moving to Durango, Colorado (Denver, Pagosa Springs: HOA fees, loans, employment)

[DurangoJoe]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

With all due respect to SoButCounty--and I do respect his opinions--there are lot of places in this country, and western Colorado is one of them, where the "broadband revolution" is semi stalling out. And it's some basic business issues that are making that happen. Simply stated, broadband networks, like any other infrastructure, require a substantial customer base to be viable. In many areas of the Rocky Mountain West, that density of customer base just is not there. If you live right in one of western Colorado's rural communities, yes, you have some availability. But, for the Colorado wannabe's who dream about living out on some acreage and happily telecommuting--well, that can be a different story.

This is not unique to Colorado. It exists virtually anywhere in the US, east or west. Again, I service primarily T3 rural carriers. The customer base issue was more of an issue years ago. Many states have been requiring via utility commission mandate to provide a minimum level of broadband service to anyone who asks for it within 30 days. In the state of PA for example the minimum available required within 30 days is 1.5MB. In PA, that's known as "Chapter 30" compliance. That mandate went into effect 5 years ago and all service providers have complied. Governments have recognized the vital importance broadband services play everywhere, in both rural and urban areas and this type of mandate is popping up in state legislatures across the country.

Originally Posted by jazzlover

Let me illustrate by example: Several years ago, a friend of mine decided to move out of a western Colorado town to a small rural subdivision about 8 miles from town. No CATV service, no DSL. The land-line telephone carrier (Qwest) promised that DSL would be available in his subdivision within two years. That was eight years ago--they say now that they have "no definite timetable" to expand DSL to his area. No s***! His only option for broadband in all that time was satellite, which was expensive, unreliable, and had horrible upload speeds. Finally, a Wi-Fi network was set up to serve his area. It is more reliable than satellite, but still has numerous outages. It costs 2 1/2 times what I pay for my in-town broadband connection. This is by no means an isolated circumstance in the rural Rocky Mountain West, no matter what people say in the rest of the country. Hell's bells, it's only been in about the last 3 years that some places got away from only having analog cell service. Up until about a year ago, there were plenty of places that I travel in the Rocky Mountain West where my tri-band cell phone would roll over to analog because that was the only service available--and in a lot places, there was/is no service at all. The guys with Blackberries might as well of been carrying a rock.

That's 8 years ago.... that's decades in a technology driven industry. Might as well have been a century ago. Things are vastly improved. Not to imply all is perfect but the cost of technology deployment has dropped significantly which has rippled throughout the telecom industry and made it cheaper to serve even more customers. The result is that more & more of the rural areas are coming up to acceptable minimum levels of service... and quickly.

Originally Posted by jazzlover

There is one final note that I will make about this, and it likely will not make lot of Colorado wannabes very happy. Most of the telecommuter types that I meet in rural Colorado who have moved here from someplace else are fairly content so long as they have easy mobility to "get out"--for vacation, to visit family, to shop, whatever--anytime that they choose. Well, when those cheap, happy days of being able to travel hither and yon at the drop of a hat come to a screeching a** halt with the explosion of energy prices and/or shortages, those folks are going to find rural Colorado one hell of a lot less attractive. For me, I don't have to and I don't want to gallivant all over the country (or even go to Denver) more than about once a year, but most transplants, quite bluntly, don't have that mentality.

I love the ability to be away from it all and live in a rural area. My wife and I plan to to travel by car quite often regardless. It doesn't cost us any more to travel in Colorado than it does in PA, it's just a difference in starting point to us. We plan to live in the Durango area, 4 miles from the new hospital, 7 miles from town. We don't have excessive drives to fulfill any daily needs. I wouldn't expect to set up camp somewhere in the Weminuche Wilderness and have a cellphone or wireless signal of any type, and there will still be people who choose to live in extremely remote areas. Their lack of service choices goes with the territory & they should expect that. In general however, broadband deployment has, and will continue to grow into rural areas. It's becomes a question of how remote do you want to be?

[CAVA1990]

Assuming you've got mail delivery you can do a lot of your shopping on-line now also.

[jchasse]

I telecommute (from Durango) as does my wife. All of the employees of her company are remote (no "HQ") to speak of. My company is pretty similar.

My clients are large companies (mainly $400 million+ in annual revenues), and ALL of their sales forces are remote workers spread all over the world. None of the jobs (theirs, mine, my wife's) are at any risk of being outsourced overseas - it simply wouldn't work for cultural and relationship reasons.

I won't argue about continuued expansion of networks and IP (although my largest client is a $20 billion dollar mobile, fixed and IP communications infrastructure company with 78,000 employess), but i can tell you that enough of the country already has infrastructure to support a large and growing population of "remote" workers. IMHO, any prediction that this is all going to screech to a halt, and the country's going to revert back 75 years is just gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, or worse, wishfull thinking for some.

