particularly seeking data on tribal lands.
Just last week, the Commission authorized spectrum leasing in a
broad array of wireless services. The Commission also sought
comment on additional steps to improve how secondary markets
function. These steps will further promote the development of
innovative services in Indian country.
Finally, the Commission recently adopted an order
pertaining to, among other things, the Enhanced Lifeline and
LinkUp Programs that clarifies the operation of the eligibility
criteria. This order also asked how to expand enhanced programs
beyond reservation borders. A recent analysis based on 2000
census data indicates that telephone penetration rates of
federally recognized tribes has increased from approximately 47
percent to 67 percent in the past 10 years. However, in a
Nation that boasts a national penetration rate of 94 percent,
we can conclude only that more needs to be done to increase
access in Indian country. The Commission will continue to
support the development of telecommunications infrastructure in
Indian country, bringing basic telephone services to unserved
and under-served areas and laying the foundation for the
deployment of advanced services, including broadband. We will
continue to consult with tribes and engage in a dialogue with
industry and other Federal agencies, as well as the States, to
determine how, working together, we can best achieve our mutual
goals.
I thank you for this opportunity and look forward to
answering any questions you have.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Snowden appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. I am most grateful to the position taken by
the agency to be open to discussion and be helpful, but I would
like to ask a few questions as to something you can do
immediately. We have noted that 9 percent of Native households
have access to the Internet. My question is, is the FCC willing
to consider extending the E-rate discount to tribal
institutions and lower-income individuals during hours that
schools and libraries are not using the Internet?
Mr. Snowden. I did not follow the last part of the
question. That are not willing to what?
Senator Inouye. During hours when schools and libraries are
not using this, would you permit Indian country to use that
with the E-rate discount?
Mr. Snowden. I think that is something that we should
seriously look at. At the FCC, we are currently evaluating the
entire E-rate program to make sure that, first, the funding is
still there, to make sure that it is not in jeopardy, which it
is not, and we want to continue our efforts in that area. In
addition, I think it will be important for us to take what you
are asking and take it back to the Commission and have our five
commissioners debate that issue.
Senator Inouye. Will you tell them that this is the most
severe situation one can find in the Nation. There is no other
community where one can say we have less than 10 percent access
to Internet, and that is what it is in Indian country. So I
would like to see the time when an Indian child can dial 911,
for example, and get the ambulance.
Do you know of anything we can do, that Congress can do to
change the laws, besides appropriating additional funds?
Mr. Snowden. I think the U.S. Congress can do whatever the
U.S. Congress sees fit to do.
Senator Inouye. No; but can you suggest something?
Mr. Snowden. I think what we need to do is evaluate the
situation. As you referred to the 911 situation, I can say that
we are seriously looking at that issue across the board. We
recently held an E-9-1-1 coordination initiative to discuss the
importance of this issue, and elevate it to a level where
someone on a reservation does not have that problem. We do plan
to coordinate with the tribes on that particular issue as we
move forward. We just held that forum about 2 weeks ago.
Senator Inouye. Mr. Snowden, I thank you very much, and
will you convey to the Commission our gratitude.
Mr. Snowden. Yes, sir.
Senator Inouye. And tell them to make this their highest
priority?
Mr. Snowden. I will. Thank you, sir.
Senator Inouye. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Legg.
STATEMENT OF HILDA GAY LEGG, ADMINISTRATOR, RURAL UTILITIES
SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Ms. Legg. Senator Inouye, vice chairman of the committee,
thank you very much for the opportunity to testify at this
oversight hearing on the status of telecommunications in Indian
country. And thank you also for your vision in understanding
what modern and high-speed telecommunications means and how
that can make a difference in the quality of life for the folks
who live on Native American reservations. Today's advanced
telecommunications network will allow Native American
communities to become platforms of opportunity for businesses,
both new and established businesses, to compete locally,
nationally and globally. On behalf of President Bush, Secretary
Veneman and Under Secretary Tom Dorr, I assure you that we are
committed to enabling and empowering these communities through
working with them in whatever way we can.
Whether that be assisting them with development of a sound
business plan or making sure the right technology is fitted to
the right community, or educating potential customers to the
application of cutting-edge technologies, we want to be a
driving force in helping to create that economic demand. USDA
is very proud of its contributions to improve the
infrastructure in many Native American communities. Its Rural
Utilities Service [RUS] has worked with telephone companies and
cooperatives serving Native Americans since the inception of
our program, both in electric, water and waste, and
telecommunications. In 1961, RUS made its very first loan to
bring electricity to the Navajo Nation. In 1976, we financed
the first tribal telephone company, the Cheyenne River Sioux
Tribe Telephone Authority, in Eagle Butte, SD. We are
especially proud of our efforts working directly with tribally
owned and operated telecommunications utilities.
RUS has financed six tribally owned telecommunications
companies for service exclusively to the reservation.
Unfortunately, there are still many communities without the
access to advanced telecom services. And Native Americans
living on tribal reservations have some of the lowest telephone
penetration rates in the Nation. This lack of
telecommunications infrastructure contributes to high
unemployment, depressed economic conditions, and reduced
educational opportunities and medical care. Studies show that
this trend has begun to change, but the question is, how do we
ensure that these access to service numbers will continue to
rise?
First, we look for partnerships to develop
telecommunications systems. The key to developing a successful
telecommunications system is a good sustainable business plan,
one that has the support of the tribal community and meets that
community's needs. To ensure that success, there must be a
willingness of the community to share in the investment. Local
ownership and local control have always been the keys to
providing quality service and ensuring business success. Local
leadership must drive the acceptance of new technologies by
being users themselves, such as demonstrating and explaining
and understanding the uses of new technologies to local
businesses, or designing courses that can be taught over the
Internet, or embracing new technologies through their personal
use, such as being able to have your own EKG read via
telemedicine.
A clear success of this type of partnership is in the Gila
River Telecommunications, Inc. story. Gila River is a tribally
owned and operated telecom system. It began as a start-up. It
had no distribution lines. But by partnering with an
independent telephone company, Dobson Communication, it was
able to obtain the cash to begin business, and with
telecommunications loans from the RUS, Gila River was able to
construct an advanced telecom system capable of broadband
delivery. As a result, the most remote of Native Americans
living on the reservation had access to modern
telecommunications services, and the tribal authority was able
to build an industrial park and then recruit 50 businesses to
locate on the reservation.
Of course, hand-in-hand with job creation, education and
health care factors must be considered in an economic
development strategy. Our distance learning and telemedicine
program, during its 11-year history, has made more than $17
million in grants to provide the critical services of
telemedicine and education to Native Americans. And when we
speak about telemedicine, the life-saving medical procedures
that can be performed via advanced telecom networks, they are
boundless and they result in improved quality of life that is
truly immeasurable. However, we as a government need to work
together to remove barriers such as the fact that the Indian
Health Service clinics are considered Federal facilities and
are not eligible for our distance learning and telemedicine
funding.
One of RUS's greatest success stories for Indian country
came recently, on May 16, when Secretary Veneman announced our
Community Connect grants. Of the 40 grants that were announced
totaling $20 million, 10 of those grants totaling $6.2 million
were awarded directly to Native American communities. Another
three for almost $2 million were awarded to telecommunications
providers to bring service exclusively to Native American
reservations. These grants competed on a national level. There
were over 300 applications, and yet the Native American
projects won on their own merit. It was the quality of the
application. There were no automatic set-asides. There were no
eligibility parameters. These were good, strong applications
and we are delighted that that percentage is so high and we are
looking forward to working with them.
As I close, there are many ways in which every facet in the
quality of life of rural residents can be impacted positively
by the deployment of advanced telecom services. Every industry,
every business, every educational institution, every health
care facility and truly every home will benefit from the
deployment of broadband. It is up to us, as the facilitators to
this opportunity, to challenge our rural communities and our
partners in the telecom industry to increase the public
knowledge of this tremendous life-changing resource and to
demand a level that achieves maximum benefit for our Native
Americans.
Thank you again for the opportunity, and I will be glad to
answer any questions, Senator Inouye.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Legg appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Ms. Legg. Your agency
is one of the principal agencies that make available grants and
funds to Native Americans. I noted in your testimony that there
were 300 applicants.
Ms. Legg. Correct.
Senator Inouye. And of that number, 20 were selected?
Ms. Legg. Of that number, sir?
Senator Inouye. Of that number 20 were selected?
Ms. Legg. There were 300 applicants, totaling $185 million,
and we have $20 million to grant. Of the $20 million, almost $9
million of it will go to serve Native Americans.
Senator Inouye. Were there many other qualified entities
that you could not serve, say tribal groups?
Ms. Legg. In tribal groups, the greatest need really came
from the Native Americans, so they did score very high. There
were some applications obviously that we could not serve and
there were tribal communities within those applications, yes,
sir.
Senator Inouye. What I am leading to is if you doubled your
amount, would you be able to provide more assistance to tribes?
Ms. Legg. Yes, sir; we would.
Senator Inouye. If the Communications Subcommittee
suggested additional funds, would your agency object to it?
[Laughter.]
That is a serious question because oftentimes the
Administration says no.
Ms. Legg. Our agency will carryout whatever Congress
directs us to do, sir. This year's budget has $10 million for
the broadband grant program, which we call Community Connect,
so we will be making some more grants this year.
Senator Inouye. So you think that at the present time, your
agency can distribute more funds effectively?
Ms. Legg. Yes, sir.
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much.
Ms. Legg. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Inouye. And now may we hear from Ms. Levy.
STATEMENT OF KELLY KLEGAR LEVY, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE
OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT, NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS
AND INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Ms. Levy. Mr. Vice Chairman, I thank you for the
opportunity to testify this morning on behalf of the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration [NTIA],
setting forth our views of the role of the Federal Government
in addressing the telecommunication needs in Indian country.
NTIA serves as a principal adviser to the President, Vice
President and Secretary of Commerce on domestic and
international telecommunications and information policy issues.
The Administration shares your interest in ensuring that
telecommunications and information networks and services are
available in Indian country. Clearly, we face a unique set of
challenges here. In general, these communities are low-
population densities and low-income areas. We have had
difficulties with the data collection, research and analysis
that are needed to assess the telecommunication needs of
American Indian communities. We need to determine the type of
telecommunications technologies that would best serve the needs
of these communities and be affordable.
There are also questions as to whether existing
telecommunications companies are serving the needs on Indian
reservations, how to create and sustain tribal
telecommunications companies, and what is the appropriate role
of competition with tribal telecommunications companies. On all
these issues, tribal input and consultation are critical.
NTIA understands the importance of basic telephony, as well
as Internet access for all Americans. We have released a series
of reports that profile Americans' access to the Internet at
home and outside the home, and how different demographic groups
are using the Internet. Our most recent report, entitled A
Nation On-Line, which we coauthored with the Department of
Commerce's Economics and Statistics Administration, and
released in February 2002, analyzed census data taken from
57,000 households. We have been able to report the raw data
regarding access to and use of computers and the Internet by
American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts. Unfortunately, however,
because of the small sample size of these populations and the
high cost of over-sampling, we have been unable to obtain
enough data points for these populations to run economic
analysis and draw conclusions on the data in our reports. Our
next census survey will be taken in October 2003. We hope that
the numbers now will be large enough to provide a statistical
baseline for measuring American Indian's use of computers and
the Internet. We will be happy to share these findings with you
and other interested parties once we have them.
At NTIA, we have worked hard to connect American Indian
communities to advanced telecommunications services. Our
Technology Opportunities Program [TOP], has been providing
matching grants to nonprofit institutions and State, local and
tribal governments to demonstrate ways to use advanced
information technologies, to provide access to public
information and tribal government services, to offer greater
access to health care services and tribal cultural services,
and to provide job training and opportunities. TOP grants have
provided seed funding for such projects that then receive
sustaining funding from other sources. Approximately 9 percent
of our past TOP grants, which is about $17.5 million, have been
awarded to tribes or organizations that serve tribes. For
example, TOP grants have been awarded to the White Mountain
Apache Tribe, the Pueblo of Santa Ana, the Minneapolis American
Indian Center, the Navajo Technology Empowerment Centers, and
the Cherokee Nation for projects establishing community-wide
networks that enhance access to educational, economic
development, health, government and electoral services, as well
as build capacity for e-commerce, e-training and distance
learning.
NTIA has also helped to extend the benefits of
communications technology to American Indian and Alaska Native
communities through the Public Telecommunications Facilities
Program [PTFP]. This program has made a significant
contribution to the public broadcasting system in Indian
country by engaging in outreach efforts and providing critical
funding. PTFP has funded seven Native American projects over
the past two fiscal years, including grants for Native-oriented
public radio service, as well as construction grants to improve
the transmission equipment of stations licensed to tribes.
NTIA is not alone in our efforts to address
telecommunications needs in Indian country, as my colleagues
from the FCC and RUS have testified today. In addition, the
Federal Government's efforts on spectrum reform, including
authorizing secondary markets and the five GHz allocation will
also engender opportunities for meeting the needs in Indian
country. These reforms enable us to use the spectrum resource
better, and allow for more innovative use of both licensed and
unlicensed wireless technologies to meet these needs. For
example, as part of a National Science Foundation-funded effort
called Advanced Networking with Minority-Serving Institutions,
Motorola deployed its unlicensed wireless Canopy service on
three Indian reservations, providing them Internet access as
well as video and IP telephony services.
Mr. Vice Chairman, I thank you again for the opportunity to
testify and welcome any questions you may have for me.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Levy appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much, Ms. Levy. As you are
well aware, the primary and largest source of funding is the
Department of Agriculture. In the title of that Department,
there is no word ``communication'' or ``telecommunication.''
The second source of funding is the Technology Opportunity
Program. I commend you for the $17.5 million that have been
spent to date, but why is the President discontinuing this
program if it is such a good program?
Ms. Levy. As I understand it, the President's budget
reflects the Administration's belief that the program's mission
has been fulfilled. At this point, the President is looking to
other programs in the Administration. The programs at RUS, such
as the community grants and the broadband grants, the programs
at the FCC such as the e-Rate, and the programs at the
Department of Education, to implement many of the lessons
learned from the TOP program.
Senator Inouye. Well, the NTIA is going to discontinue the
Technology Opportunity Program. The only remaining program that
we are aware of is the Agriculture one.
Ms. Levy. A lot of the distance learning grants that we
have provided, we have learned lessons that are now being
implemented by the funding over at the Department of Education.
Senator Inouye. The third source is the Department of
Education Community Technology Center Program, is that it?
Ms. Levy. That is one of them.
Senator Inouye. The budget proposes no funding for this
program.
Ms. Levy. I think that the President's budget is looking
toward the Department of Education's $700 million in its
educational technology grants--grants that are delivered
directly to the States.
Senator Inouye. Does it not propose eliminating this
Community Technology Center Program?
Ms. Levy. I believe that is also in the President's budget,
yes.
Senator Inouye. Do you not want to restore it? We are
talking about all the problems--about 9 percent having
Internet, less than 40 percent with telephone service, no one
can use the 9-1-1. I am glad that all of us are saying we are
going to do our best, but at the same time while we are saying
we are going to do our best, we provide no funding. It is not
your fault, I realize that, but will you go back to your
leaders and tell them Indian country has a few problems?
Ms. Levy. I will do that, sir.
Senator Inouye. And just remind our leaders that in every
war in the last century and this century, Indian country has
sent more sons and daughters in uniform in the military service
of our Nation per capita than any other ethnic group. In many
ways, they have paid their dues. It is about time they got the
benefits.
[Applause.]
Senator Inouye. As you can see from the response here, I
appreciate the testimony of you three and I know you are doing
your best, but please tell your seniors and principals that it
is a serious problem and I hope that the Administration will
reconsider restoring these programs. They have great promise.
Thank you very much.
Ms. Levy. Thank you.
Ms. Legg. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman.
Mr. Snowden. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. Our next panel is made up of the president
of Kade L. Twist Consulting of Arizona, Kade L. Twist; and the
president of Native Networking Policy Center, Marcia Warren
Edelman.
Mr. Twist, it is your show now.
STATEMENT OF KADE L. TWIST, PRESIDENT, KADE L. TWIST CONSULTING
Mr. Twist. Mr. Vice Chairman, I would like to thank you for
inviting me to testify here. It is an honor to be here with you
today. I would like to express my sincere appreciation for your
continuing efforts to improve the status of telecommunication
in Indian country. I think you are providing tremendous
leadership on this issue.
My name is Kade L. Twist. I am a member of the Cherokee
Nation and president of Kade L. Twist Consulting. I have been
conducting research on the subject of telecommunications in
Indian country for the past year as a consultant for the Ford
Foundation. Prior to that, I was with the Benton Foundation as
a policy analyst specializing in telecommunications in Indian
country. While at the Benton Foundation, I was a member of a
talented and dedicated staff that was responsible for shaping
much of the public discourse pertaining to what is now referred
to as the digital divide.
Over the course of my research, one significant finding has
emerged over and over. That is providing equipment and
infrastructure is not a solution in and of itself for the
telecommunications development needs of Indian country.
Equipment and infrastructure are merely tools. They are only
effective when they are applied in a manner that provides for
and advances the social, civic and cultural needs of respective
Indian communities. Even if every mile of Indian country were
to be fully wired, many tribes do not have the knowledge,
expertise and organizational capacity to effectively utilize,
manage and sustain their infrastructure.
Telecommunications systems are very expensive to sustain,
and require a large number of staff with a wide array of skill
sets to keep them up and running. These technologies require a
great deal of experience, expertise, creativity, community
education, community organizing to utilize them in a manner
that complements the cultural will of tribal people, while
meeting their civic and social needs. Therefore, stakeholders
should match their investments in equipment and infrastructure
with investments in human capital. It is critical for
stakeholders to pay close attention to capacity building and
sustainability issues, because Indians have just begun the
process of making telecommunications fit their respective
cultural and social worlds. This is a new technology. This is a
new enterprise. It is a new ball game for us.
