The “glue” of Trailblazer Broadband is someone you don’t always see, but she’s everywhere, keeping the wheels of progress – and construction – moving. She is Linda Swoboda, Estes Park Utilities Business Manager. Having worked with the Town of Estes Park since 2015, Linda has spent much of the last 4 years coordinating operations for Trailblazer Broadband as well as other utility projects for the Town. In her role with Trailblazer, she has created and coordinated the entire construction schedule with the fiber team and manages day-to-day operations, subcontractors, supply management, contracts, grant writing, and budgeting.
Swoboda has a dual expertise in Construction Management and Architectural Studies, backed by two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and an MBA. In addition to all her other responsibilities, she used her unique talents to design and renovate Trailblazer’s headquarters at 1180 Woodstock Drive. She has also provided independent estimating consulting services for building contractors and architectural design firms.
Linda grew up in Nebraska where she was a tenured associate professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, teaching estimating courses. She was also a project manager for The Weitz Company in Nebraska and Arizona.
After relocating to Estes Park in 2010, Linda and her husband Gary became active community members. Swoboda is an occasional snowshoer, hiker, quilter and long-time member of the Estes Valley Quilt Guild.
“I am so happy to be here in the beauty of Estes Park and surrounded by such a great community of friends. The Trailblazer project has been a labor of love, and I am really looking forward to bringing it to its planned completion in the next year, ” Linda says. Trailblazer is incredibly fortunate to have Linda as its guiding force!
Trailblazer Broadband is municipally owned and is Estes Park’s only locally supported high-speed broadband service providing fiber directly to homes and businesses. The Town of Estes Park provides information only and does not endorse any listed companies, the views they express, 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 atwww.trailblazerbroadband.com andhttps://www.facebook.com/TrailblazerBroadband/.
Incredibly, the first four years of Trailblazer Broadband’s fiber buildout are behind us! Following a unanimous vote of the Town Board on March 12, 2019, the Town of Estes Park kicked off its community-owned and operated broadband. This high-speed internet service will ultimately be available to everyone Estes Park Power & Communications serves.
Currently, Trailblazer service is available to approximately 80% of the intended recipients and this year, construction has expanded into the outlying areas of Glen Haven and Allenspark. To date, there are over 3,200 Trailblazer Broadband customers, 250 of which are area businesses.
PROGRESS TO DATE
This new fiber network has been entirely built from scratch since the old cable infrastructure used by other carriers cannot provide the speed and reliability of 100% fiber optic lines. The state-of-the-art fiber infrastructure of Trailblazer Broadband requires an expansive network spread from 4 centralized “huts” to 55 strategically located cabinets and then to thousands of terminals across our valley.
Over 780 miles of fiber optic cable have been run since construction started in Sept 2019. As with electrical lines, main fiber lines may run overhead or be buried underground, depending on the location. When running fiber underground, crews typically follow existing easements which is why we may need to cross asphalt or concrete paved areas; however, we try to minimize cutting through these hard surfaces. “It is always our goal to make any disruption from our construction as minimal and short-term as possible,” comments Joe Lockhart, Estes Park Power & Communications Line Superintendent.
During the past four years, the Trailblazer team has constantly streamlined and adapted the construction plan to reach as many customers as quickly as possible while maintaining the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the project. Linda Swoboda, Estes Park Utilities Business Manager explains, “Agility is essential to any large-scale project, and this one is no exception. During the buildout process, we encountered challenges from our surroundings including wildfire, record snowfall and freezing temperatures, fiber damage from wildlife and most recently, a lot of rain. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down our operations less than a year after we started building the network. We weathered that well, but the resulting supply chain issues and rising cost of materials continue to impact us today. Although other front-range communities – Longmont, Ft. Collins, and Loveland – have built similar fiber networks, none of them have faced the same terrain challenges that exist in the Estes Valley. Even considering those challenges, we have been ahead of our original schedule for a good portion of the buildout which leaves us well-positioned to complete construction by the original timeframe by the end of 2024.”
When we change our schedule, the timeline for some areas improves which pleases those folks, while other areas are pushed back on the schedule. We realize that delays can disappoint those eagerly awaiting service, and we are committed to getting everyone connected as quickly as possible. All community members are encouraged to register at www.TrailblazerBroadband.com to receive the latest news and updates with no obligation.
2023 KEY MILESTONES
As the project nears completion, two key milestones are taking place in 2023. The first milestone is making payments on the bond issued to fund the broadband buildout. This bond, procured grants, and Trailblazer client revenue have funded 100% of the project without using any tax dollars. “Obviously, bond payments are a priority for the project’s sustainability, and we are well-positioned to make those payments,” says Swoboda. “We also have to make sure that we pace ourselves efficiently to the finish line for the remainder of the project.”
