A glance at Colorado’s broadband coverage map shows an impressive 91 percent outreach. However, it also makes it strikingly obvious that Ute Mountain towns like Towawoc remain insufficiently covered. As the Colorado Sun reports, Colorado is determined to achieve 100 percent coverage, a plan supported by Ute leaders like Bernadette Cuthair.
“That was good news to our ears,” said Cuthair, commenting on the HB 1298 provision to direct $20 million to plans for the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute tribes for broadband infrastructure. “We have a very slow speed,” she explained. “In many cases, the provider’s actually providing 3-megabits (download) and 500 kilobits (upload) for services according to their own website…The southwest Colorado region could benefit from more redundancy of services and options.”
Rural residents in Colorado need the federal funding and outreach, but can be at the mercy of federal data that can show coverage where locals know none exists. “We’re going to require more data map accuracy to our GIS and mapping team so we have a better understanding of being able to tell the people in Colorado, where service is good and where it’s lacking and where we need to make improvements,” said Antonio Martinez, the newly appointed executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office. Martinez noted that his own house is just beyond the town’s broadband reach where connectivity suddenly drops off.
Colorado is working to coordinate various agencies, local governments, and providers to identify and address coverage gaps within the state. Allotting funding to the projects that will do the most good for underserved residents continues to be a challenge.
“My concern is that broadband is local,” said Teresa Ferguson, the Colorado Broadband Office’s director of Federal Broadband Engagement. “It’s a local issue and the results of the Connect America Fund — the last auction that the FCC engaged in — left a lot of areas of Colorado with 10 megabits down, 1 megabit up service. For millions of dollars. I worry that history could repeat itself here.”
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