[sllug-members]: [sllug-members] UTOPIA Project in the [bad] news

[Doran L. Barton]

Not long ago, Nelson H. F. Beebe proclaimed...
> There is a large front-page story in the Salt Lake Tribune on Monday
> 31-Dec-2007 about financial difficulties in the UTOPIA Project, due
> both to delayed federal government funding, and a customer base that
> is 1/3 the size of that predicted.

This is disturbing to me on a number of levels. 

The Tribune ran an editorial today about this as well.

    http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_7865012

I have supported UTOPIA from the get-go with some reservations. My
political views are fairly conservative so I'm leery of government programs
to do anything private companies, citizens, or organizations can do because
much more often than not, privately managed ventures are run more
effectvely than any comparable government program. Part of the reason for
that is because when you run a company, it's usually your neck that's on
the line and not something as vague and nebulous as "future tax revenues
of vested municipalities."

That being said, it's clear no private company was going to do what UTOPIA
is doing. For example, there's no way XMission could go out and by the
rights of way to deploy fiber optic lines to every home and business in
several cities, not just because of the expense, but also the procedural
difficulties of working with various city governments and so forth. The
best way to achieve what UTOPIA wants to achieve is a collaborative effort
between cities. 

But, because it is a government project without anything "real" to lose,
they don't have the same incentives to rush to "profitability" that a
private company does. City councils of vested municipalities need to treat
their pledges like a VC would treat their seed money: Push for results and
full disclosure! Otherwise, UTOPIA truly is destined for the route of most
every other government program: cost overruns, unmet deadlines, and
dissatisfied users.

Internet service providers that offer services over UTOPIA should have
stronger incentives, from UTOPIA, to increase the take rate. I am
completely ignorant of whether UTOPIA is already doing this or not.

Finally, I am very discouraged by the federal funding wrinkle in the story.
When we were operating our office in West Valley, we investigated UTOPIA
and were told it would be available soon. I continued to check on its
availability regularly until I was told the build-out in West Valley was
slowing or halting because UTOPIA had gotten federal money to build out
rural areas and was going to divert their attention to those projects.

I didn't think much of it at the time, but in retrospect, that was a BAD
MOVE! Changing your play mid-game is unfair to the cities that have pledged
future tax revenues, no matter how much money the federal government was
offering. UTOPIA should have said no to that and continued building out
areas that had been committed to. I believe, had they done that, the take
rates would probably be higher today than they currently are.

Comcast and Qwest, of course, continue to fight UTOPIA every way they can.
Unfortunately, they have a much larger marketing and public relations
budget to do so than UTOPIA has to fight back with. For that reason, I
believe it is only through grassroot efforts and through the marketing
and public relations budgets of the companies that stand to profit from the
UTOPIA infrastruture that the word can be spread. 

-- 
Doran L. Barton <fozz at xmission.com> - Linux, Perl, Web, good fun, and more!
 "Have many accidents here."
    -- Seen in a Tokyo traffic handbook
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