Local agencies and utility companies are teaming up to compete for federal stimulus funding to build a high-speed Internet pipeline that would serve Northern New Mexico.
To succeed, the initiative will require successful cooperation from as many as four counties, three colleges, seven electrical cooperatives, two municipalities, at least one non-profit organizations and possibly an Indian pueblo or two — not to mention the state governor’s office and two federal agencies.
At stake are tens of millions of dollars in federal funding, broadband Internet connections to thousands of businesses and homes, and the potential to create thousands of jobs, according to its proponents.
“The idea is to build a public-access fiber-optic cable network that we could then lease to the private sector in the region,” said Elmer Salazar, chair of the Greater Española Valley Community Development Corporation, which is helping develop the regional plan. “They could then distribute commercial and residential service to people’s doorsteps. We’re having lots of meetings to make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing and coordinate everything at all the right levels.”
The federal stimulus bill passed by Congress in February includes $7.2 billion to bring broadband Internet to rural areas across the United States. The federal Commerce and Agriculture departments will distribute most of those funds through competitive grants available to both private companies and public agencies.
Specifics are still cloudy on how the money will be disbursed. The two departments are currently gathering public comments before drafting specific terms for the grant programs.
Salazar said he expects the federal agencies to release the first round of broadband funding this summer. Kit Carson Electric Cooperative Chief Executive Officer Luis Reyes said he is preparing to submit a funding application by mid-April.
The idea for the broadband network came from a $250,000 regional economic development study funded last year by Los Alamos County. The study stated that a regional broadband network would encourage companies to move to Northern New Mexico and new companies to sprout in the area.
At the same time, the plan ties in with a statewide initiative to bring broadband to the rural areas surrounding three cities: Hobbs, Farmington and Española, according to Lenny Martinez, Gov. Bill Richardson’s adviser on rural development.
That initiative arose from plans to connect a state-owned supercomputer in Rio Rancho to colleges and universities throughout the state, Martinez said.
The supercomputer is already built, but a lack of adequate broadband connections has raised questions as to whether Northern New Mexico College, for example, would be able to connect to it.
Rio Arriba currently has broadband service, mostly through Windstream, in certain “pockets” of Española, Salazar said. And even that service is not very quick, Northern Vice-Provost Andres Salazar said. Northern’s network connections are currently 10 times slower than what Northern needs, he said.
Broadband provides a high-speed connection to the Internet. It is faster than older, telephone modem-based connections (see sidebar). In Rio Arriba County, however, only the most basic level broadband is available.
“We are limited in desktop Internet speeds for students and faculty and are restricted in streaming video speeds for our distance education course offerings,” Andres Salazar wrote in an e-mail. “Normally colleges also serve as Internet gateways for community non-profit organizations who have need of broadband connections — schools, municipal government agencies, foundations, etc. Northern is in no position to help in that regard since we are bandwidth constrained.”
He said Northern plans to use money from several grants to speed up its broadband connection on its own, outside of the regional plan, within the next few months.
“This regional initiative, it’s going to take some time, there’s so many people involved,” he said. “We have demand right now. We have to act. This other stuff would be great, but when is it going to happen?”
Andres Salazar said despite whatever steps it takes on its own right now, it will still participate in the regional plan in the future.
Kit Carson has already built a 60-mile fiber-optic network serving a large portion of its Taos County customers, Reyes said. The idea would be to stretch that network east to Colfax County and west to Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties, Elmer Salazar said. The network would likely hook up to a fiber optic line owned by PNM that stretches from Hernandez to Albuquerque.
In Rio Arriba, the network would stretch from Hernandez south to Española and north to Chama, Elmer Salazar said. Española Mayor Joseph Maestas said he would also like a ring of fiber optic line to surround city.
The counties involved in the project are undertaking studies to develop plans and cost estimates for the project. Reyes estimated it would cost about $60 million to deploy the network in Taos and Rio Arriba counties.
Martinez said the state and the regional initiative would apply for stimulus funding simultaneously. If the regional network is designed to fit within the statewide plan, the regional network could also qualify for additional funding obtained by the state. Martinez said the state is also encouraging companies like Qwest and Windstream to apply for funding.
Reyes said cooperation from electrical cooperatives is important because it would allow for installing fiber optic cable along the same easements currently used for electrical lines.
“The first thing we need is collaboration from everyone involved,” Reyes said. “The use of (Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative’s) rights of way would be key, though it wouldn’t necessarily hold up the whole project.”
Jemez Co-op General Manager Ernesto Gonzales did not return calls for comment.
Some government officials are billing the effort as an alternative to large telecommunications providers such as Windstream and Qwest, which own all broadband Internet lines in Northern New Mexico. Other, smaller providers lease bandwidth on those companies’ lines.
“We’d have a separate line altogether, parallel to and competing with Windsteam’s,” Maestas said. “Ideally, this would spin off other companies, and we’d probably see the rate structure go down.”
The network Maestas referred to would be owned jointly by the entities involved through a still-undetermined structure.
Colleges, school districts and local governments would get free access to the network. Independent providers would pay to hook up to the network and sell service to individual companies, Reyes said.
Those independent providers could include existing companies like Cyber Mesa, or new start-up companies created to take advantage of the network, Maestas said. Cyber Mesa President Jane Hill was at once intrigued by and skeptical of the plan.
“I’m all for stuff like this on one level,” Hill said. “But then there’s the question, when you have all these fingers in the pie, will it ever happen?”
Hill said fiber optic networks are costly to build and maintain, and she would prefer to see an effort to expand the current network to more homes and businesses in the area. She said Cyber Mesa looked into building an independent network in Santa Fe, but dropped the idea after finding it would cost $700,000 to install only 13 miles of cable, she said.
“I don’t know enough about (the plan) to have a favorable or unfavorable view on it,” Hill said. “But there is a network out there that needs to be maintained, and building alternate networks gets wildly costly. In my experience, when municipalities try to do something like this, it winds up costing a lot more and not being very effective.”
Hill pointed to the case of Rio Rancho, where the city hired a company to set up a city-wide wireless network. That project was marked with delays,and has suffered customer complaints since it was launched in 2004.
Windstream Vice President Bill Garcia said he has not heard of the regional plan. But Windstream does plan to apply for stimulus funding to expand its own broadband lines. Garcia said Windstream would coordinate its stimulus-funded projects with the state.
“Right now, we’re just waiting to see what (federal agencies) come up with in terms of what are going to be the criteria, what the rules of the game are going to be,” Garcia said.