For Angela Diahkah, what started as a self-described “side hustle” is now her full-time job.

Diahkah – or “Ange,” as she sometimes goes by – is five years into serving as Network Operations Supervisor and Digital Navigator Program Manager for JNET, the Tribally-owned broadband provider for the Pueblo of Jemez.

Just 50 miles northwest of Albuquerque, Angela leads the charge in building a new fiber network, the gold-standard of Internet connectivity, that once complete will serve her community (one of the 19 Pueblos in New Mexico).

Last week, she was at the 17th Tribal Broadband Bootcamp (TBB) in Aguana, California in the hills above Temecula Valley, along with a half dozen JNET technicians-in-training and JNET Director Kevin Shendo. The 30 or so other TBB participants – representing broadband leaders from several other federally-recognized Tribes – were also there for the three-day immersive learning experience focused on building and operating Tribal Internet networks.

Held in different tribal regions several times a year since the initiative began in 2021, this most recent bootcamp was back at TBB co-founder Matthew Rantanen’s “RantanenTown Ranch.”

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“We're basically trying to find a light in a dark tunnel and just work with what’s best for us,” Angela told ILSR in describing why she and her JNET crew had come, just as they are in the early stages building out their own fiber-to-the-home network.

“We want to expose them to the network,” literally and figuratively, she said.

More than 121 Colorado cities and towns have now opted out of SB152, a 17-year old state law backed by telecom monopolies greatly restricting the construction and funding of community broadband alternatives.

And the trend shows no sign of slowing down. 

Colorado’s SB152, passed in 2005 after lobbying pressure by Comcast and Centurylink, prohibits the use of municipal or county money for broadband infrastructure without first holding a public vote.

Deep pocketed monopolies know they can usually outspend municipalities, bombarding voters with misleading marketing to try and shift the vote in their favor. But SB152 is different from most of the other 17 state preemption laws ghost written by monopolies in a bid to stifle consumer choice: it includes a clause allowing voters to opt out of the restrictions entirely. Angry at decades of market failure, Colorado towns and cities are increasingly shaking off these unnecessary shackles in a bid to improve service. 

During the recent midterm elections, four additional communities (Castle Pines, Lone Tree, Pueblo and Trinidad) voted to opt out of the onerous state restrictions. With those votes, more than 121 Colorado communities have chosen to opt out of SB152, according to the latest tally by the Denver Post.

Across the country, the pandemic highlighted the essential nature of affordable fiber broadband networks. That in turn accelerated public annoyance at regional monopolies intent on maintaining a very broken, but very profitable status quo, Tim Scott, a project manager overseeing the buildout of Boulder’s broadband backbone, told the Denver Post. 

“Why do we accept this duopoly of service? That’s what we’re trying to do in Boulder is to make it more competitive,” Scott said. “What the pandemic did is it brought the delivery of broadband services to the attention of every mayor.”