[1st-mile-nm] FCC: Improving and Increasing Broadband Deployment on Tribal Lands

[Richard Lowenberg]

Owen,
Good to hear from you.
I'll be brief in my responses to fairly complex matters you ask about.

On 2019-12-18 09:58, Owen Densmore wrote:
> Thanks for the report. Brought up two questions:
> 
> 1 - Casinos: Don't they use broadband, thus are a point of access for
> the rest of the tribal lands? I realize they are typically on the
> boundaries, to be close to customers, but still could be useful.
> 
I'm not privy to details but assume that many, of not most tribal 
casinos
have high bandwidth fiber connections (for their networked gaming 
machines)
and specific 'commercial' contracts with service providers.

These contracts are usually very restrictive to casino services, and are
therefore not a means of 'public' provision for their very underserved
communities.

Unfortunately, equitable tribal broadband development is economically
difficult, politically contentious and only one a small part of larger
eco-social relationship issues and world-views.


> 2 - Are tribal lands planning to use Elon Musk's StarLink?
> 
> https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-internet-service-2020.html
> 
Possibly.  But, we are about to experience a number of satellite 
broadband
provision services in the coming years, including Dish, which is a 
partner
in the proposed Sprint/T-Mobile merger.  There are current plans and 
approvals
for launch of at least 20,000-40,000 sats. (Environmental Impact Reports 
not
required).   The emergence of new convergent service partnerships, 
offerings,
failures and costs for a proposed society of "IDIoTS" (Intelligent 
Devices
on the Internet of Things) is worrisome.

Comments by others are appreciated.

All seasonable best,
Richard


>    -- Owen
> 
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2019 at 12:54 PM Richard Lowenberg <rl at 1st-mile.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> A recent report from the FCC's Native Nations Communications
>> Task Force.
>> 

---------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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