The Navajo County Board of Supervisors adopted two resolutions last week that will move the county forward in its broadband endeavors. It was noted that District I Supervisor Fern Benally excused herself from voting on either, stating her lack of understanding of how the plan would benefit the Navajo Nation.
First, a resolution was approved to adopt the Broadband Strategic Plan by Magellan Advisors and secondly, the adoption of a resolution allowing the county to proceed with the grant application process.
Magellan is a consulting firm hired by the county to evaluate the existing broadband infrastructure in the area and identify needs for further improvement and development to create greater network resiliency.
The plan, presented by Magellan Project Manager Melanie Downing outlined the next steps that need to be taken in order to bring high speed internet to the entire county.
She began, “We started with an asset inventory. This was to determine what infrastructure is actually available in Navajo County at this time. We also looked at a market assessment to see what services are currently offered and conducted a gap analysis to see where those might be falling short of community needs.”
Downing went on to explain that a needs assessment was conducted that consisted of a survey and a series of focus groups to talk to the community about their needs, and also a partnership evaluation to reach out to those public and private entities throughout the county and the region to see how they could partner with the county to address some of these issues.
“Our engineering team also developed a high level design for a county-owned network. A funding analysis was conducted to find out some grant and other funding opportunities. All of this resulted in our final recommendations.”
The thorough analysis showed no fiber currently available in Navajo County as reported in publicly available provider reports and minimal existing assets with no plans to upgrade the infrastructure. Privately owned entities however, did share some information on their existing fiber and assets including Hopi Telecom and the Navajo Nation. Many of those are under non- disclosure agreements and cannot be shared with the public.
However, Arizona Public Service (APS) does have plans to install new fiber from Payson to Cholla along I-40, Sparklight is reported to be pursuing a fiber to the home project through a grant application process in the Heber-Overgaard area and various smaller private companies pursuing projects throughout the region as explained by Downing.
“Taking a look at the market in Navajo County, it looks like there are only two providers of high speed internet. Those are Frontier, who appear to be running on older preexisting infrastructure and not actually meeting federally defined broadband. Sparklight is really the only option providing broadband in the county, but it does not exist everywhere.”
It was shown in the Magellan study that broadband is a much needed addition to the area. More and more Arizonans are working and attending school from home and, as Downing said, “That is a reality that is here to stay. Another need that was pointed out was public safety. We heard about outages where even the 911 services were out for an amount of time, which is obviously a big concern. Healthcare and telemedicine allow for doctors to treat their patients from home, as well, and that requires patients to communicate with quality video services and if you don’t have the bandwidth for that, it is not an option.”
In conclusion, Magellan Advisors identified a suitable area for construction of an open access middle mile network and provided a design which included new fiber installation. Plans are to construct from Holbrook south along Route 77 through Snowflake and Taylor and continuing to Show Low and Pinetop-Lakeside and also from Show Low to Heber Overgaard and including a wireless connection from Heber Overgaard to Winslow.
As of press time the comprehensive study was not available on the Navajo County website but is available at https://destinyhosted.com/navajdocs/2021/BOS/20211214_168/2531_Navajo_County_Broadband_Strategic_Plan_-_Final.pdf.
County Manager Glenn Kephart said, “The timing of this is fortuitous as we are now in a position to complete an application for an Arizona Commerce Authority grant on dollars that were released by the Governor to the Arizona Commerce Authority (ACA) of $100 million. Our understanding is that $75 million of that will be available to rural counties and up to $10 million per project, per county. As part of the application, it will be important that we bring on private sector partners; which will mean we need this strategic plan to have this broadband network built. We currently have an RFP (request for proposal) that will help us to find a last mile private sector partner who would also be a service provider. At that time, hopefully by mid-January, we will know what the project looks like and what it takes to fund it. At that time, we will submit our fully completed application to the ACA.”
He explained that the ACA grant is one of many the county intends to apply for to fulfill this need. Another was mentioned in this meeting as the ReConnect grant, awarded by the US Department of Agriculture.
The Supervisors also discussed how bringing broadband to the area would rely on partnerships with all tribal communities in the area. To which Benally said, “I guess I will have to get with the Navajo Nation to make sure they are taking care of this up in the northern part of our county.”
Kephart explained that the next resolution, which will support the submission of the completed ACA application will have further clarity on the benefits and responsibilities required of all stakeholders and partners involved.
