Revolution Brewing of Paonia, Colo., tapped a keg of ElevateFiber IPA, a special batch of black India pale ale, at the annual Montrose Oktoberfest to celebrate Elevate Fiber, the new broadband provider operated by hometown co-op Delta-Montrose Electric Association (DMEA).

Elevate Fiber employees were on hand in downtown Montrose on October 1 to pour samples of the brew and answer questions.

“Elevate is a true representation of the cooperative spirit. Our communities were being denied what we all consider to be a current-day necessity: fast and reliable Internet,” says Jasen Bronec, the co-op’s CEO.

“The future is coming to the valley, and we warmly embrace it, for ourselves and for our kids,” adds Mike King, founder of Revolution Brewing. DMEA is building out a fiber-optic backbone previously used only for utility communications. The network will provide up to 1-gig Internet service.

The co-op is proceeding on a “take rate” basis, meaning it will only go where there is a sufficient number of takers to make the service pay for itself.

Phase one of the build-out will include 8,000 business and residential consumers in parts of Montrose, Paonia, and Orchard City, in the co-op’s southwestern Colorado service area, says Becky Mashburn, DMEA’s marketing supervisor.

“There is no other fiber provider in the area,” Mashburn says. “Our base speed is 100 Mbps, both for upload and download. The fastest advertised speed of our competitors is 60 Mbps, just for download.”