The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.
Joe Coldebella:
Hello. Welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m Joe Coldebella, and we are in Houston, Texas at the Broadband Community Summit coming to you from the Harrison Edwards Summit Studio. Joining me is the president and CEO of Tribal Ready, Joe Valandra. Joe, welcome to the Broadband Bunch.
Joe Valandra:
Thank you. Very happy to be here. Thanks.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s great to have you here as well. We’ve got a lot of money coming into the space, and I know that BEAD money is a main topic. Before we touch on that subject, I would love it if you could just give our listeners a little bit of a story about yourself as well as Tribal Ready.
Joe Valandra:
I’d be happy to. In fact, I think it’s important that people know who I am. So I’m originally from South Dakota. I’m a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe or a citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. Was born and raised in South Dakota and went to undergraduate college in South Dakota. Went to Minnesota Law School, University of Minnesota Law School. And have really been in business most of my career.
But for the last 40 years, my focus has been on tribes, economic development, and trying to better life on the reservation or just for tribal people in general. And broadband in modern society is a tool that you must have access to for healthcare, education, entrepreneurial opportunities, business opportunities, and just communication in general. I mean, just the fact that we’re doing this podcast validates that being online is important, otherwise, they won’t hear the podcast. So I think that sums up a little bit about me and my life.
I live in Washington DC; I have for about 20 years. My wife and I live there. Our kids are grown and gone. We enjoy lots of things about being in DC, and we’re happy to be there. Our families are all over the place. Most of my family is still in South Dakota on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, but not all. They are in lots of different places, but by far the largest concentration is still there.
Now, how we got to Tribal Ready. I first began working on tribal broadband back when the American Reinvestment Act in 2009 was passed when the economy was… Because I think people think of Lehman Brothers and those kinds of things that happened then. So a big investment was made in the economy. Some of it was earmarked for broadband. And the situation in Indian country, which I know we’ll touch on later, was about the same then as it is today. Maybe it’s slightly better today, but only slightly. So I formed a business with a couple of partners. And we partnered with five tribes across the country and put in applications to build five high-speed broadband projects.
Very similar to what tribal country is doing today in that, trying to get grant money to help build out what isn’t there. Unfortunately, none of the projects got funded.
Joe Coldebella:
Really?
Joe Valandra:
We’re not sure why. Honestly, we never really got a lot of feedback from the administration as to why. I testified before Congress asking why. I still never really got any answer. But that sparked my deep interest in helping to try to bring high-speed broadband to Indian country. And I’ve been persistent all along. But it’s one of those things where without investible capital, it’s very difficult. Or without some mechanism that gets capital to the project that can be accounted for in a way that helps facilitate sustainability. And that’s a lot of words in one sentence, but that makes it so it can survive long-term financially. It’s very difficult. Well, the opportunities now.
Because one of the few positive things to come out of COVID is the stark realization that the world needs to be connected for us to have better healthcare and all the other things that we have already mentioned. And that’s certainly true for Indian country because the conditions are not any better today than they were in 2009 or probably than they were in 1969 in some cases. And I say that not to shock people or just try to be hyperbolic. The fact of the matter is that Indian reservations still tend to be the most impoverished locations in the country with the lowest number of resources and with the lowest amount of hope. That hasn’t changed, unfortunately, very much. It’s changed some, but not so much as you’d notice unless you have lived there.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. So obviously there are tribes across the United States. You’ve got Navajo and Hopi in Arizona. In the northwest, the northeast. Is it sort of the same in all areas? Or in terms of population density, it’s more positive? I would love it if you could unpack that for me.
Joe Valandra:
No, the situation tends to be uniform.
Joe Coldebella:
Really?
Joe Valandra:
Now, in some circumstances, and this is a good thing, some tribes have been very successful with their other economic development, namely gaming. So they’ve been able to improve the lives of their people and the circumstances in which they live. So that’s been good. But that is the exception, not the rule, of the 574 recognized tribes. 229 of them are in Alaska. So the remaining that are in the US, only 200 at last count, not every tribe had a casino. I guess, I’ll just say it that way, so I don’t get the numbers wrong.
And even those that do — let’s use my tribe as an example. In Rosebud, we have a casino. It’s near the Nebraska border, near the largest community that’s anywhere near that area. What that casino really does is that it makes some money, of course, that it’s able to distribute back to the community. But it provides jobs. Jobs at the casino, jobs for the businesses that supply the casino. It’s most valuable for the jobs that it creates, not so much for the profits that it generates.
