Internet service in western Colorado was so terrible that towns and counties built their own telecom

Internet outages became a distant memory in April as a good chunk of western Colorado turned on a new broadband system. But this wasn’t built by a typical telecommunications company. It took a band of local governments and partners from 14 rural communities to stitch together the 481-mile network, dubbed “Project Thor.” Communities from Aspen to Meeker craved better access and affordability but also demanded reliability. Over the years, multiple outages caused by accidental cuts in the internet line would shut them off from the rest of the world. So the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, referred to as Northwest COG, coordinated the two-year effort of public and private organizations that couldn’t wait any longer for existing broadband providers to fix their problem.