Therefore, Indian nations have an intense need for
planning, community organizing, training, technical assistance,
capacity building assistance and the recruitment of talent with
a diversity of skill sets. Indian nations must develop their
organizational infrastructures to ensure the appropriate
development and sustainability of telecommunications endeavors
on tribal lands, as well as ensuring the consumer rights of
their respective tribal members.
One of the main issues that I have been addressing is the
knowledge and capacity building. During the course of my
research and speaking with top Indian telecommunications
executives and information managers, practitioners in the
field, they have identified knowledge and capacity-building
needs as more significant even than funding and development
needs. Furthermore, respondents expressed frustration toward
existing knowledge and capacity-building resources because they
were typically limited to 1-day workshops that do not address
the specific needs of their specific communities, and provide
very little or no opportunities for ongoing support. The
majority of respondents also state that they experienced
difficulty accessing capacity-building funds for their
respective organizations. That is both through the Federal
sector and through the private foundation sector. The following
is a list of the most frequently identified knowledge and
capacity-building needs. First, is core funding; second, is
training and technical assistance; third, is planning; fourth,
is community organizing; fifth, is research, data collection
and analysis; sixth, is technology selection; seventh, is
demand aggregation; eighth, is regulatory systems, regulatory
codes; nineth, is fundraising; and tenth, is recruiting staff
with advanced skill sets.
Therefore, I have two recommendations at this point. First,
is to urge this committee to design and implement a funding
mechanism that is specifically designed to meet the
telecommunication needs of Indian country and flexible enough
to accommodate pre-development, development, and knowledge and
capacity-building endeavors as well.
Indian country needs its own funding mechanism for
telecommunications development because Indian nations should
not have to compete against States, municipal governments and
other incorporated entities to gain access to the benefits of
the Federal Government's trust responsibility. Furthermore,
Indian country needs a telecommunications funding mechanism
that adequately addresses its pre-development and knowledge and
capacity-building needs. Currently, no such Federal funding is
readily available, including that of the RUS broadband pilot
project and the TOP Program. The funding mechanism should be
designed to link telecommunications investment with nation-
building, economic development, cultural preservation,
community networking and efforts to improve upon core public
services such as education, health care, housing, law
enforcement, fire and public safety and enhanced 9-1-1
services, which as you have already identified as very, very
important and critical to public safety right now in Indian
country. The key to linking these developments with these
services is promoting community-driven telecommunications
development that is scalable, efficient, sustainable and
better-suited for leveraging diverse sets of resources.
I would like to also mention, and reiterate the comments of
Hilda Gay Legg of RUS, that the current broadband pilot project
is going to be reduced from $20 million to $10 million, or at
least planned to do so. So what progress has been made this
year will not be duplicated next year. So it may be a
smokescreen of some sort. The second recommendation would be to
facilitate the development of a system of training, technical
assistance and knowledge and capacity building intermediaries
for telecommunications in Indian country. There is a need for a
system of American Indian nonprofit telecommunications
intermediaries capable of providing training and technical
assistance, knowledge and capacity-building assistance,
brokering broad-based partnerships, facilitating collaboration,
leveraging multi-layered funding sources, and leveraging
political clout. There are already such systems in place--
training and technical assistance, capacity-building and
intermediaries, for TANF, WIA, for housing, for economic
development and so on. Yet there is not an organized system for
telecommunications.
However, there are individual organizations such as
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the Southern
California Tribal Chairman's Association that have been very
successful telecommunications intermediaries. In fact,
representatives from both ATNI and SCTCA are here today to
testify about their tremendous achievements. These are
precisely the types of organizations that should serve as
models for building a comprehensive system of
telecommunications intermediaries for all of Indian country.
Regional intertribal organizations already play a significant
role as intermediaries for TANF, WIA, economic development and
so on. They are already well-positioned to play a role as
intermediaries for telecommunications as well.
Likewise, there are already a number of national American
Indian nonprofit organizations such as the Native Networking
Policy Center, the National Indian Telecommunications
Institute, and the National Congress of American Indians which
are already well-positioned to add value to the work of
regional intertribal organizations. All that is needed is
funding to support their work and to support their organizing
efforts.
In conclusion, funding assistance for telecommunications
development that does not include knowledge and capacity-
building merely solves half of the equation--the non-human side
of the equation. Indian country stands to benefit most from an
investment in equipment and infrastructure that is matched
equally with an investment in its people. An investment in
building the capacity and knowledge of Indian people will
contribute to their ability to manage, sustain and adapt these
technologies so that they effectively meet the needs of Indian
communities.
Thank you very much.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Twist appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Mr. Twist. You may be
aware that there are 562 recognized tribes in the United
States. Of that number, optimistically 20 tribes can be
considered to be wealthy and self-sufficient. Most tribes are
very, very poor, almost on a deadly level, with unemployment as
high as 90 percent. Obviously, these tribes just cannot afford
to hire these organizations to give them the expertise and what
have you, which leads us into this awful situation where high
technology surrounds this Nation, but Indian country is not
ready to absorb it. What can we do to make certain that we
provide training, expertise and proper assessments of the needs
because if you asked the other 460 tribes, they may not know
what to do, and they do not have the loose money to spend to
hire experts. There are many tribes that can do that, but most
tribes do not have the capacity to do that. So we have to be
realistic, so you tell me what this committee can do.
Mr. Twist. I would like to point out one thing before I
answer that question specifically, and that is the program like
the broadband pilot project, the majority of tribes would not
be able to even apply for that because they would not have the
$20,000 or $30,000 necessary to get an application completed.
That is why it is so critical just to get to that level that we
need a system of intermediaries. I would believe that it should
be done on a pilot project basis and it should be modeled after
the intermediaries that serve TANF, because I believe that TANF
is most critically linked to the needs of universal service. I
think that a lot of data- sharing can happen to gain a higher
enrollment of Native people in the Enhanced Lifeline and LinkUp
Programs through that type of collaboration. But I think TANF
intermediaries to represent the most comprehensive and
effective model out there.
Senator Inouye. I am going to suggest to the NCAI that they
make this their top priority project, so that Indian country
can get into this new high technology world. Otherwise, the
inequities that will result from this would make a bad
situation that we have today worse. So I thank you very much,
Mr. Twist.
Mr. Twist. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. We will be conferring with you as to what
we can do. If you have any suggestions on what we can do
legislatively, do not hesitate to share them with us.
Mr. Twist. Thank you very much, sir.
Senator Inouye. Ms. Edelman.
STATEMENT OF MARCIA WARREN EDELMAN, PRESIDENT, NATIVE
NETWORKING POLICY CENTER
Ms. Edelman. Good morning, Vice Chairman Inouye, members of
the committee, tribal representatives and leaders, and
distinguished guests. Thank you for the invitation to come
before the committee today to discuss the current status of
telecommunications in Indian country.
My name is Marcia Warren Edelman. I am an enrolled member
of the Santa Clara Pueblo located in Northern New Mexico, and
the president of a newly formed nonprofit organization,
incorporated actually this March 2003, that focuses on
facilitating the development of a collaborative policymaking
process, building Native capacity, and increasing education
outreach among tribes and policymakers at all levels of
government on issues regarding the digital divide in Indian
country. We are named the Native Networking Policy Center. I am
pleased to be here representing our group.
From 1999-2002, as you may be familiar, I served as the
Senior Policy Adviser for Native American Affairs at the
Department of Commerce, and was fortunate to be there during a
time when the digital divide became a national catch-phrase and
a national priority. I worked with many issues with NTIA and
also with the Secretary's office as we conducted visits to
Indian country to examine this particular issue. I am also the
co-author of Native Networking in Telecommunications and
Information Technology in Indian country, a report that the
Benton Foundation published in 1999.
As we have heard before and in last year's testimony, this
is an extremely dire situation, an issue that has been brought
up in a number of reports that have been referred to--four of
them, three published in 1999 by NTIA, by the Economic
Development Administration, Benton Foundation. Also the
National Congress of American Indians published their own
report in 2001 that was based on the findings of their Digital
Divide Task Force. In that report, it outlined specific areas
of policy and action that can be used as a basis for future
collaborative efforts, I believe, between NCAI, regional
organizations and policymakers at the tribal and national
levels. I would encourage the committee to refer to that report
at their Web site, www.ncai.org, or also on their national
clearinghouse site, which is Indiantech.org, where they have a
number of these reports already available.
In Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide,
the NTIA report, we saw statistics showing that Native American
households ranked far below the national average, at 76.4
percent. The national average at that time was 94.1 percent.
And showing that the digital divide in this country is really a
dial tone divide. The basic service of telephone access was
being denied to our own reservations and our own tribal
communities at a level that I feel is highly unacceptable. I
commend the committee for holding last year's hearing to
introduce the issue to members of the Committee on Commerce,
and also to the general public, and keeping the issue alive
over the past year. As a result of that hearing, I believe that
additional policy efforts were made in Indian country to start
discussing on a very real level some recommendations and some
forward action items that we could undertake in conjunction
with the Federal Government and also Congress.
I would like to bring up three areas that I outlined in my
testimony last year as sort of an overview of some of the
efforts that have been taking place over the past few years and
to provide a current status of policy discussions today. Last
year, I noted that there were three obstacles to
telecommunications infrastructure deployment in Indian country.
First, is the lack of investment capital in technical
assistance, as my colleague Mr. Twist has mentioned; second, is
a lack of current and accurate information; and third, the lack
of ongoing coordination of resources. As we have heard today,
we have had some Federal programs that have had great impact in
Indian country in terms of capital and technical assistance,
namely the TOP program from NTIA, the CTC program at the
Department of Education, RUS's program of broadband technology
grants, as well as the telemedicine and distance learning
grants. Another one that we have not heard too much about, but
I believe is still quite important, which is the Department of
Treasury's Native American Community Development Financial
Institutions Program, which has provided ongoing funding for
new organizations, new financial institutions that serve
primarily Indian country, to develop and thus provide a new
source of capital that can be directly tapped into by Indian
nations throughout this country.
Some of these are quite small. Some of them are more
developed. However, this is still an important starting point
for tribal communities, individual entrepreneurs, and tribal
businesses to begin working to develop the kind of capital that
they need in order to realize their own business goals.
However, as we have discussed, overall funding for
telecommunications and information technology projects in
Indian country remains inadequate to address the needs of these
communities, especially in the areas of feasibility studies and
upgrades and ongoing operations support, and also ongoing
technical assistance. I urge the committee to ensure that the
Technology Opportunities Program and the CTC Programs are
preserved in some way, shape or form, and at the very least
that the lessons learned from these programs are not lost.
A second point, the current inaccurate information--over
the course of 2 days in February 2003, three important meetings
took place which examined telecommunications policy and
practice in Indian country. The first was the NCAI
Telecommunications Subcommittee conducted a half-day policy and
advocacy meeting after the NCAI winter session. The FCC
conducted a day-long meeting with a high-level delegation of
tribal leaders and representatives of tribal telecommunications
companies and organizations to discuss ways to improve access
to telecommunications products and services throughout Indian
country. Also, this committee invited attendees of both those
meetings to an informal brainstorming session to explore ways
to develop legislation to address the issue.
We saw the first result of these meetings at the beginning
of this month with the release of the new FCC report on
telephone subscribership on Indian lands, which shows that 67.9
percent of American Indians have telephone service, compared to
46.6 percent in the 1990 census. The good news is that of
course over the past 10 years there has been a 20-percent
increase in residential access. However, the bad news is that
we remain well below the national average of 95.1 percent, and
that figure is based on July 2002 census current population
surveys.
It was also evident during these meetings that even though
many efforts have been made to address the need in Indian
country for access to infrastructure and funding information
technical assistance, these efforts have not resulted in a
consistent and coordinated activities process that can best
serve tribes and tribal organizations working to close the gap.
What is missing is a central repository for policy development,
research and educational outreach, which can effectively
address the problems being presented to date to the Native
community. For this reason, our organization, the Native
Networking Policy Center, was created in order to leverage the
existing experience, resources and efforts already underway to
finally achieve the goal of digital inclusion in Indian
country. We were formed as a nonprofit whose mission is to
ensure equitable and affordable access to, and the culturally
appropriate use of, telecommunications and information
technology throughout Indian country. We are working to achieve
this mission by addressing the following goals: First, policy
development to ensure the inclusion of Native interests in the
development and promotion of policies at all levels of
government to improve and increase the deployment and use of
telecommunications and information technology throughout Indian
country; second, research and evaluation, to conduct research
and data collection to create a baseline of information to
support policy development and education efforts, as well as to
inform local and Federal stakeholders of relevant and current
information impacting telecom and information technology needs
in Indian country; and third, education and outreach, and we
wish to analyze, evaluate and disseminate all relevant
information and resources to tribes, Native organizations,
policymakers and practitioners so that they can develop
policies that will promote the appropriate and timely
deployment of telecom and information technology infrastructure
throughout Indian country.
We feel the expertise to address these issues exists among
tribes in the public and private sector today. All that is
needed is an organization to focus on providing information and
communication between the stakeholders necessary to achieve
these results. Our organization is willing to serve in this
capacity as an added value to any tribe or public or private
sector entity by providing the policy and information tools
necessary to best coordinate the efforts, create resources,
identify relevant information and promote awareness and action.
I feel today tribes are at a pivotal point in history.
Self-determination policies have begun to yield measurable
results in Native communities in the development of diversified
tribal economies, to the revitalization of Indian languages and
culture. Throughout the country, the number of tribal and
Indian-owned enterprises has grown dramatically, and many
tribes have become active participants in economic and
political arenas on both local and national levels. However,
the impressive growth we have seen in these areas will continue
to be limited as long as the opportunities afforded by access
to the digital economy of this Nation exist beyond the
boundaries of infrastructure, funding and regulations existing
in our Indian country communities today.
It belongs to those of us in the room today and who we
represent to work together to further the progress being made
in closing the digital divide in Indian country. I am confident
that today's hearing will provide the substance and direction
to bring the resolution of this issue into action. I thank you
for your invitation to testify, and welcome any questions you
may have.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Edelman appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Ms. Edelman, I would assume that everyone
in this room is not only interested in telecommunications, but
involved in it in some way. The statistics that I cited when I
opened the hearing are tragic statistics. Many of us sitting
here comfortably think that the high-tech age is a good thing
for us, therefore we want everyone to benefit from it. Is that
the feeling in Indian country? Does Indian country really want
this?
Ms. Edelman. I believe our communities see technology not
as the solution to all the problems, but as a valuable tool. I
believe that the discussion has really taken root as to how
technology can be used in a culturally appropriate way, can be
used as a facet of strategic planning to achieve the goals of
the community, the vision of the communities. I think we may
have passed the point where technology represented the new and
interesting area to explore, and has become really more of the
realistic facet of planning and implementation of what the
community itself sees itself achieving.
Senator Inouye. Mr. Twist has said that unfortunately most
communities are not prepared to absorb the funding or resources
that may be available because of the lack of trained personnel
and the lack of experience and such. How do we bring this
about?
Ms. Edelman. One of my greatest----
Senator Inouye. Are there any places where large numbers of
Indians can go to study?
Ms. Edelman. For this particular issue? No, that is one
area of development that needs to be examined. We do not have
as many individuals in Indian country that understand
telecommunications.
Senator Inouye. Do the Indian community colleges provide
studies and courses on what to do?
Ms. Edelman. Actually, I think Mr. Twist may want respond
to that.
Mr. Twist. I would like to defer that to Carrie Billy who
will be providing testimony later on. The American Indian
Higher Education Consortium has made a concerted effort to
organize the tribal colleges to provide that anchor in the
communities that is needed to develop that sort of expertise
and awareness of the issues as well, but mainly, the expertise,
and to keep that, to retain that expertise within the
communities. By far, AHEC has provided the most comprehensive
leadership on this issue. I think they should be worked with in
addressing that and expanding that to other institutions that
serve large populations of Indian people, Native people, like
Arizona State University, University of Arizona, University of
Oklahoma they have very high Native enrollment.
Senator Inouye. If I may, I will be sending questions to
all of you because we just do not have the time today. I hope
you can respond to them.
Ms. Edelman. I would be happy to.
Senator Inouye. I want to thank both of you for joining us
today and helping us with your testimony. Thank you very much.
Ms. Edelman. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. Our next panel consists of the Governor of
the Gila River Indian Community of Arizona, Richard P. Narcia.
He will be accompanied by the chairman and president of the
Gila River Telecommunications Inc., Robin N. Fohrenkam. The
next witness is the chairperson of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe
of California, Nora McDowell, and the president of Turtle
Island Communications, Madonna Peltier Yawakie of North Dakota.
I would like to call upon Governor Narcia. I gather that
you have a plane to catch, so please proceed, sir.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD P. NARCIA, GOVERNOR, GILA RIVER INDIAN
COMMUNITY, ACCOMPANIED BY ROBIN N. FOHRENKAM, CHAIRMAN AND
PRESIDENT, GILA RIVER TELECOMMUNICATIONS, INC., CHANDLER, AZ
Mr. Narcia. Good morning, Vice Chairman Inouye. My name is
Richard Narcia. I am Governor of the Gila River Indian
Community, and on behalf of the community I am very pleased to
be here to provide some testimony regarding issues of
telecommunications and technology implementation that has
evolved in our community.
Accompanying me is Robin Fohrenkam, who is the chairman of
the board of directors for the Gila River Telecommunications,
Inc. [GRTI].
Also, I would like to acknowledge other members of our
community that are here from the board: Cecil Antone, former
Lieutenant Governor; Reuben Norris, a board member; Steven
Lewis; Aiessa Fullen, who is the current general manager of
GRTI; and Gary Bohnee, who is my executive assistant.
