Economy & Economic Development  October 22, 2019

CSU expert: AG’s deal with T-Mobile raises questions about rural equality

Listen to our conversation about this story on KUNC’s Colorado Edition. The story starts at 12:15.

DENVER — Colorado’s deal with merging cell carriers T-Mobile (Nasdaq: TMUS) and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) is set to bring jobs and more connectivity to Denver and the state’s urban cores, but the benefits to rural communities may not be as sweet.

SPONSORED CONTENT

Business Cares: March 2024

WomenGive, a program of United Way of Larimer County, was started in Larimer County in 2006 as an opportunity for women in our community to come together to help other women.

On Monday morning, the Colorado Attorney General’s office said it would drop a lawsuit with about a dozen other states trying to stop the $26.5 billion merger. The U.S. Justice Department gave its blessing to the merger earlier this month.

Under the settlement, Dish Network Corp. (Nasdaq: DISH) would take some of the assets T-Mobile is cutting to build its own wireless business based in Littleton and create 2,000 new jobs. It faces up to $20 million in fines if it fails to hit those goals.

In a separate agreement, T-Mobile will roll out low-cost plans with limited data for as much as $25 monthly.

The telecom will also build out 5G infrastructure so that 68 percent of the state will have at least 100 Mbps speed and 76 percent will have at least 50 Mbps within three years of the merger closing, with those figures increasing to 92 percent and 93 percent respectively within six years.

The deal emphasizes rural connectivity in particular. The Attorney General’s office said 60 percent of rural state residents will have 100 Mbps access and 63 will have 50 Mbps speeds within three years, with those numbers rising to 74 percent and 84 percent respectively within six years.

That’s a good sign of private-sector investment in infrastructure at a time when several cities along the Front Range are building their own municipal broadband networks, said Stephan Weiler, director of Colorado State University’s Regional Economic Development Institute.

“Your local market in rural areas is not very large, but the promise of the Internet is the fact that it makes the whole globe as a potential market if you can reach it,” he said. “And if you’re stuck in a DSL or dial-up world… then your ability to market your products and services to the planet, much less Colorado, is going to be seriously hamstrung.”

But he worries more about the portions of the state that aren’t going to receive that network option, especially if they’re already economically marginalized compared with more-populous portions of Colorado.

This includes sparsely populated parts of the Rockies, where it would be more expensive to build and maintain a network tower than in the Eastern Plains.

T-Mobile already covers almost all of Weld County except for small portions of its farthest northeast corner, according to its 4G map. The network already covers almost all of the urbanized Front Range and Estes Park, but lacks coverage of portions of far-western Larimer and Boulder counties.

However, it’s possible that rural parts of the Front Range won’t be prioritized at all. Colorado classifies Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties as urban because they are all parts of a Census-designated metropolitan area, while parts of far-west Larimer County are considered rural areas of an urban county.

Rich Werner, president and CEO of Upstate Colorado Economic Development, said that designation precludes several small Weld County cities from accessing state resources, although that may not be the case once T-Mobile starts the 5G rollout.

But he said anything that brings technology infrastructure to less-populous areas will help them retain vital jobs.

“If we’re not paying attention to rural communities and not helping companies already there stay, we will continue to see that urban flight,” he said.

The speeds T-Mobile is proposing are also far slower than municipal options in Fort Collins and Estes Park, which are both promising 1 gigabyte upload and download speeds, and it’s not clear if those speeds would be competitive in three or six years’ time, or if they’ll be competitive when the next generation of mobile protocol standards are adopted.

“If we’re already talking about a gig as a potential standard now, what’s it going to be like six years from now?” Weiler said. “Maybe that promise might be much emptier half a decade away.”

T-Mobile and the Colorado Attorney General’s office did not respond to requests for further information on the rural network rollout.

Listen to our conversation about this story on KUNC’s Colorado Edition. The story starts at 12:15.

DENVER — Colorado’s deal with merging cell carriers T-Mobile (Nasdaq: TMUS) and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) is set to bring jobs and more connectivity to Denver and the state’s urban cores, but the benefits to rural communities may not be as sweet.

On Monday morning, the Colorado Attorney General’s office said it would drop a lawsuit with about a dozen other states trying to stop the $26.5 billion merger. The U.S. Justice Department gave its…

Lucas High
A Maryland native, Lucas has worked at news agencies from Wyoming to South Carolina before putting roots down in Colorado.
Sign up for BizWest Daily Alerts