Orem, Utah gets UTOPIA ‘hookup’

Fiber by fiber, footprint by footprint, Orem City is getting closer to becoming a fully connected UTOPIA city.

The long, idyllic acronym — for Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency — is a statewide project that will enable each member of a community to be hooked up to a fast Internet, phone and video connection.

The first step is laying the foundation. Enter UTOPIA, the company that functions like a plumbing business, said chief operating officer Roger Black.

"We run pipes to the home and somebody else fills them up with a connection," he said.

Service companies like MStar, XMission, AT&T and Veracity then use those existing fiber-filled "pipes" to sell connections to residents, replacing their former phone and Internet providers.

In Orem, UTOPIA crews are finishing laying pipe for the last two "footprints," or neighborhoods, giving each house access to the super high-speed potential of fiber optic cables.

By Sara Israelsen
Deseret Morning News

Full Story: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635181600,00.html