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Benahin Kur
English 2010-403
Professor Jessica Courtney
July 4, 2014
Fiber Optic Service in Salt Lake
Imagine connection speeds a hundred times faster than any promised high speed internet
currently in Salt Lake and the option to bring this type of lightning fast technology to Salt Lake
Citys residence. Last February, Mayor Ralph Beck announced the opportunity for Salt Lake
City and Google teaming up to provide fiber optic services and connections to Salt Lakes
residence. According to an article on Forbes online magazine called Google Fiber Plans
Expansion to 34 New Cities (Including Salt Lake), Google will make its decision at the end of
this year whether Salt Lake City will be able to move forward with its fiber optic project
(Conner). Of course this decision is contingent upon Salt Lake successfully submitting requested
items from Googles checklist. The checklist includes a list of property addresses and building
types, streets, manholes, utility poles and more (Weiss). Google also requests full access to these
infrastructures and the willingness to help them lay out the fiber optic cables in a constructive
and timely manner.
To further understand this new lightning speed technology, let us define it. Fiber optics is
defined as technology based on the use of hair-thin, transparent fibers to transmit light or infrared
signal. The fibers are flexible and consist of a core of optical transparent glass or plastic,
surrounded by a glass or plastic cladding that reflects the light signals back into the core (Fiber
optics).
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Optical Fiber
The phenomenon of how the data is transmitted was best described in the report Fiber
Optic Technology and Its Role in the Information Revolution, optical fibers use total internal
reflection to keep a light ray trapped within the denser glass of the center of a composite
cylindrical glass fiber, the core. It is as if light rays are guided down the core of the fiber in a
zigzag path by a succession of total internal reflections at the boundary between the core glass
and the less dense glass surrounding it the cladding (Davis).

(Davis, Fig.(2))
When comparing fiber optic cable connections to copper wired connections, there is a
clear distinction to why optical fiber technology is much more beneficial. Greg Sanger wrote in
his article How Fiber Optic Works that optical fiber has a base frequency 108 times greater than
copper and cable. Because it is possible to direct many channel down a single glass fiber by
using wavelength multiplexing optical fibers have relatively unlimited bandwidth or range of
frequencies in a signal (18). In other words, better connection speeds, better data transmission
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and multiple connections available through one fiber. Because of this reason, fiber optic
connections are becoming more and more desirable.
To keep residence of Salt Lake involved in the project, a city hall blog site was created
for residence to voice their opinions about bringing fiber optic connection to Salt Lake. To
participate in this discussion, residence can navigate to slcgov.com and find city hall topics. The
fiber optic topic is under Fiber Optic Networks and Salt Lake City. As seen throughout the
topic, majority of Salt Lakes residence support bringing this type of technology into the city but
some residence have voiced several concerns including the concern of Google creating a
monopoly. A Salt Lake resident by the name of Pete Ashdown commented:
No competitor is likely to challenge the resources of Google and lay a parallel
fiber network. Instead of encouraging another service monopoly in Salt Lake
City, we should be building infrastructure that any service provider can utilize
(including Google, Comcast, and Century Link) where competition can flourish
instead of stagnate. Macquarie has expressed interest in building out an open fiber
network in Salt Lake City, we should consider it before handing over the keys to
Google (Pete Ashdown.)
Similarities among the residence views about Google being the sole fiber optic provider
has made it clear that there is more research needed before proceeding with any type of
agreement. Some have even suggested exploring other options similar to UTOPIA
network which Brigham City has set in place for its residence.
UTOPIA stands for Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (Albanese). It
is not a service provider and as Albanese explains, UTOPIA has created a network that will be
leased to private service providers and allow them to sell high speed fiber connections to
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residential and business customers. This will provide consumers a market of competing service
providers and rules out any type of monopoly. As stated on utopianet.org, the benefits of this
type of network includes: the fastest internet connection on the planet, freedom to choose your
own provider, no loss of speed through shared lines, same light speeds which means parallel
download and upload speeds, competitive pricing and servicing and wont become obsolete
(About UTOPIA).
To get an idea of how much Google Fiber plans will cost, consumers can navigate to
fiber.google.com. Three cities including the city of Provo, which launched Google Fiber back in
January of 2014, can be found in the cities tab. In a Salt Lake Tribune article called Google Fiber
officially launches in Provo, it describes the service and experience that are being offered to
Provos residence. Google is offering three plans to Provo residence, starting with a free plan
that gets you internet speeds of 5 megabits download and 1 megabit upload for seven years
(Horiuchi). The author continues to say that the television plan has 350 basic cable channels.
There is a DVR box provided with the service with storage capacity of up to 500 hours of HD
programs and eight television shows. Also consumers have the option of adding additional
channels such as HBO for $10 extra. The current rate for Google Fiber internet connection which
includes 1 gigabit of upload and download speeds is $70 a month plus $30 construction fee. But
what are the consumers saying about Google Fiber, one might wonder.
A report called Not So Fast: A Google Fiber One-Gigabit Mystery from MIT Technology
Review summed up what majority of the consumers are thinking. David Talbot writes in his
review, Googles one-gigabit services made a big statement, but whats still far from clear is
who actually uses it, and for what. Other reviews from those who have experienced Google
Fiber range from totally loving the service to simply appreciating the speed. Phys.org has
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concluded from their reviews that the opportunity for this technology to flourish has yet to come
(Canon). A lot of customers would agree with this. Others, however have benefited a lot from
this technology. Google Fiber user Mike Karr has utilized this technology the way Google
intended it to be used. He is an information technology specialist who regularly checks in by
audio Skype with colleagues in India. He regularly sends and receives large data files. Before he
got his gigabit connection, such tasks could be maddening. Now he'd rather do that work at home
over Google Fiber than at work (Canon). "Everything is pretty instantaneous," he said. "There's
never any kind of slowdown" (Canon).
The pricing for Google Fiber are only looking at what fiber optic service will cost after
the infrastructure has been set in place. There is still the discussion of how much time and tax
payer money will be needed to set up the infrastructure and if there will be other cost to maintain
these infrastructures and who will be maintaining these infrastructures. To reiterate, so far no
agreements have been signed and the Salt Lake Council and Google have only exchanged
discussions of Salt Lakes eligibility for this project. Google will ultimately make the decision
whether they would be able to provide fiber optic service in Salt Lake City at the end of this
year. As previously stated, there are other options that Salt Lake can explore such as UTOPIA
network or other similar projects to this. The future of fiber optic connection in Salt Lake City is
still to be discussed and residence are encouraged to voice their opinions whether Google and its
fiber optic service would be the best choice for Salt Lake residence.




