The Hoopa Valley Tribe is celebrating the opening of its new fiber network operations center as the Hoopa Valley Public Utilities District (HVPUD) expands fiber-to-the-home Internet service throughout the Hoopa Valley Reservation and into neighboring communities just outside of its Tribal lands.

To mark the occasion earlier this summer, more than 50 community members, Tribal leaders, HVPUD staff, and project partners attended the July 17 opening celebration.

At the celebration, Hoopa Valley Tribal Vice Chairman Jordan Hailey hailed the milestone moment:

“This is truly a great day for the Hoopa Valley Tribe, for the department and for the Hoopa people. It makes me proud as a Hoopa Tribal member and a member of this community to see everything that they’ve accomplished.”

Though the new network operations headquarters is a storage and transport data center, General Manager of HVPUD Linnea Jackson made it clear that it is not a hyperscale/compute AI data center that have sparked controversy and protest in numerous local communities across the nation.

“The (data centers) that are sucking up all those resources — water, land, and energy — those are the AI data centers. Ours is a network hub, not a huge footprint,” Jackson tells ILSR. “We’re talking about servers and rack space for (Tribal) government operations and records, not a demand on our water resources — completely different from a large AI data center.”

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Establishing Data Sovereignty

As federal broadband funding sources face continued uncertainty, California’s massive last-mile grant program continues to plow ahead, looking increasingly like a vital lifeline for communities hoping to ensure that every individual has access to robust, reliable, and affordable Internet access.

Cold Springs Rancheria of Mono Indians was among the applicants celebrating a winning grant application in the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) latest Federal Funding Account (FFA) announcement.

The grant marks the eighth successful application by a Tribal nation in this program and another in a long list of community-focused projects led by public entities like municipalities.

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Cold Spring Rancheria’s application, for up to $1.5 million dollars, will bring much-needed connectivity to a total of 94 units, including 5 anchor institutions, on the Reservation in Fresno County with 100 percent of the households served by this project qualifying as low-income.

Many residents on the Reservation lack access to a terrestrial Internet service offering speeds anywhere near the definition of broadband (100 Mbps Upload/20 Mbps Download). Those that do have access to purported “broadband” speeds must rely on out-of-date DSL connections and, as a result, struggle with slow and spotty connections.

After working for several years to find a viable solution to these connectivity challenges, Tribal officials can now look forward to the fastest and most reliable Internet access via fiber-to-the-home technology.

The new, Tribally-owned broadband network will help the Tribe achieve universal access.