Alamosa, Colorado is a small town in the southern part of the state, and residents are no stranger to wildfires. As fires rage, often times they sever or destroy wireline communications infrastructure.

This disruption impacts both near term rescue and fire efforts and it can be weeks or months before service is restored. Residents and business are also impacted often suffering Internet outages and finding themselves as a low priority for remediation.

This year saw several devastating conflagrations when the Spring Creek fire came to town. Alamosa experienced this first hand until Jade Communications stepped into the breach.

The Spring Creek Fire which by July 3 had charred over 60,000 acres had wiped out much of the fiber connectivity in Alamosa, leaving most of the town without Internet access or telephone. Business, residents, local government were all without connectivity.

Jade was introduced to Siklu solutions early in 2018, and was looking to see how this might help them expand their business as a local service provider. When they saw what was happening with the fire and its impact on the community, they quickly stepped into the breach and began deploying Siklu mmWave radios throughout the town.

With a multi Gigabit backbone in place, Jade first connected several entities such as the fire station, local church and business centers to the network.

Using a multitude of different carrier grade ruggedized products supporting from 1Gbps Full Duplex up to a 5Gbps full duplex, Jade was able to put in the right size and cost connection throughout the network.

As word got around, customers began calling for help and Jade expanded the network with the Siklu PtMP product line – the MultiHaul. From the time a customer called to request service to actual installation and a functioning high-speed mmWave connection was often times less than a day.

The Spring Creek fire, while devastating, was not unique and it is expected that the fire season in the western portion of the US will only continue to grow worse each year. While this fire has passed, the lessons learned have not. Josh Wehe, Director of Network Operations of Jade Communications states,

“Today with Siklu, we have hospitals, banks, courthouses, restaurants and residential locations all on our mmWave network. Every financial institution in Alamosa is connected via Jade and Siklu.”

With this experience, Jade has plans to extend this approach to other towns such as Monte Vista and Antonito. With the competitive pricing Jade is able to offer using Siklu mmWave products, and the speed of deployment, Jade is confident they can compete with existing services in these towns. As Josh notes,

“Everyone knows the value proposition for Siklu solutions in the urban environment. But we have shown that even in rural and suburban locations, Siklu delivers these solutions deliver an excellent customer experience and makes solid business case for Jade.”