Free UTOPIA!

There will be an interim meeting of U-CAN for Salt Lake County residents on July 29th at 7PM. We will be meeting at the Holladay Library on Murray-Holladay Road just east of Highland Dr. While this is specifically for Salt Lake County residents, anyone is welcome to attend.

The next meeting of the UTOPIA Citizen’s Advisory Network (U-CAN) will be held on Saturday July 26th at noon in the Commission for Economic Development Office (CEDO) conference room at 777 S State St in Orem. As usual, anyone interested in getting more information about UTOPIA, getting updates on the progress of the network or helping UTOPIA succeed is welcome to join.

I’m also working on something a little less formal on Tuesday July 29th in the evening for Salt Lake County as an interim meeting. Announcements will be made as I firm up a location.

Today was the inaugural meeting of the UTOPIA Citizens Advisory Network or U-CAN for short. Attendance was about a dozen and we had some great conversations getting caught up on the status of UTOPIA and an idea of where it's going. Some highlights:

• UTOPIA is looking at using Special Assessment Areas to expand services in non-member areas and unincorporated county lands. It's a voluntary tax increase in order to pay for deploying the network and doing the installation costs in a specified area that takes advantage of 15-year government bonds and the low interest rates they enjoy. The cost of installation will be assessed entirely to members of the SAA.
• There's going to be some announcements soon on new service providers as soon as next week. Up to 4 could be announced over the next month and at least one is rumored to be interested in providing triple-play services.
• The new bond closed in late May as planned, so we may yet see construction by August. The UTOPIA website is actively soliciting new employees, a Business Sales Director and Teams Coordinator, as well as an RFP for asset management software and services.
• Speaking of UTOPIA's website, they are working on a new one with more updates and information. This will also include a mapping application to show you where the demand for UTOPIA is so you can find out if your neighborhood is higher or lower on the priority list.

Meetings are going to be held at least monthly and will rotate between the member cities to give everyone an equal chance to participate. I'm also planning on provisional monthly meetings outside of this rotation for Davis, Salt Lake and Utah Counties to encourage better participation in pledging member cities. The regular monthly meetings will be as follows:

• July 2008: Orem (Utah County)
• August 2008: Layton (Davis County)
• September 2008: Brigham City (Box Elder County)
• October 2008: Murray (Salt Lake County)
• November 2008: Lindon (Utah County)
• December 2008: Centerville (Davis County)

I'll announce the meeting times and locations here on the website as they are scheduled. Meetings will be tentatively planned for the 4th Saturday of the month at noon. If you want to receive U-CAN related announcements via e-mail, send a blank message to ucan-announce-subscribe@freeutopia.org to get on the mailing list.

Just a friendly reminder that Provo will be entertaining the motions to sell iProvo at a municipal council meeting on Tuesday the 3rd. The meeting will be starting at 5:30PM instead of the normal 7PM (h/t: Gary Thornock) and will include a lot of other business items as well. It's possible that they will vote at this meeting, but I'm betting they punt for the time being to take more time to evaluate the deal. I expect the hearing to last a VERY long time, just like the last one.

American Fork will also entertain a final motion to sell AFCNet to Orem-based Surpha, a company that I know precious little about. Given that the city has experience with Surpha as an ISP and it has been negotiated largely in the open for months now, I'm guessing the vote is just a formality. That meeting is also on Tuesday the 3rd, but at 7PM.

Last night, Provo's municipal council heard presentations from Broadweave, Veracity, the energy board and the telcom board on the proposed sale to Broadweave. There was a bit of new information and a lot of council skepticism. I don't have a play-by-play so much as some random thoughts.

