Warm Springs eCheckup

DEPLOYING BETTER BROADBAND in Indian Country

Have your say, Speak Up!

The U. S. Department of Commerce, Economic Development Administration has awarded a Broadband Planning Grant to Jefferson County of Oregon to develop a broadband plan that will provide a strategic roadmap in updating the broadband system in Jefferson County (County) and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (CTWS).  The funding for the program will help in identifying communities within the local governments, municipalities, and the CTWS that are in need of improvement access and what obstacles stand in the way of enhancing connectivity.

When each plan is completed, the outcomes will lay out an implementation plan and what steps are required for the CTWS and County to reach the goal of developing a comprehensive broadband plan that includes a roadmap that identifies how to connect communities with fast, reliable, and affordable broadband availability. A real challenge today is that in rural areas the service when available is often much less than needed.

Based on fundamental barriers to deployment in Indian Country, the County and CTWS find it critical to continue  efforts to collect, monitor, and analyze any relevant data on Tribal lands on the CTWS Reservation.  Strategic Networks Group (SNG) has been retained to perform the consultation & outreach for the CTWS Broadband project.

COMPLETE AN ASSESSMENT TODAY

Every Warm Springs Resident is asked to complete the eHousehold checkup that is availalble HERE

Warm Springs Business Owners are also asked to complete the eBusiness checkup HERE

Why is this important?

Economic barriers on tribal Lands continue to raise deployment costs and suppress indigenous communities and historically who have had less access to telephone and broadband service than other segments of the population.  There are a number of reasons, such as the high build-out costs of the infrastructure necessary to provide ubiquitous telephone and broadband services to residents on tribal lands and the limited financial resources of many of the people. In addition, the rural nature of many tribal lands deters businesses of all kinds, including communications service providers, from investing in businesses on tribal lands due to the lack of an adequate return on investment, which in turn contributes to high unemployment.

The Warm Springs Tribe’s application to take over the local exchange on their reservation illustrates this point. Warm Springs has built a Telecom that serves most of the population at this time and is still working to improve the broadband service coverage in the reservation.

Your valued time in completing the assessments and insights into how broadband is currently used and what is needed for the future will help to plan for better broadband services and to support applications to secure funding. In November 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law and provided $65 billion for broadband.

Again, you can help with the data collection by getting involved. Please complete the broadband assessment today.  Take 20 minutes (unless your internet is slow, then closer to 30 minutes). You have nothing to more to lose and a huge advantage to gain.  If you’ve never had an internet connection problem, never mind; do nothing.