Utah an Internet Utopia?

Utah may soon be home to the nation's largest ultrahigh-speed digital network.

The $470 million project, called Utopia (Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency), would link Salt Lake City and 17 other Utah cities over the Internet via a fiber-optic network capable of transmitting voice, data and video at speeds several times faster than that of current copper, cable and satellite systems.

While fiber-optics may seem a questionable prospect, given that thousands of miles of installed cables currently lay unused, Utopia's plan has a twist: completing a direct fiber-optic connection to homes and businesses—something the fiber-optic boom of the 1990s failed to do.

According to the New York Times, the network would initially be available to 723,000 residents in 248,000 households and 34,500 businesses.