by Caleb Stento
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This is the first in a series of articles in which the Plaindealer examines the issues surrounding broadband access in Ouray County.
Slow and unreliable Internet causes more than just inconvenience. It can adversely affect our livelihoods.
It’s an inconvenience when you get to the register after waiting in line and see a handwritten sign that reads “Machine out…Cash Only.” It’s bothersome when Netflix slows to a crawl. It’s unfortunate when... your streaming music keeps skipping. It’s tough when your paper is due, but you can’t access online sources.
It’s bad for business when you lose sales because the lines are down and your customers don’t carry cash. It hurts business when your customers rely on your online presence, but your Internet connection fails. It takes a toll on business when what should take minutes, takes hours to complete.
Internet speed and redundancy are two of the challenging issues with broadband in Ouray. Granted, speed was improved after a recent CenturyLink upgrade. Unfortunately, DSL connection speeds degrade with distance, so the further you live from 5th Street in Ouray, the slower your connection gets.
Generally, if you live in the city limits, your connection should be good enough to stream movies and music. But if you use your connection for purposes other than surfing the web or streaming Netflix, you may run into problems, because the download speeds are decent, but upload speeds are lacking.
If you happen to work from home like Craig Kaminsky does, the upload speeds are not sufficient. Kaminsky writes programs for a living. Once he finishes a program, he has to get it to his client. Craig’s finished programs vary in size, but logically, the larger the program, the longer it takes to send. Because the upload (sending speed) is slow, it can take hours to get his finished product into a client’s hands. “I start around 10 or 11:00 in the evening and it may finish up at two in the morning,” Kaminsky said. His efficiency is hobbled. Time is money, especially in the high-tech field.
Another paramount issue is broadband redundancy. When a main data line goes out, there is no secondary line for backup. Any business that relies on a data connection to the outside world is vulnerable under these conditions. One outage can result in customer loss.
Lack of infrastructure also impacts our communities’ potential for growth. “The Ouray area would be a lucrative location to many larger Information Technology (IT)-based companies for a satellite office. Because there is no redundancy, they won’t even consider it,” Kaminsky said. These companies can’t run the risk of being forced offline for any period of time.
Why, with all of today’s technical advances, does this problem persist in Ouray County? Basic economics plays a part. There aren’t enough people and businesses in this area to make it lucrative for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to justify investing in the infrastructure. Places like Ouray, Ridgway and Silverton are low priority for ISPs. “We get the short end of the stick, and Silverton was left without a stick,” John Lorimer, Ouray resident and owner of Lornet, an IT consulting firm, said.
There is good news. As part of the governor's Bottom-up initiative, the Broadband Committee formed to tackle one of the county's five identified goals. The committee is attempting to tackle the speed and redundancy issues — a big undertaking. Right now we are still at the mercy of the Telecoms. There has to be a solution out there. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, and right now we need better broadband infrastructure.