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OPINION: Broadband Boondoggle |
Jack Llewellyn | 9/1/10
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The following letter was sent to the Durango Herald on August 11, concerning the $27 million federal grant applied for by Southwest Colorado Broadband — a grant that apparently threatens to undermine broadband services throughout southwestern Colorado, submitted by a company that, as far as we can tell, does not yet have an office in Southwest Colorado.
Re: Concerns about the impact of Federal Economic Stimulus Funding on our community
Background: The ARRA – Economic Stimulus Plan included $7.2 billion in funding to promote bringing broadband to unserved, rural areas throughout the United States to support rural economic development and to close the “digital divide” that has been created by large telecommunications companies bringing high speed broadband to cities and higher density urban areas which are profitable while neglecting the lower density rural areas because of the high cost to deploy broadband coverage to large swaths of land with very few potential customers and the lack of compelling profitability. This rural broadband stimulus funding was to provide capital funding for infrastructure expansion to local, rural providers willing to provide broadband service by expanding coverage to unserved rural areas.
The overall objectives of the program have been well received with many rural communities around the country applying for and receiving funds that have helped connect rural schools, hospitals and public safety organizations allowing them to provide critical technology services to their community members that were previously unavailable due to the lack of broadband connections to the internet.
As with any type of government program, especially ones that are handing out millions of dollars of “free” taxpayer money, the good and noble intentions can sometimes get lost in the lack of oversight and transparency by federal agencies and greed on the part of private businesses and individuals. Not only can large amounts of public money be wasted on misguided efforts but as in the following case real damage can occur to the very local communities’ stimulus funds are supposed to help.
My concern revolves around a newly formed private enterprise call Southwest Colorado Broadband, LLC (whose principals are ex-large telecom executives from Denver & Florida) that has applied for $27,000,000 in taxpayer money through the Dept of Commerce’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) to bring allegedly needed broadband to Southwest Colorado.
In most circumstances this type of federal funding would be welcomed by me and this community but as you will see in the attached documentation this group does not have any real interest in or concern for our community but are savvy enough in the grant and telecom world to put together an application that meets all of the BTOP criteria while appearing to benefit our community — except for the fact that they not only lack the support of the community but would cause real damage to the very objectives for our community that the Rural Broadband Act was intended to forward. The recipients of these types of grants around the nation have all been consortiums of schools, hospitals, public safety agencies and public & private organizations from the community. What makes the Southwest Broadband endeavor particularly disturbing is the idea of a out of area, private, profit making company seeing the opportunity to secure $27,000,000 in free start up money from taxpayers solely for profit on the backs of a community that doesn’t support, need or want the group or their planned use of this funding.
 Our congressional delegation, Congressman Salazar and Senators Udall and Bennett as well as both local Tribal Governments (Ute Mountain Utes and Southern Utes) do not support this particular application and misuse of federal funds — which is extremely rare. Also several local organizations have all voice concerns and lack and lack of support to the Secretary of Commerce but from what we are hearing, this group is going to get funded at any moment in spite of the issues raised and the fact that nobody from the Dept of Commerce BTOP program has talked to a single member in our community about the concerns raised. It appears to be another example of people with money lobbying the federal bureaucrats in DC (which is supposed to be forbidden in this program) while local needs and desires are being completely disregarded and ignored.
That this application is very likely going to be awarded over the objections and lack of support in the community without even some conversation with the concerned organizations seems completely inconsistent with what the Economic Stimulus – Rural Broadband program is supposed to be about. We all welcome Broadband Stimulus Funds coming to our community and there are several other applications for bringing these funds into our community but this particular group with their questionable behavior and lack of concern for the community as well as the bloated nature of the money they are requesting (much of their application is asking for funding in areas where there isn’t a real need but a potential for better profits by overbuilding infrastructure private companies have already invested in out of their own pocket) has caused a lot of heartburn with us all.
I come to you to hopefully bring these issues to light prior the travesty of Southwest Broadband’s application being officially awarded. Once they are awarded, all of these concerns will have been disregarded and our community will have only the hollow opportunity to once again be outraged at yet another example of federal indifference to local communities as well as the arrogance, ineptitude and lack of transparency we have unfortunately become too accustom to these days from our government. The reality that the people behind this application have also shown a complete lack of desire to collaborate or work with the community and have created so much animosity in such a short time through unethical behavior and making duplicate or false promises to different counties and municipalities of the region to get their support — as well as their arrogance — has only raised the concern level that much higher for all of us that they might be the dominant technology player in this region with privately owned but publically funded network which no one has any control or say over.
In addition, all of us have a strong foreboding as to what impact a federally funded startup profit making company will have on the local businesses that have invested their own time and money over the past 10-12 years to bring broadband to our rural community. LPEA and Empire Electric have invested over $20,000,000 of Coop Member money to bring fiber into this area and this new federally funded company would over build and duplicate all of that fiber putting FastTrack out of business. They also would duplicate the very infrastructure in which Brainstorm Internet and My Durango/Cedar Networks have worked years and invested millions of dollars into, again leading to very likely demise of both of the other locally based and owned companies losing locally based jobs and all of the great contributions all of these companies have made to our community and non profits over the years. Our biggest concern about this is
these guys will ultimately thrash our local technology infrastructure and then be long gone with whatever profits they can walk away with leaving our community with less availability of broadband and competition than before they arrived here.
I implore the Durango Herald to write a story exposing this potential travesty before we all regret it.
Jack Llewellyn, Executive Director, La Plata Economic Development Action Partnership, 749-4548
Shawn Nau, La Plata County, 759-5330
Ron LeBlanc, City Manager, City of Durango, 759-4300
William Tookey, San Juan County & Chair of SWCCOG, 387-5632
Ed Morlan, Region 9, 749-2674
Greg Munro, LPEA, 382-3530
Jasper Welch, Chairman, FastTrack Communications, 749-2070
Phil Bryson, Brainstorm Internet, 946-5440 |
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