Over the past several years, the community, through its
partnership with its community-owned telecommunications
company, and the development of a management information system
has devoted significant resources to bring our technology
system on par with current levels. A little background on our
community--we are composed of two tribes, the Pimas and the
Maricopas. The 373,000-acre reservation was established by an
Act of Congress in 1859. Today, the community is the home for
nearly 50,000 members and is the largest Indian community in
the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Traditionally, we are an agricultural people, and in recent
years we have attempted to diversify into other various
entities and businesses. We have developed industrial parks
that are home to local and national companies. The community
owns and operates three gaming facilities. Recently, the
community has developed a premier destination resort spa and
golf facility. Next month, our Sheraton Wild Horse Pass will
host the National Congress of American Indians mid-year
conference. Additionally, the community has established several
tribally chartered corporations including the Gila River
Telecommunications, or GRTI as we refer to it.
As the leadership of the community has planned for the
diversification of its economy, while also providing essential
services to our constituents, it has been vital that we invest
adequate resources in technology and telecommunication. A key
element in our community's ability to implement technology
improvements has been through the efforts of GRTI. GRTI was
formed in 1988 for the primary purpose of providing telephone
service for our community members. At that time, it was not
cost-effective for our community members to receive this type
of service. Some services would cost approximately $20,000 for
one service. With initial capital funding from the Department
of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service and continued support by
way of low-interest Government loans for infrastructure and
construction from RUS, GRTI has been able to continue providing
reasonably priced service for our customers. The model that has
evolved has allowed GRTI to use of a combination of private
financing, Federal funding, and loan programs. In fulfilling
its mission, GRTI has increased the number of telephone
subscribers, promotes community employment, improves the
quality of service, and provides state-of-the-art technology.
Today, the GRTI system consists of 117 miles of fiber optic
cable, and 342 miles of copper cable that is deployed
throughout the reservation. Starting in 1998, as I mentioned,
the basic reason was to provide telephone services, but since
that time GRTI has expanded into a variety of services--DSL
Internet service, satellite TV service, Web page design,
cellular phone sales, data cabling, and business phone systems.
GRTI has also implemented several programs for our
community members--first, the Fresh Start Program which allows
customers with delinquent accounts to retain phone services;
second, a customer incentive program which promotes responsible
payment of phone bills; and third, an Enhanced Lifeline and
LinkUp Program which allows qualified low-income residents to
receive basic phone service. We are recommending that the
criteria for this program be included for those on fixed
incomes, such as the elderly. I think it is fair to say that
GRTI continues to meet the demand of our unique tribal
marketplace and the challenges that are present on a daily
basis.
As was previously mentioned, the evolution of GRTI has in
part been a function of the growth of the community
marketplace. Tribal economic development and housing has
spurred the need for improvement in technology and
telecommunications. We believe our marketplace will allow the
business model to work. One of the biggest customers at this
time is the tribal government. Over the past 5 years, the
demands of equipping a growing tribal workforce of
approximately 1,500 employees and approximately 83 departments
and programs has presented significant challenges in two major
areas--infrastructure and financial resources. The function of
the investment in the community's technology effort has always
been to meet basic infrastructure needs. While we have
established basic connectivity to all of our seven district
service centers, we are challenged by the sheer size of our
reservation in developing systems that are effective,
efficient, and reliable in all circumstances.
Mr. Vice Chairman, in summing up, the community has several
recommendations. For the most part, I believe all tribal
governments and tribal corporations like GRTI support the
inclusion of Federal programs that allow communities to
consider more options in providing and building services. From
the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Services grants
and loan programs to the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration's Technology Opportunities Program,
these initiatives, as a matter of policy, should continue to be
funded. In addition, the committee should be aware of important
issues pending before the FCC. We are recommending to the FCC
that the e-rate discount program be continued. Also, Congress
must continue the educational process of the unique
jurisdictional and regulatory issues that exist in our
communities. Finally, Mr. Chairman, it is my hope that the
committee will continue to support tribal efforts in the area
of technology and telecommunications.
Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Narcia appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Governor, I can assure you that this
committee will continue to do whatever it can to help you. We
will urge the agencies to change their policy so that the
programs that we cited will be continued--RUS plus TOP; that
much, we can promise you.
You have been saying you have not been consulted as often
as you want by these agencies?
Mr. Narcia. I think there is a need for that consultation
at any level as far as--it goes back to the basic question that
tribal communities need to be involved in whatever
decisionmaking is done, or have a part in it.
Senator Inouye. Do you think we should have laws enacted to
require the FCC to consult with you before they designate
certain communications carriers located within your service
area?
Mr. Narcia. I believe that it would be very appropriate to
have that type of legislation in place.
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much, and I know you have
got a long trip to take, so thank you for your presence.
Mr. Narcia. Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your
support.
Senator Inouye. May I know recognize Chairperson McDowell?
STATEMENT OF NORA McDOWELL, CHAIRPERSON, FORT MOJAVE INDIAN
TRIBE
Ms. McDowell. Good morning, Vice Chairman Inouye, and
Patricia and others that are here today, distinguished tribal
leaders, and others that are here on behalf of
telecommunications throughout the United States, on behalf of
tribal governments.
Before I begin, I just want to thank our creator for giving
us this day and allowing us to safely be here today to
represent the needs of tribal governments throughout not only
our communities, but throughout the United States.
On behalf of our tribe, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, I
want to thank you today for having this hearing to address the
status of telecommunications in Indian country. During the
early 21st century as we look at needs throughout Indian
country, telecommunications obviously is one of the highest
technologies that is continuously evolving. Every 6 months
there is a new telephone, you know--everybody has a different
way and mechanism of communicating. Tribal governments have
historically communicated using communication tools throughout
their history and their culture. As most economic factors
predicate today, high quality communications services are vital
to our communities in Indian country, especially in rural
areas.
Without access to high quality services similar to those
found in the urban areas and at comparable prices, most Indian
youth and people sometimes have to make a heart-wrenching
decision whether to stay and seek work off their ancestral
lands and-or perhaps never realize their full potential because
of the lack of capabilities that are there on reservations that
currently exist not only in the telecommunication area, but all
economic areas. There is location to be considered. We are
fortunate with our tribe to have been located in an area that
is diverse. We are located in three States--California,
Arizona, and Nevada. Through the efforts or our tribe, when we
look at establishing a telecommunications company back in 1988,
actually in 1989, our tribe looked at how we could best
accomplish and complete our true vision of ensuring tribal
sovereignty and actually exercising tribal self-determination.
In that, we looked at our communications. We look at our
utilities on reservation. We also looked at the unmet needs of
our tribal people, the future vision for our people. Most
current location for our homesites were in California only. We
expanded in 1972 into Arizona and established homes there, and
it was virgin territory at that time. The company that had
traditionally provided service there for 35 years was a company
that was not able to provide service to us just because of
remoteness of our location there at that time, and not being
able to service that area. And every other mile of land on our
reservation was checkerboarded in Arizona, which meant every
other mile was tribal-nontribal, tribal-nontribal. As you have
probably heard and have seen throughout other testimony from
different tribes throughout the United States where the
Railroad Act was implemented therein, so our reservation became
checkerboarded.
Prior to the formation of the Fort Mojave
Telecommunications Inc., our penetration rate of telephone
service on my reservation was about 35 percent. During the
short life of Fort Mojave Telecommunications, it has increased
the penetration rate to an astounding 98 percent, and currently
provides 1,016 access lines throughout the reservations in
California, Arizona, and Nevada. These significant gains of
which my people are collectively proud are made even more
noteworthy when you consider that the reservation is in three
States, as I mentioned before, consisting of 48,000 acres. In
Arizona, the difficulties mount, obviously, as you are aware of
the checkerboarded situation.
My tribe wanted its own telecommunications basically
because in order to achieve total exercise of its tribal
sovereignty and self-determination and because high-quality
telecommunications services were vital. Prior to the formation
of FMTI, the telephone network consisted solely of copper
lines; not all parts of the reservation, especially the remote
areas, had access to the network. The Fort Mojave
Telecommunications has greatly improved the communication
capability of the reservation as is evidenced by the vastly
improved penetration rate. It no longer matters where you live.
Before, we only had access to analog services. FMTI has
upgraded the network to approximately 75 percent digital. To
hit that mark, FMTI has laid over 45 miles of fiber optic cable
to increase both the speed and quality of our communications
system.
It is really something to sit here today and recount the
beginnings and resulting growth of FMTI. I can tell you about
all the meetings to determine not whether we needed our own
telephone company, for it was quite obvious that we did, but
rather the path to that goal. I could relate to you some of the
stories of some of our tribal members, especially in the areas
that were remote at that time. Sometimes we would be without
service for 3 to 5 days. So for us, for some people it was just
imperative just to have dial tone, so for us the increase in
the capacity that we have been able to achieve throughout our
15 years of development of our company was something the
remarkably that our tribal people totally appreciate.
I also have to mention, though, the legal, jurisdictional
and political opposition we faced from formation of our company
from local service providers who had a monopoly of the area for
over 35 years. My tribe certainly had help, obviously, from
others such as the Gila River Telecommunications, Cheyenne
River, who had gone before us, and from other rural telephone
companies who had similar experience in dealing with providing
service to rural areas. The establishment of FMTI has been of
extraordinary value to my people, not simply because now we can
call in when in the world, or we currently run our own
Internet-based business, but for the shining example of the
Fort Mojave Tribe's self-determination. All the world can now
see how my people came together and cooperatively fulfilled a
need, and in the end provided ourselves with what had
previously been denied.
Far from saying that the path is wrong, Fort Mojave
Telecommunications must continue to grow and expand to meet the
development needs of the community it serves. The Federal
Government has also contributed to the success of FMTI. Key
programs such as the Technology Opportunity Program, TOP, RUS
grants and loans, and Federal universal service support have
enhanced our ability to bring high quality advanced
telecommunications service to my tribe. Unfortunately as we
look forward to providing for the future needs of the tribe, we
are concerned. In the early years of FMTI, the assistance
received from RUS was really significant and important to our
tribe.
I know there are other funds that also RUS provides for
electricity and other rural needs out there. In some areas we
have been denied actually access to those Federal dollars
because other providers in rural areas had already received
grants and funds to provide service to our area, such as
electricity. On my reservation, we had difficulty there, and
hopefully those will be areas that will be looked at. Also,
when you implement programs or grants to Indian reservations,
because another rural company coming in without proper
authority or jurisdiction over your tribal lands cannot claim
your property or say they are going to provide service without
consulting with that tribe. We had experienced that with our
electricity company. Fortunately, we did not have to go through
that with our telephone service, but it is something that is
there that needs to be looked at in any program that is
implemented or where funds are appropriated by Congress to be
addressed in Indian country.
We are fortunate that we did have that startup money, and
currently not many financial institutions, as I am sure you
have heard in past testimony from other tribes in looking at
economic development. We are willing to sit down with tribes
and financial markets throughout Indian country in dealing with
tribes, and because of the trust status of lands and/or
allotted lands, have created barriers to financing companies
such as FMTI, and/or utility services, and/or any other
services that are currently provided on our reservation.
Therefore, the grants, loans and loan guarantees that we
received from RUS helped to breathe life into FMTI, and
continue to assist us in achieving our dream on our
reservation. As much help as RUS has provided and continues to
provide, there is room for improvement. With input from tribes
such as at today's hearing, employees and customers, some
programs can be better tailored to have greater impact on our
reservations. The recent broadband loan program implemented
last year provides low-interest loans and loan guarantees for
broadband services. While most reservations would meet the
requirements, some tribes seem unable to participate in this
program, for instance because a community must first apply for
resources from a fund from a specific State. This seems to
disqualify reservations which, like mine, stretch over three
States. While my tribe could apply to the national fund, this
pool is only funded with money left over, if any, from the
earlier States' process. A better approach would have been to
carve out funds for entities seeking to provide broadband
services on tribal lands.
Today, I want to thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman, for your
time and attention and thoughtful consideration of the issues I
have presented here today. I ask that when you consider the
provisioning of communications in Indian country, and
especially your committee, you remember the inherent right of a
governing body of a nation, which I know you promote and
envision and continue to support tribal governments and the
tribal sovereignty issues that we face daily, not only here in
Congress, but in the States and the counties, and the tribal
governments that we represent--that the tribes are best able to
meet basic needs based on the distinctive cultural heritage.
When a tribe is able to adequately fund and provide for these
needs, not only does it strengthen the self-determination of
our tribes as a whole, it also provides self- esteem and
confidence for every tribal member. In the end, both nations,
the tribe and America are stronger and connected for the
future.
Today, I thank you for hearing us and having me here today
providing our comments on behalf of our tribe, and I am able to
answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Ms. McDowell appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Chairperson McDowell.
Your testimony has been filled with criticism and citing
shortcomings of the Federal agencies and Federal laws. If you
have any suggestions as to what can be done to improve, for
example, the designation process of eligible telecommunication
carriers, we would like to receive them from you.
Ms. McDowell. Yes; I have suggested a number of items
within my testimony, specifically to the FCC and others that
have actually those authorities to designate what those would
be. I think in Indian country, I think most of us, like my
company, is very young. It is a young company that does not
have the competitive edge. On reservations, it is a lot
different providing services as a tribal government versus an
individual entity or corporation or company. I am not saying we
should be anti-competitive, but I am also saying that we should
be looking at the needs of the communities that we are
providing service to. Some reservations I am also advocating
for do not have those services. So we need to look at those
issues. I would suggest that we also look at providing
legislation where there would be a set-aside for tribal
governments of any sort, whatever size, that decides to take on
the responsibility of providing services on its reservation.
There needs to be money carved out in all of the communication
areas throughout the Federal Government process that provides
that service. But I think the tribes need to be consulted.
We have had different groups and entities that have come
together that have addressed those issues. They bring you all
together to talk about telecommunication needs, but they do not
give you any answers or funds or a mechanism to go to actually
start that and develop it. A lot of that takes feasibility
studies. It takes analysis. It takes all these technology-based
performance results to achieve those goals for your tribe. It
may not be in the best interests of you as a tribal government
to take that responsibility on, but at the same time you should
be afforded that opportunity to decide that, based on the needs
of your tribal governments. So I would wholeheartedly ask the
Senate and Congress to consider a set-aside for tribal
governments for development of technology, much like the energy
bill that is before you currently, to address the unmet needs
of providing basic electric service needs on reservations. The
moneys appropriated for that may not be a whole lot, but it is
a beginning, and it is something that tribes that want to enter
into that new technology can achieve and have resources
available to develop their communities.
Senator Inouye. We will do our best.
Ms. McDowell. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. And now may I call upon Madonna Peltier
Yawakie, the president of the Turtle Island Communications.
STATEMENT OF MADONNA PELTIER YAWAKIE, PRESIDENT, TURTLE ISLAND
COMMUNICATIONS, INC.
Ms. Yawakie. Good morning, Mr. Vice Chairman and staff
members.
Charles Murphy, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
was unable to present testimony at today's hearing due to a
scheduling conflict. My name is Madonna Peltier Yawakie. I am
the president of Turtle Island Communications, which is a 100-
percent Native American-owned telecommunication engineering
firm providing consulting services to the Standing Rock Sioux
Tribe. I have been asked to testify today on behalf of Chairman
Murphy.
The tribe welcomes the opportunity to inform this committee
of the obstacles that are faced by the tribe in its efforts to
improve telecommunications services on the reservation. Census
2000 figures place the average penetration or average
percentage of occupied Indian households with telephone service
on the reservation at 69 percent. In stark contrast, non-Indian
occupied households on the reservation enjoy a 96-percent
telephone penetration rate. These figures represent an entire
class of people on the reservation who are denied access to
emergency medical and police services, educational and economic
opportunities, and the ability to communicate with their
government. These basic human needs strike at the heart of
commitments made by the United States in the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1868. Ironically, it was Federal law that enabled
current telecommunications service providers on the reservation
the ability to deploy telecommunication infrastructure in a
discriminatory manner.
The tribal council is attempting to correct this serious
threat to our communities, but we may need the help of Federal
legislation. For a period of time, the non-Indian population
exceeded the Indian population on the reservation. However, the
2000 census reveals the vast majority on our reservation are
now American Indian. The devastation of the allotment policy
allowed for non-Indian acquisition of reservation lands. When
these non-Indians needed phones, the BIA generously granted
right-of-ways to tribal land areas to telephone companies.
These telephone systems are financed with Federal resources
and-or subsidies, and were establish with complete disregard
for the tribe or its members.
There is inadequate 9-1-1 service provided on the
reservation. Emergency calls are routed in such a way that they
are long distance calls for many of our tribal members. Those
tribal members that meet Lifeline eligibility requirements to
obtain telephone service are also required to submit a monetary
deposit to the local telecommunication company or have toll-
blocking applied to their telephone service. When a tribal
member is unable to make a deposit for long distance telephone
service and due to lack of extended area service between our
tribal districts, many of our community members are unable to
place calls to the government and service centers. As an
alternative, the tribe offered toll-free access to its members
to address this problem, but it became too costly to sustain.
Wireless services are typically considered an alternative
where wire length services do not exist. However, cell phone
service is effectively nonexistent on the reservation. There
are only two cell towers located within the exterior boundaries
of the reservation, which encompasses 2.6 million acres. One of
these towers is located adjacent to the home of and on the
property of a board member of one of the telephone
cooperatives. Both cell towers are located in areas that limit
service quality and reception. In 2001, the council decided to
take corrective action and hired an engineering firm to
complete a feasibility study and an attorney to draft the
regulatory quote. The feasibility study included
telecommunications service improvement options and the
financing and funding options available for tribal
telecommunication development. Telecommunication wireline
infrastructure and wireless license holders were documented
that serve all communities within the exterior boundaries of
the reservation. Telecommunication right-of-way easements were
obtained from the BIA to review their locations and terms of
these existing agreements.
Telecommunication network design options were developed,
along with their associated costs that would best meet the
long-term service needs and economic objectives of the tribe.
Financial statements were completed for this project to
demonstrate the economic impact of service improvements and
employment opportunities within the tribal land area. A draft
utilities service code was developed and distributed for
comments to the FCC, the North Dakota Public Service
Commission, the South Dakota Public Utility Commission [PUC]
and the four LECs providing service on the reservation. The
North Dakota Public Service Commission held an informal hearing
and offered written comments on the code. To the contrary, the
South Dakota PUC did not respond to our request for comments.
