Arizona Daily Sun

After being officially approved in January, Kingman (AZ)-based Wecom Fiber officially broke ground on its high-speed, fiber broadband network for Flagstaff on April 16. The Flagstaff City Council officially selected Wecom Fiber in September 2024 to bring high-speed broadband Internet to 34 city facilities, including Flagstaff City Hall, the Flagstaff Aquaplex, public libraries, fire stations, and more. The contract was approved in January, with Flagstaff providing $2 million from a city grant to fund the project, with $3 million contributed by Wecom, according to its press release.

Expanding broadband to tribal communities is not just a technical challenge, it’s a social and political one. Morgan Vigil-Hayes, a computer scientist at Northern Arizona University, has participated in several projects aimed at addressing the challenges of tribal connectivity since 2018. It is Vigil-Hayes' personal research passion dating back to her dissertation, and a topic that became even more pressing during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.