It looks like American Fork is going to discuss the sale of AFCNet this Tuesday the 27th at their normal city council meeting. (See City Council Agenda, item 17, PDF.) There's very spare details as to what the purchase price is or if Surpha is still indeed the buyer, so it'd be worth it for any American Fork residents to go on down and check this one out.
Personally, I think unloading it is in American Fork's best interests. With an FTTN structure, it's not up to the task of delivering fiber-like speeds and the city has shown little interest in properly investing in the network's future. It would have made sense for them to join UTOPIA and spread the costs of the NOC and wholesale operations with other cities, but the council seems to have gotten distracted from doing anything useful with the network.
(h/t: David Rodeback, again, for pointing this out.)
Jesse,
Will you be going down to this to provide the same investigation and opinion you have about the Broadweave iProvo transaction? I am sure your readers would be interested to see what you have to say about this deal also.
There’s not a lot to find, unfortunately. While Surpha is the name being dropped, we don’t know for sure that they are the buyer. They first filed articles of incorporation in 2002 with a Mr. Larry Lires as the main corporate officer. I can’t find any business license in Orem or American Fork, both suspicious things if you ask me. A corporate credit report shows that Larry A. Lires is the CEO, David I. Davis is the CFO and Steven E. Overson is the VP and CIO.
While I don’t speak any German to confirm this, apparently their public listing on the Frankfurt stock exchange caused quite a fiasco with shareholders looking to sue the company for fraud: link It’s also a bit discomforting that their website hasn’t seen updates for nearly two years. Anyone with experience want to enlighten us as to Surpha’s product and service quality?