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diehardspeed
Premium Member
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT

diehardspeed

Premium Member

UTOPIA - Info on Veracity or Connected Lyfe

Just wondering if anyone has had experience with either of these providers on the Utopia network. I couldn't find any reviews and don't know anyone using them but may be forced to choose from one soon.

I tried asking both for network information such as upstream providers and bandwidth but the sales reps have no clue about their networks!

Both quoted me the same rate for a 50/50 Mbps connection so I am just looking for any reviews or information about the providers!

Both providers websites offer very little detail!
»residential.veracitynetw ··· rks.com/
»www.connectedlyfe.com/in ··· et.shtml

Cody Kofoed
@comcastbusiness.net

Cody Kofoed

Anon

Call me !!

Cody Kofoed 1-877 FOR LYFE

Connected Lyfe

diehardspeed
Premium Member
join:2003-05-14
Salt Lake City, UT

diehardspeed

Premium Member

Wow! No reviews on either ISP and no useful responses to this post!

Anyone??

Tim84121
@myvzw.com

Tim84121

Anon

A colleague of mine just switched his small businesses from Comcast and Integra Telecom to Veracity and he says its the best move he has made. They are getting a much faster and more reliable broadband connection and phone service for much less than they were paying before.

I live in cottonwood heights with no access to UTOPIA fiber unfortunately.

Hope this helps! I wish I was 'forced' to chose a UTOPIA connection for my home. I would drop crapcast faster than the blink of an eye.
UtahTechGuy
join:2011-03-18
Salt Lake City, UT

UtahTechGuy

Member

As far as Connected Lyfe or Veracity, well... My understanding is that ConnectedLyfe is 'going the way of MStar' along with PrimeTime. I even heard that they aren't allowed to sign on new customers at the moment because of a billing dispute(not paying their bills?)

It's rather sad that these providers keep stepping in with big words and promises and keep falling on their face. You'd think they would do their research and not over-extend themselves financially, but they all end up making the same mistakes.

That being said, Veracity does have a good product lineup. They have decent VoIP pricing and I hear they even have their own video product that they plan on rolling out on UTOPIA soon(the old MStar IPTV head-end out of iProvo, updated/modernized for new IPTV technologies). But they aren't the only other fish in the sea.

First, there's XMission, though they recently had to deal with a few days of problems due to 'bugs' in their core equipment, they quickly resolved these problems and have committed to buying new core equipment to ensure problems like that do not happen again. They have excellent customer service and for data products, they have competitive rates. Their voice product, on the other hand, is fairly expensive compared to other providers, but, from what I've heard, is reliable. They also do Video, which is just reselling the UTOPIA Wholesale video product that ConnetedLyfe also uses. I've heard a lot of good things about the UTOPIA Wholesale Video product.

The Little Guy:
If you're just looking for a residential/small business connection for a decent price on UTOPIA, and don't care about video at all, I would suggest checking out Brigham.Net, run by Ken Sutton. Their data product is the best quality product I've used to date(bandwidth through Level3), and we have them at one of my clients offices. But, compared to a company like XMission, their support isn't always the best(but we've never had to call in for help, either). They started out as a computer shop up in Brigham City and decided to branch into the ISP business when the UTOPIA rollout began in Brigham.
They originally re-sold off of PrimeTime's VoIP platform based out of Denver, but have recently started re-selling Veracity's voice product.
Their video product is the PrimeTime video product, which has a lot of sporadic issues, and frequent complaints from customers.

Other Options:
For businesses, you have providers like Integra and PAETEC, national business providers with a long history of quality services behind them. They cost more, but they guarantee the quality of your connection and service, and even have an SLA agreement with UTOPIA for rapid response in repair in the event of damage to your connection. I have not heard of anyone on UTOPIA using PAETEC yet, but Integra is becoming popular with businesses who need dedicated bandwidth they can always rely on.

There's also FiberNet, Voonami, InfoWest, Nuvont, 1Wire, and Telesphere. I know very little about these companies. FiberNet has their datacenter in Orem, Voonami has at least two datacenter facilities that i'm aware of, and at one point advertised Residential and Business services on their website on the UTOPIA network, but I can't find any mention of those on their website anymore. Then we have InfoWest. They're based out of southern Utah and have little for a local presence, I'm not even sure why they are a provider on UTOPIA.
Nuvont is just Veracity with a different name, and 1Wire does VoIP and then resells another providers bandwidth(I've heard numerous complaints about their services). Finally there's Telesphere, whom I know absolutely nothing about. My understanding is that they are a VoIP-only provider.

As a final note, there is a website out there run by a supporter of UTOPIA, called FreeUTOPIA(»www.freeutopia.org). It's occasionally useful for announcements about things such as, for example, when FuzeCore pulled out of the UTOPIA network and stopped being a provider.

I've got fairly extensive experience with various UTOPIA providers and UTOPIA itself, and would happily answer any questions I can.

Hope this info has been helpful.

RandyCosby
@infowest.net

RandyCosby

Anon

Hi guys,

Just wanted to chime in here on UtahTechGuy's comment about my company, InfoWest. We joined the UTOPIA network last year to take care of businesses that have a presence in both Northern and Southern Utah. We've been very successful with fiber here in Southern Utah using Utah Interlinx and we've landed a couple good deals that make use of the UTOPIA network as well. You may not be aware that UTOPIA has fiber to a data center here in St. George.

We are working to get into the UTOPIA residential markets as well. We've completed one MDU in Orem, and so far it's been a great success. While we don't yet have a local presence in the area, we do have a strong tech support group, and have built relationships with others in that area who help support our customers' on-site needs.

We've been in the business almost as long as Xmission, and plan to be around much longer. I think you'll find our services will be uniquely suited to the market, and our users will be well-supported.

Randy Cosby
Vice President, Co-Founder
InfoWest