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THE NEW MEXICAN Monday, July 7, 2014
Next: Both sides look to Hobby Lobby case for clues
Railyard: At this point, the city will install a stretch of fiber to city offices in the Railyard. The long-term goal is to create a data center where Internet service providers could plug in and city offices could store electronic data.
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Education Building: Fiber will run through here to the Simms Building.
The fiber trail starts at CenturyLink's central telephone exchange. Only a telecommunication business such as Cyber Mesa can run cables through the central exchange.
Simms Building: The state's Internet service runs from here to Albuquerque, and it's here that the city hopes to take advantage of the backhaul from Albuquerque.
Fiber hut: This where the trail could end. The fiber hut, owned by CenturyLink, ties into the Internet backbone running to Albuquerque and Denver. Water Division: Some original plans called for laying fiber out to the city's Water Division, but it's unclear if that will happen.
An independent Internet pipeline Santa Fe residents pay the same average monthly rate for Internet service as Albuquerque residents, but can only browse the Web at half the speed. City officials hope a $1 million fiber trail project will increase competition and drive up Internet speeds in Santa Fe.
THE NEW MEXICAN
Internet: Cyber Mesa, a local ISP, selected by city to carry out project Continued from Page A-1
The long and short One of Santa Fe’s major Web hubs rests in a nondescript gray building on Second Street, near the Rail Trail. The unremarkable building, known in industry parlance as a fiber hut, is owned by Century Link, which, along with Comcast, dominates the city’s Internet landscape. Inside, a maze of interwoven cables connects through a 2-mile line to the company’s central telephone exchange along East Alameda Street, amid downtown’s many bars and restaurants. Most other Internet providers have to access that line to serve their customers, said Sean Moody, a project administrator with the city’s economic division who is leading the Internet project. Century Link acts as a sort of toll service, he said, giving the national telecommunications company tremendous control over the city’s Web service. “It’s unregulated and uncompetitive,” Moody said. He believes that de facto monopolization of access is partially responsible for the fact that Santa Fe residents currently pay $50 a month for an average speed of 5 megabits per second, whereas Albuquerque residents pay the same price and get 10 megabits per second. Century Link denies that its control of the line inhibits competition. Company spokesman David Gonzales said in a statement that Santa Fe customers have many choices. For ordinary customers, that might be true. But for businesses that are wholesale buyers of Internet access, choices are limited. That’s where the city project would come in, Moody said. By building a parallel and independent line from Century Link’s downtown exchange to its fiber hut on Second Street, providers would have an alternative to Century Link’s line, Moody said. Along the way, Cyber Mesa, a local Internet service provider that the city designated to carry out the project, would also tie fiber through the Railyard, the Capitol Complex, the Simms Building and the city’s water department at 801 W. San Mateo Road. The link should foster competition and increase speeds as new providers vie for customers, Moody said. Jane Hill, Cyber Mesa’s owner, said the goal isn’t to undercut Century Link but to provide “another way out of Dodge.” The city contract calls for creation of a new company, tentatively called “SF Fiber,” which will sell wholesale space on the city’s fiber lines. Cyber Mesa would run the company the first four years before the contract goes out to bid to other companies, Moody said. Any profit from the sales would go to the company running SF Fiber, Moody said.
Cyber Mesa also is required to create a data center that will serve as another independent port to access the wider Internet.
The decision process Moody said that when he first began the project, he wasn’t sure what he needed, so he put out a request for proposals and received responses from Internet service providers Cyber Mesa, City Link, Century Link and Plateau. Century Link, he said, told him not to waste money on the project, and Plateau’s ideas weren’t comprehensive enough, Moody said. That left Cyber Mesa and City Link. Moody said he eventually canceled the request for proposals, citing a clause that allows the city to skip the competitive bidding process when selecting a utility service such as a water or power provider. Moody said telecommunications falls in that category. It’s one of many aspects of the city’s plans that have flustered City Link owner John Brown, almost to the point of litigation. Foremost, he said, is Cyber Mesa’s lack of experience compared to his own. He said he has more than 170 commercial accounts and hundreds of residential ones. “Jane has a nice company,” Brown said. “That doesn’t mean that they’re the right organization for this job.” Brown said that in his bid he proposed creating a 7-mile loop that would have accomplished the city’s goals and provided additional coverage and redundancy. The city didn’t bite, saying that he couldn’t complete the project within the funding limits, he said. Brown said he could, but the city remained unconvinced and instead opted for Cyber Mesa. He also questioned the need for running cable through Century Link’s central exchange, saying it was unnecessary and expensive. Moody said the city wanted to connect to the central telephone exchange because much of the existing Internet infrastructure already runs through it. He said Brown has a good business model but it didn’t meet the city’s needs. “It wouldn’t serve all the ways to access the Internet,” Moody said. Cyber Mesa’s plan does, he said. As for Cyber Mesa’s lack of experience, Hill disagrees. She said her company has provided Internet service for Santa Fe residents for years and has done plenty of fiber work, most recently in Silver City and for the Casas de San Juan development near The Santa Fe Opera. Moody added that he wouldn’t have chosen someone he didn’t believe was capable of completing the job.
