Over seventy-five years ago, a group of rural New Mexicans banded together to create Eastern New Mexico Rural Telephone Cooperative. The group wanted to provide telephone service to rural eastern New Mexico. The cooperative is now known as Plateau. Its cooperative area covers 25,000 square miles, over one-fifth of New Mexico’s land area.
The cooperative’s mission is to provide dependable area-wide communication and information services at the lowest price, consistent with sound economy and good management. Starting in 2019, Plateau applied for several USDA Rural Development ReConnect grants. Rural Development awarded the group over $41 million in grant money to help bring high-speed internet to the cooperative’s most rural customers.
The cooperative already provides fiber internet connections to 98 percent of its members. With help from the ReConnect grants, Plateau hopes to reach those in the hardest to reach areas by 2030.
“We will reach every existing customer that we have today through ReConnect one, three and four,” said Regan Williams, Plateau’s chief operations officer. “Now there's no guarantee somebody doesn't build a house out somewhere that we don't know about today. Then we'll have to go back and figure out how to build to them.”
The high-speed internet Plateau provides is already making a difference to rural New Mexicans in the cooperative.
“Fiber makes living in the rural area a little bit more attractive because you can have access to the same services that you could in a big city,” shared Launa Waller, Plateau’s chief executive officer and cooperative member. “You have access to medical care that you didn't have before. You can do a telehealth appointment. Somebody doesn't have to get in a car and drive 150 miles to Lubbock or Amarillo. I don't know any colleges that are not doing some type of an online program, whether it be just a class here and there, a certification or entire degree plans.”
Businesses in the area benefit from the high-speed internet in ways you might not expect.
“We have ranchers out there that can do online auctions because they have high speed internet,” said Williams. “It just allows a little more of a competitive environment for those rural New Mexicans.”
Williams shared the cooperative would have eventually reached all of its members without the ReConnect grants, but it would have taken much longer.
“We would have continued that process, but it would have been through internal funds, meaning we wouldn't have the access to the money as quickly as we do now,” said Williams. “What may take us five years would have probably taken 15 to 20 years to get there. The money allowed us to speed up our schedules greatly.”
That time difference might impact people’s ability to stay in rural areas.
“Without fiber, I would guess many people would have had to move in closer to cities,” said Williams. “What the [Rural Utility Service] grants have allowed us to do is reach those people that could not get internet for whatever reason; either they were too far for DSL or maybe the old copper wouldn't support a data connection. That’s really what these grants have allowed us to do, to get out to the far ends of the areas we serve.”
Plateau’s board of directors represent the constituents of the areas that they live in. The cooperative supports those communities with various grants. It gives out around $200,000 a year in scholarships for graduating high school seniors headed to college. They also have grants for public safety entities, schools, and business startup grants.
“We're customer centric and we are also very involved in the community,” shared Waller. “Those are the communities we live and work in. We really have a robust donation and sponsorship program, making sure that we help sustain businesses and communities [in our cooperative area] and help them get some of the things that they might need.”
Aside from the cooperative area, Plateau also serves as a competitive internet provider in more populated areas like Tucumcari, Roswell, and Clovis. The goal of providing service in those areas is to help create revenue for the cooperative, but it also has an impact on those less rural residents.
“One of the key reasons we go into select markets is to help drive revenue to ensure that we can continue to serve the rural areas to the best of our ability,” said Williams. “It also impacts those local communities, like in Clovis. Now Clovis is 100 percent overbuilt with fiber. Very few communities can boast that.”
Plateau is still using some of the fiber they installed in the late ‘80s. Waller and Williams shared they continue to look to the future with the work they are doing now.
“Fiber is future proof,” said Waller. “That's why we chose to build it and build it underground. Fiber is really king when it comes to the different technologies and providing service today and in the future.”
The cooperative is also prepared for population growth in areas they serve.
“Everything we're building is set to ensure that we're not having to go back and rebury a bunch of fiber,” said Williams. “We're sizing our counts to ensure that if there's an area out there that ends up being subdivided, and people build a bunch of houses, our fiber can accommodate that.
To learn more about Plateau and how they are using the ReConnect grant funds to reach rural customers, visit their website.
To learn more about how Rural Development programs can help you or your rural business, visit the programs page.