Installation in Tremonton, Brigham City, Perry, Lindon and Payson could be complete by the end of the year, Black said.

Centerville assistant city manager Blaine Lutz said his city can get a boost to its economic vitality if there is access to high-speed telecommunications.

"We anticipate that the availability of this network will encourage local job creation and economic development to existing and new businesses," he said.

Kent Fitzgerald, founder and CEO of Fitzgerald and Company CPAs, an accounting firm in Murray, said he was the first business in Murray to join the fiber-optics network.

Before he joined, he was paying $1,100 a month for telephone and a T1 Internet connection. But once his firm connected to UTOPIA's 30 megabit connection, his costs dropped to $275 a month.

And his connection is now the equivalent of 20 T1 connections.

Fitzgerald said government can be inefficient, and people can get complacent, but building infrastructure that everyone can use and that fosters competition is a true purpose of government.

"That's what it did in this case," he said.

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Contributing: Sara Israelsen

E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com