As many of you may know, Google has been offering to provide Gigabit Internet services with Austin TX being the second city to be so provisioned and Provo UT the third. Provo already had a failing fiber system (management and technical issues) that Google recently acquired. I was curious about Provo's failure and found this article showing the timeline of Provo's iProvo fiber network:
I've copy'n'pasted the short timeline below.
There's also an interesting 'Google Gotcha' for Provo: Google promised free Internet to every home but it never said anything about businesses. Whoops! A long article about that datelined today is here:
And here's Provo's fiber network timeline:
1998 -- The city began investigating a telecom project.November 2003 -- The Municipal Council voted to move it forward.
January 2004 -- The council approved a $39.5 million bond for iProvo.
October 2004 -- iProvo available for subscriptions.
Early 2005 -- Fiber built out in Grandview neighborhood, other areas.
July 2005 -- HomeNet, the first service provider, bails on iProvo; Mstar and Veracity take over. HomeNet later goes bankrupt.
March 2006 -- Provo loans itself $980,000 to make the first bond payment on iProvo.
2006 -- Subscribers continue to grow, although not at the hoped-for rate.June 2007 -- Provo allocates $1.2 million in sales tax revenue for bond, while projecting the system will not be self-sustaining until 2011.
September 2007 -- iProvo hits 10,000 subscribers.
January 2008 --The state auditor began an investigation into how much money iProvo's providers owe the city.
May 2008: Provo City sells iProvo to Broadweave for $40.6 million; city pays $2.6 million in sale costs.
April 2009: Broadweave scales back on marketing, citing prohibitive costs of setting up new customers.
August 2009: Broadweave and Veracity merge, ask for the city to take over some of the bond payment for 18 months.
July 2011: Provo City prepares to take back the network from Veracity, which could not make enough revenue to make the bond payments.
September 2011: Provo adds surcharge to every utility ratepayer's bill to pay off iProvo bond. City begins shopping the network.
April 2013: Google Fiber announces takeover of the network.