Tag: "arizona"

Going Wireless for Students and Seniors in Tucson

Posted February 18, 2021 by sean

When Collin Boyce, the City of Tucson’s Chief Information Officer, was a young boy, he left his native island country of Trinidad and Tobago with his mother and three brothers and moved to Brooklyn, New York.

“We were poor but what my mother did for us in the summertime is send us to computer camps. And because of those camps three of us are in the IT industry today and the one we call the black sheep of the family is a neurosurgeon,” Boyce said.

He was joking about his neurosurgeon brother of course. But was dead serious about how being introduced to computer technology as a young kid led him into IT work and why it means so much to him to help build Tucson’s new municipal wireless network to provide Internet connectivity for low-income school students and seniors.

“This effort is an opportunity to give back what my mother gave me,” he said.

Tucson has hundreds of miles of fiber connecting the city’s municipal buildings. But, unlike a city like Chattanooga, which operates one of the premier Fiber-to-the-Home networks in the nation allowing America’s first Gig City to provide free high-speed Internet access to 12,000 low-income students in Chattanooga throughout the ongoing pandemic, Tucson has not built a fully fiber-optic municipal broadband network.

As the COVID crisis swept across Arizona and forced students to attend school remotely last spring, Boyce began to look for a way to ensure that the thousands of students who didn’t have Internet access at home wouldn’t be left behind. In a city with a population of about 530,000, an estimated 30 percent of city residents, or about 150,000 Tucsonans, don’t subscribe to wireline broadband, Boyce said.

Standing Up a New Network

“We needed to stand up some wireless technology,” he told us this week.

The stop-gap solution the city decided on was a Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) network that was financed using $5.1 million in CARES Act funds to leverage the city’s existing fiber infrastructure. Partnering with the IT management company Insight to help build the network and provide customer service, the construction work started in January and is already nearly finished. It involves erecting towers on fiber-connected municipal buildings and city-owned property at strategic locations across the city and installing converter devices that look...

Mohave Electric Co-op Will Deploy Fiber for Broadband in Arizona

Posted March 6, 2020 by lgonzalez

For the first time, an electric cooperative in Arizona plans to develop fiber optic infrastructure in its service area in order to expand broadband availability. Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC) recently received a state grant to develop fiber optic infrastructure and expects to spend the next two years connecting residents and businesses for high-quality Internet access.

State Funding Efforts

Arizona's Rural Broadband Development Grant Program, which awards up to $1 million for shovel-ready projects, will provide funding to MEC for infrastructure deployment. Two other grants went to private sector providers for a middle mile project and for a Fiber-to-the-Business project. The co-op's network will enable symmetrical connections of up to 10 gigabits.

The region is in the far west-central area of the state where Arizona meets the tip of Nevada and California, not far from the Mojave National Preserve and the Havasu National Wildlife Refuge. MEC will build out their network to around 35,000 premises in Bullhead City, Fort Mohave, and Mohave Valley.

In addition to the development grants, Arizona awarded four planning grants to local governments of fewer than 150,000 (municipalities) or 750,000 (counties). One of the grants went to Gila County, which has been working on their Broadband Master Plan. Native American Tribes and nonprofits were also eligible.

Local Support

Back in October 2019, the Bullhead City Council passed a resolution to support the cooperative's plan to develop the project. Community leaders responded to the results of the MEC survey in which 95 percent of respondents indicated that they wanted broadband from the co-op.

Mayor Tom Brady noted that his office often received complaints about incumbents Suddenlink and Frontier. At the time, MEC said that the cooperative plan includes service to 100 percent of its service area, but officials from MEC stated that...

Gila County, Arizona, to Create Broadband Master Plan

Posted December 27, 2019 by Sayidali Moalim

In November of 2019, the Gila County, Arizona, council board of supervisors approved a $12,000 funding proposal for consultanting expertise to explore the community's broadband options. EntryPoint Network s, the company awarded the bid, has worked with both Quincy, Massachusetts, and Idaho’s Ammon, along with other communities around the country where publicly owned broadband infrastructure has helped improved local connectivity.

EntryPoint Networks will work with the county develop a Broadband Master Plan.

 From Payson Roundup:

Vela [assistant county manager] said EntryPoint will study all the options available in Gila County, including APS’s proposal to bring broadband to the area by stringing fiber lines along its towers from the Valley as well as Sparklight’s proposal to bring broadband from the White Mountains area.

…

EntryPoint, in its proposal, said it would look at the conceptual design for a fiber to home/business network supported by a reliable middle mile fiber network. It will provide a projected cost breakdown for network materials and installation. It will provide information on current network models throughout the country, including municipal networks, like Ammon.

