[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Broadband Article

[Richard Lowenberg]

The article copied below, from the Santa Fe New Mexican, is making it 
onto a number of national broadband lists.   Unfortunately, the article 
doesn't really say much.   I have been following current Santa Fe 
broadband initiatives closely, and I know that a number of those 
directly involved are subscribed to this list.  I therefore ask those of 
you who can, please use this list to provide additional details, status 
and other appropriate, non-proprietary information.    I also ask that 
this be a civil exchange, without any self-serving rants.   Having 
personal off-list familiarity with the broadband issues at play in City 
and County of Santa Fe, and the north central NM region, I can imagine a 
productive conversation on grounded realities, options, best ways 
forward.
RL

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Science Matters: City targets lack of broadband options

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/health_and_science/science-matters-city-targets-lack-of-broadband-options/article_bd4891ff-78a8-5ec4-baad-15759c749c01.html

Posted: Thursday, January 9, 2014
Roger Snodgrass

As a lot of developments swirl around the Internet, which has become a 
critical source of economic opportunity in the world today, Santa Fe’s 
quest for cheaper, faster access to the Web faces a test as early as 
next month. Even with a million dollars to spend, thanks to a capital 
improvement project funded in 2012, city officials will have to make a 
very strategic move to gain much headway against even modest community 
needs and expectations.

By contrast, all of of Taos soon will be connected to the Internet at 
gigabit speed, about a thousand times faster than what is currently 
known as high speed. The next level is called terabit speed, and it is 
another thousand times faster. By partnering with the Kit Carson 
Electric Cooperative and using its grid for distribution, Taos expects 
to leap forward in the information age.

A federal grant of $64 million covers the cost, which is about what it 
would cost to do the same in Santa Fe. Also making a bold move, Google 
is rolling out a new fiber-optic program in Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas 
City, Kan.; and Austin, Texas, among other places, that offers 
connection speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second, which the company 
predicts will be about 100 times faster than existing high-speed 
broadband.

In Santa Fe, city project administrator Sean Moody puts the issue in 
the context of telecommunications and its local impact. “This is on the 
radar of city council that includes cell towers and overhead power 
lines,” he said. Economic development and education are in there, too, 
along with urban planning. Various cooperative efforts have been and 
will continue to play a role in local efforts. The city can hope to get 
lucky like Taos, but meanwhile, it has to work effectively with what it 
has.

Capital improvement project funds must be spent on something that needs 
to be built, and Moody thinks he has found a bottleneck that could be 
fixed with a little work. Currently, there is one major link from Santa 
Fe to the backbone of the Internet, the main pipes that loop east and 
west through Albuquerque and connect with the rest of the world. “The 
distribution is relatively competitive and well-regulated.” Moody said. 
“What is not competitive is the wholesale transport side.” Providers pay 
fees for access, and if you use that provider, “The world is at your 
disposal.” There are at least four potential candidates for competition, 
but by the time that main branch line connects Santa Fe, he said, there 
is only a single player, and that’s Qwest. It’s called Qwest Classic.

Moody has compared rates in Albuquerque with Santa Fe rates, and he has 
determined there is no significant difference in rates at speeds between 
5 Mbps and 10 Mbps. But large businesses such as Christus St. Vincent 
Regional Medical Center, big data users like film-editing services, 
large employers such as Thornburg Investment Management and Genzyme 
Genetics, and the city and county are paying twice as much for bandwidth 
at the 100 Mbps scale. He believes the minimal competition could be 
remedied by building a co-location facility that would house a second 
pipe, enabling interconnection with additional providers.

All the major networks run through the same pipes, although they don’t 
necessarily own them in the same way. Andrew Blum writes in Tubes, a 
popular book that explores the physical aspects of the Internet: “The 
networks carry networks. One company might own the actual fiber-optic 
cables, while another operates the light signals pulsing over that 
fiber, and a third owns, or more likely rents, the bandwidth encoded in 
that light.” Few of the players can stake a claim based on actual 
digging to deposit cable, but among them they own rights to many strands 
of cable, or even bandwidths of light within a strand of fiber, in which 
the stream of information is transmitted.

To those who want a faster Internet connection from the Santa Fe 
capital project, Moody advises patience. “This has value immediately, by 
opening up the wholesale market and value in the future by opening 
fiber,” he said. “Whether we start operating at terabit speeds or start 
flying around on jetpacks, whatever we do, this program and the co-lo 
are going to be instrumental.”
If you asked the precocious kids in the “It’s not complicated” AT&T 
commercials whether bigger and faster is better, they probably would say 
yes. But sometimes the situation is complicated. “Right now, Santa Fe 
may be on a long list of places where Internet operators would like to 
go, and this speeds it up by about 10 years,” Moody said. “We’re doing 
this because we want to get there sooner.”


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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Dir.
1st-Mile Institute, 505-603-5200
P.O.Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504
www.1st-mile.org  rl at 1st-mile.org
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