City leaders and officials with Visionary Broadband, a provider of high-speed Internet service to communities in the rural West, including Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, held a symbolic groundbreaking event Friday to mark the official kick-off of the public/private project.
Phase 1 will be the construction of a redundant ring, or loop, that will cover primarily the greater Cañon City area and tie into much of the city's base infrastructure including city and government buildings, emergency dispatch and the school system.
As the ring is being built out, Phase 2 will work into the businesses, homes and subdivisions.
Brian Shepherd, VP of Grant Engagement for Visionary Broadband, said the project will take about three years.
City Information Technology Manager Aleizja Owens said high-speed, reliable, redundant communication provided through fiber optic cable is crucial to the business sector, economic growth, residents and schools.
"This is a very crucial moment for this project," he said.
There have been talks about bringing fiber-optics to the community since at least 2017. With the city's allocated American Rescue Plan Act funds received in late 2021, City Administrator Ryan Stevens said the city set aside $1 million to bring fiber optics to the community in partnership with Visionary Broadband.
"This is going to bring a best-in-class fiberoptic broadband solution to Cañon City," Stevens said during Friday's event. "It's going to create competition in the broadband market, and we are really looking forward to that."
He said this leading-edge fiber network will be a catalyst to help with economic development and recruiting people to the community.
"Cañon City has been a community that needs to compete with other communities for development," City Economic Development Manager Rick Harrmann said. "We as a community need to understand our needs and understand how we can add to our community to help incentivize and help encourage other investors to come to the community."
Reliable Internet is now mandatory, he said.
"It is a required utility for a community to have in order to promote growth," Harrmann said. "We're not looking to turn our community into anything else other than what Cañon City can be."
When the Internet goes down, it affects businesses and creates challenges.
"Government needs to govern, students need to go to school and use the Internet to learn, it touches every bit of our lives, including all of our cellphones," Harrmann said. "This base infrastructure is very critical to our community."
This infrastructure could encourage primary jobs locally so that the 57% of Fremont County residents who work outside the community could work here instead.
Business owner Chris Koehn of Second-61 likened the network to farming.
"As our business community continues to grow, our 'seed' is the network services," he said. "For us to compete — attract the businesses we want that are sustainable, that will be here for a long time and add legs to our economic community — this is an absolutely critical need for us."
Koehn's business provides technology services on a national and international scale, and without the citywide fiber Internet build-out, there is no "crop."
"Without a crop, we don't grow," he said. "... Our businesses can't thrive without (Visionary Broadband) coming here."
With modern education changing rapidly, Cañon City School District Superintendent Adam Hartman said this reliable Internet is a necessity for students.
"Our kids have to have access to high-quality Internet," he said. "In addition to accessibility is affordability."
Crews began working on the ring on April 23, and as of April 26, they had already laid 1,300 feet of fiber along Justice Center Road.
"From my standpoint, I will have employees here," said Visionary Broadband CEO Brian Worthen. "This actually gives us a hiring pool. We've got fiber plants west of here in Salida, Buena Vista, Poncha and Gunnison. Those areas are hard to find housing, so the possibility that opens for us, we are anticipating within 18 months to have more employees based out of this location, so this is about simple job creation."
Shepherd said packages range from $60 to $90 per month for unlimited, symmetrical Internet service, up to a gigabit symmetrical speed.
To learn more, visit https://www.vcn.com/.
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