Gila County is located in central Arizona and boasts a population of 53,597 residents over 4,758 square miles. Payson, a town in northern Gila County, is located very close to the geographic center of Arizona thus being called “The Heart of Arizona”. Ninety-seven percent of the land around Payson is under jurisdiction of the United States Forest Service or is tribal land. The town is also known for the oldest continuous rodeo in the world.

Remote Havasupai Tribe Connects With Community Network

Posted September 19, 2019 by lgonzalez

Rural tribal communities in the U.S. struggle with some of the worst connectivity in the country. Decades of neglect have put them even farther behind other rural communities, many of which are moving toward community networks rather than depending on national Internet access providers. The most isolated tribal community in the continental United States has chosen to shrink their disadvantages by establishing a community network.

Within the Canyon

The Havasupai Indian Reservation, home to about 600, is surrounded by the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Having populated the region for centuries, the federal government restricted them to the reservation, an area of about 518 acres in Havasu Canyon, in 1882. Non-Indian ranchers, settlers, and miners started takng over the area in the 1870s and Executive Order confiscated the Havasupai homelands for public use. After the establishment of the Grand Canyon National Park and generations of persistence, the tribe finally won back more than 188,000 areas of plateau and canyon lands in 1975 through an Act of Congress.

The community, on the floor of the Grand Canyon, can only be reached by helicopter, or an 8-mile hike that starts 67 miles away from the nearest town. Mail is still delivered by mule.

Seeking Spectrum

That persistence is paying off again as the Havasupai Tribal Council focuses their attention on broadband access. They're collaborating with nonprofit MuralNet to connect the main residential area in Supai, where about 450 tribal members live. The nonprofit's mission is to assist tribes like the Havasupai develop infrastructure to obtain high-speed Internet access.

In the spring of 2018, the tribe obtained a temporary Educational Broadband Service (EBS) Spectrum license. MuralNet, local ISP Niles Radio, and Northern Arizona University have all contributed toward the effort to launch the community network. Niles Radio provided 30 Megabits per second (Mbps) backhaul at no charge in addition to volunteering to help with deployment. With MuralNet professionals and volunteers from the community, the LTE network was up and running within a day. Equipment costs for what MuralNet describes as the first phase of the network were $15,000. As a result, a few...

"Can You Hear Me Now?" Free Webinar On Rural Connectivity, July 26th

Posted July 14, 2017 by lgonzalez

Just like cities around the county, rural communities are all unique. Nevertheless, there are some common steps they can take to improve the likelihood of achieving better local connectivity. The Arizona Rural Development Council and the Local First Arizona Foundation are hosting a free webinar series and on July 26th, the topic will be “Can You Hear Me Now? Strategies for Rural Broadband Access.”

The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, July 26th, at 10:00 AM Pacific.

The webinar description:

As we progress into a world driven by technology the need for broadband access is hardly an option, it is a necessity. During this month's webinar, we will hear from four highly experienced professionals advocating for broadband access in rural communities around the state and the nation.

Attendees of this webinar will learn:

Steps communities can make to ensure they are fiber ready

Alternative solutions to broadband access

How to work regionally or within a county

How to leverage any and all existing resources

Unique factors of costs to broadband deployment on tribal lands

On July 26th, presenters will include:

Deb Socia, Executive Director of Next Century Cities

Blake Mobley, Rio Blanco County, Colorado’s IT Director

Belinda Nelson, Gila River Telecommunications and member of the Gila River Pima tribe

Bruce Holdridge, Gila River Telecommunications

You can register for the free event online.

Digital SouthWest Videos Now Available

Posted April 20, 2017 by lgonzalez

You might not have made it to Mesa for the Digital Southwest Regional Broadband Summit, but you can now watch some of the speakers and panel conversations. Next Century Cities has posted video from panel conversations and the keynote address from Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.

In her address, Commissioner Clyburn said:

“Access to high-speed broadband is a necessity in today’s 21st century economy, providing a gateway to jobs, education, and healthcare. I am honored to join state and local leaders who are on the front lines of closing the digital and opportunities divide. Working together, we can achieve our shared goal of affordable broadband for all Americans.”

The Commissioner’s full remarks were about 18 minutes long:

Sharing Knowledge on Infrastructure

Christopher moderated Panel Two, focused on infrastructure needs, which included CISSP President and CTO of CityLink Telecommunications John Brown, Partner at Conexon Jonathan Chambers, Director of Technology at the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association Matt Rantanen, Manager of Tribal Critical Infrastructure at Amerind Riskand Kimball Sekaquaptewa, and Vice President of Digital Innovation at Magellan Advisors Jory Wolf. If you listen to the Community Broadband Bits podcast, you’ll probably recognize most of these voices.

