Internet currently sits in a unique gray area between essential utilities — like electricity and heat — and commercial products like smart TVs and Apple watches. But for the Nation of Hawai'i, that line is clear: connection is not a commodity; it's a communal responsibility.
The pandemic exposed a growing reliance on internet infrastructure across the globe. But for Hawai'i — isolated, with many communities deeply tied to a tourism-driven economy — the effects were especially harsh.
The state took early steps to improve its struggling infrastructure with pandemic relief funds in 2021. And two years later, the state received $11.5 million through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) to expand access in rural and Native Hawaiian communities.
Now the islands are set to receive a far more substantial $150 million chunk of the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. And separately, the Biden-Harris administration awarded over $72 million in additional TBCP funding specifically for Native community internet access and digital literacy.
But the new administration’s overhaul of BEAD — sending states like Hawai'i into a resubmission scramble — now delays the program despite efforts aimed at cost savings and deployment speed.
The colliding combo of a BEAD program drifting from its original vision, an administration intent on axing digital equity funding (which has already impacted the islands), and unfulfilled TBCP funding leaves uncertainty over whether federal support for Native communities will follow through or falter.
But according to John Kealoha Garcia — 2nd Vice President, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Commerce of the Independent & Sovereign Nation State of Hawai'i — many in the Nation aren’t waiting on Washington. They’ve developed without it for decades, and broadband won't be the exception.
The Sovereign & Independent Nation State of Hawai'i was officially established in early 1995, through the enactment of the Hawai'i Constitution — its purpose to empower sovereignty and the “restoration of political, economic, social and cultural rights” for Native Hawaiians and citizens of the Nation.
Kealoha Garcia believes the lasting infrastructure solutions won’t come from a bureaucratic race for efficiency. They’ll come from the lessons already rooted in the land and the people who care for it. His approach to the work is deeply communal, and it “moves at the speed of trust,” he told Broadband Nation. “You could even go a step further and say it moves at the speed of nature.”
Rather than a commercial product — a perspective at the core of private providers, no matter how communally centered they are — broadband is a community necessity for communication and access to education, health care and civic participation. "We're looking at it more like a necessity, less like a business," he said.
While it is an infrastructure of modern technology, there’s a constant awareness and focus on broadband connection as a new means for old practices in the Nation of Hawai'i. It grows naturally through relationships, shared knowledge and respect for the land we all rely on — and that means taking on the task of building and managing their infrastructure together.
"We're not just connecting a wire; we're actually building real networks,” of broadband and people. “It's all very human," he explained. Even in pioneering new broadband technologies and seeking funding, “we try and do our best to humanize the whole process."
Kuleana for connecting communities
While local private providers in best practice strive for a kind of ‘friendly neighborhood internet’ presence (some are even able to achieve it in certain ways), Kealoha Garcia’s work is built around genuinely personal relationships within the community.
“You have a different kind of kuleana, what we call a responsibility, to these personal relationships,” he said.
One project where this showed up was in Pu’uhonua o Waimanalo, where the Nation of Hawai'i, the state of of Hawai'i and the Internet Society worked together to launch a community-run LTE broadband network using donated 5 GHz spectrum equipment from Baicells. The organization sent experts to lead workshops on LTE networks and how to assemble, install and maintain their equipment.
The communities on Oʻahu built their own broadband network from the ground up, navigating challenges as a collective — like when they had to run a fiber connection from the outskirts into the village.
“To get that second fiber connection to the community hall building from the first termination point, they needed to dig a trench,” wrote Brandon Makawa’awa’a, Deputy Head of State, Nation of Hawai'i. “A local system integrator got the right material for the connection, and the people dug the trench themselves.”
Kealoha Garcia continues to champion this community-led, hands-on-on approach to network infrastructure — with around eight networks across different communities connecting around 5,000 Hawaiians.
Tenets of a 21st century citizen
“We have curriculum that we teach, like the basics of networking all the way down to crimping wires and trenching a fiber trench," said Kealoha Garcia. "I mean, it's really whatever the community needs."
From digital literacy to resetting routers and working on local equipment, citizens trained form experts like Baicells can pass on what they learn to neighbors. “We’re not paying a service provider to come in and service it. If it goes down. We have our own internal system that allows us to deploy someone, give them the right training and all that,” he said. “The knowledge transfer happens in our community.”
Empowering local know-how creates a self-sustaining quality to the network, and he emphasized that this work is about more than just technical skills — it's about building capacity through deep, personal engagement. "It's identifying people in the community who may be like a digital steward," he explained, "and then from there we can put them through some training."
Built and maintained by the community, it’s a utility that then directly empowers the same people that run it — be it for online healthcare, jobs or civil engagement.
"If you're in government, you want to check your email. If you're an entrepreneur, you might want to log into your banking. You might want to vote, if we have those tools,” he listed. “There's a lot of things that can take place from that launch pad.”
"These are all like core tenets of being a 21st Century citizen," Kealoha Garcia expressed. "We can teach the digital sovereignty side while we build the physical infrastructure side of things."