For your celebration this year, you may have strung lights on your house, and your trees, and lit candles in celebration. But have you thought about the light that fiber brings to your home?
Here are some innovative uses of your fiber internet that can make the 12 Days of Christmas – and all the days after – even brighter and easier.
12. Light the Smart Lights. Smart device outlets allow you to control the timing of your holiday decorations, so you don’t have to think about unplugging the tree or turning off the light decor outside before going to bed.
11. Don’t let the Grinch steal your holiday cheer! Smart Home security and camera systems depend on reliable internet to function properly and alert you when something is amiss. Don’t forget the battery backup (check out the article below!).
10. Watch TV Together – or separately. Togetherness is fun, but what if you can’t watch another Hallmark Christmas Movie? Time for Die Hard? Everyone can watch what they want when they want – at the same time in the same room or different ones without fear of buffering. Get started with all the Holiday Streaming Deals from our partner, MyBundle.
9. Design Holiday Greetings. Using mobile apps such as Canva and Shutterfly, upload family photos and capture moments such as the first snow or a burst of candid laughter to make an exciting canvas for your family greeting card.
8. Create Gifts Online. Use favorite photos to create banners, blankets, mugs, and memory books for your loved ones. You can even fill a Create My Cookbook with treasured photos and family recipes.
7. Share Photos and Videos with loved ones without posting them for the entire world to see. Use an app like Cluster, which provides an Instagram-like feed but only for the people you invite into the group.
6. Share photos with “unplugged” family members. A Wi-Fi cloud frame from Nixplay provides a digital experience for the less tech-savvy folks in your life. This digital photo frame creates a slideshow of the photos you add, and you can easily use your phone to add more at any time — even if the photo frame is on the other side of the world. All the user has to do is turn on the digital frame and watch.
5. Plan Your Next Vacation. While the family is all together, it’s the perfect time to plan next year’s vacation. Experts like Jay Jaishankar, CEO of Visitor Insurance Services, a travel insurance company say plan early! “Ideally, plan six months to a year in advance to get the best deals,” he says. And according to a Statista survey, in 2023, 72 percent of travelers plan trips online.
4. Reindeer and other games are among the family’s favorite ways to engage with each other. Find multi-player games (such as Mario Kart or Overcooked) on Wii or PlayStation gaming consoles for the whole family to participate in.
3. Telecommute. It sounds better than playing hooky, right? The holidays are a great time to work from home if you can, particularly during the snowiest days.
2. Connect with Friends and Family. With Trailblazer Broadband’s unmatched upload speeds, you can virtually share holiday feasts and open presents “together,” keeping the holiday spirit alive, no matter the distance.
1. Disconnect! Get it all done and shut it down. Fast reliable internet keeps you from having to wait for the “wheel of doom,” that little spinning circle that appears on the screen whenever your connection is too slow for whatever it is you’re doing, giving you more time for fun and family holiday pursuits.
‘Tis the season for joy, and Trailblazer Broadband is here to make it even brighter. Happy Holidays from the Trailblazer Broadband Team!
Trailblazer Broadband and the Town of Estes Park do not promote or endorse any private entities or service providers referenced in this newsletter, linked references or in any other published materials. Resources and links are provided for informational purposes only.
Storms or cars colliding with an electrical cabinet can cause inconvenient electric outages. Trailblazer Broadband customers can stay connected and receive outage updates thanks to our modern fiber network. Customers must install a readily available Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to ensure uninterrupted internet service. A “battery in a box,” a UPS is a backup power supply for essential electronics to provide power for periods ranging from minutes to hours during a power outage. This device can provide backup power to your WiFi equipment during power outages, ensuring you stay connected to the internet even during an outage.
On the morning of Sunday, October 29th, galloping on the new Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) 115 kV transmission lines caused a system-wide outage. Line galloping occurs when temperature, wind, and ice combine, causing them to gallop or jump. If the lines touch each other, safeguard mechanisms called relays de-energize the lines to protect the grid from damage, resulting in an electrical outage. That morning, Journey Lineworkers from Estes Park Power and Communications and operators from Platte River Power Authority (PRPA) immediately got to work with WAPA to restore power. They restored power to Estes Park shortly after noon, and WAPA returned the new 115-thousand-volt lines to service later that day.
Many people wonder how they can stay connected to the internet during an electric outage. Trailblazer Broadband uses a modern Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) infrastructure. It is called “passive” because it does not rely on any electrically-powered equipment in the path between us and our customers. We have backup batteries in our offices for the network optics. Our customers must install a readily available Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to ensure uninterrupted service. This device provides backup power to your electronics during power outages, ensuring you stay connected to the internet even during an outage. You must also connect other electronics, cell phones, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones, or computers to the UPS. Many UPS products have multiple outlets, like a power strip, for other essential electronics in addition to your Gateway. The costs and capabilities of UPS backups vary greatly across various potential purchase options.
When considering a UPS purchase, first determine which devices besides your modem you may want to power during an outage, keeping in mind that some devices, such as TVs, take a great deal of power and will drain your UPS more quickly. Some devices may already have battery backups of their own. For example, Medical Device Uninterruptible Power Supply Systems (Medical Device UPS Systems) are designed to provide uninterrupted power precisely for your particular medical device. Most home security systems are programmed to switch to backup battery power during a power outage. In both of those examples, it is essential to double-check your system’s unique requirements.