Public response Gonzales, the Century Link
spokesman, said the company already pays “hundreds of millions of dollars every year” to bring broadband to more residents throughout the country. “While we believe that public broadband networks that compete directly with private industry are not the best use of taxpayer dollars,” Gonzales said in a written statement, “we support government initiatives to leverage existing infrastructure and extend broadband service to unserved areas.” Christopher Mitchell is director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative with the Institute for Local Self- Reliance, a national nonprofit that advocates for local communities to solve their own problems rather than turning to national providers. He said many national telephone companies are positioned to be gatekeepers to fast Internet access, and they profit from it. He added that most Americans are struck with cable or digital subscriber lines, which transmit data over telephone lines. “The city is trying to rectify it, and that makes sense,” Mitchell said. “It’s a good first step, but it can’t be the only step.” Mitchell also warned that the city should not expect competition to flourish on its own, saying Internet giants such as Comcast and Century Link “have a lot of power to run competitors out of business.” Mitchell warned that Comcast and Century Link have a history of opposing public Internet infrastructure projects through legislation, and that the city should expect resistance if it continues building such projects. “They’re very happy with the market the way it is,” Mitchell said. Damian Taggart owns and operates MindShare Studios, a Web design firm. He said that for his day-to-day work of coding and creating Web pages, Santa Fe’s Internet overall is “acceptable. ” But uploading or downloading large files can take hours. “It will certainly be welcomed by all the Internet companies in town,” Taggart said of the city’s project. Moody has said the purpose of the project is to bring faster Internet to Santa Fe to benefit high-traffic users such as the city’s film studios, schools, hospitals and other businesses. Hill said the city’s project also could benefit smaller Internet providers, such as La Cañada Wireless Association. Joel Yelich, president of La Cañada, said the co-op provides service to about 400 members. La Cañada currently operates its service by leasing bandwidth from Century Link, but he said he will be watching the city’s fiberoptic plans closely. “I certainly hope that is successful in some way,” Yelich said. “The more competition, the better.” Contact Chris Quintana at 986-3093 or cquintana@sfnewmexican.com.
regulators would violate their religious beliefs. To do so, they must fill out a government document known as Form 700 that enables their insurers or third-party administrators to take on the responsibility of paying for the birth control. The employer does not have to arrange the coverage or pay for it. Insurers get reimbursed by the government through credits against fees owed under other parts of the health law. Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the requirement to offer birth control. The objections by religious nonprofits are rooted in teachings against facilitating sin. Roman Catholic bishops and other religious plaintiffs argue that filling out the government form that registers opposition to contraceptives, then sending the document to the insurer or third-party administrator, is akin to signing a permission slip to engage in evil. In the Hobby Lobby case, the justices rejected the government argument that there was no violation of conscience because the link between birth control coverage and the outcome the employer considers morally wrong was slight. Just hours after the Hobby Lobby decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta granted a temporary reprieve to the Alabama-based Eternal Word Television Network. Judge William H. Pryor Jr. said in a separate opinion in that case that the administration “turns a blind eye to the undisputed evidence that delivering Form 700 would violate the Network’s religious beliefs.” But the Supreme Court could draw a distinction between subsidizing birth control and signing a document to deputize a third-party to do so, said Robin Fretwell Wilson, a family law specialist at the University of Illinois College of Law. “Think about how thinned down that objection is,” Fretwell Wilson said. “The court might say that is a bridge too far.” Judge Karen Nelson Moore of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said the document is a reasonable way for objecting organizations to inform the insurer, but that the obligation to cover contraception is in the health law, not the form. “Self-certification allows the eligible organization to tell the insurance issuer and third-party administrator, ‘We’re
