Tired of being underserved and overbilled by shitty regional broadband monopolies, back in 2002 a coalition of local Utah governments formed UTOPIA — (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency). The inter-local agency collaborative venture then set about building an “open access” fiber network that allows any ISP to then come and compete on the shared network.
As we’ve noted over the years, regional monopolies like Qwest (now Centurylink or Lumen) didn’t much like that. They desperately tried to sue and harass the network out of existence in the early aughts, claiming the concept violated numerous local laws (it didn’t). These efforts failed, in part, because of widespread support among a public extremely tired of being ripped off by shitty monopolies.
Two decades later and the coalition just announced that 18 different ISPs now compete for Utah resident attention over a network that now covers 21 different Utah cities. In many instances, ISPs on the network are offering symmetrical (uncapped) gigabit fiber for as little as $45 a month (plus $30 network connection fee, so $75). Some ISPs are even offering symmetrical 10 Gbps fiber for around $150 a month:
“Sumo Fiber, a veteran member of the UTOPIA Open Access Marketplace, is now offering 10 Gbps symmetrical for $119, plus a $30 UTOPIA Fiber infrastructure fee, bringing the total cost to $149 per month.”
It’s a collaborative hybrid that blurs the line between private companies and government, and it works. And the prices being offered here are significantly less than locals often pay in highly developed tech-centric urban hubs like New York, San Francisco, or Seattle.
Yet giant local ISPs like Comcast and Qwest spent decades trying to either sue this network into oblivion, or using their proxy policy orgs (like the “Utah Taxpayer Association“) to falsely claim this effort would end in chaos and inevitable taxpayer tears. Yet miraculously UTOPIA is profitable, and for the last 15 years, every UTOPIA project has been paid for completely through subscriber revenues.
As other Utah cities have considered following suit, those same local monopolies have created dark money campaigns and even fake consumer groups to lie to locals that such efforts are still inevitable government boondoggles. Such sleazy lobbying campaigns are cheaper than actually competing or building the kind of networks these locals have spent several decades clamoring for.
For years, real world experience and several different studies and reports (including see our Copia study on this concept) have made it clear that open access networks and policies result in faster, better, more affordable broadband access. UTOPIA is proving it at scale, but numerous other municipalities have been following suit with the help of COVID relief and infrastructure bill funding.
Sometimes such networks are owned by local governments. Sometimes they’re community-owned cooperatives. Sometimes they’re the extension of the local city-owned utility. Sometimes they’re built on the back of public/private partnerships.
According to a database of such networks tracked by the Institute For Local Self Reliance (which I have done research and writing work for), there are now 450 municipal broadband networks in the U.S. Since January 1, 2021, at least 47 new networks have come online, with dozens in the planning or pre-construction phases. And this may be an undercount given the FCC’s failure to track them all.
But because big monopolies (and a bunch of Libertarian think tankers with covert financial ties to those same monopolies) didn’t like the idea for ideological or financial reasons, federal and state policymakers have vacillated between demonizing the idea of municipal broadband, or banned it entirely (17 states currently prohibit such networks, and House Republicans attempted a federal ban during COVID).
Again, this could have all been prevented if big ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, CenturyLink and others had actually delivered the affordable, ultra-fast access Americans have demanded for decades. It could have been avoided if they’d embraced competition. It could have been avoided if they’d properly used the untold billions in taxpayer subsidies they’ve received over the last thirty years to expand access.
Community and municipal broadband sees widespread bipartisan support. It’s an organic, highly local, response to decades of corruption and market failure these companies enabled at every step of the way. Any impact it has on regional telecom monopolies was entirely earned on the back of decades of hubris and greed.
