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.