(TNS) — On the Hopi Reservation’s more than 1.5 million acres of desert landscape in northeast Arizona, most residents live in villages atop arid mesas.Below ground, there’s a network of copper wires that provides telephone and internet service. Hopi Telecommunications in 2004 bought the company that had installed them, but has been struggling ever since to upgrade the network to broadband speeds.Hopi Telecommunications serves both the Hopi reservation and parts of the surrounding Navajo Nation. To broaden access, the company provided free internet for students during the COVID-19 pandemic and began offering discounted prices for residents through a federal program.But the copper wires aren’t reaching all the reservation’s residents, nor providing the fastest service, as fiber optic cables would. Hopi Telecommunications received two federal grants — one from the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and the other from the Rural Utilities Service— to provide fiber directly to homes. But the project, which began in September, won’t be finished until sometime in 2025.“It’s very important for us to have the higher bandwidth, and we can’t do that with copper,” said Alicia Youvella, the company’s service order coordinator. “It’s literally like pulling the veins out of the earth and having to relay down new ones.”Native nations historically have lagged in access to high-speed internet, because of the cost and incomplete broadband coverage data, among other barriers. The inequity became even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, when broadband internet service was a crucial lifeline for people stuck in their homes.So, some Native nations such as the Hopi are taking the matter into their own hands by building their own networks to provide high-speed internet. They also are tapping into a recent …
[wpts_spin]{Read|See} the {entire|full} article {on|about} infrastructure development in Arizona, or, read more news about {Arizona real estate investing|real estate investing in Arizona|real estate investing in Arizona}. We {warmly |}{welcome and |}encourage you to {mention|recommend} our site to your{ circle of|} fellow investors, {letting them |allowing them to }benefit from the valuable{ resources and|} insights we provide. {Thanks!|Thank you!}[/wpts_spin]
