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Success Stories

ReConnect Program Brings High-Speed Fiber Internet to Southeastern New Mexico

Nicole King
Broadband
Cooperatives
High Speed Internet
man and woman stand next to each other with mountains in background
Mitch Hibbard (left), Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative Chief Operating Officer and Tabitha Davis (right), marketing and public relations manager at PVT, pose for a photo in Mayhill, New Mexico.

You might not expect to find high-speed internet in remote mountain areas with gravel roads, but you will soon find exactly that in southeastern New Mexico in the Peñasco Valley Telephone (PVT) Cooperative, Inc., service area.

The large area that PVT covers is extremely rural. Many homes do not currently have access to dependable or fast internet. Some homestead ranches in the area have been in the family for generations and continue to operate ranches. The remoteness of those homes meant high cost to providing fiber internet.

“We have a customer density of one customer for every two square miles,” shared Mitch Hibbard, Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative Chief Operating Officer and cooperative member who lives in the remote area the cooperative serves. “When you drive up and down Highway 82 you realize that’s not here. This is all subdivisions. Which means out farther it is one customer for 10 or 20 square miles to get that average. The density is just not there for any type of investment company to come in and provide internet service.”

The Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative’s roots lay in the small rural village of Hope, New Mexico. Seventy-five residents banded together in 1949 to create a telephone system centered in a home living room. They later applied for funding from the Rural Utilities Service to help expand their telephone service. That service is now part of the Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative and serves approximately 2,700 members over a 4,929 square mile area in 4 counties.

man holding equipment looking in fiber cable box

The cooperative’s goal is to provide all its customers, including those in the most remote areas of the service area, high-speed fiber internet. Their mission is to provide progressive high-quality communication services and valuable career opportunities. From 2020 to 2023, USDA Rural Development awarded the cooperative $62.3 million dollars in loans and grants from the ReConnect program that is helping PVT meet that goal.

“With the cooperative, you have to think about all of your members,” shared Tabitha Davis, the marketing and public relations manager at PVT. “You can’t just leave somebody out because they are too rural. We really want to look at the best interest for each one. And sometimes we have to get very strategic and creative on how we are going to make the business model work.”

To reach their members within the cost limits and timelines required by the ReConnect program, PVT determined it was most effective to use existing electric poles to install the new fiber lines.

“To maximize what we can do with the ReConnect money, we have decided to go aerial and use the infrastructure of the rural electric co-ops,” said Hibbard. “We thought it was a great idea because it drops the price to about a third of what it is, sometimes even a quarter of what it is to bury fiber. It also lessens the environmental footprint; we’re not going to tear up the world.”

The Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative is working with the Otero County Electric Cooperative and the Central Valley Electric Cooperative to replace older poles that do not have telecommunications space and cannot be used to install fiber. The updates also strengthen some of the electric infrastructure in the area for shared members.

“We have always taken pride in our relationship with the electric cooperatives,” shared Davis. “We have been working closely with their team to coordinate project details and provide proper communication with members.”

Aside from using space on power poles, the cooperative also uses spare conduit they installed during previous construction. Since 1998, the cooperative planned for future advancements and installed the spare conduit that is now allowing them to deploy fiber more quickly.

“If you are going to dig anywhere in our service area you are going to go through rock even though it looks like topsoil,” said Hibbard. “You have to saw rock, and that’s incredibly expensive. We will use that existing conduit wherever we can, but then we are going to the poles.”

Project construction in some areas is finally in the phase where customers can sign up for service now or very soon.

man looking in fiber cable box

“We’ve been attending area meetings to let people know where we are on the projects and they are so excited,” shared Davis. “Several people told me at the meetings if they had better internet their kids would come visit more with their grandkids. Being able to work remotely is now a necessity for many households.”

Residents who already have high-speed internet already see the impacts, especially when it comes to healthcare.

“Living out here we really struggle with finding doctors and any kind of healthcare that we can get into within a decent amount of time,” said Davis. “Before, anytime me or my family is sick we would have to drive an hour to Alamogordo to go to Urgent Care. I have fiber at my house now, so we are able to call and talk to a doctor online. We want that for all of our members.

The cooperative is currently working with the local hospitals to help them implement telehealth options and provide members education on how to use that solution.

“We have a couple people that are able to do their physical therapy from home with a decent broadband connection,” said Hibbard. “Our broadband connection is allowing a gentleman to receive at home dialysis and live out his years on the ranch instead of being put into nursing care, where it’s an hour and a half to two-hour drive to go see him. He’s going to enjoy his last years a whole lot better at home.”

Families with children in school will also see a benefit, not only from increased opportunities through online schooling but also for local school participation.

“In higher elevations, they no longer cancel school for snow.” said Hibbard. “They pivot to an online day. But if you don’t have decent internet service, you’re out. You miss the school day. Now, if students go to a remote model when bad weather arises, they can continue their education at home, with several students on the internet at the same time.”

Public safety in the area will also benefit. In one area the cooperative covers, the town needs to turn off their community security system to join a virtual video meeting. Once the town connects to the fiber network, they will have bandwidth to join virtual video meetings without disabling the security system. Residents will also have more capability to use internet connected video surveillance systems at their homes for more security.

The cooperative is already helping with community safety by providing landline telephone service to all members. That is important for calling 911 since the area has little to no cell coverage. The landline telephone service also ensures authorities can reach residents during emergencies such as wildfires through the Reverse 911 process.

“We have about 3,000 landline telephone customers,” shared Davis. “The majority of residents in PVT’s Mayhill and Hondo exchanges really depend on their landline phones. In the mountains we have little to no cell service, so the landlines provide support during emergencies, especially when we have power outages.”

The ReConnect funded construction is still underway, and the cooperative continues its work to reach their most remote members with the funding.

“I think we’ve raised the property values, the education options, the entrepreneurship capabilities and the employment opportunities,” said Hibbard. “The ReConnect program has been a big game changer for southeast New Mexico. My biggest hope is that these ReConnect programs continue, because they are changing the rural landscape.

For more information on how Rural Development could help you or your rural business, visit the programs page. Peñasco Valley Telephone cooperative area residents can find out more and view if their address is on the fiber expansion route at www.pvt.com/fiber-construction.

Obligation Amount:
$56,853,304
Year(s) of Obligation:
, , ,
Congressional District:
  • New Mexico: District 2