The Divide: Utopia Fiber CEO on the fight for municipal, open access broadband

This episode features Roger Timmerman, CEO of Utopia Fiber, a municipal, open access provider based in Utah. Founded in 2002, Utopia Fiber is now delivering fiber-to-the-home in 23 cities, with roughly 63,000 subscribers across its network. Last year, the company completed five new builds in the Utah cities of Orem, Cedar Hills, Pleasant Grove, Syracuse and Santa Clara, connecting over 23,000 additional homes.

Timmerman returns to The Divide to discuss Utopia Fiber's growth and lessons learned since the municipal network's inception, and how Utopia's model is delivering broadband competition to the communities it serves.

With Utopia Fiber being subject to criticism and controversy since its start, we also discuss opposition to the network – including an anti-municipal broadband campaign launched late last year, and other efforts with suspected ties to incumbent cable providers. Most efforts to derail the network's growth, like an attempt to stop Bountiful, Utah, from moving forward with its Utopia partnership, have been unsuccessful.

"This is an enormous threat to them," Timmerman said of the incumbents suspected of funding efforts to oppose Utopia. "I mean, the cities start realizing, you know, 'we don't have to put up with this garbage anymore. We could actually either do it ourselves or find partnerships like with Utopia' ... that is a huge hit for any company that's, you know, dependent on their monopoly status in a city."

Related:As public broadband networks ramp up, so do new attacks

Here are some topics covered in this discussion:

For a lightly edited conversation transcript, click the caption button on the podcast player.