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Rural broadband bill heads to governor

By Marianne Goodl 03/20/2018 | updated 7 years ago

DENVER – The Senate Tuesday morning agreed to House amendments on Senate Bill 2, the bill to finance the buildout of rural broadband. With that resolved, the bill now heads to Gov. John Hickenlooper and a hoped-for signing.

House amendments last week resolved several lingering issues. That included a lawsuit from Viaero Wireless that the company agreed to drop in exchange for releasing funds held in an escrow account, estimated at around $8.5 million. About $6.5 million from that account could immediately be transferred to the broadband fund and hence would be available this year. The bill as passed leaves a lag of almost two years between when it’s signed and when the first grants would to go broadband providers.

Senate Bill 2 would transfer funds currently going to the state’s High Cost Support Mechanism (HCSM) to the state’s broadband deployment fund. The HCSM is a surcharge, paid for by consumers on landline phone bills and which currently brings in around $35 million. The HCSM is then paid out to landline providers in the form of grants that cover the difference between the high cost of providing that service to rural areas and what those providers charge customers. Most of those dollars go to CenturyLink, at around $30 million per year.

Under Senate Bill 2, 60 percent of the dollars that currently go to CenturyLink would be transferred next year, and 20 percent per year until all the money is going to the broadband fund.

The bill would require that broadband grants first to go to unserved or underserved areas and at lower speeds than the standard set by the Federal Communications Commission, which is 25 megabytes per second (Mbps) download and 3 megabytes per second upload. The bill allows grants to go to providers who would set up 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up, which customers in rural areas, such as La Plata County, say is still considerably faster than what they’re getting from CenturyLink.

The Senate vote to approve the amendments, at 20-15, reflected concerns expressed, mostly by Republicans, that the amendments were so complex that the bill needed more study. Once the amendments were adopted, the bill passed on a 29-6 vote.

The bill’s sponsors are Republicans Sen. Don Coram of Montrose and President Pro tem Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling. In the House, the bill was carried by Speaker of the House Crisanta Duran of Denver and House Majority Leader KC Becker of Boulder. The bill also had strong support from Senate Democratic Leader Lucia Guzman of Denver, who has long advocated for improvements to how broadband service is provided to rural communities.

 
Marianne Goodl

Reporter

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