excused from the new federal obligation relating to contraception,’ and in turn, the government tells those insurance companies, ‘But you’re not,’ ” the judge wrote. People on both sides of this argument are looking to the Hobby Lobby case for clues about how the justices might come out in this next round. In a Supreme Court filing, the Justice Department said the outcome strongly suggested that the court would rule in its favor when considering the nonprofits’ challenge. “The decision in Hobby Lobby rested on the premise that these accommodations ‘achieve all of the Government’s aims’ underlying the preventive-health services coverage requirement ‘while providing greater respect for religious liberty,’ ” the Justice Department wrote, quoting from Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion. The legal filing was in opposition to an emergency plea from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., to avoid having to fill out Form 700. Wheaton is one of only a few nonprofits not to have won temporary relief in its court fight. Rienzi, who also represents Wheaton, wrote in reply that the government is wrong to assume that the Hobby Lobby decision “blessed the accommodation.” He noted that Alito specifically said the court was not deciding whether the administration’s workaround for nonprofits adequately addressed their concerns. On Thursday, the court, with three justices dissenting, allowed Wheaton to avoid using the form while its case remains on appeal. Instead, the college can send written notice of its objections directly to the Health and Human Services Department rather than the insurer or the third-party administrator. At the same time, the government can take steps to ensure that women covered by Wheaton’s health plan can get emergency contraception the college won’t pay for. Several legal experts said that perhaps a simple revision to the government document at the center of the dispute could resolve matters. “I think the question will come down to does the government really need them to tell the insurance companies or can you reword the form,” said Marc Stern, a religious liberty specialist and general counsel for the American Jewish Committee. The faith-affiliated charities “might win a redrafting of the form. I don’t think they can win an argument that says we can do absolutely nothing,” Stern said.
Vietnam veteran and Veterans Affairs volunteer Durward Forbes of Alamogordo discusses the challenges of transporting veterans hundreds of miles to appointments in Albuquerque. SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Travel: N.M. doesn’t have vans to reach rural veterans Continued from Page A-1 “The VA, it’s just what you hear on the TV,” Jean Gorn said. Allegations of secret waiting lists at VA centers across the country, whistleblower complaints regarding rigged scheduling practices, patient deaths and complaints from veterans about delayed and uncompassionate care have prompted national uproar. “It’s horrible that it had to come to this, but we’re going to take this as an opportunity to make care better,” said Tim Hale, head of New Mexico’s state veterans services agency. Among the priorities, he said, is improving care for rural veterans. He said the VA doesn’t have any mobile medical vans in New Mexico, but some eastern states have two or three. About a quarter of the nation’s 22 million veterans live in rural areas and a majority are enrolled in the VA health care system. The agency created an office of rural health in 2007 to boost telemedicine opportunities and expand primary care programs in rural areas. It also began offering grants last year to help with transportation in highly rural areas. However, only 25 states have counties that qualify for the grants and less than half of the counties in New Mexico are eligible.
No counties in Pennsylvania are eligible, despite a 2012 legislative study that found much work needed to be done to meet rural veterans’ needs. Oregon was among the states that applied for grants. Analysts there told state lawmakers the only organized transportation to a VA medical center from many rural counties was the DAV van system or other volunteers. “The need for reliable transportation is compounded due to limitations on the number and frequency of medical appointments that can be accommodated within the VA medical system,” the analysts said. “When veterans are able to obtain an appointment, it is imperative that they attend the appointment, and be on time.” That’s where Joe Price and Durward Forbes come in. The Vietnam veterans are among a team of DAV volunteers from southern New Mexico who shuttle patients to Albuquerque and El Paso. Their trips often begin before sunrise and end after dark. They’ve been stuck in traffic, forded snow drifts and dodged rabbits along dirt roads in an effort to find a veteran’s home. Without transportation, the veterans wouldn’t get treatment, Price said. “A lot of them aren’t really in the shape to even ride that distance, but they don’t really have any choice,” he said. “It’s hard on some of them. It can be very hard.”