Reader comments
UTOPIA should follow iProvo

Wow there must be some powerful lobbyists.

Why on earth would the papers keep printing these stories?

UTOPIA is the best thing around. No need to sell off any of it.

Provo made a huge mistake.

Who keeps paying for these editorials?

Wow, you must be one of those fortunate enough to have Utopia. The chances that 40% of any new neighborhoods would pay $2,000 per household to add Utopia is virtually zero.

Consider, would you pay a $2,000 bill now?

Whether UTOPIA has been mismanaged or not, whether it should be sold or not, NOW IS THE TIME TO INVEST IN HIGH SPEED INFRASTRUCTURE!!! I am amazed that editorials like this one are not recognizing that one of the single biggest things we can do as communities to combat high fuel prices is to make telecommuting a reality. Super high-speed broadband, such as UTOPIA, brings the promise of making commuting to work a thing of the past. Virtually all companies can take advantage of high speed, in one form or another, to allow employees to work from home.
Wireless is not enough, and for full two-way video-enabled commuications, DSL and Cable are not sufficient either. They just don't have the capacity.
Now, of all times, it is crucial that we get behind fiber networks. I can't believe the DNews is blind to that reality. Where is the vision?

Thank you for this opinion which is so on point. The other comments show that people just do not understand how our free enterprise market works. These people should consider for example the impact of a government distributing gasoline. Surely a city government could deliver gasoline to the public at a better price than the market and provide higher quantities. If prices and quantities didn't meet consumer satisfaction the cities could issue bonds at a lower costs of capital than the oil companies. That would hold down prices at the pump. Oh wait. The Soviet Union tried this for 80 years and turned their world into the lowest standard of living on the planet.

If free enterprise works why is the US falling farther behind in the ability to provide broadband access? The nonpartisan Information Technology & Innovation Foundation notes that the US is 15th in the world in broadband down from 4th just 6 years ago. The only areas in Utah can compete with the top 14 nations are iProvo and UTOPIA. Of course, if by free enterprise you mean a phone company that got its startup costs tax subsidized (Qwest) and charges 5x more than the global average and delivers 1/5 the speed then you can have it.

Since the Desnews is so big on "disclosure", I would be curious to see who they keep chatting with from Qwest and Comcast.

If the Desnews board was to be consistent in their logic, cities should dump their roads as they too are an "endless drain on city coffers". This is the same board that advocates for local decision making, except when information infastructure is concerned. Then the decision should be out of the 12+ cities whose citizens have declared that their needs aren't being met and spur their government onto action.--Jaren Blake

I wonder if the Utah Taxpayer Association wrote this?

Provo isn't going to stop competing with private enterprise. The entire Broadweave deal is an exit from the telcom business by entering into the banking business and financing the loan for Broadweave's purchase, though it's really structured more like a rent-to-own plan. When (not if) Broadweave fails to make its payments, the city gets the network back and has to scramble to find new retailers just like when HomeNet went under. This time, however, they've already demonstrated a willingness to screw over retailers and will have a lot of difficulty attracting new ones.

Provo is looking for an easy out, but there are no easy outs. This just delays the bond payments for two years (while expanding the debt, no less) while putting the network in a much weaker position in the future, both with retailers and customers.

The reason that UTOPIA has not taken off is that people that are subscribers to Qwest and Comcast don't understand that there is something significantly better than what is being offered. One would be a fool to remain a subscriber with these two companies when they can have more than what Qwest and Comcast will offer in a decade. Don't let their lobbyists mislead you into thinking that their new services will even come close to the 50 MBit connection that UTOPIA offers. Lastly, there are just some services that require infrastructure investments that private enterprise will not invest in but are crucial. Airports and roads come to mind. My guess is that if we waited for oil companies to build roads we would still be driving on dirt. This is what we are staring at with Qwest's copper network. Those cities that cities that drink Qwest's (and Comcast's) koolaid will live to regret it. Utahn's love the "Free Market for Eveything" diatribe.

I aggree with most everything you said, but the biggest reason is that UTOPIA isn't available to the higher tech centers of the cities.
My area would LOVE to have UTOPIA, but it will be the LAST area of Orem to be built. NO company will even accept my preorder.

I hate Qwest and Comcast. The upload is WAY too slow... Comcast is slower than DSL in this.

As always the technology of iProvo and Utopia is good. The management and marketing is bad. Broadweave will likely be worse than Mstar with less experience and no money at risk. How many businesses would love to have a $40 million dollar asset thrown into their laps to experiment with? I guess we will never know since Provo cheated on the process. Sure potential businesses that could have made it successful are cheated, but the people of Provo will be the biggest losers in the long-term since they will still end up paying the bond for a project that has been decimated.