Similarly, West River Telecom, the principal carrier on the
reservation, did not provide its comments until after the
comment period. Basically, their only comments were that the
tribe lacks jurisdiction to regulate them. West River
Cooperative Telephone Company also offered comments to contest
the tribe's jurisdiction. The LECs have been communicating with
State regulators about our draft code, but not with the tribe.
The draft code was revised to address the comments we did
receive, and we are again soliciting comments on the revised
version, which are due later this month.
According to the FCC report released recently on telephone
subscribership on American Indian reservations and off-
reservation trust lands, the State of South Dakota ranks 27th
and North Dakota ranks 24th in telephone subscriber rates when
comparing rates with 33 States where American Indian tribes
reside. Though Congress clarified in the 1996
Telecommunications Act that tribes do have jurisdiction in this
area, the lack of specific guidance in the act has left the FCC
with only recent Supreme Court rulings for direction. More
legislation is needed that supports tribal authority to
regulate and improve wire-line and wireless telecommunication
service levels on tribal land. For instance, the FCC has
resorted to the Supreme Court's ruling that applies the test
developed in the United States v. Montana, to decide whether a
tribe can assert its jurisdiction over non-Indians on the
reservation. The result, which has been applied only in the
wireless context, is that tribes have been held to have
jurisdiction only over carriers to the extent they are
providing service to Indians on the reservation, and the States
have been held to have jurisdiction over carriers providing
service to non-Indians.
While that jurisdictional arrangement may be somewhat
workable, yet awkward, in a wireless context, it becomes even
more challenging in a wireline context. It creates checkerboard
jurisdiction that is subject to change with the transfer of
land ownership or with the voluntary submission to tribal
jurisdiction. Nevertheless, that is the jurisdictional scheme
we are forced to establish in order to address the lack of
service and poor quality service on the reservations. The FCC
has fallen prey to loose language of the recent Supreme Court
decisions that suggest tribes have jurisdiction only over
members of the tribe. Despite Congress' effort to correct that
problem with the Duro-Fix legislation, any correction in the
telecommunication legislation may need to again, at the very
least, clarify that tribes have jurisdiction over all Indians
on their reservation, and that States should not be allowed to
assert jurisdiction just to collect taxes.
As carriers of last resort, telecommunication providers
operating on Indian reservations are required to serve Indian
people. Without direction from Congress, we expect that the
lack of clarity will only make our efforts more challenging to
improve services on the reservation. Regardless of these
obstacles, the Lakota and Dakota people of the Standing Rock
Sioux Tribe deserve the benefits of a modern society and we
will not allow jurisdictional opposition to defeat our efforts.
Again, we thank you for the opportunity to testify on this
very important issue.
[Prepared statement of Charles Murphy presented by Ms.
Yawakie appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. You have come up with a very basic concern
of Indian country--who has jurisdiction over what. I have noted
your suggesting that maybe we should revisit Duro.
Ms. Yawakie. Yes.
Senator Inouye. And to clarify the language so that it will
be jurisdiction over everything in the reservation.
Ms. Yawakie. That would be wonderful.
Senator Inouye. We will at the earliest time consider
having appropriate hearings here to see if we can work out
something.
Ms. Yawakie. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. Because according to your testimony, the
problems you are having, some of the high technology that can
be made available may be denied your people. So we will do our
best.
Ms. Yawakie. Thank you very much.
Senator Inouye. We appreciate your testimony, and we will
be submitting questions if we may. Thank you.
Incidentally, I am going to be presiding until we finish,
so if you are getting hungry, I think you should have lunch now
or wait until later. It might be good for you to fast a little.
[Laughter.]
Our next panel is the president of the Turtle Mountain
Community College, Dr. Gerald ``Carty'' Monette; Director of
Technology, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Seattle,
Elsun Lauesen, accompanied by Valerie Fast-Horse, the Cochair
of Telecommunications and Utility Committee, Affiliated Tribes
of Northwest Indians, Portland, OR, and Director of Management
Information Systems, Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Idaho; and Denis
Turner, executive director, Southern California Tribal
Chairmen's Association of Tribal Digital Village, California.
I was advised that Mr. Turner has to leave right away, so
Mr. Turner.
STATEMENT OF DENIS TURNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA TRIBAL CHAIRMEN'S ASSOCIATION, TRIBAL DIGITAL
VILLAGE
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Senator. My name is Denis Turner. I
am the executive director of the Southern California Tribal
Digital Village.
The 19 tribal governments in Southern California recently
obtained a grant and made a partnership with the Hewlett-
Packard Foundation to develop a wireless communication system
within the 19 reservation areas. We believe it is a solution
for self-sufficiency for strengthening our sovereignties within
Indian country. In doing so, I am providing for the record a
written testimony of 5 pages. Hopefully, you have received
that, Senator.
Senator Inouye. It will be made part of the record.
Mr. Turner. Thank you.
I would just like to briefly tell you, though, that if you
look beyond the pages that we have provided and that I have
mentioned, we have developed a vision of what we think our
solution is. We encourage other tribes to look at our model and
consider our vision, because we believe it fits Indian country.
It leaves no one behind. It brings everybody up to speed in
developing their independent, individual tribal communities,
systems connectivity to the bigger Worldwide Web, to developing
their own community Internet, as well as an intertribal
community Internet, as well call our IntraNet.
So I think that this can only be done with using, as we
have in our model, the universities, certainly the tribal
colleges that we have used, and engineering and developing the
architecture of our first-generation of our wireless system. I
think that is constantly and always will be changing as the
technology and the inventions and solutions come about in the
future. I think that is something that all tribes need to keep
abreast of and build their depth into.
I want to just kind of briefly tell you about some of the
real things that are more tangible that have happened since we
have developed our model. I think that we have seen and other
tribes will see in Indian country that by setting up our system
ourselves, by building our towers, teaching our people to build
the towers for broadband wireless, developing shadow projects
through TANF people or other programs within the community for
social services, to understand the value of the wireless
broadband system, and having academies with the young people
and showing them the maintenance, the development, to the final
product, is something that really needs to happen. If you just
build labs and expect our young people to learn
telecommunication and what broadband wireless is, then you are
leaving that other important part out.
And how we learn this is that we have a charter school on
our reservation. I am a member of the Rincon Band, and over the
past years we have had a problem of attendance at our charter
school. We have 200-and-some kids at a high school on the
reservation, but since the development of our program, Tribal
Digital Village, the attendance by the Superintendent of
Schools in California cited us, and the State addressed for the
Superintendent of Schools, that our charter school since we
developed our lab and our Tribal Digital Village had a 99-
percent attendance rate. That is very tangible. It shows that
our kids are learning the system that all Indian kids
throughout Indian country need to learn. This is very valuable.
So on a page of our report, we kind of give you an outline and
a graph of what it is that Tribal Digital Village is doing in
terms of resources for Indian students.
I think that the issue that we face, though, is developing
sustainability for our systems, because they are forever
changing. That is just the nature of wireless and the nature of
the IT business, as we have been taught. We were kind of guided
by some defense contractors in the architecture of our system
for wireless. They were able to teach us that the
sustainability of it can only come, though, that if there is an
economic structure that holds it up. We are working on that,
but we have found out that even through that system, there are,
as has been earlier said, the e-rate discount system in which
tribes can build their systems and become self-sustaining. That
is our goal. It is part of our vision. Unfortunately, I left
behind our vision chart. I will supply that, along with a video
that we would like you to see and your committee members to
see, Senator, concerning our project in more detail.
We were able to develop a video so that we can share it
with the tribes throughout the country on how we developed our
wireless broadband system. We do believe it is the solution,
not because that is--under H-P, they say invent solutions. This
truly is a solution that we ourselves are inventing for Indian
country, and would all like to invite all tribal leadership and
all Senators on your committee for visiting us and seeing what
our model looks like. We truly believe that it can help
everybody.
You asked the question earlier, our children, our students
and our elders have adopted and do want to be part of the
Worldwide Web and communications system and support those
efforts. Just in closing, I would like to thank you, as a
veteran and other veterans, and our Native American veterans,
for providing us for the freedom we have, and a safe place to
be able to communicate on this earth.
Thank you, Senator.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Turner appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Mr. Turner.
When did you establish your digital center?
Mr. Turner. We obtained a grant in the year 2000, February
2000. We established a steering committee, a backbone committee
composed of everybody from the University down to people who
were on public assistance.
Senator Inouye. Do you have this model already established?
Mr. Turner. Yes, sir.
Senator Inouye. And where did the participants receive
training?
Mr. Turner. I am sorry, sir?
Senator Inouye. Where did they get their training?
Mr. Turner. We developed some training for our students,
for our adults, parents, through classes, through training
through the University.
Senator Inouye. You had an arrangement with the University?
Mr. Turner. Yes; with the University of California. That is
where we feed our wireless from, although we are moving from
dot.com to dot.org to dot.gov. In doing so, we have to get off
their nonprofit status because we are going to economic
development. In doing so, we have purchased another system in
California for our wireless system so that we can maintain our
own wireless phones, our own wireless communication. I really
believe it is something that is a solution for tribes in very
other isolated areas.
Senator Inouye. How much did it cost?
Mr. Turner. The costs in the last two years have been close
to $10 million for the last 24 months.
Senator Inouye. Where did you get the funding?
Mr. Turner. One-half of those funds came from the Hewlett-
Packard Foundation, in the amount of $5 million a year. The
other one-quarter of it came from our tribes. They have some
new businesses in Southern California and were able to supplant
the Foundation grant, which was not a requirement, but they
were able to provide that. And then the Indian people that were
interested in it provided the other one-quarter, through
various companies that are on the reservations, just providing
that. One of the greatest things they have done is that every
high school student we are having, and you are welcome, too,
Senator, on May 29th, high school graduation for 120 Indian
high school students in San Diego County, by which they have
committed to provide every high school graduate student a
laptop computer that is wireless.
Senator Inouye. Congratulations.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, sir.
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much, Mr. Turner.
Mr. Turner. Thank you, Senator. It is always an honor to be
before you.
Senator Inouye. Now, may I call upon Dr. Monette.
STATEMENT OF GERALD ``CARTY'' MONETTE, PRESIDENT, TURTLE
MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Mr. Monette. Vice Chairman Inouye, on behalf of the
Nation's 34 tribal colleges, which comprise the American Indian
Higher Education Consortium, I thank you for extending us this
opportunity to testify today.
I am honored to be here. I, too, am a veteran, not a combat
veteran, but a veteran during the Vietnam War. I see you on
television and I read about you in the newspaper, and I get the
opportunity now to say thank you for what you have given to
this country and our people. You are a great supporter of
Indian people, as are all members of this committee. The two
Senators from our State, Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Byron
Dorgan are also tremendous champions for Indian people and
tribal colleges.
My name is Carty Monette. I am president of Turtle Mountain
Community College, located in North Dakota. We are one of the
first of five tribal colleges in the country, and this year we
are celebrating our 30th year of existence.
In my summary statement, I will cover three areas. First, I
will briefly talk about a strategy that the tribal colleges
have already used to plan for and to bring new opportunities to
our people. Second, I will talk about the new tribal college
wireless Internet backbone project. And third, I will provide a
few recommendations for the committee's consideration.
Senator Inouye and Senator Conrad, it is neither necessary
for me to provide an assessment of the state of
telecommunications in Indian country, nor to review the history
of the tribal college movement. The two of you and others on
this committee probably know best the history of tribal
colleges and the struggles that we faced. I will simply say
this: American Indian tribal colleges are young, geographically
isolated and poor. The reservation-based tribal colleges are
the poorest institutions of higher education in this country.
About 10 years ago, our tribal colleges began to learn
about the Internet and the awesome power that information and
communication technology has in bridging the boundaries of
geography and time. By that time, technology had already become
a fundamental component of teaching, learning and research in
higher education. Tribal colleges and universities, because of
our poverty and isolation, had the most to gain or to lose from
this evolution.
But the new technological revolution was largely passing us
by, just as it bypassed most of Indian country. We were faced
with two choices: Either we could view our communities' lack of
access to technology as a digital divide that most of us would
never cross, or we could view technology as a digital
opportunity. As tribal colleges, we chose the latter. In late
1999, we began a series of steps that would lead to the
creation of a dynamic and broad-based strategic plan to guide
our effort to join the technology revolution. Our goal was to
reach a circle of prosperity, a place where tribal traditions
and new technologies are woven together to build stronger and
more sustainable communities. We call our plan the Tribal
College Framework for Community Technology. It is a framework
of strategic partnerships, resources and tools that is helping
us to create locally based economic and social opportunities
through information and communication technology and use of the
Internet.
We developed the plan in five phases, and information all
of these are included in the testimony that I have submitted. I
hope that the committee members have a chance to review that
testimony. We used a methodology called a Prosperity Game--a
highly interactive, fast-paced and effective strategic planning
simulation developed by Sandia National Laboratory from
strategic war games. The game is designed to help create and
sustain productive change through strategy development and
negotiation. After much planning, we convened a 2\1/2\ day
Prosperity Game, led by a team of 13 trained facilitators.
Participants interacted in and across 11 sector teams to
identify challenges and develop policy options and strategies
for the coordinated TCU Framework for Community Technology. We
included governments, including tribal governments, education,
private sector, information technology providers, research and
development, and public. Within weeks of the Prosperity Game,
we had a series of other meetings to finalize development of a
strategic plan. The result by January 2001 was the first tribal
college framework for community technology.
In February 2001, the AHEC Board of Directors adopted a
strategic technology plan that embodied the TCU framework
community technology. With support from the National Science
Foundation, NASA, Microsoft Corporation and others, AHEC
established a national coordinating office and launched a
series of activities representing the initial phase of the
framework. Most important to individual tribal colleges was
bringing the framework full circle--back to each tribal college
through assistance with community-based information technology
planning. In addition, AHEC has undertaken a series of regional
IT planning sessions to ensure that the framework and all
activities that flow from it are responsive to the specific and
evolving needs of tribal colleges. We have learned that
planning on this level is a never-ending process. It is a
circle of continuous improvement through locally and nationally
based assessment planning, implementation and evaluation that
is continually repeated.
I refer you to my testimony for more details on our process
and outcomes. In the interest of time, I will only mention two
outcomes of this ongoing process. First, everyone of the 34
tribal colleges, despite our remoteness, isolation and poverty,
has achieved broadband Internet connectivity for our campuses,
most through multiple T-1 lines. We have computer labs and we
are developing robust and growing distance education programs.
This is a significant change from only a few years ago, when
some colleges had only one computer with dial-up Internet
access. Second, an example of our efforts over the past few
years is AHEC's Wireless Backbone Project. To provide high-
speed connectivity to remote institutions and our satellite
campuses, where laying fiber optic cable may never be cost-
effective, Turtle Mountain Community College and two other
tribal colleges are piloting state-of-the-art wide-band
wireless backbone technology. We are setting distance records
in the process.
Last year, Turtle Mountain Community College, established a
point-to-point wireless infrastructure ring around our
reservation, running from our college site in Belcourt, North
Dakota to several locations in other parts of the reservation.
In addition, we established a point-to-multipoint access point
at the local radio station tower, which provides line of sight
access for a 10-mile radius. The system uses commercially
available and cutting edge technologies and unlicensed
spectrum. It is providing TMCC and some of our local K-12
schools, tribal governments, tribal courts, other tribal
offices with excellent broadband connectivity, significant cost
saving over the traditional services, and the ability to
deliver broadband multimedia capacity and applications that are
not currently available to most rural and tribal communities.
Implementing this pilot system was challenging. We had to
educate our local community and the tribal government on the
initiative and win their support. We had to obtain local
permission to mount and install the wireless transmission
equipment at the necessary locations. Finally, we had to
establish a working agreement with the local public utilities.
Without these relationships in place, our initiative would have
failed. I am pleased to report, however, that the system has
been in place and performing well for several months now. It is
cost-effective, easy to maintain, adequate for our needs, and
has pushed wireless technology to a level never before attained
in the terms of first-mile access.
I would like to close with a few recommendations. I
respectfully request that the committee support our existing
tribal college programs, and urge you to ensure that funding is
available for comprehensive community-based strategic IT
planning for tribal colleges and tribal communities. Currently,
as we have heard today, little money is available, and what is
available is disappearing rapidly. We urge the committee during
reauthorization of the Higher Education Act and the Carl
Perkins Act to consider establishing specific technology-
related programs for tribal colleges. Likewise, as national
security and cyber-infrastructure programs are developed, we
urge you to ensure that tribal colleges are included in any
legislative initiatives.
In closing, Senator Inouye and Senator Conrad, I am
grateful for this opportunity to present our thoughts and
recommendations to the committee. The Nation's tribal colleges
and universities are committed to working with the Congress,
Federal agencies and the private sector to build a bridge of
technological opportunities across our vast Nation. Thank you
very much.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Monette appears appendix.]
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much.
May I recognize the gentleman from North Dakota, Senator
Conrad.
Senator Conrad. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your courtesy, as always.
Welcome, Dr. Monette. It is excellent to have you. I was
actually on your reservation this weekend. I was with the
chairman and we were looking at some of the housing issues, as
you know, that exist there. I regretted not having seen you,
but we were dealing with other issues, so we missed having an
opportunity to visit.
I would be very interested in your prioritization of what
needs to be done with respect to telecommunications. If you
were to say in a couple of sentences what the priorities are--
what are the most important things that we could do that would
improve telecommunications services in Indian country, what
would they be?
Mr. Monette. Senator, of course the broad answer is access.
We have to strive to bring access to high-speed Internet to all
tribal members. But from the tribal college president's point
of view, I look at the teaching and learning part of our need.
