[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Fiber Initiative

[Richard Lowenberg]

City launches high-speed Internet project

Posted: Monday, December 14, 2015
By Chris Quintana
The New Mexican

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/city-launches-high-speed-internet-project/article_134d51d9-4fa3-54a6-82a3-091d9e1fedeb.html


The city of Santa Fe on Monday launched a long-delayed project with the 
long-term goal of improving Internet speeds and lowering service costs.

Mayor Javier Gonzales announced at the city’s Railyard offices that 
Santa Fe Fiber will bring Internet speeds of 1 gigabit per second, or 1 
billion bits per second, to the city. Most businesses in Santa Fe max 
out at 100 megabits per second, or 1 million bits per second. The 
average Santa Fean’s Internet speed is somewhere in the area of 5 Mbps.

Gonzales said broadband access to the Internet is as necessary today as 
the development of the nation’s interstate system was during President 
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s.

“The type of infrastructure changes, but the idea is the same,” Gonzales 
said. “It’s about building the foundation for the private sector to 
succeed. And in this case, it’s the fastest, most robust connection for 
our community, and our economy, to the outside world.”

Gonzales also said he will push for the city to create an 
8,000-square-foot space in its Railyard offices that would serve as what 
he called “an epicenter for collaboration among innovative companies, 
especially those who need high-speed Internet.”

Sean Moody, the project administrator who developed the project, said 
the network could be expanded to other portions of the city in the 
future.

Santa Fe Fiber is a 2-mile stretch of fiber-optic wire connecting two 
key access points for the Internet in Santa Fe. Century Link, one of the 
city’s major Internet providers, owns a similar pathway. Anyone who 
provides Internet access in the city has to pay Century Link for access 
to that pathway. The city’s project provides an alternative pathway for 
those who want to provide Internet access in the city.

The alternative pathway, Moody said, breaks Century Link’s de facto 
monopoly. More providers means more competition, which can decrease 
prices and increase speeds in the long run, he added.

Cyber Mesa, a local Internet provider, built and designed the $1 million 
Santa Fe Fiber project. The firm also will be in charge of leasing space 
along the Internet pathway for the next four years. At that time, the 
city can opt to renew its contract with Cyber Mesa or offer the contract 
to someone else.

Jane Hill, the owner and operator of Cyber Mesa, said she is talking 
with potential providers to lease space on the city’s fiber network.

The project also establishes a partnership with the state. The city gets 
access to some of the state’s lines running to a key Internet hub in 
Albuquerque, and the fiber network connects several state offices in 
Santa Fe in exchange.

Construction on the fiber project started last spring, but it has been 
in development since 2011. Required archaeological studies delayed 
progress. And before that, a potential contractor for the project 
threatened to sue the city over its bidding process.

Faster Internet is key to technology businesses like Mark Johnson’s 
Descartes Lab. His company uses satellite imagery and artificial 
intelligence programs to conduct agricultural surveys. The company uses 
massive amounts of data, and to be successful, it needs a reliable, 
speedy Internet connection to move that data around.

“Where these companies choose to locate their offices and data centers 
will depend on proximity to fiber,” he said.



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