Courtesy picture
UTOPIA Fiber construction contractors begin work to run fiber optic cables under the street, connecting homes in a cul-de-sac in Orem.
With just months to go before Orem is fully built with high-speed internet as a member of the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency, the organization has released data from a survey of broadband subscribers.
As Americans continue to work remotely and increasingly rely on high-speed internet for daily tasks, the magnitude of its impact was measured in the survey.
According to the UTOPIA survey, consumers equate connectivity with a better quality of life. Of the respondents, 85.44% said access to UTOPIA Fiber improved their quality of life, with 95.78% saying internet speed was either “extremely important” (64.94%) or “very important” (27.7%) with 43% of respondents choosing 1 Gbit/s or higher.
Approximately 2,500 UTOPIA Fiber subscribers, ages 19 and older, were surveyed in 16 Utah cities. Respondents live in towns as small as Woodland Hills, with a population of 1,500, to Utah’s second largest city, West Valley City, which has more than 136,000 residents.
According to the results of the “Customer Feedback Survey”, respondents reported using the Internet at home for smart phones (97.18%), desktop computers (73.51%), laptops ( 90.73%), tablets (78.48%), smart TVs (82.38%), as well as smart devices (57.76%) and home security (52.59%).
Forty-four percent of UTOPIA Fiber customers said they invested in at least 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps), with 37.14% using at least 250 Mbps. The correlation between the need for speed and the current work-from-home business climate is evident, as the survey reports that 65.47% of people are working from home, with 69.13% relying on the internet for video calls, emails (92.73%) and research (61.54%).
Satellite service fell to 10.19% from 17.67% in 2021, and cable subscribers made up 3.61% of households, from 3.63% last year, while 91.22% of respondents use the Internet to stream TV or movies, according to the survey.
“The numbers don’t lie. Americans who have access to high-speed Internet have a much better life than those without connectivity,” said Kimberly McKinley, Deputy Director and Chief Marketing Officer of UTOPIA Fiber.
McKinley notes that, given the choice, consumers will always opt for faster, more reliable fiber broadband for their day-to-day activities. “The big takeaway here is that the internet is life, and you either have it or you don’t. Consumers also shared that their communities were better places to live now (76.02%) because municipalities made the wise decision to invest in fiber and provide every home and business with the same opportunities and services. fair trade at a very reasonable and fair price,” she said.
Over 90% of respondents also said that the reliability of the UTOPIA Fiber network was either “extremely important” (62.51%) or “very important” (29.19%) to them, and a determining factor in making decisions. their service compared to incumbents.
UTOPIA was created by a group of Utah cities and is a community-owned fiber optic network that uses the Open Access model to promote competition by giving customers the freedom to choose the telecommunications services they want. .
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