Jesse Harris continues his monthly podcast show with an interview of Ken Sutton from Brigham.Net - a service provider from Brigham City that recently started offering services on the UTOPIA network. Brigham.Net has developed a very loyal customer base -- an impressive feat as it was dependent on leasing loops from Qwest, its biggest competitor. In that part of Utah, Qwest still has to share its lines with third parties but Qwest still goes out of its way to make life difficult for those third parties. Qwest poached customers from Brigham.Net - a common practice if one talks to any ISP that has leased lines from Qwest to resell. By getting on the open access network, Brigham.Net has expanded its customer base - it is on track to double the customer base in Brigham City when the UTOPIA network is fully available to residents. The discussion is interesting and shows why unbundling requirements are inferior to a publicly owned network operating on an open access basis.

The good folks at Broadband Properties Magazine recently ran an article I wrote about Brigham City's use of a new financing model for FTTH networks. You can read it there in the nice layout and formatting, or here: The UTOPIA project, an ambitious fiber-to-the-home network developed by a consortium of 16 Utah cities, has encountered difficulties that delayed its original buildout schedule. However, it is now building out fiber in Brigham City, one of the original cities in the consortium. Brigham City found a local solution to UTOPIA’s slow deployment schedule and created a model to speed buildout in willing communities. Brigham City, a city of 18,000 in northern Utah, decided to form a voluntary assessment area – sometimes called a special assessment area – to finance the network buildout that will pass all homes and connect residents looking to subscribe. As with all wired networks, upfront costs are steep and typically require a heavy debt load. Brigham City’s unique approach may catch the interest of deployers unwilling or unable to shoulder that debt. For several months, a group of canvassers organized by UTOPIA went door to door in Brigham City to talk to residents about UTOPIA and ask if they were interested in subscribing to the network. Supporters organized some 30 block parties and invited UTOPIA to attend with a mobile home to demonstrate the superiority of full fiber optic networks. Residents who wanted service were requested to ask the city to create a voluntary assessment area. Creating this special district would allow participants to finance their connections themselves. Residents who wanted to subscribe could either pay the connection cost up front or agree to pay up to $25 per month (the exact amount would depend on how many joined the program) over the course of 20 years. This amount does not include the cost of services; rather, it is the cost of connecting to the network and having the option of subscribing to UTOPIA-based services (see sidebar for current services). Those uninterested are not levied. In other UTOPIA cities, when residents subscribe to services on the UTOPIA network the connection costs are included in the service fees.