Native American Net Play - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, Nov 20, 2000 by Tim Mccollum

Stuck with a junked network, GRTI gutted most of the existing facilities and started from scratch. Using $17.2 million in Rural Utilities Service loans, GRTI installed digital switches, ran 117 miles of fiber-optic cable across the reservation, replaced old copper cable in some places and added new wires in previously unserved locations.

"When we started the company, it was so far out of the scheme of things for our community," Nelson says. "The tribe's budget was minimal, and they were barely providing services."

Despite these hurdles, GRTI doubled its subscribers by 1990. Then, with the opening of the casinos in 1995, demand for telephone service exploded. Today, more than half of Gila River households have phones.

Federal assistance has helped GRTI become one of the most successful of the tribally owned telephone companies that have emerged in recent years. Nationally, six Indian telephone companies - five in Arizona - provide phone service on reservations, and these companies have formed their own trade association that lobbies Congress on behalf of tribes and advises other tribes on telecom issues.

But GRTI's past successes haven't helped it keep up with Gila River's business growth, as an increasing number of companies move onto the reservation. Alcoa, Champion Homes, Home Depot and dozens of smaller firms have set up shop at Lone Butte - the largest tribally owned industrial park in the United States - with more on the way. These companies expect GRT1 to provide broadband voice and data services, T1 lines and DSL. GRTI must also provide modern telecommunications services to the casinos and the tribal government, which has taken over education, health care, public safety and other social services that previously were provided by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"We have a harder time satisfying businesses," Nelson admits, "because they want the latest technology and they want it soon."

Like many small phone companies, GRTI was caught off guard by the Internet explosion. Its physical plant and personnel were geared toward voice, not IP, and unlike large carriers, GRTI didn't have the capital necessary to modernize its infrastructure and bring in the skilled people it needed to meet the growing demand. Now there's no choice: If GRTI wants to expand its business - and generate a profit - it must provide Internet services.

"They've only got 3,000 subscribers, and they have to do something to make their business plan profitable," says Erik Wilson, president of Phoenix International Teleport, a satellite telecommunications company that opened last year on the reservation. "The business market is where the money is, and they're going to have to go outside the reservation to capture that market."

GRTI has an agreement pending with cable giant Cox Communications to build two fiber rings on the reservation that would give GRTI the infrastructure to serve business customers. In return, GRTI will provide the link between Cox's broadband cable TV network in Phoenix and new housing subdivisions under construction south of the reservation.