Local groups whipped Oremites into an unhinged frenzy

Tuesday night, the Orem city council approved a property tax increase to plug some budget holes. A lot of the people present (some council members included) chose to pin the blame squarely on UTOPIA even though that’s less than accurate. I wasn’t there, but the recap from Twitter made it… Continue reading

The Alternate Reality of the Standard-Examiner

The Standard-Examiner published an anti-UTOPIA editorial yesterday that, quite frankly, makes me wonder if some sort of illicit substances are in use by their editorial board. Granted, these kinds of opinion pieces are not uncommon, but this one sets a new “standard” in incoherence and inaccuracy. Allow me to “examine”… Continue reading

UTOPIA Proving a Popular Scapegoat for City Revenue Issues

A lot of cities have been talking property tax hikes lately, and the most certain thing about all of the proposals is that elected officials are going to look for someone or something to blame. In UTOPIA member cities, blaming the fiber network has become the easy go-to solution, especially… Continue reading

Has American Fork fixed its broadband network woes? Hardly

Back on March 15, I filed a GRAMA request to get some more details on American Fork’s sale of AFCNet, their municipal broadband network, to a private party. The request was dutifully filled exactly 10 business days later on March 29. The documents revealed the terms of the sale, what… Continue reading

Veracity Deploying ADSL2+ in Downtown Salt Lake City

Not content to roll out ADSL2+ in American Fork, Veracity has announced that its ADSL2+ product is going to start landing in downtown Salt Lake City (warning: press release, superlatives ahead). There’s no information on pricing or speeds, but I would anticipate that both will be highly competitive. The initial footprint… Continue reading