RAPID CITY, S.D. - If tribes want decent phone and Internet service on their reservations, they should either start their own telecommunications companies or establish regulatory commissions to oversee them, a panel of American Indian leaders said Wednesday.

J.D. Williams, president of the National Tribal Telecommunications Association, said Indians have the right to govern their own people as well as every business that comes onto tribal land.

"To tribal leaders, it's another sovereignty point that we must step forward," said Williams, general manager of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority.

The discussion came during the opening session of the Federal Communications Commission's two-day Indian Telecommunications Initiatives workshop and round-table at Rapid City's Rushmore Civic Center.

The FCC also was in town for a Wednesday night public hearing on how local broadcasters are serving their communities.

During his keynote address, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said many tribal lands have trouble getting into the analog era let alone the digital age. He said although 94 percent of U.S. households have a telephone line, that number drops to 67 percent in Indian communities.

"And that's not right. We have to fix that," said Adelstein, a Rapid City native. "We've made progress, but we have a long way to go."

Mark White Bull, telecommunications project manager for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, said Standing Rock is underserved by Verizon Wireless, which he said has just one tower to cover 2.2 million acres.

"There's hills and valleys so there's a lot of dead spots," White Bull said. "I always hear that commercial, 'Can you hear me now?' Come to Standing Rock."

The tribe has had to address other issues with service providers, such as customers being charged long distance fees for calls within the reservation. Standing Rock straddles the South Dakota-North Dakota border.

White Bull wants the tribe to start its own company because others don't understand Indian issues.

"They don't know how they think," he said. "They don't know what they want. They don't know what's out there."

Vernon James, CEO and general manager of the San Carlos Apache Telecommunications Utility, said his tribe began pursuing its dream of forming its own telephone company in the early 1990s, mostly because no one else would provide service.

James said requests for new hookups on the Arizona reservation drew estimates of $3,000 to $6,000, as no companies would invest in the infrastructure to build a network.

By 1997 James' dream became reality, and San Carlos Apache has since grown from 700 to 2,700 access lines. The tribe has dial-up Internet service and is getting ready to roll out high-speed digital subscriber line (DSL).

The tribe's investment through loans has been about $24 million.

"It's a utility that's very capital intensive," James said. "There's a lot of money that must be put into the infrastructure."

Tony Rogers, executive director of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Utility Commission, said if tribes can't start their own companies, they should at least create a commission to watch over the ones who provide service.

Rosebud is served by four telephone companies, and Rogers would like to see an arrangement for calls between the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian reservations to be classified as local.

FCC Chairman Michael Powell was scheduled to deliver the keynote address, but he flew back to Washington Wednesday morning after receiving a call Tuesday from the White House.

Dale Snowden, chief of the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, said Powell met with tribal representatives for about an hour Tuesday evening, discussing such issues as companies' use of universal access fees and local number portability.

(On the Net: FCC, http://www.fcc.gov.)