The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has awarded a $29.3 million Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program grant to the Native Village of Port Lions in Alaska.
With today’s award, NTIA has now made 70 awards totaling more than $755.7 million for the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, a nearly $3 billion grant program.
The funds for the program come from the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 ($980 million) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law ($2 billion). Additional grants will be announced on a rolling basis as other grant requests are approved this fall.
The latest grant will fund connectivity to high-speed Internet for homes, businesses and anchor institutions via a new fiber-optic high-speed network capable of Gigabit speeds, directly connecting 930 unserved Native American households.
“During my recent trip to Alaska I met with the community members of the Native Village of Port Lions and know this investment in their community will be life-changing,” said Alan Davidson, assistant secretary of commerce, in a prepared statement. “Affordable and reliable high-speed Internet for these remote villages means access to jobs, health care, and education. It also means keeping their community’s future alive by bringing their community members back home.”
Last month NTIA awarded more than $143.6 million in funds from the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program in two states. Those grants were designed to provide funds for broadband internet infrastructure deployment projects for the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council and Yurok Telecommunications Corp. in California and the Spokane Tribe of Indians in Washington. The projects are designed to connect more than 2,800 homes across these three Tribes.
