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Today we announced that we hope to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city of Provo. As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to
by vyrotek 14y ago
Today we announced that we hope to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city of Provo. As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber. Our agreement with Provo isn’t approved yet—it’s pending a vote by the City Council scheduled for next Tuesday, April 23, and also is subject to satisfaction of additional closing conditions. We intend to begin network upgrades when the deal is closed.
We hope to have service to our first customers in late 2013, and will have more information to share soon.
https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/ https://fiber.google.com/cities/provo/
- justsomedood 14y agoThe city has been looking to get out of the financial obligations from iProvo for a while, it'd have to end up being a really bad deal for them to say no to this.
- awaythrowme 14y agoIt is a really bad deal because it eliminates municipal ownership of the infrastructure that would facilitate competition. Instead they are installing a new monopolist which will only seem to improve things in the short term.
- turing 14y agoThere are still other ISPs in the area that will be competing. The change will be from a bankrupt fiber provider that the city cannot afford to a well-funded provider undergoing network enhancements and expansion. Stop complaining.
- GhotiFish 14y agoI'm actually somewhat against the purchase of a municipal line. I think the cities should be running the fiber. This feels like a move in the wrong direction. The problem is there arn't enough noisy people who know to ask for it.
- awaythrowme 14y agoPresumably those competitors won't have access to fiber to the home. Besides the fact that it doesn't make sense to roll out separate fiber for each provider it is clear that municipal owned fiber would decrease barriers to entry and therefore increase competition. You simply cannot expect good outcomes in situations of monopoly/oligopoly regardless of who the monopolists are.
- aray 14y agoWhy would this prevent anyone else from accessing fiber to the home? I thought the whole neat reaction from the Austin, TX fiber announcement was that ATT was planning on doing just the same.
- awaythrowme 14y agoThey wouldn't have access to that fiber, they would have to do their own fiber drop and I point out why that's bad in the remainder of my previous post. Regarding ATT/Texas: Having a competitor is not what economists mean when they refer to competition.
- awaythrowme 14y agoThey wouldn't have access to that fiber, they would have to do their own fiber drop and I point out why that's bad in the remainder of my previous post. Regarding ATT/Texas: Having a competitor is not what economists mean when they refer to competition.
- r00fus 14y agoBad for constituency <> Bad for city administration. Perhaps some ongoing service level agreements (that perhaps even iProvo couldn't provide) for the constituents/customers are part of deal?
- WestCoastJustin 14y agoNice way to gather support for the tuesday meeting ;)
- wwweston 14y agoEven better for support gathering purposes is that they didn't mention that they're buying the network for $1 and not assuming any of the $39 million in debt the city has from rolling out the network so far: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/56168330-79/google-network-fiber-provo.html.csp http://transmission.xmission.com/2013/04/18/the-1-fiber-optic-network http://www.freeutopia.org/2013/04/17/i-was-wrong-about-google-fiber-but-this-isnt-a-golden-deal-for-the-city-either/ I appreciate the fact that Google would be making an investment in the network, and that local Provo business or technical leadership apparently cannot manage the project on their own. But taking a public asset -- one that's becoming a key public utility -- and turning it into a wholly private one while assuming none of the costs of the existing investment doesn't seem like a balanced deal. I think Google should either assume some portion of the debt, or they should agree to the same conditions of letting others provide services over the network that was the vision of the network in the first place.
- Osiris 14y agoI was at BYU when iProvo was launched. I believe it was offering 10mbps up/down at the time, which was 10x faster than the DSL I had. Unfortunately, I was in an apartment building and they couldn't install the service without permission from the building owner. Also, the Salt Lake City corridor was involved in building a fiber network around the same time, I believe called "Utopia".
- mrchucklepants 14y agoiProvo was 15Mb symmetric when it launched. I had it as soon as it was available on my street. Sadly, Utopia is a financial mess (even more than iProvo became).
- Osiris 14y agoI had waited forever for them to open up my 'region' and I was pretty annoyed when I found out they couldn't install it in the building. Given the pricing and speed, I'm actually surprised that more people didn't sign up for it. Was it just a marketing problem? (I left Provo in 2005)
- gonzo 14y agoI left Provo in 1983, when BYU was not yet on ARPAnet, Ethernet was really new, and I was one of the few who had dialup access to the Vaxes from home. Be happy. :-)