The video lasts one hour thirteen minutes:

The other videos are available on the Next Century Cities YouTube channel page, or watch them here.

Welcome and Introduction: Deb Socia, Executive Director of Next Century Cities and Eric Farkas, Fujitsu Network Communications, 7:32

...

South Central Communications Bringing Fiber to Members in Utah, Arizona

Posted February 16, 2016 by lgonzalez

Another rural communications cooperative is upgrading its current system to a Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. South Central Communications (SCC), is in the process of deploying fiber to all of its 23 member communities in Utah and the few it serves just across the Arizonia border. The cooperative started as South Central Utah Telephone Association in 1953.

An Investment For Today And Tomorrow

Construction began in 2015 and should be completed by the end of 2016, reports the Southern Utah News. Kanab, population 4,300, is the first community to receive the upgrade from the coop's DSL network to the new fiber infrastructure. All of Kanabs schools, municipal facilities, libraries, homes, and businesses will connect to the network, SCC President and CEO Michael East told the News:

“We are making this investment because we believe it will contribute to the economic vitality of our community and allow us to serve this great place we call home with the best communications network available today.”

During the initial build, connections to the new fiber will be free of charge. If customers pass on the offer the first time around decide to connect later, they will be charged an installation fee. FTTH connectivity typically increases home values, so even if customers decide to pass on taking fiber service, there is no down side to connecting to the network.

FTTH Internet access from SCC is available in 5 Megabits per second (Mbps), 15 Mbps, or 50 Mbps for $34.95, $54.95, and $64.95 per month respectively. Gigabit per second (Gbps) access is available for $89.95 per month.

It's About More Than Profit

SCC is one of an increasing number of rural cooperatives offering fast, affordable, reliable connectivity to communities where big corporate providers don't invest. Publicly owned networks, like cooperatives owned by the people who use them, have an interest in the well-being of the community, rather than only in extracting profit from subscribers.

East concluded by saying “We are excited to be bringing this fiber network to Kanab. I am excited about the tremendous and much needed opportunities it will provide…[I]t’s the educational opportunities, and the improvements in healthcare that are available via the tele-health initiatives...

Mesa's Focus on Dig Once and Fiber Leases Pays Off - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 139

Posted February 24, 2015 by christopher

Arizona's city of Mesa is one of the largest communities in the nation to benefit from the city taking role in ensuring conduit and fiber are available throughout the area. This week we talk with Alex Deshuk, the city's Manager of Technology and Innovation that was brought on in 2008.

We talk about how Mesa has, for longer than a decade, ensured that it was putting conduit in the ground and making fiber available to independent providers as needed to ensure they had multiple options around town and especially to select areas where they wanted to encourage development.

Having this fiber available has helped to encourage high tech investment, including the new Apple Global Command Center.

Read the transcript from this episode here.

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show - please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

This show is 20 minutes long and can be played below on this page or via iTunes or via the tool of your choice using this feed.

Listen to previous episodes here. You can can download this Mp3 file directly from here.

Find more episodes in our podcast index.

Thanks to Persson for the music, licensed using Creative Commons. The song is "Blues walk."

Blast From "Muni" Wi-Fi Past: Tempe Awarded Ownership of Citywide Network

Posted June 1, 2011 by christopher

MuniWireless has published a story noting the outcome of Tempe's lawsuit against Commonwealth Capital Corp in which the city was awarded $1.8 million in pole rental charges from a private company dealing with a failed Wi-Fi network.

Tempe, like many other communities circa 2006, had hoped a private company would be able to build and run a citywide Wi-Fi network that would create another broadband option for residents and businesses frustrated with the DSL/cable duopoly. For a variety of reasons, nearly all of these networks failed to deliver on promises and were either abandoned or turned into occasional hotspots.

Unfortunately, the term "Muni Wireless" was used to describe these networks despite the fact that local governments had little more to do with them than they do with franchising cable companies (and Comcast is not called "Muni cable"). Regardless, the general failure of Wi-Fi to match the hype gave muni broadband and community broadband a bad name due in part to this inappropriate "Muni Wireless" title.

What I found interesting about the MuniWireless.com story about Tempe is the section entitled "What should Tempe do now?" This is an excellent question. The suggestions offered by Esme Vos are interesting and worth mulling over. Over time, I hope the comments add some more suggestions.

community broadband networks

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