Continental Divide Electric Cooperative Zuni Schools to Receive CDEC Red Bolt Broadband
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Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Robert E. Castillo, P.E. Grants Office 200 E. High St.• P.O. Box 1087 Grants, N.M. 87020 505-285-6656 505-287-2234, fax Gallup Office 2500 NM Highway 602 • P.O. Box 786 Gallup, N.M. 87305 505-863-3641 505-863-2175, fax After Hours 877-775-5211 Office Hours 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (M-F) Satellite Payment Offices Villa de Cubero, Zuni, Tribal Utility Dept. Website www.cdec.coop Board of Trustees President Keith Gottlieb, At-Large Vice President Vacant Secretary-Treasurer Joe Hoskins, District 7 Lyle Adair District 8 Alex Griego District 1 Wes Malcolm District 2 Lloyd Ortega District 4 Claudio Romero District 3 Alfred Saavedra District 5
tudents and teachers of Zuni Public School District can look forward to new, highspeed, fiber-optic internet service come the 2020-21 school year. “I am happy to announce that construction is underway, and initial service should be available before June 30th,” said Robert E. Castillo, chief executive officer of Continental Divide Electric Co-op. CDEC’s Red Bolt Broadband internet service received a federally-funded E-rate contract to provide 1-gigabit of service to each school in the district. Right now, each school only receives 100-megabit equivalent circuits from its current provider. “At the moment, they have a bottleneck. High-speed internet is important for students to have access to the same resources as their peers around the state and country,” said William Dixon, manager of CDEC’s Information Technology department. The $1.1 million of federal funding will build the trunk line necessary to deliver the amount of bandwidth called for in the E-rate contract. CDEC is investing additional resources to upgrade its electric distribution system’s communications, as well as position itself to potentially provide Red Bolt Broadband to Zuni and Ramah residents and businesses in the future. “Kelly Cable of New Mexico, a CDEC contractor, is constructing the fiber construction component for this project,” said Angela Evans, CDEC’s operations manager. In addition, Evans said there is a significant amount of make-ready construction needed to support the fiber cabling that will be strung some 25 miles to the connection point. CDEC line crews will perform that work, which includes replacing 32 poles, beginning in May. Most of the CDEC and Kelly Cable construction will not require disruptions of power. CDEC will do its best to notify, in advance, those who may be impacted by brief, planned outages. CDEC’s Red Bolt Broadband service is a byproduct of the co-op’s effort to improve the reliability, efficiency, safety and quality of the co-op’s electric distribution system through Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). SCADA is a digital energy-management system that requires CDEC to install fiberoptic lines and other high-speed internet equipment throughout its service territory to remotely monitor its electrical distribution grid and gather data in real-time. CDEC started SCADA construction in 2017, allowing the co-op to begin building fiber-to-thehome the following year in Grants and Milan. Red Bolt Broadband’s internet access is ultra-reliable, offering residential and commercial subscribers service at symmetrical speeds, starting at 50-megabits per second, up to 1-gigabit per second – something wireless, satellite and DSL providers are unable to provide with their technology. “We are a local, high-speed internet provider with the co-op principles at heart, specifically the seventh Cooperative Principal—Concern for Community. The Zuni project is a great example of our commitment to work for the sustainability of those we serve,” Castillo said.
16 June 2020 • enchantment.coop
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