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Eagle opts into broadband project

EAGLE — Eagle will spend more than a quarter million dollars to bring fiber-optic cable into town.

In a 4-3 Town Board vote, Eagle became the ninth entity to join Project THOR, a “middle mile” broadband project coordinated by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments.

THOR will and will not
THOR will not provide fiber-optic broadband speed to homes and businesses. That's “last mile” service.
THOR will create a 178-mile fiber-optic loop around northwest Colorado. It would tap into the fiber-optic cable that the Colorado Department of Transportation already installed along Interstate 70. That loop will reach up to 12 community centers around the region, according to Mammoth Networks, the Gillette, Wyoming, company that would build THOR under a contract with the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments.
Jon Stavney, Northwest Colorado Council of Governments executive director, says it will cost $2.5 million to build the network infrastructure. A Colorado Department of Local Affairs grant will cover $1 million of that.

Eagle's share is $308,909, at least for now. That cost will go down if more governments and entities join, Stavney said.

Cost savings
Costs will also drop — or at least be partially offset — if Eagle can connect other local entities. Eventually, homes and businesses in town could connect through local internet service providers.

Some Eagle town board members likened THOR to federal projects that provided electricity to rural areas, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Board members said they've been unsuccessful in convincing Comcast and Century Link to provide “middle mile” service to the town.

First, middle and last miles
In any utility system there are beginning miles, middle miles and last miles.

For the THOR broadband system, the “beginning mile” was CDOT running fiber-optic cable along I-70.

The “middle mile” brings it into a community center. In Eagle's case this would be the town hall — ironically, about an actual mile from the fiber-optic cable CDOT laid along I-70 to the town hall.

The “last mile” takes it to homes and businesses. While THOR will push fiber-optic capability into towns around the region, homes and businesses won't be able to connect to it right away.

“That's up to the entity. This will create a market for a lot of hungry smaller internet service providers to create that last mile connection,” Stavney said.

Stavney said that while broadband service is not a public utility — like water, sewer and electricity — it often functions like one.

“In terms of its importance, it's as important as a utility,” Stavney said. “Try doing business in the modern world without it.”

Eagle will be subsidizing more remote communities like Craig and Meeker — spending money it would not otherwise need to, Ken Bauer, sales director for Forethought and San Isabel Telecom said.

“It's not that complicated. You don't need Mammoth or anyone else to do this. We don't need THOR as a middle mile provider,” Bauer said.

A pipeline for providers
THOR is not designed to compete with local internet service providers, but to allow them to tie into the system, Mammoth Network's Evan Biagi said.

“This is not a last mile project,” he said. “It will not connect customers or businesses. That's a local service provider.”

These sorts of networks already exist in urban areas. This would create a rural version of that in northwest Colorado, Biagi said.

Rural areas don't have it because there are not enough potential customers to make it a paying proposition for most telecom companies.

Eagle voters, like voters across the county and state, approved a ballot measure that allows towns and other governments to do exactly this, Eagle Mayor Anne McKibbin said.

“It has never been represented by us that if we sign this tonight and we can flip a switch tomorrow and it will be there,” McKibbin said during Tuesday's town board meeting.

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