But that was one of the intentions of the economic development behind tribal casinos anyway. So that’s true. Whether it’s my little casino north of Valentine Nebraska, or if it’s one of the larger casinos on the east coast or in the middle of the country, Oklahoma, wherever that might be, they produce more jobs, more economic benefit than the profits generally that they make from gaming. And that’s the value of them both to the tribe and to the surrounding community. So having said that talk kind of got diverted into-
Even again, we go back to my tribe. We’re in South Central, South Dakota, hundreds of square miles that are part of the reservation. And there’s not much there — roads. There’s an IHS hospital. The tribe has some businesses. Of course, there are grocery stores, governmental facilities, and those kinds of things. But there’s not as much economic development as the community could support. And again, that’s true across the country. Again, when a tribe tends to be closer to a metropolitan or a more heavily populated area that they either are surrounded by or they’re on the fringe of, the economic opportunities are different there, of course. But again, most of the tribes in the west of the Mississippi, unless they happen to be close to a metropolitan area, live an impoverished life.
Joe Coldebella:
Wow. So that’s a lot there. I know that you hosted a talk here as well. I was wondering if you could expand on that in terms of what you guys talked about. It sounds like with the $3 billion specifically earmarked for tribal communities, it doesn’t seem like it’s enough.
Joe Valandra:
Well, it’s not. In fact, that was really the ultimate message yesterday for the panel that we hosted. I and the other three panelists are all native people. One from Alaska; one from upstate New York; one from Northern California; and myself from the middle of the country. We realized that we were going to be talking to a group that didn’t know a lot about tribes. So we did our best to try to give some background about what tribal sovereignty is all about. And it’s not just a word. It derives from the treaties that the US government signed with tribes and the provision in the US Constitution that sets tribes out as someone that the government must deal with government to government. And some other basic principles.
I’m not going to go through them here again, but they were meant to, as I described to the crowd, sort of a level set so that when we start talking and we’re using terms that we’re very familiar with because we live those terms every day, that at least the group that was in the room had a starting place that made sense for them. So we did that first. And then we talked about specific areas, about the funding that’s available, and the problems the tribes are having to access that.
Not so much with the $3 billion, although there have been issues. There always are. But the message on the money was that the $3 billion is the floor. It’s the starting point because the $42.5 billion that’s coming out in BEAD to the states, the tribes are also eligible and probably the most eligible for those funds, depending on the state, to supplement, or in some cases, be the sole source because not every tribe has been awarded something from the $3 billion.
But regardless of if they have or not, they’re still available. They’re still eligible to apply for BEAD grants through the state that they happen to be in. So that $42.5, $42 billion is a lot of money. It’s the most that’s ever been allocated for these kinds of projects. And it’s specifically targeted to unserved areas or arguably unserved areas, depending on how you want to define that. That’s almost always a tribal reservation within the state. Almost always. And it kind of comes back to what you asked when we were talking before about the availability of broadband economic development. Tribal lands have tended to be overlooked, although there are incumbent providers. I’ll just keep coming back to Rosebud because-
Joe Coldebella:
Please do. Yeah.
Joe Valandra:
… Because I’m most familiar with that. And it’s most personal to me. There’s an incumbent provider there. I’m not going to name names.
Over the years, they’ve received millions of dollars of grants from various programs or have been eligible to upgrade service on the reservation and for all their customers, specifically on Rose. And frankly, the reservation has seen very little of that money in terms of true upgrades.
I mean, to this day, today, there are houses I know of that still have dial-up speeds coming across copper wires, which means they won’t be able to listen to this podcast. Maybe on their phone, if they go into town, they can listen to it. But if they were going to try to do a FaceTime meeting or any kind of video conference, forget about that. If they’re trying to download or upload any kind of significant document, that’s not going to happen. So it limits the opportunity just in that small area for working from home or starting a business from home. I mean, you just don’t have the bandwidth to build a website if you can’t even upload a document that’s larger than two pages.
Joe Coldebella:
So just for my own edification, in terms of speeds themselves, do they even meet the minimum thresholds?
Joe Valandra:
Oh, no, of course not. No. They are truly dial-up. Maybe if you’re old enough — I am — where you used dial-up. You’d hear that sound, and you put it in a coupler, or the modem you had sitting on your desk would connect using that. It’s that speed. It’s measured in bauds per second; it’s that slow.
Joe Coldebella:
In terms of the technologies that the tribes are looking at, since it’s in rural outlying areas, is it WISPs, or fiber, or is even Leo’s? Are these things that are under consideration? Or because the BEAD has specific guidelines some things are off the table?
