A Communications Road Map for Santa Ana Pueblo

Recently a number of events/trends have combined to give the Pueblo of Santa Ana the opportunity to develop the communications infrastructure required to achieve parity with and possibly even surpass the services available in more urban areas in New Mexico like Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

• The business climate appears to have changed. With the acquisition of US West by Qwest, the "phone company" appears more interested in developing its infrastructure in the more rural areas of New Mexico, and while the jury is still out, Qwest appears more interested in working with the Pueblo than its predecessors.

• Santa Ana Pueblo has received a significant grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Agency of the Department of Commerce to fund a portion of our infrastructure development.

• Santa Ana is a "Gaming" Tribe, and the revenues from those activities are being directly used to finance not only communications projects, but home building and restoration projects, and services developed throughout the Pueblo.

A Starting Point

Phone service on the Pueblo is extremely limited. What phone lines we have on the Pueblo are already used up, and some homes have no phone service at all. Most families do not own a computer, and those that do have difficulty getting access to the internet.  Even if they can get connected, the connection speeds are so slow that surfing the net is impossible for all but the most patient.

The TOP Program

The Technology Opportunity Program (TOP) is a Federally (US. Department of Commerce) funded project to help the Pueblo grow and prosper by helping to develop the Pueblo's communications infrastructure, and the services. The project is helping to fund the development of a Pueblo wide communications system that will allow us to start taking advantage of computers, and services on the internet.

Project Scope:

The current plan will put computers in every home, and provide broadband wireless connectivity through a Pueblo wide intranet to the Internet. The Santa Ana Intranet will make communications between tribal members and the tribal government easier and more timely. Tribal members will be able to more readily access needed information on their TV sets or their computers. Announcements could even be made in Keres by deploying multimedia services over the broadband network, and we are working on a way to bring Tribal activities directly into the home in the form of interactive video.

Each tribal residence will have a computer, and the project provides for a communications network to connect them all together. Email and other "internet" services are already available. Tribal members will have direct access to the internet and all the information resources available on the net.

Project Location

The TOP Project is primarily an East Side development. It affects the Tribal Government Complex, and the three villages on the East Side of the Rio Grande as shown in the circled area on the following map.

The Santa Ana Intranet

An intranet is simply a "local" internet. Each of the "home" computers will be connected, and able to browse a web page where each of the government departments will present information that affects the Pueblo. For example, to find out when a Tribal Council Meeting or other special activity is being held, one would simply browse the Tribal Calendar, or check the "web page" of the government department responsible for the activity.

Infrastructure Development

Broadband connectivity to individual homes is one of the primary goals of the project.  Our initial efforts will be based on IEEE 802.11b broadband wireless services to see if we can provide the required services while minimizing  the need for trenching. We are also evaluating the need to bury optical fiber in more centralized and densely settled locations of the Pueblo.  Our goals are to upgrade both both data and voice environments and to converge the services where that makes sense.

Voice over IP has recently become a topic of interest. The Pueblo was an early adopter of this technology (2002), and has integrated telephony, FAX and other computer intensive services at the desktop. Integration of voice, data and multimedia services has been a primary goal of the project since the outset. These services can all be “pushed” out into the community when cost effective IP phones become available. The elimination of individual POTS lines while not an immediate goal of the project represents a significant future cost savings for the Pueblo.

Increasing the Bandwidth at the Residence

Our first efforts have been to provide complete connectivity within the Pueblo for the Government, Residences and Pueblo Businesses. That task has largely been completed. The next task is to increase the bandwidth to allow the easy adaptation of emerging services. The wireless bridges and access points serving the communities are already being supported over an advanced VDSL capability that provides up to 15 Mbps connections. Future rollouts will connect each residence to the intranet individually at up to 15 Mbps. In effect each residence will have a hard wired 15 Mbps connection to local servers and other sources of information. So while the rest of the world struggles to get DSL and Cable modems, the Pueblo will continue to lead the charge with full connectivity and broadband services.

The Pueblo of Santa Ana
2 Dove Road
Bernalillo, New Mexico 87004
USA

(505) 771-6799

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Copyright © 2001, The Pueblo of Santa Ana.