Wireless may go countywide

Plan would extend network

The same wireless web service that Internet Colorado owner Jason Swenson has proposed in Gunnison and Crested Butte could be on its way to the Irwin town site, and even Somerset, if the county signs on to help with the bureaucratic wrangling involved in the process.

The plan would link the possible future Gunnison or Crested Butte wireless web networks to those more remote areas of the county with eight or nine relays mounted to poles placed on public land.
“We’re hoping to cover the lost [population] of rural Gunnison County that is totally unserved,” Swenson told the commissioners at a work session Tuesday, January 12. “EMS and cellular services are non-existent in these areas. If the towers are going to be put in place you might as well install something that can be used by everybody.”
The poles would have to be 100 to 150 feet tall and self-supporting, meaning they would not need guy wires that would increase the area affected by the poles. However, Swenson said he didn’t know how much area would be affected by the installation of the poles, which requires a crane.
But Swenson said dealing with the Forest Service for such a project without the backing of a governmental entity was a nightmare. The towers being proposed would be placed on Forest Service land and paid for with federal stimulus money from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Swenson said that would be too much to handle on his own.
“We’d need to put the poles on Forest Service land and this is where the county needs to take the lead,” Swenson said. “We met with the Forest Service about this proposal and it was not pretty or fun. It’s a deal-killer. They’re trained to just say ‘no.’”
Swenson said the plan would cost between $600,000 and $800,000 to implement and just like Internet Colorado has done for Gunnison, and offered to do for Crested Butte, he hopes to apply for money from the NTIA or the Rural Utility Service with the county’s blessing.
“The fact that these areas are totally unserved makes this project ideal for the stimulus. But we couldn’t do it ourselves. This has to be a joint venture with a governmental entity like the county,” Swenson said.
Without permission to place the towers on public land from the Forest Service, Swenson doesn’t see much purpose in applying for the federal money and asked the commissioners to lobby the Forest Service on the proposal’s behalf.
If this proposal is seen through and is successful, Swenson said, the poles could eventually be installed during the summer months and would be “self-sufficient” after the initial work was done, with the possibility of leasing the poles to cellular companies seeking to expand their coverage area.
The commissioners were receptive to the idea and said they would consider the proposal before taking any formal action.