Today, Bountiful City, Utah announced that the Utah Taxpayers Association (UTA) failed to collect enough signatures from registered voters to put on November’s ballot the City Council’s unanimous decision to partner with UTOPIA Fiber to build a universal, affordable and high-speed broadband network for the City’s residents. This means that UTOPIA Fiber will start building the network next month. Earlier this month AAPB President Gigi Sohn wrote in the Salt Lake Tribune about how the UTA, a dark money group backed by the cable industry, attempted to delay and possibly block Bountiful from choosing the broadband network it believed would best serve its residents.
Gigi Sohn, Executive Director of AAPB released the following statement:
The people of Bountiful City have spoken loud and clear: they want the City to work with UTOPIA Fiber to build a universal, affordable and robust broadband network for all of their residents, and they want that network NOW. They rejected the cable industry-backed dark money campaign that sought to take it away from them or at a minimum, cause an unwarranted and expensive delay. The City Council never wavered from its initial unanimous support for a community-owned network.
The AAPB is proud to have been one of the voices alerting the people of Bountiful City, and the country, about the dirty tricks that seek to undermine local communities’ freedom to choose what broadband network works best for its residents. The organization will continue to advocate for the community broadband model, and for communities’ freedom of choice.
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