Cities, Counties Opting Out of Restrictive Colorado Broadband Law
Colorado’s cities and towns are responding in a variety of ways to the state's 2005 law restricting a municipality’s right to build out its own broadband network. While that law in some form isn’t unique to Colorado, the difference is that it allows local governments to opt out with a ballot measure in an election. Because that option exists, some municipalities are exercising it, with Longmont leading the charge years ago and fighting the large telcos in two elections before winning and officially beginning the process of building out its own network. In the last election, Boulder’s residents voted to opt out of the law and now the city has hired a firm to do a study before moving forward. Bayfield is expected to have a measure asking residents to vote on opting out on the ballot in the November election.
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Chris Mitchell, Institute for Local Self-Reliance director-community broadband networks initiative, said cities are likely choosing to opt out of the law instead of going to the FCC to have the law overridden because it’s easier and cheaper for a city to opt out than go through the entire FCC process, which involves lawyers and possible appeals. And unlike when Longmont went through the process, Comcast said in a recent meeting it won’t oppose those municipalities looking to opt out, he said. Instead, consistent with the rest of the country, the big telcos seem to have been making larger investments in networks in those cities that choose to opt out, Mitchell said. “Anecdotally, we've seen that it seems that just opting out may result in more private sector investment,” he said.
Nine of the 13 communities that voted to opt out of the law aren’t in Comcast territories, a Comcast spokeswoman said. The four that are in Comcast territories have the exact same services as the rest of the state, she said. “We've invested billions in our footprint in the state and have increased speeds 14 times in 13 years, and announced we'll be making 2 gig speeds available in the state soon,” Comcast said. CenturyLink didn't comment.
Officials in Boulder tried to change the law itself before going the opt-out route, said city policy advisor Carl Castillo. When they realized there was very little chance to get rid of the law, the city decided to put a measure on the ballot and it was approved by about 83 percent of the population, he said. Boulder already has more than 100 linear miles of fiber infrastructure laid down that is used for communications among state facilities. But that's being underutilized because it hasn’t been built out enough to connect the entire city, and the law was preventing that, so the goal is to get that together in the near future, he said. Castillo said the first thing Boulder did was install free, public Wi-Fi on municipal properties. That was operational about two months ago and an RFP was issued in June to conduct a comprehensive Broadband Feasibility Study, he said. A consulting partner will likely begin the project by mid-August, with preliminary findings and recommendations expected to be presented to the City Council late in the fourth quarter of this year, he said. “There's not enough competition in our city to provide fast, reliable, affordable broadband for our community,” Castillo said. Since opting out, the city has noticed there have been better deals and broadband services offered to Boulder, he said. “The instant benefit is just by passing this law, companies like Comcast start getting worried and they start wanting to provide additional services,” Castillo said. Comcast is going to start providing 2 gigabit services to the residents of Boulder this summer, he said.
Bayfield hasn’t approved the measure for November’s ballot, but town manager Chris La May said the town is just re-establishing a right the Colorado General Assembly took away with the passage of the 2005 law. Being able to have every resident in the rural town connect to a reliable and fast network isn’t just a telecommunications issue for Bayfield, it’s an economic one, he said. Right now there are no other networks that provide adequate speeds for residents that need broadband for homework, work or even personal use, La May said. The town hopes residents will approve the measure so it can move forward and keep up with the industry and the rest of world. "We're starting to look at [broadband] as any other utility that a community provides -- like our water system, our sewer systems -- that we have these infrastructure needs that we need to ensure that the community has,” he said. “We want to keep pace with what's going on in the state of Colorado and we want to keep pace with what's going on nationally, and, quite frankly, in today's world, I think we're far behind internationally and need to step it up.”
The Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) is working to help communities through the process to make sure municipalities that want to be the service provider for broadband are able to do so, said Nate Walowitz, NWCCOG coordinator-regional broadband. NWCCOG is a voluntary association of county and municipal governments that believe working together on a regional basis provides benefits that could not be obtained alone. The group's goal is to ease legal hurdles and ensure that the participating municipalities can enter into public/private partnerships, even if they're with the larger telcos, Walowitz said. The municipalities in NWCCOG aren't necessarily looking to compete with companies such as Comcast or CenturyLink, but they are looking to find new ways to work with them, he said. "There could be very interesting partnerships created to help deliver these services," Walowitz said. "Some of our best partners are the incumbents, because there are some things that they do very, very well. Their network infrastructure is there. ... [Municipalities] looking to deliver services to folks and partner and create partnerships so that it can be cost effective for them and other service providers to come in and deliver broadband services."