When you place an order for new service, our customer care staff will ask if you want a Colorado Central Telecom router or will be providing your own. All clients that choose a Colorado Central Telecom router are enrolled in Wi-Fi First Aid. The program is available to residential clients.

Wi-Fi First Aid costs $5 per month.

Wi-Fi First Aid acts as router insurance and support for residential clients. If your router fails, we’ll replace it for free. If you forget your Wi-Fi password, we can retrieve it for you. When your printer isn’t working or your iPad won’t connect, our tech support staff will try to fix the problem. Customers don’t get that kind of help at other internet providers.

Here’s another thing that’s important for you to know: We can only support routers provided by Colorado Central Telecom. We cannot provide support for third-party routers, so if you purchased your own router through an outside retailer, you’re not eligible for Wi-Fi First Aid.

No. Colorado Central Telecom provides tech support to all clients regardless of whether they’re enrolled in Wi-Fi First Aid. That said, we can only support routers that we provide. That means our tech support can’t extend to your in-home Wi-Fi network if you have your own router. In that instance, our tech support can only extend as far as the Power Over Ethernet box. The Power Over Ethernet box, located where our cable enters your house, provides power to your dish and connectivity to your router.

In plain English, the router is the little box that emits your Wi-Fi signal. It’s different than the radio transceiver on the outside of your house, which brings in internet connectivity from a tower.

So why do you need a router and not a modem? A modem is a device that turns an analogue signal into a digital signal. For instance, DSL modems convert digital signals from your computer into a frequency that can be transmitted over a phone line. Likewise, cable modems convert digital signals into a frequency that can be sent over COAX cable. For fiber connections, this function is performed by a media convertor. Modems can be embedded in a router that emits Wi-Fi. Modems can also be standalone devices that don’t emit Wi-Fi, in which case an access point provides wireless connectivity.

On our network, the radio transceiver on the outside of your house acts as a convertor. It’s the functional equivalent of a modem, but it’s called a transceiver because the signal is sent over the air. The Wi-Fi router serves to segregate your home network from our broader network, as well as provide Wi-Fi to connect laptops, tablets and other devices.

We can only support routers provided by Colorado Central Telecom. We cannot provide support for third-party routers.

If you purchased your own router through an outside retailer, we cannot support your router through our Wi-Fi First Aid program. Our tech support staff are only able to troubleshoot connections with third-party routers as far as the Power Over Ethernet box; they cannot assist with internal networking. The Power Over Ethernet box, located where our cable enters your house, provides power to your dish and connectivity to your router.

Please note that third-party routers may be unable to access the Colorado Central Telecom network until the router can be authorized or authenticated after first connecting. This may result in being redirected to our walled garden. If you want to add a router to the Colorado Central Telecom network, please contact technical support at 719-937-7700 ext. 3.

Purchasing your own router can be the right decision for tech-savvy customers. If you elect to buy your own router, make sure that it’s an actual router with Wi-Fi capabilities. Switches, access points or cable/DSL modems will not work.  Our tech support staff do not recommend using routers provided by previous providers due to possible software incompatibilities with the Colorado Central Telecom network.

Apple routers have known issues on our network due to our IP schema. When used on the Colorado Central Telecom network, Apple routers will often give an error message that you’re double NATed and attempt to set the equipment up in bridge mode. Our tech support staff advise Apple router users to ignore the double NAT message and choose the router setup instead.

Wi-Fi First Aid does not apply during vacation mode, since your service is not active during that time. Vacation mode is still $10 per month.

We didn’t always have a separate router program. When Crestone Telecom was first founded in 2012, we provided Wi-Fi routers as a convenience to our customers. We gave out Wi-Fi routers with installations, covered replacement routers in the event of equipment failure and provided free on-demand support for all technical issues up to the router itself.

Over the years, customers increasingly required Wi-Fi-related support past the router – connectivity issues with their printers, iPads, Roku boxes, etc. This dramatically escalated the complexity of our tech support, and it became apparent to us why other providers had different policies.

Colorado Central Telecom needed to change the way it handled router replacements and Wi-Fi support. We could have stopped providing routers altogether, but felt this would be a disservice to our customers. Instead, we rolled out Wi-Fi First Aid as a means to continue providing the high level of support our customers appreciate.

Most internet providers only offer tech support within their network and don’t support Wi-Fi routers; customers typically have to buy their own router and do their own Wi-Fi troubleshooting. Internet providers that do provide and support Wi-Fi routers charge a monthly fee to cover the cost of equipment replacement and labor. By offering Wi-Fi First Aid, we’re able to meet our client’s needs in a sustainable manner.