{"id":36983,"date":"2022-12-02T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-03T03:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/44-million-announced-for-southern-ute-tribe-high-speed-internet\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:34:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:34:49","slug":"44-million-announced-for-southern-ute-tribe-high-speed-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/44-million-announced-for-southern-ute-tribe-high-speed-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"$44 million announced for Southern Ute Tribe high-speed internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"La
La Plata County commissioners have agreed to put $500,000 of COVID-19 relief money toward a $4 million project that will place fiber-optic cable along Colorado Highway 151 from U.S. Highway 160 to Ignacio. The project will tie into broadband expansions in Archuleta County and from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe along Colorado Highway 172. La Plata County aims to continue expanding broadband westward until it reaches Breen, Kline, Marvel and Redmesa, which struggle most with reliable internet, said Commissioner Matt Salka. (Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper announced Thursday that $44 million of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be directed to connect the Southern Ute Tribe to high-speed broadband internet. The award will enable the connection of 1,798 households to the system.<\/p>\n

The funding comes as part of nearly $1.35 billion in spending to connect 94 tribes to broadband across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cTribal communities too often find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide,\u201d said Bennet in a statement. \u201cWith this funding, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe can bring their families, farms, businesses, and schools online, help communities within the reservation boundaries improve their broadband services, and begin to close that digital gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

The funding aligns with the tribe\u2019s goal of having a broadband network that covers 95% of its land by 2025. The tribe applied for funding from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which made the award, to deploy fiber connecting households to broadband cable and deliver high-speed internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Southern Ute Tribal Council made the deployment of affordable, high-quality, high-speed broadband internet on the Reservation a top priority,\u201d said Southern Ute Indian Tribe Chairman Melvin J. Baker in a statement. \u201cThe Southern Ute Indian Tribe is honored to be awarded this funding and with this grant we can now focus on making this important goal a reality and truly bridge the digital divide that exists within our Tribal Lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennet introduced a bipartisan bill titled the Broadband Reform and Investment to Drive Growth in the Economy Act in 2021 along with Democratic Sen. Angus King of Maine and Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. The goal of the legislation was to funnel $40 billion to states, tribal governments and U.S. territories to ensure broadband access, particularly in underserved, high-cost areas.<\/p>\n

The BRIDGE Act was incorporated into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, of which Hickenlooper was a co-author.<\/p>\n

Broadband is now considered essential infrastructure<\/a> \u2013 the technology enables many of the daily needs that society has and has been qualified<\/a> as a \u201csuper-determinant\u201d of health outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future is going toward broadband: TV, streaming phone services, being able to talk to your doctor remotely online, not having to go into the hospital,\u201d said La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka. \u201cBroadband is definitely important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe also recently received $22.7 million in funding to develop broadband infrastructure on its tribal lands as a part of the same program.<\/p>\n

The infrastructure will provide internet users with at least 250 megabits per second of symmetrical download and upload speeds.<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funding will connect 1,800 Native American households to broadband <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[481,28,275,1565,561,629,2069],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-gov-john-hickenlooper","tag-headlines","tag-internet","tag-michael-bennet","tag-native-american","tag-southern-ute-indian-tribe","tag-telecommunication-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36983","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=36983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83521,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36983\/revisions\/83521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36983"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}