SALT LAKE CITY — A new TV ad is running in Utah, criticizing government-run internet providers.
The ads are part of a $1 million blitz to warn about problems associated with municipal internet systems, including high costs and a lack of regulatory oversight. The Domestic Policy Caucus is running them under the name NoGovInternet.com.
"This isn’t really the lane that our government should be in," said Greg Hughes, a former Utah House Speaker who represents NoGovInternet.com in Utah. "We have all these challenges in a growing state. Being entrepreneurs with taxpayer money, bringing in broadband when you have private sector companies that can do it? That’s not the proper role."
The campaign makes the argument that government should not be involved in providing internet access. It is aimed squarely at UTOPIA Fiber, a coalition of municipalities that provide network access to 60,000 customers in 20 cities across Utah and partners with cities in Montana and Idaho. The Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) was founded in 2011 by 11 cities to provide fiber service to consumers and businesses.
"I think most people when they think internet think of two things: price point and speed," Hughes said in an interview Wednesday with FOX 13 News. "I think the third thing we ought to be talking about is do you want your government controlling that speed or that price point?"
There is no pending legislation going after UTOPIA Fiber, Hughes said, but the ads are raising the question of the proper role of government and whether internet access is best left to private sector companies. Hughes noted expensive startup costs with UTOPIA when it was launched, as well as iProvo. In that boondoggle, the city of Provo got bogged down with $39 million in infrastructure costs and ended up selling the network to Google Fiber for just $1.
"Government internet generally is a growing trend, and I don’t think it’s a good one," Hughes said.
He declined to specifically say who is behind the group. The American Association for Public Broadband, which advocates for public broadband, released its own statement about the ads criticizing them as "dark money attacks" and blaming "big cable."
For UTOPIA Fiber, the attack ads are coming out of nowhere.
"We're probably as surprised as anyone to see them because there really isn’t any sort of decision or legislation or anything that’s targeting UTOPIA," said Roger Timmerman, UTOPIA Fiber's executive director.
Timmerman told FOX 13 News he suspects the ads are designed to scare off municipalities thinking of joining or launching their own in Utah and around the country. He noted that UTOPIA was created out of dissatisfaction with the private sector not stepping up and providing internet access to residents.
"UTOPIA Fiber has become very successful recently. I mean, it had a reputation a while back of struggling and recently it’s been very, very successful. We're being used as an example across the country of how to successfully do fiber," Timmerman said. "The private companies don’t like that much so we're seeing these attacks trying to scare cities from doing that saying there’s a lot of risk, there's a lot of cost."
Timmerman also argued that UTOPIA is also not controlling the internet. Essentially, he said, it builds the road that a large number of private-sector companies can use as internet service providers.
Hughes said there are better pathways for government when it came to internet access.
"If you get into rural areas, and Utah certainly has its rural areas, a smart partnership would be where there’s not economies of scale. Where you could partner with private sector," he said.
Hughes said if governments are going to run the internet, they ought to be regulated like utilities are.
