Comments about ‘2 Davis cities join UTOPIA’

Congratulations on these two visionary cities. They may not have been as quick as Centerville, but they can recognize a good thing when they see it and jump on the bandwagon when they get the chance. I do hope Bountiful will join as well. When my son was looking for a home in Davis county last year, all things being equal he said he would prefer to buy in Centerville because of this progressive technology. Once in place, it will be a definite drawing card for these cities and should boost property values as more people demand high tech homes.

This isn't news. They joined three years ago along with Centerville and everyone else. The fact that UTOPIA is years behind schedule and is just getting started isn't newsworthy. Why doesn't someone ask what's taken so long and why are we still waiting. In the time since this whole UTOPIA project has started the other internet companies have gotten their acts together and UTOPIA is now poised for failure not success. UTOPIA's service isn't cheaper than Qwest it's more expensive and even though it might be faster, for most people like me, money is what it's all about.UTOPIA is years too late and will lose millions just like iProvo and will probably end up bankrupt and sold for pennies on the dollar. Too little too late and they'll never get built out with the money they've got for a multiyear construction project with construction prices increasing the way they are. Good luck, but we'll all be reading about it like the headlines we've seen from iProvo.

Apparently Anonymous hasn't even bothered looking over the financial statements from UTOPIA. If s/he had, it would become obvious that UTOPIA breaks even with a 25% participation rate presuming an average of 2 subscribed services per household. Given that the first-year take rate for fiber optic services is often in the 40% range, I'd say this person needs to spend a lot more time getting their facts straight.

The problem is, the telecommunications situation is not at all like an airport. Airline "carriers" cannot each generally build their own airport infrastructure in every city. However, most cities already have multiple communications carriers, whether wireline or wireless, cable company or telecommunications company. Those companies are competitive and in business to make money in the free market economy that has made America great. What kind of hue and cry would arise if the government tried to privatize them? And yet, the arguments in support of UTOPIA are the same kinds of arguments that support government-run utilities and infrastructure (e.g., airports). Don't look just at financials on paper. Look around the country at actual results of projects similar to UTOPIA, and you'll see struggling operations -- few if any sustained success stories over time. Look at iProvo. Much better to let the free market work. Encourage government to get out of the way even more and let free enterprise compete to truly identify and meet real needs. That will do more to accelerate newer and better services than a government-sponsored approach. I'm afraid that citizens of cities involved in UTOPIA will eventually rue the day they got involved in this.

Imagine this for a moment, an outdated airport that doesn't even allow jet aircrafts onto its runways. This is the type of technology that the current vendors are offering to their customers. The future of telcom is not with outdated copper lines, despite what all of the antiquated telcoms will tell you. We are running our communications on a network whose technology dates back 100 years. I personally don't feel that I want to continue to subsidize the continuation of this cash cow. For example, the way that technology is going is to have direct "downloadable" movies in HD format available for purchase or rent. This really doesn't work well under the current system. There are other technologies that require decent upload speeds. Current providers don't and can't offer this cost effectively. We should have our information (phone, tv, internet) all come into your house in one pipe. This is no different then our gas, electricity etc... This will only happen when someone that isn't interested in "bandaiding" their own outdated infrastructure is willing to build a forward looking network. With fiber, only the speed of light is the barrier for advancement. By the way, anyone can offer services on this network, there is plenty of competition for service offerings. In fact, even ATT is already on the UTOPIA network as a provider. The difference is that one service is speeding along on the autobahn the other is not even off of the on-ramp.