- Details
- By Chez Oxendine
- Economic Development
For years, I’ve heard the same line about tribal broadband: “Don’t be a customer.”
Sovereignty, the thinking goes, means owning the infrastructure — building and running your own network.
Then I talked with the folks at the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians, who saw things differently.
Instead of starting their own internet service provider, the California tribe partnered with AT&T to extend fiber to 125 tribal member homes in the Valley Center region. The project used part of a $4.5 million federal grant originally awarded to the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association.
The telecom giant will maintain the system, handle repairs and even rebuild if a disaster happens. In return, AT&T gets new subscribers.
The San Pasqual Band’s chairman, Stephen Cope, told me the tribe’s goal was simple: Get people online now.
“Some of our people have lived here for 40 or 50 years without internet,” Cope said. “Our primary goal was trying to help the elders, but also work with the kids trying to go to school.”
Before the new build, broadband access on the reservation was a patchwork at best. A handful of residents relied on wireless connections that used 2.4 GHz spectrum the tribe acquired years earlier through a Federal Communications Commission auction. The signals were “very weak” and unreliable, often dropping out and unable to sustain what residents needed for work, school and daily life, Cope said.
The new system replaces that unreliable setup with modern infrastructure connected to AT&T’s existing Valley Center network. The upgraded service offers speeds up to five gigabits, depending on plan and location.
AT&T Tribal Liaison Julio Figueroa said the partnership grew out of pandemic-era challenges. When schools and offices went online, many San Pasqual Band families were effectively cut off. “Their mission was to make sure people didn’t suffer through spotty services anymore,” Figueroa told me.
The project was viable because AT&T already had fiber nearby, which dramatically lowered cost and build time, he said. After the circuit went live, AT&T distributed 150 laptops to newly connected families, making sure residents had devices that could actually use the faster speeds.
It’s a different model than the one I’ve written about before. Tribes such as Hoopa Valley and Akwesasne have launched their own broadband utilities, keeping ownership — and risk — in Native hands. Those projects are ambitious, but they require deep pockets and teams of trained technicians.
Steve Lake of the nonprofit Internet Connectivity Lab in Charlotte, N.C. told me that for many small or mid-sized tribes, that level of control just isn’t practical.
He pointed to Alaska as proof. There, Native villages often partner with regional telecom GCI to overcome vast distances and harsh terrain. Building standalone networks across tundra and mountains would be cost prohibitive, even for larger consortia. In those cases, it made sense for tribes to build and work in partnership with the telecom rather than trying to start from scratch.
“You have to do what makes the most sense for your situation, your funding and your workforce,” Lake, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, told me.
“It isn’t that these tribes are less capable,” he added. “They’re starting off with fewer resources, and if you didn’t have great connectivity to start with, there’s not really a reason for you to have that base of technicians. If your goal is to get online and stay online, and you have a deal on the table that can make that happen in your budget, then it makes perfect sense to build on what’s already in the area — with who’s already (there).”
When federal agencies rolled out $3 billion in tribal broadband funding through programs like the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, it also attracted risk. The Commerce Department’s Inspector General later warned those grants were “vulnerable to fraud and duplication,” which opened the door for outside opportunists. Tribal governments still have to navigate that reality. These decisions aren’t just ideological. They’re defensive, pragmatic and grounded in protecting their people.
For tribes like San Pasqual, that’s sovereignty in practice — making the choice that works for your community.
Cope said the tribe now hopes to build on the successful broadband launch by training young tribal members in IT and network maintenance. “We would love for some of our younger generations to work with companies like AT&T and bring it back to us,” he said.
In Indian Country, broadband is often framed as a test of control — own the pipes or risk dependency. I’ve written that story myself. But after talking with Chairman Cope and Steve Lake, I’ve been reminded about another side of sovereignty.
Sometimes it isn’t about who owns the wire; it’s about who makes the call.
