Where is Arizona going with the FCC buildout?

PHOENIX — Arizona is making an online interactive broadband map using federal funding. In addition to creating its own state coverage map, like all U.S. states, the data is being rolled-up into the building of the Federal Communication Commission’s national map showing broadband availability and deficits for the entire country. The Arizona map was pre-released last week at Broadbandmap.AZ.gov/map and the official release will be in about a month. The national map can be found at BroadbandMap.gov/technology.
As expected, the major metropolitan areas of Phoenix and Tucson are well positioned with both wired and wireless broadband services but the rural areas are a different story. Long highways and major amounts of cacti in-between areas conspire to create expensive builds for fiber optic broadband capacities in these gaps.
“We need to figure out how to best get policies changed to make it less costly for service providers to get the long distance connections put in place to make it more economical for the private sector providers to build out rural communities for wired and wireless services,” said Mike Golden, director of broadband planning at the Arizona Government Information Technology Agency (GITA).
Ron Schott, board member of the Arizona Technology Information Council, said the broadband map is an invaluable tool for expanding wireless opportunities for education, city services, and business.
Schott cites the town of Superior, Ariz., as a fine example of how broadband can and will create an entirely new work and life climate for rural areas with help from local, state, and federal government agencies such as the FCC. The town, located about an hour east of the Phoenix metropolitan area, was struggling with a population of little more than 3,000 people across about two square miles. A former boon to copper mining, the city needed new investment to attract business.
The Resolution Copper Co. took control of mining operations in Superior in the middle of 2008 and approached the city, private businesses and major employers along with other agencies such as the Arizona Department of Commerce, The Government Information Technology Agency (GITA), the Arizona Telecommunications Information Council, and even Native American governments to help the town build a way of life based on wireless broadband.
“The Indian communities here that have casinos on their Indian land have provisions that allow them to (operate) and one is that the state requires them to do outreach outside of the Indian community itself,” said Schott. “The (communities) invest like 10% of their earnings into that.”
Two years went by before it was complete, but broadband enabling through a wireless mesh allowed police, fire and health care to integrated communications with other major stakeholders such as the mining company to help the town communicate and thrive.
Surrounding communities near Superior showed immediate interest and are working on their own broadband buildouts.
City planners in rural communities can see where the gaps are in coverage based on the federally-funded GITA state map and plan accordingly. Assessments are a first step to putting data into the map. In Arizona, more than 70 carriers signed on to help map supplied coverage areas with only one carrier abstaining from participation.
“To protect the information of each of the carriers, nobody can see the entire layout of any carrier’s network but you can put your address in for wherever you live,” said Schott. “What will pop up is the information of what’s available at your location-who the carriers are, what kind of services are provided and at what speeds.”
From there, planning can be done to contract with companies for broadband and wireless services.
Golden said he recognized early that highway construction or repairs with open trenches in the ground could allow an opportunity for major cost-reduction to provide fiber optic conduit. With the ground ready to accept a fiber optic line, Golden claims the cost amounts to about as much as painting white and yellow stripes on the asphalt.
However, rules at both the federal and state level require that highway rights-of-way only be used for highways, and Golden and his associates are working to get the definition changed.
“I call it two highways for the price of one,” said Golden. “The FCC also has a rule pending right now that could open it up dramatically to allow canals, pipelines, railroads and utility towers to be used to string fiber optic bandwidth. If it happens, it will crack the nut to get broadband capacity to these rural areas.”