RADIUM SPRINGS, N.M. – Standing in a hallway of a community center in Radium Springs, a small town of 1,500 residents in rural Southern New Mexico, Javier Gandara looked through a Plexiglas doorway to the concrete slab outside. Nondescript as it might seem, it played a role in helping him do his homework.
“Sometimes I would sit there to use the internet. But if it was windy, I have to move to the other door,” said Gandara, a 24-year-old Doña Ana Community College student, as he described his ritual of searching for an internet signal for schoolwork when the community center was closed.
If he wasn’t able to make the trip to the community center, or if that signal was sketchy, he’d try using his phone, laboring for multiple hours on simple online tasks. Other times, he’d ask someone who was known to have an internet connection to share some time on their network.
“I would ask my neighbors, ‘can I sit in your porch so I can do my homework?’” Gandara said. If they were leery of sharing their network, he’d negotiate, offering them a portable USB drive so they could download or upload files for him.
“That’s incredible,” said U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico, who was listening to Gandara describe his regular plight to find an internet connection for schoolwork. “That's all going to change,” the senator assured Gandara. “Once this gets connected, there's going to be more internet available at people's homes, at other businesses, faster internet speeds at the schools as well,” said Luján, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Media, and Broadband.
$16M project announced
Luján and Gandara were among dozens of people who gathered at the Radium Springs Community Center, about 17 miles north of Las Cruces, on Oct. 12 as part of the state’s effort to inform New Mexicans on the progress of utilizing the Bipartisan Infrastructure Fund to build broadband infrastructure across the state. Southern New Mexico is lacking reliable, fast internet in many locations, particularly in rural and underserved communities.
Officials at the event announced the Northern County Broadband Project, a $16 million broadband partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Doña Ana County, and SWC Telesolutions Ethos Broadband – a division of Sacred Wind and Commnet Broadband – to bring high-speed fiber internet to about 1,600 homes, 20 institutions and 100 small businesses that feed into an estimated 31-mile stretch of Interstate 25 of Northern Doña Ana County. It will be fiber-optic-to-the-home connections – considered the gold standard of high-speed internet.
“Ethos is honored to work with Doña Ana County and USDA to expand broadband connectivity across Northern Doña Ana County,” said Neo Nicolaou, senior vice president and general manager for Sacred Wind and Commnet Broadband. “Our mission is to connect underserved communities with high-speed broadband to improve public safety, economic development, and quality of life. Broadband is the enabler that levels the playing field for those that live in rural communities across America.”
The COVID-19 pandemic forced work, school and other activities to move online like never before and exposed the depths of digital divides across the country. Many New Mexicans lacked – and continue to lack – internet access or adequate connectivity speeds. Congress has allocated unprecedented levels of funding to solve connectivity gaps, in recognition of the fact that digital connectivity is virtually a necessity in today’s era. Different waves of funding have been authorized through various federal agencies and the state government.
The Northern Doña Ana County region – Garfield, Hatch, Rodey, Rincon, Salem, Placitas, and Radium Springs – has a total population of 9,273 residents, which would rank it as the 22nd largest population center, right behind Silver City, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau figures.
Low population density poses challenge
New Mexico has unique challenges that complicate the state’s effort to bring the state entirely online.
By square mileage, New Mexico is the fifth largest state in the United States, but, according to the World Population Review, it is “the sixth most sparsely populated territory in the country” with vast mountain ranges, deserts and large swaths of federally protected forest land (https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/new-mexico-population).
With more than 121,000 square miles of land, there is “an average of just 17 people who live in each square mile,” the World Population Review data source stated.
This makes it harder and more costly to deliver high-speed fiber broadband infrastructure, said Luján.
“We're much larger, we're much more rural, we're much more frontier. That means that there's probably a lot more areas that need to be connected,” he said. “That's where states like ours may be a little behind the Northeastern states, but I'll say that I'm seeing Western states continue to make positive strides, and New Mexico certainly has.”
He said he’s “confident” that difficult states like New Mexico will reach connectivity rates of “95, 96, 97, maybe 98 percent.” But he added: “I'm always concerned that there's always going to be some need as you get towards the end. My question always is on the last 2 percent because as you get to those final areas, they're much more expensive.”
“That's where I asked for a significant commitment from the Department of Commerce,” he said, “that when we get to that point that, indeed, we'll be able to get 100 percent of the state connected. And I was assured that they would.”
