Fri 15 Aug 2008
The rumor mill says that Nuvont has decided not to sell their customer base to Broadweave and will continue to operate on both UTOPIA and iProvo. This would cause more problems for the new owner of iProvo since one of their key selling points was to control both the retail and wholesale aspects of the network. Between Veracity and Nuvont, around 20-25% of the total retail customer base would not belong to Broadweave including a significant number of high-revenue business customers.
This is the latest in a string of bad news and worse rumors concerning Broadweave. The failure to close on-time combined with persistent rumors that Sorenson has walked away from the deal casts doubts on their financial ability to properly take over the network and the failure of the merger with Veracity robbed them of significant experience with commerical accounts. Much-improved technical support and customer service also can’t overcome the frequent outages of the TV programming guide or the dwindling number of VOD options. Broadweave, meanwhile, chooses to stay silent on clearing the air of rumors and doesn’t offer up explainations for these problems, leaving customers worried about the future of iProvo.
UPDATE: It’s confirmed.
August 15th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Today, I wrote about some of the problems that I was having with Nuvont, Veracity, Broadweave, or iProvo, depending on who you talk to. Thanks for the inside tip on the happenings of our Provo network.
Nathan
August 16th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Damn Jessy, you really do have inside sources!
As your update mentions this is NOT a rumor. It was front page news in today’s Daily Herald.
You forgot to mention that the majority of customers Broadweave did get from Mstar are much less profitable MDU’s (student apt’s mostly) that have an old Provo Cable analog video package (no IPTV) and pay a much lower “bulk” rate for data and don’t take phone.
I’ll bet of the single family homes on iProvo, Broadweave has about 50% and perhaps 10%-20% of the businesses?
Of course they do collect “rent” for the use of the network from Veracity and NuVont. But so did iProvo and they were still well over a million dollars short each year. Broadweave has eliminated the “excess” costs like not hiring all 3 experienced iProvo Network Engineers.
You know, the guys that knew how to keep the guide up and the VOD movies coming?
August 18th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Broadweave knows how to “keep the TV guide up and the VOD movies coming”. It’s just not a priority for them. (right) They are more interested in reinventing the core of a perfectly good network. Brilliant! The only question now is how much damage will they do before they leave…
Quote from Mayor Billings: “Broadweave’s engineers are the who’s who of Utah technology”. Brilliant!
August 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
NuVont has brought their web site back to full life. I suspect they may have shut it down when they planned to sell to Broadweave but after the announcement that the sale was off, the web site is back up and lookin’ good.
http://www.nuvont.net
November 24th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I just heard that Broadweave did their 1000th install last week since they took over 3 months ago.
1000 new installs in about 3 months is pretty good news, isn’t it?!
November 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
It’s good news depending on a number of factors including the churn rate and subscriber mix. If most of those installs were for students who had disconnected for the summer, that’s no good. If it’s more single-family homes and businesses, that’s much better.
Since nobody on the outside gets to review anything anymore, who knows if it’s good or not.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Good point Jesse. The details are critical here. If in fact these are just large student apartment complexes where the revenue per unit is minimal it could be meaningless. Where is the 1000 install claim coming from?