Dec 11
Salt Lake Tribune’s Crystal Ball
2009 at 9:22 am | posted by Rep. Craig Frank 1 comment
Clairvoyant? Or, just exercising a little rational free-market thinking, the Salt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Board has seen its predictive powers expose the final steps of the tragic demise of the UTOPIA project.
“We argued against Utopia almost from its founding because we thought it was a bad idea for municipal governments to get into the risky telecommunications business. Not when the likes of Qwest and Comcast were already duking it out with private capital. We also thought it unfair for Utopia to be tax-exempt when its competitors weren’t.
Unfortunately, our misgivings came true. Utopia turned out to be a financial quagmire rather than a technological paradise. And the swamp keeps getting deeper.”
When will government learn that delivering private sector services should be left up to…well…the private sector?!
December 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
“Not when the likes of Qwest and Comcast were already duking it out with private capital. We also thought it unfair for Utopia to be tax-exempt when its competitors weren’t.”
That’s a false argument, Qwest receives tens of billions of dollars in tax payer subsides through the USF and excise tax’s they collect.
“Not when the likes of Qwest and Comcast were already duking it out with private capital.”
I don’t recall which city’s are Qwest and Comcast laying fiber to the home in? The answer is none.
Lindon offered to pay Qwest to install FTTH in their city they refused. Many other city’s requested service upgrades in their city’s Qwest refused.
In fact the best way to get Qwest and Comcast to install services is to start installing your own network, You can nicely match up Qwest and Comcast service upgrades in the Wasatch front to where Utopia is.
Any other revenue Generating Utility would be in the same spot as Utopia is if under the same horrid regulation’s placing controls the City’s ability to exercise the City’s RIGHT to self determination.
Brigham voted yes to the SAA, hopefully we can get one of them going in Layton soon.