I have been a long-time UTOPIA customer. This includes when I had an extended three and a half year stay in California. While I was living out in California, close to Silicon Valley itself, I expected to find some comparable Internet as what I had been already using for a couple of years.

Was I wrong!

I can tell you that the “monopoly” of service isn’t just here in Utah and the Rocky Mountains; it’s just held by another name out there. They call the company Time Warner Cable, and AT&T owns all twisted pair (land line phone service) copper line communications. While one can get service via DSL through other companies, it almost always has to be through those two.

I was with TWC, on their top tier, paying in excess of $130 for both Internet and television. While I was supposed to be receiving 25Mbps, this was a rarity, and I could count on anything from extremely slow service to total disconnect after 4:30 p.m. when people up the node started getting home and logging on. I kept my XMission connection (via UTOPIA) ongoing, mainly so that my aging mother could have Internet without the pains of switching. During the time I was in California, she often needed assistance or maintenance on her PC. I was able to do that through remote desktop connections. I remember having to download to her PC the complete Vista Service Pack1, being ready to wait for a couple of hours as I had with my TWC connection.

I cannot express the amazement I had when it finished in less than 10 minutes! I knew that the fiber connection was fast but this was proof for me to remain a UTIOPIA customer for life! And, it made me pretty upset with the supposed “California so far ahead of us” attitude I’ve gotten from many visiting me when I was in Utah. California has nothing close to UTOPIA. We’ve got it good; I know that from watching downloads scream to my mom’s machine as I watched, drooling from my terminal in California.

If you are already a UTOPIA user, I would suggest trying this out somehow yourself—comparing the speed difference. Maybe from work or something similar that’s not on fiber. You will be very happy you chose the future for your connection and this is a promise!

Jayson Messick, The Fiber Optic Marine
Orem