Severed lines lead to countywide internet and phone issues

Loss of service reignites conversations about redundancy 

By Olivia Lueckemeyer

In two separate incidences last Friday and this Monday, internet and cell phone service came to a screeching halt in the valley after fiber optic lines were severed—on Friday, 32 to 50 miles west of Gunnison, and on Monday, just outside of Delta—causing a landslide of modern-day inconveniences affecting businesses, government agencies and individuals.

Fortunately, there were no emergencies as a result of the errors, but the outages spring-boarded the ongoing conversation about the need for a backup system in the future.

“Other than people thinking the zombie apocalypse had occurred, everything went really smoothly,” Gunnison County undersheriff Randy Barnes said of the Friday outage. “We have learned that having a single avenue of internet and phone lines coming into the valley is not smart. We need to put more pressure on the public utilities to provide a separate redundant line for communications to our valley.”

The Friday dead zone encompassed everyone from Lake City to Mt. Crested Butte for eight hours before Century Link was able to repair the damage.

Service discontinued again on Monday around noon, due to a road construction crew accidentally severing a fiber optic line right outside of Delta. Monday’s outage reached as far south as Cortez and lasted approximately four hours, but Century Link temporarily restored data and some internet and cell service by rerouting lines. As a result, Verizon cell service resumed approximately two hours following the initial blackout. A fiber repair team from Grand Junction fully resolved the issue at around 4 p.m.

“Our society is so reliant on internet and electricity and all of these systems,” Scott Morrill, county emergency manager, said. “I think this is a good opportunity for the community to reflect and start working on some contingency plans for when this happens in the future, because it will continue to happen.”

According to Barnes, on Friday the municipalities set up communication points for people to come to for information or to report crimes in person. The Gunnison Regional 911 Center Facebook page also reported that emergency lines were routed to Montrose County and communication ensued between Montrose County and Gunnison County via radio.

On Monday, emergency calls were routed through Delta County, and two analog lines were also set up by the Office of Emergency Management.

Since United Airlines was unable to obtain the dispatch release necessary to land at Gunnison Airport, the one flight into Gunnison on Friday was diverted to Montrose, but the airport remained open despite operational challenges. Fortunately, no flights were affected during Monday’s outage.

“We rely upon internet data and access and cell phone service for all kinds of things,” Rick Lamport, airport manager, said. “We did have to start thinking about what our contingencies were, so it was a disruption, no question about it.”

Business owners also took a hit from the outages. Mary Larson, owner of Mikey’s Pizza and Creekside Spa, said the loss of service impeded her employees’ ability to take orders over the phone at Mikey’s, and also disabled the phone and payment systems she uses at the spa.

“The outages had a big effect on our business,” Larson said. “Our phone system [at Creekside] is cell phone-based, so we missed all calls. It also affected checking out customers because all of our booking and payment systems are done through an online POS [point of sale], so we were basically shut down for taking new appointments and accepting credit card payments.

“I think we lost a lot of business,” Larson continued. “I’m sure we lost money from customers not being able to call, especially at Mikey’s Crested Butte, since a majority of our business is call-in orders.”

What about redundancy?

The lack of a redundant network to act as a failsafe in these incidences has been a source of discussion within the county for several years, but a system has yet to be put into place.

In 2011 the Gunnison County Local Technology Planning Team was formed to tackle broadband issues—the three major concerns including redundancy, availability and speed. According to team member David Clayton, redundancy was a first priority issue as it affects the largest number of people and services in an outage.

“Gunnison County gets its landline, cell and internet services via one multiple fiber cable running from Gunnison through Montrose and ultimately back to Denver via I-70,” Clayton explained. “Our worst case scenario was a crazed backhoe driver digging up that cable and taking out all data services, which is basically what happened Friday and Monday.”

Century Link owns the cable through its subsidiaries, but other companies such as Time Warner Cable will lease either unused fiber strands or bandwidth on used strands. From Gunnison to Crested Butte, there are separate fiber routes for Century Link and Time Warner, meaning that if a cut occurred somewhere between the two towns, only customers on the damaged cable would lose service. But if a cut occurs before Gunnison, both cables will go dark, which is what occurred on both Friday and Monday.

“One thing to make clear is that there is no true 100 percent redundancy. You can only decrease the possibility of an outage by adding redundant paths and systems,” Clayton explained. “The first priority is finding a way to get a new route fiber or microwave into Gunnison County; however, just having a second route is not redundancy unless the providers have access to and have bandwidth on each route.”

There are efforts underway to provide redundant systems, but according to Clayton, any solution would prove extremely costly.

“A microwave link to Salida would be in the low six figures if you use existing towers,” he said. “A fiber cable to Montrose would be $25 per foot, or more than $8 million.”

Within the past year, the county and Region 10, the economic development agency for Gunnison County, have received two grants from the Department of Local Affairs to address broadband issues. According to Clayton, the second grant is intended to tackle redundancy by adding a new service through Gunnison to Crested Butte and Mt. Crested Butte. Redundancy for government agencies would be the first priority, but service could be provided to companies through either internet service providers or the municipalities. Still, this grant relies on the single cable running from Montrose to Gunnison.

Municipalities within the county must provide a combined 20 percent match in order for the project to commence, and shares vary based on the work that would need to be done in each area.

Senior planner for the Gunnison County Community Development department Cathie Pagano described the development of broadband redundancy as a county priority, but also a “work in progress.”

“The county is well aware that this is a major concern and has been working for the past two years with Region 10 to develop a plan and identify funding sources,” she said. “The solution for redundancy is more complicated and is probably still three years out from implementation.”

An alternative solution would be to obtain access to fibers installed on transmission lines operated by regional power entities such as the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA). According to Clayton, these fibers run from Montrose through Gunnison to Salida, but currently are only allowed to carry control signals related to power company operations.

“To add data services, the rights-of-way agreement would have to be renegotiated for commercial data,” Clayton explained. “This effort means new agreements, and possibly new royalties, with each landowner having towers and wires on or over their lands.”

In order for any of these methods to work, Clayton says a couple of remaining factors hinge on the county’s ability to achieve “true redundancy.”

“The efforts that are being undertaken attempt to reduce the chance of outages like we have experienced,” Clayton said. “But we need a second, independent route for data into the valley with access to a second hub like Albuquerque, N.M. for true redundancy. We also need all providers to utilize this second path if we are to get the redundancy most people expect.”