UTOPIA

UTOPIA, Utah — United States of America

Cre­ated by a col­lab­o­ra­tion of cities in Utah, UTOPIA stands for Utah Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Open Infra­struc­ture Agency. The agency includes six­teen Utah cities that have joined together to cre­ate one of the nation’s largest, fastest, most robust fiber-optic net­works. This open fiber net­work links mul­ti­ple cities and fos­ters com­pe­ti­tion among com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vice providers who offer Inter­net, tele­vi­sion, tele­phone and other ser­vices, giv­ing cus­tomers the free­dom to choose their own ser­vice providers, the best prices, and absolutely the best service.

The mem­ber cities of the net­work believe that telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture is the high­way of the future – and that the eco­nomic devel­op­ment and ben­e­fit that come from a true broad­band net­work are vital to the long-term suc­cess of their com­mu­ni­ties. UTOPIA stands for Utah Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Open Infra­struc­ture Agency.

With UTOPIA, each home and busi­ness is con­nected by fiber-optics directly to the main fiber-optic back­bone. That means you don’t share a your con­nec­tion with your neigh­bors. If you order a 10 mbps ser­vice from your UTOPIA ser­vice provider, that’s exactly what you get, all the time, down­load and upload. There’s no fine print say­ing speeds “up to” 10 mbps are “available.”

The Utah Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Open Infra­struc­ture Agency (UTOPIA) is a con­sor­tium of 14 Utah cities engaged in deploy­ing and oper­at­ing a fiber optic net­work to every busi­ness and house­hold in its mem­ber com­mu­ni­ties. Rec­og­niz­ing the need to pro­vide their res­i­dents with supe­rior com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy infrastructure—and the real­ity that cur­rent ser­vice providers in the mar­ket­place were not deliv­er­ing first-tier services—the com­mu­ni­ties banded together to cre­ate a world-class, 100 % fiber optic net­work for mem­ber com­mu­ni­ties. The ultra-broadband UTOPIA Com­mu­nity MetroNet will be open to mul­ti­ple ser­vice providers to offer inno­v­a­tive and excit­ing ser­vices to cit­i­zens in the UTOPIA cities. In terms of the size and nature of the project, UTOPIA can prob­a­bly be regarded as the most advanced Fiber to the Home project in the United States today.

The UTOPIA Com­mu­nity MetroNet and its ser­vice providers will make avail­able to every house­hold and busi­ness on the net­work new, leading-edge ser­vices, some of which are not avail­able any­where else. These ser­vices include ultra-broadband Inter­net access, high def­i­n­i­tion TV, video on demand, com­mu­nity and edu­ca­tion ser­vices, tele-work, telemed­i­cine, video con­fer­enc­ing and Internet-based tele­phone service.

Because the UTOPIA Com­mu­nity MetroNet is an open and publicly-owned net­work, mul­ti­ple ser­vice providers are able to offer appli­ca­tions and ser­vices over the net­work. As ser­vice providers com­pete for cus­tomers every­one will ben­e­fit from more choices, lower prices and bet­ter services.

The UTOPIA Com­mu­nity MetroNet might be com­pared to an air­port. Indi­vid­ual air­lines don’t each build an air­port. Instead, the city builds the air­port, and mul­ti­ple air­lines and their cus­tomers pay to use the trans­porta­tion infrastructure.

UTOPIA’s Com­mu­nity MetroNet approaches crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture in much the same way. The cities build the fiber-optic net­work. Then mul­ti­ple pri­vate ser­vice providers pay a fee to the cities to use the net­work. As cus­tomers sign up with the ser­vice providers, those who use the MetroNet—service providers and customers—will pay for and ben­e­fit from the community-owned infrastructure.

This pre­mium fiber-optic net­work is being installed in sev­eral com­mu­ni­ties, and UTOPIA-powered ser­vice providers—AT&T, MSTAR, Sisna, Verac­ity, Xmis­sion and others—are in the process of rolling out their ser­vices on the network.

Con­tact infor­ma­tion
Con­tact per­son: Paul Larssen -
Web­site: http://www.utopianet.org