Better food for thought is when will Utopia provide the real benefits of fiber (ie. Internet bandwidth in excess of the 3Mps you can get currently with cable)? The article says that “Wireless is still 100,000 times inferior [in terms of speed] to fiber. When it comes to capacity, it is the difference between a scooter and a freight train.” While this is true, if you only give users access to the scooter, what’s the point of having the capacity of a freight train? iProvo fiber’s is only currently planned to provide internet bandwidth of between 1-3 Mbps. Apparently this is 1-3Mbps download and upload, but it isn’t much better than current cable connections which allow for 3Mbps download.

Utopia will provide an incredible amount of bandwidth, but it will do so at a high cost. The question is whether people are willing to pay for the high cost to access an incredible amount of bandwidth they might not be willing to pay for. We don’t know if Utopia will provide the incredible bandwidth promised, or if they will follow iProvo’s path of limited bandwidth. Currently, the only reasons I would want a faster internet connection is so I could host my weblog at my house and so I could host a Halo server. How many Utahns are willing to pay for that bandwidth luxury? If Utopia becomes reality, we will find out.