Ting Brings Competition, Fiber Service and Microtrenching to Centennial, Colorado

The City of Centennial, Colorado is making steady inroads bringing affordable fiber Internet service to the city of 106,000, leveraging its city-owned fiber backbone and a partnership with the Charlottesville, VA.-based fiber provider Ting.

Just south of Denver – in a city known for its high-tech industry, craft breweries, and family-friendly neighborhoods – voter-approved efforts to get out from under the thumb of regional monopolies has driven a surge of competition, most recently exemplified by Ting’s continued delivery of affordable gigabit fiber.

Ting Public Affairs manager Deb Walker told ISLR that while the company couldn’t break out specific details on the number of passed fiber locations in the Centennial market, they’re making inroads on fiber deployments across Colorado.

“Now that Ting has city-wide networks built or under construction in three markets in the Denver region (Centennial, Greenwood Village and Thornton), and they share certain operational resources, we report progress on those markets together in our quarterly Ting Build Scorecard,” Walker said.

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“At the end of the first quarter of 2024, we had almost 31,000 serviceable addresses in the region, mostly in Centennial as we’re just starting the other two markets,” she added.

In 2021 Ting also unveiled the construction of a new 16,000 square foot office complex and data center, Walker said. Ting is also collaborating with Colorado Springs Utilities, which is building a fiber network throughout the city and connecting local homes and businesses.

Locals within range of Ting fiber can currently get one tier of service: a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service plan for $89 a month, which features no usage caps, overage fees, or long-term contracts.

A Voter-Fueled Backlash To Monopoly Power

Centennial’s network and Ting’s last mile expansion required some extra legwork to bypass counterproductive state laws supported by widely disliked local telecom monopolies.

Colorado’s SB152 was passed in 2005 after intense lobbying pressure by Comcast and Centurylink. The law required local municipalities to hold costly referendum elections to pursue municipal broadband. But unlike similar anti-competition laws in other states, Colorado’s restrictions came with a useful catch: locals could also opt-out of the law with a majority vote.

So in 2013 Centennial residents voted to exempt the city from the law. After a decade of additional criticism, the law was removed from the books entirely last year via Senate Bill 23-183. The effort was bolstered by frustrations with substandard broadband during COVID, which highlighted the pointless nature of the state-level restrictions.  

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In 2016, Centennial released a Master Plan for the construction of a $5.7 million 432-strand open access fiber backbone known as FiberWorks. By 2018 the city had put those plans into motion, and quickly began connecting key anchor institutions around the community.

“We have used the network to connect our city buildings, traffic signals and we have multiple leases,” Wyatt Peterson, a Senior Strategic Advisor for Centennial, told ISLR.

That same year (2018) also saw the city strike its first leasing arrangement with Ting, which had recently begun partnering with municipalities on select fiber deployments. Built on the back of the city-owned 50-mile fiber network, Ting says it got to work not long after, first building out fiber to the Willow Creek, Walnut Hills and Hunters Hill neighborhoods of the city.

Real Competition (And Microtrenching) Comes To Town

Given the open access nature of the Centennial backbone, numerous other providers have also been drawn to the city to compete over broadband access. A notable departure from the years where the city’s broadband access was predominantly dominated by a costly duopoly consisting of Comcast (XFinity) and Centurylink (Quantum).

“We currently have three ISPs leasing portions of the fiber network–Ting, Unite Private Networks, and Aerux Broadband,” Peterson said. “We also have leases with some community partners, including SEAKR Engineering, CORE Electric Cooperative, and Cherry Creek School District.”

Meanwhile Ting says Centennial has proven to be the ideal platform to expand its use of microtrenching – deploying fiber along major traffic thoroughfares a few inches under the surface.

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“What has been transformational about our build in the region, starting with the City of Centennial, has been the move from traditional underground construction to microtrenching,” Walker said. “Ting has always been committed to the superior resiliency of underground networks, particularly in the face of increasing climate impacts to above-ground facilities.”

The practice is generally viewed as far less disruptive, faster, and cheaper than hanging overhead fiber on traditional utility poles. At the same time, the shallow depth at which fiber lines are buried means fiber runs can be damaged by inevitable repaving efforts.

“Microtrenching enables us to build future-proof underground networks at four times the pace of traditional underground construction, and with less local disruption, bringing modern Internet service to people faster,” Walker said. “We worked closely with the City of Centennial as we transitioned to microtrenching in 2021 to accelerate the build.”

As for Centennial more broadly, city officials say there are some additional plans in the works to expand the city’s existing broadband infrastructure even further.

“We’re currently working with Digital Ubiquity Capital to explore the feasibility of a public-private partnership (PPP) to further utilize and strategically expand the network,” Peterson said.

Colorado is poised to soon nab $826.5 million in BEAD (Broadband Equity Access And Deployment) funding, courtesy of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. And while that money should aid several of Colorado’s burgeoning municipal broadband ventures, Centennial leaders doubt they’ll be able to leverage those funds for their looming PPP.

The city's advisor on the project Wyatt Peterson noted how the city plans to move forward with a clear eye about the city's prospects for getting BEAD funds, highlighting an example of what cities across the nation are starting to figure out:

“Centennial won’t be utilizing BEAD funding because we’re already well served through our incumbent ISPs and the other ISPs that lease on our fiber network. We just wouldn’t be a competitive candidate for that funding."

Current federal policy deems cities with an existing ISP as “served” – even if that service isn’t ubiquitous, reliable, or affordable. Centennial may prove to be a useful case-study for similarly situated communities who will likely receive very little, if any, BEAD funds to build municipal networks and bring choice to local markets long dominated by monopoly providers.

Header aerial image of Centennial courtesy of BeyondDC, ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-NODERIVS 2.0 GENERIC

Inline image of the Streets at SouthGlenn in Centennial Colorado courtesy of Kent Kanouse, ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL 2.0 GENERIC

Inline image of Interstate 25 heading into Centennial courtesy Ken Lund, ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 2.0 GENERIC