Colorado Springs is 'future-proofing' its infrastructure, but many residents just see a torn up yard
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In an effort to implement new fiber networks throughout the city, Colorado Springs Utilities has been dropping large spools of bright orange conduit cables in neighborhoods around town.
Residents have mixed emotions about the project, which has required the city to dig up yards in some cases. The project also led to one recently settled lawsuit with private internet provider, Metronet.
This project, budgeted at $600 million, has an expected completion date of 2028, according to Deb Walker, spokesperson for Colorado Springs Utilities.
In a recent Rocky Mountain PBS canvas of the Briargate neighborhood, some neighbors reported that their lawns were torn up and they submitted landscaping maintenance requests to the city. The utility accepts requests for landscaping repairs here.
But Cat and Michael Carter, Briargate neighbors who have called Colorado Springs home for 21 years, welcome the changes.
“It's [fiber optic network] going to be that much quicker, and less manpower once it's up,” Cat Carter said. “And that's going to be good.”
The fiber network installation is an effort to “future-proof” the city’s infrastructure to better adapt to changing technologies, said Thane LaBarre, network transport services manager for Colorado Springs Utilities. Fiber optic cables deliver the internet at the speed of light and allow for high-speed connection to smart-devices, which might allow utility employees to control circuits from a remote location instead of needing to travel to utility customers' locations.
While Colorado Springs Utilities currently utilizes fiber optic network, the ongoing project expands its fiber network to all corners of the city. Expanding the reach allows the service to improve its own infrastructure, LaBarre said.
Notably, Colorado Springs Utilities implementation does not directly provide utilities customers with internet rather private contractors use the infrastructure to provide services.
The utility signed a 25-year contract to lease out some of its fiber network to Ting Networks to provide internet services to the public in an effort to help pay for the project, and said it’s in ongoing conversations with other providers as well. Ting’s website advertises its service at $89 a month and takes around three weeks to set up. Ting is not the only fiber network internet provider in Colorado Springs, but access to any given private fiber optic internet provider depends on customer location.
“Optical fibers are the plumbing of the internet,” said Paul Prucnal, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton University.
“There would be no internet without optical fibers,” he said. “They span the entire globe. The data is carried across continents under the sea, everywhere.”
Other cities around Colorado and the U.S. have begun to install the fiber network which shares information through light waves in the fiber, differentiating itself from satellite, and tends to have faster upload and download speeds.
These projects are often expensive, Prucnal said, but if companies or governments are going through the effort to update their infrastructure, Prucnal said that they should implement the highest quality technology that prepares them better for future technological advancements.
Fiber networks also aid in wildfire mitigation, said LaBarre, because administrators can turn off circuits from a control center rather than sending a lineman to de-energize a location.
“So the impact to the customer is on a larger scale,” he said.
“It's the ability — the utility — to control and mitigate a situation that may pose a life safety.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. To read more about why you can trust the journalism of Rocky Mountain PBS, please visit our editorial standards and practices page.