By L. Parsons The Navajo County Board of Supervisors approved a contract with Magellan Advisors last week in the amount of $73,350 to provide studies and plans to move the County forward in their plans to bring broadband capabilities to the area, with funds for the six-month contract to be paid for from the County’s general fund. The firm provides design and engineering services to rural and urban areas. According to Magellan Advisors Vice President of Digital Innovation Jory Wolf, “We are a full spectrum planning and implementation firm that brings together technology, communications and utility consulting to create smart gigabit cities of tomorrow.” For Navajo County, this means the Denver-based firm will “work to identify funding strategies and sources available for expanding broadband. We will explore funding options including leveraging strategic partnerships and the reinvestment of revenues received for the use of infrastructure in the public right-of-way into the County’s broadband program,” Wolf explained. Navajo County Manager Glenn Kephart added, “Part of what this firm provides for us is the funding opportunities. The information we are gathering and will continue to gather will allow us to have a competitive grant application. We don’t have that currently. We know we have underserved and unserved areas, but we don’t have it defined well enough to move forward into a grant program that gives us the money to actually build it. These projects are expensive.” Funding, according to Kephart, will continue to be a roadblock. However, with Magellan on board, more options will become available. Wolf said, “We will also evaluate outside funding sources at the state and federal levels, providing an analysis of grant and loan opportunities that may be available to Navajo County, which may include the use of economic development, transportation, Arizona State Broadband Office, USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund), and other funding sources. At the onset of the engagement, our grants team will identify and assess grant opportunities for which to apply. The final report will include a funding action plan and schedule, identifying key dates and action items for pursuing each funding source.” To get to the funding phase of the project, Magellan will first perform several assessments. In Wolf’s presentation to the Board of Supervisors, he said, “We will begin by conducting a comprehensive asset inventory of the County’s current assets in the public right-of-way including conduit, fiber, antennas, poles, towers, abandoned facilities, active facilities and other infrastructure to determine their usefulness for expanding broadband within the region. This effort will provide a realistic assessment of assets available for expanding broadband connectivity.” Kephart added, “They are going to assess existing infrastructure, which is constantly a moving target because we have existing infrastructure already built and infrastructure already planned or being built. What we will have at the end of this Magellan project is a good plan of where more conduit and fiber needs to go. That will help us to not miss an opportunity. We can meet with all of our utilities and share the plan and partner with them to help us get conduit in the ground.” Next, according to Wolf, is a market assessment. He said, “In addition to evaluating the existing broadband infrastructure in Navajo County, our team will conduct a market analysis to gain an understanding of what service offerings are currently available to the community. The analysis will identify the services that are available, providers, service level, pricing, and access. We will document all publicly owned and privately-owned networks in the County and research providers that currently serve the market. We will then analyze the current market and delineate served, underserved and unserved areas. We will work with the local providers to understand and document their current needs, as they too are stakeholders in the community.” Effort will also be made to perform a “gap analysis” that will indicate areas that have a need for broadband but currently lack the necessary infrastructure, according to Wolf. “We propose to review the long-term capital projects schedule and build a map that identifies the projects where broadband infrastructure could be installed over a 10-year period.” Arguably the most important step in the process is the needs assessment. Wolf said, “Magellan proposes to hold interviews with key community partner organizations to gain an understanding of their current and future broadband and technology needs. Community partners to be included in this process may include: local businesses, healthcare facilities, schools, public safety agencies, ADOT (Arizona Department of Transportation), tribal leaders, residential and commercial developers, municipalities within Navajo County and other stakeholders.” Kephart said, “This is set up to really make a difference and get us deliverable definable projects that we can then win grant award money from. We will be able to define the specific project, estimated cost of the project and the economic benefit of the project. Rather than looking at this as some big monster that we can’t get our hands around, we are going to get it defined down into what our specific needs are. Then go through a countywide prioritization process with all the stake holders and then break that into definable, buildable projects.” The portion of the Navajo Nation that is within Navajo County is also included in that prioritization, Kephart said. “The broadband expansion will reach out on to the Navajo Nation as they are part of Navajo County and the project will prioritize countywide. In fact, Magellan has already done work with the Navajo Nation so they already have solid contacts and should be an easy partnership that we are looking forward to.” Finally, Magellan Advisors will develop a conceptual network design that provides a high-level design for components of broadband infrastructure. Wolf continued, “The conceptual routes will be key to applying for grant funding and will be based on leveraging existing infrastructure to meet current and projected needs throughout Navajo County. Magellan will assist the County in developing the most appropriate broadband network design based on the needs of unserved and underserved sections of the community. The conceptual design will be detailed enough to estimate high-level costs to deploy the network, which can be used for construction grant applications.” Kephart is looking forward to the benefits that far reaching broadband capabilities will offer Navajo County. “In Navajo County, we have a unique opportunity. People may prefer to live here instead of some of the more urban areas, to experience the lifestyle we have to offer here if they could work from home. We have limited capacity now and that makes it hard. This opens up not only quality of life improvements, but more importantly, it opens up business opportunities for people to do their business from Navajo County. It can help encourage people to bring things here. The economic development opportunities are vast if we have really healthy broadband.” He continued, “Broadband expansion is one of the few issues that has bipartisan support. It’s going to be part of the federal and state budgets. In fact, (Arizona) Governor Ducey has already proposed $10 million toward broadband projects in his executive budget. So, we know we need this. You can make an analogy with our interstate highway system. Prior to the highway, we had two lane roadways. As we continued to grow as a country, more and more people wanted to use those roadways, so they became very congested. It became harder to go from one place to another and it really slowed things down. It wasn’t very efficient. Broadband is the flow of information. Currently, there is inadequate capacity and it isn’t very efficient. Broadband opens that up just like the freeway system did for moving through and around the country. This is critical for our economic commerce.” The timeline for fully integrated broadband countywide is unknown. Kephart said, “I don’t accept that we are 10 years out. In fact, I fully expect within this year that we have our definable projects and are starting to submit our grant applications. Then, the timeline from that point on will depend on the flow of money and the availability of those needed to complete the projects. However, I feel good about this moving us from the back of the line, to more toward the front of the line. We are going to have the information we need to compete for those grants and that money.” Wolf concluded, “Because of Magellan’s experience in working with rural clients, our advisors have a deep understanding of the challenges that small communities face in deploying new broadband infrastructure to serve their populations, including cost barriers, attracting investment, and aggregating demand for a successful business model. We will work closely with the County’s team to develop innovative solutions to these issues based on our knowledge of best practices and Navajo County’s unique situation.” Kephart said, “We are more than hopeful, we are determined. Having said that, this won’t come easy. It will take a lot of work, there will be setbacks, there will be disappointments. That’s why I say we are determined. We will see this through and have it be successful for the future of our county.”
