Free UTOPIA!

Way back in 2004, Springville had a fiber-to-the-home network covering most of the city, but it had only picked up about 100 subscribers. The city made the decision to shutter the network, purchased from the defunct AirSwitch, since it was operating at a loss and was mostly dark. Now a new UTOPIA provider, Neighborhood Networks, has big plans to bring back fiber in the city and provide gigabit services at the now-standard rate of $70/mo.

The state of the current city network isn’t all that good. Most of the electronics are in need of replacing and many segments didn’t have any installed to begin with. There’s also the question of the state of a network that has gone unused for over a decade. For instance, the fibers or conduit could be broken or there may be a lot of unmapped network assets. Repairing what’s there would be an expensive endeavor, and it’s why Neighborhood networks plans to build from scratch, bypassing the current city assets. I reached out to the Mayor of Springville, Wilford Clyde, to ask more about the network and received no response.

Building fiber is certainly no easy task, even with a good business plan. They’re still negotiating right of way with the city (which will take about six months) and aren’t ready to start seeking out areas of demand just yet. (Seriously. If you call, they’ll probably ask you to call back when they’re ready.) Another challenge is that supplies of fiber equipment are stretched pretty thin as gigabit mania sweeps the nation. It also costs a lot of money to dig trenches and lay conduit, something that’s caused Google investors a lot of heartburn when it comes time to look at earnings statements.Neighborhood Networks CTO Johnathan Pemberthy says the company sold most of their WISP operations to help finance building out the city. They’re also hoping to take an approach like UTOPIA did in Brigham City (and Google Fiber later emulated in Kansas City, Austin, and Provo) to sign up neighborhoods before starting construction. With a 25% take rate, they’ll build a neighborhood and offer 100Mbps for $40/mo or 1Gbps for $70/mo with an eye towards eventually providing 10Gbps services down the road. The service will come with no caps, no throttling, and no contracts. Most interestingly, they’re offering a standard same-day SLA for residential customers and 4-hour for business customers, what Pemberthy calls their crucial differentiator.

If you’re living in Springville, keep your ears to the ground for some next-gen broadband in your backyard.