Mark White Bull, telecommunications project manager for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says he has to chuckle when he sees those "Can you hear me now?" television ads for cellular phone service.
"Come to Standing Rock," he said.
The sprawling 2.3 million-acre reservation that straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota line has only one cell phone tower, he said. Most of Standing Rock is a virtual dead zone for cell phone service, White Bull said.
White Bull said tribal members are frustrated by the lack of telecommunications service, both wire and wireless, on the reservation. The tribe is taking steps to establish its own telecommunications system on the reservation.
White Bull was one of the panelists at the morning session of the Federal Communications Commission-sponsored workshop on the FCC's Indian Telecommunications Initiatives, held at Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.
FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein listened as a series of tribal officials from Alaska to Arizona talked about the problems and opportunities for telecommunications in Indian Country.
Adelstein, who is from Rapid City, said he understands that telecommunications and broadband Internet are "so key to the health and welfare of Indian Country."
He said the FCC's job is to ensure access to telecommunications for all people but that it has fallen behind on that goal. That's especially true for American Indian reservations, he added. Only about 67 percent of Indian homes have telephone service, compared with 94 percent of homes nationwide, he said.
Adelstein said the FCC is amending its universal service rules, changing the system for auctioning off licenses, promoting more use of low-power unlicensed wireless Internet services in rural areas and establishing a government-to-government relationship with the tribes. But he said the tribes still face a variety of geographic, legal, jurisdictional and sovereignty issues.
Increasingly, panelists said, tribal governments are taking control of telecommunications. Some tribes, such as the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, operate their own companies. Others, such as the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, are creating utility commissions to regulate private sector companies doing business on the reservations.
Panelist J.D. Williams is general manager of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority and president of the National Tribal Telecommunications Association.
Over the past 19 years, he has helped the tribe turn its small phone exchange into a diverse utility company with 300 miles of fiber optic line serving 20 communities. Reservation residents have low rates and toll-free local calling between towns, he said. "We're as modern as anybody."
By owning its own system, Williams said, a tribe can create opportunities for young people to find technology jobs closer to home.
However, he said the tribe's success has not always been appreciated outside the reservation. In 1994, the company had an agreement to buy 67,000 access lines from U S West. Williams said the resulting political uproar eventually sank the deal.
Panelist Tony Rogers, executive director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commission, said bureaucratic hurdles can be high for tribes trying to start their own ventures.
Rosebud's wind turbine project, launched last year, took eight years to establish. In the late 1990s, he said, the tribe applied for a cellular telephone license but discovered that the license had already been sold. "The FCC sold our airspace," he said.
The Universal Service Fund, created under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, offers a subsidy to companies that serve high-cost regions of the country.
Mario Gonzales, attorney for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, suggested during Wednesday's question-and-answer session that instead of giving USF money to large companies that serve the reservation, the FCC should instead use that money to help tribes serve themselves.
Jim Berg of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission said phone providers should be required to show they have spent all of their USF money in the high-cost areas for which they receive USF dollars.
Adelstein said he agrees. The phone companies are supposed to spend every dime of USF money in the area for which they are getting the funds, he said, especially in areas already served by existing carriers.
On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, some residents are served by a wireless telephone network installed by Western Wireless of Washington in 2000. The phones have been derided as "commodity phones."
However, Gene DeJordy, vice president of regulatory affairs for Western Wireless, defended his company's wireless service on Pine Ridge. In a telephone interview from Bellevue, Wash., he said Western Wireless has invested millions of dollars to erect five state-of-the-art cell towers on the reservation.
He said the company has phased out the old home-based wireless phones n the so-called commodity phones n and today most of the company's 5,000 wireless customers use handheld cell phones. He said Western Wireless has also launched a broadband Internet service on the reservation.
"It's cost us millions of dollars to provide service. … The amount we received (from USF) is a fraction of what we are spending," DeJordy said.
"Can you hear me now?"
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