Denver Post

Norman Vasquez often has to choose between buying soap or calling his family while serving time at Colorado’s Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility. Vasquez was one of 15 people who urged Colorado lawmakers to pass a bill that would make phone calls free to people incarcerated in state prisons and their families. The approximately 17,000 people incarcerated in the Colorado Department of Corrections pay 8 cents a minute for phone calls—or $4.80 for an hour, according to data collected by the state.

Nearly 15 years after the first Colorado community opted out of a state law prohibiting local governments from providing or investing in broadband internet service, 121 cities and towns in the state have followed suit, including four more communities in the November 2022 election. The result is the installation of hundreds of miles of new fiber-optic lines throughout the state, from tiny Wray near the Kansas border to even smaller Mountain Village near Telluride — and dozens of communities in between. The big pipes delivering data to homes and businesses mean an increasing number of Colorad

Denver Issue 2H would opt the city out of a 2005 state law restricting governments from using tax dollars to build broadband networks. The move would allow the city to enter into the high-speed internet business, should city officials want to go in that direction. 

A 400-mile fiber network built to provide broadband Internet access to 14 mountain communities across northwest Colorado officially went online the week of April 6. The Northwest Colorado Council of Governments has spearheaded the work, dubbed Project Thor. The loop starts in Denver and runs west, using Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) fiber along Interstate 70 and a combination of fiber services going north through Meeker, Craig, Steamboat Springs and Grand County.

When it comes to being able to connect to high-speed internet in rural Colorado, “universal service” is still an aspiration, not a reality. With upward of 600,000 rural households in the state, an 87% service rate means somewhere in the range of 80,000 to 90,000 households are living with subpar internet, according to state officials’ estimates. Tony Neal-Graves, executive director of the state’s broadband office, knows there are plenty of barriers to reaching the state's goal of 92% rural access by June 2020, starting with collecting reliable information about who has broadband and who doe

Outside the Interstate 25 and 70 corridors in Colorado, where great distances and low populations make providing internet more expensive, there can be wide variations of service and coverage. State officials say 87% of rural Colorado has access to broadband, but that number comes with asterisks. State and federal officials acknowledge that more precise mapping is needed to pinpoint which areas need to be brought up to speed. 

After visiting with 5,600 residents, and making 277,000 connections, one message stands out: Loveland (CO) wants broadband internet, and they wanted it yesterday, Councilor John Fogle said.