Battle for Bountiful ends in win for public broadband advocates

A recent effort to squash a community broadband project has failed in Utah, giving a win to advocates of public broadband.

The project, Bountiful Fiber – a partnership between Bountiful City, Utah, and Utopia Fiber, a municipal, open access broadband provider operating in 20 cities across the state – was approved unanimously by the city council in late May, following years of consideration and a request for proposals open to service providers and the public at large.

But Bountiful Fiber's future quickly became murky when an opposition group, the Utah Taxpayers Association (UTA), hired another group called Gather Utah to solicit signatures that would have forced the city to halt the network until the matter could come up for a vote on November's ballot. (UTA has previously publicly opposed Utopia Fiber as well.)

Late last week, however, it was announced that Bountiful Fiber is back on track after UTA's effort failed to gain enough signatures. As planned, Utopia Fiber will build and operate the network, and the city will issue approximately $42 million in revenue bonds to pay for it (generating an estimated $47 million in bond proceeds for the total construction cost of the project, according to the city), with subscriber revenue expected to cover the costs.

Related:The Divide: Gigi Sohn on the FCC, dark money in politics and why public broadband matters

Ties to cable

But the battle for Bountiful's broadband tells a broader story about access to high-speed Internet, the dark money forces stalling progress and how communities can win public broadband battles going forward.

Speaking with Light Reading about the matter, Gigi Sohn, executive director for the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), said she attributes the failure of UTA's campaign in Bountiful to the city council's continued support of the project and its efforts to sound the alarm on the matter, as well as her organization's work to help amplify concerns. Back in early July, after the city council held a meeting alerting the public to the ongoing effort to squash the Bountiful Fiber project, Sohn published an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, calling out the campaign's ties to the cable industry.

"UTA has long been opposed to communities having the freedom to choose the best broadband internet access for their residents," wrote Sohn. "Two huge cable and broadband companies, Comcast and CenturyLink/Lumen, have been members of UTA and have sponsored the UTA annual conference. They have been vocally opposed to community-owned broadband for decades and are well-known for providing organizations like the UTA with significant financial support in exchange for pushing policies that help maintain their market dominance."

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Sohn also urged anyone who had already signed UTA's petition opposing Bountiful Fiber – and wanted their names removed "after learning the truth" – to fill out municipal paperwork to have their signatures stricken. The city then held a town hall on the matter to further educate the public and encourage people to remove their names.

In the end, Sohn told Light Reading, "many did" remove their signatures, helping to ensure that the UTA effort failed.

Bountiful Fiber will now start construction in August. Work is expected to take 24 to 36 months, with individual neighborhoods coming online as they're completed. The open access network will ultimately offer gigabit-speed services for residents and businesses. City documents show pricing of $80-$250/month for speeds between 1-10 Gbit/s, with no connection fees or contracts.

Continued advocacy

For Sohn, helping to advocate for public broadband projects like Bountiful, which have the support of the city but get sidelined by special interests, is one of AAPB's core purposes. She accepted the position as executive director of the organization after withdrawing from the race for FCC commissioner following her own battle with dark money.

"I am 100% focused on promoting this model," she said of public broadband. Sohn cited an estimated 700 public broadband projects across the country and said she'd like to see that number double in the next five years. To that end, she said AAPB will "certainly be helping" states that are looking to overturn their existing restrictions and bans on municipal broadband. Most recently, the governor of Colorado signed a bill overturning a municipal ban in place since 2005.

As with Bountiful, Utah, Sohn sees increasing public awareness on the forces opposing public broadband, and reasons for their opposition, as beneficial to the push for more municipal networks.

"I think when you shine the light, the cockroaches run into the corner," said Sohn. "Once people actually see the facts on the ground and what's going on, and that they've been deceived, then they get really angry. And they want to do this more than they wanted to do it beforehand."