To provide much-needed broadband capacity to critical community facilities in underserved west Texas and eastern New Mexico communities, ENMR-Plateau plans to construct 189 miles of new fiber and utilize 418 miles of additional existing fiber to create a middle mile broadband network spanning central and eastern New Mexico and parts of western Texas.

Expanding its $11.2M BTOP Round One infrastructure award, ENMR plans to deploy its network into additional underserved areas with 1 Gbps middle-mile speeds. The project proposes to facilitate distance learning and education for tens of thousands of residents by significantly improving broadband connections at schools and higher education institutions. ENMR-Plateau plans to partner with both New Mexico and Texas colleges and universities, regional utility companies, and other service providers as needed to further maximize use of fiber and broadband capacity.

The Mission Economic Development Agency, in collaboration with the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders and a national network of Latino-serving economic development organizations, plans to create 12 new public computer centers and expand five existing ones in 13 communities throughout the United States. Each center expects to operate on the project’s centrally managed network and provide computer training and adult education to a low broadband adoption, high unemployment target population through a standardized English-Spanish training curriculum. The project expects to add a total of 263 new workstations and replace 37 existing workstations, enabling the centers to serve an additional 2,500 users per week and train an estimated 3,000 users per year. Broadband capabilities at each center will be increased to speeds of 1.5 Mbps. Public computer centers funded through this grant will be located in Phoenix, AZ; Canoga Park, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, CA; Del Norte, CO; Blackfoot, ID; Wheaton, MD; Minneapolis, MN; Kansas City, MO; Anthony, NM; Philadelphia, PA; and San Antonio and Laredo, TX.

To enhance broadband access to community anchor institutions while upgrading the state’s public safety communications capabilities, New Mexico’s Department of Information Technology proposes a two-tiered project that addresses both objectives via a single network infrastructure First, the project will complete the tenyear analog-to-digital upgrade of the state’s microwave network by replacing 19 of the network’s towers that,
along with the existing infrastructure, connect to a 100 Gbps backbone network at several key points statewide. Second, SIRCITS proposes to utilize the microwave network’s towers to deploy a new interoperable 700 MHz public safety wireless broadband network in the Albuquerque and Santa Fe metro areas that would cover 220 square miles, 14 site locations, provide 1,500 first responder end users with speeds of up to 7.5 Mbps, and benefit a population of about 600,000 residents. Some goals of the new public safety network include streaming critical patient data from paramedics to hospital personnel; field access to records management systems for criminal, fingerprint, and mug shot information; building blueprints and infrastructure diagrams on the go to enable access for firemen; and video applications to improve situational awareness at incident command posts.

The New Mexico State Library has partnered with the University of New Mexico, Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship, and 1st-Mile Institute to propose Fast-Forward New Mexico, an initiative to increase statewide broadband adoption and promote computer literacy and Internet use. The project intends to reach vulnerable populations, Hispanic and Native American users, small businesses, and entrepreneurs through small group trainings at public and Tribal libraries in 15 communities across the state. The partners estimate the project will result in 3,000 new household broadband subscribers, 1,000 new business and institutional broadband subscribers, and 3,200 new users at public computer centers. They intend to develop programs for first-time computer users that will address computer literacy and Internet usage. The New Mexico State Library also plans to provide training in computer and Internet use for small organizations and business owners. The Fast-Forward New Mexico project intends to improve New Mexico’s ranking of 46th nationally in percentage of Internet users, 49th in e-government, and 36th in broadband telecommunications when compared to other states, according to a report by the Kauffman Foundation and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. This proposal is part of Governor Bill Richardson’s five-year plan to phase in “broadband for all.”

The 21st Century Information and Support Ecosystem project proposes to implement a comprehensive program of computer training, wireless Internet access, broadband awareness marketing, and online content and applications to residents of 159 affordable and public housing developments and low-income communities in 50 cities and towns across 31 states and the District of Columbia. The project plans to implement four principal programs: training 2,500 youth to become “Digital Connectors” who will then provide digital literacy training to others in their communities; deploying localized broadband networks in public housing developments; developing online content and applications aimed at low-income, low-literacy audiences.

As part of a longstanding project to connect essential community anchor institutions across the country, and facilitate closer collaboration and long-term benefits for education, research, healthcare, public safety, and government services, the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) proposes a comprehensive 50-state network benefitting approximately 121,000 community anchors. The project proposes a large-scale, public-private partnership to interconnect more than 30 existing research and education networks, creating a dedicated 100-200 Gbps nationwide fiber backbone with 3.2 terabits per second (TBps) total capacity that would enable advanced networking features such as IPv6 and video multicasting. The project plans to connect community anchors across all disciplines into virtual communities with shared goals and objectives, including colleges, universities, libraries, major veterans and other health care facilities, and public safety entities, with additional benefits to tribes, vulnerable populations, and government entities.