Category Archives: UTOPIA

UTOPIA Mobile Home Spotted in Brigham City

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Commenter Dave has noted that he has seen UTOPIA’s mobile home cruising the streets of Brigham City. From what I’ve heard, this is being used as a mobile office to provide local demonstrations and provide local support ahead of any marketing efforts. Don’t know if they were passing through for gas on their way to Tremonton or if it means that service in Brigham is right around the corner. Your best bet is to call up UTOPIA or one of its providers to find out if service is available to you.

Is the wait over in Layton? UTOPIA service may be available!

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Forum commenter mabuxton reports that they’re getting UTOPIA installed at their Layton home in just two weeks. XMission and two other providers (I’m guessing FuzeCore and Nuvont) are reportedly going to have residential service available in the area and you can sign up for the install right now. If you’ve been waiting with baited breath to get UTOPIA service in the city, now is the time to call!

Is Frontier Blowing Smoke on LNP?

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After posting that Frontier Communications was giving competing telcos a hard time with porting numbers, commenter Aaron Wilcox, the Utah Account Manager for Frontier, advised that Frontier would be more than happy to port numbers given the proper paperwork was filed with the Utah Public Services Commission. At least one service provider called bunk on that claim citing that under current telecommunications law, the Utah PSC doesn’t issue the Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity that Aaron refers to if the service area in question has less than 5,000 lines. Documents I received from the PSC indicated that they suspended LNP waivers for rural telecoms, but those documents only reference wireline-to-wireless transfers, not wireline-to-wireline.

So which is it? Can customers in Tremonton port their numbers or does Frontier have those numbers permanently locked down? Is the suspension of the wavier a boon only to wireless companies? Could customers get their phone number to a UTOPIA provider by transferring to a wireless carrier and then porting the number again? It sounds like Frontier has been taking advantage of the current regulatory structure and resulting confusion to keep customers locked into their service.

UTOPIA Trucks Spotted in Brigham City; Is Service on the Way?

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Commenter Dave noted that he has recently seen UTOPIA trucks driving around in downtown Brigham City. There’s not much indication as to what they were doing, but we do know that UTOPIA installed a fair amount of fiber backbone in the city before halting construction last spring. Tremonton saw sales crews about a month after the trucks were spotted up there splicing. As the ground thaws, we may yet see fiber service deployed in the city. Keep your eyes peeled for the door-to-door sales team.

Cost for Centerville UTOPIA Hub May Top $100K

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The Standard-Examiner reports that the network communications hub in Centerville may cost about $20K more than initially projected with the additional money paying for conduit to cross the railroad tracks. A vote on the spending could come as early as January 20. There’s no word yet on Qwest’s response to this new plan or if they plan to take advantage of the new facilities.

The bigger question, however, is why Centerville appears to be the only city willing to go “all in” to make the network succeed. I’m not aware of any other member cities looking at building and leasing infrastructure or spending RDA funds to help UTOPIA succeed. What’s the deal, guys?

No More Impasse? Centerville May Have Deal to Spend RDA Funds on UTOPIA

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According to the Standard-Examiner, Centerville may be able to spend RDA funds to expand UTOPIA without facing legal action from Qwest. The deal would be to build a telecommunications hub within the city that would be open to all networks and providers willing to offer high-speed services to businesses and residents. Centerville could spend as much as $150,000 to expand UTOPIA to businesses along the I-15 corridor and complete the network hub.

Anyone at the meeting care to share additional insights? I couldn’t make it due to weather and preparing for another activity tomorrow night.

Corrections from UTOPIA on the Tremonton Numbers

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Hugh Matheson e-mailed to clarify some of the stats from Tremonton. The close rate is close to 50% – that is that half of homes visited end up taking service. The total take rate is hovering around 20% of all residents right now, still not bad for 10 weeks work. The door-to-door effort is being held up a bit by the inclement weather we’ve had lately. Also: in a lot of cases, folks are either unreceptive to any door-to-door sales or just aren’t home when someone comes by.

Even with numbers revised lower, it shows that an agressive marketing campaign with boots on the ground can do a lot to boost take rates. Maybe we need to get together and do guerilla marketing in a UTOPIA-ready neighborhood?

UTOPIA Article in the DesNews Shows Growth and Goals

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The Deseret News ran a brief article on UTOPIA that, while light on a lot of specifics, includes their current subscriber growth rate and goals for subscriber growth. According to the article, they’re adding 300-400 new subscribers per month and plan to double or triple that number in 2009. I’ve also heard that in Tremonton, their door-to-door campaign resulted in an impressive 50% take rate.

It’s good that UTOPIA has some public goals and accomplishments, but there still needs to be more public disclosure so that we can all evaluate how things are going. Hopefully they’ll be able to show big gains in other areas Real Soon Now(TM).