{"id":93285,"date":"2019-06-24T23:59:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T23:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/high-speed-internet-finally-arrives-to-village-north-of-purgatory-resort\/"},"modified":"2019-06-24T23:59:39","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T23:59:39","slug":"high-speed-internet-finally-arrives-to-village-north-of-purgatory-resort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/high-speed-internet-finally-arrives-to-village-north-of-purgatory-resort\/","title":{"rendered":"High-speed internet finally arrives to village north of Purgatory Resort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A state grant covered $268,500 of the $455,000 cost to bring fiber-optic lines to Cascade Village. Installing lines to Cascade Village started in the fall and is expected to be finished in July.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The arrival of high-speed internet has been less than speedy for some residents in Southwest Colorado, including a small village near the La Plata-San Juan county line.<\/p>\n

But residents and businesses at Cascade Village north of Purgatory Resort are getting hooked up to high-speed internet for the first time this month.<\/p>\n

Before the arrival of grant-funded fiber-optic lines, residents and visitors to Cascade Village<\/a> in San Juan County were reliant on dial-up speed service, said Charlie Tyack, facilities manager and full-time resident.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we had was almost nonexistent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If the village was busy, Tyack wouldn\u2019t even bother trying to use the internet, he said.<\/p>\n

Streaming videos or other content was out of the question at the village, said Sid Arnold, Western Slope operations manager for Brainstorm Internet<\/a>. Brainstorm was the existing internet provider for the village and put in the new fiber lines.<\/p>\n

The sluggish speeds and trouble streaming will be history for all 260 units in the village after July, when Brainstorm finishes installing fiber-optic lines, Arnold said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just brings Cascade Village right up to the forefront of cutting edge,\u201d said Tom Brunner, a former HOA board member at Cascade.<\/p>\n

Bridging the 2-mile fiber-optic line gap between Purgatory and the Cascade homes required $455,000, an investment that no private company was likely to make without a grant, Arnold said.<\/p>\n

The project couldn\u2019t rely on fiber-optic lines that brought faster internet service to Silverton because they were installed on Tri-State Generation and Transmission power lines that cut through the forest and don\u2019t come close enough to Cascade Village to serve the area, Arnold said.<\/p>\n

So Brunner worked with Arnold to apply for a state grant to cover some of the construction cost.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Broadband Fund provided $268,500 for the project, San Juan County provided $20,000 and Brainstorm provided about $20,000 through in-kind contributions. The Cascade Village HOA covered the remainder of the cost, Arnold said.<\/p>\n

Broadband fund grants typically require a 25% match, but Brainstorm tries to contribute more to be more competitive, he said.<\/p>\n

Brunner said he expects the project to increase economic activity for Cascade by drawing in more visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cWi-Fi is probably more important than a fireplace, I mean really,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

San Juan County was persuaded to contribute because of the potential for economic development, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey knew it was a problem to have their largest lodging facility to have dial-up speed internet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Brainstorm is interested in reaching subdivisions with similar dial-up speeds with the help of grants, Arnold said.<\/p>\n

Rockwood, a neighborhood north of Hermosa, and Deer Valley, a subdivision east of Bayfield, could both be good candidates for grant-funded fiber projects, he said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A state grant of $268,500 made the hookup possible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5895,5740,6256,5736,5735,5968],"tags":[374,13,275,1562],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-93285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-development","category-frontpage-lead","category-internet","category-local-news","category-news","category-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-economic-development","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-internet","tag-san-juan-county-colorado"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93285"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=93285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}