Photo by Photo by Jason Richard on Unsplash.
Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced the first group of plans approved under the American Rescue Plan’s Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF). The CPF provides $10 billion to states, territories, freely associated states, and Tribal governments to fund critical capital projects that enable work, education, and health monitoring in response to the public health emergency…
— from the U.S. Treasury Department, June 2022.
The COVID crisis provided a strong impetus to federal, state and local governments to improve broadband access — and perhaps particularly, broadband access for households that had been left behind for economic reasons — because they lived in low-income neighborhoods, or in rural communities where distances made fiber installations more costly, per-customer. Often, those two criteria went hand-in-hand. As they do, for example, in the Aspen Springs neighborhood, here in Archuleta County.
On the other side of the coin, the COVID crisis also provided a reason to generously fund private communications companies — ISPs and cellular service providers — with billions of tax dollars.
The goals of these public investments? I suppose, during the COVID crisis, the main goals — in the minds of lawmakers — were to allow workers to stay home and still be productive, to allow school-age children to stay home and continue their lessons, to allow mothers to stay home with younger children as childcare centers closed…
…and to keep an increasingly tense population sedated with streaming videos, games and music.
Unfortunately, the wheels of government and business sometimes move more slowly than an epidemic. In June 2022 — when the U.S. Treasury announced the first round of awards in awards from the American Rescue Plan’s Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF) — COVID was already winding down. If I know anything about the pace of government funding (having served on a few local government boards) most of the projects publicly funded in 2022 are probably still not completed.
The U.S. Treasury also awarded ARPA money to local governments, and that money could be spent addressing COVID. Here in Pagosa, the Archuleta County government received about $2.7 million in ARPA. Most of the money was spent on two local “needs” presumably related to COVID.
Housing.
Broadband.
Various local housing groups — Archuleta County Housing Authority, Aspen House, Habitat for Humanity, Archuleta Housing Corporation — shared $1.4 million in ARPA funding.
The Archuleta County Broadband Office was awarded about $600,000 in funding.
Thanks to the CPF grants, our community (through two private companies) will see perhaps $13.3 million in broadband improvements… serving maybe one-third of our homes.
But, according to consultant Eric Hittle, a bigger chunk of federal money might someday come our way, via the BEAD program.
The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, has (apparently) been funded to provide $42.45 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning, infrastructure deployment and adoption programs in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. We’re of course mainly concerned with Colorado.
I say “apparently” because any funding coming from Washington DC seems to be subject, lately, to feuding between the Republicans and Democrats.
According to a January 2023 article published by the Pew Trusts:
Congress established the BEAD Program to address the persistent digital divide in the United States and outlined three associated priorities for use of the funds: building infrastructure, developing broadband action plans, and supporting programs to promote user adoption of new networks. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)—the agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that administers the program—clarified in its June 2022 Notice of Funding Opportunity that BEAD spending should prioritize:
- Fiber connectivity directly to the end user.
- “Unserved” locations — those without access to 25-megabit-per-second (Mbps) download service and 3-Mbps uploads, commonly expressed as 25/3 Mbps service.
- Proposals that improve affordability to ensure that networks built using taxpayer dollars are accessible to all Americans.
We might note the stipulation, “fiber connectivity directly to the end user.” This is the goal of current state and federal grant programs. Actual, real people, connected to actual, real broadband.
In 2015, CenturyLink received a massive ‘Connect America’ federal grant — $506 million every year for six years, for a total of over $3 billion — to lay fiber optic cable in their service areas.
From my front porch, I watched their subcontractor lay fiber within 20 feet of my property line.
But when I search my address on the CenturyLink website, it appears that fiber is not available at my address. All CenturyLink will offer me is a standard phone line connection, for $70 a month.
From the Pew Trust:
To meet the requirements of the BEAD Program, states and territories are already scaling up their broadband programs to ensure proper data collection, planning, stakeholder engagement, and funding decisions. And although this investment still will likely not be enough to achieve universal access, combined with other federal broadband funding, it will bring the nation closer to closing the digital divide than ever before.
Ah, yes. The digital divide. The rich, enjoying ever-faster internet. The poor, lucky to have any internet at all.
I’ve been covering local Pagosa politics for 20 years now, and I understand that elected officials and government bureaucrats are just normal people, and they often make decisions without having the best possible information. (As we all do at times.)
Sometimes, the best possible information is indeed available, and our leaders simply don’t take the time to research it. Or else, the information exists, but is purposely kept hidden from our elected leaders.
Often, good information — about the likely outcome of a government investment — doesn’t exist, and we’re all shooting in the dark.
In summary, I’d suggest that the Archuleta County Broadband Office has been making relatively good use of public money, to judge by the number of homes that will likely see improved (faster) internet and cellular service within the next decade.
Whether those homes will simply be getting faster access to misinformation and uninspiring entertainment, remains to be seen.