New Mexico

More local governments and state agencies in New Mexico will soon be able to provide public Wi-Fi access because of $6 million in U.S. Treasury Department funding for a new community broadband program. The Office of Broadband Access and Expansion launched the New Mexico Community Wi-Fi Digital Connectivity Technology Project, a new program designed to expand and deploy public Wi-Fi in local communities.

Yucca Telecommunications did not meet its applicable Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) deployment milestone by the required deadline due to the RDOF Interim list containing less locations than the number of locations Yucca was awarded in the RDOF auction. Yucca has passed a 100 percent verification audit to demonstrate to the FCC that Yucca is fully deployed to the RDOF-assigned blocks during May 2026. Yucca cannot achieve 100% deployment in the USAC HUBB because the RDOF Interim location list lists only 3 locations within the assigned census blocks.

Three rural and Tribal New Mexico communities are one step closer to high-speed internet access after the state awarded $300,000 in broadband planning grants to Jemez Springs, Doña Ana County, and Santo Domingo Pueblo. The grants were awarded through the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion’s (OBAE) Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program (GWEP).

Jemez Springs will use its grant to:

Three rural and Tribal New Mexico communities are one step closer to high-speed internet access after the state awarded $300,000 in broadband planning grants to Jemez Springs, Doña Ana County, and Santo Domingo Pueblo. The grants were awarded through the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion’s Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. The grants are specifically used for broadband deployment planning.

More than 170 rural students in the Española Public Schools now have access to high-speed internet following the completion of a state-funded broadband project in Rio Arriba County (NM).

New Mexico is deploying a corps of trained digital navigators to help thousands of residents in rural, low-income and older communities build the internet skills needed to access jobs, healthcare and education online. The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) is providing $300,000 to the Department of Workforce Solutions (DWS) to develop and launch the New MexiCorps Digital Navigator program.

Nearly 400 rural students in the Lordsburg (NM) Municipal Schools now have access to high-speed internet after a state-funded broadband project completed construction in one of New Mexico’s rural communities.

In New Mexico, as in every state, the primary reason people can’t get online is that they can’t afford internet service. Fortunately for New Mexicans, their state legislature established a sustainable and budget-neutral way to address this issue.

The New Mexico broadband office is likely to downsize after it’s done managing the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program. “In New Mexico, we do have a plan, and I think the plan will be to scale down a little bit,” Aquiles Trujillo, deputy director of the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access & Expansion, said at the Connected America show in Dallas.