Joe Valandra:
Well, they are under the terms of the NOFO off the table; that’s true. But tribes realistically must look at all options. In Rosebud, some of the distances are so long and the cost per mile to pull fiber is prohibitive, yet the need is still there. So when we’re advising tribes, fiber’s the first thing that we look at because that’s, I guess, still the gold standard. So you pull fiber to every place that you can afford to. Not every place you can, every place you can afford to. And still have money left in the budget to provide fixed wireless, other devices, or other mediums that can get you the speeds that are required.
Fixed wireless is what the audience probably knows or should, has gotten better, and better, and better. If it has the right connection to backhaul and has the right radio frequency, et cetera, you can get some pretty good speeds out of fixed wireless.
When we’re advising tribes, we advise them to look at all options because there’s no other way to meet some of the goals of the community, which is to cover as many people as absolutely possible. Hopefully, everyone. But it may be several steps before everyone is covered with some sort of reasonable speed.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s probably from the customers as well, right?
Joe Valandra:
Absolutely. Or has just left a hole. There are literally holes in the FCC map where this looks like there’s nobody there. But we know that there are people there. We know that those holes are generally where tribal lands are, where tribal people live. So the problems with the fabric have inspired us to put together and promote and sponsor the tribes a speed test along with some other data gathering so that we can fill those gaps. It’s not just a single-speed test.
If you go to our site and click on it, we run three-speed tests at the same time. And we encourage the user to take the test multiple times so that we can statistically validate as best we can, the data that’s coming to us from there. And we also have an option. If you don’t have coverage, how are you going to get that data in? So we have a phone number. A lot of people have phones, and they can call us, and say, “I live at X, Y, Z and I’m non-covered.” And that’ll be added to the database.
Joe Coldebella:
Will that be also part of the challenging portion for the maps as well?
Joe Valandra:
Well, to be perfectly honest, we’ve sort of given up on the FCC for now. Because time is short and NTI’s allocations are coming, probably almost set by now. But we’re encouraging tribes to have their members and citizens take the test, gather the data, and then we’re — an important point. We’re gathering this data on behalf of the tribes. So they own the data. And they ultimately decide how they use it. Most are going to decide to use it in either a challenge process or advocacy.
I think right now we’re at the advocacy stage with the NTIA like, “We’ve got data. You can’t ignore our data.” Along with all the other things that we’ve already talked about, the poverty and the lack of attention from incumbent providers in Indian country, et cetera, et cetera. To try to influence a little bit so that the allocations to the states that have high numbers of tribal members in them, reflect that. That the allocations are fair or more fair based on that.
But without the data… Because if for some reason NTI only uses the fabric, there’ll be some states where there are large concentrations of tribes that will be under-allocated because there’s such a large number of unserved people there, but they’re not represented on the fabric.
Joe Coldebella:
And then the scary thing is we come full circle to where we were in 2009, where it was like there were these good intentions, and then that came to naught.
Joe Valandra:
That’s right. And so we’re doing our best to avoid that. That’s why we have the speed test on our website. We’re offering it for free. And as they say, we’re gathering the data on behalf of the tribes so that they can decide how to use it. And the final use, and I think this is going to be the most productive in this relatively short timeframe, is to go to the state broadband offices.
NTIA gives states a lot of latitude in how they put together their own maps. So when tribes come to the state broadband office with verifiable data and all the other information that’s required, I think they can have a big impact on the state’s sub-grant award program and allocations as they should. Because again, they should, because they’re unserved. And they can demonstrate that they’re unserved. So state broadband offices will have the benefit that we wish the NTIA would have of including tribal data on their maps and making allocations that make sense to help cover the people that are most unserved.
Joe Coldebella:
As we sort of go through this process, I’m so happy that we have broadband offices. Obviously, some are farther along than others. But to your point exactly, there’s someone that they can directly reach out to that can understand the problems of the tribes. And then, hopefully, from that, there’ll be an allocation either through money specifically earmarked for tribes or from the larger fund.
Joe Valandra:
Absolutely. Either way, it will benefit the tribes. And all we’re trying to do is provide the opportunity to gather the data that furthers the policy behind BEAD, which is to get as many people that are unserved, served as possible. And if, for our purposes, that’s tribal people, that’s certainly what we’re trying to do. But the communities that are around many tribes are not exclusively made up of native people. So the community in general benefits from this kind of advocacy, from this kind of data gathering. So we see ourselves as a tool for tribes to better their overall communities. And we’re hoping that we’ll gather a lot of data and have a big impact on that.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s awesome. And if we could just go on a little bit of a tangent. There’s the program for the ACP.
