[1st-mile-nm] US Feds to increase costs for access to Federal Land for broadband

[Nan Rubin]

At the beginning of this year, the legislative session approved a
multi-million dollar allocation for a centralized broadband office, to
coordinate all these disparate interests and getting broadband deployed,
coordinating grant applications to ensure that there won't be a lot of
competition among municipalities, and so we know who's applying for what,
and to prioritize where services need to go and direct resources in two
into those areas. That was nearly a year ago. Do we know if this office has
been set up, and has a broadband czar been named to the state of New
Mexico? I haven't seen anything about it down here in Las Cruces, no news
whether this has been put in place or whatever. So please tell us Richard,
do you know if this is going on so we can make our positions known? Thanks
much! When I saw that the money had been allocated by the state to set up
the broadband coordinating office, I was hoping it would get established
pretty quickly. Here it is a year later and no news. Maybe we need to keep
making noise to make sure that this gets done as soon as possible?... 0
best to everyone for the new year! Nan Ruben

On Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 11:04 AM John Brown <john at citylinkfiber.com> wrote:

> The US Forest Service just pushed out a notice that they plan to
> increase the annual
> cost of using Federal Land for broadband deployment.
>
> The USFS has been increasing the costs to use "Comm Sites" for years
> and now they want to add more fees because "they are short staffed"
> and need more money to hire people.
>
> Each year the Feds collect millions of dollars from comm-site
> providers and use those funds for everything BUT comm-site projects.
>
> They DO NOT keep the roads in good repair.
> They DO NOT provide security
> They don't fence the area in to keep hikers / animals out and thus safe.
> When there is a crime, their Law Enforcement side pushes it off to the
> local county / city cops
>    (yet its federal land)
> They don't respond to comm-site owners that are worried about FIRE
> DAMAGE because the Feds won't respond to allow us to clear the area
> around the site.
> They take more than a year to process simple requests and changes.
>
> Yet our leaders say we need more broadband and they want to help get
> that deployed.  And then
> on the other side they go RAISE the rates to make use of those sites.
> DoubleSpeak is what I call it.
>
> I think its time we start doing what ATT has learned they can do.
> Pass all of these costs on to the consumer (er voter)..  I'm seriously
> think that next year I'll do a
>
> Sandia USFS SIte Cost Recovery Fee.
> Federal Regulatory Burden / Cost Recovery Fee
>
>
>
>
> --
> Respectfully,
>
> John Brown, CISSP
> Managing Member, CityLink Telecommunications NM, LLC
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> 1st-mile-nm at mailman.dcn.org
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>
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