The origins of Orem-based Blendtec begin with engineer and inventor Tom Dickson, who grew up putting big engines in little things. After revolutionizing the home wheat milling industry with patented stainless steel milling heads in the 1970s, he turned his attention to making the perfect mixer, developing an “auto knead” feature. Tom continued to improve the mixer and decided to add a blender with a square jar, rather than the conventional round jar. As Tom expanded his mill and mixer business, new ideas developed. He enhanced the blender and began developing commercial blending machines just as the smoothie era began.

Today, people all around the world use Blendtec blenders in their homes, restaurants, smoothie shops, coffee shops and more. The firm employs roughly 300, and with its series of “Will It Blend” videos on YouTube, Blendtec has a high profile online. Helping to power that effort is the UTOPIA fiber optic network.

According to Ken Dinkel, IT Director, when Blendtec was looking for more bandwidth in 2009, they found that “the UTOPIA pricing was excellent. We now have the bandwidth we need and our monthly costs are much lower than our previous provider,” he says. And, because the network is open access, Blendtec enjoys those benefits “without the hassle of multiple vendors,” he says.

Another benefit of the open network is that, after encountering some ISP issues, Blendtec was easily able to switch. “Our original ISP ended up with massive uptime and customer support issues. We were able to switch ISPs, but kept the pipe and pricing we already had,” he explains. “While we have had some reliability issues, they were with the ISP, not with UTOPIA. It has been a fantastic service at a great price.”

With benefits like these, it’s not hard to see why Dinkel says Blendtec is unlikely to relocate to an area where UTOPIA is not available.