San Francisco to become next Internet Utopia

It’s hard to imagine the world without your computer, tablet device, or smartphone. We, as consumers, have come to rely heavily on them. Technology are appliances that we use to aid us in keeping up to date and in keeping up with our busy lives. Can you imagine life without it right now? How will you look up current events, easily contact friends/acquaintances across the world, and share information as easily to a mass number of people? Internet access is essential to everyone today. The use of internet has been the source of so many innovations and has become necessary in our daily lives. Human reliance on the Internet and its useful qualities resulted in the declaration that broadband is a basic human right by The United Nations in 2011. Broadband access is essential because it impacts and dictates how the Internet functions and is being used. San Francisco, one of the most popular cities in the world, is the closest major city to the famous tech hub, Silicon Valley. Despite its close geographical location to an area renowned for innovation in technology; it has one of the most expensive and slowest internet speeds in the world. Leaders of internet speeds come from countries in Asia; cities like Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong are the top of the list. San Francisco residents are paying roughly the same amount as these internet leaders, but still coming in close to last place regarding internet speeds and costs in a report detailing 24 world cities. San Francisco city officials have been taking strides to fix it with the arrangement of transforming it into an internet utopian city. The announcement of San Francisco transforming into becoming an internet utopia city has gained a lot of traction. The implementation of the internet utopia is going to be funded through resident taxes and many residents are in opposition of the transformation. In 2014, Kuper Jones, a contributor for Forbes, has said that “UTOPIA has been a failure and a thorn in the side of Utah taxpayers from the beginning. Since 2004, UTOPIA was running operating losses for nine years straight.” UTOPIA is the company responsible for providing the few select cities in Utah with an internet utopia. The announcement that San Francisco is transforming itself into an internet utopia has gained a large following. This announcement, however, isn’t innovative news. An internet utopia is when a city aims to connect all of the homes and businesses in its area to a fiber optic network. Fiber optic networks are utilized for long distance transmitting by sending large amounts of information through wires that contain glass fibers. Even though this concept seems revolutionary, it’s nowhere near new. Utah, U.S., has already converted multiple cities into internet utopias.  

What does this means for the world?

San Francisco is a leading city that sets standards and procedures that inspires other cities to also implement standards and procedures into their city plans. This progression towards an internet utopia may also influence major cities in the U.S. and the world like Los Angeles, Paris, London, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago to implement and transform their cities into internet utopias too. This influence will have a huge impact on the people living in these cities. Taxes will likely be increased and used to fund the project if cities choose to become an internet utopia. This decision will impact internet providing companies. These companies will end up bidding for major contracts with big cities if internet utopias begin to trend around the world. These companies will be able to monopolize areas and achieve big deals.   Original Sources: Business Insider, Forbes, BoingBoing, and Wired