Southwest Colorado internet provider Clearnetworx is continuing to connect the immediate area surrounding Bayfield to stronger, more reliable broadband.
Clearnetworx, which is based in Montrose, plans to incorporate fiber-optic broadband into the Forest Lakes subdivision and near the Florida Road (County Road 240) corridor in the not-too-distant future. Work on the underground infrastructure is slated to begin in spring 2025, and the project is expected to be completed by or before summer 2026.
“This will connect all of Forest Lakes, as well as connecting its way up to Vallecito (Reservoir),” said La Plata County Commissioner Matt Salka.
Using capital project funding dollars, roughly 800 to 900 Forest Lakes addresses will be connected to high-speed fiber internet. That expansion is part of $10 million in grant funding for rural La Plata County.
Casey Irving, Clearnetworx’s director of business development, said the grant stipulates that the project be completed within a two-year span. The grant agreement for the project was signed earlier this year, giving Clearnetworx the green light to proceed, according to Irving.
As part of its expansion into Forest Lakes, Clearnetworx will upgrade and install fiber north to Vallecito and west on County Road 240 to just outside the Edgemont Ranch subdivision northeast of Durango.
Irving said one of the goals is to add redundancy, or multiple internet connections for continuous access, to that stretch of the county.
“We’ll be building a new route,” he said. “Bayfield right now only has one connection for us coming in from the south.”
Irving also said if there are two different routes for fiber connectivity between Durango and Bayfield, that second route can be used so that the whole town doesn’t find itself without internet.
“That extends into Forest Lakes, it extends into Bayfield. So really, anyone with built-out fiber to it adds diversity to the whole region,” he said.
Salka said homes and businesses in Forest Lakes currently have CenturyLink as a viable, yet overused, broadband provider option, adding that Clearnetworx will be that extra option and help ease that infrastructural burden.
Multiple Bayfield residences and businesses are now completely wired into a new fiber-optic line for high-speed internet connectivity dating back to November 2023. In the months that followed, Clearnetworx expanded its service to include about 5,700 addresses along Florida Road near northeast Durango.
Salka spent years trying to hook up the greater Bayfield area to faster internet.
Salka also said there’d be an additional fiber-optic gap between Edgemont Ranch and Durango that will be addressed and will serve as an extra connection for any redundancies present.
“If there’s fiber cut somewhere else, that traffic is still able to move,” he said.
For example, it would address situations like when a backhoe in Bayfield broke into a fiber-optic line a couple years ago, knocking out internet access in north Bayfield and part of Archuleta County.
Should similar issues arise in the future, Salka said filling that fiber-optic gap will allow businesses and homes to not lose internet access in those moments.
“It’s not if mistakes happen, it’s when mistakes happen,” he said. “If I block the highway, there’s always other routes to get around to that area. That’s what we’re trying to do, is create multiple paths to make sure that the connection is always there and running.”
mhollinshead@durangoherald.com
