- Utopia Fiber finishes its open access network in Bountiful, Utah ahead of schedule
- In the beginning of the project, dark money groups fought it
- The city of Bountiful owns the network, which it paid for through a bond
FIBER CONNECT 2025 — Despite dark money campaigns fighting a community network in Bountiful, Utah, the project has now been successfully completed by Utopia Fiber, and customers are signing up.
At a press conference today at the Fiber Connect show in Nashville, Tennessee, Roger Timmerman, executive director of Utopia Fiber, said, “We have completed the Bountiful City fiber project and built out the entire city with an open access network. This was a three-year project, and we completed it nearly a full year ahead of schedule.”
The fiber network now passes 16,500 addresses.
When Fierce Network asked how uptake has been, Timmerman said connections have been phased in as the project has been deployed, but it’s too early to say how many people will ultimately sign up. He said in the last couple of months, there have been about 200 signups per month. “We need a year to really answer that question. In Bountiful we’re confident we’ll get take rates of 40% or higher. There’s a lot of demand there.”
But neither Utopia nor the city of Bountiful were always so confident. That’s because when the project was being considered, dark money groups fought against it.
Timmerman said, “This project did not come without opposition. We had a dark money organization involved, the Domestic Policy Caucus. It was a pretty ugly campaign against the city.”
A dark money group called Utah Taxpayers Association financed a petition effort to force a vote on project funding. It hired signature collectors to try to persuade registered voters to oppose the project.
Timmerman said the signature campaign failed because residents would ask, “Who do you work for?” and the signature gatherers didn’t even know who was behind the campaign. And when residents asked, “Are you a resident of Bountiful?” the signature gatherers said, “No.”
Although these dark money groups don’t disclose their donors, one can only assume that they were funded by the incumbent providers in Bountiful, which include Comcast and CenturyLink. However, there is no verification of exactly who was behind the campaigns.
Some incumbents had previously approached the city, saying they would upgrade their networks. “But the city wanted choice,” said Timmerman.” They didn’t just want a replacement of cable with fiber: monopoly 2.0.
The open access network
The city of Bountiful owns the network, which it paid for through a bond. Utopia designed, built and manages the network and takes a share of the revenue.
Utopia Fiber operates open-access networks in 23 cities, mostly in Utah. “We have relationships with contractors, engineering, design, materials management firms,” said Timmerman. “We have the technicians, we have the repairs, cyber security, mapping, billing, an enormous amount of back-office work."
Utopia typically allows a large number of ISPs to use its open access networks. And that’s definitely the case in Bountiful where customers have their choice between 19 service providers.
Nicole Cottle, deputy director, general counsel, and director of government affairs, at Utopia Fiber, also happens to be a resident of Bountiful. She said her former service from one of the incumbents was “slow and inconsistent for 25 years.” She’s thrilled to have fiber to the home, now, via the community open access network.
Catch up on all the news from Fiber Connect 2025 here.