[1st-mile-nm] High-Speed Internet Project to Connect Navajo Nation Homes

[Richard Lowenberg]

High-Speed Internet Project to Connect Navajo Nation Homes

As many as 40 homes in the New Mexico portion of the Navajo Nation are 
being connected to high-speed Internet. Until now, the community just 
south of Farmington was considered too rural to support.

BY STEPHEN HAMWAY, ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL / MARCH 5, 2020
https://www.govtech.com/network/High-Speed-Internet-Project-to-Connect-Navajo-Nation-Homes.html

(TNS) — A first-of-its-kind project is providing high-speed Internet to 
more than 40 New Mexico homes on the Navajo Nation, with hundreds more 
on the way.

Sacred Wind Communications announced last week it has completed a 
project that brings fiber-optic cable to a housing development just 
south of Farmington through a partnership with the Navajo Housing 
Authority.

John Badal, CEO of Sacred Wind, said the project is a way to bring 
high-speed Internet into a community that has largely been considered 
too rural to support it.

“We want our Navajo children to have the same opportunities to improve 
themselves as the students or the children who reside in urban areas of 
New Mexico,” Badal said.

The Navajo Nation, like many rural communities across the United States, 
has limited access to high-speed Internet. Badal pointed to the region’s 
extremely low population density – roughly two homes per square mile 
across Sacred Wind’s territory – as a barrier to high-speed Internet.

“It would be terribly unaffordable to try to stretch a copper mile or 
fiber a mile to reach a single home,” Badal said.

When Sacred Wind was founded in 2006, Badal said most of its customers 
were served using copper wire, a network he described as outdated and 
not suited for broadband Internet.

Sacred Wind has attempted to bridge gaps in coverage through a mix of 
technologies, using fixed wireless towers in some areas to provide 
line-of-sight Internet access, Badal said. Recently, however, the 
company has shifted its approach and is working to replace its network 
of copper cable with fiber-optic cable in specific developments managed 
by the Navajo Housing Authority.

The Navajo Housing Authority provides public housing on the Navajo 
Nation, managing more 8,500 housing units in the community. Badal noted 
that NHA developments are among the densest portion of the rural region, 
with up to 150 homes per square mile.

“It makes sense to target homes that are closer together,” Badal said.

Most customers can receive 25 megabits per second with copper, which 
Badal said is sufficient for a couple devices to send e-mail and do 
basic tasks on the Internet. Fiber will bring speeds of up to 100 
megabits per second, which opens up more functionality. Catherine 
Nicolaou, external affairs manager for Sacred Wind, added the new fiber 
can be helpful for students, who are increasingly asked to do homework 
on their computers.

“One hundred megabits is really going to level the playing field for 
these students,” Nicolaou said.

Installation is free to residential customers, and Badal said costs are 
comparable to what customers currently pay for slower speeds.

The first phase of the project brings fiber to around 45 homes in the 
Huerfano Chapter, located south of Farmington. Over the next three to 
four years, Badal said the plan is to build out a fiber network that can 
bring high-speed Internet to more than 1,000 homes managed by the 
housing authority across northwest New Mexico.

“There’s no other company that’s positioned to do this, except for us,” 
Nicolaou 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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