Bountiful City Councilman Richard Higginson described UTOPIA as a “proven player” in an email to the Standard Examiner. Other municipalities with franchise agreements are Salt Lake City, Draper, South Jordan and Pleasant Grove. Higginson wrote: Why isn`t the city`s proposed agreement with Google the same as local franchise agreements with cable operators such as Comcast and Frontier? Because the agreement with Google is not a cable franchise. As defined by federal law, Google will not offer or offer any cable television services in Portland. Between the direct benefits of the public under the franchise (z.B for free basic broadband, free connections with municipal organizations, public wi-fi, connections with PEG and I-Net, etc.) and indirect public benefits (investment, economic development and competitive choices that can improve services and lower prices) public benefits have been offered for many years under the cable franchise Local. What are the public benefits under the proposed deductible? The city uses a broadband franchise agreement to allow ISPs to use their non-exclusive public line. In section 4: Service Features, Lincoln requires any private ISP that wants to use its channel, respecting the net neutrality rules that they clearly express. You will find that the city also imposes a “no data caps” rule: less than a month after Decatur Comcast announced that it had not been selected, the company informed the former city manager, Peggy Merriss, that it intended to immediately retire the I-Net, unless the city paid for its use. A few months later, Comcast reiterated its intentions towards current City Manager Arnold and stated that the company had acquired a government franchise to replace the local franchise agreement that expires in 2009.

According to Arnold, Comcast decided to charge the city about $370,000 a year for the use of the current I-Net until the new one was built. It must first obtain a deductible before seeking permission from the city for a surface installation, as there will be a visual effect. On June 7, The people of Bar Harbor voted against funding the first $50,000 of a $100,000 engineering study for a fibre optic network connecting municipal facilities. In a controversial vote of 47 to 57 at the city`s annual meeting, the Capital Improvement Programme (CIP) was withdrawn from the annual budget, improving the progress of potential public internet infrastructure. At a Meeting of the Municipal Commission on May 6 in Decatur, Georgia, city leaders approved a $2.35 million project budget for the construction of a municipal network I and the award of the construction contract to Georgia-based Network Cabling Infrastructures, Inc. The decision was made amid demands from cable giant Comcast that the municipality of about 24,000 immediately begin to pay exorbitant fees for the infrastructure used by the city under a previous local franchise agreement. The fall of acid grapes has been resolved, but it shows once again how the big corporate monopolies do not hesitate to bend their muscles if things do not make their way. City documents show that Conterra intends to work for commercial purposes to provide Internet and Ethernet technologies to telecommunications operators as well as schools, businesses and public and non-governmental institutions. In accordance with state-imposed restrictions, UTOPIA can only offer wholesale services through its fibre-optic infrastructure. Ten ISPs offer housing services on the network, creating sufficient competition and all benefits for subscribers, including lower prices, better customer service and the ability to switch providers. Companies can choose from 25 ISPs.

When people are just as curious about public-private partnerships, they wonder if a municipality or other form of local government can require a private PARTNER ISP to respect the principles of net neutrality.