Room has power to change broadband access in Steamboat, Routt County

Steamboat Springs Several feet above where coal was once shoveled into an old boiler room in the Steamboat Springs School District administrative building now sits a room that has the potential to reshape broadband access in the city of Steamboat Springs and Routt County.

Members of the Northwest Colorado Broadband co-op and other public and private organizations gathered Tuesday afternoon to dedicate the room, known as a carrier-neutral location, that is the product of two-and-a-half years of hard work.

Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association CEO Tom Kern described the uphill battle the interested organizations faced in making the location a reality and how daunting the task looked at the start.

Man, were toast, Kern said to himself after a particularly disheartening meeting with various providers and users. But, we just kept at it.

The carrier-neutral location initially is enabling the school district, the city of Steamboat Springs and Routt County to pay far less for more connectivity, but the hope is that the effects will trickle down to customers large and small across the region.

A carrier-neutral location is a space owned by a disinterested third party where broadband providers can install equipment to connect to one another. In the case of the new CNL in the school districts building, the space will allow Northwest Colorado Broadband to connect to the newest middle-mile broadband provider in town: Mammoth Networks.

The middle mile is a segment of network infrastructure between the backbone of the Internet and last-mile providers, which serve individual customers.

Until now, the only true middle-mile provider in Steamboat Springs has been CenturyLink, which owned the fiber optic lines out of town.

Mammoth Networks expanded presence in Steamboat will allow it to compete with CenturyLink to provided middle-mile services to local Internet service providers as well as provide drastically less expensive connectivity to the large, institutional customers grouped under Northwest Colorado Broadband.

In addition to the three entities now receiving services under the agreement, Yampa Valley Medical Center and Yampa Valley Electric Association plan to join in the next phase, further aggregating the institutional broadband demand and the negotiating power that goes along with that.

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Room has power to change broadband access in Steamboat, Routt County