CenturyLink expands gigabit Internet service to small businesses in Boulder, Fort Collins

An official for CenturyLink on Monday said that the company’s decision to begin offering 1-gigabit fiber-optic Internet speeds to a large chunk of businesses in Boulder and Fort Collins was not influenced by those cities’ ongoing exploration into creating their own municipal broadband utilities.

CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) began offering such service to small and medium-sized businesses in Denver and Colorado Springs last summer. Previously, only enterprise-sized businesses that could afford the added expense of having such service brought to their buildings, or large office buildings that provided CenturyLink with sufficient density for a positive return on investment, had access to such service from the company.

CenturyLink announced Monday that the company is making its gigabit download and upload speeds available to small and medium-sized businesses in Aurora, Boulder and Fort Collins thanks to a growing network that is helping enable the company to make such service available more broadly for an affordable price.

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In November, Boulder voters passed a measure that grants the city the ability to create its own municipal broadband utility in an attempt to make faster service available to residents and businesses. Fort Collins, meanwhile, has money budgeted this year to explore the idea of creating a municipal utility itself. Both cities are following in the footsteps of Longmont, which last summer began building out its municipal broadband service. It will make 1-gigabit service available to all residents and businesses by next year.

Penny Larson, vice president of operations for CenturyLink in Colorado, said the decision to target the new cities the company was based on two factors: Looking at areas where a significant number of businesses had expressed interest in such service and also areas that provided enough density to provide a reasonable return on investment on the cost of building out fiber-to-the-premises infrastructure.

“This was all about going where we think we have the demand and where we think we have the return on our investment, and where we think small and medium-sized businesses could benefit from more services,” Larson said. “I can say that we are not using tax dollars to fund our deployment.”

CenturyLink didn’t disclose specific costs of the service in its announcement Monday. Larson said that’s because the cost is tailored to each business based on number of employees and what suite of information technology services those businesses purchase.

A few buildings in Boulder and Fort Collins already had access to gigabit service from CenturyLink, but Monday’s announcement increases that number significantly. CenturyLink officials didn’t immediately know the percentage of businesses to which the service is available in each city. But the company did state that Monday’s announcement affects 16,600 businesses in Aurora, Boulder and Fort Collins, bringing the company’s total in the state to 92,000 businesses

In Boulder, the service will now be available to any business located in an area bounded by Kalmia Avenue to the north, Foothills Parkway to the east, Arapahoe Road to the south and Ninth Street to the west. In Fort Collins, Larson said the service will be offered to businesses in most of the city.

CenturyLink began offering gigabit service in parts of Denver and most new residential developments in the region, including the Boulder and Fort Collins areas, last year. Larson said Monday’s announcement was not a precursor to further gigabit service deployment to existing neighborhoods in Boulder and Fort Collins at this time.

“Predominantly, our real work here is to get it in front of medium to small-sized businesses in these communities,” Larson said.

Businesses that wish to see if CenturyLink’s gigabit service is available to them can do so online at www.centurylink.com/fiberplus.