Just a few years ago, Alexander's Print Advantage in Lindon sent employees back and forth by car to its largest customers, ferrying entire computer hard drives that stored colossal data files containing books and graphics-heavy posters.

Then Lindon joined UTOPIA.

Company leaders successfully pushed to get UTOPIA's high-speed fiber-optic pipes laid to Alexander's sooner than scheduled.

Now, staggering amounts of digital information sweep into and out of Alexander's every day, a technological trick impossible without the controversial private-public project.

"We were really killing our connection," Alexander's chief technology officer Dan Mortimer said. 'We have three customers who do a significant amount of data transfers every day. We were uploading a couple hundred major files a day and overwhelming our capacity."

Alexander's set up a 10-megabit pipe through UTOPIA for 60 percent of the cost of the T-1 line that had struggled to keep up with the print shop's needs.

The T-1 line could handle just 1.5 megabits per second.

Mortimer lives in American Fork, which doesn't have UTOPIA. He'd like to see it come to his town so his home Internet connection could speed up at a cheaper price, too.

The big problem at home comes when his wife wants to upload pictures to an Internet service or a blog. Residential Internet connections through Qwest and Comcast allow upload speeds far slower than their download speeds.

"Whenever we need to push anything out from our home, the connection really crawls," Mortimer said. "That's not the case with the UTOPIA system."

Then there's Laura Lewis, a principal with Lewis, Young, Robertson and Burningham, which handles public finance for UTOPIA and about 15 of Utah's 25 most populous cities.

Lewis lives in Murray, and when she and a friend from Sandy each bought iPods, they decided to download some movies.

Lewis' friend's download took five hours.

Lewis' download took five minutes.

Life, near-death

"The early years are a big challenge," Lewis said.

Not only did UTOPIA seek support from member cities, but from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service, which provides loans to rural areas to get certain utilities.

The original pledging cities were approved for a $67 million loan July 14, 2006.

But negotiating the loan's closing took 18 months, Lewis said.

The funding delay meant work stopped, marketing stopped and new hookups stopped, she said.

Paul Cutler, UTOPIA's interim deputy director, said the delay cost UTOPIA millions of dollars.

"(The agency) failed to make good on its promise to loan money in timely manner," Cutler said. "It's really disappointing there's so little accountability in Washington."