![]() ![]() One of the resources I learned about in my research on this subject is Community Networks, a sort of clearinghouse for information on community broadband networks. They have comfortable franchise agreements with your city, so that there is no competition. The incumbents also spent money on my representatives in Congress to ensure their market remained captured, uncompetitive.Ĭhances are, if you live in America, you also live in a city or town with one or maybe two wired internet access providers. And as they were doing that, Comcast and Centurylink spent money on the statehouse to ensure that Utopia was restricted by legislation. So the Utopia cities sold bonds to finance their network, their dream. But the incumbent service providers refused to improve service for Salt Lake City. Utopia is really a consortium of 11 cities that had been begging and pleading with Centurylink and Comcast for faster, more reliable service. In this case their competition was the government. I'm very political, and I was keen on the fact that court cases like Citizens United allowed Centurylink to use their profits to lobby for more protection from competition. I had symmetrical service, like nothing I had ever seen before, realizing a 10 year old dream.īesides speed and reliability, there are a few more reasons why I made this move, this change. I went from 20 Mbs down and less than 1 Mbs up, to ~270 Mbs up and down. Then I connected the router to a switch, and my desktop computer to the switch. When Utopia service was ready, I connected my new Google WiFi router to the new network. I had the Centurylink modem connected to my router. That cable went to an Ethernet jack in my living room. ![]() They pulled more fiber from that box to a beefy modem mounted on the wall of my unfinished basement. Yesterday, they completed the installation. They came out again and ran conduit under my driveway from the green box on my lawn to stop just sort of my house. And then one day, a few weeks ago, one of our neighbors got signed up. We checked again and again for availability on the Utopia website. Comcast refused to compete in our neighborhood. Some got slow but steady service (that would include me, too). The entire neighborhood was looking for relief from just having one wired service provider: Centurylink. In my neighborhood, we have a Facebook page where the whole community shares their issues and we help each other out. I don't know all the details, but after that settlement, Utopia got busy. ![]() Then Utopia won a $10 million settlement against the federal government concerning denial of a loan that they had applied for from a federal broadband fund. I wrote letters, emails, made phone calls, wrote articles, doing everything I could to get that service, to escape the duopoly that was paying for the 3rd vacation house on the coast of Spain for the CEO of Centurylink or Comcast as the case may be. I went to city hall meetings to lobby for Utopia. I followed the Utopia story very closely. I was mindful that I wanted to stay in West Valley City, a Utopia city, ever hopeful that they would hook me up. We lived there happily for about 5 years and decided to move when the house across the street put up a confederate flag, then the owner got busted, and then they ran up the skull and crossbones. That sales rep, a woman, got me hooked up to Comcast in two and a half weeks to a service that provided better than 50 Mbs at peak. By chance we went to a home show where we met a sales rep from Comcast. I called Comcast for more than a year hoping that they would add me to their database and hook me up. That house didn't have Utopia, either.Īll I had was Centurylink, 5 Mbs down, and much less going up, and Centurylink would only guarantee 80% of that download speed. After nine months of living in Utah, we bought a house at the bottom of the market in 2009. The apartment didn't have Utopia, they had Comcast. They didn't have Utopia, they had Comcast. We started out our lives in Utah living in the basement of a relative of my wife's. If I was going to move to Utah, I had to have that service. I checked it out and found that at the time, it was one of the fastest ISPs in the country. I found that there was this service called Utopia. But before we moved I had to know what to expect for internet access in Salt Lake City. In 2008, my wife and I decided to move from Orange County, California to Salt Lake City, Utah. It's a really long story, so let me give you the overview. After nearly 10 years of waiting, to the day, I now have Utopia Fiber service. ![]()
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