Free UTOPIA!

After almost 2 hours of discussion and questions, the Orem City Council voted 6-0 to approve the new UTOPIA bonds and move forward with the new plan for the network. This leaves Murray as the last city to vote on the issue and all signs there point to yes. With only Payson refusing to sign off, this means that the new bonds will likely go through as originally envisioned and the RUS cities could be on the network in as little as 8 weeks after the financing comes through.

Less than 2 hours ago, Brigham City voted in favor of the new UTOPIA bonds with Ruth Jensen casting the lone dissenting vote. They made their vote conditional upon approval by the remaining two pledging member cities, Orem and Murray, in a move similar to Centerville. With this vote, UTOPIA moves one step closer to securing the new financing and being able to move forward with its plans to continue construction in the RUS cities.

Just today, Jeremy Neish, a Provo citizen, launched iProvoWorks.com to build a grass-roots advocacy network around the city's municipal fiber optic network. It appears to have some of the same goals that I have for FreeUTOPIA, yet it goes further to put together advertising materials and actively solicit new customers onto the network. I'd encourage anyone who's supportive of iProvo to give this sister site your support.

Just moments ago, Centerville's City Council voted 3-2 to approve the new UTOPIA bonds, coming down to a "lesser of two evils" yes vote from Council Member Justin Allen, the swing vote on the council. The vote comes with conditions that Centerville reserves the right to reconsider based on how the remaining three cities vote, that UTOPIA find new executives and that UTOPIA present all contracts to the board before moving forward. All amendments were proposed by Paul Cutler, member of the Council and UTOPIA's board.

This now leaves only three cities, Brigham City, Orem and Murray, to cast votes on the issue. I encourage anyone in favor of UTOPIA to contact the council members to voice support leading up to these meetings. 

After almost 4 hours of public comment, the Layton city council approved the resolution authorizing the new UTOPIA bonds by a 1-vote margin. This was a battleground meeting, too: Qwest had the room stuffed with employees and sent Jerry Fenn, President of Qwest for Utah while the UTA sent their point man, Royce Van Tassell, to stump for them. The public testimony was about as split as the council vote with a number of residents expressing frustration at both incumbent providers. My favorite part? When I got to spell out in excruciating detail the trail of broken promises and outright lies from both Qwest and Comcast. Those watching him said that Jerry Fenn looked very uncomfortable as I spelled out their $1.4B Telco Act of '96 fraud and their plans to use the FTTN upgrades to shut out competing DSL and phone retailers.

I'll be sure to post more when I find out how the votes in Brigham City and Perry went. 

Watch your back, Qwest: XMission is getting in on the booming VoIP market. At $35/mo, it's comparable in price to the similar digital phone service from Comcast but without the poor customer service; the service is also a substantial discount compared to a similar offering from Qwest. It will also include a lot of advanced features, such as selective call forwarding and selective call blocking, traditionally only seen through services like GrandCentral. From the sounds of things, the service also supports using SIP, though it does not currently have support for fax machines.

Given XMission's history of technical excellence and solid product offerings, it will be a major boon to have them as a phone provider on UTOPIA.

I attended the Midvale city council meeting tonight and the city council unanimously approved the new bonds for UTOPIA by a 5-0 vote, much to the dismay of many of those in attendance. I know I was somewhat ambiguous about the new bonds but after the presentation by Kirk Sudwicks (?), I knew they had put together a solid plan with high odds of success. The city council realized it too and I could tell they'd done their homework when they later explained their votes. Kudos for them to being willing to do what they thought was right in the face of so much hostility (and a fair number of folks speaking out of order). 

Payson, meanwhile, rejected the new bonds by a 4-1 vote. This came as a surprise as it was expected as recently as last week that they would pass the new bonds. Word on the street is that the Utah Taxpayers Association launched a blitz on their city council to talk them out of it. Payson residents, there's still time to talk to the council and have them reconsider the motion. I know that once I get a chance, I'll be opening a dialog with each of them to find out why they rejected it.

I haven't seen anything on the five other cities voting on the bond issue tonight, but I'll be sure to post more as it hits the newswire tomorrow. 

A surprisingly accurate story from the Deseret Morning News (no, really) reveals further details on UTOPIA's current build progress. Here's a list of the current completion per city:

• Lindon: 95-99%
• Payson: 95-99%
• Tremonton: 95-99%
• Perry: 50%
• Orem: 50%
• Murrary: 50%
• Midvale: 40%
• Brigham City: 33%
• Centerville: 25%
• Layton: 15%
• West Valley City: 15%

We also get some more critical details on the financial picture. With the current 7,000 subscribers, UTOPIA is currently covering operating costs. Given the two-year reprieve from bond payments under the new bonding plan, UTOPIA will have plenty of time to wrap up construction in the current Phase I and Phase II cities and boost subscriber numbers to the point where covering the debt service won't be an issue.

So how about the benefits already realized by UTOPIA users? Orem is saving $600,000 per year in telecommunications costs, a sizable chunk of the money they pledged for UTOPIA. Print Advantage of Lindon went from ferrying around large files on portable hard drives to having customers directly upload them over their shiny new 10Mbps connection, a connection that cost just 60% of what they paid for a T-1 line at about 1/7th of the speed. Laura Lewis, a member of the firm that handles UTOPIA's finances, downloads movies from iTunes 60 times faster than her friend in Sandy.

As more details come out, the future for UTOPIA looks bright indeed. Let's hope that the city councils in member cities see it the same way when voting on the rebonding. 

After months of working with PacketFront, the company that acquired DynamicCity, UTOPIA has pulled back the curtain on their new plan and model. They plan to re-bond for a longer term (32 years instead of 20 years) with a lower interest rate, adding about $20M in cash to their reserves. This will also improve the cash flow since the bond payments will be lowered. In this environment of deflated interest rates, it made sense to lock in that lower rate.

The real challenge starts now: UTOPIA will have to convince the city councils of current pledging member cities to extend their sales tax guarantees that backed the original bonds. The upshot is that the amount of the guarantee will stay the same, but spread over a longer period. Provided this happens, the new bonding will be in place by mid-May so that construction can pick up again. If you live in a member city, it's absolutely critical that you write your mayor and city council to let them know that you support this change. Since the feds have presumably still not cut the checks on the RUS money they approved nearly two years ago, the funding infusion will be necessary to keep things moving.

After the train wreck of sloppy reporting from The Tribune, it's nice to see a news article that, you know, gets the story right. The Clipper has rightfully pointed out that cities always were prepared for the worst-case scenario, paying for the bonds with tax money, and that nobody has been expecting a slam-dunk free lunch. Officials from Layton and Centerville seem comfortable with where the project is and, given the high stakes, that speaks volumes.

Of great interest is a re-working of the model from PacketFront, the company that acquired DynamicCity last year. They bring a lot of experience to the table and have done a thorough top-to-bottom re-evaluation of the current way of doing business. Hopefully this will improve UTOPIA's abysmal policies concerning advertising and publicity, something that has left take rates low since most potential customers hadn't even heard of the project. The details are scarce right now so we don't have much to go on.

Another juicy tidbit: apparently Vineyard voted to become a non-pledging member in December, something that went largely unreported.