• Both the energy and telcom boards are eager to cut and run as fast as they can. Energy doesn't want to be forced to cross-subsidize from their own funds in the face of an increased need for additional power generation capacity. Telcom, it seems, is unconvinced that the city can effectively run the network and expressed frustration that their suggestions and feedback were rarely translated into action. While I can understand the position of the boards in terms of their own self-interests, I don't necessarily agree with them.
• MSTAR is seriously cheesed off about the lack of an open RFP and made some not-so-vague intimations that it planned to sue to stop the sale should it be approved. They also expressed a lot of frustration that their own proposal to lease the network as the wholesale operator was turned down despite having lined up financing sources to bring them current and provide a significantly larger chunk of surety. One of the reasons MSTAR was denied was concern over not maintaining the open nature of the network. Irony much?
• Broadweave plans to raise prices. Most triple-play and Internet customers can expect a $10-15/mo bump in pricing to maintain their current level of service. This is something I've previously suggested at the wholesale end to be passed on to the retail customer. The annual shortfall of $2M annually worked out to around $200 annually per subscriber, a difference that would have been easily made up for with a small bump in pricing. I don't get why Provo didn't seek to increase fees until the network was solvent, then ease up again later. I don't see how private ownership is the only way to make this happen.
• Broadweave plans to offer new tiers of service. Their PowerPoint showed off about 6 different Internet packages from 3M/512K for $20/mo to 60M/60M for a waller-busting $180/mo. Again, something I've been suggesting for months now, that there be a value tier for grandma to increase subscriber units and a power user tier for folks willing to pay for more bandwidth. Again, I don't see how Broadweave's plans are any different from any other smart network operator.
• Broadweave is buying the Eagle Broadband network in Houston. They plan to pay a scant $274K to pick up the fiber connected to 4000 homes. That might sound like a deal at under $65/household, but that's fiber only without franchise agreements, a NOC, transport rights and so forth. It's also a seriously distressed asset that left a bad taste in users' mouths after suddenly disappearing without notice. The existing customers will be hesitant to sign up for services after an experience like that and it will take a significant investment to make those assets useful again, most likely through expensive network expansion. Building a NOC with a phone switch and video head-end will easily run in excess of $3M.
• Both Comcast and Qwest have concerns about the fairness of this deal. Both companies submitted letters to the city council expressing concern that Broadweave could get more favorable tax and right-of-way treatments under this deal, though neither is in opposition to a sale.
• Broadweave is projecting that triple-play wholesale costs will drop from $43 to $15 per month. I don't know how this would even be possible. It's common knowledge that cable TV providers barely eke out a profit on television alone, a product that retails at $40+ per month. Anyone with more experience on transport costs care to chime in?
• Broadweave was spooked by a lot of what I uncovered. Steve Christensen dedicated a slide of his presentation to "addressing" many of the concerns and irregularities that I've brought up in various venues. He failed to refute their lack of business licenses (something I noted to the council during my public comments), downplayed the investment required for the network in Houston and didn't have much of a rebuttal beyond "gimme a break" on the HomeNet comparison. Christensen also tried to downplay the involvement of his father in Traverse Mountain while failing to note that at least one uncle, possibly two are also principles in the project.
• Members of the council are very skeptical of this deal. Steve Turley, Sherrie Hall Everett and Cynthia Clark hit hard with lots of questions and doubts about the terms of the agreement and the RFP process. Cynthia Dayton also said that she wouldn't consider it without a close look at Broadweave's financial statements even if it took an NDA to do so. Alarmingly, she has been requesting this information for weeks without any action. Cindy Richards seemed to agree with me that pursuing networks across 6 or more states means that the council should make sure that the financial backing is there. There's also a lot of concern at the pace this project is proceeding at with Mayor Billings trying to force this through on a tight timeline. My personal prediction is a 5-2 vote against the sale with George Stewart and Midge Johnson voting in favor.
• The RFP may have been made vague so that customers didn't get spooked and bolt. Both Kevin Garlick and Mayor Billings brought up the fiber network in Marietta, GA that sold for 30% of its initial price claiming this was because the project was advertised as being for sale. While I can see this point, it wouldn't have been an issue had a provision of the sale been to maintain an open network and honor contracts with the existing providers. Once the sale became public, many other interested parties came out of the woodwork with better terms. Too bad that the city is obligated to treat Broadweave's offer with exclusivity through September.

My takeaway is that this deal is that the council recognizes that Broadweave is getting in way over its head despite the planned acquisition of Veracity and doesn't feel confident extending long-term financing under the current proposed terms. Some folks are as skeptical as I am, others are more optimistic. With all I've seen and heard, it's obvious to me that Broadweave should stick to what it knows, greenfield developments and exclusive service areas.

There's going to be a large number of meetings on iProvo popping up over the next two weeks for you to ask questions and voice your concerns. Here's the schedule:

• Monday May 12 from 4-6PM: Open house at the iProvo Network Operations Center, 744 N. 300 West. Rumor has it representatives from Broadweave will also be there.
• Tuesday May 13 at 7AM: iProvo Review Committee Meeting, 351 W. Center St. They didn't allow public comment last time and may not feel a need to do so this time either, but they are highly informative.
• Tuesday May 13 at 5:30PM: Municipal Council Study Session on iProvo, 351 W. Center St. This meeting will likely accept public comment.
• Tuesday May 20 at 7PM: Municipal Council Meeting, 351 W. Center St. The council will likely take a vote on the impending sale to Broadweave.

I'll try to make as many of these meetings as I can to make sure the opposition is heard. Make sure you get friends and neighbors to show up to these and contact members of the council and the mayor to voice your opinion.

After more waffles than you'd see in an Eggo plant, Payson has decided that they need to rethink their vote on the new UTOPIA bonds after being the lone hold-out. The city council will meet Monday May 12 at 6PM to reconsider backing the new UTOPIA bonds, a move that's eerily reminiscent of their "no we aren't, yes we are" vote on joining in the first place. The meeting will be held at 439 W. Utah Ave. and it's unknown if additional public comment will be heard. For good measure, supporters in the area should do their best to show up anyway.

I 'll be there, though it's going to be back-to-back with the iProvo open house the same night so I could be a few minutes late.

h/t: Jens Dana from the DMN. Had he not said anything to me on the phone tonight, I might not have heard about it until I was on my way to Zion Nat'l Park for a well-deserved vacation.

Less than 2 hours ago, Brigham City voted in favor of the new UTOPIA bonds with Ruth Jensen casting the lone dissenting vote. They made their vote conditional upon approval by the remaining two pledging member cities, Orem and Murray, in a move similar to Centerville. With this vote, UTOPIA moves one step closer to securing the new financing and being able to move forward with its plans to continue construction in the RUS cities.

The title pretty much says it all. Instead of a meeting closed to public comment, the Centerville City Council will accept additional public comment during tonight's meeting. If you're able to make it and speak in favor of UTOPIA, please do so!

I've received updated meeting times for the rescheduled UTOPIA meetings as follows:

• Brigham City: Thursday May 1 at 7PM
• Centerville: Tuesday April 29 at 7PM
• Murray: Monday May 5 at 6:30PM
• Orem: Friday May 2 at 9AM
• Payson: No re-vote

The addresses should be the same as the prior meetings and can be located on the sidebar. Payson has decided to not reconsider approving the new bonds for UTOPIA and will likely start paying from its pledges on the original bond arrangement. All other hearings will not be accepting any further public comment since they've already had significant public input. I'd encourage you to attempt to make as many of these meetings as you can and take the time to write to city council members.