Sounds like the iProvo troubles are about to get bigger. According to a Nuvont installer who would like to remain nameless, Broadweave has defaulted and could likely be returning the network to the city in very short order. Nuvont is also trying to switch video customers from iProvo to Dish Network, presumably in preparation for serious network troubles. This could very well mean the end of both Broadweave and Mayor Billings’ political future.
Anyone else out there heard about this?
The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Broadweave has failed to make its November payment to Provo City, instead having to rely on the security deposit. CEO Steve “we’re meeting our financial goals” Christensen and Mayor Billings both tried to gloss over the missed payment while Steve Turley, predictably, has called it bad news. Of course, if Broadweave is unable to bill their customers, that might account for coming up short. This will most certainly be a major issue during Provo’s upcoming municipal elections.
The Provo City council voted to put Mayor Billings on Broadweave’s board as the official representative from the city. I wonder, however, if this will provide adequate city oversight or not. Mayor Billings kept the council in the dark during the negotiation of the deal and there have been a lot of negative rumors about Broadweave’s financial condition. This bring up the obvious question: would the mayor delay disclosure of negative information to the council to save his own political hide? It’s worth asking given the number of other questionable deals that Provo has managed to get itself into during his terms as mayor.
The Deseret News recently ran an article on iProvo in which Mayor Billings claimed that iProvo is seeing a major turnaround under Broadweave’s direction. Certainly there are areas that have been improved drastically, live support being the most notable. Unfortunately, this improvement in response time has been at the cost of frequent outages with the TV programming guide, a 3-4 hour outage this morning for all Internet users and a lack of general notification as to what the heck exactly is going on.
Mstar is reportedly still receiving payments for customers they sold to Broadweave. Bills have arrived from Broadweave without explanation as to who this bill was from and their purchase of the network. Rates were scheduled to increase, but not notification was sent as to how existing plans will be migrated. This is top-notch management? There’s just two weeks for Sorenson to complete their review of the financing without so much as a peep as to how that’s going.
Amidst all this are many disturbing rumors floating around. CEO Steve Christensen is reportedly having to pay employee salaries out his own pocket. It’s also alleged that Broadweave is using trucks with city plates to do business in Provo. We’ve also witnessed the departure of all iProvo NOC techs and a significant amount of the rest of the staff, a major loss of expertise that cannot be easily compensated for. With the lack of basic notifications and the “silent running” attitude, it’s no wonder that rumors like this continue to persist.
Sounds like Broadweave needs to reconsider who’s doing their PR. Anyone out there willing to fill in the gaps?
