What might we expect to see… in terms of improvements to our lives, I mean?
If the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners were to spend $2.7 million — the entire amount they’ve been promised by the federal American Recovery Plan Act — on the broadband improvements delineated by our two BSMO managers, Jason Cox and Eric Hittle, at the June 1 BOCC work session?
How might we benefit from that kind of expenditure?
Let us count the ways. (Mr. Cox and Mr. Hittle were clear about these being very preliminary cost estimates.)
1. The County would be able to lease a few strands of fiber optic cable from the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) if CDOT does, in fact, install fiber from the top of Wolf Creek Pass down to Pagosa Springs. CDOT has already installed fiber from South Fork up the east side of the Pass, to the summit. By leasing some stands of fiber — available only to government entities? — Archuleta County might be able to create a redundant internet highway out of this godforsaken little town, so if Pagosa’s only fiber connecting us to the great big world gets accidentally cut — that is, the existing fiber between Pagosa and Durango — our digital conversations and video downloads could find an alternate path. Cost to the County? $256,000.
2. A 12-mile redundant fiber path within the community, from the east end of downtown Pagosa to the Hurt Drive intersection in Aspen Springs. Cost to the County? $467,000.
3. A high-tech, refrigerated shipping container at the Pagosa Springs Medical Center — called a Carrier Neutral Location (CNL) — where various companies could hook up to our existing fiber. Cost to the County? $100,000.
4. A similar CNL at Town Hall. Cost to the County? $8,000. Cost to the Town? $25,000.
5. Fiber from Pagosa Springs Medical Center to an LPEA station. Cost to the County? $42,000. Cost to LPEA? $168,000.
6. Fiber from the County Airport to LPEA’s Stevens Reservoir substation. Cost to the County? $63,000. Cost to LPEA? $252,000 (as a “swap”.)
7. Fiber from the County Airport to PAWSD’s water treatment plant at Lake Hatcher. Cost to the County? $480,000.
8. Fiber from PAWSD headquarters on Lyn Avenue to the Hatcher treatment plant. Cost to the County? $375,000.
9. Fiber from PAWSD headquarters to the as-yet-undeveloped Chris Mountain II subdivision. Cost to the County? $100,000.
10. Log Hill Road fiber loop. Cost to the County? $585,000.
11. Upper Blanco Tower. Cost to the County? $25,000.
12. Cost to pay the Broadband Service Management Office staff (Mr. Cox and Mr. Hittle, working part-time) for two years, $200,000. Cost to the County? $125,000. Cost to the Town? $75,000.
Grand total County investment for the above: $2.7 million. You might have noticed that nearly all of these proposed projects would connect “Government Location A” to “Government Location B”. The reason for this, is that the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) hands out 50/50 matching grants, if you are connecting government locations.
Or, perhaps… the BOCC could invest the County’s $2.7 million in federal ARPA money into workforce housing?
I had a few conversations this week, to learn more about the current state of Archuleta County broadband. I had a short conversation with Archuleta Commissioner Ron Maez, who explained that the BOCC is still looking at various options for spending the County’s ARPA funds.
I had a somewhat longer conversation with LPEA Vice President Dan Harms, touching on a couple of issues.
Two days ago, in Part Three, I had posed a question in my editorial. Why, in the 1940s, did rural communities throughout the American West form “electric cooperatives” to finance electric development funded largely through the federal Rural Electrification Act…?
…But in the late 20th and early 21st century, a somewhat similar utility known as The Internet developed — in rural areas — as a bunch of privately-owned companies, each creating their own private (redundant?) infrastructure within towns and suburbs?
Why didn’t the US government see this problem coming, especially the (wasted?) duplication of effort, and do something similar to the REA? And help this stuff build out in a sensible manner?
As Mr. Harms explained, when the Rural Electrification Act was passed in 1936, there were (practically speaking) no electric lines anywhere in rural America. The REA was addressing a blank slate, and member-owned co-ops were a great way to unify communities under a democratic, non-profit business model, and get the necessary work done.
In a sense, this was ‘socialism’ bringing electricity to the rural farms and ranches. (I said that, not Mr. Harms.)
But in the late 20th century, when The Internet was being born, users were easily able to make do with an existing telephone system that already connected the entire nation in a web of copper wire and telephone poles. Digital files was small in those days, and telephone wires handled the job just fine. For a while.
By the year 2000, the world had 300 million Internet users, and many of them wanted to send and receive photos. The ability of phone lines to service this need began to crumble. Meanwhile, cable TV companies were realizing that their coaxial cables could transmit digital information faster that telephone lines. Fiber optic cable began to spread across the landscape, especially between populated urban areas, and soon, people found they could watch decent-quality videos over the Internet.
This all took place without any driving need to form “Internet co-ops” that would mirror the rural electric co-ops formed in the 1940s.
In 1984, total global Internet traffic was 15 Gigabytes per month. By 2014, the average Internet traffic per user was 15 Gigabytes per month. Each one of us generates more traffic than crossed the entire global Internet 30 years ago. As of 2020, there are 5 billion of us…
…And almost all of us, it seems, want to watch Netflix and YouTube and Disney+ on our various-size screens. Or listen to a constant stream of music. Or conduct Zoom meetings.
According to the Nielsen Company’s ‘Streaming Meter, in US homes capable of streaming video, Internet-based video accounted for 25% of total television viewing minutes last summer, up from 19% at the end of 2019. The cumulative weekly time spent with streaming video in second quarter 2020 was 142.5 billion minutes, an increase of nearly 75% from the 81.7 billion minutes viewed per week during second quarter 2019.
Back in 2017, Cisco Systems predicted that by 2021, 80% of all Internet traffic would consist of video streaming. Considering that very few businesses in Pagosa Springs are built upon Internet delivery, we might guess that, in our particular community, the percentage of Internet bandwidth used to watch videos (for entertainment) probably exceeds 80%. That doesn’t include the amount of bandwidth consumed by music streaming.
Add in the amount of bandwidth used for online shopping, and — if we consider “shopping” to be a form of entertainment — it’s very possible that 90% of all Internet use in Archuleta County is essentially for entertainment.
Is that where we want our County government to spend our precious ARPA money?