Fiber internet transforms education and healthcare in Routt County, Colorado

Fiber broadband was once scarce in Northwest Colorado. As late as the 2010s, some residents relied on slow, 800 kilobit per second DSL connections. Others tried their luck with expensive (and often unreliable) satellite internet. Without the advantages of fiber internet, students couldn’t collaborate online like their peers in Denver or Boulder. Many local businesses couldn’t engage in ecommerce in any meaningful way. In rural Routt County, a few citizens decided to do something about it. They took action to bring the advantages of fiber internet to Northwest Colorado. In doing so, they changed their communities for the better.

Identifying the need for community internet access

As the technology director for the Steamboat Springs School District, Tim Miles understood the need for fiber internet better than anyone else in town. Steamboat was famous for many things, like world-class skiing and therapeutic hot springs, but the advantages of fiber internet (including the ability for fully remote work) weren’t among them. In 2012, the town had a single 1 gigabit per second line running through the Rocky Mountains from Denver. If that line went down, Steamboat’s internet went with it.

Miles had already seen it happen. In October 2012, a major outage shut down the entire town’s internet, hurting local businesses that depended on revenue from the annual Downtown Halloween Stroll.

Even when it was working, there was no guarantee Steamboat’s broadband could handle the increasing demands on capacity.

“If we had too many people [online], it would slow the system down,” recalls former school superintendent Brad Meeks.

As Colorado started conducting all state testing online, that became a real liability. “One of the biggest fears I had was that in the middle of testing, we [would] lose connection, or it freezes, or there’s some kind of delay … and there’s so much riding on that,” says Meeks.

Significant outages don’t happen anymore, says Miles. For over a decade, Miles has worked tirelessly to improve community internet access in Routt County. With the help of other community stakeholders, he succeeded. Multiple 800 Gbps middle-mile fiber lines now run to and from Steamboat Springs (including service from Quantum Fiber, although it was not the original fiber provider in Steamboat Springs).

“[We’re] only a small school district,” says Miles, “but we have over one hundred student-facing applications, [and] they all just work when they turn on their device and want to go. They just work.”

Bringing the advantages of fiber internet to Steamboat — and beyond

In 2012, Miles brought together community partners to form Northwest Colorado Broadband (NCB). Their mission is to “[enable] ample, affordable, and redundant broadband to support community and economic development ” in the region.

Over time, they added a 10 Gbps fiber line between Steamboat and Craig, CO, 42 miles away. With redundant pathways running both east (to Craig) and west (to Denver), Steamboat had a dependable fiber loop for the first time. If one line went out, they could immediately redirect all traffic to the other one.

“In five years, we outgrew [those] 10 gigs,” says Miles. His next move was to expand the mission. With the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) , he co-founded a new group called Project THOR . With state grants and matching funds from local governments, they established a 400-mile, 400 Gbps fiber network running through 14 mountain communities.

Reaping fiber internet’s advantages in schools

Steamboat Springs already had one of the best school districts in Colorado. Expanding broadband access gave them the tools to keep it that way. “It’s prepared the students and exposed [them] to things they needed in the future,” says Miles. “If we had stuck with what we had, there’d be times that an application just wouldn’t have run. It wouldn’t have worked.”

The need for community internet access was clear even before COVID made remote learning the norm. As late as 2023, nearly half of all U.S. public school students still lacked adequate bandwidth: almost 27 million students . One study found that roughly 15 percent of school-aged children lacked high-speed internet at home before the pandemic.

Lack of broadband in schools can deny students the digital learning opportunities they need in a rapidly changing world. A recent study found that fiber broadband availability can increase students’ math scores, standardized test scores, and more .

Miles understood that broadband was an investment in students’ future. As he said when applying for grants, the advantages of fiber internet weren’t just for today’s kids. They would serve “one hundred percent of tomorrow’s kids.”

The cost advantage of community internet access

While the benefits to Steamboat’s students were profound, the advantages of fiber internet extended beyond academic achievement. Added fiber lines also saved the school district a lot of money.

“By aggregating demand [with other institutions in the community], we were able to achieve significant cost savings,” says Miles. As more community facilities became connected, demand grew and prices dropped. That’s consistent with a nationwide trend: the median cost per megabit for schools has decreased by over 66 percent since 2018 .

“We’re now paying around $40,000 a year instead of $250,000, and [we’ve] added a ton of redundant services and added value” to the community,” says Miles. Those savings “went toward the construction of new buildings. It’s hired new staff members. It’s added a new bus.”

“We were going through a period where we had steadily increasing enrollment,” recalls Superintendent Meeks. “Some of that money went toward new Chromebooks for the new students coming in. We were able to greatly update our camera systems at our schools… Now, [watching security footage] is like you’re sitting at home watching TV.”

Other Routt County communities shared in the savings as well. Take Walden, CO, a town of 569 people that lies 47 miles northeast of Steamboat. “Little Walden went from $800 (per Mbps) down to [approximately] $5,” says Miles. “That saved teachers’ jobs, and added teachers’ jobs, without question.”

Learn more about how fiber advantages every community

Steamboat’s community internet access was a years-long effort. It took planning, cooperation, and foresight. And it was well worth it.

“Our [return on investment] really was under two years,” says Miles. “[We had] instant success. What it did to some of my staff members and their families … they said it changed their lives. Because they were living where they had no internet at all. None.”

How does the internet benefit your community? And how can increased fiber broadband enhance those benefits? Discover more about the advantages of fiber internet on our website . What happened in Steamboat Springs can happen anywhere—for the benefit of everyone.