To that end, the second milestone is to have the Estes Park Power & Communications fiber team do all future construction and installation work in-house. Trailblazer has relied on excellent contractors to help with the buildout, which would not have been completed as quickly or efficiently without them.
“This transition to the in-house team has been planned since the beginning, and now is the time,” states Skye Stiner, Trailblazer’s Lead Fiber Technician. “We are optimizing our resource management to complete as many Trailblazer installations as possible each week while continuing the overall network construction. Summer is always the busy season, and combined with longer run times to Glen Haven and Allenspark, we know the schedule will be tight until the end of the project. This may mean a little longer wait times for our customers from sign up to installation, so we encourage anyone interested in service to sign up as soon as service is available in their area and get on the schedule.”
COMMUNITY IMPACT
In addition to faster, more reliable internet, Trailblazer Broadband service is an investment in the community. Investing in its broadband service, the Town of Estes Park keeps dollars in the community while creating jobs and ensuring high-quality local support through Estes Park Power & Communications.
The fiber optic lines that provide state-of-the-art broadband service also serve as the foundational backbone of Estes Park Power & Communications’ Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The AMI is comprised of smart meters and infrastructure devices to transmit the meter reading data. According to Reuben Bergsten, Utilities Director, “Our AMI data is analyzed to reveal potential problems, and we use that information to initiate preventative maintenance that reduces the risk of wildfire from our electric infrastructure.” This technology is essential to a well-maintained working system and will help the community reach its renewable energy goals.
From the outset, the broadband program has achieved success because of the community’s desire for high-speed internet and the support of businesses and residents alike for Trailblazer Broadband. In the words of one new customer, “This is exactly why we switched over to Trailblazer Broadband!! A local company and representative, watching out for us, personally answering the phone when I call, taking care of us.”
Reliable, high-speed internet is no longer a luxury. Ultimately, this is a public utility and a local asset that will provide additional value, opportunities, and sustainability to Estes Valley residents and businesses for years to come.
THANKS TO OUR PARTNERS
Trailblazer Broadband became a reality only through the efforts of a dedicated team. In addition to the Estes Park Utilities Team and Fiber Specialists, Trailblazer’s sales and support team includes Customer Experience Manager Kim Smith and Customer Support Representatives Teresa Jones and Angelo Raso, all of whom have been on board since the project began nearly four years ago. Trailblazer also thanks its valued partners Backbone Fiber Systems, GE Construction, Splash Fiber, OTM, eStrategy3, and FullStack for their various contributions and expertise essential to the buildout effort.
The Trailblazer team looks forward to completing the project in 2024 as originally planned and appreciates the flexibility and understanding of the community as we bring the broadband network buildout to a successful conclusion.
Trailblazer Broadband is municipally owned and is Estes Park’s only locally supported high-speed broadband service providing fiber directly to homes and businesses. The Town of Estes Park provides information only and does not endorse any listed companies, the views they express, 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/.
On Friday (Oct. 8), Estes Park Mayor Wendy Koenig, along with other members of town staff cut the ribbon on the new Trailblazer Broadband customer service facility at 1180 Woodstock Drive. The building had been under construction for 18 months but is now open to the public.
“So much time and effort have gone into the renovation of this location to serve Trailblazer, the Utilities Department, and mostly all of our roughly 11,000 customers,” said Mayor Koenig. “Born out of a need for expansion this Town of Estes Park facility was designed to be a primarily administrative multi-use building with future growth potential. By housing the administrative growth needs of the Utilities Department, this provides an accessible, quiet, and central location for power, water, and broadband staff to work.”
The new offices will also allow residents an opportunity to interact directly with the customer support team for the Town of Estes Park’s community owned fiberoptic internet service. The building will also be home to Trailblazer educational seminars.
Utilities Director for the town, Reuben Bergsten, and his staff have been instrumental in the roll out of broadband in Estes Park, and he is pleased the community prioritized such a major project.
“The Estes Park community has always been forward thinking. In the first half of last century, F.O. Stanley built his hotel as the first in the country to be completely electrified,” Bergsten said. “We’ve been providing public municipal power and water for over 80 years. The importance of connectivity in today’s world is crucial and our community of forward thinkers chose to launch the cutting-edge community-owned Trailblazer Broadband service. The town’s utilities staff is proud and honored you, the community, chose us to build and launch TrailblazerBroadband.com. We’re committed to delivering the highest quality customer service and broadband service. While we have an exceptional sales staff team, Trailblazer does sell itself in this day and age.”
