Congrats to FreeUTOPIA for Victory In Utah

Jesse Harris over at FreeUTOPIA is noting an important shift in the discussions and controversies that surround Utah’s UTOPIA open access network. For starters, as the network is increasingly showing signs of financial success, he’s noticing that critics of the network have gone silent. Meanwhile, more and more people in the region seem to be interested in getting connected to the network. 

After almost a decade spent covering the UTOPIA open source network, Harris declared victory for UTOPIA and for local authority over broadband access in Utah.

We’ll let Jesse take it from here:

UTOPIA is probably in the best shape it has ever been in. They have or will soon hit operational break even, where all operating expenses are now covered by revenues. Between remaining UIA money and the RUS settlement, they have operating capital they can use to expand the network. In fact, expansion is now underway in Perry, Layton, Midvale, and West Valley City. All of the expansion is being done to demand and the cost is landing squarely on subscribers.

Even the public attitude is different. I don’t see baseless fact-free editorials against it with any notable frequency. Even the Utah Taxpayers Association has gone uncharacteristically silent. Orem elected pro-UTOPIA candidates. Murray has been actively working on ways to maximize the network in their city. Payson reportedly even shows up to board meetings with regularity now. From many sources, I hear less “how do we get rid of it” and more “how do I get it in my house”. The importance of competitive, fairly priced, and high performance broadband has entered the mass consciousness in a way that I haven’t seen it before. Most importantly, highly visible failures by incumbents to deliver the kind of broadband nirvana they’ve been promising for decades has made the public highly cynical to their claims.

There is still work to do. UTOPIA has a lot of network to build to serve every address in member cities. There are a lot of areas badly neglected by incumbents that don’t have any kind of viable competition. Google is great for those that have it but creates a lot of have nots and replaces one duopolist with another. The companies who are doing interesting competitive things can’t really do it at scale. Despite these challenges, one thing is certain.

We won the war.

Yes, I’m declaring victory. It’s taken nearly 10 years of running this blog, but the hearts and minds part of the game is more-or-less over. It’s all mop-up operations from here, scattered battles that I think we’ll have little trouble seeing through to victory.

In Jesse’s decade of diligently tracking all things UTOPIA, he’s covered good news (see here and here), setbacks, the network’s tumultuous history, and he’s been a voice of reason in the face of misinformation efforts.

We’d like to salute Jesse for 10 years of effective advocacy for UTOPIA and for the municipal broadband movement as a whole. Thanks Jesse!