Navajo Nation Losing Internet Access

An anonymous reader writes "Due to contracts that are allegedly FUBAR, and associated wrangling, the Navajo Nation is being cut off by its satellite ISP. This is the final stage of the process, which already deprived chapter houses of access last April. While the business mechanisms play themselves into the expected ludicrous snarl, the real question may be: Is there a place for an inexpensive ham/technogeek/FOSS solution that could bypass the antics of the for-pay providers?"

Comments

Re:Nations vs. Internet

[Anonymous Coward]

What use are nations these days? Don't they just divide us?

The world is full of unimaginable horrors and humans being deprived from basic necessities and rights. The idea of a nation is to divide the world into blocks that are small enough that you could possibly do something about the terrible condition in which you and your fellow citizens exist.

How much more likely are you to be able to uplift the condition of a small nation than a large one? A great deal.

How likely are you to be successful in attempts to uplift the condition of all men in all nations? Not very likely.

All the networks belong to the corporations.

[GuNgA-DiN]

"Is there a place for an inexpensive ham/technogeek/FOSS solution that could bypass the antics of the for-pay providers?"

That question is just as relevant for the rest of the world as it is for the Navajo nation. What happens when AOL/Time Warner/Microsoft/CNN/MSNBC/Taco Bell and Carl's Jr. take over the world? There is no Net neutrality anymore. Everything we do is being watched, and reported to the corporations of the world. In the future we won't be able to sneeze or fart without someone knowing about it somewhere.

When are we going to get together to start forming our own backbones? We need a fat pipe that will always remain open and free and that can't be taken over by corporate greed. But, how would you pay for such a thing? How would you create it? How would you maintain it?

I'd be willing to pitch in $80 / month for a truly neutral network. What's your price? How much would you be willing to pay to have access to a FREE (as in speech) Internet connection?

Re:Government as usual

[bconway]

Perhaps they could pay for their own Internet access. Like, ya know, everyone else.

Re:Government as usual

[TubeSteak]

Totally insensitive to the actual reprecussions of their actions, some GS weenie, probably balding and fat and fearful of doing anything constructive to solve problems because it might screw up his/her next stepping increase in the future, consigns thousands of people to being offline.

Government just doesn't really work.

You might want to RTFA a second time.

USAC, which administers billions of dollars in FCC grants every year to provide Internet service to rural areas and low-income consumers, is refusing to continue funding after an audit by the tribal government revealed questions over payments by the Navajos to their Internet provider, OnSat. As a result, another company, SES Americom, which provides satellite services to OnSat, is scheduled to pull the plug today.

USAC says the provider is under investigation, after the audit raised questions about the bidding process and possible overpayment. But the provider rejects the findings and plans to fight them in tribal court.

Surprise surprise, there was a corrupted bidding process overseen by an Native American Tribe.

Unfortunately, many of the Native American Tribes have poor &/or corrupt governance, none of which is the fault of the U.S. Government. If the Tribe was really serious about resolving the issue, they would conduct the quickest inquiry ever and do everything possible to create immediate reforms in order to regain the confidence of the USAC.

BTW - the USAC is a non-profit corporation, so they're not technically part of the US Gov't

Re:Government as usual

[TubeSteak]

Is tribal governance not handled by some kind of tribal government?

Government screws stuff up. Tribal government, local government, federal government, doesn't really matter. If there's government involved, something is probably being forced to work inefficiently.

True, but...
1. Native American Government is much much less transparent about their business than is normal in a 'Western' government, allowing shenanigans that even their own people would protest. We're not talking inefficiency here, we're talking about a (apparently/allegedly) broken bidding process.

2. The OP specifically singled out "some GS weenie".
GS = General Schedule = US Federal Government

This problem is of the Tribe's own making and as I pointed out,
the USAC is not the Federal Government.
http://www.usac.org/about/usac/

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation designated as the administrator of the federal Universal Service Fund by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

A lot of the Native American Tribes need to join the modern era and create some transparency in their governance. It's one thing when their malfeasance/corruption benefits a minority of members, it's another thing entirely when it publicly harms the entire Tribe. How hard is it to run a kosher bidding process? They could have hired a bonded and insured company that adheres to Federal Standards to do it for them.

What book is that?

[copponex]

Just checking.

I'll be laughing my ass of when the Chinese knock you off your land and say, "Look at that white trash. Just sits in his trailer all day and drinks. Can you believe they could only support 300 million people on their land?"

