AMERICAN FORK — American Fork officials have approved five deals with one goal in mind — to improve the city's telecommunications infrastructure.

The recently OK'd deals are with Utah County, the Utah Department of Transportation, Union Pacific Railroad, Central Utah Telephone, and the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA).

Collectively, they will allow the six parties to cooperatively develop a 60-mile fiber-optic conduit from Salt Lake City to Payson.

American Fork will receive money from two of the agreements. Central Utah Telephone will pay the city $155,000 in the first week of January, and UTOPIA will pay the city $1.5 million for 24 fibers (the city will be left with 120) when the project is completed.

UTOPIA is a cooperative agreement among 14 Utah cities that seeks to provide fiber-optic networks for its members.

The other parties will provide rights-of-way and in-kind contributions for the conduit's construction.

The idea, Councilman Keith Blake said, is to improve the broadband system that the city purchased in 2002 with a $6 million bond.

"This provides redundancy, which increases the reliability of the network," Blake said. "In a nonredundant system, when something goes down in a part of the network, the network is down."

The City Council also approved a $750,000 contract with Fibertel in Tuesday's meeting for the installation of the fiber-optic cables through American Fork's section of the conduit. The net $805,000 the city will have at the end of the project (which is expected to be done in July) will go into the broadband fund, Blake said.

Blake called the fiber-optic cables a "huge technical asset" and expects them to increase the options available to American Fork residents from service providers, while at the same time decreasing costs.

"(Fiber) is just an amazing medium," he said. "The whole content of the Library of Congress can be transmitted on it in under a minute."

The system will also be used to conduct video arraignments in the court system, which Blake said will reduce transportation costs.

But not every member of the council was overwhelmed by the deal. Although she voted in favor of the agreements, Councilwoman Juel Belmont approached the vote cautiously Tuesday night, citing concern for an ongoing lawsuit between Qwest and UTOPIA.

Qwest filed a lawsuit in June, accusing UTOPIA of using its quasi-governmental status to provide cost breaks to service providers, thereby creating unfair competition. The lawsuit also alleges that UTOPIA attached facilities to Qwest poles and lines without permission. Riverton city, a member of UTOPIA, was also singled out in the lawsuit.