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Utah conference shows broadband’s future

In the E Center on Monday, a Utah Valley State College aviation instructor operated a flight simulation program on a giant computer screen. "Flying" behind his jet plane was a plane being piloted by a UVSC student working at a flight simulator miles away in Orem.

Next to the instructor, two UVSC students raced cars in a Microsoft Xbox video game. The gamers they were racing against were nowhere near the E Center, though — they, too, were interacting via the Internet.

The entire room, full of what was termed the Utah Valley Experimental Computer Lab, was connected to the outside world by one thin fiber-optic cable. So as one student carried out remote-controlled electronics experiments and the aviation teacher sent comments to his student pilot, it was all done — in high-speed real time — thanks to the E Center and UVSC’s connections to the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency.

The display was part of the Broadband Cities 2005 conference, which opened Monday at the E Center and will run through Wednesday. The conference, chaired this year by UTOPIA executive Paul Morris, brought about 500 community and business leaders — many of them from outside the United States — to West Valley to learn how cities and communities worldwide are connecting their residents and businesses to the information superhighway.

"The U.S. really lags behind in this technology," UTOPIA spokeswoman Maura Carabello said. UTOPIA is a relatively recent — and sometimes controversial — partnership between city governments and the private sector. It seeks to lay a fiber-optic infrastructure and offer service providers to allow those in member cities to use the Internet and send and receive video and other data at ever-higher speeds.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. opened the conference with a real-time question-and-answer session with a group of Orem elementary school students. Morris gave his opening remarks from home, appearing thanks to a Web camera and high-speed Internet.

By Doug Smeath
Deseret Morning News

Full Story: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,610152401,00.html

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Cities around the world are exploring broadband

SLC gathering: A successful Swedish system is highlighted; UTOPIA gets another push

By Steven Oberbeck
The Salt Lake Tribune

Swedish businessman Jonas Birgersson and his Broadband Co. helped bring affordable high-speed Internet connections to 42 cities in Sweden without using a cent of government money.

The company, which began developing its network in 1998, was privately funded with more than $500 million provided by investors that included Cisco Systems and Intel.

"It would have been better for us if the government had funded the development of the network," Birgersson said. "Then we could have concentrated our efforts on developing additional new products and services for people."

Still, Birgersson said the privately funded effort in Sweden is a huge success with more than 42 percent of those with access to the network receiving services over its fiber-opt lines.

Full Story: http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3044460

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