Timnath, Colorado Breaks Ground On New $20 Million Fiber Build

Timnath town seal

Timnath, Colorado officials have broken ground on a new $20 million fiber network that should dramatically expand affordable fiber access to the town of 7,100 residents.

Working in partnership with the city of Loveland’s Pulse Fiber, the project has been several years in the making, and – as with most of the successful municipal operations in Colorado – was fueled by ongoing public frustration with the speed, availability, and cost of monopoly-dominated regional broadband access.

“This project is about more than just Internet access,” Timnath Town Manager Aaron Adams said in a statement.

“It’s an investment in our future, ensuring that we have the infrastructure in place to support economic growth, attract new residents and businesses, and improve quality of life for everyone in Timnath.”

Last year the two cities signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) greenlighting the plan to bring ubiquitous, affordable high-speed Internet access to Timnath. Under the arrangement, Tinmath is slated to receive 25 percent of the network’s gross income. That should equate to a 2 to 6 percent return on capital investment over 20 to 30 years, with the network fully paid off in 26 years.

Image
Timnath CO fiber network groundbreaking

Timnath’s project was heavily funded by the town’s capital improvement funds, which were in turn bolstered by broadband grants received via the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The City of Loveland, which is about 15 miles south of Timnath, launched Pulse Fiber in 2018. The city completed the $110 million deployment to the city of 77,000 just about a year ago, coming in on time and under budget.

In deployed markets, Pulse provides locals with five tiers of service: symmetrical 250 megabit per second (Mbps) for $60 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $75 a month; symmetrical 2 Gbps service for $100 a month; symmetrical 3 Gbps service for $150 a month; and symmetrical 10 Gbps service for $200 a month.

Image
Pulse Timnath construction map

The first phase of construction in Timnath is expected to take between six and nine months.

Full construction of the network is expected to take between three and five years.

Pulse and Timnath join a growing parade of popular municipal broadband deployments in the Centennial State, ranging from LongMont’s Nextlight to Fort Collins’ Connexion.

Such efforts were emboldened last year by the state’s removal of counterproductive state restrictions against community broadband, extensively lobbied for by regional telecom monopolies.

There are still 16 states that currently have some kind of state law either banning community broadband or greatly restricting the funding and expansion of such networks.

The laws are a harmful, dated byproduct of regional monopolies keen on blocking competition and keeping municipalities from making their own infrastructure decisions.

Colorado not only shed prohibitive state restrictions, local communities have repeatedly demonstrated competency at bringing complicated, community-owned fiber projects to fruition, inspiring countless other municipalities nationwide.

Inline image of groundbreaking ceremony courtesy of Town of Timnath Facebook page