Natives worked less hours, had cleaner air, water, food, and lived sustainably. It's better than we seem capable of. But you probably measure wealth in dollars. How's that been treating you lately? 401K looking good? Oh, and that lack of road thing is probably refuted by every piece of archeology in the western hemisphere, unless your definition of road needs asphalt, in which case there were no roads until the 20th century. Which seems kind of inaccurate.

I imagine your kids are getting some kind of education!

Re:What book is that?

[ppanon]

There are no great Indian authors, inventors, or musicians. Period.

That you know about. Period.

Most North American indian cultures were nomadic or semi-nomadic. They therefore had oral cultures because when you move constantly, you don't tend to pack big libraries around, just the tools you need to survive. So no great inventors in North America - I'll give you that one. But authors or musicians? You really have no idea. Were any of the troubadours in the Dark/Middle Age Europe any good? Most of them would have been illiterate so there's no telling is there? If a first millennium musical prodigy hadn't been interested in writing hymns for the church, there would be little trace of his output except in unattributed folk songs that survived hundreds of years to be incorporated into symphonies and pieces by 18th and 19th century composers, or Paul Simon.

Now mind you, if you go south into Mexico and further, the Inca, Aztec, and Maya empires had roads, irrigation, and cities comparable to a lot of Europe, as well as writing, oh and bloodthirsty religions and governments. Now certainly, they stopped evolving technologically after a certain point, but water monopolies have a tendency to suppress research that might upset the status quo. And when your government controls its people through fear, it tends to have a deleterious effect on the production of art.

What I'm getting at is that the lack of the types of artists and creative peoples that you point to as a sign of their savagery is often more due to environmental conditions. There are for instance very strong artistic and cultural traditions in the Pacific Northwest native communities, even though a large number of examples of those artworks were pilfered by missionaries in their zeal to replace the native religions with Christianity. For generations, the government actively worked to suppress native culture by making its core ceremonies illegal. That tends to have a fairly strong negative impact in the transmission of music and myths in a culture with oral traditions.

Note that the same thing happened with native cultures in the Pacific islands like Fiji, Tahiti, etc. because those cultures also had very rich oral and musical traditions. So your statement is only founded on an ignorance of, and ensured by, white missionaries and invaders.

Re:Right...

[smolloy]

We did it, and we still benefit from the economic prosperity of our forefathers.

You may have done it, but I didn't. I moved to the US 6 years ago, so neither I, nor my wife and child owe anything to anyone. Just because I'm a white westerner doesn't mean I'm guilty by association. And just because I'm a white westerner, doesn't mean I'm guilty due to descending from governments who abused the poor native. I'm Irish. I have a good claim to whinge about my ancestors being abused by a rich European government.

In case your sarcasm detector is broken, I'm not claiming anyone owes me anything. I'm just trying to point out the idiocy (and horrendous complexity) in trying to figure out who owes who what.

Do people who's families have been here for 6 generations owe more than people who have only just arrived? What about kids of mixed marriages? In terms of slave reparations, do we just go on skin colour, or do people have to prove that their ancestors were slaves and didn't move here 50 years ago? What about a slave descendant who married a non-slave descendant -- do their kids get less?

What about someone who is half Native American, a quarter German and a quarter English, married to someone who is half Irish, and half Polish-Jewish? How do you settle the English/Irish, German/Jewish, English/Indian, debts there?

It's complicated to the point of being unsolvable, and it's too old. Forget it.

No one gets government handouts due to the particulars of their parentage.

Re:Government as usual

[jd]

Let's test my claims versus the examples you gave, see if my prediction is correct.

• Cuba - current administration founded by violent revolution - maintained by violence and intimidation - results and proportion match theory
• North Korea - founded by violent civil war - maintained by violence and intimidation - results and proportion match theory
• Laos - current administration founded by violent civil war - maintained by force and suppression - results match theory
• East Germany - founded by violent occupation of a society riddled with violence and xenophobia - maintained brutally by force and intimidation - results and proportion match theory
• Soviet Union - founded by a combination of violent revolution and violent conquest - maintained by savage violence and intimidation - results and proportion match theory

Remember, my theory says NOTHING about success, wealth, power, influence or even freedoms. It states that a system will typically be maintained by the means by which it is created. You can have a violently maintained nation that still has enormous freedoms. In the most trivial sense, the fact that US cops carry guns is all about maintaining law and order through the threat of them shooting you. If that wasn't an effective threat, why would they bother?

