Ciena will deliver a new regional fiber network across 10 Colorado counties, the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) announced yesterday.
More than 230,000 residents may gain access to higher bandwidth through this new offering. The coverage area in northwest Colorado already contains approximately 400 miles of existing public and private fiber. The new regional fiber network, known as Project Thor, will be distributed through 10 landing points throughout the coverage area. NWCCOG says about 80% of the infrastructure needed for the project is already in place due to existing fiber networks.
The Colorado council hopes to lower the cost of broadband and reduce the chance of mass failures resulting from a fiber line being cut.
“Whenever there’s a fiber cut, it impacts not only consumers in our towns, but cellphone carriers, public safety centers, schools, hospitals and other critical services,” said Nate Walowitz, NWCCOG regional director of broadband, in a prepared statement. "By leveraging the fantastic technical and engineering support from Ciena, we can offer carrier-grade services, have a real-time view into our network as well as the ability to reroute traffic in the event of an outage.”
This deployment runs on three services. Ciena’s Waveserver Ai and 5170 Service Aggregation Switch will be used to turn up and manage Ethernet and other packet-based services. Ciena’s Blue Planet software will unify network and service management on top of the rest of the Ciena infrastructure.
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After deployment, the fiber network will be operated by Mammoth Networks. Deployment was enabled by Graybar, a member of Ciena’s Partner Network.
The new fiber network is funded in part by grants from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs and local government contributions.