Arizona officials say they’ll work with a tribal-owned firm to help bring broadband access to Native American communities around the state. The money comes from the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Development, or BEAD program.Joe Valandra, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe from South Dakota and chairman and CEO of Tribal Ready BPC, says while there’s been a good amount of money set aside for this purpose, it’s still not enough. Tribal Ready BPC will be working with the Arizona State Broadband Office on this project. Valandra joined The Show to discuss whether it’s possible to describe the state of broadband in Indian Country within Arizona.Full conversationJOE VALANDRA: Well, there’s 22 tribes in Arizona and some are located close to high population areas and those tend to have better connectivity. Some have taken the bull by the horns and made sure that like Gila River, for example, but many tribes are located in, in very remote areas like White Mountain Apache, San Carlos, others like that that have great challenges bringing modern conductivity to their, to their communities.So it really spans the range from, from very good to almost none at all. And it’s hard to generate, it’s hard to generalize more than that, but it really is quite a range. And that’s typical across Indian Country.MARK BRODIE: OK. So how significant do you think it will be that you are now working with the state broadband office to try to increase it and improve that situation across the state?VALANDRA: Well, I think we bel …
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