How bootcamps are helping to address the historic gap in internet access on US tribal lands

There’s a home movie theater with orange walls and plush recliners at the top of a steep hill on Matthew Rantanen’s ranch in Southern California. But on a recent afternoon, people weren’t flocking to the room to watch a movie or to escape the scorching heat, they were shining a beam of light through more than 55,000 feet (17 kilometers) of fiber optic cable coiled up in the corner.

The demonstration took place during a hands-on broadband training for tribal nations near rural Aguanga, about 53 miles (85 kilometers) north of San Diego. Participants handled fiber made up of strands of glass as thin as human hair that transmit energy through pulses of light.

The session was part of an initiative founded in 2021 by Rantanen and his business partner, Christopher Mitchell, to help shore up historic disparities in connectivity in Indian Country.

“Essentially what it does is it brings together like-minded individuals that are building broadband communications for their community,” said Rantanen, a descendant of the Cree Nation who has worked at the intersection of broadband and policy for two decades.

Broadband expansion has gotten a major boost from the Biden administration, which has invested $65 billion to develop internet infrastructure in places that need it. The money is fueling an unprecedented effort to connect every home and business in the country to high-speed internet, a lofty goal President Joe Biden has said he hopes to achieve by 2030.

That effort suffered a recent setback when Congress let an internet subsidy program expire despite pleas from the administration and advocates about its positive impact.

Ultimately, though, if broadband expansion is to succeed on tribal lands, it will happen because people understand