SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 30 -- Riverstone Networks announced it will immediately begin shipping Ethernet equipment to the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) to build what the company says is the largest fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) network in the US. Based on the technology recommendation by DynamicCity Inc., the network management company responsible for the design, implementation and operation of the UTOPIA network, Riverstone was awarded a contract to provide the network's Ethernet infrastructure, which will use its RS 38000 core routers and RS 8600 metro aggregation routers. The project is expected to take three years to build at an estimated cost of $300 million. The UTOPIA network will provide a wholesale active Ethernet network to approximately 140,000 residential and business subscribers in 14 Utah cities. It will use DynamicCity's open service provider network (OSPN) model, keeping network ownership separate from the service providers and enabling service providers to simultaneously operate on the network's bandwidth to deliver retail communications services. End-users will only pay for the services provided over the network, not access. Using Riverstone's MPLS-based Ethernet solutions, UTOPIA will be able to harness virtual private LAN service (VPLS) technology to carry a combination of voice, video and data traffic to end-users with the reliability of an ATM network, but with less cost and complexity than traditional network architectures, Riverstone said in a statement. For more information, visit: www.riverstonenet.com