For Angela Diahkah, what started as a self-described “side hustle” is now her full-time job. Diahkah – or “Ange,” as she sometimes goes by – is five years into serving as Network Operations Supervisor and Digital Navigator Program Manager for JNET, the Tribally-owned broadband provider for the Pueblo of Jemez.
Just 50 miles northwest of Albuquerque, Angela leads the charge in building a new fiber network, the gold-standard of Internet connectivity, that once complete will serve her community (one of the 19 Pueblos in New Mexico).
Last week, she was at the 17th Tribal Broadband Bootcamp (TBB) in Aguana, California in the hills above Temecula Valley, along with a half dozen JNET technicians-in-training and JNET Director Kevin Shendo. The 30 or so other TBB participants – representing broadband leaders from several other federally-recognized Tribes – were also there for the three-day immersive learning experience focused on building and operating Tribal Internet networks.
Held in different tribal regions several times a year since the initiative began in 2021, this most recent bootcamp was back at TBB co-founder Matthew Rantanen’s “RantanenTown Ranch.”
“We’re basically trying to find a light in a dark tunnel and just work with what’s best for us,” Angela told ILSR in describing why she and her JNET crew had come, just as they are in the early stages building out their own fiber-to-the-home network.
“We want to expose them to the network,” literally and figuratively, she said.
They were there to get a hands-on education for both fiber and wireless network construction. But also so the group of mostly young technicians had an opportunity to “start networking with other people (and) other Tribal communities so that they know we’re not the only ones in the dark.”
“Hopefully, with the connections they make here, if they do have any issues, they know who to fall back on if we don’t know the answer.”
Finding Light in Fiber
To say the Jemez crew was there “to find light in a dark tunnel” says more about Angela’s humility than the state of her network knowledge. With a resume that includes working as a former CIA communications specialist, tech support for T-Mobile, and later as an IT field technician doing contract work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Angela knows Internet networks better than most – in or outside of Indian Country.
Throughout the three-day submersion into the nuts and bolts of Internet access technologies and what it takes to run an ISP, her up-and-coming JNET technicians shuffled from one demonstration area to another.
It gave them a front row seat into the engineering that allows fiber networks to operate, and also allowed them to see and use the electronic equipment involved.
Angela mostly stood in the back to allow her technicians to get up close, get hands-on, and quiz the instructors at each station along the instructional (and operational) fiber network specially built and spread out across Rantanen’s sprawling rural ranch.
Every so often she would speak to her crew in their native language, Towa, while switching to English in mid-sentence to name certain technical terms here and there: “NID, Network Interface Device … splice case … cladding.”
Crossing The River From Wireless to ‘Future Proof’ Connectivity
Shendo’s roots in tribal networks are similarly deep, dating back nearly a decade.
Serving primarily as the Tribe’s Education Director for the past 25 years overseeing the Pueblo’s education programs, he also helped lead the effort to establish JNET’s fiber backbone when in 2017 a consortium of Tribes received a $4.2 million grant (90 percent of which was funded from the federal E-Rate Program) to build a “self-provisioned” fiber network that would connect libraries and schools of four Pueblos in New Mexico.
“One of the things with the Jemez River Crossing was there was the Jumping Mouse, which was a protected species. So we had to make sure we weren’t impacting the habitat of the Jumping Mouse while we were crossing over the Jemez River (deploying fiber),” Shendo shared with participants on the first day of the bootcamp, light-heartedly explaining some of the early challenges his Tribe faced in deploying the fiber backbone and the extra conduit capacity that would lay the groundwork for its current project.
Using that fiber as backhaul, the Tribe was able to leverage it to support the Tribe’s wireless network, the fiber for which was deployed just before the 2020 pandemic hit, putting them in position to bring broadband – for the first time – to Tribal citizens living on the Pueblo.
While they weren’t able to offer wireless service until March of 2021, “when the pandemic hit we already had the (fiber backbone) infrastructure in place,” Shendo said.