The new facility is currently open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Masks are required inside the building.
“I’d liked to thank everyone, including the Town Board and the community, for making this important investment. It’s going to benefit our community for generations, you guys are going to get to use it,” the Mayor said gesturing to Town Board member Carlie Bangs’ young daughters. “I think that’s great.”
As the Cameron Peak fire burned in the distance on the morning of Oct. 17, Josh Cramer sprung into action. He worried the fire might reach Estes Park and cause a literal meltdown that could wipe out the town’s internet, emergency lines and prevent reverse 9-1-1 calls.
The town needed access to backup broadband. But where? And how?
Cramer, network architect at Trailblazer Broadband, began making calls and learned the Platte River Power Authority was worried about the same thing. One possible answer lay on the other side of the Continental Divide, where a new 481-mile internet line named Project Thor offered backup broadband to western Colorado. Cramer found the contact information for Nate Walowitz, who spearheaded Project Thor, and emailed him.
“He calls me back 15 minutes later and we talk and he says, ‘Yeah, if you can get here, we can connect things up,’” Cramer said.
By that evening, there’d been three conference calls with dozens of people representing power companies, local governments and internet services. Getting to Project Thor’s connection in Granby required locating available fiber along the way and gaining permission from various agencies, utilities and fiber owners — something that usually takes weeks, months and sometimes years to pull together.
But something just clicked with everyone.
“There was just this mass collaborative effort of everyone just pitching in whatever was needed,” Cramer said. “And by that evening, we already had splicers dispatched to Estes Park to do the Western Slope slope side. And then on Sunday, the next day, we had splicers on the other side splicing, all the way to Granby.”
At least 16 organizations got together to contribute a piece to the emergency plan. There were no permits issued. Verbal agreements were made. People worked on the weekend.
“It truly is an amazing story how we all worked together to pull this off,” said Walowitz, Regional Broadband Program Director for Northwest Colorado Council of Governments. “If any one of these partners hadn’t participated, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Cramer drove out to Granby to help, marveling the whole time at how it all came together in one weekend. By the time he returned home a few days later, his wife told him they had less than an hour to evacuate. The East Troublesome fire had jumped the Continental Divide into Rocky Mountain National Park and was spreading quickly toward Estes Park. But he felt some relief that the communications lines stayed up and now that Estes Park has more than one redundant line.
“The way I decompressed it all and thought about it is you’ve got a lot of great government agencies. They’ve got a lot of great processes. We’ve got a lot of good policies to follow,” Cramer said. “But at the end of the day, this was just humans helping humans try to survive.”
When the internet goes down
Estes Park has at least four broadband providers, including Trailblazer Broadband, which is building out gigabit service to the community. Residents voted to allow the city to consider offering its own broadband service in 2015 and the town approved a $30 million bond to pay for it. Trailblazer is part of the city-owned Estes Park Utilities.
But if the main internet pipe into town accidentally got cut, the town would experience a complete communication outage.
That happened during the floods of 2013, when the town’s fiber was washed away. A severe windstorm in 2016 caused further damage.
“Since the flood, we only had one fiber coming into town,” Cramer said. “And in 2016, a pretty good segment of that fiber was basically vaporized by a wind event and some high voltage power lines. There was another three-day blackout for folks up here where there was no 911 service, no cell service and literally no internet service in the entire town. People were back in the Stone Age, basically.”
In urban areas, there are multiple internet lines that run through cities so that if one goes down, several others step up. Typically, there’s a loop of fiber that runs in and out of a town and back to the main source. If one side gets cut, internet traffic goes the opposite direction and back to the main internet source.
But in rural areas, it’s difficult to attract private companies to build internet service when there are few people who would pay to use it. That’s why the federal government offers grants and loans to rural communities, like the recent USDA ReConnect awards to the Yampa Valley Electric Association and Emery Telcom to expand in northwest and southwest Colorado.
The state’s Department of Local Affairs also offers grants to local governments to build networks. Estes Park received one as it was researching municipal broadband, which is today’s Trailblazer Broadband.
But in emergencies, companies do seem to step up. Greg Winkler, the Northern Mountain Regional Manager for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, credits Walowitz’s take-charge attitude and networking skills for the success of the Estes Park emergency line. And it wasn’t the only broadband project he helped with during the fires. Last week, Winkler was helping victims of the East Troublesome fire at the emergency operations center in Fraser.
“There was no good broadband service here so everyone was working at the emergency center trying to use hotspots,” Winkler said. “So I said to Nate, ‘Hey, can we do anything about better broadband?’”
Comcast stepped up and ran a fiber connection to the Grand Count center last week.
