DENVER \u2013 When Rep. Don Coram was a kid, telephones were attached to the wall, and several families shared the same number.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up on an eight-party landline, and we had a lady named Pearl who thought she had seven of those lines,\u201d said Coram, R-Montrose.<\/p>\n
Cell phones? Hadn\u2019t been invented. Internet? Forget about it.<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s telecommunications laws aren\u2019t quite as old as party lines, but they haven\u2019t been updated for the wireless age. Legislators have been trying for the past four years, without success.<\/p>\n
Coram and several others think they can do it this year, and in the process bring broadband Internet service to unserved rural areas.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more at stake than the ability to stream Netflix on an iPad. Coram said his hometown missed out 250 jobs from a corporate expansion because Internet connections weren\u2019t fast enough.<\/p>\n
The main idea is to deregulate phone service and fund rural Internet lines with some of the fees that customers pay on their phone bills.<\/p>\n
Unlike past years, most telecommunications companies appear to be supporting this year\u2019s effort, and that agreement bodes well for Coram and his fellow sponsors. A package of five bills passed their first votes in the House Business Committee on Tuesday afternoon on unanimous or near-unanimous margins.<\/p>\n
But opponents warn that deregulating phone service will lead to higher prices and worse service.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to keep regulation in place so somebody has a hammer to make these telecom companies do what they need to do for consumers,\u201d said Patricia Yeager, chief executive of the Independence Center, a Colorado Springs group for disability rights.<\/p>\n
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission currently regulates basic phone services, sets a cap on monthly bills and gives phone companies a subsidy to serve rural customers.<\/p>\n
Coram\u2019s bill would convert some of the subsidy for basic phone service into a fund for Internet companies to build broadband networks. Early estimates are the bill would bring $3 million to $5 million a year into a new broadband fund \u2013 far less than the state needs. But supporters say it\u2019s a good start.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just don\u2019t have enough money \u2026 to wave a magic wand and say everyone has broadband. It\u2019s going to be an incremental process,\u201d said Pete Kirchof, president of the Colorado Telecommunications Association.<\/p>\n
Rural residents across Colorado have been waiting for broadband for years. Silverton has battled with CenturyLink and its predecessor, Qwest, over construction of a broadband line from Durango. Eagle-Net Alliance is promising to build the line to Silverton, but the group has come under fire for using a $100 million grant from the federal government to build lines in the Denver metro area and leaving large swaths of rural Colorado without service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
jobs are at stake<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,275,2068,2069],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-121185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-internet","tag-telecommunication-equipment","tag-telecommunication-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121185"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=121185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}