And then in September of 2023, the Tribe received an $8.6 million grant from the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion to build fiber connections out to 546 households spread across 89,000 acres of tribal land that 3,400 Tribal citizens call home.
Currently in Phase One of the project, the Tribe is on track to finish construction and begin offering fiber service by 2027.
The Art of Splicing and How To Ensure No Light Loss When Fiber Goes ‘Dark’
With an array of experienced (Tribal and non-Tribal) network operators and builders on hand, TBB participants were exposed to key fiber network components – from how Network Operation Centers work and how underground fiber is located to fiber splicing and troubleshooting.
And while most of the bootcamp focused on fiber networks, as an increasing number of Tribes are working on fiber projects, TBB participants also spent a day solely focused on the installation of wireless network gear.
Speaking separately to the JNET technicians Angela and Shendo brought, it was clear their desire for the team to get a hands-on deep dive into the work they will be doing to connect homes on the Pueblo was clearly having an impact.
The most experienced of the JNET technicians is William Yepa, wearing a name tag that read “Will i. am.“ Will is the senior NOC Technician for JNET.
But even with two years experience installing and maintaining the Tribe’s wireless network, Yepa said he was learning a lot during the bootcamp.
“We came out here to get more hands-on, more experience like with this area here,” he said, pointing at the demonstration utility poles installed by an Anza Electric Cooperative crew during the bootcamp, which also gave participants a chance to see utility pole placement in action and allowed them to help the Anza crew lash fiber to the poles.
“That was new to me and I like to see how that works. It looks easy, but I don’t know,” Yepa said with a grin.
“I just want to see a lot of stuff and this seems like the place to be where you can get a lot of that experience.”
K’Lijah Tsosie – who likes “sports, sleeping, playing basketball, and working” back home on the Pueblo – said he is new to working in the field and now a part of the team working on splicing fiber and getting it ready to deploy for Phase Two of the project.
“I like it, seeing the different ways other jobs work – like seeing how the fiber is pulled through the conduit here (with a jetting machine) is a lot different than how we do it at home. We use mill tape to pull it through,” the 19 year-old apprentice said. “Also seeing how the aerial works is pretty cool too.”
Keoni Romero, another JNET tech-in-training, said they are “usually doing the wireless home installations and splicing the fiber for our new project. We just finished the splicing for a new housing development and are working on getting to people living in houses. We go out on service calls.”
Romero, who is 20 and in college to get a degree in physical therapy, said when she first got the job as a “Tech 1” she was “completely clueless” and was not “very techie” when she started. But over the months, she has learned through on-site training.
“I’m hoping what I learn here, I can take that skill set back home,” she said. “I’ve met a lot of people … and it’s a lot to learn. But, it’s good to soak up all this information.”
What piqued her interest maybe the most, she said, was learning about the use and purpose of OLTs and OTDRs, devices used to measure the amount of light loss in individual fiber strands to test how stable connections are and where problems may be found.
Building Meaningful Connections
The final surprise “test” on the last day of the bootcamp came when Rantanen staged a fiber cut by “accidentally” rolling his tractor over an exposed, fiber line that connected the big tent workshop on the ranch to the Internet.
Romero and her young colleagues then headed inside the tent to the tables with splice machines on top of them where they fixed the fiber cut in less than 30 minutes, as Angela coached them along, relying mostly by speaking Towa.
“Towa is the native language. Everybody speaks it,” Angela said afterward.
“I teach it (network operations) in Towa because sometimes if you’re not in the field and you’re trying to work on something, and if they have a hard time trying to understand, if you flip the language and say it in basic terms – in how we would translate it – then it’s more meaningful,”
It’s those kinds of meaningful connections JNET is working to build on in hosting the next TBB on the Pueblo of Jemez April 7-10 as the Tribe continues to move their fiber project forward.
Watch a short video of the TBB 16 fiber cut and splice fix here.