The Northern County Broadband Project is “one of those important projects that is not going to leave out any part of rural America or rural New Mexico,” Luján added.
Resident: ‘Sometimes it just hangs up’
That’s welcome news for Ricky Martin, an elderly man who lives across the road from the community center in Radium Springs. He said he currently has an internet subscription, but said it is rife with problems.
“Sometimes it just hangs up, and it doesn’t want to do what you need it to do, so you have to wait on it. And that gets frustrating at times,” said Martin about his internet connection in this area of New Mexico. “Especially if you're in a hurry to do something, and that's usually the only time I get on the internet is when I'm in a hurry to do something. We had heard back toward the end of COVID that they were going to do something about the internet out here. So we came out to see what was going to be done,” he said, adding that the government’s effort to bring reliable internet to the region “is a good thing for the community.”
“We've got a lot of people out here that can't afford the Internet. I'm paying $46.07, but haven't got the greatest internet in the world, but at least I got something,” he said.
The completed infrastructure project will have three conduits that run from Salem to Radium Springs. Ethos Broadband will own the first conduit, which will provide internet to “residents and businesses in communities in Northern Doña Ana County,” according to the project’s official press release (https://www.donaanacounty.org/Home/Components/News/News/507/14).
The second conduit – which will be owned by Doña Ana County and managed by Ethos – will connect “the new Salem tower, the Radium Springs Community Center, and the Radium Springs Fire station to the county’s private network,” the press release stated.
“The third conduit will belong to Doña Ana County and will be available for potential use by other entities interested in delivering services in the area,” states the press release.
Benefits of connectivity abound
The benefits of bringing high-speed, reliable internet to rural areas are well documented.
“Broadband access and adoption in rural areas is linked to increased job and population growth, higher rates of new business formation and home values, and lower unemployment rates,” stated a 2020 Federal Reserve Bank study (https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/community_development/community_scope/2020/comm_scope_vol8_no1).
A 2021 report by the Brooking Institution also found that, in rural areas, “broadband expansion can also improve health and life outcomes, offering access to remote healthcare providers, online social networks, and educational opportunities” (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-benefits-and-costs-of-broadband-expansion/).
Universal internet would also impact community engagement and activism, which are critical aspects of poor rural communities like those surrounding this stretch of Interstate 25.
Sandra “Sandy” Tatum is a longtime activist from the Fort Selden area who has been reluctant to embrace internet technologies because, she said, she prefers her “political and community work to be face to face.”
For 22 years Tatum and her late husband were the proprietors of the Fort Selden General Store, a popular spot from 1987 to 2009, where locals would gather to discuss current topics affecting the region.
“It became a hub for information,” Tatum said, and she acknowledged that a stable, universal internet in this Southern New Mexico region would equip “the next generation of activists” to better reach the far-flung homes and rural neighborhoods needing assistance.
“In our rural areas, we've always had trouble with communication because out here, in this northern part of the county, there are residential clumps, and for the most part, people live kind of separate, and they're on private roads with fences,” she said. “And so the back and forth of community, that chatter that spreads information and perspective on issues, that's really hard to get at,” said Tatum. “So what I see is the possibility of getting that ground-level input on issues for politicians, for others, to keep people engaged civically.”
Study: Lack of devices, skills are other hurdles
Mamacitas Cibernéticas, a community group devoted to gathering data that shows the internet needs of Southern New Mexican rural communities recently released its findings from 35 in-depth surveys with residents of the southernmost part of the county. Among the findings are that most – 60 percent – of those interviewed said they do not have a laptop or desktop computer, and most – 71 percent – said they can’t afford those devices. Another finding is that “71% said they can’t afford spending time or money to learn new internet skills,” according to previous reporting by the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative. (https://www.krwg.org/regional/2023-08-07/digital-literacy-a-big-need-in-southern-dona-ana-county-report-says)
Gandara has about another year before he earns his degree in animal science, and said he’s looking forward to the time when others won’t have the same problems accessing the internet.
“I think about all the other students with the same problem, and I think about my family struggling with it. So knowing they are working to bring it here, and to other similar communities, it’s a very good thing and I’m really happy to know that the internet is coming.”
Reyes Mata III is a freelance journalist who works with the Southern New Mexico Journalism Collaborative to cover COVID-19 and pandemic recovery from a solutions-reporting lens. For info, visit www.southNMnews.org or surNMnoticias.org
Map of Radium Springs: https://maps.app.goo.gl/es9bvp8VQiDWceun9