Help Me Understand Elevate's Fiber Zones

Elevate Fiber Zone Boundaries Community Question:

How come Elevate's zone boundaries don't make any sense? They seem to disadvantage a lot of people when it comes to getting rural broadband in their communities.

Elevate Answer:

Elevate’s fiber zone boundaries have been the brunt of confusion on many a social comment, email to our team, in-person conversations, and message board rants.

So here’s the deal with Elevate’s fiber internet zones. They are confusing. And they do make it harder for some communities to get service. BUT we didn’t make them up, and they are not as random as they may seem.

Elevate fiber zones like Olathe 148, Paonia 55, and Hotchkiss 67 were all predetermined by our electrical feeders and the areas those feeders serve (feeders is a fancy term for power lines). Our fiber must follow our electrical lines and poles because in doing so we save millions and millions of dollars. This savings allows us to not only exist at all, but continue building more zones. AND following DMEA’s electrical lines with our fiber lines is basically the ONLY way we would be able to bring fiber to your homes logistically.

Also, it costs a lot of money to build a fiber-to-the-home network, way more money than other alternative networks like copper. We need you to show interest (aka preregister) so we know there are enough people who will buy our service to keep our business doors open. Bottom line, we want to make sure we can bring you the best internet, tv, and home phone for years to come, and the preregistration goals are our best guide to do that.

Back to fiber zones. We know some are large and rural, some have what seem like impossible goals, and you can live in Montrose but be in Elevate fiber zone Olathe 148. But these zone boundaries are a necessary means to an end unless anyone has an ARMY (not a few platoons, but more like a few Roman Legions) of lawyers and $10s of millions extra lying around to foot the bill…

We hope our efforts for transparency will help folks understand the necessities of doing business without being a billion-dollar company, and that this transparency will foster more understanding and appreciation for the processes that at first glance may seem arbitrary.