As the burgeoning number of Tribal networks being built across Indian Country continue to come online, a growing roster of them have been learning from one another at Tribal Broadband Bootcamp (TBB).
The three-day immersive learning experience focuses on building and operating Tribal Internet networks, held several times a year since its founding in 2021. Now, to celebrate TBB’s fifth year, ILSR has released a new video on YouTube looking back at what the program has built.
The timing is fitting, as more Tribes celebrate the building of their own networks in parts of the U.S. that have historically been left behind by the nation’s major telecom companies.
ILSR’s newly updated census of Tribal Internet networks finds that nearly 90 Tribal nations are now actively providing Internet access to their communities, double the number we counted when we first conducted the research in 2020. For these Tribes, owning the network means far more than getting online.
Across Indian Country, Tribal nations are building networks that give them control over their own data, keep critical services running when wildfires and outages strike, and create jobs for community members trained to run the infrastructure themselves. In short, they are exercising digital sovereignty.
As TBB continues to bring Tribal network builders together in the months and years to come, its ranks are likely to swell: the census identified about 50 additional Tribal nations that are building networks or have received funding to do so, plus another few dozen that have expressed interest. Over the next decade, the ranks of Tribal broadband networks may well double again.
TBB is poised to continue its work providing Tribal broadband leaders hands-on experience with fiber and wireless technology, while also giving Tribal technologists the chance to compare notes with peers facing similar challenges, especially at a time when the federal government is retreating from support for closing the digital divide on Tribal lands, canceling more than $160 million in announced Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program grants and leaving the future of hundreds of millions more in question.
Explore the full Tribal Internet Networks map and census here.
To hear why access to wireless spectrum remains essential to Tribal self-determination, and what the FCC’s proposed changes to the Tribal Licensing Window could mean for future Tribal networks, listen to Episode 17 of the Unbuffered podcast, featuring TBB co-founders Matthew Rantanen and ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Director Christopher Mitchell, below:
