Navajo Broadband 2009 – 2013 Broadband on Navajo: a $60 Million Dollar Opportunity

Navajo Nation given $32M for Internet

By James Monteleone The Daily Times

Posted: 03/26/2010 12:00:00 AM MDT

WINDOW ROCK — The Navajo Tribal Utility Authority on Thursday was awarded $32.2 million in federal stimulus funding to provide broadband Internet access across more than 15,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation.

The project awarded by the U.S. Department of Commerce plans for more than 530 miles of fiber line to connected major cities of the Nation with the broadband access backbone in Farmington. The project also will construct 33 new microwave towers to transmit Internet signals to the remote regions of the reservation, NTUA said.

The project will cost $46 million. In addition to the stimulus funding, NTUA will contribute $11.3 million. An additional $2.2 million will be paid by a private company, Comnet Wireless, which has contracted to provide home and mobile Internet services on the Nation.

All phases of the broadband project are expected to be completed within three years, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Initially the project will provide improved Internet access to at least 49 Navajo chapter houses, as well as hospitals, police stations and other government or public offices. Residential Internet connections will follow.

“It’s going to help us. Someone has said we’re 30 years behind the times. I believe it. … I see it,” Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. said Thursday. “This infusion of new capital is going to bring us a long ways in terms of helping us to catch up with the mainstream.”

The broadband Web connection inremote areas of the Navajo Nation will mean greatly improved opportunities for residents otherwise cut off from technology, including expanded education programs in schools and advanced telemedicine services at community hospitals.

The service plans to connect more than 1,100 community buildings and as many as 30,000 houses across the reservation and 1,000 businesses, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said.

“This investment is absolutely essential for the health and wealth of the Navajo Nation,” Locke said.

New Mexico legislators in Washington commended the project as a major step to reconnecting the Navajo with surrounding communities.

“By providing Navajo with this cutting-edge technology, we can provide new economic opportunities like Internet-based business initiatives; we can give students better educational opportunities and learning tools; we can use telehealth to improve their health outcomes in this very rural and medically underserved region,” Sen. Tom Udall said. “It makes me very hopeful for new opportunities on the Navajo Nation.”

Sen. Jeff Bingaman noted improved Internet access will improve living conditions in the most remote Navajo communities.

“Many of the homes on the Navajo reservation lack basic telephone service, many even lack electricity,” Bingaman said. “Getting this broadband capability to these chapter houses and building this infrastructure is going to dramatically improve the situation for a lot of people on the Navajo reservation.”

The $32.2 federal funding granted to Nation was more than four times greater than any other broadband project across the county awarded through the stimulus program, according to the Department of Commerce.

“When looking at a broadband access map, the void in the southwest is predominately the Navajo Nation. With this project, we would fill a large portion of that gap,” said NTUA General Manager Walter Haase. “When in place, the Navajo Nation will not be waiting to catch up with the rest of the county. We will actually be an unparalleled and significant step ahead.”

James Monteleone:

jmonteleone@daily-times.com