Project THOR | Northwest Colorado Council of Governments Taps Ciena to Improve Broadband Access

The Northwest Colorado Council of Governments (NWCCOG) has selected Ciena and its partners to build a regional fiber network known as Project THOR.

Funded in part by grants from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs and local government contributions, the network will connect approximately 400 miles of existing public and private fiber and has the potential to provide more than 230,000 residents access to more bandwidth at more competitive pricing.

Serving the region for 38 years, NWCCOG represents 28 jurisdictions in a five-county region of northwest Colorado covering 7,000 square miles. It provides the critical mass needed to take advantage of state and local programs.

Through Project THOR, NWCCOG is delivering abundant, reliable and lower cost broadband access to local internet service providers, participating state and local governments, schools, libraries, and healthcare and public safety facilities through 10 landing points dispersed throughout the region.

The goals of Project THOR are to lower the costs of broadband access and improve the reliability of the network, which is currently prone to mass failures when a fiber line is cut. Roughly 85 percent of the needed fiber for the project is already in place, taking advantage of existing fiber networks such as those built by the Colorado Department of Transportation.

NWCCOG is deploying Ciena’s Waveserver Ai and 5170 Service Aggregation Switch to rapidly and securely turn up Ethernet and other packet-based services, and adapt to changing service requirements in real-time. In addition, Ciena’s Blue Planet Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) software will provide NWCCOG end-to-end lifecycle operations that unify network and service management across its Ciena infrastructure.

This deployment was facilitated through Graybar, an Elite partner in the Ciena Partner Network. Mammoth Networks will operate the network.

“Whenever there’s a fiber cut, it impacts not only consumers in our towns, but cellphone carriers, public safety centers, schools, hospitals and other critical services. By leveraging the fantastic technical and engineering support from Ciena, we can offer carrier-grade services, have a real-time view into our network as well as the ability to reroute traffic in the event of an outage,” said, Nate Walowitz, Regional Broadband Director, NWCCOG.

“Mammoth is working closely with Ciena and its partners to create a robust and flexible network architecture that brings open, secure, and redundant broadband at a lower cost to NWCCOG members. A lack of reliable broadband limits economic development. We hope that this brings new applications and services to Colorado,” explained, Evan Biagi, Vice President of Business Development, Mammoth Networks.

“Access to broadband networks is critical for economic development and growth. Ciena is thrilled to help NWCCOG modernize and unlock the value of networks by providing a programmable, converged, multiservice network infrastructure that can scale up while simplifying operational support,” said, Kevin Sheehan, Chief Technology Officer of the Americas, Ciena.