Thursday, August 2, 2007

August 2, 2007

The White City Council meeting went well. The level of interest in Utopia is very high. It seems they will be joining Utopia far in advance of West Jordan if things continue. Both my wife and I attended and had the chance to chat with people. Since White City is a Township, they had a Council member assigned to them by Salt Lake County. We had a wonderful conversation with the Councilmen about Utopia and it's many benefits. They were very surprised to learn of our Comcast termination story and had many questions which I was pleased to answer.

Another gentleman I spoke with made a comment before the meeting if perhaps Comcast or Qwest would be a better choice for the area. He and others were stunned when I mentioned that Comcast is terminating Internet accounts in such a bizzare manner with inadequate notification for violating an undocumented bandwidth limit. Needless to say, it's unlikely Comcast will find much sympathy here.

Jesse (who presented the Utopia idea) mentioned Comcast was plastering the area with an advertisement he said they were loosing money on big time. I found it amusing the ad came only days after S.B. 66 died.

In the meeting I mentioned the one thing the Township needed to remember is once Utopia comes, they must advertise! When I spoke to a tech for the City of Murray I was told people had Utopia fiber and didn't know about it! They were looking to sign up with another service costing far more than Utopia. I'm hoping they will keep that in mind when it comes to the area.

Next we're on to Draper Utah. There has been a great deal of discussion in bringing Utopia there. Also I'm speaking with my City Council again about bringing Utopia here to West Jordan. It's ironic. Roger Black, COO of Utopianet lives in West Jordan and can't get the awesome service his company provides. Go figure.

Just received this notice. I strongly suggest everyone who doesn't wish to give up their legal right to sue Comcast to opt out here. You simply need your name, address and Comcast account number. As far as I can tell it's legitimate.

One more note. Looks like the State of Ohio has decided they want the ability to compete in the 21st Century and more importantly, save money. Now who doesn't want to save more money :-)


From the article

“This is the first step in bridging the digital divide in Ohio, and I look forward to working with industry providers, businesses and our local communities to take additional steps to provide superior broadband access to all of Ohio’s 88 counties,” Strickland said.


Please encourage your local and state Government to bring broadband which will allow American's to compete. America is already in 24th place in broadband penetration and in 7th place with technology and science. We're no longer number 1. I don't know about you guys but I find that disturbing.

2 comments:

JTRockville said...

Comcast's "opt-out" link is legitimate. The Montgomery County MD council recommends that Comcast customers opt-out. You can read their press release here:
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/apps/News/press/PR_details.asp?PrID=3767

Garmon said...

Hey, I have Utopia myself (through MStar), and it looks like they block bittorrent too. I tried to download an Ubunto .iso after switching over from DSL. Bittorrent doesn't work anymore.

Maybe some of the other providers on Utopia don't block p2p, so check into it before you sign up.