[CAVA1990]

I'm amazed at how slowly some companies are at embracing this, considering the high cost of warehousing workers in expensive commercial real estate markets. I work in IT and most of our technical people now work remotely. You're right about the cultural barriers to offshoring this. It really only works with lower level jobs. Once any kind of interpersonal skills are required offshoring no longer produces acceptable results. Also, the overseas markets now are so big in and of themselves most companies can barely keep up with hiring skilled people there to service those operations, much less assign them to their U.S. operations. The myth that there's this huge pool of unemployed educated, wired, and skilled overseas workforce is just that.

[jchasse]

I think there's just one more generation of executive management that needs to work through the system to retirement. The companies i've worked for or work with that aren't embracing remote workers seem to have senior management that just has a generational issue with it. Of course there are positions that need to be centralized, and people need to be trained etc., but there are just too many advantages to "virtualizing" the workplace for it to be ignored. (study after study has shown huge advantages for hiring reasons alone - your potential candidate pool expands by orders of magnitude, employees are happier and stay in jobs longer, can be hired for lower salaries, reduced overhead...)

And you're absolutely right about the fallacy of the huge, skilled offshore talent pool. It may work for writing code, but it doesn't work at all if interpersonal and communications skills are required.

[CAVA1990]

I am dreading the prospect of expanded video teleconferencing. I'd be embarrassed if my co-workers saw what I was wearing sometimes.

[jchasse]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

I am dreading the prospect of expanded video teleconferencing. I'd be embarrassed if my co-workers saw what I was wearing sometimes.

I hear that! I actually couldn't figure out how to ensure that the built in video camera on my laptop wasnt broadcasting (the application kept starting automatically whenever i joined a conference). So i stuck a postage stamp over the lens.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by CAVA1990

I am dreading the prospect of expanded video teleconferencing. I'd be embarrassed if my co-workers saw what I was wearing sometimes.

When I worked for the Army, we once did a VTC with Smith Bros cough drop and ZZ Top type of beards....

[DurangoJoe]

Originally Posted by jchasse

I think there's just one more generation of executive management that needs to work through the system to retirement. The companies i've worked for or work with that aren't embracing remote workers seem to have senior management that just has a generational issue with it.

I was fortunate enough to have worked in telecom since 1974. It was a family thing. I met my wife there, large portions of my family & her family worked there (geez, talk about nostalgia). Anyway, after 12 years with telcos I worked for the now bankrupt Nortel for 22 years. I'm now in a bizdev/sales role for another smaller company. Anyway, Telecommuting was embraced very early by those companies, sort of a "practice what we preach" approach to using our own technology to change our business model. I started working from home in 1985.

Originally Posted by jchasse

And you're absolutely right about the fallacy of the huge, skilled offshore talent pool. It may work for writing code, but it doesn't work at all if interpersonal and communications skills are required.

Agreed. Excellent customer & communications skills are required whether in person or via phone. You can't offshore that. It's a talent & an acquired skill, and demands professionalism.

[Colorado Rambler]

Well, I'd love to find something in telecommunications but what? I don't have any specialized training in telecom and I've been looking, but so far nothing has jumped out to me here in Cortez.

I agree with Jazzlover that a move to a rural West Slope town with only a telecom or whatever job to keep you busy is a mind altering experience. I have been living in Cortez for two years now with no car (long, sad story), and only the Internet is keeping me sane. Normally, I'd be happy as a clam, taking off camping and exploring the back roads, but with no car...

I walk everywhere in Cortez, and go no place else unless a friend takes me along for the ride somewhere. And ANYTHING you might consider doing entails a 50 mile drive minimum - and that's just to get to the bustling metropolis of Durango. It's really been an other world experience. I've met lots of Navajos and Utes and folks who have lived their entire lives in Cortez. Definately a different mentality than many folks are used to. Everyone thinks I'm wierd because I have a college degree, and Cortez's lone bookstore closed about two years back. The small Cortez library does an outstanding job considering its funding and our remote location, but still... Again, thank God for the Internet.

And Medical care here sucks. Montezuma county has one of the highest mortality rates in Colorado. All the doctors have stopped accepting Medicaid patients or else moved their practices elsewhere. I have to go to Dolores of all places to get treatment thru the rural medical clinic there.

We still are getting the tourists, though. I work part time as a motel desk clerk here and gas prices don't seem to have affected the start of the tourist season - so far.

I'm hanging on, seeing light at the end of the tunnel at last (or is it that on-coming train from Silverton/Durango? LOL). I will have enough money in the bank to buy a car by June or July, and it's gonna be a Jeep or a Toyota 4-Runner or an Explorer or the closest approximate. To heck with the gas prices, I'm gonna hit that lonesome highway big time!