Contact: Isaac Padilla
Office: 505/986.4819
Mobile: 505/264.6512
Isaac.Padilla@nmlegis.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Legislative Committee to Discuss Future of Broadband in New Mexico
Santa Fe-Senator Majority Whip Michael Padilla (D-14-Bernalillo) will chair the Science, Technology and Telecommunications Committee on October 20 and 21 in room 317 at the State Capitol in Santa Fe. The meeting will focus on expanding broadband in New Mexico and increasing the speed of broadband systems already in New Mexico.
“New Mexico’s broadband access and expansion strategies have a direct impact on our job creation and economic future” Sen. Padilla. “Improving our broadband infrastructure will improve education and New Mexico’s position to compete for high wage jobs.”
Members of the business community, representatives from Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs and education professionals will be discussing the current broadband infrastructure in our schools and in our communities. This will include the next generation standards and ideas to help develop a strategy to meet those standards.
“We have successfully worked with industry and the school district in Belen to increase the speed at all Belen schools to 1 gigabit per second,” said Sen. Padilla. “I encourage anyone who supports expanding access for their communities to attend the committee meeting.”
Facebook recently broke ground on a data center in Los Lunas New Mexico. New Mexico needs to improve access to broadband to rural areas to attract companies, like Facebook, that require access to high speed broadband. Currently, 39% of rural Americans do not have access to speeds of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload according to the FCC. That number increase to 68% in rural tribal lands. In New Mexico, 61% of the population in rural areas does not have access to 25 Mbps.
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