Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner
South Ogden officials join with representatives of Connext to break ground as the company brings its high-speed internet services to the city.
SOUTH OGDEN — Residents will have a new option to connect to the internet in the coming months.
Officials from Connext and the City of South Ogden were on hand at South Ogden City Hall on Tuesday afternoon for a short groundbreaking ceremony to highlight expansion of the business — which provides high-speed fiber-optic internet service — into the city.
Brian Papworth, Connext sales and marketing director, told the Standard-Examiner that Tuesday was an exciting day for the company.
“We’re proud to be bringing another level of connectivity here to the city,” he said. “We’re based in Ogden, so we’re working with our neighbors to get everybody connected. We’re looking to connect every single residence within South Ogden. That’s our agreement with the city — to bring a fiber connection to each and every residence, condo, apartment, business and single-family home.”
He said there’s already been several people trying to get in on the new service.
“With the announcement of the groundbreaking, we’ve had a very high level of interest,” he said. “Just (Tuesday) through the day, I could just watch as the interest came in. … I just watched all day as the numbers rolled through (the website). People were on there excited, learning more about the groundbreaking and coming here and joining us at the event.”
Connext CEO David Brown told the Standard-Examiner construction work will begin in the southeast corner of the city with a goal of connecting the whole city in 18-24 months.
“South Ogden is awesome,” he said. “Our corporate office is five minutes from here. We met with them a year ago and talked through everything.”
Papworth said there’s a few major distinctions between Connext and other internet providers.
“We’re local,” he said. “We’re proud to be a part of the community and we’re proud to be welcomed to the community. We are the construction company as well as the internet service provider. We provide the internet as well as we oversee the entire construction project. We engineer the infrastructure. We plan the infrastructure. We work with the cities and we build the infrastructure.”
Connext is available in several cities from Plain City to Kaysville.
Brown said Connext is looking to continue expanding.
“We’re slated to build past 150,000 homes in the Weber, Davis, Box Elder county area right now,” he said. “Once we get most of that done or if we get to a point where we can logistically handle it, we’ll begin to move into some of the other counties in Utah.”
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