PI editorial: Roaring Fork Valley’s web outages isn’t just an obstacle to seeing cat videos

Younger or old, huge company or modest mom-and-pop company, all of us sense the disruption, disconnection and financial affect when the net goes out.

Acquire for example the outage of very last 7 days. Triggered by a cable staying lower at the 27th Avenue underpass development web page, connectivity was down for 1000’s from Glenwood Springs all the way to Aspen.

We get that incidents come about, but we’re puzzled at how vulnerable the Roaring Fork Valley stays to significant online disruptions in 2023. In some means this is a final result to the non-public sector solution that began yrs back when large-pace world-wide-web obtain began rolling out to communities. Somewhat than looking at it a public utility (even nevertheless the net has its roots in federal research programs through the Division of Defense), internet was considered a non-public support to be largely taken care of, marketed and offered by non-public firms.

Now, this in all probability aided spur rapid enlargement of fiber optic advancement through a great deal of the nation than would have in any other case happened, but it looks like we come across far more downsides than upsides to that technique in our neck of the woods. There is some competitiveness, to be certain, but not plenty of that adequate of us can genuinely consider our business enterprise in other places when we put up with a major and prolonged disconnection.

Now the good news is that we have neighborhood and point out measures in the functions that could enable continue to keep internet outages shorter and less frequent. Glenwood Springs Group Broadband is readily available for some metropolis people presently and the services is very likely to broaden even further in the coming months and many years.

Garfield County is also inquiring the point out to do additional of their portion to assistance improved join our rural communities. Previously this spring, the county commissioners questioned the condition to expedite the process letting communities to be a part of on the Colorado Section of Transportation’s fiber network. 

Then in Could, Gov. Jared Polis signed a legislation letting counties and municipalities to fund online company advancements without having first acquiring to look for voters’ acceptance. 

So, it is pretty probable that many of us Garfield County residents could see improvement in our world wide web company in the up coming couple yrs. Right until then, nonetheless, we may well want to hold on to those people dusty 56K modems in the occasion we want them for backup company.

The Submit Independent editorial board users are Publisher/Editor Peter Baumann and neighborhood representatives John Stroud, Mark Fishbein and Amy Connerton.