Keeping Falcon residents connected with cable TV, phone and Internet service is no small feat. Ongoing construction and the community’s distance from downtown Colorado Springs create challenges that Falcon Broadband and its 20 employees must deal with constantly to keep Netflix and Wikipedia flowing for its 1,600 customers.Randy and Cindy DeYoung of Falcon incorporated Falcon Broadband in 2003. The company serves a wide area, extending from Monument to Fort Carson and Garden of the Gods to Falcon. A large percentage of Falcon’s businesses, Falcon Fire Protection District, High Prairie Library, Pikes Peak Community College’s Falcon campus and Falcon School District 49 are served by the DeYoungs’ company. Fifty miles of distribution fiber and 144 miles of transmission line carries Internet, television and telephone service to its customers.ìWe are a competitive local exchange carrier, which is the legal term for a Colorado licensed telecommunications utility,î said Ben Kley, general manager. ìOur core business is providing fiber-to-the-premises service for Internet speed and capacity.îFiber optic service provides numerous benefits to customers, Kley said. ìInternet is not always Internet, as people are finding out with the net neutrality debate,î he said. ìWe have not only redundant but also physically diverse routes from Colorado Springs downtown POP out to Falcon. From there we purchase premium access from a blend of Tier 1 carriers.î A POP, or Point of Presence, is the physical location where Internet service providers connect their networks to each other. Net neutrality is the principle that all data on the Internet must be treated equally, with no content deliberately slowed by a service provider.Falcon’s distance to downtown Colorado Springs adds technical problems for providing high speed and reliable communications. ìBeing 18 miles away carries real challenges,î Kley said. ìWhen you get to Falcon, you’re really getting to the edge of where good services can be provided.îHaving multiple fiber routes to Falcon helps Falcon Broadband avoid some of the physical reasons the Internet can go down. ìWe have had fiber cut, which impacted businesses before we had the diverse routes,î Kley said. ìAt one point in time, we had a more linear design, where one cut would bring Falcon down. But we were able to repair it within three hours, which is unheard of in our industry. But the businesses out here have still not let me forget it.î Since then, the company added another line from the downtown POP so that traffic will pick the best and shortest route. If there is a fiber cut at any one place now, the network will route it around the break, Kley said.Growth of residential and business Internet needs in the Pikes Peak region has helped everyone, with better options for information flow. ìOut of downtown Colorado Springs, our routes can go to Denver, Las Vegas, Albuquerque or down to Texas, which was not always the case,î Kley said. ìIt used to be that the Springs was tied in to Denver. If there was a problem in Denver, we were losing Internet, too. But now, Colorado Springs is its own place with its own carriers and routes going out. This gives us a better chance to get the shortest routes to the hot places like Google and Netflix.îTelephone, Internet and television service reaches Falcon at a small building, called a head end, on McLaughlin Road. Service is then distributed to customers along Falcon Broadband’s fiber lines. ìThe only active equipment we have that requires electrical power is in that building,î Kley said. ìSo we don’t need the active equipment that you see in the large white cabinets you see in the neighborhoods for other carriers.îOptical fiber doesn’t conduct electricity, so lightning is not a concern for fiber systems as it is for copper wire service. It’s also safer for homeowners, Kley said. ìWe still want you to call 8-1-1, but if you cut it with a shovel, you’re not at any risk from electric shock,î Kley said. ìYou also can’t tap into it by putting something on to pick up the signal, so it’s much more secure.î The company also maintains legacy systems, including traditional cable and twisted pair telephone.The company recognizes that Internet downtime is more inconvenient than ever, especially for businesses. ìPeople become so reliant upon the Internet and that kind of communications, especially for credit card transactions,î Kley said. ìPeople don’t carry cash any more. It used to be if the credit card machine is down, we’ll use cash and move on. But now it’s a huge impact for that business. We realize that.îFalcon Broadband keeps an eye on potential future changes in telecommunications regulations and customer needs to make sure the infrastructure and capacity they install will scale up to those needs. ìThe infrastructure we’re putting in is the same as Google is building in their ‘fiber cities,’î Kley said. ìWe try not to play the numbers game of where we tell people they can use a gigabit of service when there’s no way the network could provide it if everyone used it at once. It’s the equivalent of being told you’re allowed to go 70 miles per hour, but you’re on Marksheffel at 4:30 in the afternoon. Whereas, we’re telling you to go 70, and you’ve got six lanes on I-95 to do it.îCloud storage, gaming, Skype and other two-way services are increasing the amount of upload capacity customers need, which older distribution systems are not able to provide, Kley said. Fiber Internet allows for symmetrical upload and download speeds. Asymmetrical systems such as DSL and cable-modem will be ill-equipped to handle uploads of video, images and audio needed for two-way services, he said.Regulatory issues like changes to net neutrality rules being considered by the Federal Communications Commission impact the company and the telecommunications industry. ìThe current proposals are open for comment with the FCC, and Falcon Broadband will provide our input through the American Cable Association, of which we are members,î Kley said. ìWe hope the decisions do not result in different ‘tiers’ of Internet service like customers have in video today. We do not want customers to have to pay extra for things like video streaming.î
