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Pleasant Grove City Council selects UTOPIA Fiber to build a network throughout the city

Murray — UTOPIA Fiber announced today that it will expand the southern end of its rapidly-growing, all-fiber network, after the Pleasant Grove City Council voted on April 13, 2021 to sign a contract between the city and Utah Infrastructure Agency (UIA is UTOPIA Fiber’s sister agency). The partnership will bring fiber internet access to all residents and businesses in Pleasant Grove City, within the next two years. The unanimous vote to move forward with the approximately $18 million projects came after months of vetting. Pleasant Grove now becomes UTOPIA Fiber’s 16th city to contract for the Open Access network’s fiber-to-the-home services. It is anticipated that construction will begin sometime in May 2021.

“UTOPIA Fiber’s turnkey approach and remarkable reputation made them the clear choice,” says Guy Fugal, Mayor of Pleasant Grove. “UTOPIA Fiber is both shovel and operationally ready at a time when others are navigating logistical hurdles and crew shortages. UTOPIA Fiber has the staffing and the expertise to get the job done. Most importantly, UTOPIA Fiber has a loyal customer base and has been consistently hitting its revenue marks, which are the ultimate quality measures. We’re very excited to be moving forward with them.” 

Pleasant Grove City—like every UTOPIA Fiber project since 2009—is on track to be funded and grown solely through subscriber revenue.  

“Like many communities along the Wasatch Front, Pleasant Grove City is growing quickly and many of its 38,000 residents are demanding better internet access,” notes Roger Timmerman, executive director, UTOPIA Fiber. “While we’ve been delivering services to schools and businesses in the city for years, we’re really excited to now connect all of Pleasant Grove’s neighborhoods to the fastest internet speeds in the country.” 

Including Pleasant Grove, UTOPIA Fiber provides fiber-to-the-home services in 16 cities and business services in 50, connecting communities to residential speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), and 100 Gbps for business, both the fastest speeds currently offered in the United States. UTOPIA Fiber is a publicly-owned Interlocal Agency that operates as an Open Access network. This means that UTOPIA Fiber builds the infrastructure and enables competition among private sector internet service providers (ISPs) via UTOPIA’s fiber lines. 

UTOPIA Fiber’s Open Access model protects a free and open internet without throttling, paid prioritization, or other provider interference. Participating cities can also benefit from various Smart City applications that are enabled by the UTOPIA Fiber network including an early wildfire detection system, fast public WiFi, air pollution monitoring services, and more.

Pleasant Grove residents and businesses are invited to visit UTOPIAfiber.com for service maps, build-out timelines, and information on how to sign up for UTOPIA Fiber services. 

About UTOPIA Fiber

Created by a group of Utah cities, the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) is a community-owned fiber-optic network that uses the Open Access model to promote competition by giving customers the freedom to choose which telecommunication services they want. With fiber availability to over 130,000 businesses and residences in over 50 communities, UTOPIA Fiber is the largest—and widely considered the most-successful Open Access network—in the United States, and enjoys the industry’s highest customer satisfaction scores. Since 2009, the agency has successfully designed, built, and operated nearly $300 million worth of fiber projects throughout Utah, all of which have been funded completely through subscriber revenue, at no cost to taxpayers.