Colorado broadband director talks local deployment challenges, funding opportunities

Brandy Reitter, executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office (CBO), discussed what the state’s broadband coverage looks like, local challenges with deployment, and progress on the funding front. In terms of coverage gaps, Reitter estimates there are about 166,000 households and 360,000 locations across Colorado without access to high-speed broadband, with over half of those households (around 93,000) having cited a lack of physical infrastructure as the main obstacle to broadband access. In terms of funding, Colorado is taking advantage of several different funding programs, as the Colorado Department of Local Affairs invests $5 million annually in rural broadband and other broadband projects across the state. To date, it has invested around $40 million in broadband deployment. In terms of regional success, Reitter highlighted some public-private broadband efforts that have done well over the past couple of years, where, in smaller markets, there are mainly consortiums that “don’t have the economies of scale to just go off and do a one-off broadband project.”