Dell Telephone Cooperative – Unlicensed Fixed Wireless – Cloudcraft 01 PAU
Dell Telephone Cooperative (DTC) proposes to deploy an unlicensed Fixed Wireless project to serve 640 unserved and underserved locations in and around Timberon, located within the Cloudcraft 01 PAU area of Otero County. DTC identified these locations during its design of the proposed NM BEAD project and the associated PAU.    DTC intends to utilize an advanced unlicensed fixed wireless broadband network using Tarana Wireless Inc.’s G1 platform. This next-generation Fixed Wireless Access (ngFWA) system is designed to deliver fiber-class performance over unlicensed spectrum, with high throughput, low latency, and strong interference mitigation capabilities.   The network architecture includes multiple tower sites connected via 10 Gbps fiber backhaul to the Timberon Central Office, which is further linked to Dell City and the broader DWDM fiber network. One tower (Otero) is served by a 1 Gbps microwave link. The system uses Base Nodes (BNs) and Remote Nodes (RNs) operating in the 5 GHz and 6 GHz unlicensed bands, with each BN capable of delivering up to 2.4 Gbps per sector and supporting up to 1,000 clients per cell. The network design supports beamforming, MU-MIMO, and carrier aggregation across multiple 40 MHz channels, enabling high spectral efficiency (up to 90 bps/Hz) and robust performance even in interference-prone environments. Tarana’s Asynchronous Burst Interference Cancellation (ABIC) and self-interference suppression (up to 45 dB) further enhance reliability. Security is enforced through AES-128 encryption, device authentication via Tarana’s Cloud Suite, and operator-specific certificates. Quality of Service (QoS) is managed using 802.1Q-based prioritization and fair access scheduling.   DTC’s service offerings for residential subscribers within the ULFW footprint include affordable high speed offerings ensuring potential subscribers of all income levels have options available. DTC’s residential service offerings range from 100Mbps at $60 to 1Gbps at $105, even the lowest service offering is sufficient for a family to simultaneously work remotely, attend school remotely, and have access to telemedicine and entertainment.   The need for grant funding to construct ULFW to the unserved and underserved BEAD locations is driven by financial feasibility insomuch as the cost of serving the 620 locations does not return a positive NPV during the life of ULFW assets. These locations currently lack access to broadband service at sufficient speeds and the remote nature of these locations exponentially increases the cost to deploy ULFW service. Without support from the BEAD grant program, it will not be financially feasible to deploy a high-speed broadband network to these locations.   DTC matching funds for the proposed BEAD project consist of contributing 25% of the cost of the project through a cash match.    DTC’s deployment timeline for the project is crafted in a manner to include contingency timing for any unforeseen delays and will be completed and active within 23 months after the grant award has been made. The timeline elements consist of but are not limited to, permitting, detailed engineering, procurement, staking, and testing and turnup.    The strategies associated with the proposed BEAD project consist of constructing the network and as quicky and efficiently as possible, pre-marketing and marketing activities and outreach to locations in the BEAD project area, and providing customer support and ongoing system monitoring. DTC’s experienced and well-qualified staff continuously monitors the network to ensure it is operating at peak efficiency, all traffic is moving smoothly and reduce bottlenecks through diverse and redundant routing. Any disruption to the network is quickly identified and teams dispatched to isolate the problem and effect any repairs. DTC performs routine maintenance and upgrades of the network to ensure long-term viability of the network.