UTOPIA officials optimistic despite slow sign-up rate

The city may look toward building a UTOPIA fiber hub on the west side of I-15 to cater to a growing business population.

In the meantime, city officials are waiting to hear back from consultants.

Among its other accomplishments, UTOPIA has convinced its biggest critic to help it work toward success. Royce Van Tassel of the Utah Taxpayers Association has conceded that failure of the network would be bad for everyone, but still thinks the concept was flawed from the get-go.

UTOPIA has also tapped blogger Jesse Harris to lead a community input committee that reports to the network's general board.

Most importantly, however, the network has changed its focus and now operates like its big-business competitors, adding infrastructure only in profitable neighborhoods. This way, the burden of cost will eventually be shifted to the end users, Matheson said.

But Van Tassell continues to cry foul, saying that UTOPIA's mimicking business just proves that the socialist concept can't work.

Additional information can be found on Harris' blog, freeutopia.org, utahtax.org or on UTOPIA's new site at utopianet.org.

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Contributing: Joseph M. Dougherty

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E-mail: rpalmer@desnews.com