Category Archives: UTOPIA

Zombie Bill: HB60 comes back, committee hearing Friday at 8AM

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Despite looking like it’s dead, HB60 is coming back for a committee hearing on Friday at 8AM. This is the best chance to kill the bill for good, so it’s very important that as many opponents as possible come to the hearing and voice their opposition. The bill is currently fourth on the agenda, so even if you’re a bit late, you’ll likely be able to get a chance to speak.

Now is the time to email, call, or visit members of the committee to urge them to oppose this bill. Showing up will make the most difference. If it dies in committee, there’s a good chance it won’t come to a floor vote at all.

BREAKING: HB60 may have died in committee

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I went to check the status of HB60 this morning and noticed the status has changed to “House Comm – Not Considered”. This means that the committee responsible for hearing the bill has declined to do so. Without a committee hearing, the bill has little chance of passing at all. There’s still the possibility that once the rules are suspended that it could be brought to a floor vote, but that appears to be unlikely and would be a “hail Mary” kind of move.

As always, I’m going to keep watching this one until the session is over, but it looks like we may have won this round handily.

Bill Alert: HB60 held again

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Rep. Curt Webb has held HB60 again to make some additional modifications. It will be heard again either Wednesday or Friday. I’ll post more as it becomes available, though notice of the agenda change wasn’t made until minutes before the committee meeting. CenturyLink is definitely watching this one as their head lobbyist, Eric Isom, was spotted outside the committee room.

Rep. Webb was also on a radio interview opposite Pete Ashdown and was reportedly unable to articulate a good reason to pass the bill. I’m hoping he withdraws it before there’s more egg on his face.

Brigham City on Macquarie: Yes, please

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On Thursday night, the city council in Brigham City voted to move forward on a predevelopment agreement with Macquarie. This is a positive step towards bringing $300M in investment to UTOPIA, completing the buildout in all member cities, and contributing money towards the UTOPIA bond payments and Lending Tree. Unfortunately, the meeting wasn’t without theatrics and hysterics with plenty of incoherent rants and untruths during the public comment period. We even got a special Hitler reference from one of them.

You can watch the work session and city council meeting online (skip to 33:00 to begin public comment). The work session includes a very informative history of how private industry failed to build the infrastructure the city needed to keep businesses. Some quick facts from the work session and council meeting:

  • In Brigham City, a total of 1600 people signed up for the SAA and about 1300 are current subscribers to the service, about 26% of the city.
  • Brigham City is currently not contributing any payments towards UTOPIA’s operational shortfall of about $2.1M per year.
  • UTOPIA’s revenues raised much faster when they started primarily targeting business customers.
  • January’s income is much higher than expected.
  • Anything beyond the current plan to slowly grow the network to profitability would be a much more expensive option. But we already knew that, didn’t we?
  • Reissuing the bonds would be very expensive because of the way the current bonds are issued.
  • The network will remain the property of the member cities. Macquarie is primarily interested in a return on their investment, not ownership. To break even, they’d need to bring in $10M per year over the life of the contract.
  • Per Ken Sutton, owner of UTOPIA ISP Brigham,net, if the network doesn’t make a profit, Macquarie doesn’t get paid. Period.
  • The woman who canceled the RUS loan to UTOPIA is now an executive at Frontier, the incumbent operator in Tremonton. Isn’t that special?
  • Per their IT director, Box Elder School District depends on UTOPIA for 55% of students to get Internet access. They have no other fiber options available to them.

As expected, Ruth Jensen was combative for much of the work session, fitting her previous history of more-or-less unhinged opposition to UTOPIA. She even went so far as to propose suing UTOPIA, calling it “enslav[ing] the people”. The city attorney promptly smacked her down, saying that it would be the city effectively suing itself. (Skip to ~38:00 in the work session video to see it for yourself.)

So far, West Valley City, Layton, and Tremonton have also signed on. Centerville and Murray are considering it this week. Payson, as usual, is hoping that the whole thing will just go away and is ignoring anything UTOPIA-related. Word around the campfire is that all of the other cities want to move forward on a full study.

More than a coincidence? HB60 would kill access to UTOPIA as CenturyLink preps business gigabit

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We’d like to think that incumbents are a well-oiled lobbying machine, but they often do things so ham-fisted and amateurish that you’re left wondering if Gomer Pyle is in charge. This week is proving no different. After getting a legislator who took their money to propose cutting off UTOPIA at the kneecaps, CenturyLink announced that they would be offering gigabit service to office parks along the Wasatch Front. You know, the same ones that HB60 really wants to keep UTOPIA from providing service to.

So let’s recap our timeline here:

  • CenturyLink sends campaign cash to a legislator.
  • Said legislator runs a bill to kick UTOPIA out of business parks that paid to have the service built to them.
  • CenturyLink comes in behind that and sells their own service, most likely at a much higher cost. This includes state agencies such as UDOT, UEN, and UTA.

Could it be any more obvious as to what’s going on around here? CenturyLink has convinced a legislator, Rep Curt Webb, to run a bill to kick their competition out so that they can take those customers. I’m furious about that arrangement. You should be too. It’s time to yell about this one from the rooftops.