Teaching and learning is enhanced tremendously when our young
people and all of our people have access to technology in the
learning process. Earlier there was a comment about education
and about tribal colleges, but the role that we have at tribal
colleges is multi-folded. We have to raise the level of
knowledge of technology so that all tribal peoples recognize
the need for technology. Then we have to bring that technology
to the communities. On many of our reservations, particularly
where the reservation-based tribal colleges are located, if it
were not for our institutions, there would be no technology
there. Our role is to bring access to technology, and then to
teach people how to use that technology. So the greatest need,
of course, is money. We need to sustain what we have, but we
have to be allowed to grow that so that all people have access
to technology.
I hope I answered your question, sir.
Senator Conrad. Excellent answer. Let me just say that I
received a letter, and I would like to put this letter, Mr.
Chairman, if I could in the record.
Senator Inouye. Without objection.
Senator Conrad. It is from Mick Grosz, the CEO and General
Manager of West River Telecommunications Cooperative that is
located in Hazen, ND. This does not serve your area. It serves
the area of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. He goes into
substantial detail on what West River Telecommunications
Cooperative has done to be responsive to the needs in Indian
country, and indicates that their number one goal is to provide
quality, affordable service. To this end, they have taken a
whole series of steps that are in the letter. At the same time,
they have kept rates affordable. Local service rates average
less than $12 a month. It goes into some detail as to the
quality of services they provide on the reservation that are
equivalent to the non-reservation areas, and that their level
of penetration is very good. They indicate the Indian
households' level of penetration is 69 percent. The FCC study
on telecommunication subscribership on reservations gives
almost an 80 percent penetration rate for all households on the
Standing Rock Reservation; 69 percent for Indian households--
far higher than what is seen elsewhere in the country.
He concludes by saying this, and he also goes into some
detail of things they have done to broaden the area that you
can make toll-free calls in response to requests from the
reservation. He said that what they do not need is more
regulations or mandates. He says, as a member-owned
cooperative, West River is very sensitive and responsive to the
needs of its member-owners. We do not need more regulations or
mandates. The program is available; the cooperative spirit and
the willingness to work together will ensure needed services
will be available.
Now, this is not your service area, but this is a very
clear signal, at least from one member-owned cooperative, that
the answer is not more regulations or mandates. Would you have
a reaction to that?
Mr. Monette. First of all, I think it would be nice if the
other cooperatives talked to this gentleman, and I am sure they
do. His target, I believe--he is facing a challenge because it
sounds as though his cooperative that he leads, their heart is
in the right place. They want to do the right thing. But even
the numbers that you just read are far short of where they
ought to be. There needs to be a way where the cooperatives can
survive and grow and show profit and serve their members, so
their members get a return on their investment and good quality
service in the process, but also pushing them toward raising
those numbers for Indian people. I think the letter that you
just read, Senator, and the gentleman that wrote it to you, is
on the right road. But I think there may be need for more
regulations to nudge them forward a little bit, so that they
raise those numbers for all Indian peoples in all areas of the
country.
Senator Conrad. I might add in fairness to Mr. Grosz, he
indicates that the numbers that I cited were estimates from a
2000 FCC estimate. On March 27 of this year, he provided my
office a worksheet that showed the total number of lines that
were actually being paid for at that time. According to that
worksheet, the actual penetration rate is in excess of 90
percent. So they have clearly done a very good job in that
particular area of improving their services. So I would like to
enter this letter into the record, and I thank the Chairman.
Senator Inouye. Without objection, so ordered.
[Referenced document follows:]
West River Telecommunications Cooperative,
Hazen, ND, May 19, 2003.
Hon. Kent Conrad,
U.S. Senate Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Conrad: I am writing in response to the
hearing on telecommunications services available for the Indian
Tribes scheduled for May 22, 2003. I am the CEO/General Manager
of West River Telecommunications Cooperative [WRT]
headquartered in Hazen, ND. WRT provides service to the greater
part of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which is located
in North and South Dakota.
WRT strives to provide quality, affordable
telecommunications to all people living within its service
area. WRT is a member owned cooperative that is governed by an
elected Board of Directors. Margins earned through member's
patronage are allocated back to that member and returned to
that member as capital credits are retired. As a non-profit
company, our No. 1 goal is to provide quality, affordable
service. To this end, WRT has constantly upgraded its
technology to better serve its member owners. WRT has upgraded
to all digital switches and fiber in the loop technology. Local
number, dial-up Internet is available to every customer. DSL is
available to over 80 percent of its customers both on and off
the reservation. WRT has accomplished this and kept rates very
affordable. Local service rates average less than $12 per
month. The Dial-up Internet cost to the customer is $19.95 per
month. The DSL, with Internet service included, cost to the
customer is $39.95 per month.
WRT has provided service to the reservation that is equal
to or superior than that provided to off reservation exchanges.
The exchanges located on the reservation were either the first,
or among the first, in our system to have digital switches and
fiber-in-the-loop technology installed. Local number, dial-up
Internet was introduced on the reservation in the same
timeframe as the other exchanges served by WRT. DSL is
available to people living on the reservation in approximate
proportion as it is to the rest of our membership. WRT has made
quality, affordable telecommunications available to people
living on the reservation. WRT created an expanded local
calling area for three exchanges located on the reservation.
This was done in response to the concerns of tribal members.
With the expanded local calling area, many more tribal members
could call agencies and businesses without incurring a toll
charge.
WRT has attained a subscription rate on the reservation
that is very good. The FCC study on telecommunication
subscribership on reservations released on May 5, 2003 gives a
79.9 percent penetration rate for all households [1895 of 2372]
on the Standing Rock reservation and a 68.9 percent penetration
rate for Indian households [969 of 1406]. These 2000 FCC
estimates are far higher than the 1990 FCC estimates of a 46.6
percent penetration rate. But these are estimates. On March 27,
2003 I provided your office a worksheet that showed the total
number of lines that were being paid for at the time. According
to that worksheet, the actual penetration rate is in excess of
90 percent.
WRT is working hard to improve the penetration rate on and
off the reservation. WRT advertises the availability of the
Lifeline and Link-up program that is available for low income
consumers. We are very active in promoting the Enhanced
Lifeline program that is available for people living on the
reservation who qualify. WRT has promoted this program through
its monthly newsletter. We have also advertised this through
the radio and newspapers. WRT has made the appropriate agencies
and authorities aware of this program. In addition, WRT has
gone to the various towns and districts located on the
reservation on 35 occasions to meet with residents of the
reservation to promote the program and sign up qualifying
people.
I appreciate and share the concern the Senate Indian
Affairs Committee has about the provision of telecommunication
services to the various tribes. I feel strongly that we have
met and continue to meet the needs of the people in our service
area whether they live on or off the reservation. As a member-
owned cooperative, WRT is very sensitive and responsive to the
needs of its member-owners. We do not need more regulations or
mandates. The programs available, the cooperative spirit and a
willingness to work together will insure that the needed
services will be available to the members of the Standing Rock
Sioux Tribe.
I appreciate the opportunity to present this letter to you.
Please feel free to share this letter with other members of the
Committee. I would be willing to meet with you or any member of
the Committee, at a time and place of your convenience, to
discuss this issue. Should you desire, I would be available to
present this information to the committee.
Sincerely,
Albert ``Mick'' Grosz, CEO/General
Manager.
Senator Inouye. I was signaled by Ms. Yawakie that she
wants to say something on this.
Ms. Yawakie. My name is Madonna Peltier Yawakie. I
appreciate Senator Conrad bringing that letter to light. I
represent Standing Rock Sioux Tribe today. Chairman Charles
Murphy was asked to testify today and he asked me to take his
place. We have submitted testimony for the Standing Rock Sioux
Tribe. I think what I would ask you to do is refer to that
testimony. Right now, we are working with the tribes to begin
to assert regulatory jurisdiction over West River
Telecommunications and three other LECs. We are working, not
actually with the South Dakota PUC, but we have submitted a
utility code to them. They have not responded to the North
Dakota Public Service Commission. They have responded, and
right now they have that code for a second round and final
round of response and comment. So what I would ask you is that
we stay in touch with your staff, because this will be an
ongoing effort. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is at 69 percent,
but they have eight districts and that is an average rate,
because some of their districts have 58 percent penetration
rate. So while the numbers sound positive, there is a lot of
work to be done in that area. I would remind you that West
River Telecommunications has been serving that area since 1956.
When we began our study, their penetration rate was at 52
percent. Substantial money has been used through universal
service funds to up those numbers. However, there is a lot of
work to be done, and I wanted to bring that to light. We have
met with your staff-person as well.
Thank you.
Senator Conrad. If I could just inquire, in the letter they
say the 69 percent rate was an estimate done in 2000 by the
FCC. They say that they have since provided my office a spread
sheet that shows the actual penetration rate is now 90 percent.
Ms. Yawakie. We actually have our statistics as well, and
we would be happy to share those with your office. I think that
the tribe, after having been--I am from North Dakota, as a
matter of fact. I am from Turtle Mountain, Band of Chippewa,
and I am a member there. The state of telecommunications at
Standing Rock has been notorious. It has been notorious for
years. There are things that are going on, that have gone on
with some of the reservation. I think this is a complex issue.
The tribe sits in two States. We have some specific detail that
we would like to talk with you and your staff about at your
convenience, and we look forward to that.
Senator Conrad. Thank you very much.
Ms. Yawakie. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. Are you finished? Thank you, Senator.
Dr. Monette, your opening remarks were rather painful,
pointing out that the community colleges are the lowest-funded
schools of higher education in the United States. I am well
aware of that. As you may be aware, some of us have been
working on a plan for many years now to establish in the United
States a university--a university without walls for Indian
country. The problem we have at this moment is, where do we
locate that university, so that you can set up a medical
school; a school of law; a school of social work--all of those
specialties that community colleges do not have. Do you have
any suggestions where we can go? We would like to have it in
Indian country, not here.
Mr. Monette. Senator Inouye, you are correct. I am well
aware of the concept, and have mixed feelings about the
concept. But overshadowing all those feelings and all those
positions I may have is the recognition that we need to provide
access to higher educational opportunities for all Indian
people of all ages. So having said that, we need to find a way
to do that. It is not reasonable, I believe, although it is
preferable from my point of view to have a tribal college at
each reservation. I believe it is not feasible to do that. So
we need to look at ways to provide that access. We are well
into the 2000's, and we still have too many Indian people who
are not enjoying access to higher education.
A couple of things--I think the current tribal colleges and
those that are coming forward now provide a unique and
excellent opportunity to deliver some of that access. I think
technology provides the tool, the vehicle to do that. Even
today, several of the tribal colleges are broadcasting courses
over the Internet to places all over the world. Within States,
several of the tribal colleges are using interactive video,
multi-type approaches to technology used to bring teaching and
learning to tribal peoples all over the world. So I think that
is an important ingredient to this process--the use of
technology. Because I think, and I feel that several of the
tribal colleges are near that position. They are almost
positioned to provide that service on a broad and grander
scale.
If we are talking about bricks and mortar and where that
ought to be located, I think to have the research and the
scholarship available to students in medicine and in law, you
need to have a place where that ought to be. That is a tough
question. I believe it ought to be in North Dakota, is where I
believe it ought to be. [Laughter.]
Senator Conrad. That is a very good idea. [Laughter.]
Mr. Monette. I knew I would have support for that. I think
the Upper Midwest, the Great Plains area, where a tremendous
amount of Indian people are located, where a lot of history is
located both for Native people and for America, and where the
reservations are isolated--the poverty, the poorest counties in
the country are located in the Upper Midwest. There is a
tremendous need for education at all levels. I would like to
see if it had to be bricks and mortar up in the Upper Plains
area. But I think before we get to that point, we should assure
appropriate funding for the existing institutions, which are
tremendously underfunded. The reservation-based colleges like
Turtle Mountain Community College are operating on an amount
that is about half of what a similar mainstream institution
would receive. So we are having to operate our programs on that
small amount of money, plus also assist the students who for
the most part are not academically prepared for college
education, so they require a lot of attention. So a lot of our
resources to into that effort, too.
So I think multi-faceted answer here--the use of
technology, the bringing up of the current funding level for
the tribal colleges so they may continue to provide quality
education, but looking at the need to provide access to all
Indian people in a location I think would be right in the heart
of what I call Indian country, and that is the high plains,
Upper Midwest.
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Dr. Monette.
May I now call upon Valerie Fast-Horse of the
Telecommunications and Utility Committee of the Affiliated
Tribes?
STATEMENT OF VALERIE FAST-HORSE, COCHAIR, TELECOMMUNICATIONS
AND UTILITY COMMITTEE, AFFILIATED TRIBES OF NORTHWEST INDIANS,
PORTLAND, OREGON, AND DIRECTOR, MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS,
COEUR D'ALENE TRIBE OF IDAHO
Ms. Fast-Horse. Good morning, Mr. Vice Chairman Inouye and
Senator Conrad.
My name is Valerie Fast-Horse. I am the Director of the MIS
Department for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. I serve as Cochair of
the Telecommunications and Utilities Committee of the
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. I would also like to
insert that I, too, am a veteran of the U.S. Army and served in
Desert Storm, and I have really been pleased to hear the
testimony and the tributes to veterans this morning in this
room.
On behalf of the Affiliated Tribes, I am pleased to present
testimony today regarding the work of ATNI and how we have been
able to address the telecommunications needs of our member
tribes. While our written testimony provides greater detail
about ATNI and the challenges we face, in this morning's
testimony I want to highlight some of the positive steps being
taken to overcome these challenges.
First, it is important to outline the framework from which
we operate. When we speak to the issues of the digital divide,
we see four divides and not one. The four divides are in the
areas of transport, distribution, access and content. In order
to begin to break these barriers, ATNI developed the Tribal
Technologies Project. This project is a giant leap forward for
many tribes. Most of our tribes do not have the resources,
financial or human, to fully utilize and maintain the
technology needed to succeed and prosper in the information
age. The Tribal Technologies Project is designed to fill that
gap by providing technical assistance to tribes through a
structured planning process. The work is accomplished within
the framework of formal invitations to ATNI EDC, conveyed
through tribal council resolutions. These resolutions authorize
the tribal technology team to work with local advisory boards
and project staff, describes the tribal resources that are
there to support the project activities, provides a time frame
to complete the work, and specifies expected results from the
assessments.
Current initiatives being done within this framework in the
Northwest, which we hope will serve as models for other ATNI
tribes, includes the following. First, the Makah Tribal Portal
Initiative. We see this initiative as a comprehensive solution
that addresses both the content and the access issues in the
Makah tribal community. The Makah Tribe is the most remote
tribe of ATNI. It is located in Neah Bay in the Northwestern
Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The concept is to create
locally controlled content and to provide local services as a
gateway to the Internet. The use of electronic documents and
messaging boards among the households will be used to enhance
tribal communications. The development and archiving of
cultural content will enhance the use of cultural resources for
the tribe. Local news, weather, sports and a local market
trading area on the site will increase use and penetration of
the technology in many tribal members homes. Because more
households have TV's than PC's, the use of set-top devices for
TV owners is being tested to increase access to the tribal
portal. Another program that is being carried out by ATNI is
the Tribal Telephone Outreach Program. This program was
developed to address the access issue. It has two outreach
advocates who provide training to tribes on telecommunication
issues. This includes training on the Lifeline and LinkUp
Programs for tribal lands and consumer rights issues. In
addition, they have also impacted policy at the local, State
and Federal levels. Through written and verbal testimony to the
Public Utility Commission, they have contributed to the change
of consumer laws in the State of Washington. These changes will
make it easier for low-income families to reestablish phone
service when old phone debt is an issue, and will protect the
rights to privacy for all consumers.
In addition to their outreach work, they also serve on the
SEC Consumer Advisory Committee as well. We believe this
program is an excellent model that could be replicated in other
areas of Indian country. Although this program has helped
hundreds of families, it is in serious jeopardy now due to lack
of funding.
Another initiative I would like to outline is the Tribal
Teleport Initiative. This initiative addresses both
distributive and transport issues. The Lower Elwha Tribe
acquired property which contains a 300-foot microwave tower and
facility. The facilities are part of the old Cold War Alaska
Communication System. ATNI is cooperating with Lower Elwha and
five other Olympic Peninsula tribes, including Makah, to
convert the microwave facility into a teleport site. This site
will link the tribes to an open access backbone, NoaNet,
through a point of presence owned by the S'Klallam County PUD.
There will be a fiber link from the S'Klallam County POP to the
Lower Elwha tower. The circuit will then be transmitted to
participating communities. The Makah Tribe and others will have
a wireless point of presence built that will receive the signal
and redistribute it to the end-users PC's and set-top devices.
This will allow cost-effective access to be established. The
tribes will operate as the content experts and the ISP for the
system. Subscribers will pay for their connection at a
wholesale rate, plus capital costs and transportation costs
estimate to be around $25 per month for the equivalent of a
fractional T-1 line.
The last initiative I would like to outline is the Coeur
d'Alene Tribe Broadband Initiative. This is a project that is
designed to address the transport, distribution, access and
content issues on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. The tribe was
recently awarded a $2.78 million community broadband grant from
the USDA Rural Utilities Service. Through this grant, the tribe
will build a state-of-the-art Tribal Community Technology
Center and deploy a wireless broadband transmission system that
will be adequate enough to support the tribal government,
public safety personnel, medical facilities, educational
institutes, new development and reservation communities. In
addition to providing access to free broadband, the Technology
Center will serve other purposes as well. We plan to use the
center for the tribe's higher education, career renewal and
workforce training needs. We have been collaborating with North
Idaho College to bring instructor-led courses, online courses
and interactive video conferencing courses to the Center. The
Center will also be a focal point for e-government activities.
We are currently developing a Web portal that integrates
government and culturally relevant content together in order to
attract users to the Center.
These initiatives represent what ATNI hopes will be a
locally empowering solution addressing all of the digital
divides in Northwest Indian country. However, in order to
continue along this positive path, ATNI also offers the
following recommendations.
No. 1, support open access backbones for rural America,
such as the Northwest Open Access Network, NoaNet, throughout
the United States. The presence of these backbones are similar
to the public interstate highway system that links our great
Nation together. A fair and equitable subscriber system could
support the development of these systems and the interconnect
costs to remote communities to be served by them.
