Mon 30 Apr 2007
Why Couldn’t Packetfront Finish the American Fork Deal?
Posted by Jesse under News
Maybe they're too busy catering to the high end. They just dropped a press release touting a new fiber network in some luxury condos in California. I suppose the "little people" don't hold much interest when there's not phat sacks full of cash money involved.
(See press release here.)
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 am
Know this is late Jesse, but just stumbled across this and thought I’d set the record straight.
Our passion, and primary focus, is community networks. We would have loved to have done the American Fork deal and our team worked really hard to try to bring it together.
The way we work with communities is to partner with them. We think the best model for rural fiber is to use public-private partnerships where neither the public sector nor the private sector takes all the risk - they share.
The challenge for us in American Fork was that after much discussion the community decided to divest themselves of the asset entirely (and the asset is in really rough shape) rather than enter into a PPP. Without a local partner willing to bear some risk, it didn’t fit our model nor that of our financiers, so we had to move on.
With all our activities here in the Valley, it would have been an ideal project. We’re as disappointed as you are.
Hope that helps,
Matt
———-
Matt Wenger
President
PacketFront Inc
November 24th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for the clarification. Since this time, I’ve heard enough about how American Fork operates to make me think that they’re really in over their heads. After all, they had the opportunity to join UTOPIA and roll the cost of installing new fiber optics (instead of their existing copper) into the cost of the shiny new pressure irrigation system, but declined. I also heard that they more-or-less wanted a San Francisco-style “you spend the money, we keep the profits” kind of arrangement. It’s no wonder they’ve had some trouble finding a willing buyer.