The Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Council issued a call for Utah legislators to defeat Senate Bill 66, calling it “an impermeable barrier to true broadband deployment in Utah.”
“This bill was clearly drafted to kill the Utopia and iProvo FTTH initiatives. The growing FTTH market in this country today has benefited greatly from the advances made, lessons learned, and price declines created by municipal FTTH deployments. Less than a year ago, Utah was considered a ‘hot bed’ for FTTH and one of the country’s technology leaders. Should this bill pass, Utah will be relegated to the back of the communications pack, with the population likely destined to the limitations of legacy copper or other broadband-inadequate networks,” said Leonard Ray, the FTTH Council’s Vice President and Vice-Chairman of the Government Relations Committee.
The FTTH Council noted that municipalities accounted for 32% of all U.S. FTTH networks as of September. “I can say with high confidence that without municipal FTTH, this industry would not be as far along today as it is and it is absolutely critical that Utah does not enact legislation that effectively blocks municipal broadband networks,” DeMauro continued. http://www.ftthcouncil.org
