Internet broadband provider Eagle-Net Alliance is back in the news because the Department of Commerce inspector general has decided to review its finances and operations.
Eagle-Net, which received $100 million in stimulus money to provide broadband service to unserved areas in Colorado, is under fire for having reached only half the schools it agreed to supply while only $7.8 million of the original stimulus money remains.
Among the school districts in Southwest Colorado still waiting for broadband service are Dolores, Montezuma-Cortez, Mancos and Silverton.
The agreement to conduct the audit comes after local governmental leaders expressed mounting frustrations with Eagle-Net’s work, including the fact that it laid fiber-optic cable along the Front Range where private companies already provide broadband service.
Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, and Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma, pressed the inspector general to review Eagle-Net’s situation.
Eagle-Net just received permission to resume its work at the end of April after several months of delay while the National Telecommunications and Information Administration reviewed its environmental-compliance issues. That delay pushed completion of its projects in Southwest Colorado out to the end of the year instead of August, the company said at the time. It does not plan to connect the Silverton School District until 2014 at the earliest.
Eagle-Net also is working to establish partnerships with local Internet providers because it estimates it needs an additional $15 million and another year to complete the connection of so-called “last mile” communities, such as Pagosa Springs and Silverton. It has a partnership with Durango’s Brainstorm Internet.
“So far, Eagle-Net has overbuilt in areas that already have high-speed fiber-optic lines installed by private providers, blown through $100 million in taxpayer funds and put needed projects in unserved areas on the Western Slope at the bottom of their list of priorities,” Tipton said in a news release. “With this track record, it is truly astonishing that Eagle-Net is requesting additional funds to finish a project that falls pathetically short of the promises the company made to provide broadband access to unserved rural areas.”
The details on the timing of the audit were not available.
abutler@durangoherald.com
