[1st-mile-nm] Santa Fe Wifi Access

[Richard Lowenberg]

Santa Fe City Council approves free Wi-Fi hot spots

By Daniel J. Chacón dchacon at sfnewmexican.com
Apr 8, 2020

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/coronavirus/santa-fe-city-council-approves-free-wi-fi-hot-spots/article_42da404c-79b4-11ea-8124-ab9db5e9df61.html

Free Wi-Fi will soon be available at several locations across Santa Fe 
despite reservations about the project from some city councilors who 
ended up voting for it anyway.

After a nearly 11/2 hour discussion Wednesday, Mayor Alan Webber and the 
City Council unanimously approved a memorandum of understanding with 
Santa Fe Public Schools for the city to install Wi-Fi hot spots at 
several school campuses. The free Wi-Fi on school grounds is primarily 
intended for students who have switched to online learning in the midst 
of the coronavirus pandemic but who have limited or no internet access.

Though not part of the agreement with the school district, the city also 
plans to install Wi-Fi hot spots at several city-owned buildings that 
will be available for the public to log into, too.

“In combination with city-owned sites, the selected school locations 
will allow for more areas of the city to have hotspots near at hand,” 
Sean Moody, the city’s telecommunications architect, wrote in a memo to 
the council.

Some city councilors, including Michael Garcia, JoAnne Vigil Coppler and 
Renee Villarreal, pushed for a “timeline” to remove the infrastructure, 
which is only intended to be temporary. Despite their jockeying, the 
full council ultimately approved the agreement as originally presented. 
“The pandemic is our timeline,” Rich Brown, the city’s economic 
development director, told the governing body. “We don’t know when 
that’s going to end.”

The project, which will cost an estimated $90,000, has raised suspicions 
that it will lead to the installation of 5G cellphone technology, which 
still doesn’t exist in Santa Fe. But city and school officials 
emphasized that the hot spots are unrelated to 5G.

“That’s still aspirational for Santa Fe,” Moody said in a telephone 
interview before Wednesday’s virtual council meeting. “None of the 
providers have it here. Certainly, it’s not part of our project 
whatsoever. Our project doesn’t use it, and it doesn’t make it.”

Councilor Signe Lindell said the council received numerous emails about 
the project from concerned residents, some of which left her 
“dumbfounded.”

“There was one thing that stood out in those emails that I’m compelled 
to say out loud, and that’s the number of people that said in emails 
that they didn’t believe there were people in this town that don’t have 
internet access,” she said. “I was shocked by that. It tells me that 
there’s some folks who have no idea how much some of our fellow citizens 
are struggling.”

Tom Ryan, the school district’s chief information and strategy officer, 
said the free Wi-Fi on school campuses is designed to help students “get 
to their educational resources” as well as access general information 
about what’s happening in the world.

“We have about 550 kids that said that they need internet access,” Ryan 
said. “We also have teachers, some of which their spouse has lost their 
job due to the closing of businesses, etcetera, that can’t afford or can 
no longer afford internet.”



---------------------------------------------------------------
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
---------------------------------------------------------------