[1st-mile-nm] CO Front Range-based GigaPop want to expand to Western Slope

[Richard Lowenberg]

Little-known internet network plans Western Colorado expansion to link 
students, nonprofits to supercomputers

Front Range-based GigaPop wants to team with local governments on the 
Western Slope to improve broadband in rural Colorado. It’s looking for 
funding for the $2.2 million project.

https://coloradosun.com/2020/05/20/rural-broadband-western-slope-expansion-internet

PUBLISHED ONMAY 20, 2020
Tamara Chuang, The Colorado Sun — tamara at coloradosun.com

The text-heavy website looks like it’s stuck in the 1990s. 
https://www.frgp.net/

But peering past the Front Range GigaPop’s pages full of Times New Roman 
font and blue underlined links, you’ll understand what the fuss is 
about. The broadband network, long exclusive to universities and federal 
research labs, offers unthinkably fast speeds and access to the 
brightest minds — and their data. And now, this decades-old network 
wants to expand to connect as many western Colorado educational 
institutions, K-12 classrooms, nonprofits, health care services and 
community organizations it can, from Denver to Durango and Grand 
Junction.

The idea that an exclusive research network could spread to the Western 
Slope and connect students, telemedicine patients and telecommuters is 
being pitched as BiSON West. The project is the western expansion of the 
BiSON Network, or the Bi-State Optical Network that stretches from the 
University of Wyoming and the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s 
supercomputer in Cheyenne, to more than two dozen Front Range schools 
and research labs from Fort Collins to Pueblo. Front Range GigaPop, or 
FRGP, manages the BiSON Network.

(snip)


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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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