13,000 homes to be built in Utah to get fiber-optic connections

Qwest, Kennecott Land announce a new partnership

Qwest and Kennecott Land announced Friday a partnership to provide fiber optic connections to nearly 13,000 homes to be built at Daybreak, a South Jordan master-planned residential community.

Roughly 700 homes already have been built at Daybreak. However, homes that are built in the future will have fiber optic lines running directly into them — instead of copper wiring — allowing Internet connections at 5 megabits of data per second.

Most high-speed Internet connections run at 286 kilobits or 1.5 megabits per second. But even with a high-speed DSL connection, downloading a movie can take an hour or more, according to James Vogel, Qwest’s vice president of sales.

"With fiber, it’s instant," Vogel said. "It’s downloaded, and then you can watch it. And it’s all there."

Qwest has just one other fiber-to-the-home development, located in Lone Tree, Colo., which will connect 9,800 residences.

Homes with the fiber connections will pay a $55 a month homeowner association fee.

"Technology infrastructure is one thing where if you build it they will come," McMahon said. "Just ask the people in Bangalore, India, which is now the largest software development center in the world. They put in all of that infrastructure before they had any of those jobs."

By Dave Anderton
Deseret Morning News

Full Story: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,605155182,00.html