A Cooperative Experiment

I’ve been living in White City Township for over 7 years. Less than a year after moving here, I found out about UTOPIA and started kicking myself for not being someone who used to Buy Properties often. About that time is when I started FreeUTOPIA to try and improve broadband policy in this state. Most of my effort has been focused on municipal efforts since that’s about the only place to see the kinds of drastic improvements I think are needed.

Living in an unincorporated township, I didn’t really have many options to push for UTOPIA membership. Between a combination of legal limbo and unwillingness to extend themselves on more municipal services, pursuing any kind of municipal option here is and likely will always be a dead end. It’s time to take matters into my own hands. To that end, I’d like to announce that I am forming the White City Telecommunications Cooperative. It will be a privately-funded subscriber-owned fiber optic network covering the township and adjacent properties. I don’t know how I’ll do it, and I don’t know if I’ll be successful, but I do know that I’m tired of waiting for better options.

Does this mean I’m going to be neglecting FreeUTOPIA? To be honest, I kind of have been for a while now. UTOPIA is doing a better job of actually communicating what’s going on over there. I’m up to two kids and can’t really spend as much time going to every single council meeting to rehash the same arguments. The blog sees so little traffic these days that I sometimes think I’m just shouting into the void.

Am I quitting FreeUTOPIA? Not even a little bit. Broadband Bytes will still go out. I’ll still be posting periodic essays on telecommunications policy. And I’ll be (somewhat selfishly) working on getting broadband for myself instead of just facilitating others. I’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on how it goes.

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7 Responses to A Cooperative Experiment

  1. Jason F says:

    I’ve appreciated the existence of this blog, your following of broadband issues in Utah (and more broadly), and the advocacy you have been involved in. Good luck bringing fiber to your neighborhood!

    It is sad that so much effort by educated individuals is required to get access to decent bandwidth at a reasonable price in the US, especially when we look at Scandinavian countries and many Asian countries that have made high speed internet connectivity nearly ubiquitous and at low cost. Hopefully the day will soon come where you don’t have to decide where to live based on the availability connectivity options.

  2. charlesH says:

    I find your blog very informative. Thank you and good luck.

  3. Matthew says:

    I have loved reading your emails, I live in Bluffdale and would like to get something like this going here.

  4. Andrew M says:

    Keep doing what you can and good luck on your project! Let us all know how it goes every step of the way. Let the world know for that matter… Show the successes the pitfalls and everything in between. Thanks again!

  5. Jason R says:

    I know all of us at UTOPIA have appreciated your supportive voice. While we’d all like the project to be further along that it is, and to win over more critics than it has, the future is still bright. Good luck with your own effort.

  6. Jim says:

    Good Luck from the north western edge of West Valley. No Utopia yet, but they keep getting closer.

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