Utah's gold medal effort
During the Winter Olympics, 8.5 million minutes of traffic passed through Utah's communications system for the event
In 1993, Utah created a task force to improve communications among its agencies.
Two years later, Salt Lake City landed the bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. The state wanted a new communications system for that event and called on the federal Public Safety Wireless Network program for advice and help coordinating its initiative.
Getting the entire infrastructure in place was a significant undertaking and cost $43 million. But the effort paid off.
During the Winter Olympics, 8.5 million minutes of traffic passed through the network, and it "performed flawlessly. There was not one minute of downtime during the entire Olympics," said Steve Proctor, executive director of the Utah Communications Agency Network in Salt Lake City.