UTOPIA Starts Construction Season

After many, many months of inaction, UTOPIA is finally starting to move some more fiber into the ground starting with Centerville. This is the start of wiring up anchor institutions using the federal broadband grants, money that should touch most member cities. It won’t get the fiber all the way to your house, but it will wire schools, hospitals, libraries, and other government buildings which will make hooking up neighborhoods much easier and cheaper.

So what do you need to do to get service when it rolls by near you? Go to UTOPIA’s website and register your interest. They will be using those registrations to identify places to market to. If your city is part of the UIA, you’ll be able to get the install cost rolled into your monthly fees. If your city is not part of the UIA or is not a UTOPIA member city, you need to go talk to your city council to get that fixed.

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7 Responses to UTOPIA Starts Construction Season

  1. Ronald D. Hunt says:

    About $#^%*&!&ing time!!!!!!!

  2. Pingback: UTOPIA’s Five-Year Plan « Free UTOPIA!

  3. Trudy Mirci says:

    Signed up, promised we would have service by December…January at the latest. It is the middle of January. I have seen a lot of trucks in the area laying cable, digging up yards etc. Have yet to be contacted further regarding services. Guess they are waiting for Centerville City to sink more millions of dollars in, just to be taken for a ride. Utopia has been full of promise, but they have yet to deliver.

    Of course we have yet to start paying for it. When they start charging without any service I will really be upset.

  4. eddie says:

    I’m still waiting for service in Sandy. :C

    utopia needs a marketing strategy.

    • Jesse says:

      You’ll be waiting for a very long time (read: forever) since Sandy is not a member of UTOPIA. I’ve been working with a group of citizens in Sandy who are trying to change that. If you’re interested, I can wrap you into the conversation.

  5. Jill Jenkins says:

    The citizens don’t even get a say in Centerville, because the Mayor knows we would vote it down. We don’t want to buy your Pig in a Poke business. We don’t want to be forced to pay for a service we don’t want. Where is our vote on this issue?

    • John says:

      I don’t know about you, but I’d rather pay for a useful service that can actually drive broadband Internet costs down and service levels up whether or not you use it (due to Comcast and Centurylink having to actually compete to win business, rather than just maintaining the status quo in their duopoly), rather than pay almost as much or more just to service a debt that’s already been incurred, without getting anything useful in return.

      I’m not a fan of increased taxation/fees, either, but any way you look at it, citizens of UTOPIA cities ARE on the hook for the massive debts incurred, and that IS going to result in tax hikes, reductions in services, or both. As shown quite well on this website, this is the best opportunity that UTOPIA cities have to accomplish their goal of a municipal fiber build-out, and have a revenue stream going forward that could significantly nullify or even completely cover the cost of the debt service.

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