The House Thursday gave preliminary approval to the major rural broadband bill, Senate Bill 2, and put it on the path to final approval for Friday.

It wasn’t without a change or two, however.

Senate Bill 2 would direct a surcharge on voice lines, included in consumer phone bills, into the state’s broadband deployment fund. Those dollars, about $34 million in 2017, are currently going into what’s known as the High Cost Support Mechanism (HCSM), which has been used to subsidize the cost of providing landline phone service to rural areas. CenturyLink, which is designated as the state’s provider of last resort, has gotten the lion’s share of those dollars for years.

But the need for that high-cost service has dropped as more and more communities obtain landline phone service, and at the same time more and more people switch to cell phones exclusively. Cell phone bills don’t contribute to the HCSM. That’s resulted in the HCSM getting fewer dollars. At $34 million in 2017, that’s $20 million less than the fund got just a few years ago.

Under Senate Bill 2, and how the bill looked before the House debated it Thursday, the HCSM money that currently goes to CenturyLink would be parsed into the broadband fund, at 60 percent in 2019 and 20 percent per year thereafter until the HCSM is exhausted.

An amendment put on by the House Thursday resolved several problems, including a lawsuit that challenges a settlement that has been pending for several years. Viaero which provides wireless service in northeastern Colorado, has been fighting a settlement reached by the Public Utilities Commission and CenturyLink several years ago. The lawsuit has stalled a transfer of some of the money into the broadband deployment fund. That money has been put into an escrow account, and is expected to reach about $8.5 million this year.

The second problem is the bill itself, which has a lag time of about two years before any of the new funds for broadband would actually get into the hands of the providers who want to build out the service.

The amendment solves both issues, according to Democratic House Majority Leader KC Becker of Boulder, one of the measure’s House sponsors. The amendment would allow most of those escrow dollars, about $6.5 million, to immediately go to the broadband fund and those grants can be awarded as soon as this year.

Becker told Colorado Politics that Viaero has agreed to drop its lawsuit. The company would receive less money from the escrow under that arrangement, it would save money on legal fees and other costs.

Should the bill receive final approval from the House Friday, it would have to go back to the Senate to obtain that chamber’s agreement on the amendments. Becker said she believes the Senate will agree to the amendments. The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Republican Sen. Don Coram of Montrose and Senate President Pro tem Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling.

Correction to address misspelling of Viaero.