Power and Communications continuously work to improve reliability; however, we have all learned from experience that fires, floods, and severe weather happen, and it is advisable to have an emergency contingency plan for you and your technology! Trailblazer internet service combined with a UPS will allow you to access our public information maps to get outage information. Customers can also sign up for automated notifications and receive updates through text messaging. We continuously share information on our internet network reliability on our Trailblazer website. Go to www.trailblazerbroadband.com, and click “Status” for the latest internet connectivity information.
If you don’t have a UPS, you can follow these steps once power is restored to ensure that you’re connected and your fiber internet is working:
- Make sure your router is on by checking the signal.
- Try restarting your router if it appears to be off.
- Call Trailblazer Broadband’s 24 x 7 x 365 Technical Support at 1-970-577-3770, Option 1.
Trailblazer is here to help area residents prepare for the unexpected and know what to do to stay connected.
Trailblazer Broadband is municipally owned and is Estes Park’s only modern fiber optic service, operated and maintained by Estes Park Power and Communications, formerly Light and Power. The Town of Estes Park provides information only and does not endorse any listed companies, their views, or the products/services they offer. For more information about internet service, contact Trailblazer Broadband at info@trailblazerbroadband.com or (970)577-3770. More Trailblazer news is available at www.trailblazerbroadband.com and https://www.facebook.com/TrailblazerBroadband/
Reprinted with permission from the Allenspark Wind, December 2023 Vol. 50, No. 11, Pg. 22, by Edward Yagi
One chapter in the 30-year, saga of internet access in Greater Allenspark is about to end. A new, game-changing chapter – the expansion of fiber optic cable broadband to any home on the Estes Park power grid – is about to begin.
As 2023 comes to a close, the big question on everyone’s mind is “Why is the world still at war? Wasn’t globalization and economic integration supposed to put an end to this nonsense?” One thing is for sure: most of us are happy to be in Allenspark rather than Kyiv or Gaza City…despite Allenspark STILL having worse internet than either one.
This raises another big question which, happily, doesn’t involve war (at least, not yet): when, exactly, will Estes Park Power & Communication’s “Trailblazer” high-speed fiber optic cable service reach Allenspark? Are they late? Are they behind schedule? Have they forgotten about us? Are they unaware that Allenspark even exists?
It turns out that the answer to all these questions is “yes” and for more details this reporter contacted its spies, er, contacts in Estes Park for the latest details. Only Kim agreed to speak on the record.
I obtained the following insight from someone we will identify only as Insider #1: “Well we never really expected to get to Allenspark before around 2025 in the first place. This is what we in Estes Park call a “forever project,” meaning that, like the electricity we have provided since the 1930s, it takes us forever to get up there. But once we ARE up there, we’re there forever, and once the basic infrastructure is all set up, it also takes forever to change anything. You only have one chance to do it right the first time. That’s what we’re doing.”
Insider #2 had a slightly different take. “A lot of people don’t know this, but since 1983 we’ve only had one person willing to go up to Allenspark at all. Allensparkionians can be, like, kinda crazy or ornery, you know? Our guy was Ralph, and a couple years ago, right in the middle of the Trailblazer roll out, we found out, sadly, that Ralph was dead. He was just sitting at his desk, all quiet, but there was nothing at all unusual about that. So it’s taken us some time to onboard a few new bright-eyed kids right out of school who didn’t know anything about Allenspark and aren’t afraid to go up there. But they have to be trained, and splicing internet fiber isn’t like pouring milk on cereal, you know what I mean?”
Insider #3, who clearly went to college, had this to say: “Say you build a railroad from Big City A to Small City B. The only way you can do this is to start running trains along the track you first build between A and the first stop, build more track, service the second stop, build more track, service the third stop, and so on. How long it takes to build the final stretch of track, to Small City B, depends in part on how much service you have along the intervening stops. The simple fact is, Allenspark has always been the last stop on the choo-choo line for pretty much any service, public or private, you can think of. Look where it is. It’s just simple geography.”
Insider #4 blamed it all on the weather: “If it was always summer we could have had Allenspark lit up a year ago. But surprise! it’s not always summer in Allenspark. We only have so many snow tires, oxygen tanks, and hazmat suits – hey, we’re a public utility, right? And the timing has just been horrendous – every time Allenspark was next on the list…BAM! winter hits, so hello Glen Haven. Sorry Allenspark…I guess it just sucks to be you.”
Insider #5 claimed that minor administrative error has played a role, if not a decisive one: “We sent two people do to a survey of Meeker Park…and they just vanished. I mean, like into thin air. Turns out that they went to Meeker, Colorado on the other side of the state. They ran out of gas, found a weed dispensary, and have been living there high and happy ever since. The paperwork we had to fill out on that one took months.”
When contacted for verification of the above insider intelligence, Trailblazer Customer Experience Manager Kim Smith replied: “I can neither confirm nor deny any of these reports. I can say that Allenspark’s wait is almost over. Most of Glen Haven, which was a very challenging area for us, now has service, and we will finally bring Trailblazer broadband to Allenspark in 2024. We’re saving the best for last! In the meantime, we are sending an email to all Allenspark folks who have registered in our system to inform them of our latest plans, and we are working to coordinate a Town Hall meeting in Allenspark in early December to answer the community’s questions. All we’re waiting for is Ralph to wake up. I swear that guy sleeps like he’s dead.”
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