$44 million announced for Southern Ute Tribe high-speed internet - The Durango Herald

Funding volition link 1,800 Native American households to broadband

Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper announced Thursday that $44 cardinal of funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law volition beryllium directed to link the Southern Ute Tribe to high-speed broadband internet. The grant volition alteration the transportation of 1,798 households to the system.

The backing comes arsenic portion of astir $1.35 cardinal successful spending to link 94 tribes to broadband crossed the country.

“Tribal communities excessively often find themselves connected the incorrect broadside of the integer divide,” said Bennet successful a statement. “With this funding, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe tin bring their families, farms, businesses, and schools online, assistance communities wrong the preservation boundaries amended their broadband services, and statesman to adjacent that integer gap.”

The backing aligns with the tribe’s extremity of having a broadband web that covers 95% of its onshore by 2025. The people applied for backing from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which made the award, to deploy fibre connecting households to broadband cablegram and present high-speed internet.

“The Southern Ute Tribal Council made the deployment of affordable, high-quality, high-speed broadband net connected the Reservation a apical priority,” said Southern Ute Indian Tribe Chairman Melvin J. Baker successful a statement. “The Southern Ute Indian Tribe is honored to beryllium awarded this backing and with this assistance we tin present absorption connected making this important extremity a world and genuinely span the integer disagreement that exists wrong our Tribal Lands.”

Bennet introduced a bipartisan measure titled the Broadband Reform and Investment to Drive Growth successful the Economy Act successful 2021 on with Democratic Sen. Angus King of Maine and Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. The extremity of the authorities was to funnel $40 cardinal to states, tribal governments and U.S. territories to guarantee broadband access, peculiarly successful underserved, high-cost areas.

The BRIDGE Act was incorporated into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, of which Hickenlooper was a co-author.

Broadband is present considered essential infrastructure – the exertion enables galore of the regular needs that nine has and has been qualified arsenic a “super-determinant” of wellness outcomes.

“The aboriginal is going toward broadband: TV, streaming telephone services, being capable to speech to your doc remotely online, not having to spell into the hospital,” said La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka. “Broadband is decidedly important.”

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe besides precocious received $22.7 cardinal successful backing to make broadband infrastructure connected its tribal lands arsenic a portion of the aforesaid program.

The infrastructure volition supply net users with astatine slightest 250 megabits per 2nd of symmetrical download and upload speeds.

rschafir@durangoherald.com