Fergie's Tech Blog

Navajo Nation to Lose Internet Signal

An AP newswire article by Felicia Fonseca, via Salon.com, reports that:

The thousands of Navajo Nation residents who rely on the Internet to work, study and communicate across their 27,000-square-mile reservation will be out of luck Monday, if their service provider is shuttered as planned.

"It's going to be a sad day," said Ernest Franklin, director of the tribe's Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.

A tribal audit last year revealed that Utah-based provider OnSat Network Communications Inc. may have double-billed the tribe, and it raised questions about how the tribe requested bids for the Internet contract.

Those discoveries led the Universal Service Administration Co., which administers the service under the Federal Communications Commission's E-rate program, to tell the tribe March 28 that it would withhold $2.1 million from OnSat.

posted by Fergie @ 4/03/2008 10:53:00 PM