“If you come to Fraser and where you see the ice skating rink, if you drive up the road, there’s orange fiber strung through the fence now,” Winkler said.
But rural towns able to attract decent broadband service also suffer from the lack of redundant internet. If the main line gets cut, that means there could be no internet for days. That was the impetus for Project Thor, which was dreamt up by the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments more than two years ago. Internet outages sometimes took days to fix and were costly to the businesses in those towns.
Northwest COG essentially pieced together different companies’ “middle-mile” fiber, which sits between consumer internet service providers and the greater internet. It was a major task getting buy in from different organizations but the benefit was that partners could access reliable and often cheaper internet service.
And where Northwest COG couldn’t find available middle-mile fiber, they built it themselves.
When Estes Park came calling on Oct. 17, Northwest COG welcomed them.
“This was an emergency. And when Nate said, ‘Can we do this? I said, ‘I’m not going to get in the way,’” said Jon Stavney, Northwest COG’s executive director. “The good news is Estes Park didn’t burn and now they have resiliency. From an infrastructure point of view, this is why you have a coordinator like Nate.”
How to build broadband in an emergency
Walowitz has been helping rural communities access faster broadband for years, so he knew a lot of people.
Connecting the two communities wound up involving more than a dozen government agencies and organizations, including several utility and power companies, a federal agency and private companies and competitors.
CenturyLink, which changed its name to Lumen this year, also provides internet service in Estes Park. It was already working with the Platte River Power Authority to resolve the backup problem in the event the Cameron Peak fire moves closer. The company shared with the group that it had fiber near to another line owned by the Western Area Power Administration, or WAPA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy that markets and delivers power generated by 57 hydropower plants to a 15-state region.
“We knew it was available but there were restrictions on commercial communications use around those facilities. However, earlier this year, WAPA relaxed those restrictions and began allowing commercial use of their fibers,” said Tim Kunkleman, Lumen’s director of government affairs, who said the company was also interested in getting redundant lines for that community.
Walowitz had been eying the WAPA fiber, which runs through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel, which runs from the east side of Grand Lake to the southwest edge of Estes Park. Accessing it would help extend Project Thor. But Walowitz said he was never able to get WAPA’s attention.
“We’ve known about this for years, but there was never any way to really get the conversation fully engaged. And because it goes under federal land and everything else, it had some challenges,” Walowitz said.
The threat of fires changed that. WAPA granted access to its fiber in the tunnel within hours. Walowitz then worked on piecing together the other side of the tunnel to reach Granby.
“Meanwhile, on the west side of the connection over in Granby, we were working with WAPA and the local power company, Mountain Parks Electric, as well as CenturyLink, to figure out how we could connect where the WAPA fiber stops,” he said, “so we can connect to the hospital, Middle Park Health.”
Northern Water provided use of its fiber near Granby. The Platte River Power Authority worked with Larimer Emergency Telephone Authority and CenturyLink to support reverse 911 through the connection.
It didn’t end there. They also made sure the new line through Estes Park was a loop by connecting it to the city of Fort Collins’ municipal broadband service, Connexion, which in turn was connected to Project Thor’s main connection in Denver.
“We created a loop,” Walowitz said.
The fires never reached Estes Park, although the East Troublesome fire came close to both Estes Park and Granby. Partners in the project hope that the line is here to stay, though that will be up to WAPA.
“Now we have a redundant system that I hope everyone would see the value in and say let’s make sure it stays here,” Winkler said.
In this era, if the internet goes down even for a day, that means students can’t log into remote learning and adults can’t work remotely. It could shut down emergency lines and leave a community vulnerable, which is still the case in many rural communities. A backup line helps any community, and also can be tapped to support networks from Lumen and Project Thor.
“Getting this circuit through here is really about improving public safety and maintaining connectivity in the face of whatever might happen to us,” said Cramer, who started the process in Estes Park. “There’s an interest in us keeping it in place, and you can look at Grand Lake and Granby and all those communities on the other side. We can be their backup connection on this side as well. People are thinking about that because they were in the same situation as us.
Article posted on Wed, October 9, 2019 by Sayidali Moalim of Community Networks:
After five years of planning, meetings, and overcoming obstacles, the town of Estes Park has officially launched its Trailblazer Broadband Internet service to pilot neighborhoods.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
The Broadband journey started back 2015 when the residents of Estes Park experienced catastrophic outages due to ice and flooding which led to long telecommunications outages. It bacame obvious to community leaders that the town needed a different solution that entailed reliability and redundancy, not available from the incumbent provider. The city held a referendum and with the support of 92 percent of those voting, the town of Estes Park opted out of SB 152.
