Comcast upgrades infrastructure for fiber
by Marissa Lorenz
Comcast Director of Government Affairs recently joined the Kremmling Town Council to present an active plan for the expansion and upgrade of local services to the town of Kremmling.
Comcast currently provides a video-only system in Kremmling, and Davis presented an expansion that “will bring Comcast’s broader suite of services to the community,” including a fiber-optic network that will upgrade infrastructure and deliver high-speed residential internet of up to 1 gigabit, and offer new Small and Midsize Business (SBS) internet services, television, landline phone services, and a suite of Xfinity security and streaming products.
Residents may have seen or received notifications of Comcast partner Sage Telecommunications working around town, completing aerial installation work and some limited underground construction in, primarily, easements and public right-of-way. Power supplies are in place and crews are placing fiber throughout all Kremmling neighborhoods. Work is scheduled to be completed before the end of the month.
Davis also explained Comcast’s Internet Essentials program, a nationwide broadband adoption initiative, designed “as a way to help deal with the challenges of COVID19.”
Internet Essentials has “so far connected more than 8 million low-income Americans–and over 300,000 in Colorado–to low-cost, high-speed Internet at home so that everyone can be ready for anything,” according to the presentation. Eligible new customers in Kremmling will qualify to receive 60 days of service without charge until the end of 2020.
Outside of the introductory period, the program requires no contract, credit check, or installation fee, and provides speeds of 25 megabits-per-second and access to 40 one-hour sessions of Xfinity WiFi hotspot use every 30 days for a base rate of under $10 a month.
Participating households will be offered free digital skills training to improve internet understanding and low-cost internet-ready laptops or desktops for purchase.
“We’re excited to expand our services in the Kremmling community to further enable connections to the moments and experiences that matter most,” says Leslie Oliver, Director of External Communications. “We know how essential it is to have
fast, reliable home, and business internet connections, and people [who qualify] in Kremmling will now have access to Comcast’s
multi-gigabit broadband speeds, smart home solutions, personalized WiFi tools, and affordable home internet access through the
Internet Essentials program.”
With a franchise agreement already in place between the Town and Comcast until 2027, there was no Board approval needed for the infrastructure and service upgrades. However, Town Manager Dan Stoltman agreed that the expansion project would benefit the Kremmling as a whole.
“This will provide the community with another high speed internet provider, as well as cable tv, phone, and home security options. Overall, I believe this is good for the community and another step in a positive direction,” he summarized.
To learn more about Comcast products and services, visit a nearby Xfinity store in Silverthorne or Granby or visit corporate.comcast.com. Businesses wishing to contact a local representative should contact Tim Shannon at 970-401-1023 or Timothy_Shannon@comcast.com. And residential customers can sign up for a service plan at any local store after October 22 or by calling 1-800-XFINITY. Existing customers will also need to swap out their old equipment for new equipment, which a technician can assist with during an installation appointment.
Visionary Broadband amps up
by Anastasia Button
Visionary Broadband has been operating in Kremmling since August 2019, offering high speed wireless internet services for resident and business needs. Now, they are bringing fiber optic cable internet connection for the homes, businesses, and public buildings of Kremmling.
Since March of this year, when COVID19 hit Grand County and both adults and students were sent home in record numbers, residents have felt the need for a higher speed internet connection like never before. For many locals, the internet had become more than a luxury; it became essential for work, life, and especially entertainment!
Demand for high quality, high speed internet is growing
Suddenly, multiple family members in single households were streaming, downloading, uploading, or accessing internet data, causing a slow internet connection. Individuals began to feel the need for faster connections. And so the market demand for fiber internet became apparent.
“We saw a real need for better internet in Kremmling, Colorado,” said Stacie McDonald of Visionary Broadband. “The community is growing rapidly, which means more tourists, more permanent residents, and growing businesses due to the previous two factors. That need grew exponentially when COVID placed both students and professionals at home.
“The dynamic of learning, working, and playing had changed drastically, and Kremmling needed a solution to stay up to speed, literally and figuratively. Our team of engineers constructed a plan that would do just that–bring fiber speeds to the residents, business owners, and students around the community.”
Visionary responds to new need with fiber optics
Visionary Broadband soon set to work building a fiber optic infrastructure for the people of Kremmling. And their fiber internet service is already available in certain areas of town.
“Visionary prides itself on being a hometown partner who isn’t afraid to be innovative in order to seek rural solutions,” notes McDonald of the 25-year regional provider of rural broadband services in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico.
Currently, Visionary has split Kremmling into two sections (see map): yellow is where there is active building of fiber optics, and orange indicates the anticipated future-based build-out, given continued requests through phone calls and service availability checks at Visionary Broadband’s website.
The benefits of fiber optic internet
Fiber optics can handle more users and more data at consistently higher speeds. For example, based on internet capability, to download a two-hour movie to a computer hard drive could take 25 minutes with 4G LTE speed of 35 Megabits-per-second (Mbps), 30 minutes with DSL speeds of 25 Mbps, seven minutes with cable internet at speeds of 100 Mbps, but only 40 seconds with fiber optic internet at 1 Gigabit-per-second.
While previously existing internet services in Kremmling were being offered at speeds of between 12 Mbps and 100 Mbps, fiber optic speeds are between 10.5 and 45 times faster. Fiber optics also are less impacted by interference from various frequencies in the area (the cause of community overload of use), speeds are not affected by storms, and are practically weather-proof from wind, snow, and sleet. Fiber optics are scalable and create availability to effortlessly upgrade or downgrade services if needed.
For individual residences, fiber optics can mean seamless streaming for students doing virtual learning, quick uploads for parents working from home, and higher quality video and gaming entertainment… all at the same time.
If your household has multiple internet-dependent devices in use, if you have multiple people streaming video simultaneously, if anyone in your home uses WiFi for competitive online gaming, if you frequently need to send large files, and if any of you are experiencing interruptions, game lags, or lengthy loading times, fiber optic internet could provide the solution you need.
For more information or to get a quote on the various fiber optic packages available in Kremmling today, call Visionary Broadband today at 1-888-682-1884 or visit Fiber.VisionaryBroadband.com.
If you are interested in getting fiber speeds, but your residence or business is shown in orange, go online to complete a pre-signup form so Visionary can aggregate demand. Once thresholds are met in these zones, Visionary Broadband will bring fiber to your neighborhood as well.
