In 1947, the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Co., with millions of miles of wire, started the biggest expansion in its history. As we know, rural areas still didn't get phones. It took telephone cooperatives, following the model of electric cooperatives, to deliver the service.
Here we are, 68 years later, trying to extend another technology, broadband (high-speed internet), into rural New Mexico. For 15 years, we've seen coalitions, initiatives and studies come and go. We've had broadband and digital divide summits. We've even seen progress, just not enough.
Broadband refers to the size of the pipe. A bigger pipe means more speed and less wait for that web page to load. But it's more than that. If you're a graphics designer, doctor, engineer or business owner in a small town, you can't send or receive big files without broadband.
If we were to name a single tool that would make a difference right now across education, healthcare, law enforcement, agriculture and business, it would be broadband.
Recently I heard a tourism expert say, "If we don't have broadband and better cell coverage, it won't matter that New Mexico is beautiful and quaint. People want to be connected."
Not that we've been standing still. In the last five years, New Mexico was the beneficiary of more than $200 million in federal stimulus funding for rural broadband – funding that was matched by phone companies receiving the grants.
Projects large and small sprouted across the state, from Leaco Rural Telephone Cooperative in Hobbs and Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative in Artesia adding hundreds of miles of fiber to Kit Carson Electric Cooperative's new network connecting thousands of homes, businesses, schools and clinics in Taos, Colfax and Rio Arriba counties. Smaller projects made broadband more affordable and accessible up north or upgraded broadband in the northeast.
In northwestern New Mexico, the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority laid 550 miles of fiber and built or upgraded 59 microwave towers in across the reservation, while Western New Mexico Telephone Co. brought broadband to critical community facilities in southwestern New Mexico. In central New Mexico, ENMR-Plateau Telecommunications in Clovis built 74 miles of fiber-optic line in the Estancia Valley.
And the state Department of Information Technology used its grant to create an online map of broadband and launch studies.
The U. S. Department of Agriculture continues to fund rural broadband, most recently lending $5.3 million to Mescalero Apache Telecom to build a broadband system. And the Federal Communications Commission awarded $15.4 million to three healthcare organizations to build a rural telehealth broadband network.
Altogether, it's a big step forward, but we can't rest on our shovels. Rural providers still have gaps in their service areas.
New Mexico still lags most of the nation, and rural New Mexico lags urban New Mexico. Last year, the website broadbandnow.com ranked New Mexico the 37th most connected state and said that access to a high-speed connection (at least 10 megabits per second) has improved from 72.8 percent to 83.5 percent of New Mexicans.
That still leaves many thousands without access or with access to just one provider, so they don't have the option to switch. And speed is iffy because sometimes it's not what the providers say it is.
Since rural electrification in the 1930s, the federal government has stepped in to help citizens in sparsely settled places gain services their city cousins took for granted. The stimulus money followed that course, and the USDA and FCC are still awarding grants, but the state needs to step up.
Last year the interim Legislative Jobs Council produced a bill to provide $300,000 every year for broadband implementation. It died, but broadband is still on a lot of wish lists.
Look for a bigger, better broadband bill in the next legislative session.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sherry Robinson
Quelle/Source: Carlsbad Current-Argus, 18.09.2015
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