My MStar story

MStar was a Utah based phone, internet, and television provider that partnered with UTOPIA to provide their services through a local fiber optic network. It was one of the first providers of this new technology and I was lucky enough to be one of their first salesman. We would literally run from house to house because we made so many sales with little effort. These experiences showed me on a local level exactly what happened on a global level to lay the framework for the dot-com bubble.

In the book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman explains how the world got flat in one gloriously long sentence. He writes, "Just as the national highway system that was built in the 1950s flattened the United States, broke down regional differences, and made it so much easier for companies to relocate in lower-wage regions, like the South, because it had become so much easier to move people and goods long distances, so the laying of global fiber highways flattened the developed world." That is the beauty of the fiber optic network that will transcend any of the criticism of its expense.

On the global level we saw companies that invested in the fiber optics go bankrupt and on the local level we are seeing a similar scare. However, just like Friedman argues in his book, "fiber cable is the gift that keeps on giving and unlike other forms of Internet overinvestment, it was permanent." Think of what communities can do with this technology in place! If you need help thinking, listen to what google is planning to do with it. Even though UTOPIA has had its ups and a lot of downs I still believe it was the right choice for our community.