The Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office focuses on many projects around the Archuleta County area and broader region. Working with local and regional Internet Service Providers as well as local governments, utilities and banks, the Broadband Services Management Office strives to work with all stakeholders to increase broadband speed, reliability and accessibility while maintaining an affordable cost to access broadband in the county.

Current Projects Coordinated by the Office

  • Colorado DORA Broadband Fund
    • The Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office worked with Visionary Communications to submit a grant application in July 2019 seeking nearly $500,000 from the Broadband Fund to assist with six local fixed wireless projects in Archuleta County
  • Carrier Neutral Location (CNL)
    • The Office is working with the Pagosa Springs Medical Center to establish obligations and privileges for all Internet Service Providers and other network stakeholders to access the future CNL that will be housed at the Pagosa Springs Medical Center
    • Plan to begin construction in the winter of 2020 once the agreement between the hospital and Broadband Services Management Office is completed and signed by all parties
  • Hospital-La Plata Electric Association (LPEA) Fiber Connection
    • The Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office seeks to complete a fiber connection between the Pagosa Springs Medical Center and an LPEA substation on South Pagosa Blvd to create redundancy and resiliency in the network as well as to provide additional bandwith capacity in the local publicly-owned fiber network
    • The Office is working with the Southwest Colorado Council of Governments (SWCCOG) and the Pagosa Springs Medical Center on a Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) Program grant application that will provide funds of 65% for the project
  • Natural Grocers communications fiber relocation
    • Project moves a fiber bundle in the publicly-owned SCAN network from an aerial link above the back of the Natural Grocers building at US 160 and 8th Street to an underground link running beneath 8th Street
    • The project was required as Natural Grocers extended its building to the back of the lot and encroached upon multiple communications lines owned by several entities including the SCAN fiber
    • Archuleta County Broadband Fund is splitting the cost of relocating fiber with Natural Grocers at $4200 apiece
    • The cutover work will occur on a Saturday or other off day in the next few weeks to minimize downtime and disruptions for SCAN fiber customers
    • Eric has a mitigation plan in place to back up service during the outage
  • Colorado 811
    • The Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office is now registered with Colorado 811 to respond to utility locate requests that could possibly have impacts on local broadband networks
    • Eric sent a KMZ map file to the 811 folks to register broadband assets and designate the Office as the responsible party for locate requests
    • This registration will help mitigate issues with fiber cuts, etc., that can affect operations of the broadband network
  • SCAN fiber
    • Leases
      • Have three interested parties currently with two of those having basically committed to endpoints for leasing
    • Contract with Zito Media
      • Not much action recently and need to button up the contract for both parties in 2020
      • The Archuleta County Broadband Services Management Office did pay Zito Media for back leases for five years of poles (~$9.50/pole for ~150 poles), paid out of the PSCDC Broadband Fund recently
  • Meetings with partner stakeholders
    • Archuleta County Broadband Services Managers Jason Cox and Eric Hittle continue to engage local entities regularly to stay up to speed on broadband deployment opportunities
      • CDOT
      • CenturyLink
      • 811
      • FastTrack
      • LPEA
      • SWCCOG
  • Aspen Springs monopole
    • Still have a $10,000 commitment for half of this project with Visionary Communications
    • Visionary still targets getting to this project by winter 2019 in November or December
  • Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) trenching next summer
    • Archuleta County Broadband Services Managers have been in touch with local and state-level CDOT resources who provided a resource at the state level to discuss a partnership on the fiber trench that CDOT plans to bring down from Wolf Creek Pass to Pagosa Springs in summer 2020
    • Jason met w/ a local bank president and lender, with some local private investors and with representatives of an ISP to talk about implementing the project and getting someone to put fiber into the trench alongside CDOT
    • Eric putting together a cost model and revenue model to pitch to investors and to try and leverage financing through grant and loan programs
  • Other opportunities
    • DOLA matches w/ private ISPs to leverage capital further for 2020 and beyond
    • Cloman Park link needs to be a high priority project after the hospital link
    • Organize business entity to put fiber to top of Wolf Creek if existing ISPs can’t commit to the CDOT fiber trenching project