How Does Every House in a Place as Remote as Eagle Mountain Have Fiber-to-the-Home?
Direct Communications, Eagle Mountain’s local independent broadband company,  will this year complete a fiber-to-the-home build out to every resident of Eagle Mountain, which, coupled with the company’s continuing investment in the latest broadband technology, will make Eagle Mountain the most connected community in Utah.
The viability of this project in a remote and relatively small community like Eagle Mountain, was only made possible through the support of the FCC, which administers programs that offer cost-recovery and other financial incentives to encourage investment in rural broadband deployment.
Over 8700 homes, which represents about 99% of Eagle Mountain residents, now have fiber to the home, with the final subdivision, North Ranch, currently being upgraded from old copper lines to new fiber lines. Thanks to Direct Communications, and the financial backing of the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, Eagle Mountain residents enjoy perhaps the best Internet service in the world, with fully symmetrical 1 Gig speeds available, with no data caps, no throttling and no limits, ever!
The miracle of this fiber project is that unlike in other Utah municipalities, local taxpayers of Eagle Mountain did not have to pay the construction costs, put liens on their houses, or raise municipal bonds in order to build a new fiber network throughout the city. This was a model of private and government partnership working efficiently, with the right incentives in place for a local company to invest in the community for the long term. For a broadband installation fee of only $125 with no term commitment required, all residents of Eagle Mountain can immediately enjoy fiber Internet with prices starting at just $50 a month (including all taxes) for 50Mbps speeds.
The project began in February 2006, when Direct Communications purchased the original city-owned Eagle Mountain Telecom for $6.3 million, and the new private telecom, officially Direct Communications Cedar Valley, qualified for FCC support . Since then, the company has spent the past 12 years steadily overbuilding and upgrading the old copper telephone network to an all new, state-of-the art, all-fiber network, ready to deliver whatever future technology applications may come along. This multi-year project required an investment of about $2 to $3 million per year, with total investment by Directcom in the local network now about $30 million.
For more information please see:
http://directcom.com/eaglemtn/rural-telecom-business-model-explained/
http://directcom.com/eaglemtn/about-us/
http://directcom.com/eaglemtn/history/
Contact: Brigham Griffin, Marketing Director [email protected].
directcom.com/eaglemtn | 3726 E Campus Drive, Eagle Mountain, UT 84005 | 801 789 2800