Champions of Change Blog

Recovery Reaches Rural Coverage Areas

Affordable broadband access. What seems like an absolute to many Americans is in fact something that countless communities around the country struggle to obtain. In an era when high-speed data connectivity is essential, it is unimaginable that entire localities are without access to that lifeline or lack competitive, affordable options. 

When the Broadband Incentives Program (BIP) was created under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, nTelos Wireless took the opportunity to apply for funding to upgrade portions of our network to 3G Evolution Data Optimized (EVDO) Rev A service. nTelos Wireless already provided high-speed mobile broadband in the majority of its service area. However, there are portions of our footprint that have not been upgraded from traditional 1X or 2G data speeds to 3G service. Those areas are in rural markets that are not economically feasible to upgrade to 3G service. 2G service, while functional, limits the customer to basic Internet browsing both on handsets and data cards used in laptop computers. File transfers and the audio/video streaming experience for these customers is poor and often impossible. With EVDO Rev A service, the speeds allow a full suite of Internet options previously reserved for wireline platforms. EVDO Rev A supports peak data rates of up to 3.1 Mbps in the forward link and 1.8 Mbps in the reverse link bringing mobile broadband to the subscriber’s phone or laptop. In addition, the portability of the service is an enormous advantage when compared to traditional wireline products.

Roads and Transportation on the Navajo Nation

I’m a member of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American Tribe in the U.S. We live in parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah on land we have occupied since the beginning of our time on this continent. Our land area is over 27,000 acres with a population exceeding 250,000. Elevations in parts of our land range from 4,000 feet to over 12,000 feet encompassing high deserts with sparse vegetation to land heavily forested with Ponderosa pine. We experience drought, heavy rainfall and abundant snowfall. Most of our people still live in isolated rural areas where generations of their relatives lived on land connected to their history, customs and traditions.

The Navajo Nation has over 18,000 miles of roads; over 15,000 of those miles are not paved yet provide the only means for children and families to get to schools, hospitals and markets. Most Navajo households are located miles from paved roads which are accessible only by dirt roads which are highly susceptible to damage from heavy snows, floods, and washouts making roads useless for travel and pose risks for school buses and families; sometimes people are stranded for days at home unable to drive out to major roads.

I am appointed by the President of the Navajo Nation to guide of the Navajo Division Transportation. I provided the foregoing snapshot of our land and people as a backdrop to my message on the roads and transportation challenges we face, and, the absolute need for cooperation and sharing among people and organizations to improve life on the reservation.

Needless to say, paved roads are highly valued for dependable, safe travel in most weather conditions. Many of our families have had to move closer to paved State, County and B.I.A. roads for convenience and safety. U.S. Highway 491 is one such road which connects with Inter-state 40 in Gallup, New Mexico, and runs north through the Navajo Nation into Colorado. The route was named Highway 666 before it was renamed due to people’s discomfort with the numbers “666”and the bad omens associated with it. The concern was very real due to the historically high number of vehicle crashes and fatalities on the route.  Highway 491 was always a two lane road not sufficiently designed and constructed to handle the heavy traffic assigned to it. Trucks of every description exiting Inter-State 40 use it to haul homes, hazardous material, and everything in between competing with school buses and families which share the highway along the corridor. A general public outcry for a safer four lane highway, with a median separating north and southbound traffic had been heard for years. Funding for re-construction of the highway was not available despite repeated attempts to find funding. In the meantime Highway 491 maintained its reputation as an unsafe, bad road.