The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“We’ll look at everything…”
[ by Mark Reaman ]
The idea of having “redundancy” for internet and cell phone service through more than a single fiber line providing such service to Gunnison and Hinsdale counties came into sharp focus last Thursday, November 12 when a contractor sliced the one line cutting service, including 911 capability, in the counties for about 10 hours.
The outage impacted local emergency personnel and those that depend on the world-wide web for work.
Gunnison County emergency manager Scott Morrill said Thursday’s outage was different from previous ones, including a couple that occurred in 2016, because of “the inability for people to dial 911. They received a busy signal,” he said. “Usually when 911 lines get cut, the system can reroute the calls from Gunnison County to Montrose or Delta dispatch centers. In 2016 citizens could still dial 911 on landlines. Not this time, and that was a serious problem.”
While not yet finished, there is potential for redundant fiber lines coming into the county sooner rather than later. Virgil Turner, regional broadband project director at Region 10, the organization charged with helping to develop a rural broadband network in our part of the Western Slope, said having such backup is needed, but it is never easy and it doesn’t happen quickly. He said Region 10 is investigating and working on a number of potential plans to get redundancy to the area and one could be coming online relatively soon. “Last week was an example of why it is needed,” he said. “It is a fragile network right now.”
The only live fiber line currently runs from Montrose to Gunnison. Turner said Lumen (formerly CenturyLink) worked in conjunction with the recent Cottonwood Pass road realignment and is in the process of putting in a second fiber line over the pass. “My understanding is that the company is still completing this new route so it is not quite there yet but perhaps could be live by the end of December.”
Turner said the ultimate plan is to have two separate paths for fiber coming from different directions so that a single calamity cannot take out two lines. A wildfire, for instance, could impact separate lines located in the same area.
He said Region 10 is in talks with WAPA (the Western Area Power Administration) to possibly use its transmission lines where dark fiber is available. But there are some technical and legal issues involved with the easements over private property. Turner did say WAPA has conducted a feasibility study on the idea but discussions are in the very early stage.
Turner promised he is looking at everything to get a diverse redundancy line system set up. He mentioned the potential of bringing a line from Marble over Schofield Pass and into Crested Butte and Gunnison. Another idea is to bring in a line from Creede to Lake City and Gunnison. “Part of my job is to look at every option,” he said.
Turner said some state money might be available to help fund some of that redundancy. To provide new line is not cheap, with Turner saying it could cost about $200,000 per mile.
“The world we live in is very dependent on tele-communications,” said Turner. “We can’t have outages like last week’s so I am confident we’ll get to a solution in a few years at the most. We have to. Finding the right solution we can afford is the challenge.”
Even if the line over Cottonwood is completed this year, there is still work to do and the need for proper equipment to be put in place that can switch from one fiber line to another. Turner said a router would likely be located at the Gunnison police department—a carrier-neutral location where internet for the valley originates.
“We are trying our best to find a good solution to this issue,” Turner concluded. “We know it is a problem. We are talking to anyone and everyone who might be able to help.”