No. 2, support landing rights for World Trade Organization
telecommunications satellite transponders for Indian country
and other underserved rural areas. Intelsat, Telesat Canada,
and other systems are capable of serving domestic U.S. markets.
These systems could provide redundancy, links to peering
services and signal repeating services for remote networks.
No. 3, continue funding and supporting programs such as the
Technologies Opportunities Program under the Department of
Commerce, and the multiple programs supported through the Rural
Utilities Service--projects such as the Teleport project and
the Coeur d'Alene Tribe's broadband project simply would not
exist without programs like these. RUS provides critical
support for tribes. However, the corporate culture at RUS is
driven by the utility power and telephone sector. While RUS
does excellent work in rural America, there is a need for
linking the operations of this corporate culture with the trust
responsibility to Indian tribes. On that note, it is ATNI's
position that there should be an Indian Desk at RUS.
We also advocate support for the Economic Development
Administration. EDA has been a dependable friend of rural
America and Indian country throughout the years. EDA is a
public partner in the assessment work currently being conducted
by ATNI EDC. These programs provide important investment
funding for public projects that help build the capacity of our
Nations. However, we are finding out that much more work still
needs to be done.
No. 4, in particular we are requesting the support of this
committee for a proposed congressionally sponsored
appropriation specifically targeting the work of the Northwest
Tribes, which is intended to support projects much like those
described earlier throughout Northwest Indian country. This
funding would dovetail the assessment and planning work being
sponsored by private foundations in the Northwest over the next
24 months.
Finally, in relation to homeland security, we urge this
committee to be mindful of the unique opportunity for Indian
country to support the security of our Nation. Indian nations
are often inholders within the vast tracts of wilderness and
federally managed areas that are potentially vulnerable to
infiltration by terrorists, smugglers, and other criminal
agents. We are co-managers with Federal agencies in many areas,
including fisheries, water resources and environmental
management. Native Alaskans served on the technological front
lines of America's Cold War, engineering and operating the
district early warning sites along coastal Alaska. Native
Americans have served this Nation with distinction when called
upon to do so. In this context, the Cold War era microwave
tower at Lower Elwha closes that loop of history in these
challenging times. When this remnant of the Cold War is
converted for peaceful uses of our tribes, it may yet perhaps
be a service to the domestic security of our Nation. The Office
of Homeland Security does recognize the government-to-
government relationship between the United States and federally
recognized tribes. In this connection, we urge the committee to
ensure that there will be a strong role for tribes as that
office shapes its strategic thinking and the deployment of our
Nation's security resources.
Thank you for this opportunity to come before the committee
and thank you for your diligence on behalf of the Northwest
Tribes.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Fast-Horse appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Ms. Fast-Horse. In
your closing remarks, you mentioned the Tribal Teleport
Initiative. I believe you have an application with the Commerce
Department's TOP program? I am certain you have heard that the
Commerce Department and the President do not recommend funding
for this program. Do you have any alternative sources for
funding?
Ms. Fast-Horse. I am sorry. I am not sure that--it seems to
me like the only alternative sources we have in Indian country
are the philanthropic efforts of private foundations, but that
takes a lot of work in educating them in what the issues are to
Indian country. I do not know. I am not sure what other----
Senator Inouye. In other words, this committee must do
something to overcome the President's proposal.
Ms. Fast-Horse. Yes, sir.
Senator Inouye. We will do our best.
Ms. Fast-Horse. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. Your statement has been extremely helpful.
We will be sending you questions, if we may, on other
specifics.
Ms. Fast-Horse. Yes, sir.
Senator Inouye. You are doing a good job there, and
incidentally my first visit to a tribe as chairman of this
committee was a visit to Makah.
Ms. Fast-Horse. You are aware of the remoteness of the
Makah Nation.
Senator Inouye. It was not one of my most pleasant,
because--[Laughter.]
I was in an aircraft in a storm, and they have an air base
about the size of this room. [Laughter.]
But I landed. We left the Makah reservation by car.
[Laughter.]
Senator Inouye. It is safer that way.
Do you have any questions?
Senator Conrad. No additional questions, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to just say a word of thanks to you for, first
1, your holding this hearing, along with Chairman Campbell, and
most of all your extraordinary patience and willingness to
listen. It is deeply appreciated throughout Indian country.
Senator Inouye. You are very kind. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dr. Monette. And now our next panel
is: Cora Whiting-Hildebrand, member of the Oglala Sioux Tribal
Council of Pine Ridge, SD; the vice president of Regulatory
Affairs of the Western Wireless Corporation of Bellevue,
Washington, Gene Dejordy.
Ms. Whiting.
STATEMENT OF CORA WHITING-HILDEBRAND, OGLALA SIOUX TRIBAL
COUNCIL MEMBER
Ms. Whiting-Hildebrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Cora Whiting-Hildebrand. I am a member of the
Oglala Lakota Tribal Council. On behalf of President Yellow
Bird Steele, the Oglala Lakota Tribal Council and the Oglala
Lakota people that we serve, I appreciate the opportunity to
appear before you today. We have a good story to tell here. I
submitted testimony for the record and I will summarize.
Reliable and affordable telephone service is essential for
all Americans, including those Americans on the Pine Ridge
Reservation. Eighteen months ago, only 30 percent of the homes
on our reservation had telephones. This service was wireline
and the provider did not make the reservation-based consumers
aware of Lifeline or LinkUp assistance available to them. At
$38 a month for basic services, with an average reservation
household yearly income of $3,500, this meant 13 percent of the
average household income was spent just to have a phone line.
In other words, if a family in Toledo was making a household
income of $40,000, by comparison they would be paying $433 a
month for basic service. We are happy with Western Wireless and
the competition. It is good to have LinkUp and Enhanced
Lifeline universal service fund access. Ninety-nine percent of
the Western Wireless subscribers on our reservation qualify.
Next, Congress and the FCC must respect our sovereign
authority. We know our need. We know our numbers. We know
ourselves. We do not trust with good cause that our use of
Lifeline and LinkUp assistance would have occurred without the
competition created by Western Wireless Services. We would
appreciate advice and assistance from the appropriate parties
in educating ourselves about wise and responsible use of our
regulatory, financial and service options.
In conclusion, the Oglala Lakota people are happy with
Western Wireless service. We know that without Western Wireless
having eligible telecommunication carrier status, our mutually
beneficial services would not have been possible. Before I
finish, I want to give you an example of why the Oglala people
are happy with Western Wireless. There are two sisters who live
in my district, which is the Pejuta Haka District. They live
about 20 miles out of town, right on the edge of the Badlands.
They each have their own little one-bedroom houses. They have
no electricity, no running water, and they use wood stoves to
heat and cook. They have one old pick-up that they share. They
use to haul wood and everything. They have never had a
telephone in their whole lives. But now, they both have cell
phones due to Western Wireless, and that keeps them connected
to their doctors, to their family, to the tribal government,
and it gives them 9-1-1 access if they ever happen to need it.
With that, I would like to say thank you for allowing me
this opportunity, and I will be happy to answer your questions
if I can.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Whiting-Hildebrand appears in
apppendix.]
Senator Inouye. Ms. Whiting, I thank you very much for your
testimony. It has been extremely helpful.
May I now recognize the gentleman from South Dakota,
Senator Johnson.
STATEMENT OF HON. TIM JOHNSON, U.S. SENATOR FROM SOUTH DAKOTA
Senator Johnson. Thank you, Senator Inouye. Unfortunately,
I have been tied up with an Appropriations Committee hearing
this morning. We are dealing with a lot of rural issues in that
regard, so I had to excuse myself from here. But I did want to
make a particular point of dropping by this morning to welcome
Councilwoman Cora Whiting-Hildebrand to the Indian Affairs
Committee. Cora is one of nine councilwoman, now one-half of
the Oglala Sioux Tribe Council on the Pine Ridge, and providing
extraordinary new leadership for the OST. I am just so very
pleased that she could join us here to share insights that she
has relative to telecommunications. Cora wears a lot of hats.
She provides leadership in many different respects, but in this
particular one I appreciate all that she does relative to
telecommunications in our part of the country. Particularly in
Indian country, telecommunications is not a luxury. It is not
just a matter of economic opportunity. It is a matter of public
safety. So it is so important that we have high quality,
affordable, reliable telecommunications capabilities in Indian
country. I have a very high regard for Councilwoman Whiting-
Hildebrand's experience, her insights on what has worked well
and what has not worked well on the Pine Ridge, and I am
grateful for her leadership. I just wanted to make a special
personal welcome to her. I saw her the other day at a committee
hearing as well, but I did want to stop into this hearing to
express my thanks for her leadership on the telecommunications
issues in particular.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Inouye. What can I say beyond that? Thank you very
much.
Mr. Dejordy, I do not think you need to testify. She has
done it for you. [Laughter.]
STATEMENT OF GENE DEJORDY, VICE PRESIDENT, REGULATORY AFFAIRS,
WESTERN WIRELESS CORPORATION
Mr. Dejordy. No kidding. I do not know what else to say
here. But Senator Inouye, Senator Johnson, I appreciate the
opportunity to appear before the committee and further expand
upon Cora's statements with respect to Pine Ridge.
I think what is noteworthy is that Pine Ridge is an
exciting and real-world story of how we can bridge the
telephone divide as well as the digital divide in Indian
country. What it represents is how a tribe and a private sector
company can work together for the benefit of Native Americans,
and how government can make a difference in the lives of tribal
members on reservations, as well as the value of a competitive
universal service system and how it translates into significant
consumer benefits.
Let me just briefly touch upon each one of those subjects.
In terms of the tribal and private sector cooperation that took
place here, it all started several years ago with a vision by
the Oglala Lakota Tribe that they wanted to enhance their
lives, they wanted a better telecommunications system. And
together, Western Wireless and the Oglala Lakota Tribe worked
to address those issues. We put aside any preconceived notions
of how the system should work, how the arrangement should be
structured. We sat down with each other and tried to work out
what would be the best arrangement for both the tribe and for
Western Wireless. In the end, that culminated in the Tate
Woglaka service agreement, which we had a signing ceremony here
several years ago before you, Senator Inouye.
I think it is important to recognize that every tribe and
their telecommunications needs are potentially unique and may
require a different solution. There are tribally owned
telephone companies that are doing a very good job; there are
some telephone companies that are not from reservations and are
serving reservations. And then there are some tribes like the
Oglala Lakota Tribe who have developed a cooperative
arrangement with Western Wireless, and that has served their
needs well. The point, I think, is that the tribes should
decide which approach best meets their needs and be able to
count on the government and the private sector to assist them.
That is what we tried to do in this arrangement here.
Next, I would like to just touch upon how the Government
can make a difference. The Pine Ridge story would not have been
possible but for the FCC assuming jurisdiction in granting ETC
status to Western Wireless for the purposes of universal
service on the reservation itself. Universal service was the
form of funding that was available to us to build out the
network and the infrastructure on the reservation, which prior
to us doing that there essentially was no wireless services on
the reservation and very little wireline service.
This raises, however, an important issue that needs to be
resolved. Currently, the law is not entirely clear as to
whether the FCC or the State commissions have jurisdiction over
the designation of eligible carriers on reservations. In the
Pine Ridge case, the FCC did a commendable job in resolving the
jurisdictional issue in expeditiously granting ETC status
within nine months. In our experience with being an ETC in 14
States and on the Pine Ridge Reservation, that was the quickest
process that unfolded in getting us into the market.
However, the jurisdictional uncertainty in the regulatory
process can and does create a barrier to competitive carriers
seeking to obtain ETC status on reservations. Therefore, we
would recommend that there be some clarity to the section
214(e)(6) process that makes it clear that the FCC, in
consultation with the tribes, has the authority and the
jurisdiction to address ETC applications on reservations. What
I would like to stress is that Western Wireless agrees that
tribal support for an ETC application should continue to be a
prerequisite to any carrier seeking to provide service on the
reservations, whether that is a competitive carrier such as
ourselves or the incumbent carrier. That is certainly what we
did in this process before we even tried to obtain eligible
status on the Pine Ridge Reservation. We worked with the tribe
and obtained their full consent, as well as subjected ourselves
to the jurisdiction of the tribe in terms of addressing
service-related issues that may arise.
The next point I would like to address is really the value
of competitive universal service on Pine Ridge. The importance
of this form of funding that is available to most tribal-owned
telephone companies, as well as competitive carriers who want
to serve reservations. It is really the mechanism that is in
place for companies like Western Wireless to obtain the funding
necessary to build out an infrastructure and serve the
reservation. Prior to our entry into this agreement with the
tribe, we had one antenna tower that partially served the
reservation, and then after we entered into this agreement, we
constructed three additional towers on the reservation and
essentially have ubiquitous service throughout the reservation.
Recently, it has come to our attention there are some areas of
the reservation where there are gaps in coverage, and we are
addressing that issue by constructing additional antenna
facilities on the reservation.
As Cora mentioned in her testimony, prior to our entry into
the market, telephone penetration rates were about 32 percent.
It took long-distance calling to call many communities from
within the reservation, from one community to the another
community on a reservation. The incumbent telephone company was
not terribly responsive to the needs of the tribal members, as
Cora mentioned. After Western Wireless entered into the market,
the penetration rate has now increased to approximately 70
percent, if not more. We have implemented local calling area
for the entire reservation, as well as Rapid City. All of this
was very much based on us sitting down with the tribe and
identifying what their needs were and implementing a system
that addressed their needs. I think oftentimes, a telephone
company which could be competitive carriers, they may enter a
reservation and may not necessarily consult the tribal
government to determine what the reservation needs were. That
is not what we did, and I think in the end the tribal citizens
are better off for it. They have 9-1-1 service today. In fact,
they have a more responsive incumbent telephone company. So it
is not just us that providing our service on the reservation,
but it is also true that the incumbent service provider that
has gotten better at what it is doing.
In sum, I would just like to stress that Pine Ridge is a
success story. I think it can be duplicated with the right
Government policies. I thank you for the opportunity to
testify.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Dejordy appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much.
In prior testimony by other witnesses, they noted that the
designation process for ETCs may be very difficult, but you
found yours to be rather expeditious and easy.
Mr. Dejordy. Yes.
Senator Inouye. To what do you account for the difference?
The others were tribal organizations. Would you say they were
lacking in experience?
Mr. Dejordy. This is the FCC? Yes, that was a big issue
when we first presented the application. The threshold question
that the FCC has to answer is whether they have jurisdiction.
There is a question in the FCC's mind as to whether they have
jurisdiction over a carrier that would seek to be an ETC just
on the reservation, not counting areas outside of the
reservation. The FCC has developed a legal process that they
would undergo to determine whether they have jurisdiction. It
is not entirely clear what the outcome would be of that
jurisdictional analysis. In the context of Pine Ridge, it
worked out, but it was a very painful process that, to the
FCC's credit they went through it incredibly quickly and did it
at the same time that they granted our ETC application. But I
do not anticipate that that is the normal course of events, so
when I suggest that there is clarification to the 214(e)(6)
process, I think that would solidify the FCCs jurisdiction and
then they would not have to undergo an jurisdictional analysis
to decide if they even want to hear the application.
Senator Inouye. We will look at your recommendations and I
think we can work out something.
Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson. Just briefly, Councilwoman Whiting-
Hildebrand--I am not supposed to say Cora, I guess, here in a
formal setting--but one of the facts of life across much of the
most rural parts of South Dakota, as you well know, is that
cell phone coverage, we have a lot of gaps in places where
there just is not a signal. Do you feel pretty comfortable that
we are making good progress in the Pine Ridge in filling in
those gaps so we have a very continuous level of coverage no
matter where you might be on the Pine Ridge?
Ms. Whiting-Hildebrand. Yes; they work pretty much all over
the reservation, and actually I have a cell phone with Cellular
One out of Rapid City, and my husband has a cell phone through
Western Wireless. His phone works in more areas than my phone
will. The only place that neither of our phones will work is in
Yellow Bear Canyon, and probably because it is in a canyon.
Senator Johnson. Well, you get in a canyon, yes, you get
into the Black Hills or into some of those canyons and you are
going to have some trouble, no doubt. But you feel,
particularly because of our concern about 9-1-1 signals and
things like that, it is important that people can be sure that
their signal can get across.
That brings me to the other point. When we began to adopt
9-1-1 through South Dakota through a lot of our rural areas,
one of the first issues we had to deal with is an awful lot of
people did not really have an address per se. As we went
through voter registration and so on on the Pine Ridge last
year, we discovered that was one of the hurdles we had to kind
of get over because a lot of people had a box number, but not
really an identifiable location number. How are we dealing with
that on the Pine Ridge so that the 9-1-1 really works so we can
get rescue help to people when they really need it?
Ms. Whiting-Hildebrand. Well, our dispatchers and our
emergency service people, the ambulance drivers and police
officers, they have maps posted and they go by BIA highway
numbers, and just basically landmarks of where people live.
After an officer has worked in the district for awhile, they
usually figure out where people live.
Senator Johnson. There is nothing quite like using local
people and people who are familiar with the communities to
really make that work. I think that is interesting. I really
commend the tribe for what it has done. I think that is a huge
new enhancement of safety and quality of life for a lot of
people to have that option in the event that they have got
anything from a car accident to a heart attack that they can
get immediate attention.
I appreciate your observations as well that this is not
just a matter of technology. It is also a matter of
implementing technology in a way that honors the sovereignty of
the tribe, and it is done in a very closely consultative
manner. I wish that all the things the Government did was as
consultative, but I applaud your work in that regard.
With that, Mr. Chairman, that is all the questions that I
have.
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much. I would like to thank
Cora Whiting-Hildebrand, and Mr. Dejordy--thank you very much.
Ms. Whiting-Hildebrand. Thank you.
Mr. Dejordy. Thank you very much.
