Mike, you've completely missed the point. Does the gov't compete with truckers when it improves the freeway? Utopia is an _infrastructure_, the state has no intention of offering any kind of service to end users. Suppose you had your choice of sewer systems? That might be cool to have sewage services compete for your business, but how many pipes would we have running under our streets?
This is exactly right. Paul Venturella, the head honcho overseeing the fiber-to-the-home initiative made a presentation in one of my classes (business, not CS) in which he explained how the system would work. As Andrew mentioned, it is indeed all about infrastructure, not service. The city will run fiber to your house, but you'll still have to go through a local ISP who has a contract with Provo city in order to get online.
(By the way, I think the UUG should be one of the entities with an ISP operating on the network--something with _no_ tech support other than the mailing list. That could be pretty cheap, wouldn't you think? There would still have to be somebody that could fix DHCP, DNS, etc., but I bet a large portion of any ISP's charges cover tech support.)
-Brent
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