Utah cities hesitate on fiber-optic plan – Government role questioned; deadline this week

An ambitious fiber-optic network that promised to rocket Utah to the front in the telecommunications race is igniting fierce debate over government’s place in the business of high-speed Internet access.

Utah’s Utopia project – which is shorthand for the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency – is billed as an agreement among 18 cities to build a lightning-quick fiber-optic pipeline to provide Internet, telephone and television access direct to households.

By Travis Reed
The Associated Press

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~2077827,00.html

That network, backers say, would then attract Internet providers and others to offer services to connected homes.

The speed would be dazzling, if not dizzying. Utopia’s backers promised Internet access 35 times quicker than what’s currently available from the fastest high-speed residential service in the region, at prices similar to those customers already pay.

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But not all of the original 18 cities are on board, and many have backed out. And as the state barrels toward Thursday’s deadline for member communities to either commit money or back off, opponents are pressuring cities to stay away.

Utopia took a hit last week when Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson recommended that the City Council deny allocating taxpayer money to insure bonds that would pay for the cost of laying the fiber-optic cable – potentially costing Utopia its biggest player and largest share of customers.

"There is a very legitimate question as to whether this type of project should be undertaken by the public sector and whether a municipality should undermine the competitive position of longtime employers in our city who currently have several hundred people employed here," Anderson said.

In theory, Utopia is a close cousin to an airport, whose government-owned and operated infrastructure is rented out to private companies for use. Instead of airlines, the clients in Utopia’s case would be cable companies, telephone companies and