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Santa Fe, N.M., Works to Bring Internet to Mobile Home Parks

Within Santa Fe, access to broadband Internet remains a challenge for people who can't afford it, prompting the city government to roll out the second phase of a plan to install more free public Wi-Fi hot spots.

WiFi Sign
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(TNS) — Edwardo Hernandez has beautiful views and a bountiful garden at his mountain home near the village of Pecos.

Internet service? Not so much.

"We live 10 miles into the mountains, and we don’t get service," he said Tuesday morning while catching up on the news on his cellphone while parked outside the city of Santa Fe's Southside Branch Library, which offers free public Wi-Fi.

"We don’t even get phone service, so if we need to use the phone, we gotta come out to use the phone," he said.

Even within Santa Fe city limits, access to broadband internet service remains a challenge for people who can't afford it or live in an area that doesn't provide it, prompting the city government to begin to roll out the second phase of a plan to install more free public Wi-Fi hotspots. The city will be targeting its latest efforts on the south side, specifically at eight densely populated mobile home parks that have a combined 1,922 trailers.

“We thought, ‘How can we look at a broader initiative to sort of give some equity out there and cross that digital divide?’ ” Rich Brown, the city's economic development director, said at a council committee meeting last week.

“There’s about eight mobile home locations that are very, very dense in [City Council] Districts 3 and 4 that will allow us to put some antennas there so that they can have internet access, free public internet access," he said.

The antennas, which have a 300-foot range of service, will help not only students who are doing distance learning but also adults who may be looking for jobs online or just need access to the web.

The city plans to use a large antenna at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy off Cerrillos Road and Jaguar Drive to deliver free internet to the eight mobile home parks and surrounding neighborhoods.

"This will be our point-to-point station where we’ll be able to use antennas to reach out to these spots, giving them high-speed internet," Brown said.

Kate Noble, president of the Santa Fe school board, lauded the city's efforts Tuesday.

"The basic principle that’s important for me here is that education is economic development," said Noble, who used to work in the city's Office of Economic Development.

"We are in a scenario where we’re seeing the connectivity of that, not just in the traditional sense that you need a skilled workforce but in the sense that the school system really does support working parents and families," she said.

"As everything in the school system is being challenged right now, it’s incredibly clear that we need more community support around our education system in order to have effective equity and economic development," she added.

After students switched to online learning when the coronavirus pandemic first hit New Mexico, the City Council in April signed off an agreement with the school district for the city to install Wi-Fi hotspots at several school campuses. Though not part of the agreement, the city also installed Wi-Fi hotspots at several city-owned buildings.

The hotspots took longer than anticipated to install because of what Brown called equipment and paperwork issues. But more people are using them with each passing week. Unique users grew from 250 the week of July 20 to nearly 400 the week of Aug. 10.

“I think that’s going to grow once folks are looking for jobs, folks are going to the school parking lots and doing distance learning," Brown said. "So, we’ll see a spike as school starts to get further into play.”

Lack of internet access isn't an issue unique to Santa Fe.

Brown said New Mexico lags behind much of the nation when it comes to broadband subscriber rates. Nationwide, the average subscriber rate is 85 percent. In New Mexico, it's 77 percent.

At a recent legislative committee meeting, Brown said officials realized Santa Fe "is actually on the forefront of using broadband and extending it and leveraging it out to the neighborhoods."

Santa Fe Public Schools' chief information and strategy officer, Tom Ryan, said recently that Santa Fe is "in better shape than the rest of the state and most school districts across the country" with its remote-learning infrastructure.

While the school district is doing "relatively well" when it comes to ensuring students have technology and internet access, Noble said the district's good performance comes with a caveat.

"I asked [Ryan], ‘I assume you think this is basically a good instrument, a good metric that puts us as doing pretty well?’ He says, ‘Well, yeah, it’s a decent instrument, but I would say that the bar is not very high,’ ” Noble said.

"He didn't quite say it this way, but what I heard from him was it's not that fine a measure of how we're actually doing because the bar is so low."

©2020 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.