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Another Government Funded Network is Failing
There are two problems with the IProvo and UTOPIA municipal fiber rollouts, according to this local article.
The first problem is that the monopolies have come in with low price bundles whereas in the past they did not serve the area. That's a natural consequence of municipal fiber: when a city starts building a network, the monopolies always come in with discounts and even dirty campaign tactics.
So: Error one was not anticipating that the monopolies would suddenly bring in broadband.
Error two is equally flabbergasting. The article says that some areas that have fiber don't have subscribers willing to pay for it. How could you do this? I suppose that politics means no redlining, no avoiding poor districts (unlike, say, FiOS, which serves only the rich, so far).
Finally, there are only two experienced ISPs on the network, XMission and MSTAR.
So a bunch of rookie mistakes seem ready to derail what was once perhaps the most promising municipal deployment in the nation.
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