Joe Valandra:
Yes.
Joe Coldebella:
Is that something that’s incredibly important for the tribal areas as well?
Joe Valandra:
Absolutely. It’s important for two reasons. First, just affordability. So when there is high-speed broadband, I’ll be optimistic here, that it is affordable. That’s going to be a key thing. And so ACP helps with affordability. But it does something else even more important in the long run. It helps provide a stable financial base for these new networks that need to be sustainable. And if without the subsidy, in many areas, it will be very hard to put together a proforma that shows sustainability. And our goal with every new network that’s built, especially tribal networks, is that they’re not just built for the next year or the next three years, they’re built forever. We look at this as an Indian country along with the federal government and others as making an investment for, as we like to say, in Indian country for the next seven generations.
Joe Coldebella:
I like that.
Joe Valandra:
So that this is going to benefit my grandchildren’s grandchildren if we do it right. And that’s the perspective that Tribal Ready is bringing to this. And as I know, it’s a perspective that all Indian Country shares. It’s just never been available quite to the scale before. So part of our job, besides gathering the data, is making sure the tribes get good, honest, straightforward advice on what kind of service they need, how to design the system, and how to operate the system. That’s part of our job. That’s part of what Tribal Ready also does.
Joe Coldebella:
So, Joe, just in regard to the ACP program, one of the questions that I have in regards to digital literacy, is that a real issue with it as well? Because I think that a lot of the rural areas and some of the urban areas as well, I think that’s where there’s a lag. And I was wondering how are some of the tribal communities trying to address that?
Joe Valandra:
Well, there’s a robust network working on digital equity, which is part of what you’re talking about. It is making sure that, again, optimistically, with the new broadband networks that are to be built so there’s more access and that people will be given or will have an opportunity to have access through their phones, through computers, through tablets, through other things, that they really know what they’re getting into. It’s hard to conceive for some of us that there are people that have never been connected to the internet before. They understand it. They understand that there’s this connection. They’ve seen others with it and probably experienced it. But they’ve never personally had it at their home or there’s someplace where they are often. So they need guidance on how to use the equipment, how to protect themselves from thieves and cyber-attacks, and cybersecurity.
And within Indian country, I think I used the word robust before and I’ll continue, a group that’s really working on that. We’re optimistic that by the time the networks are built, they will have had the impact that they should. But it certainly is a concern in that we don’t want new people, especially people who might just be home all the time like the elderly and some of the young folks to be taken advantage of as soon as they get online. That’s not really what we’re trying to promote here. We’re trying to promote all the benefits of the Internet. It’s funny, I was at a meeting of the American Indian Chamber of Commerce of Arizona last Friday, and the topic was cybersecurity. And the two speakers before me just scared the hell out of everybody.
Joe Coldebella:
I can imagine.
Joe Valandra:
They even got to me a little bit. And so I thought, I wrote down something, I got up and I said, “The first thing I have to tell you is the internet is good.”
Joe Coldebella:
Right. Exactly.
Joe Valandra:
That it’s not a bad thing in and of itself. You must do things to protect yourself and be aware. But the Internet is good because it provides all these other things. But I thought that’s a really telling thing. If you scare people too much, they’re going to be reluctant to use a tool that will really enhance their lives if they use it properly. So I guess the long and short, the point of bringing all that up is that it’s something that we must be vigilant of. I think there are people that are working hard to make sure that adoption, digital security, and just digital equity overall are part of what’s built into these systems.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, because the reason I bring it up is because we’ve sort of had this group of folks that have been left behind. And I’m thinking, how can we solve that? Have they missed a step? Because when I first learned about the Internet, I went to an Internet cafe. I did it with a group of people that you could lean on. And I know now it’s like, all right, we can get it to your house. But I think it almost seems like the folks that are lagging behind have missed that step.
Joe Valandra:
Well, they have. But I think the effective strategies that I’ve seen that will be built into most networks is there are anchor institutions or community centers, where they’ll be able to go and be with a group and experience the internet through that group setting. But also be instructed in a group setting so they know that there’s more than themselves to lean on. Now, not everybody will do that, but they’re certainly going to be encouraged to do that because that’s really the best way to get confidence and to learn. And whether it’s the internet or anything, it’s good to have a support group. And so part of most of the plans, is that there’ll be a community-based way to address that.
Joe Coldebella:
When you have the folks come out and talk about cybersecurity, it just scares people. And people are like, “Get me away from that.” So if you ease them into it and say, “Hey, listen, come along with us.” Yeah, I think that’s vitally important.
