Success Stories for New Mexico
For the first time ever, residents of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico's Four Corners region soon will have access to high speed Internet services and Internet training.
The new service and a training facility will be financed by a $436,461 grant to Sacred Wind Communications Inc. (Sacred Wind) from the Rural Utilities Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The funds will help pay for the costs of installing a fixed wireless broadband tower and related communications equipment to reach several community facilities and residences in the Huerfano and Carson communities. The Internet training facility is to be located at the Ha nadli Community center at the Huerfano Chapter.
Through the grant, Sacred Wind, a Class C communications company, will hire and train three full-time, bi-lingual residents of the Huerfano Chapter to train Navajo tribal residents in the region in PC literacy and related after-school research.
Sacred Wind's CEO John Badal said his company has mapped out "thousands of Navajo homes in northwest New Mexico without telephone services." The company says the RUS grant is the first step toward a more significant delivery of broadband services across the huge Navajo Nation, whose lands stretch into New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah.
Gil Arviso, Sacred Wind's president and a member of the Navajo Nation, says his firm intends to reach "at least 90 percent of all of our Navajo households with the best available telephone service and broadband. ... Internet training is a necessary requisite to the introduction of broadband services to Navajo adults and children. Many of our people have never touched a computer, but realize that it is a valuable tool to help their children succeed and to market the many products that Navajo families manufacture in the home."
The communications company, temporarily located in Santa Fe, N.M., says it has designed a fixed wireless network to reach homes with basic telephone services and broadband in 21 chapters of the tribe, all in New Mexico. Sacred Wind plans to submit a loan application to the RUS in the near future to accomplish that goal over a five-year period. The company ultimately plans to move its headquarters to Yatahey, N.M., between Gallup, N.M., and Window Rock, Arizona.
Courtesy of New Mexico Business Weekly
October 2005