The city of Belen, N.M., makes mobile hot spot devices available at the local public library. The technology is provided by Mission Telecom, a nonprofit telecommunications organization.
“Belen has a high poverty rate,” Jessica Rodgers, lead librarian for the Belen Public Library, said, noting that financial challenges often stand in the way of having an Internet connection at home.
Belen, in Valencia County, is home to only about 7,400 residents. One impediment to home-based Wi-Fi is the rural nature of the region.
“Another cause is that a lot of people lack physical access, especially if they live outside the city limits,” Rodgers said in an email.
Roughly 90 percent of New Mexico has access to high-speed Internet, according to the state Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE). Valencia County communities up and down the Rio Grande River, including Belen, are relatively served with broadband, according the state’s broadband map. However, pockets of unsevered and underserved locations still exist along the corridor, with the coverage falling off significantly in the county’s more rural reaches.
The 2023 Public Library Technology Survey by the American Library Association found that 43 percent of low-income households lack a home broadband subscription, and 47 percent of public libraries now offer mobile hot spot lending programs — a 15 percent increase from 2020.
“It’s not because they don’t have a connection,” Mark Colwell, Mission Telecom executive director, said, noting the economic challenges to maintaining a monthly home broadband subscription. “That’s a big issue. Some households are mobile-only, or they go to a library, and they check out a hot spot.”
In the last year, the Belen Library’s 10 mobile hot spots have circulated more than 335 times, Rodgers said, making them the “most circulated items in the library, and we usually have a list of several people that are waiting for a hot spot.”
The library does not charge a fee for these checkouts, unless a hot spot is damaged or lost.
“The goal is to make the Internet as accessible as possible to as many patrons as we can,” Rodgers said.
The service from Mission Telecom costs the library about $1,200 per year, and had been funded partially via E-rate, a federal program that brings Wi-Fi to schools and libraries. Late last year, the FCC moved to restrict using E-rate funds for mobile hot spots, and for programs putting broadband service on school buses.
OBAE also offers state funding with its $7 million Community Connect program, which targets communities with low levels of broadband connectivity and digital inclusion.
Broadband officials and advocates have long maintained that broadband is an essential utility service which should be expanded and made more available. This was generally the thinking behind the development of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, a piece of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The legislation included funding for digital equity and closing the digital divide, with money for skills training and other programs. BEAD funding was subsequently halted, and states were compelled by new federal rules to resubmit their plans for the money.
Training, devices and Internet access are all needed to ensure communities can fully participate in the modern economy, education, healthcare and other areas, Colwell said.
“The issue is adoption. You are not going to get value for society if people don’t use the Internet,” he said, pointing out digital equity’s three-legged stool rests on access to the Internet, a device to connect and the skills to use it. “And not all households have that. And cost is often the most important factor.”
