Broadband Manager Jerry Smith
By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
The community broadband project is in the planning stages, but Broadband Manager Jerry Smith reported to Los Alamos County Council in May that construction is tentatively scheduled to begin June 2026.
He explained that the project is in phase one, which is the design and engineering phase. Plans include high level and low-level designs.
The high-level design involves gathering data for the County, building maps, verifying County-owned infrastructure, discussing how to phase the build out, updating the bill of materials and updating the cost estimate, Smith said.
Low-level design includes the actual drawings and permitted schematics, which will be handed to the construction crew to do the work, he added.
“Construction won’t start until we get the low-level design approved by council … the tentative timeline has us bringing that to you in March or April in 2026 and that will give time for construction to start in June of 2026,” Smith said.
As far as what has been accomplished thus far, Smith said several deliverables, one being a revised cost estimate, have been received. Furthermore, the high-level design has been submitted and is being reviewed. Once it is approved, work will begin on the low-level design. Smith also mentioned that the contractor for the project, Bonfire, toured the future construction site in January.
He added a process called proofing was conducted with success. Smith explained that conduits were installed in neighborhoods affected by the Cerro Grande Fire, but were never used. They sat empty for 25 years.
“So the idea was we could reuse that and run fiber inside that conduit that’s unused – we don’t know how much of it is still good so Bonfire worked with a contractor and supervised their work … in February around those neighborhoods and used a compressor to put air through it to see if it was intact and the good news is 95 percent of it is intact and that’s an immediate savings to the project,” Smith said.
Smith offered more details about the high-level design. He explained there will be three hubs in Los Alamos and White Rock. One will be in the basement of the Los Alamos County Golf Course clubhouse, another will be in downtown Los Alamos and White Rock will have a single hub. From the hub, the line will break off to a passive splitter and then travel to customers.
“The idea is when we do start building the network, we start closest to CO – the central office – where the equipment is located and you build out from there,” Smith said. “When we see the phasing information, you will see that the construction by default will happen close to the equipment hubs and be built out from there to the more remote locations.”
He added that network speeds will vary with each line to support the total possible number of users at the subscriber location. Plus, resilient lines will be built so if one line goes down there will still be a line going from the north side of Los Alamos over to where the CO is in White Rock.
“That’s one of the points that we want to make – we did want to step up with resilience design both for some redundant fiber lines that are part of the in-town network and some redundancy in the design that will provide a second internet feed to Albuquerque – it’s designed to have two separate – not in the same path – feeds so if one goes down, we have a backup,” Smith said.
The progress on the middle mile project, which San Ildefonso Pueblo is building to provide a second fiber optic line to Los Alamos, was shared with council, too. Smith said that the conduit was installed on N.M.4, and the conduit installation from the N.M.4/N.M. 502 intersection to the river bridge is in progress. Work from the river bridge, east along N.M. 502 and San Ildefonso Pueblo’s eastern boundary is in the permitting process. The total budget for the community broadband project is $35 million. Los Alamos County CFO Melissa Dadzie reported that GRT revenue bonds will be issued to pay for the project. She added that the debt service will be over 20 years and was built into the County’s adopted budget and long-range financial projection. Some on council questioned sticking to the budget and timeline. Council Vice Chair Suzie Havemann expressed some concern given that Los Alamos has rocky topography that can increase project costs. This could eat away at the $5.6 million budgeted for all the project’s contingencies, she said.
“I am nervous about this part … (encountering) more than 50 percent (of rock during construction) is going to be really hard, impossible rock so I am looking to you guys to say, no really it’s probably going to be about 25 percent – we’re fine … or you really just don’t know,” Havemann asked.
Deputy County Manager Juan Rael said it isn’t known but the County is trying to mitigate the risk mainly by using existing aerial installation for the fiber lines by putting the lines on existing power poles.
“Aerial is our best bet in terms of missing avoiding rock,” he said. “So, every place we can have aerial (fiber installed) on existing poles that are owned by Department of Public Utilities is sort of our option one … (other options) go down from there (where aerial is not present).”
He added the goal is for the project to stay in its $35 million budget.
“We are doing everything we can to mitigate that – to not get into that, to eat all the contingencies,” Rael said.
Havemann asked if doing aerial rather than burying the lines will undermine the quality and reliability of the project.
“It’s not that big of a difference,” Smith said. “If money was no object, you would bury it but … we are taking advantage of the assets that we have. It’s basically 50 percent of the project is ending up aerial.”
Before any lines are installed on existing power poles, Rael said the Department of Public Utilities needs to give approval. Council approved the project in November. Bonfire is contracted to do the construction and will operate the County-owned open-access Community Broadband network once it is completed.