Senator Inouye. And now the final panel: the managing
director and vice president of Privacy Council Inc. of
Washington, Roanne Robinson Shaddox; the CEO and general
counsel of the Montana Independent Telecommunications Systems,
Mike Strand; the chief information officer of the Tohono
O'Odham Nation--executive branch, Ben H. Standifer, Jr.
Ms. Shaddox.
STATEMENT OF ROANNE ROBINSON SHADDOX, SENIOR ADVISOR/EXTERNAL
RELATIONS, PRIVACY COUNCIL
Ms. Shaddox. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman Inouye and
distinguished tribal leaders and guests.
My name is Roanne Robinson Shaddox, and I am managing
director and vice president of the Privacy Council, and the
former chief of staff of the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration. I am also a founding board member
of the Native Networking Policy Center and a member of the Hopi
Tribe of Arizona.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide my personal
observations on the important role of the Federal Government in
addressing telecommunication needs in Indian country. During my
6 years with NTIA, I primarily worked on efforts to close the
digital divide. As the most senior Native American involved in
telecommunications policy development for the Clinton
administration, I tried to ensure that Indian country was
included in these important efforts.
At the outset, a key priority was educating Federal
officials about the need in Indian country and bringing tribes
and tribal organizations into the fast-moving
telecommunications debate. Toward that end, we held the first
of a series of public field hearings in Albuquerque, NM so that
senior Commerce, NTIA and FCC officials could learn first-hand
about the lack of service on tribal lands. For many people,
they had never heard that tribes and Indian people did not have
phone service, so it was very educational.
We also successfully pushed for the appointment of a Native
American to the first White House National Information
Infrastructure Advisory Council that, too, held a hearing
focused on Native issues. In addition, we worked to increase
tribal access and awareness about the TOP program that you have
heard a lot about today, and alerted the BIA officials about
the new e-rate program which today is credited for connecting
most BIA schools to the Internet.
We also prominently highlighted Native issues at our major
conferences on universal service, which further helped to bring
the issue of the digital divide to the mainstream attention.
Most notable, however, were our efforts to include data on the
status of Native American household connectivity in our
landmark Falling Through the Net reports. These reports
received widespread national media attention, and with the
President's call to action, helped to spur a wide range of
public and private sector initiatives, including those by AOL,
Microsoft and others, that helped to target the Indian
communities' needs. I think these efforts also should be
credited for helping to finally spur the FCC into action, which
up to that point had not paid much attention to Indian issues.
As a small agency, we had very few resources in which to do
this. However, I mention these accomplishments because they
demonstrate the powerful role that the Federal Government can
play on issues of national importance. As tribes transition
into the digital age, we need the Federal Government to
continue to help in several important ways. Policy advocacy is
one of those. With the rapidly changing telecommunications
policy landscape, now more than ever tribes need an advocate
within the Executive Branch to ensure that their voice is heard
in major policy debates when possible ideas to create an office
within NTIA or even to reestablish the Department of Commerce
Indian Desk to monitor and advocate tribal interests on a wide
range of policy issues, both inside and outside the agency.
There are several such hot issues today, ongoing debates
about universal service, broadband deployment, wireless and
unlicensed wireless technologies, and the future of radio
spectrum management. We also know that with the move to e-
government, issues such as privacy and security in the online
environment are going to be very important to tribal
communities.
We also need more Federal coordination. I think that we all
know that. This is needed to improve tribal investments or
Federal investments on tribal land. These existing projects
that occur today throughout all the Federal agencies with all
these different programs need to be further examined, better
coordinated, and we need further information about them so that
this information can be widely shared to avoid other agencies;
reinventing the wheel. For example, I recently heard that over
at HHS the Public Health Service is making Internet access in
their clinics a number one priority, and how is this type of
initiative being rolled out and going to impact other projects
that might be going on over at IHS?
As you have heard overwhelmingly today, the Federal
Government must continue to provide funds for tribal
connectivity efforts. Programs such as TOP must be retained and
fully funded to meet the strong demand not only from tribes,
but from States, universities and other nonprofits. As we have
heard today, TOP has played an important role in bringing these
technologies to tribal communities, and can also play a very
important role as these communities look to improve emergency
communications in response to the war on terrorism.
Also, as you have heard today, besides NTIA's TOP program,
there is the PTFP program. There is also EDA's technical
assistance and public works programs, and the Department of
Education's CTC programs. I respectfully disagree with the Bush
administration in thinking that these programs, specifically
CTC and PTFP and TOP, have exceeded or met their mission. I
think the need has been very well established today that these
programs need to be retained and fully funded.
I think these programs also become vitally important as we
look at the FCC's June 2 vote on media concentration. The
argument has been made that with the advent of the Internet and
access to those technologies that why do we need to have
diversity of media ownership. So I think if we are going to be
in a world of further concentration, that having access to
other alternative resources or sources for news and information
on local events is very important for tribal communities.
The guidelines and requirements for these programs should
be periodically reviewed to make sure that they do not impede
tribal participation, and timely reports very much need to be
published on these projects, especially those that can serve as
other models. We have also heard a lot about data collection. I
cannot underscore the importance of the Federal Government
engaging more and getting good baseline data for our
communities. Only through good baseline data are we going to
know how to best target policies and programs that can serve
the needs on tribal lands. I believe that increased funding
actually may be required for NTIA's next Nation Online survey
to ensure that reservation households are adequately addressed
in that data collection effort.
I think finally what we have also heard a lot about today
is that the FCC continues to need to build and strengthen their
relationship with tribes and tribal organizations. Although
tribes are on their way toward building a solid dialog with the
FCC, we have many, many tribal communities that do not have the
resources or expertise or the time to engage in formal
Commission proceedings. My fear is that this could be
misconstrued that tribes either are not interested or that they
are not affected by all the issues that are before the FCC
today. So the FCC should be encouraged to continue its dialog
with tribes and find new ways to ensure that tribal views are
heard and addressed at all levels, particularly on these tough
jurisdictional issues.
Moreover, the FCC should dedicate more resources to do
effective consultation, enforce the universal service and
build-out requirements of telecommunication providers that
serve tribal lands, as well as to perform further outreach to
Native American consumers about the Lifeline and LinkUp
Programs, among other things. I also think the letter that
Senators Daschle and Johnson and Baucus sent to the FCC
recently asking them about these types of activities is very
important in terms of seeing more oversight of these programs.
They need to know that you are interested and that you care,
and certainly this hearing today does that.
In conclusion, the Federal Government must continue to play
a strong role in support of tribal connectivity efforts. I urge
the committee to take the steps necessary to protect and
promote Federal programs and policies that best address the
communication needs in Indian country. Only through your
leadership will our communities soon enjoy true universal
service and the wide range of benefits that come with today's
technologies.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify, and I look
forward to your questions.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Shaddox appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Ms. Shaddox. I was
just reminded that on my visit to the Hopi Nation, I met your
mother, Mrs. Robinson.
Ms. Shaddox. Thank you. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. You have had experience with NTIA. At the
present time, do the Native Americans have any voice in the
activities of NTIA?
Ms. Shaddox. Unfortunately, I think very little today. I do
not think it is a lack of interest as much as that it is a very
small agency with very limited resources. Unless you have
somebody there all the time basically nagging them about Indian
issues, it is very easy to get caught up in some of the big
debates that are being driven by much larger interests and
lobbies. I think that is why, I know when I was there a lot of
my work was just going and trying to educate--who are Indians,
that they do exist, about the government-to-government
relationship, and then educating them, trying to get good
information to them about the status of access. I think
everybody in this room who encounters folks at these agencies
or working with the larger non-Indian community, you find most
people today still do not know that there are a lot of folks
that do not have a basic telephone in their households. So the
education process has to be continuous. We tried to, and we did
successfully get an Indian desk in the Office of the Secretary.
That unfortunately no longer exists. I think as we have heard
at other agencies, it takes someone in there working day to
day, side by side with these professionals to keep Indian
interests at the forefront.
Senator Inouye. Does the White House have any Indian voice?
Ms. Shaddox. Not to my knowledge. I believe there is
somebody in that area responsible for Indian affairs. My guess
it is in the intergovernmental affairs area of the White House,
but I have not heard of any major outreach.
Senator Inouye. Do you believe that the so-called
consultation carried out by Federal agencies with Indian
country meet the intent of the law?
Ms. Shaddox. I am not sure exactly which law. I do not
think it meets the intent of the full trust responsibility in
government-to-government relationships. As we all know,
consultation is an extraordinarily difficult process to do,
particularly if you do not have any resources to conduct that.
I think that is why a lot of agencies turn to organizations
like NCAI, hopefully the National Tribal Telephone Alliance and
others, to get the word out about programs and issues, and to
get feedback. I think if you look at the BIA's consultation
policy, it looks great on paper, but trying to execute that
without significant resources to do so is difficult. Then, we
are hindered by the fact that only until recently have all the
tribes actually gotten fax machines. So if you want to alert
them to information that they may have an interest in, we have
gotten to that point. We need to get tribes and communities
connected so it can be a seamless instantaneous communication
process back and forth.
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Ms. Shaddox.
Mr. Strand.
STATEMENT OF MIKE STRAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND GENERAL
COUNSEL, MONTANA INDEPENDENT TELECOMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS
Mr. Strand. Good afternoon, Vice Chairman Inouye. Thank you
very much for having me. For the record, my name is Mike
Strand. I am the CEO and General Counsel for Montana
Independent Telecommunications Systems, that represents
telephone cooperatives operating across Montana. I am also the
CEO and General Counsel for an organization called iConnect
Montana that builds neutral co-location facilities and data
centers across Montana. I am a member of the Governor's blue
ribbon Telecommunications Task Force, a long-time member of the
9-1-1 Advisory Council and a founding board member of the
Yellowstone Regional Internet Exchange, which provides the only
Internet peering point in the Great Plains region.
I would like to thank the committee for allowing me this
time to offer my observations with respect to basic and
advanced telecommunications services to Native Americans. I
represent seven small telephone companies operating in Montana.
They range in size from about 1,600 lines to about 10,000
lines. Their service areas include all or part of five
reservations--Fort Peck, Fort Belknap, Rocky Boy, Blackfeet,
and Crow. These rural telephone companies are not tribally
owned. However, several of them are cooperatives, so their
subscribers on the reservation are owners of the cooperatives,
along with the other cooperative members.
While the policy of the companies I represent is to offer
the same quality of service on reservations as we do off the
reservations, it is nonetheless true that the reservation areas
pose a number of unique challenges to our operations. First,
our most current information is that the average per capita
income on the reservations we serve is less than $10,000 per
year, and unemployment is often greater than 30 percent. The
Enhanced Lifeline Program that makes local service available
for $1 per month helps the poorest get service, but most still
have difficulty paying long distance charges or paying for more
advanced telecommunication services like high-speed Internet
access.
Second, many residents, particularly among the elderly,
speak primarily in their Native language and we cannot assume
fluency in English. This creates certain challenges from a
customer service standpoint. Third, there is often a pervasive
mistrust of programs and projects offered on the reservation by
non-Indians. Therefore, we have met some initial resistance
even to programs like the Enhanced Lifeline Program I mentioned
earlier. And then fourth, finally and perhaps most importantly,
we acquired much of the reservation areas we serve from the
local Bell company in 1994. When we acquired those areas, we
found that the telecommunications facilities were antiquated,
lacked adequate capacity to handle calling volumes, and had not
been deployed to many homes or businesses. Therefore,
subscribership among Native Americans in those areas was as low
as 50 percent at the time we acquired them.
Faced with these challenges, we were forced to come up with
a number of different strategies to improve service and boost
subscribership. I would like to outline some of these
strategies for the committee because I think they are
instructive for any company, tribal or otherwise, seeking to
improve service in reservation areas. Then I would like to
identify three areas in which we believe further improvements
can be made.
The example I will use is Project Telephone Company, which
serves most of the Crow Indian Reservation in Southeast
Montana. Project's experience is representative of the
experiences of the other companies I represent. Our first
challenge upon acquiring the Bell company's facilities on the
Crow Reservation was to reengineer the physical
telecommunications network so that it was not only capable of
serving all of the residents, but also capable of providing the
full range of basic and advanced telecommunications service. We
found that the calling traffic capacity of the Bell company's
old copper lines was exhausted in many areas, and that
switching equipment was old analog equipment. There was no way
for us to improve subscribership without installing new copper
lines with greater capacity, as well as a certain amount of
fiber optic cable to handle increased calling traffic. Further,
there was no way for us to offer advanced services like high-
speed Internet access, voice mail, caller ID, call waiting,
call forwarding, et cetera, without converting the antiquated
switching equipment to digital equipment. This required an
investment of over $2 million on top of the price we had to pay
for the Bell company system.
The reason I emphasize this point is that those companies,
tribal or otherwise, must identify who they intend to serve,
where those people are located, as they construct their
networks and their capacity in order to adequately handle
calling volumes. Further, they need to identify up front what
kinds of services they intend to offer, so the correct
technology platform is built that can deliver those services.
We intended to offer not just voice services, but also high-
speed Internet and video conferencing services to the Crow, so
we upgraded using wireline technology, fiber optic technology,
coupled with digital switching.
In addition to the Bell company's facilities being
antiquated, they simply did not reach a large segment of the
population. Our understanding was that the Bell company's
construction policy required a substantial financial
contribution from the individual customers before lines would
be installed to their homes or businesses. We were told that
many customers did not have service because they could not
afford to pay the thousands of dollars the Bell company
demanded in construction assistance before it would install
phone lines to rural customers. To boost subscribership, we
established a policy under which any customer that was within
one mile of our lines could get service without construction
charges. Nearly every resident of the reservation was within
this distance, so construction charges pretty much became a
non-issue. In order to address the language and suspicion
barriers, we hired Crow-speaking customer service
representatives and field technicians to do our hookups. We
also appointed a tribal member to our board of directors to
help determine tribal policy.
While all of the measures I mentioned boosted overall
subscribership, we found that we were seeing a significant
number of reservation residents dropping service due to an
inability to pay long distance charges. At the time we acquired
the reservation areas, calls between the telephone exchanges on
the reservation and between the reservation exchanges and the
nearest large community were long distance charges. So for that
reason, we petitioned the Montana Public Utility Commission to
expand the local calling area so that all the exchanges on the
reservation could call each other as local calls and not toll
calls, and so they could also call the nearest large community
as a local call without toll charges. Although that process was
long, as regulatory processes often are, and it took us almost
two years to accomplish this, we were successful, and now calls
between all of the reservation communities and the largest city
in Montana are local toll-free calls.
As the 2000 census shows, all of these efforts enabled us
to boost subscribership among the Crow from around 50 percent
to 87 percent. Our subscribership has continued to grow since
2000 due in no small part to the Enhanced Lifeline and LinkUp
programs that make local service available to qualifying Native
Americans for a dollar per month. We advertise the programs
very aggressively on the Crow Reservation, and our customer
service representatives contacted individual residents on a
house-to-house basis to foster further awareness of the
programs. Of the 1,400 residential lines on the Crow
Reservation, 591 or 41.8 percent of the Crow residents are now
on the Enhanced Lifeline Program. We believe that we are one of
the most successful companies in the Nation in promoting the
Enhanced Lifeline Program.
In addition to the improvements to voice services, we also
made dial-up Internet access available to all customers on the
Crow Reservation. We have made high-speed Internet access using
DSL technology available to two-thirds of the tribal members.
Finally, we have installed fully interactive video conferencing
studios in the tribal college and in the K through 12 schools,
so students are able to share teaching resources with other
schools across the country and across Montana.
All in all, we believe we have made remarkable progress in
making available basic and advanced telecommunications services
to the Crow Reservation. However, there are still a few areas
that remain troublesome. First, while we have been able to
alleviate some of the problems with long distance charges by
expanding the local calling area, many residents still find
themselves with large long distance bills for calls made to
areas outside that local calling area. When those bills become
unaffordable, we find some residents simply disconnect their
service. Second, while we have made broadband access available
to the Crow Reservation, we have not yet seen great demand for
those services. In part, we believe this is because of the
economic conditions on the reservation, which simply prevents
people from purchasing the service. We also believe that many
residents of the reservation simply do not yet see why such
access is relevant to their day-to-day lives. Our hope is that
young people who use broadband services in the tribal college
and K through 12 schools will over time create greater demand
for similar services in the reservation's homes and businesses.
Finally, there is a wrinkle in the FCC's rules regarding
the distribution of universal service support for companies
serving the reservations. Currently, if a competitor comes to
the Crow Reservation and is designated as an ETC and are able
to receive universal service, that competitor receives funding
based not on their own costs of providing service, but on our
costs. This creates a kind of catch-22 dilemma for us in so far
as the more we invest in services on the Crow Reservation, the
more funding becomes available to our competitors. For the
first time, our board of directors and management have to think
about how much investment we continue to make in the
reservation when the cost of making those investments result in
greater support to our competitors. This issue is of no doubt
substantial concern not just to us, but to the tribally owned
companies as well because they have the same exposure.
As a final note, I would just like to take a few seconds
and read the penetration numbers for the eight reservations in
Montana: Blackfeet, 89.5 percent; Crow, 87.4 percent; Flathead,
95.9 percent; Fort Belknap, 89.3 percent; Fort Peck, 92.3
percent; Northern Cheyenne, 75.4 percent; Rocky Boy, 90.1
percent; Turtle Mountain, the portion that is in Montana, 94.3
percent. So we certainly appreciate the grave difficulties that
many reservations are experiencing across the country, but we
are shocked and dismayed at the 69 percent average and the much
lower percentages we hear about, particularly in the desert
Southwest. Clearly, those kinds of experiences are completely
foreign to us in Montana, and we stand ready and willing to
share our experiences and any advice we can give folks that are
having a more difficult time getting penetration, and talk
about our successes.
Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Strand appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. With your background and experience, do you
think your involvement in the south might make a difference--a
company of similar background and experience?
Mr. Strand. In the southern part of the United States, sir?
