A recent bankruptcy petition by a locally operating internet provider is lining up competitors to fill a potential void in how rural homes access internet.

Frontier Communications, headquartered in Connecticut but which operates throughout North Idaho and 29 other states, says it’s able to provide internet access to more than 33 million Americans. But while its coverage map has not been challenged, its ability to provide higher-speed access to rural Americans — including those in Kootenai and Shoshone counties — has been called into question.

Frontier filed a bankruptcy petition April 15. Conversely, on Tuesday, a court approved the sale of Frontier’s operations in Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Montana to Northwest Fiber, LLC, a company specifically designed for the Frontier purchase. Once the acquisition is complete, the company is expected to operate under Ziply Fiber, according to a press release.

Reuters reported that Frontier estimated its assets and liabilities both in the range of $10 billion to $50 billion, according to a filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Internet providers don’t merely compete for customers’ cash. They also compete in an auction for funds collected through a telecommunication fee called the Universal Service Fund fee. Providers then use those funds to build out necessary networks in places that have either weak or no wireless connectivity.

The more than $20 billion in funds gets distributed nationwide back to providers who build out networks to schools, libraries, health care providers and — more recently included in this list — rural households.

But first, internet providers must establish they can provide broadband download speeds of 25 megabytes per second, something Frontier has long held the company can provide. But Frontier’s capabilities to provide that service has come under fire by two trade associations made up by Frontier’s smaller competitors.

In a joint April 27 letter from the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association and the National Rural Electric Coooperative Association, the two groups asked the Federal Communication Commission to investigate Frontier’s claims it could indeed hit that speed.

“We find it difficult to believe that Frontier was able to provide voice and 25/3 Mbps service in each of these 16,000 census blocks in just eight months, and question how this is possible, especially in light of Frontier’s operational issues and financial woes that led to its filing of a bankruptcy petition on April 14,” the letter reads.

“We think what they’re doing is saying, ‘Nope, we’ve got [rural areas] covered with 25/3 speeds’ to keep local competition at bay,” said Mike Kennedy, president of Intermax in Coeur d’Alene. “For years, Frontier had a monopoly … They’d like it better if that was the case.

“They don’t want to have a fair, competitive fight in those rural areas.”

Those areas include rural pockets in southern stretches of Kootenai County, on and near tribal lands, around Spirit Lake and in Bayview, as well as whole swaths of Shoshone County from Cataldo to Mullan.

Frontier Communica-tions did not respond to requests for this story.

State Sen. David Nelson, D-Moscow, on Tuesday called for easier access to stronger internet speeds in harder-to-reach areas after the coronavirus pandemic has left thousands of rural students with little to no internet access.

“At the drop of a hat, Idaho students and teachers have had to completely change their education plans for the school year,” Nelson wrote. “They are creating lessons in the virtual world while they are burdened by one of our state’s biggest problems: bad internet. Now, more than ever, Idahoans need reliable broadband.”

The Idaho lawmaker cited how students in his district have had to congregate in school parking lots to access wi-fi, and how teachers send weekly paper packets instead of online curriculum, violating the state’s constitutional requirement of uniform access to education.

“Unfortunately,” Nelson said, “unreliable broadband in many parts of Idaho is limiting what people can do. The coronavirus pandemic has made it more obvious than ever that reliable internet access is a public utility that all Idahoans need.”