The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Asks BOCC and Mt. Crested Butte for support
By Alissa Johnson & Olivia Lueckemeyer
Efforts to bring reliable internet service to the Gunnison Valley continue as Western State Colorado University attempts to obtain funding for a project it believes would guarantee fiber redundancy, or a second internet connection, to Gunnison—a critical step in ensuring reliable internet service valley-wide.
“We’ve been talking about fiber and internet redundancy in the valley for quite some time. The primary problem is that we have a single connection from the valley to the west to Montrose, and from time to time that stops working,” Chad Robinson, chief information officer at Western, explained to the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council on October 4.
This summer the valley was brought to a standstill when human error caused valley-wide internet outages. For WSCU, faulty internet service is a security issue as well as a problem for students.
“We’re the only school that doesn’t have this kind of capacity in the state of Colorado. We need to maintain competitiveness and make sure we can maximize our operational efficiency. And also, as we get more into the distance education realm, it’s got to be always on,” Robinson said.
Robinson and Western’s vice president of finance and administration, Julie Feier, have been meeting with entities like the council and the Board of County Commissioners to garner support for their efforts to secure a second connection from Poncha Springs.
The proposal is a new one in the landscape of regional broadband service. The county and Region 10, which is an economic development agency for Gunnison and surrounding counties, have received two grants to address broadband issues, one of which is intended to help tackle redundancy between Gunnison, Crested Butte, and Mt. Crested Butte.
Western’s proposal, however, is the first to bring in an internet connection from the east.
“Our project is all about a separate geographic path to the valley,” Robinson told the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council on October 4. If funded by the state, 60 miles of fiber would be installed between Poncha Springs and a carrier-neutral location in Gunnison via an easement from the Colorado Department of Transportation. The estimated cost of the project is $13.7 million.
According to Feier, Western realigned some its own priorities after the loss of connectivity in June, when members of the Capital Development Committee (CDC), a statutory committee responsible for reviewing funding requests for capital projects from all state agencies, were on campus. Western has submitted a proposal to the Department of Higher Education (DHE), which ranked it number seven of 26 projects as of early October. The projects will then be reviewed by the CDC, and from there, the Joint Technology Commission and the Joint Budget Commission will review them.
Feier expects to hear back on the proposal this spring when the Long Bill, or the budget for the state of Colorado, is passed. “Even though spring seems like a long time from now, it’s just part of the process. We’ll be going to the capital to make a plea for the cash,” Feier said.
In anticipation of those meetings, Feier and Robinson are looking for community support for the proposal—which won’t improve the project’s ranking with the DHE but could help with the Joint Technology Commission and the Joint Budget Commission.
Feier admitted that for the DHE, the request is unorthodox because it focuses on the broader community and not just students.
“The Department of Higher Education is not loving it. They’ve had a lot of follow-up questions about it… but we ranked seventh, which is really pretty good,” Feier said.
So far, WSCU has spent $25,000 to secure a cost estimate and committed $250,000 toward the project if it comes to fruition.
“We would be happy if community entities, like the school district or the county, wanted to contribute funds,” Feier said.
In Mt. Crested Butte, the council needed some clarification in terms of how the project was different from other efforts to bring redundancy to the Gunnison Valley and what it meant for service between Gunnison and Mt. Crested Butte.
Robinson clarified that the project would not create a second line between the south and north ends of the valley, but he also pointed out the geographic region in which a cut line could create an outage would be dramatically smaller, reducing exposure to problems.
In addition, Feier suggested that these state dollars going toward a second internet connection to Gunnison could free up other funds to solve the bottleneck between Gunnison and Mt. Crested Butte.
The Mt. Crested Butte Town Council agreed to write a letter in support of the project and consider a symbolic financial contribution during its upcoming budgeting process.
The Board of County Commissioners agreed to draft a letter in support of the project.
Even with local support, Feier was clear that funding is not guaranteed. “To be clear,” she told the Mt. Crested Butte Town Council, “This is a super-long shot. But if we have any hope, it’s this year after [the June] occurrence.”
The DHE was finalizing its ranking of the projects in mid-October, and Feier said it was possible the Western proposal would slip to tenth.