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Work cited page:
About UTOPIA. Utopianet.org. 2014. Web. 5 July, 2014.
Albanese, Elizabeth. Utah Agency Seeks Fiber-Optic Utopia Through Bonding Bond Buyer
346.31778 (2003): p36-36. Print.
Canon, Scott. Google Fiber earns good grades from early customers. Phys.org. 2 May, 2013.
Web. 10 July, 2014.
Conner, Cheryl. Google Fiber Plans Expansion to 34 New Cities (Including Salt Lake).
Forbes. Feb. 20, 2014. Web. June 6, 2014.
Davis, Christopher C. Fiber Optic Technology and Its Role in the Information Revolution.
University of Maryland. Web. 5 July, 2014
Davis, Christopher C. Fig.(2). n.d. Picture. University of Maryland, Maryland.
Fiber optics Def. 3. The American Heritage Science Dictionary. 2005. Print.
Horiuchi, Vince. Google Fiber officially launches in Provo. The Salt Lake Tribune 24 Jan,
2014: Web0
Optical Fiber. n.d. Opticomm. Alhambra, CA. Fiber-Optic.Info. Web. 5 July, 2014.
Pete Ashdown. Slcgov.com/opencityhall#peak_democracy. 2014. 5 July, 2014.
Sanger, Greg. How Fiber Optics Works. Industrial Physicist 8.1 (2002): p18-18. Print.
Talbot, David. Not So Fast: A Google Fiber One-Gigabit Mystery. MIT Technology Review.
20 September, 2013. Web. 10 July, 2014.
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Work cited continued:
Weiss, Todd R. Google Looking to Provide WiFi Google Giber Cities. eWeek. 27 Apr. 2014.
Web. 5 July, 2014















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Works consulted page:
http://www.slcgov.com/opencityhall#peak_democracy
https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/support/#tab=plans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MwMkBET_5I
http://www.bb-elec.com/Learning-Center/All-White-Papers/Fiber/Fiber-Optic-Technology.aspx