Kimberly McKinley, deputy director and chief marketing officer for the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, has been elected to the nationwide Fiber Broadband Association’s Board of Directors.

McKinley works as the liaison between UTOPIA and Utah cities and to keep them informed and updated on services in these communities. Orem, Cedar Hills, Lindon, Payson, Pleasant Grove and Woodland Hills all contract for broadband services through UTOPIA.

McKinley also announced Thursday that UTOPIA just released 600 more addresses for residents to connect, meaning Orem is almost completed with full fiber broadband.

As for being on the national board, McKinley said, “It’s humbling to be voted on the Board by your peers. And it gives us a place at the table.”

McKinley had a hard time holding back her enthusiasm, calling the growth of broadband internet “the electrification of our generation.”

“We are enormously proud of our colleague, Kimberly McKinley, on being elected to the Fiber Broadband Association’s (FBA) Board of Directors,” Roger Timmerman, executive director, said in a press release. “The FBA serves as the industry’s largest and most-influential trade association and works to educate and advance policy to bring fiber to every corner of the United States and Latin America.”

“For more than a decade, Kim has been a critical part of UTOPIA Fiber’s leadership team, working to reboot the agency and firmly establishing it as the nation’s largest and most- successful Open Access network,” Timmerman added.

UTOPIA also congratulated other newly-elected board members, coming from OFS and Google Fiber.

“Working together, we can connect every American family to fast, affordable, and reliable fiber broadband,” Timmerman said.

Research by the Fiber Broadband Association shows that fiber providers passed 7.9 million additional homes in the U.S. in 2022 — the highest annual deployment ever, even with challenges in materials supply chain and labor availability.

According to the survey, there are now a total of 68 million fiber broadband passings in the U.S., up 13% over the past 12 months and up 27% over the past 24 months. Excluding homes with two or more fiber passings, 63 million unique homes have now been passed.

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