New Mexico

The Pueblo of Zia will use a newly awarded broadband planning grant to support fiber connectivity to 193 unserved homes and 12 Tribal community institutions. The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion has given the Pueblo in Sandoval County a $100,000 grant through OBAE’s Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. The state grant will help provide high-quality internet connectivity for the Pueblo of Zia’s Tribal Administration and community, installing 12 miles of fiber and related infrastructure. 

More than four million annual visitors, students and residents in New Mexico will soon have public Wi-Fi access at city parks, state parks, public housing, civic spaces, community centers and senior centers after the state’s broadband office awarded nearly $6 million in grants. The Office of Broadband Access and Expansion has approved nine Wi-Fi grants through its American Rescue Plan Act Community Wi-Fi Project, a newly launched program designed to help municipal, county, and regional governments and state agencies expand Wi-Fi service.

The milestone ruling by a New Mexico court that found Meta contributed to a youth mental health crisis could serve as a blueprint for other state and individual legal challenges seeking to hold tech companies liable for harms stemming from their platforms.

U.S. states and territories are making progress on their broadband goals this summer. A number of state-run initiatives have been launched, and several infrastructure projects are in full swing. While it's easy to have all eyes on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program—and, hypocritically, more on that later—there are countless other actions states are taking to ensure robust broadband access and universal digital adoption. From infrastructure planning to deployment to increasing awareness and resources, states are doing it all.

More than 32,000 students, teachers and staff in two southern New Mexico school districts and one charter school are now connected to the state’s broadband education network, a system that offers schools faster and more secure high-speed internet.

New Mexico is soliciting public comment as it prepares to roll out a statewide broadband affordability program. The program, dubbed the Low‑Income Telecommunications Assistance Program, is the first statewide initiative to offer a similar type of support as the Affordable Connectivity Program, which ran out of federal funding in 2024.

Tribal land in southwestern New Mexico could soon get its first broadband connections. The Fort Sill Chiricahua-Warm Springs-Apache Tribe near Akela in Luna County is in line for fiber broadband infrastructure following two $100,000 state broadband planning grants awarded by the state’s broadband office through its Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. Fort Sill, headquartered in Apache, Oklahoma, currently operates a convenience store and owns about 1,910 acres of an expanded area in Luna County.

Oracle is touting changes to its plans for a massive 1,400-acre, 2+GW data center campus in New Mexico as it awaits a key permit for the project, hoping its new plan will be enough to win over regulators despite extensive public backlash against the project. The campus in question is Stargate’s $165 billion Project Jupiter data center, one of a series of super-campuses OpenAI and its partners are seeking to build around the world.

Skylark Broadband submitted its First Quarterly Compliance Report as subject to Tier 4 non-compliance status under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program for SAC 499029 in the state of New Mexico. Skylark has no newly deployed, geocoded broadband locations to report. Skylark’s total obligation under RDOF for SAC 499029 is 940 broadband serviceable locations, with a 40 percent interim milestone requiring certification of 376 deployed locations by March 1, 2026. Zero locations have been certified as deployed. 

Continental Divide Electric Cooperative (CDEC) submitted an interim build-out shortfall notification dated Jan. 5, 2026. In accordance with Federal Communications Commission rules and CDEC’s Tier 3 compliance gap status, the Company submitted its first quarterly report regarding progress towards complying with its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund obligations in New Mexico. CDEC reports that, since Dec.