Across much of India, broadband gaps are also leading to health deficits

Across much of India, broadband gaps are also leading to health deficits

Standing on Ferry Butte, Frances Goli looked out over the more than half a million acres of Shoshone-Bannock Tribe lands below as she dug her hands into the pockets of a pink sweater.

At one of the tribes' highest vantage points in remote southeastern Idaho, the April wind blew cool.

“Our goal is to bring fiber optics here,” Goli said, reaching a hand over the horizon. The landscape below is dotted with houses, bordered to the east by snow-capped mountain peaks and to the west by “The Bottoms,” where tribal bison graze along the Snake River.

In between, on any given day, a cancer patient drives to the reservation's casino to call doctors. A young mother asks a child not to play video games so that another child can do homework. Tribal field nurses update medical records in notebooks at patients' homes and then travel back to the clinic to retrieve records, send orders or check prescriptions.

Three years ago, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes received more than $22 million in the first round of the federal Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program. But tribes that were awarded millions in a second round of funding have seen their payments held back under the Trump administration. Last month, federal leaders announced changes to tribal broadband programs as part of a larger effort to “cut red tape.” The National Telecommunications and Information Administration said it plans to “promote flexibility” and introduce a new grant in the spring.

Federal regulators declined to provide details. The announcement comes after a year of upheaval for federal broadband programs, including the elimination of Digital Equity Act funding that President Donald Trump has called "racist" and a restructured $42 billion broadband, equity, access and delivery program that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said was influenced by "woke mandates."

Gaps in high-speed internet continue to exist across Indian Country and the Fort Hall Reservation, despite billions being allocated to indigenous peoples. In early November, U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked federal agency heads why previously awarded funds had not been released to tribes and whether federal regulators were providing adequate technical assistance.

To date, the $3 billion master program has announced $2.24 billion in funding for 275 projects across the country. However, tribes that won awards only withdrew about $500 million, according to a recent update from the Commerce Department's Office of Inspector General.

The agency has initiated tribal consultations on the broadband programs and offered tribal leaders two online meeting dates in January.

The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have used less than 2% of their allocated funding and the program has not yet connected a single household, Goli said. NTIA spokesman Stephen Yusko said the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are still scheduled to receive their full funding amount and that future spending, he confirmed, will not be subject to government recalibrations.

Gaps in high-speed internet can be serious and urgent in tribal areas. Tribal members have historically been underserved, suffer, on average, the highest rates of chronic illness and die 6.5 years earlier than the average U.S. citizen.

Diabetes and high suicide rates are among the worst health challenges facing tribes—and federal research confirms that telemedicine can improve health outcomes. A KFF Health News analysis showed that people in America tend to live sicker and die younger when they live in dead zones or places where poor internet access is coupled with a shortage of health care providers, leaving patients who need it most unable to use telemedicine.

“We’re in survival mode,” said Nancy Eschief Murillo, a longtime Shoshone-Bannock leader. Tribes that have an on-site clinic need more health care both in-person and via telemedicine, she said. "Right now our reservation? We don't have accessibility."

“Not 100% accurate”

In a trailer that serves as the temporary headquarters for Fort Hall's tribal broadband office in June, Goli sat at a desk and scanned the Federal Communications Commission's latest online map of the reservation.

As the tribe's broadband project manager, Goli didn't like what she saw on the map. Blue hexagons marked different speeds of high-speed coverage, meaning high-speed internet is available across much of the reservation. Companies have told federal regulators that they are providing fast transmission speeds to households there.

“That’s untrue,” Goli said. There are about 2,400 households in Fort Hall, and almost all of them live without high-speed internet, she said.

When it comes to tracking who has high-speed internet on a reservation, "everyone, including the FCC, recognizes that the map is not 100% accurate," said Robert Griffin, co-chair of the Fiber Broadband Association Tribal Committee, an industry group. He is also broadband director for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Trying to correct the maps is one of the many tasks Goli has taken on since becoming the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes' broadband project manager in January 2023 - seven months after the tribes won the award.

A series of hurdles, including flaws in the plan originally approved by the federal government and a cyberattack, delayed the project, she said. The attack occurred in August 2024 and led to the shutdown of almost all phones and computers on the reservation for months.

“We didn’t have access to our information,” Goli told KFF Health News this month, adding that the tribes were still “in recovery mode” from the attack.

Goli, who grew up on the reservation and still plays basketball at the tribal gym, gave up her job as a data analyst in Seattle to return home to be with her family and work. For two years and with no experience in the broadband industry, Goli oversaw the multimillion-dollar grant without a staff.

