I’ve been a customer of Skywerx Internet Services for the past decade, and have been reasonably happy with the service provided. Skywerx has also been a Daily Post advertiser for about the same length of time. I feel good about promoting Skywerx, and I trust they feel good about supporting our little online magazine.
That’s a disclaimer, because we’re going to be talking some more about broadband. Skywerx is one of three local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) here in Archuleta County. The other two are USA Communications and CenturyLink.
Yesterday in Part Three, I tried to paint a picture of a federal government run financially amuck — a government that, for so many reasons, cannot stop spending our grandchildren’s inheritance.
Many other governments seem to be competing in the race to spend that inheritance.
A few years ago, the state of Colorado and the thirteen governmental entities belonging to the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments (SWCCOG) spent over $4 million building the Southwest Colorado Access Network (SCAN) to increase the available Internet bandwidth in little towns like Pagosa Springs. The funds expended here in Pagosa benefitted only a very small part of the community — basically, the old historic downtown, and some outlying government offices.
SCAN wasn’t the first rural Internet project to unfold in southwest Colorado, however. Back in 2009, a ‘quasi-governmental’ agency called EAGLE-Net was awarded $100 million in federal funding by the Obama administration, with a promise to run fiber optic cable to 168 school districts in Colorado. State and local governments kicked in another $35 million for the project.
It seems the federal government believed that by running fiber to various rural school districts, the high-speed fiber would eventually become available to the general public, and rural towns would get an economic boost.
EAGLE-Net came under scrutiny in 2012 for spending heavily and failing to fulfill its mission. Auditors found that the agency had spent about $96 million of its $100 million federal grant — but had completed only about half of its proposed project.
It was also discovered that the agency was laying fiber in places where fiber already existed. I assume the fiber already existed along those certain routes because the routes had been affordable places to lay fiber. And so, EAGLE-Net could save money by laying additional fiber along the same routes.
Just an assumption?
EAGLE-Net’s construction program was suspended by the federal government in 2012, and resumed in 2013. By the end of February 2014, it had reached 98 school districts — with only 63 subscribing to its services.
It’s so easy to waste taxpayer money.
As I shared in Part One, our local phone company — now transformed into an ISP — has lately been laying fiber optic cable along some of our less-populated, but easily-accessed, gravel roads.
I have not tried to contact CenturyLink about this project, and I don’t know their reasons for laying fiber optic cable where only a few people live. I do know, however, that the federal government has been making contributions to CenturyLink’s rural efforts. In 2015, CenturyLink accepted $506 million annually, over six years, to deliver broadband service to 2.3 million rural households and businesses in 33 states, as part of the Federal Communication Commission’s ‘Connect America Fund.’
That’s $3 billion, over six years.
In Colorado, the company reportedly upgraded 150 wire centers in certain rural areas to extend broadband. CenturyLink also shared their estimate of many households and businesses certain rural cities would benefit from the broadband upgrade. Pagosa was included in that list:
Pagosa Springs West: 1,123
Durango: 786
Black Forest: 637
Cortez: 608
South Fork: 442
Estes Park: 338
Last year, Governor Hickenlooper signed three bills into law that address broadband development in Colorado. Senate Bill 2 re-routes state funding, in a fund previously dedicated to subsidizing rural telephone service, to gradually switch the funding to broadband deployment. The bill does not, however, require companies to match the FCC broadband standard of “25Mbps/3Mbps.” It subsidizes speeds as modest as 10Mbps/1Mbps.
The second bill, SB 104, will allow the state broadband board to seek funding through FCC auctions. I have no idea how important that might be.
The third new law, HB 1099, addresses the controversial “right of first refusal” provision that applies to existing ISPs. If a company or government seeks grant funding to build broadband infrastructure in an area where existing service is inadequate, an ISP already offering service in the region can block that project by exercising its “right of first refusal,” with a promise to expand or upgrade their own service in the same location.
In 2017, CenturyLink blocked a nonprofit local provider — Clearnetworx — with the right of first refusal after Clearnetworx bid to supply gigabit-speed Internet in Ridgway. But instead of installing new high-speed fiber optic cable like Clearnetworx had promised, CenturyLink reportedly installed sluggish copper lines. HB 1099 now requires the ‘refuser’ to match both the speed and price found in the initial offer.
Which brings us to the ongoing success story of Elevate Fiber.
From the Delta-Montrose Electric Association website:
As your local electric co-op we know our true purpose is so much more than poles and wires — we work every day to improve the quality of life in our communities. That commitment lead us to launch Elevate Fiber in 2016, a local fiber internet company that provides the fastest, most reliable internet to the citizens of Paonia, Hotchkiss, Orchard City, Cedaredge, Olathe, Montrose, and beyond. And when we say fastest, we mean (for real):
100 Mbps (fast) for $49.95/mo.
1 Gig (supersonic fast) for $79.95/mo.
The new bills signed by Governor Hickenlooper require CenturyLink and other subsidized ISPs to provide 10 Mbps service. Elevate is providing its customers speeds up to 100 times faster than that… for about the same monthly rate as CenturyLink charges.
Do we have a local electric co-op here in Archuleta County, with a similar interest in customer ‘quality of life’?