While most people understand and agree that broadband infrastructure is crucial for economic development, education, business and medical progress, WeSERV has watched as individuals initiate internet access ideas. But what happens when individuals across those sectors join together to discuss their wants, needs and already designed solutions?
WeSERV Government Affairs decided to find out. So, we hosted a small meeting in Nogales on Monday, Sept. 20th in hopes of starting the cross over discussions that could lead to border infrastructure, community infrastructure, education, business and medial infrastructure already planned or hoped for – being coordinated to optimize the current flood of federal and state rural broadband funding.
The window to access those funds is very short – before the end of the year for some grants, and mid to late 2022 for other grants.
Our hope was to help small, medium and large projects come together to layer infrastructure, private money and government grant funding – all with the goal of optimizing current and already planned projects to further pierce the surrounding community and meet the internet access needs of the area.
We had representatives from the Nogales Port Authority, the community college, small business, SEAGO (Southeastern Arizona Governments Organization), Nogales schools, Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz County schools, and Community Broadband Advocates. Jeff Sobotka from ACA (Arizona Commerce Authority) described state available resources and guided the conversation.
You can watch Jeff’s slide show of Arizona Broadband to survey ACA and its broadband mission.
Jeff announced that ACA will have grant funds for internet infrastructure projects of all kinds: fiber, microwave, wireless, etc. later this Fall.
The conversation involved meeting attendees identifying their currently planned projects, their already identified funding, and then discussing how some projects can be expanded to interact and layer with other projects.
Part of the discussion revolved around a simple example Jeff provided of communities in which access to already existing ADOT fiber allowed the municipality to pull fiber into the city center, identify a local carrier who could expand wirelessly to the local business community and later into local neighborhoods.
While these types of projects require the cooperation and vision of many people, it is doable and the Santa Cruz meeting attendees had many ideas of how to layer already planned projects to bring reliable internet to every residential, commercial and government location.
When surveying government and commercial resources it was surprising to see how much access there could be quickly because these existing users had already planned to eventually push access to the surrounding areas.
Additionally, one of the new laws passed in the last Arizona legislative session (HB 2596) allows ADOT to drop conduit along freeways and roadways and provides the ability of private providers to contract for access to that conduit. State buildings across the state will also be able to allow antennas for wireless connectivity.
What emerged was a picture of many people working to increase internet connectivity, but also the need to coordinate so that connections could happen rapidly and as part of an organized plan.
The biggest need: finding local carriers for medium and last mile service and infrastructure. Fortunately, several meeting attendees were already meeting with carriers to identify capacity and expertise.
The next meeting will be in about a month preparatory to state and federal grant opportunities opening up.
So where does WeSERV fit in? For now, we are hosting these meetings and acting as a conduit for information sharing. In the future as projects are completed, our members will have opportunities to engage in the discussions regarding community needs and help identify areas not covered by the hard infrastructure.
Watch this website (www.weservgad.org), listen to GAD podcasts (Government Policy, Real Estate and YOU!) and read the WeSERV member newsletters to find the most up to date information and opportunities to engage.
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