1982. AT&T stopped serving land-liines in Utah in 1982.
That's when AT&T was broken up, forcibly by the Justice Department in the landmark antitrust lawsuit.
Utah fell under the auspices of Mountain Bell, one of 8 "Regional Bell Operating Companys" that were left in the aftermath of the verdict.
Mountain Bell, known later in life as USWest, was purchased by Qwest in 2000 and Qwest thereafter sold to Centurylink in 2011. This company, regardles of name, funneled TENS if not HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS into lobbying for, and advertizing their own legislation that, when passed, sumarily denied Salt Lake City proper from even being able to consider or vote upon being part of this much better network.
A well known, and respectable local ISP in the Salt Lake City area, Xmission.com, has a topical blog post about Centurylink's tactics.
https://xmission.com/blog/2012/02/24/response-to-centurylink-on-property-node-placement
The owner, received a letter from Centurylink, stating they wanted to use part of his privately owned property where he lives as an ideal location "for a network remote node DSLAM to provide faster internet service to your neighborhood'. He not only rejected their offer of money, but then created a media stink about how his ISP, Xmission, could _not_ utilize the same remote terminal DSLAMs as Qwest could, to provide faster, competitive internet, to his customers.
Xmission is only one of NINE different providers to choose from, for fast and useful Internet if you subscribe to UTOPIA - if you are able. Most households have TWO : Centurylink and Comcast for anything faster than best effort 7-12 megabits.
Xmission, and most other UTOPIA ISPs provide uncapped, unmetered 100 and 1000mbit services via this network. Businesses are able to subscribe upto 10gigabits.
All a residential account has to do, is pay ~ $3000 for the fiber and installation, and you get very cheap service thereafter. Adding it to your house increases its resale value by thousands. You can even opt to amortize this amount into a larger monthly fee for a few years to pay off the construction costs. 100% fair and equitable.
Xmission _is_ and _will continue to be forever, as a service to their customers_ a Centurylink partner and PPPoE realm auth / gateway to the internet, available to all Utah customers as a third party ISP option if you sign up for Centurylink DSL... But not the nice, fast VDSL2 standar, only central-office-provisioned, slow, noisy, ADSL2 is available to resellers.
Centurylink CLAIMS that Denver is a "Gig City". All they give a hoot about is the ability to advertize such, without providing the service to any appreciable amountn of the population. They've publicially admitted that ONLY the City and County of Denver, proper, will receive the service, and, only in very specific areas. Namely all the new condo and apartment towers being built near our new multi-modal transit station.
Another independant ISP, here in Denver, Forethought.net, is ACTUALLY WIRING EXISTING BUILDINGS for Gigabit, and ofcourse gets hardly a media mention - because they don't have millions of subscriber fees to put towards their ad budget. Amazing what actually funneling fees into NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE instead of ADVERTS can accomplish!
So, before you start any more rumors about how AT&T is about to start advertizing in Utah, give Centurylink credit for being the same bloody gits that AT&T have always been. The split-up was merely a 30 year hiatus, until status-quo returned. Bloody incumbents.