Yes, I believe that we have made so much effort in boosting
penetration on Indian reservations that I think that we could
be of great value to companies in the southwestern part of the
United States. Quite frankly, the cooperative model is a
particularly good model for improving subscribership because it
gives all of the subscribers--Native American and non-Native
American alike--ownership in the company and a place in
determining the policy. So I think that is a particularly good
model.
Senator Inouye. Thank you very much, Mr. Strand.
And now may I call upon Mr. Standifer.
STATEMENT OF BEN H. STANDIFER, Jr., CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER,
TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION--EXECUTIVE BRANCH
Mr. Standifer. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chairman. I am honored
to present this written testimony to the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs on behalf of my people of the Tohono O'odham
Nation. I would also like to acknowledge our chief technology
officer, who is with me today. I especially want to thank
Senator Inouye for inviting us and allowing us to provide this
written testimony on behalf of the Tohono O'odham Nation.
The hearing being held here is to discuss the status of
telecommunications in Indian country. Although I cannot speak
on behalf of all Indian country, I do realize that Indian
country is faced with many unique challenges and opportunities
to improve the state of telecommunications on its lands. There
are few tribes that have the opportunity to enmesh their
infrastructure with urban areas, but there are many who are
challenged by the rural remoteness of their lands. Indian
country has been subjected to the over-popularized term digital
divide, where a traditional understanding of the digital divide
as a series of gaps and rates of physical access to computers
and the Internet fail to capture the full picture of the
divide--its stronghold, its educational, social, cultural and
economic ramifications.
Events such as September 11 have shifted focus from filling
the divide to securing the divide. As priorities of the Nation
change, Indian country is faced with dealing with changes never
really quite conquering the divide. The Tohono O'odham Nation
in its best effort in dealing with the divide is now faced with
unique challenges to secure a 75-mile international border with
Mexico--a challenge unique only to the Tohono O'odham Nation,
and dealing with the after-effects of a ``more secure border''.
As Chief Information Officer of the Tohono O'odham Nation's
Department of Information and Technology, I can say that the
status of telecommunication is inching forward, but there are
unique opportunities for gaining access to funding,
interoperability, cost of broadband services, technical
assistance for some projects, and availability of a skilled
information technology workforce.
The Tohono O'odham Nation is fortunate to own and operate
the Tohono O'odham Utility Authority, an enterprise that
provides electrical, water, telephone, cellular, Internet and
broadband service. This enterprise has been able to provide
affordable phone service to over 3,500 homes and businesses on
the reservation, and Internet service to 450 dial-up customers.
Its current telecommunications service covers 75 percent of the
Nation, and will expand to 95 percent over the next 5 years.
The growth of these services are partly due to the National
Exchange Carrier Association or NECA pool, but participation in
this pool requires tariffs that regulate charges for
telecommunications services. The charges regulated the tariffs
have challenged the development of telecommunications solutions
that include the use of broadband services. The Department of
Information and Technology pays costs three to four times more
than the average monthly costs of non-rural customers to
provide high-speed Internet services. These monthly costs are
neither economical or sustainable for the tribal government,
the service departments, and programs. In a study conducted by
NECA in 2002, titled the Middle Mile Broadband Cost Study, it
focused on the costs of transporting Internet traffic from an
Internet service provider operating in a rural telephone
company territory like TOUA, to an Internet backbone provider--
this so-called middle mile.
As I quote from the study, the study concludes that without
support programs, high-speed Internet connections are not
economical in many rural telephone company territories because
serving areas are located a great distance from the Internet
backbone provider. The study also demonstrates that revenue
shortfalls do not just disappear as the market grows, but
actually increases, because operating margins become more
negative as customers need higher data speeds or when serving
higher demand levels. This sobering conclusion suggests that
high speed Internet service may not be sustainable in many
rural areas. This is based simply on the economic costs of the
telephone company broadband network upgrade and the need to
route traffic over greater distances to reach the Internet
backbone.
This particular anomaly in costs has forced the Tohono
O'odham Nation to leverage wireless solutions for connectivity
opportunities, to reconsider its strategy in servicing programs
such as departments and districts, but still challenges TOUA
and the Tohono O'odham Nation to deliver broadband Internet
access to all 4,600 miles of its reservation.
The Tohono O'odham Nation, since forming the Department of
Information and Technology, has been challenged with servicing
a need that is greater than its resources. It has realized that
effective tribal community-based planning was necessary to
develop a strategic plan that would include the interests of
all stakeholders, to include tribal governments, community
college, human service, police department, cultural museums,
nursing homes and other services. A winter IT summit was held
in 2000 to provide a greet and meet opportunity for IT
professionals who had an interest in the development of IT
initiatives on the Tohono O'odham Nation. What proceeded were
small cell meetings that resolved issues of connectivity,
redundancy and availability. An initiative that the Tohono
O'odham Nation created was standardization of hardware and
software and key application where information could be shared
across departments electronically, standards such as the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE,
American National Standards Institute, ANSI, and the Design
Criteria Standard for Electronic Records Management Software
Applications, or DOD 5015.2, is providing framework for
development. These standards will create better collaboration
with entities that adopt similar standards while safeguarding
their integrity. The Tohono O'odham Community College detailing
our community-based planning process will provide a written
testimony to this committee.
For many years, access to Federal funding has been limited
to tribal governments, mainly by the absence of acknowledgement
of tribal governments and tribal entities eligibility for
funding. Many Federal funding opportunities are written
acknowledging State and local government eligibility, but
exclude tribal governments and entities from participating
through proposal submission. The addition of words, tribal
government or tribal entities, should be included on all
Federal funding opportunities. This language needs to be added
to the Appropriations Committee or in a bill to include tribal
governments and entities.
In his opening statement to this committee in 1996, the
Director of the Indian Health Services said:
We must expand our search for partners in the health care
arena. To become more efficient and effective, we have to look
to foundations, universities, independent organizations and
others who can assist us in the delivery of care.
This CIO echoes this same sentiment for the future of
technology and telecommunications for the Tohono O'odham
Nation. We must become more effective and efficient and we must
look to foundations, universities, corporations and Federal
agencies that can assist in the further development of delivery
of technology-based solutions. There is need for public-private
sector partnership in providing the required infrastructure.
Through more funding opportunities, economic and capital
investments, research and developmental projects will allow the
furtherance in the development of wireless infrastructure,
health care and public safety initiatives that affect
communities, visitors and Federal workers.
An example of this model that continues to thrive today has
been the collaborative efforts between the Tohono O'odham
Nation and the Department of Homeland Security. The Tohono
O'odham Nation shares a 75-mile international border with
Mexico where undocumented workers become problematic,
incursions from Mexican Federals; the presence of five Federal
agencies, many of which fall under the Department of Homeland
defense; the existing radio infrastructure inadequately covers
70 percent of the large contiguous land mass; and the Tohono
O'odham police and fire department lack the necessary
interoperability with each other and their Federal
counterparts.
The Director of Wireless Communications of the Department
of Homeland Defense met with the Tohono O'odham Nation and
pledged his commitment and resources to develop an interim
solution to create the interoperability between all public
safety agencies, both tribal and Federal. His resources
included telecommunications experts from the Secret Service,
Border Patrol and Customs, engineers and security analysts to
develop an interim solution that would create the much-needed
interoperability.
This example is what can happen when the Federal Government
and tribal government commit to solve a problem with the
motivation of better serving people and communities. This
project delivered an interim interoperability solution within
45 days and began a long-term commitment between the two
governments.
Finally, I close with the discussion regarding the need for
technical assistance or the higher need of growing your own.
The Department of Information and Technology has taken the
position of providing quality services to the Tohono O'odham,
but commits its resources to developing an IT workforce for its
membership to support the IT interests today and in the future.
In a complex and sometimes complicated field such as
technology, the Tohono O'odham Nation believes that its members
can provide these services, create a skilled IT workforce, and
create a real solution that is best for the interests of the
communities, districts and people of the Tohono O'odham Nation.
The gap between the information rich and the information poor
is being reduced by planned projects with the Tohono O'odham
Nation and the community college to establish community
information centers. These centers are to be equipped with
multimedia PCs and relevant software to enable even those who
are illiterate to use computers using icons and the mouse.
The Department of Information and Technology has developed
and outreach program titled Vital Link that provides mentoring
and internships for junior and senior level high school
students to experience a career in the field of technology.
Students should be able to access the Internet in certain
learning environments and use various technologies to display
their knowledge. All students should learn to locate, acquire
organize and evaluate information from a variety of sources,
including electronic resources. Our goal is to influence the
decision of our youth to complete high school and consider a
career in technology. Other career programs that have been
instituted internal to DOIT have been the Grow Your Own
program, where technical and some professional staff who have
minimally accomplished an associates degree or applicable
experiences are put into a career ladder where they learn while
developing their skill sets to provide the function of that
position. These activities are just a few initiatives that are
being used to create the required IT workforce necessary for
sustaining the O'odham people.
Consideration of mentoring programs for IT staff with
Federal agencies who can provide additional support, skill
sets, and encouragement for O'odham IT workers could be a good
opportunity that will support the efforts of self-
determination, because it is not a hand out, but a hand up.
I am privileged to provide this written testimony to the
Senate committee, and hope that you will consider the
challenges and opportunities that rest in Indian country, in
particular with the Tohono O'odham Nation.
Thank you.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Standifer appears in appendix.]
Senator Inouye. I thank you very much, Mr. Standifer. Your
Department of Information Technology has made great progress in
providing telecommunications services to your people. Do you
have any outreach program to share this experience of yours
with other tribes and nations in your vicinity?
Mr. Standifer. Our outreach program is about two years old.
We are actually graduating our first year students that came
through our program, so it is still rather new.
Senator Inouye. Are some from other nations?
Mr. Standifer. I am sorry?
Senator Inouye. From other nations?
Mr. Standifer. No, sir; from the Tohono O'odham Nation. We
have not yet provided that information to the other tribes, but
are willing to do so.
Senator Inouye. I think they would be most grateful if you
shared your experience with them.
Mr. Standifer. Thank you.
Senator Inouye. I have been advised that there will be a
working meeting for those who are interested in participating
in room 836 of the Hart Senate Office Building at 2:30 this
afternoon. It is 1 hour from now. We would like to invite all
of the witnesses who participated this morning to be there. I
think meeting together may be helpful mutually.
With that, I thank all of you for your participation today.
I know you are hungry, so get to lunch.
Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 1:27 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to
reconvene at the call of the Chair.]
=======================================================================
A P P E N D I X
----------
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
=======================================================================
Prepared Statement of Mike Strand, Executive Vice President and General
Counsel MITS--Montana Independent Telecommunications Systems
Good Morning. I would like to thank the committee for allowing me
this time to offer my observations with respect to basic and advanced
telecommunications services to Native Americans.
I represent seven small rural telephone companies operating in
Montana. They range in size from about 1,600 lines to about 10,000
lines. Their service areas include all or part of five reservations:
Fort Peck, Fort Belknap, Rocky Boy, Blackfeet, and Crow. These rural
telephone cooperatives are not tribally owned, however several of them
are cooperatives, so their subscribers on the reservation are owners of
the cooperatives along with the other cooperative members.
While the policy of all of the companies I represent is to offer
the same quality of service on reservations as we do off the
reservation, it is nonetheless true that reservation areas pose unique
challenges to our operations:
No. 1. Our most current information is that the average per capita
income on the reservations we serve is less than $10,000 per year and
unemployment is often greater than 30 percent. The enhanced Lifeline
program that makes local service available for $1 per month helps the
poorest get service, but most still have difficulty paying long
distance charges or paying for more advanced telecommunications
services like high-speed Internet access.
No. 2. Many residents, particularly among the elderly, speak
primarily in their native language, and we cannot assume fluency in
English. This creates challenges from a customer support standpoint.
No. 3. There is often a pervasive mistrust of programs and projects
offered on the reservation by non-Indians. Therefore we have met some
initial resistance even to programs like the enhanced Lifeline program
I mentioned before.
No. 4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we acquired much of
the reservation areas we serve from the local Bell company in 1994. We
found that the telecommunications facilities we acquired were
antiquated, lacked adequate capacity to handle calling volumes, and had
not been deployed to many homes or businesses. Therefore subscribership
among Native Americans in such areas was as low as 50 percent.
Faced with these challenges, we were forced to come up with a
number of different strategies to improve service and boost
subscribership. I would like to outline some of these strategies for
the committee because I think they are instructive for any company
seeking to improve service to reservation areas. Then I would like to
identify three areas in which we believe further improvements could be
made.
The example I will use is Project Telephone Company, which serves
most of the Crow Indian Reservation in Southeast Montana. Project's
experience is representative of the experiences of the other companies
I represent.
No. 1. Our first challenge upon acquiring the Bell company's
facilities on the Crow Reservation was to re-engineer the physical
telecommunications network so that it was not only capable of serving
all of the residents, but also capable of providing the full range of
basic and advanced telecommunications service. We found that the
calling traffic capacity of the Bell company's old copper lines was
exhausted in many areas and that the switching equipment was old analog
equipment.
There was no way we could improve subscribership without installing
new copper lines with greater capacity as well as certain amount of
fiber optic cable to handle increased calling traffic. Further, there
was no way to offer more advanced services like high-speed Internet
access, voice mail, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, etc.
without converting the antiquated switching equipment to digital
equipment. This required an investment of over $2 million on top of the
price we had paid for the Bell company's system.
The reason I emphasize this point is that those companies, tribal
or otherwise, must identify who they intend to serve and where those
people are located as they construct their network in order to ensure
that the network has both the proper geographic coverage and adequate
capacity to handle calling volumes. Further, they need to identify what
kinds of services they intend to offer so that the correct technology
platform is built that can deliver those services. We intended to offer
not just voice services but also high-speed Internet and
videoconferencing services to the Crow, so we upgraded using wireline
technology coupled with digital switching.
No. 2. In addition to the Bell Company's facilities being
antiquated, they simply did not reach a large segment of the
population. Our understanding was that the Bell company's construction
policy required a substantial financial contribution from the customer
before lines would be installed. We were told that many customers did
not have service because they could not afford to pay the thousands of
dollars it demanded in construction assistance before it would install
phone service to rural customers. To boost subscribership, we
established a policy under which any customer that was within one mile
of one of our lines could get service without construction charges.
Nearly every resident of the reservation was within this distance, so
construction charges pretty much became a non-issue.
No. 4. In order to address the language and suspicion barriers, we
hired Crow-speaking customer service representatives and field
technicians to do hook-ups. We also appointed a tribal member to our
Board of Directors.
No. 5. While all of the measures I have mentioned boosted overall
subscribership, we found that we were seeing a significant number of
reservation residents were dropping service due to an inability to pay
their long distance charges. At that time calls between the telephone
exchanges on the reservation were long distance calls and so were calls
to the largest nearby city, Billings, MT. For this reason, we
petitioned the state public utility commission for permission to
establish a local calling area that included all of the reservation
exchanges as well as the Billings exchange. Although the regulatory
process took us nearly 2 years, we were ultimately successful and now
calls between reservation communities and Billings are local, toll-free
calls.
As the 2000 census shows, all of these efforts enabled us to boost
subscribership among the Crow from around 50 percent to 84 percent. Our
subscribership has continued to grow since 2000, due in no small part
to the enhanced Lifeline and Link-Up programs that make local service
available to qualifying Native Americans for $1 per month.
We advertised the programs very aggressively on the Crow
Reservation and our customer service representatives even contacted
individual residents to further foster awareness. Of the 1,413
residential lines on the Crow Reservation, 591 or 41.8 percent are now
on the enhanced Lifeline program.
In addition to the improvements to voice services, we also made
dial-up Internet access available to all customers. We have made high-
speed Internet access using DSL technology available to nearly two-
thirds of the tribal members. Finally, we have installed
videoconferencing studios in the tribal college and K-12 schools so
students are able to share teaching resources with other schools across
the country.
All in all, we believe remarkable progress has been made regarding
the availability of basic and advanced telecommunications services on
the Crow Reservation. However, there are still a few areas that remain
troublesome.
No. 1. While we have been able to alleviate some of the problems
with long distance charges by expanding the local calling area, many
residents still find themselves with large long distance bills for
calls made to areas outside the local calling area. When those bills
become unaffordable, we find some residents simply disconnecting their
service.
No. 2. While we have made broadband access available to the Crow
Reservation, we have not seen great demand yet for such services. In
part, we believe this is because economic conditions on the reservation
simply prevent people from purchasing the service. We also believe that
many residents of the reservation simply do not yet see why such access
is relevant to their day-to-day lives. Our hope is that young people
who use broadband services in the tribal schools will over time create
demand for similar services in the reservation's homes and businesses.
No. 3. Finally, there is a ``wrinkle'' in the FCC's rules regarding
the distribution of universal service support to companies serving the
reservation. Currently, if a competitor comes to the Crow reservation
and is designated as being eligible to receive universal service
funding, that competitor receives funding based on the costs we incur
to provide service and not on the competitor's own costs. This creates
a kind of ``catch 22'' dilemma for us insofar as the more we invest on
the Crow reservation, the more funding that would be available to our
competitors. For the first time, our Board of Directors and management
have to think about more than just how we can improve service when
considering further investment on the reservation because such
investment may actually harm our competitive position. This issue is no
doubt of substantial concern to the tribally owned companies as well
because they have the same exposure. The FCC is currently reviewing
these rules.
Thank you very much for allowing me this time to share our
experiences and to discuss some continuing challenges. I would be happy
to answer questions at the appropriate time.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.077
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.078
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.079
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.080
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.081
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.082
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.083
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.084
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.085
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.086
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.087
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.088
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.089
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.090
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.091
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.092
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.093
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.094
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.095
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.096
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.097
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.098
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.099
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.100
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.101
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.102
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.103
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.104
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.105
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.106
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.107
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.108
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.109
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.110
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.111
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.112
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.113
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.114
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.115
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.116
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.117
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.118
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.119
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.120
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.121
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.122
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.123
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.124
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.125
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] 87495.126