[1st-mile-nm] Sandoval County Broadband (wireless) project, version 2.0

[John Brown]

Just an unofficial note about the Sandoval County Broadband project.

Having been a participant in the version 1.0 project, I can say that the 
version 2.0 edition is going much differently.   Lots of good lessons 
where learned from 1.0, they are being applied to the 2.0 version. 
Debbie Hayes, County Manager, has always stated that the vision was to 
create a "living laboratory", something that we can learn from, 
something that will evolve over time.

The County has stuck to its vision, even when the chips where down and 
they had auditors and others swarming around them.  They should be 
commended for sticking to a vision and executing on it.

The phase 1 backbone is going to provide a minimum of 100Mb/s, useful 
bandwidth, from the JC, to Placitas Firehouse, to Pajarito, to Cuba 
water tank, to downtown Cuba / Cuba HS.

Later phases will connect spurs, or as one member on this list likes to 
call it (riblets) off of the backbone.

Initially the link is designed to carry County related traffic.  But 
from a technical perspective, it could easily carry other traffic as well.

The new County IT director has been doing a darn good job of managing 
the project and keeping the contractors in line with respects to 
deliverables.

Its been a bumpy road, but so far I think this iteration is worth 
watching and potentially duplicating elsewhere in the state.

I think its pretty darn cool that Cuba HS will have more bandwidth than 
my house has in Albuquerque, by  100x.  That should be a big plus for 
education, heath care and econ devel in Cuba.


At times the negative words can over shadow the positive, and so I 
thought it might be worth the electrons to shine some positive light on 
something that is working.

Remember that it took Edison 1000 tries to figure out that thing called 
a light-bulb :)