Fast, Affordable, Reliable Connectivity for Residents and Tourists
Estes Park, considered the gateway to the Rock Mountain National Park, depends on its tourism industry and current Internet speeds may deter vacation goers who need to remain connected to work during time away from work. With the introduction of high-quality Internet access at their resorts and lodging, Estes Park will have an edge over their competition as well as ensuring future economic development opportunities for the entire region.
For town officials, staff, and the majority of residents, the implementation of high-quality Internet access is a welcomed project.
“This is truly a tremendous milestone for the community,” said Town Administrator Travis Machalek, at the town’s official opening ceremony celebration on September 25th.
The expected project construction cost is around $26 million. Based on an anticipated take rate of 30 – 40 percent, the community expects to pay off the investment in 10 – 12 years.
Trailblazer Broadband is being rolled out to pilot neighborhoods and is expected to serve the entire town in three to five years. The schedule is based primarily on construction feasibility, population density, and potential revenue.
Check out this marketing video on Trailblazer Broadband:
The below article was published in Estes Park News on March 13, 2019. The article can be viewed here
Following a unanimous vote of the Town Board to proceed with the broadband project, here are some answers to frequently asked questions for customers of Estes Park Light & Power.
1. What is the Town of Estes Park’s broadband initiative?
The Town of Estes Park is establishing community owned and operated broadband, a high-speed internet service that will ultimately be available to everyone served by Estes Park Light & Power.
2. What is broadband and what are the benefits?
Broadband, by definition, is high-speed internet. The Town of Estes Park’s broadband service will be delivered over fiber-optic lines, resulting in more reliable service that is up to 100 times faster than existing options in the area.
With fiber-optic broadband, multiple people are able to use the same internet connection without a loss of speed or connectivity.
3. Why is the Town of Estes Park launching its own broadband service?
Residents and businesses of Estes Park have expressed a need for faster, more reliable internet. Most recently, our 2018 scientific survey told us that two-thirds of respondents wanted the Town to provide better internet service, their highest priority among 40 current and potential services. Private companies are unlikely to bring fiber-optic internet to Estes Park and surrounding areas due to the large up-front investment associated with the project.
In addition to faster, more reliable internet, the Town’s broadband service is an investment in the community. By investing in its own broadband service, the Town of Estes Park is keeping dollars in the community while also creating jobs and ensuring high-quality local support through Estes Park Light & Power.
4. What are the benefits of community-owned fiber-optic broadband internet?
Estes Park’s broadband offering will be its own municipal utility, ensuring the same premier level of service and support community members and businesses have come to trust from Estes Park Light & Power.
At home, residents will be able to work with ease, video chat with remote friends and family, stream movies, play games or music and much more.
Local businesses will enjoy quicker uploads, downloads, increased cloud-based functionality, better collaboration with co-workers and clients and more reliable video-conferencing.
Estes Park visitors will have more reliable internet to enjoy their favorite entertainment and check in with work while they are visiting.
5. How does the Town of Estes Park’s broadband service compare to other services currently offered?
The Town’s Broadband service will be the only high-speed internet service delivered over fiber-optic lines, resulting in the fastest and most reliable option available to residents and businesses of Estes Park and surrounding area.
6. When will service be available?
Broadband service will be available in limited areas later this year and will be built out over the next 3 to 5 years. The initial startup phase will take advantage of Estes Park Light & Power’s smart grid fiber-optic infrastructure, which already exists in specific neighborhoods and is currently under construction in others.
Raven Circle and Carriage Hills will be the first neighborhoods to receive service starting in the 4th quarter of 2019. Service to other areas will be added over the next several years, based on the construction feasibility, density and potential revenue in each area.
The Town of Estes Park will provide regular updates to the community with more information on how to sign up for those updates coming soon.
7. What is the cost of the Town’s broadband service?
Rate plans for the broadband service are currently being established. There will be several different plans to choose from, allowing businesses and residents to select the plan that best suits their needs.
Early subscribers will be offered a Trailblazer discount, an exclusive discounted rate available to charter members that will remain in place for the life of the account.
Soon, the Town’s local concierge support team will be available to walk residents and businesses through plan options.
The Town’s broadband service will be billed separately from resident and business utility bills.
8. When the time comes, will it be easy to switch to your service?
Sign up and installation will be easy, with minimal equipment installed by the Town’s dedicated support technicians.
The Town’s local concierge support team will be available to answer questions and help residents get the most from their broadband service.
9. How can I stay updated on your progress?
Watch for periodic updates at www.estes.org/broadband and we will send you notices from time-to-time in your utility bill. Also, keep up with the latest by following the Town of Estes Park on Facebook and Twitter.
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