UTOPIA is a great idea, but was initially mismanaged and then got hammered by the problems with the muni-bond market five years ago. UTOPIA is in a much better place today than previously.
A similar deployment in Wyoming has gone very well. They took the lessons from UTOPIA and avoided the problems. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865552237/Wyoming-shows-how-cities-can-make-UTOPIA-internet-model-profitable.html?pg=all Being on UTOPIA has been wonderful. My internal network is the bottleneck in how fast and how much I can transfer, not the ISP. I love XMission, but I know that I can choose from a bunch of other providers if I want too. For example, as my kids get more curious, I have been looking into which ISPs provide better filtering options. If the ISP owned the wires, I would not have much choice. I think a successful UTOPIA will be a great benefit in a generation, but I fear that most tax payers are not that patient. Richard On Wednesday April 17 2013 15:29:33 Lonnie Olson <[email protected]> wrote: <snip rant on UTOPIA> > Wow, talk about misinformed. Mis-management possibly. Horrible > business model, an exaggeration. Cities do not own Utopia, they lend > money to Utopia on a bond, that Utopia has to pay back over a long > time. Some cities have chosen to join into the Utopia network for > reasons of improving network infrastructure. This infrastructure is > meant to increase competition, increase availability, increase speeds, > etc. This is exactly the purpose of local government, to provide > infrastructure to the people (Police, schools, roads, water, sewer, > etc). > > Now we can argue about the specific details and implementations that > need improvement. But the motivation of your local government was > good, and the model they chose (Utopia) can work (or could have) and > was less expensive and intrusive than running it all themselves, > absorbing all costs, and probably screwing up even worse. <snip> /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
