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Fed loan expedites building UTOPIA. Fiber-optic network: Six small Utah cities to get broadband access sooner

Six small Utah cities, from Payson in the south to Tremonton in the north, are about to get pushed to the top of the UTOPIA fiber-optic network’s construction schedule.

The UTOPIA system, short for the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency, has received a $66 million commitment from a new U.S. Department of Agriculture loan program designed to help small communities build up their telecommunications infrastructure.

"We’ve received a loan commitment but we’re unsure of how long it will take before we can close on that financing," said Roger Black, UTOPIA’s chief operating officer. "Regardless, we’ll get started [on construction in those cities] as soon as we can."

The UTOPIA system was born in 2002 amid a sense of frustration by community leaders that the state’s leading private telecom providers were not moving fast enough to bring the benefits of high-speed broadband services to their cities.

By Steven Oberbeck
The Salt Lake Tribune

Full Story: http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_4182192

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