It’s no secret that many across the Western Slope want faster internet.
At a recent DMEA board meeting, business leaders and community members showed up to voice their support for the possibility of the Delta Montrose Electrical Association bringing fiber optic internet to this rural area.
The DMEA is already installing fiber optic to help manage the electrical grid. However, they won't be using 100% of the fiber optic line.
Right now, the DMEA is looking into a ‘Middle Mile’ plan. The idea is that they would supply unused fibers to an internet service provider, and that ISP would go around and connect everyone’s homes to the DMEA backbone. Olen Lund, the DMEA board president, says that the plan gets complicated quick.
"There are problems in using that line for commercial purposes. Basically, we have said we can do this, we will do what we can to get those problems overcome, but this is not a slam-dunk issue," Lund says.
"These rumors are already costing us money. We had the sheriff called on us and we were shut down in putting in some of this fiber optic cable for our own purposes. That was a land owner, what I know is second hand, but I do know we've been shut down in putting in a system, and it is costing us. Since we can't have that, we having to pay a subscription to someone else to carry our signal," Lund says.
"They accused us of putting [the fiber optic line] in for commercial purposes, to make money off it. They demanded they get a share of the money that comes from that," he says.
That ‘share of the money’ situation has to do with the easements that DMEA has. Basically, the co-op has agreements to put up the power lines with the people that own the land. The fiber network they're installing right now crosses 600 different parcels of land. All of the easements they have with the land owners state explicitly that DMEA will only use it for their own purposes.
"Lets say we were going to allow a commercial internet provider access that fiber," says Virginia Harmon, the manager of member relations and energy services at DMEA, "that's outside of that easement. We have to work on perfecting those easements."
"That perfection, there's a cost associated with it, obviously," says Harmon, "the estimates are over a million dollars right now on the perfection of those easements."
Olen says that the DMEA isn’t against broadband, just that can’t affect the electrical bill of it’s members.
"We're opposed to broadband by any means, and I'm not personally opposed to broadband," says Lund, "that's basically my wife's income; she's an online school teacher. I would love to have it, so would she, but we don't want to put it on the backs of our members."
Right now, Olen and Virginia say they’re still looking for input from the members of DMEA.
