NEDERLAND — The Nederland Fire Protection District (NFPD) Board of Directors met on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, to hear monthly reports from the District Administrator, Fire Marshal, and Chief regarding the status of many projects and upcoming events. The matter most vital to the community regarded the communication issues with CenturyLink landlines. 

“I have been working with Boulder County on the phone outage that we experienced this past weekend,” NFPD Chief Charlie Schmidtmann reported to the Board, addressing the communication breakdown over September 12 and 13—and for many, persisting throughout the following week—experienced by CenturyLink customers.  

“There doesn’t seem to be any good news or direction to help prevent outages like this in the future,” Schmidtmann’s report reads.

The issues hit CenturyLink business and residential landline customers all across Nederland, causing major issues for Nederland General Store, Tin Shed, Ubon Thai Restaurant, and Peak to Peak Counseling.

Customers, especially those with the 258 prefix, after noticing their landlines were dead but their DSL connections still worked, attempted to contact their providers, only to be on hold for extended periods of time. Eventually they were told there were no outages in their area, or were offered a technician visit scheduled for as late as October 5. 

While Nederland residents commiserated together online about the subpar response from CenturyLink, many suggested reaching out to the Colorado regulatory authority, the Public Utilities Commission, as the loss of landline service in a mountainous area burdened by perpetual communication issues and a high risk for wildfire can be considered an act of negligence for public safety.  

“The outage resulted from damage to the network, which is currently under investigation,” a spokesperson for CenturyLink, a subsidiary of Lumen Technologies, said in a statement to The Mountain-Ear. “Preliminary indications suggest the damage may have been caused by woodpecker activity.

“Legacy networks are increasingly prone to outages, and CenturyLink is encouraging customers to explore more reliable, modern alternatives to traditional landlines,” the emailed statement concluded. It provided a link to their “CenturyLink Connected Voice with Air-Line” option, their Internet-based service that converts analog phone signals to digital ones.  

“The challenge was that communications told me that it wasn't a 911 problem but a service/customer issue,” Chief Schmidtmann noted, explaining to The Mountain-Ear how converting traditional copper landlines is not a blanket solution that works in the mountains.  

“Our elderly population that only has a landline and no internet—this group is our largest at-risk group. There are people’s homes that don't have access to quality internet, or they can’t afford it,” Schmidtmann continued.

Schmidtmann also listed other possible communication issues that plague the area, from woodpeckers taking out fiber optic lines—which occurred just this summer—to how a loss of landlines would effect the ANI/ALI system, which displays for emergency dispatchers the physical address associated with a caller’s phone number.

“The biggest challenge for me is not knowing who does and who doesn't have 911 access,” Schmidtmann said. His worries indicate how the residents of western Boulder County need all the emergency communication options they can get. 

“To add to the complexity of the situation, I have been made aware that the County is not in favor of the height that is required for the cell tower at Eldora,” he continued. Schmidtmann specified that the NFPD was never given an opportunity to see the plans for the proposed tower, let alone provide any advice. “This will mean less coverage and less opportunity for the community to reach 911 via cell phone.”

While reports of Lumen’s $5.75 billion sale of its residential customer-based Quantum Fiber service to AT&T—which closed in February 2026—has local customers concerned as to the potential impacts to their service, Lumen kept its business voice accounts and copper networks. This would indicate that the company’s push to end “legacy voice lines” is based on an entirely different motivation. 

“Enterprises are redesigning their networks for a world where AI workloads move massive amounts of data across clouds and geographies in real time,” Jim Fowler, Lumen’s Chief Technology and Product Officer reported in the company’s investor materials dated February 24, 2026.

“Surpassing 2,000 NaaS [Network as a Service] customers so quickly shows programmable networking is no longer experimental, it’s becoming the control plane for Cloud 2.0. Our platform gives businesses the composability, scalability, and performance they need to operate at AI speed.”

But is all of Boulder County prepared to operate at AI speed? The hiccups with internet connectivity and in obtaining sustainable internet infrastructure has been an unrelenting challenge in the mountains, with most residents—and even the NFPD—upgrading to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service.   

Regardless of how copper landline customers are being seemingly left in silence by their communications provider, Lumen has been inching away from legacy phone line and voice service since August 1, 2026, when the company stopped writing any new contracts for voice services, including selling and renewing business line contracts.

So far, in 2026, Qwest Corporation, which operates as CenturyLink QC, has filed with the Federal Communications Commission to discontinue legacy phone service in parts of Iowa, Utah, and Florida. Separately, CenturyLink has requested from the Commission permission to discontinue all voice service from Fort Collins to Fountain, Colorado.  

"Copper is fast becoming obsolete. We strongly encourage customers to proactively explore transitioning to modern alternatives,” CenturyLink Spokesman Ron Boehmer told The Denver Post. 

As it appears from Lumen’s mission statement for its investors, and from their reported lack of communication and transparency to their customers—as evidenced by their inability to provide a timeline or specific shutoff date for their voice services—customers of Lumen, CenturyLink, Qwest, CenturyTel, or Embarq have no choice but to wait for an inevitable letter in the mail, urging them to switch to an internet and AI-based service. 

However, Lumen customers’ voice services are not expected to go completely dark at the end of their current contracts; alternatively, customers will have the option to go to a more expensive month-to-month service model. 

In the meantime, Chief Schmidtmann and the NFPD continue to make efforts to mitigate the communication issues exacerbated by Lumen's push for "progress," while also urging Boulder County authorities to speak up on the behalf of those in the mountain communities who are thrust more out of reach for emergency services as a result of that progress.

The Nederland Fire Protection District Board of Directors meets on the third Wednesday of every month. Meetings can be attended online via Microsoft Teams. Their next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at 7 p.m. 

For more information go to: nfpd.org.