Joe Valandra:
Yes, it is. Because this is a tool. It’s a tool for better education, better health, better healthcare, better communication within the community, and in entrepreneurial opportunities. And I can say from my own experience, the Internet has facilitated several businesses that I’ve either been part of or started myself which I couldn’t have done if the Internet wasn’t as robust as it is where I live.
Joe Coldebella:
Oh, that’s great. So I’m just looking at your site right now. And then you got a little section there. It says, take the test. So what exactly does that mean?
Joe Valandra:
Well, if you click on the take the test button, it’ll take you to another landing page and then you start taking the test. But it also then takes you through a survey. It asks you questions, so we can better correlate and do a lot of statistical stuff with the test. And you’ll see that the test is made up of three different tests running at the same time. Ookla is one of them, and I should remember the other two.
But it’s three at the same time. So we’re not just relying on one. And it will tell you whether you’re served or unserved. It will give you a lot of information, but it’s also then stored in a database. And based on your location and other input that you give — remember, it’s for tribal purposes — it’ll be stored under whatever tribe that you happen to be a citizen of or that you’re located within the tribal boundaries.
Joe Coldebella:
Once again, it comes down to data. You’ve got to have that evidence-based material to back up your case.
Joe Valandra:
Yeah. I make that point with tribal groups all the time when I talk to them. We must have the data. There are lots of anecdotal things that we can say, and we should. But we’re going to make the most impact. We’re going to make the most difference when we gather this data, correlate it and collate it properly, and present it properly. We’ll have the most impact. Because as you said, this is a data-driven process. And that’s good so long as you have the data. So we’re trying to make sure that the tribes have the data.
Joe Coldebella:
Great. I 100% agree. You need to have the stories, the economic positives. You need to have the telehealth stories, and you must have the work-from-home stories. All these stories. And then converse to that, you must also have the data to back it up.
Joe Valandra:
Absolutely. And that’s what we’re really focused on right now at Tribal Ready. We’re doing lots of planning work for tribes, and we just purchased our first ISP. Our strategy with ISPs is to use the ISPs that we purchased to be partners with tribes. We want tribes to ultimately if they choose to be their own ISP. But the best way that we can figure out to help them is to be their partner and give them all the experience, background, and things they need. And whatever the right timeframe is, we’ll step away. But they’ll have their own ISP.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great because then ultimately it becomes about the community.
Joe Valandra:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Joe Coldebella:
When tribes hear that, do they perk up and say, “Wow, that’s something we’d like to do?” Or do you have to sort of introduce the idea to the folks? Because it is daunting.
Joe Valandra:
Yeah. There isn’t one answer to that. It really depends on the tribe. There have been several that are just gung ho. They mostly understand what they’re getting into, and they know they need help. And they’ve never had, before this, a tribally-owned company offering that to them, that really shares their values, shares their outlook. So that’s made a difference.
Now the tribes that we’ve talked to that have been reluctant have only been reluctant because they don’t know what they don’t know. And so it’s a process for us to help them learn what they need to know. Maybe take a little larger role in some of the projects. But our goal with every project we work on is to make ourselves obsolete. Let’s make sure that we have conveyed the information, the experience, and whatever other knowledge we can so that the tribe or the community can take on this and make it their own.
Joe Coldebella:
Joe, this has been an awesome visit. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
Joe Valandra:
No, I think we’ve covered the important stuff right now. I’d love to come back in a few months and kind of update you if that’s possible. But otherwise, I really appreciate the time to tell the story, to let Indian Country through another medium know that there’s somebody out here trying to help them. I mean, really help them with data and everything else. So no, I think this has been great. Thank you very much.
Joe Coldebella:
No, most definitely. We’ll have you back 100%. If tribes or other folks want to learn more about you and your organization, where can they go?
Joe Valandra:
Well, they should go to our website if they can, www.tribalready.com. That’ll get you to the landing page to start the speed test. I will tell you this, we’re about to launch a new webpage that’ll be a little more friendly than this one, although this one isn’t too bad. But it’s the same web address. Again, it’s tribalready.com. And there’s a way to contact us through that. And we look forward to hearing from you with questions. Many times we have the answer. If we don’t, we’ll find it out.
Joe Coldebella:
Joe, I want to say on behalf of the whole entire broadband community, thank you for what you’re doing. People sort of forget that you got to have that champion behind the scenes, and you’re one of those people. And I just want to say thank you for all you do.
Joe Valandra:
Well, thank you. I deeply appreciate that.
Joe Coldebella:
Awesome. That’s going to wrap up this episode of The Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
