Fiber for Breakfast Week 2: Colorado’s Broadband Success Won’t be Up in the (LEOS) Air

Fiber for Breakfast Week 2: Colorado’s Broadband Success Won’t be Up in the (LEOS) Air 

With more than 95% of households connected, Colorado is performing better in broadband access than many of its western peers. In fact, BroadbandNow ranks the state 14th in broadband coverage, speed, and availability. This is especially noteworthy when considering that western states struggle with distance, terrain, and higher deployment costs.  

Is there anything that could slow down the state’s leading position? Could Benefit of the Bargain “low cost” priorities threaten Colorado’s ability to ensure its residents can access reliable, high-performance broadband? Brandy Reitter, Colorado’s State Broadband Officer, doesn’t think so.  

On this week’s episode of Fiber for Breakfast, Reitter examined Colorado’s approach to broadband deployment and continued success, noting that each serviceable location is analyzed for its unique technology needs to ensure a balance between investment and community impact. There are challenging environments in these remaining unserved locations that feature rock, trees, rivers, railroads, and more, so broadband technology is not one size fits all, according to Reitter. 

“It’s not as simple as just drawing a line around a certain area and saying, ‘these are unserved locations, we’re gonna go do fiber.’ We really had to analyze each one in its location to make sure that we could actually support an ISP in their application,” Reitter said. “This came up a couple of times with one of our providers where they had a set of broadband serviceable locations that were easy to serve. But, within our specific project area, there were serviceable locations on the other side, down a hill, through a ravine, down at the river, the valley floor that if you were just looking at it on a map, you’d think those locations are right next to those other locations. Mapping doesn’t always account for what’s in between. So, you can cluster the locations, but you also have to analyze those separately to design the right type of technology solution.” 

While many might think that LEO satellite might be necessary to connect these hard-to-reach locations, Colorado’s initial $826.5 million BEAD allocation was planned to be split between roughly 70% fiber and 30% fixed wireless technology. After the 2025 “Benefit of the Bargain (BoB)” round of lowest-cost framework and expanded tech-neutral competition, total allocation dropped to $420.6 million and technology choices changed to 49.6% LEO satellite (Amazon Leo and SpaceX Starlink) due to low-cost priorities, while the other half was split between 47.6% fiber and 2.8% fixed wireless.  

This could be problematic. While fiber recipients are able to access high-speed broadband services soon after fiber networks are built, Amazon Leo has committed to having service available by 2027 and the company has a staggering 14 years to meet all performance milestones. Even a fully built network doesn’t guarantee subscribers. SpaceX Starlink’s network is already built, and Reitter says that take rates are very low in Colorado due to the high price of service. 

While Reitter does admit that it could be a little while before residents are able to access internet from Amazon Leo, she is confident that Coloradans won’t have to wait 14 years. Her department will perform checks and measures along the way to ensure service performance meets agreements. The state will perform remote sensory testing of satellite broadband services to monitor compliance and performance, and Amazon Leo has to meet several specific performance milestones throughout those 14 years to receive funding from the state.  

If for any reason a satellite provider defaults on its commitment, she expects the state to respond with state grant programs to relieve underserved communities. She also expects private investments and overbuilders to target the LEO areas. “ISPs are always innovating quickly and figuring out how to deploy networks at a more cost-effective way, just the innovations have moved quickly over the last couple years. I would guess that some of these locations will be picked up by other providers over the years, if there’s an opportunity and it makes financial sense.” 

At the end of the day, Reitter feels that connecting all communities in Colorado to reliable broadband is most important, no matter how they get there. Even if things get complicated with overbuilders and performance monitoring, her department will work to understand if there are underserved locations and, if so, how to reach them. 

“We’re going to keep track of it, and if there are defaults, we’ll go in and fund, we’ll go in and try to help subsidize those locations so they can get served,” said Reitter. 

Click here to watch the full Fiber for Breakfast episode and learn more about Colorado’s broadband success.