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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?"
http://xkcd.com/257/
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
They're binary, right?
At some point, we are going to realize that a world divided into nations cannot coexist with a world united on one internet.
It's already strange enough having nations like the Navajo trying to exist inside other nations.
What use are nations these days? Don't they just divide us?
Not only is amateur radio restricted to non commercial uses - meaning important things like NO ADS ALLOWED more than simply no generation of profit for sending over those frequencies. However, it's also "no vulgarity", and "no encryption" as well.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
"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?
This not due to USAC's problems.
This action is being taken because the service provider and the applicant for the services BOTH conspired to break the rules surrounding the ERATE (Federal program that gives discounts on ELEGIBLE technology, at ELIGIBLE locations, to ELIGIBLE entities).
Wireless services were ONLY supposed to be offered at eligible school locations (classrooms, areas where data needed to transit to GET TO classrooms), but instead the wireless services were installed as a generic community service, some of them winding up in admin areas, boarding halls, and bus barns (all NON-ELIGIBLE areas).
Some folks are making this out to be a case of 'the white man screwing over the indian,' where in reality it is a case of 'the white man catching another white man and the indian breaking rules, and making them pay for their actions.'
For more information, go dig up some article from the Funds for Learning website (www.fundsforlearning.com) or eschoolnews.com
Perhaps they could pay for their own Internet access. Like, ya know, everyone else.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
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
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is definitely not the kind of problem that can be solved by geeks writing code. It's a physical layer issue, one of the hardest "last miles" in the country.
The Navajo Nation sits in hilly desert country. The population density is very low (it's desert, after all) and it's pretty far from anywhere (the AZ/NM/UT border). Most of the telephone service is provided by Frontier Navajo, who I think bought the tribal telephone company. On the NM side, some is now being served by Sacred Wind, a new phone company using WiMAX, with USF funding, to cover areas with an average population density below one person per square mile. Qwest, using old wireline technology, wouldn't go there; Sacred Wind needs to spend something approaching $10k/home using the latest radio technology. That's a fraction of what wireline would cost - and btw, USAC (the FCC's USF subsidiary) might well have spent more (they've funded >$20k/home for FTTH) if asked; that program is totally out of control. See "Sandwich Isles Communications" for a real horror show.
Frontier's network, which covers most of the reservation, is a traditional rural wireline telco, incapable of providing broadband outside of the villages. And if you want to lease a T1 from them, try $75/mile! So satellite, while hardly ideal, is usually the best option. And the bureaucrats should get off their duffs and fix the problem.
I've done some preliminary studies and it looks like some types of high-powered mesh radio network can cover rustic plains at reasonable cost, but this is in the foothills of the Rockies, not flatland, and the hills get in the way, so it would be very costly (as with Sacred Wind).
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"Is there a place for an inexpensive ham/technogeek/FOSS solution that could bypass the antics of the for-pay providers?"
Of course, it's all so simple! We could all build little F/OSS rockets out of plywood, duck tape and bailing wire, putting libre communications satellites based on Pringle's can technology into geosynchronous orbit!
You might want to look at what was highlighted - the PROVIDER is under investigation, not the tribe. It is the provider that is corrupt, the tribe (very likely) has no more technical knowledge or business acumen than any other non-technical non-corporate organization. ie: not much. This looks like a typical case of a business finding people who lack the necessary skills to evaluate a contract and decided to rip them off as much as possible before getting caught. Hell, I've worked for multinationals that are incapable of evaluating contracts and got themselves screwed over. If you can't expect Fortune 500 companies to bother reading what is written, just because of a fancy powerpoint presentation, can you seriously expect a community get-together to do better?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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!
Here goes whatever karma I've built up, but oh-fucking-well:
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.
You insensitive White Man! You and your Western style of government and business is evil and corrupt! Don't you realize, Evil White Man, that bribes and corruption are part of our Native American culture?!
The Great Spirit manifests itself in suitcases filled with money!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
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.
"How hard is it to run a kosher bidding process?"
I'm posting anonymously, but one of my clients from time to time is a tribal government. It's actually pretty damn hard to run a kosher anything, when there are no trained employees whatsoever.
Consider that only 7% of the Navajo nation over age 25 has a college degree. That includes associates degrees too. Only 56% made it through high school.
Need someone who can e.g. run Excel or quickbooks? And someone who isn't caught up in the various things that occur disproportionately often in extremely poor areas, such as health deterioration, family issues, drug abuse, etc? Good luck with that.
Say you're lucky and land the perfect employee to help with running your government office. Congratulations, they just left for better pay in another division (or off the reservation entirely)!
It's really a rather difficult and sad situation that won't resolve itself for a generation or more, barring drastic change.
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.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
While the theft of the term "liberal" by leftist anti-liberals did take place many decades ago, it is still a term that does not apply to them and should not be used to describe them.
A liberal is someone who believes in liberty and who pursues policies that create, expand, and protect liberty. A leftist is someone who believes in tyranny, and who pursues policies that create, expand and entrench tyranny.
When you allow the left to choose the terminology by which they will be described, you are hand them a victory. You don't call a child molester a "boy lover." You don't call a rapist a "persistent suitor." You don't call a terrorist a "freedom fighter." And you sure as hell don't call a leftist a "liberal." To do so tarnishes the good name of the men and women who have fought and died to bring the light of freedom into the world.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
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.
It is 60 miles to the nearest town with net access.
So I will venture that town has fiber.
Fiber can be run close to 200 miles without a line amp.
A cpl of Asynchronous Xfer Mode cards for each end are a
few hundred bucks, and some older refurb Cisco gear and
your good to go.
An OC-3 in the town 60 miles away from the local
carrier will cost less than $10,000/mo. and give them
155 Mbps that they can hookup to a Squid Box to
use as caching mechanism to save on xmitting the
same data twice to two different hosts.
Local cable TV companies ran their fiber in aerial protected
cabling with a strength enhancing strand down the center.
When you consider how much aerial fiber the cable companies
ran in major cities, I'd say it is easily doable.
The Navajo should contract it out.
For 2.25 billion I dare say they could do their own Coop ISP
like some other ppl have done around the US.
http://www.coop.net/
And when they run it run multi-strand in case one fiber pair
has issues at some point in the future.
In fact I bet as a PR stunt Cisco would come out and profile
the whole setup for them.
Just my two cents...
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
>deduce the internet connection from taxes
Pray tell, Watson, how would one do that?
Worst. Poem. Ever.
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
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation