CenturyLink VP Eric Isom is on the Utah Taxpayers Association Executive Committee

Surprising precisely nobody, it appears that CenturyLink VP and long-time UTOPIA opponent Eric Isom is a member of the Utah Taxpayers Association’s Executive Committee. Per their June 2014 newsletter, he’s currently serving as the Secretary. You may recall he also was roaming the halls during meetings on HB60. If it isn’t crystal clear now why the Utah Taxpayers Association is astroturfing for CenturyLink, I don’t know what it’s going to take.

Of course, CenturyLink has a lot to lose. With the announcement in West Valley City that Ooma will be giving away the hardware for free landline service, they could shed as many as 40,000 access lines and several thousand vanilla DSL customers who opt for the basic 3Mbps service. While that fits their moves to abandon residential wireline service entirely, it also cuts into the highly profitable business products they’ve been focused on for the last few years. CenturyLink could lose tens of millions of dollars per year if Macquarie completes the buildout of the network.

So what can you do to help?

I don’t think most people realize just how deeply CenturyLink is embedded in the Utah Taxpayers Association. Bring it up at every public meeting. Share this post on every piece of social media you can and do so often. Once more people realize the uNOpia effort is just CenturyLink protecting its turf, the tide will change.