In this episode of the podcast, Chris reconnects with Jonathan Chambers from Conexon to unpack the past, present, and future of federal broadband policy. 

They revisit the lessons of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), the wave of defaults that followed, and why definitions of “broadband” have so often favored weaker technologies over fiber.

Jonathan shares insights on the BEAD program, the risks of funneling funds to satellite providers, and how policy choices today will shape whether rural communities thrive or wither tomorrow.

Despite frustrations, he ends with a call for evidence-based decisions and hope that local voices can still steer broadband investment where it’s needed most.

This show is 48 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

This week on the podcast, Christopher speaks with Mona Thompson, General Manager at the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority (CRSTTA). CRSTTA serves the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in North Central South Dakota, which includes 20 communities dispersed across nearly 3 million acres.

Chris and Mona discuss the history of CRSTTA and the Telephone Authority’s efforts over time to upgrade its infrastructure and continue to offer residents high-quality connections – transitioning from dial-up, to DSL, to fiber. A majority of homes within CRSTTA’s service area now have access to fiber, with the exception of a new housing development the Telephone Authority is currently building fiber out to. Mona also discusses CRSTTA’s digital literacy and affordability efforts which help community members fully take advantage of its service. After 27 years with CRSTTA, Mona soon plans to retire, and during this episode sheds light on the important leadership roles she and other passionate women like her have played and will continue to play in the Tribal Telecommunications space. 

This show is 26 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

We're more than 15 years and a hundred billion dollars into the alphabet soup of federal broadband infrastructure subsidy programs, and millions upon millions of households are stuck on deteriorating connections and capacity-constrained technologies. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jonathan Chambers, partner at Conexon, to talk about how the BEAD program is our last chance. And to make sure we get it right, we have to grapple with the array of long-standing failures - purposeful and not - that have gotten us to this point: the regulatory capture of the FCC, the willful ignorance of bad data collection and mapping, the acceptance of disingenuous "technology neutral" arguments, turning a blind eye to the imbalance in service and cost between our cities and rural expanses, and pretending that not every households in the country can have a first-class, affordable, reliable Internet connection.

This show is 40 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

We're more than 15 years and a hundred billion dollars into the alphabet soup of federal broadband infrastructure subsidy programs, and millions upon millions of households are stuck on deteriorating connections and capacity-constrained technologies. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jonathan Chambers, partner at Conexon, to talk about how the BEAD program is our last chance. And to make sure we get it right, we have to grapple with the array of long-standing failures - purposeful and not - that have gotten us to this point: the regulatory capture of the FCC, the willful ignorance of bad data collection and mapping, the acceptance of disingenuous "technology neutral" arguments, turning a blind eye to the imbalance in service and cost between our cities and rural expanses, and pretending that not every households in the country can have a first-class, affordable, reliable Internet connection.

This show is 40 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

We're more than 15 years and a hundred billion dollars into the alphabet soup of federal broadband infrastructure subsidy programs, and millions upon millions of households are stuck on deteriorating connections and capacity-constrained technologies. This week on the podcast, Christopher is joined by Jonathan Chambers, partner at Conexon, to talk about how the BEAD program is our last chance. And to make sure we get it right, we have to grapple with the array of long-standing failures - purposeful and not - that have gotten us to this point: the regulatory capture of the FCC, the willful ignorance of bad data collection and mapping, the acceptance of disingenuous "technology neutral" arguments, turning a blind eye to the imbalance in service and cost between our cities and rural expanses, and pretending that not every households in the country can have a first-class, affordable, reliable Internet connection.

This show is 40 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed. 

Transcript below.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.