Tribal Member Update on the Community WI-FI
UPDATE September 8, 2022 – The community Wi-Fi back up and running on a temporary connection. Speeds may be a little slow until we swap over to our actual permanent connection (Hopefully end of next week, but ultimately in the hands of contractors), but people should be back up and running now! I’d like to thank our Network techs Ben Roberts and Tim Crowe, as well as Copper Canyon Communication in Kingman, for stepping up and getting this back online so quickly. 😊 -Mikel Allen
UPDATE September 7, 2022 – At about 3:00pm yesterday our Community Wi-Fi connection was terminated by the provider. We knew this was coming (notices in Gam’yu, on the Radio, and on the website for the last couple of months), we just didn’t have an exact time or date of the disconnect. We’ve been working with several companies to continue services, and while a lot of progress has been made, there is still more work to be done going forward.
We have techs working on a possible temporary solution as we speak, with the hopes that we can at least get a limited connection up ASAP. We already had an install for a better connection coming from Kingman scheduled for this Friday, and we have the necessary networking equipment needed for that ordered -which should be arriving next week. So in short, we’re attempting to get the Community Wi-Fi working, at least to some degree right now, with much better service coming in the next couple of weeks.
There will be future outages as there is still equipment that needs to be physically moved from one tower to another as soon as all the leasing agreements are finalized, but all of that will be planned and organized. We’ll make sure to keep everyone informed as we continue to repair and improve the system. Thank you for your support and understanding!
July 1, 2022 – Unfortunately, the company supplying the free community WI-FI to the Reservation has decided that with schools resuming and most of the country moving past COVID mandates, they will no longer be serving our community. They have not given us a specific date to shut off services, but we expect it to be sometime in the month of July. The Council moved quickly on passing a motion to secure an alternate provider, and the Tribal IT Department has already signed contracts to provide another 2 years of WI-FI for the community. Due to the time required to move equipment over and set up new services, we are unfortunately expecting an interruption to WI-FI services, potentially for several weeks. As plans move forward and dates become more clear, we will continue updating the community via the Tribe’s website, the Gam’yu, and KWLP The Peach Radio. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter as we work to get everything back up and running as fast as possible.