Utopia Fiber finishes Bountiful build despite dark money campaign

Despite dark money campaigns fighting a community network in Bountiful, Utah, the project has now been successfully completed by Utopia Fiber, and customers are signing up. Roger Timmerman, executive director of Utopia Fiber, said, “We have completed the Bountiful City fiber project and built out the entire city with an open access network. This was a three-year project, and we completed it nearly a full year ahead of schedule.” The fiber network now passes 16,500 addresses, but the project faced initial challenges. When the project was being considered, dark money groups fought against it. A dark money group called Utah Taxpayers Association financed a petition effort to force a vote on project funding. It hired signature collectors to try to persuade registered voters to oppose the project. Although these dark money groups don’t disclose their donors, one can only assume that they were funded by the incumbent providers in Bountiful, which include Comcast and CenturyLink. However, there is no verification of exactly who was behind the campaigns.