Utopia tells Payson council its municipal fiber network has grown to thousands of subscribers and offers smart-city tools

Roger Timmerman, a Utopia representative, told the Payson City Council on Aug. 20 that the municipal open-access fiber cooperative the city helped found now serves hundreds of thousands of locations and gives Payson residents more retail broadband choices. "Utopia, we are the largest open access network in the country, and you guys are 1 of the founding owning members of the system," Timmerman said. He gave customer counts, product offerings and local details for Payson. Timmerman said Utopia offers residential tiers including 1 gig, 2.5 gig and 10 gig, and business connections up to 100 gig (with some 400-gig backhaul in place for institutional customers). He told the council Utopia now lists about 2,853 residential subscribers in Payson and estimated the network saves residents roughly $992,000 a year compared with comparable cable pricing. The presentation emphasized local provider participation: Timmerman said 19 retail providers now operate on the Utopia network and that a Payson-based provider has joined in recent years. He also described citywide sensor work and experimental fire-monitoring cameras; Timmerman showed a thermal/optical camera feed that his team uses to locate hot spots and said a Payson camera is available to install if the city can identify a fibered site and mount location. Council members asked about build-out, pricing and customer uptake; Timmerman said Payson’s second-phase build completed in 2020 and that subscriptions continue to grow by roughly a dozen accounts per month. He said Utopia’s architecture provides a dedicated fiber connection to homes (not a shared timeslot system) and that customers often choose gigabit or faster packages. The council did not take formal action on the update. The presentation closed with Timmerman offering follow-up contact information and an invitation to discuss installation sites for a Payson-area thermal camera.