Utah's fiber rolling out to neighborhoods

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/11/2005 - 10:49.

This report from a Utah resident highlights two of the best-known fiber projects in the country: iProvo and UTOPIA (hat tip to Dave Fletcher's weblog). The iProvo muni fiber is 100 times faster than cable modem and 250 times faster than DSL. In other words, it is world class service, of the kind that is common in lots of other countries. Utah gets the connection between broadband and economic development, and the state has the quality of life, especially outdoor sports like hiking and skiing, to be attractive to companies who want affordable housing costs and a great quality of life to go along with affordable broadband.

We're going to increasingly see a Digital Divide between states that get it and states that don't.

Muni fiber: 3x payback the first year

Submitted by acohill on Wed, 05/11/2005 - 10:38.

A muni fiber system in Utah's Salt Lake Valley installed to manage traffic throughout the region had an installed cost of $51 million and an expected ANNUAL payback of $179 million in savings.

The Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) uses the fiber to manage more than 50 major traffic corridors, coordinate signal changes on more than 600 traffic lights, provide traffic monitoring via video cameras, and hook up truck scales.

The system has provided significant reductions in commuting time (saving time and gas), and over the long term, will reduce the need to build more roads.

Utah got this one right--we need digital road systems to reduce the demand for our old, 20th century road systems. The article does not say, but let's hope they threw in some extra fiber for other uses. Traffic management could become the anchor tenant for fiber projects in many regions, with the transportation savings helping to fund the effort and leveraging the investment for wider community benefit.