You can also have FUD and freedom. Classic example - the raising of the national alert status for the Democratic Convention in 2004. Wonderful example of deliberate scare tactics, but it didn't alter anyone's freedom to attend. Margret Thatcher routinely used scare tactics to frighten people away from voting Labour, superb FUD work, but she never stopped anyone supporting them or voting for them.

My first claim is that you cannot have a nation that was founded through violence that uses neither FUD nor violence to survive - such methods guarantee real and imagined grievances will make it unsafe for such a nation to ever renounce such methods. Any nation that tries will inevitably get itself replaced. You have shown me no counter-example. All your examples verify this claim.

My second claim is that you cannot have a nation that was founded through peaceful means that uses either FUD or violence to survive - should it try, the backlash will always exceed its capacity to deal with both the rebellion and whatever caused it to adopt such tactics in the first place. There are rather fewer examples of such societies, but they have existed (Skara Brae is a good example, surviving 1,500 until finally being beaten by the environment) and they do exist (Iceland is considered the most peaceful in the world, has been a genuine democracy since 930AD and I don't recall it getting mentioned here for Big Brother tactics).

I make no other claims, although since you brought up America's wealth, I would point out Iceland is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. This would indicate to me that any nation is capable of wealth, that wealth is wholly independent of the means to sustain the government.

(Please note: I dislike Iceland's stance on many issues, but I respect them for being honest in their views. I wouldn't want to live there, and I do choose to live in the US freely even though I regard the current regime as a bunch of mindless thugs and don't expect any future regime to improve on that.)

Re:Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may have done it, but I didn't

Correct. No one else alive today did it either. All the people who did it are dead. The institutions who did it are still around though, as institutions (governments and companies) outlast people. That's the whole idea of Governments and companies. They provide continuity beyond any one person's death. Think of an institution as an immortal person, whose hands are its employees. Liability doesn't die with the employees but lives on with the institution. Any person can sue another person/government/company for events which cause them disadvantage before they are legally a person. Why single out an indigenous person to be denied that right?

No, you don't owe anything, but your adopted government does. The government existed before you arrived and your arrival doesn't change the government's past actions.

Re:Are you asking for a free internet solution...?

[mitgib]

You have alot of interesting stuff here, but off the beaten path of what is being asked I think.

What the Navajo Nation is needing is Tier 1 access, or in the alternative, as suggested by the article, become a Tier 1 provider. I think within the reservation, using high power (50W) access points upon hill and mountain tops to wirelessly distribute to the end points would actually be a worthwhile solution, close to what 802.11 was designed for, then link the access points wirelessly again with a point to multi point backbone as they should all have line of site of each other. Now it is just a matter of getting it connected to the net. And from the geographic location of the reservation, and them needing to be their own provider, a DS3 to San Jose and Dallas or Chicago to peer at the NAPS. I don't think the big boys will be anal about peering with their community at the NAPS like they are with peering with other for-profit providers.

I peered at the Ameritec NAP through most of the 90's in Chicago and was able to pass most of my traffic there, over 50%, as a for profit provider, so MCI/Sprint/UUNet wouldn't peer with our network, but would gladly sell transit over the NAP, which would give the Navajo the option if needed. Reading TFA doesn't make clear if the Navajo or the USAC budget is $2.25b/yr, but I'm going to assume the USAC budget is that, so what I've suggested and what the Navajo budget are still might be within the costs on an ongoing basis of what their contract with OnSat was costing, and much better service, but the initial hardware cost might be out of reach for them

Re:Nations vs. Internet

[Lloyd_Bryant]

By your logic, the US would become a much better place if all the States became sovereign nations. They're already the size of nations. Heck, there's three sovereign nations in Europe that could each fit inside Rhode Island.

The original plan laid down by the Founding Father's had the states as something more than administrative districts, but something less than sovereign nations. So that most of went on within a state's boundaries was governed by the state, and the federal government only dealt with matters that genuinely crossed state lines.

Then we had a Civil War, in which the issue of states' rights became entangled with the issue of slavery. And as a result we now have an all-powerful federal government, and the states *have* been reduced to little more than administrative districts.

I suspect we *would* be better off if the US was more like the EU, with states actually having some degree of independence. Large, central governments are *much* easier for special interests to manipulate, since far fewer people have to be convinced (or bribed).