Garfield County fights BEAD grant changes that threaten local broadband expansion 

On Monday, June 16, the Garfield County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a letter to Rep. Jeff Hurd, R-Colo., urging federal agencies to avoid restructuring the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program.

The national program aims to expand access to high-speed internet across all 50 states and six territories by providing $42.45 billion in funding for critical infrastructure and improvements, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Colorado received $826.5 million in BEAD funding to connect 99% of Colorado households to high-speed broadband by 2027, according to the Colorado Broadband Office. 

Garfield County has worked for more than six years to expand broadband access, investing $5 million in the construction of network infrastructure to connect local networks with major carriers and service providers, or “last mile” service, according to a Wednesday news release from the county.

Carrier neutral locations were built in Glenwood Springs, New Castle, Silt, Rifle, and Parachute, connecting to the Colorado Department of Transportation’s fiber lines beneath Interstate 70, the release states. 

The changes

On June 6, the U.S. Department of Commerce and NTIA announced a restructuring of the BEAD program. The revised framework removes several non-statutory requirements from the original program, shifts focus away from fiber-optic infrastructure, and nullifies existing grant applications. 

The new scoring criteria prioritize the lowest-cost technology providers — a move that will largely favor “a lower technology, most likely satellite services,” Diane Kruse, CEO of NEO Connect, told commissioners. 

“We’re basically at the finish line, and here this change is happening to us, so it’s very, very concerning given where you are and where the investment is,” said County Manager Fred Jarman. “This is, frankly, a plea to Jeff Hurd to help us with this and see if he can’t push your agenda here.” 

Non-statutory requirements eliminated from the grant program include labor, workforce, and development guidelines included in the 2022 BEAD Notice of Funding Opportunity. 

“Instead of establishing straightforward selection criteria focused on the efficient deployment of broadband,” the June 6 action notice from the Department of Commerce states, “the Biden Administration’s guidelines to Eligible Entities were scattered and preoccupied with extraneous social policy goals. Thus, NTIA hereby revises the scoring criteria previously outlined in the NOFO to focus on minimizing the cost of deployment under the BEAD Program.”  

Among the removed criteria are requirements related to equitable workforce development, civil rights compliance, nondiscrimination, and contracting with small and minority-owned businesses. 

“The biggest issue,” Kruse said, “is that the original program had a priority on funding fiber optic infrastructure, which is essentially a 50-year investment —  fiber is very scalable. Yes, it might be a little bit more expensive to build homes with fiber, but it’s an investment in the long term.

“The new restructuring of the program eliminates the fiber optic priority — it lowers the bar significantly. Residents that were to receive fiber could receive up to 6,000 gigabits per second of upload and download services,” she later added. “That went significantly down to a much lower bar of 100 megabits per second by 20 megabits per second. So it does not necessarily improve broadband services. It’s a Band-Aid, if you will, in terms of a fix.”

Other eliminated components include climate change considerations, open access and net neutrality policies, and requirements for affordable middle-class and low-cost broadband plans. 

The action

The letter, signed by commissioners on June 16, calls on federal agencies to restore the original BEAD framework, so that applicants can move forward with their approved plans.

“Prior to the NTIA’s recent restructuring, 100% of our 4,000 unserved and underserved addresses were slated for grant-funded, symmetrical gigabit service — extending high-capacity broadband to all residents, businesses, and institutions across the county,” the letter states. 

The signed letter was sent to other elected officials besides Hurd: Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.; U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; and State Sen. Marc Catlin, R-Montrose.

“It seems like there should be a groundswell on this. I don’t know if that’s happening,” Commissioner Tom Jankovsky said. “We spent $5 million of our funding and state funding to get carrier neutral locations into our municipalities, and I believe we have ownership of those. If the decisions are made by the Department of Commerce, that’ll slow things down even more because of the bureaucracy — you have a national entity trying to make decisions for 50 states, and I don’t know how many counties.”