Some areas of Colorado still don’t have high-speed internet, but new funding could change that

Since the late 1990s Colorado has tried to expand access to high-speed broadband. It’s been done in starts and stops, and sometimes not at all. Now Colorado is getting a huge amount of federal money, more than $826 million in Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding that was part of the 2021 infrastructure law to help expand broadband internet across the state and the country. It’s been a goal of countless lawmakers at the local, state and federal level for more than two decades, yet there are still thousands of households that lack access, as Governor Jared Polis noted: “Right now there's about 190,000 Colorado homes and businesses that have very limited access, low access, or no access at all.” The big question now is how to best use those funds to get all of the state connected. As past attempts have shown, money has been just one obstacle to spreading broadband across the state. Another has been figuring who to work with. Early attempts focused on big internet providers to do the work.