Bill Alert: HB60 would ban UTOPIA construction outside member cities

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In a completely ill-considered move, Rep Curt Webb is running a bill, HB60, which would restrict any municipal fiber network (but, curiously, not cable, DSL, wireless, or any other technology) from building anything outside the boundaries of member cities. This is aimed squarely at UTOPIA only, and it is meant to be a purely punitive measure.

So what prompted this? Probably the developers and companies who paid out of their own pockets to expand the network. Hamlett Homes extended it into South Salt Lake communities, and a number of businesses near the backbone but outside of member cities have done the same. These extensions help lessen the burden on taxpayers as a whole by shifting more of the costs onto subscribers, but it doesn’t cost any city a red cent.

As the bill is currently written, UTOPIA wouldn’t just be prevented from building to people willing to pay for it. They could also be required to shut down any existing services and be prohibited from maintaining their backbone that links cities together. It would effectively be a death sentence on any network that isn’t entirely within member cities AND can connect to an exchange point to reach ISPs and the rest of the Internet.

Naturally, I had to follow the money and it explains a lot. Rep. Webb has taken contributions from CenturyLink and the Utah Rural Telecom Association. What’s he got planned next? Duplicating the anti-Google Fiber bill from Kansas?

Hans V. Anderson Jr.’s Curious Definition of Failing

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I suppose it could be possible for UTOPIA opponents and critics to make their case without lies or misrepresentation, but much like discovering how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know. The latest example is an op-ed published in the Daily Herald from Orem City Council Member Hans V. Anderson Jr. In addition to many of the usual talking points, he makes multiple assertions that contradict what we already know about the deal with Macquarie.

For starters, he’s stating that Macquaries investment would be a loan. No published source has stated this at all. In fact, the published information is that the money would be a required network investment similar to what Google did in Provo. If it’s actually a loan, how is it that Anderson is the only one reporting such, especially when numerous city council members and mayors were at the same meetings?

Anderson then asserts that a proposed utility fee is actually intended to repay Macquarie for their investment. His own source, however, show that it is to retire the existing bond service. Instead of covering bond service from the general fund, it would be a clear line item spread across all Oremites, similar to how Provo assigned the debt service from iProvo to everyone in the city, subscriber or not. It seems very curious that he would contradict himself to make the utility fee into something it is not.

So what, exactly, is failing? UTOPIA has met or exceeded every financial goal under it’s current five-year plan. It’s now bringing in a partner to finish the network, relieve the cities of shouldering any operating expense shortfall, and likely provide some revenues to reduce or retire the proposed utility fee. I don’t see anything for someone who wants to lessen Orem’s financial load to be upset about at all. Why is Hans furious to the point of lying?

This is what happens when UTOPIA opponents want failure at any cost. Any success, no matter the size, must be turned into failure in order to prove their larger ideological point. Instead of retreating to the absolutely defensible and logical “I don’t like this approach” position, they have to cling to the “it just doesn’t work” one, evidence be damned. I hope the citizens of Orem will ask themselves which kind of elected official they want running their city.

Did UTOPIA just out-epic Provo?

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There’s not a lot of details out about the proposed public-private partnership between UTOPIA and Macquarie, but it’s already looking like Provo’s deal with Google Fiber is about as raw as I thought it is. Here’s a breakdown of how the two deals differ:

UTOPIA/Macquarie iProvo/Google
Contract length 30 years 7 years
Investment per address ~$2,000 ~$500
Revenue Sharing Yes (unknown amount) None
Open Access Yes No

So, to be clear, UTOPIA’s proposed deal with Macquarie will bring a longer commitment, more money, and revenue sharing with the cities while preserving open access. In this light, Google Fiber seems like epic’s cheap knock-off. Provo, you just got punked.

UTOPIA Goes for Cheap Gigabit

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Remember the rumblings about UTOPIA’s upcoming announcement last week? Well, it’s here, and its’ huge. Starting today, seven providers will be offering gigabit service for as low as $64.95/mo. If you’ve already paid off the connection fee, this makes it the same or less than Google Fiber in Provo on six of them. Here’s the full price list:

Of note is that UTOPIA has added another provider, WebWave. They’ve been using UTOPIA for backhaul to wireless towers in Davis County since May and are now going to be a full-fledged ISP on the network. With nine total providers to choose from, UTOPIA’s offering more competition for your business than ever.

If you’re content on the lower-priced tiers, SumoFiber and XMission have already switched all customers to 100Mbps. Are you planning to pony up a little more for 10x the speed? I know I would.

Brace Yourselves: Gigabit is Coming

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Earlier today, UTOPIA posted a cryptic message on Facebook and Twitter that they’d be announcing something on Monday September 16. Obviously, such a vague message has sent the speculation engine into overdrive, but a little birdie told me it has something to do with gigabit.

The likely possibility is that gigabit plans are likely to get a whole lot cheaper. Right now, they’re in the $300/mo price range. Google Fiber is planning to do gigabit for $70 in Provo. It’s possible that we may see a large price cut to make gigabit a much more appealing product in UTOPIA areas. I’d be surprised if it dropped to the same price as Google Fiber, but a price at or under $100/mo would be quite appealing.

Of course, we’ll have to wait until Monday to know for sure and get the details.