Her first task, she said, is to collect data that could help create a realistic plan for providing broadband to every home on the reservation. “Data tells a story,” Goli said.

Fort Hall and many other tribal areas are remote and feature rugged, expansive terrain. To build fiber optic cables underground, the tribes must navigate through lava rock and work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to obtain permits. To build communication towers, tribes must ensure they comply with bald eagle migratory bird rules. To provide wireless connectivity, tribes must purchase or license spectrum from federal regulators, Goli said.

When the federal tribal broadband program launched, more than 300 tribal applicants, bringing in projects totaling $5 billion, submitted applications to the NTIA. In a later round of funding, more than 160 tribal applicants sought more than $2.6 billion, despite only $980 million being available. There are 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States.

Funding for the tribal program wasn't enough to "build Indian Country," said Joe Valandra, chief executive and chairman of broadband consulting firm Tribal Ready. Valandra is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota.

Congress created the tribal program in combination with funds from the larger $42 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, Valandra said.

But now it appears that “the administration has no interest in building expensive broadband infrastructure in rural areas,” said Jessica Auer, senior researcher on the community broadband network team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

Auer, who has tracked the implementation of tribal programs, said the administration may be assuming that the money already given to states for BEAD, as well as the use of satellite internet connections for tribal areas, would be enough.

“You seem to have a strong interest in declaring this problem solved,” she said. However, low Earth orbit satellites are costly to consumers and don't always provide the consistently high speeds they should, she said.

Goli's plan does not include the use of satellites. In Fort Hall, the few households that have high speeds now buy Starlink, but tribal leaders say the monthly subscription cost of $80 to $120 is too expensive for most members.

The newly revised plan will use a mix of fiber optic cables and wireless internet to ensure people can "live their lives, be it health, education or telehealth," Goli said.

The test

Ladd Edmo, a city councilman for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, believes the tribal broadband project is taking too long.

Goli “does her best,” Edmo said.

But when he thinks about the millions waiting to be spent, Edmo said, he worries that federal regulators "might just take it back."

“I’m not afraid of the current administration,” said Edmo, who is in his fifth term on the tribe’s business council. “I just think they're looking for money anywhere they can.

Edmo lives about a half-mile from the town of Fort Hall and said he can't really use his internet because he "has huge buffering." When he travels to doctors for his prostate cancer treatment, Edmo has them print out paper schedules to keep track of his treatment.

He said he's not a big fan of telemedicine, "probably because I don't know how to use it."

For 53-year-old Carol Cervantes Osborne, who also lives on the reservation, internet is a must. Osborne suffers constant pain from severe rheumatoid arthritis.

“I’m just completely broken,” Osborne said as she stared out at the open pasture last June. She talked about how much she misses riding on cattle drives. At times, Osborne was bedridden because of her arthritis and bad knees. She said she tapped her line of credit, which uses land and livestock as collateral, and signed up for Starlink so she can connect with doctors remotely through telemedicine appointments.

“I’m poor because of it, but we have to have it,” Osborne said.

Meanwhile, nearly 15 months after the cyberattack, Goli said tribes are starting to hire vendors.

“Things move very slowly when it comes to processing things in tribal government,” Goli said, adding that there are a lot of “checks and balances.”

This month — as the holidays approached — Goli said she was excited.

“We’ve actually started our first fiber optic segment,” Goli said. The engineering work has been completed and the process of issuing permits has begun, she said. The fiber optic lines, built by a private provider, will cover a two-mile section at the northern end of the reservation. The line will come from outside the reservation and connect to the tribe's data hub, an old radio station that is still being converted into broadband offices.

“It’s our first segment and we’re really using it as a test,” Goli said.

Ultimately, the old radio station will be central to the operation, with fiber optic cable lines spanning approximately 800 square miles and reaching the reservation's five district cabins. Each lodge will build a communications tower that will use the fiber optic line to power wireless antennas that will then provide high-speed internet to the reservation's most remote homes.

Goli said the tribes are requesting another extension — and they are not the only Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program awardees asking for more time. Working with tribes, she said, takes time.

"It really saddens me that we've been left behind all these years," Goli said, but "this is our chance. We want to do it right, slow and steady."

Sarah Jane Tribble, KFF Health News' chief rural correspondent, spent more than a year interviewing Frances Goli by phone call, text message and email. She traveled to the Fort Hall Reservation twice after receiving the tribe's approval to visit the land: in spring 2024 and again in summer 2025. Tribble also reviewed publicly requested copies of the tribal contract and interviewed dozens of broadband industry and regulatory experts.

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