Some of the most rural areas in the country are in the American western states of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado. This week's guest is Matt Larsen, CEO of fixed wireless Internet service provider Vistabeam. His company has made it their mission to deploy affordable, useful Internet access to the people who live in these areas where large national companies have avoided deploying Internet access infrastructure due to low population density. He grew up living on a ranch and understands the challenges of living in a place where it's difficult to get broadband.

In this episode, we're able to learn more about the company and the recent Connect American Fund Phase II (CAF II) award they've obtained to serve more people in the rural west. Matt describes the areas they'll be serving and how they've had to make some changes in order to meet all the administrative requirements of the federal program. He talks about some of the people who will benefit from their service and explains the bid they submitted to win the funding.

Matt also discusses the Lifeline product that Vistabeam will offer to subscribers, which is a requirement as part of accepting the CAF II subsidy. The new offering is less expensive than satellite Internet access, the only option for many people in the areas covered by this project, and yet offers faster, more reliable service. Christopher and Matt also talk about some conclusions of the recent report by Jon Sallet for the Benton Institute on Broadband and Society and Matt shares his opinion as a fixed wireless provider in the field.

You can listen to Christopher's interview with Jon Sallet about the report in...

After five years of planning, meetings, and overcoming obstacles, the town of Estes Park has officially launched its Trailblazer Broadband Internet service to pilot neighborhoods.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

The Broadband journey started back 2015 when the residents of Estes Park experienced catastrophic outages due to ice and flooding which led to long telecommunications outages. It bacame obvious to community leaders that the town needed a different solution that entailed reliability and redundancy, not available from the incumbent provider. The city held a referendum and with the support of 92 percent of those voting, the town of Estes Park opted out of SB 152.

Fast, Affordable, Reliable Connectivity for Residents and Tourists

Estes Park, considered the gateway to the Rock Mountain National Park, depends on its tourism industry and current Internet speeds may deter vacation goers who need to remain connected to work during time away from work. With the introduction of high-quality Internet access at their resorts and lodging, Estes Park will have an edge over their competition as well as ensuring future economic development opportunities for the entire region. 

For town officials, staff, and the majority of residents, the implementation of high-quality Internet access is a welcomed project. 

“This is truly a tremendous milestone for the community,” said Town Administrator Travis Machalek, at the town's official opening ceremony celebration on September 25th.

The expected project construction cost is around $26 million. Based on an anticipated take rate of 30 - 40 percent, the community expects to pay off the investment in 10 - 12 years.

Trailblazer Broadband is being rolled out to pilot neighborhoods and is expected to serve the entire town in three to five years. The schedule is based primarily on construction feasibility, population density, and potential revenue.

Check out this marketing video on Trailblazer Broadband:

Over the past several years, Boulder has worked methodically to research how they want to move forward with a publicly owned network. The city has determined that the first step will be deploying a fiber optic backbone, to be completed by 2022. In order to help interested vendors learn more about the project prior to issuing the Request for Proposals (RFP), the city will hold a webinar on August 29th at 9 a.m. MDT.

Register for the webinar here.

As described by the city:

Hosted by the City of Boulder’s Chief Innovation and Technology Officer, Julia Richman, the webinar will outline the initiative’s background and progress to date.  In addition, the city will also cover the high-level specifications and expectations for construction services, while also providing an expected solicitation timeline.

Boulder is building the first step of a world-class community telecommunications infrastructure for the 21st Century and beyond.  Broadband connectivity is a critical infrastructure service for quality of modern life, as is the case with roads, water, sewer and electricity.

The webinar will take place via teleconference and if time allows, the city will open the floor for a brief Question & Answer period.

Ready to Build

Earlier this month, the Boulder City Council voted to issue certificates of participation in the amount of $20 million to finance backbone construction. Certificates will be sold in September.

The 65-mile backbone will take about two years to complete and city leaders hope to wrap up preliminary contracts in order to begin construction in December. While they hope to finish this phase of the project by early 2022, Boulder officials acknowledge that this is a “high-level” schedule and subject to change.

In a 2018 survey, 90 percent of respondents supported the concept of purchasing Internet access from the city. The same survey also revealed that between four and seven percent of households did...

Municipal broadband networks already serve more than 500 communities across the country, but some states are trying to keep that number from growing. Nineteen states have established legal barriers or even outright bans on publicly owned networks, according to well-respected communications law firm Baller Stokes & Lide.

These state laws, often enacted at the behest of large telecom monopolies, slow the development of community owned connectivity in various ways. From Alabama to Wisconsin, states have implemented everything from direct prohibitions on municipal networks to oppressive restrictions and requirements that limit competition.

The outlook for municipal connectivity may be starting to improve though, despite incorrect reports that state-level broadband preemption increased over the past year. Baller Stoke & Lide’s list of states with restrictions on municipal broadband investment actually shrunk this year from 20 states to 19 — a result of downgrading Colorado’s SB 152 from bonafide barrier to mere annoyance. Still, barriers to community networks remain in more than a third of all states, leaving millions of Americans unconnected and tens of millions more without local Internet choice.

Bans, Blocks, and Burdens

Common approaches to preempting municipal broadband networks range from straightforward bans to confusing financial restrictions and complicated legal requirements. While some states have established one main barrier to community broadband, many more have adopted a bird’s nest of regulations that kill any possibility of municipal connectivity, if only because of the legal uncertainty created by complex and vague laws.

Out of the 19 states with restrictions on municipal networks, a few explicitly ban local governments from providing communications services to their citizens. In Nevada, only municipalities with less than 25,000 people and counties with less than 55,000 people can offer telecommunications services. Both Arkansas and Tennessee bar municipalities without electric utilities from providing Internet access in most situations. Yet other states restrict where government utilities can deploy broadband or what types of services they can...