Category Archives: News

News articles about UTOPIA from around the country and around the world.

Corrections from UTOPIA on the Tremonton Numbers

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Hugh Matheson e-mailed to clarify some of the stats from Tremonton. The close rate is close to 50% – that is that half of homes visited end up taking service. The total take rate is hovering around 20% of all residents right now, still not bad for 10 weeks work. The door-to-door effort is being held up a bit by the inclement weather we’ve had lately. Also: in a lot of cases, folks are either unreceptive to any door-to-door sales or just aren’t home when someone comes by.

Even with numbers revised lower, it shows that an agressive marketing campaign with boots on the ground can do a lot to boost take rates. Maybe we need to get together and do guerilla marketing in a UTOPIA-ready neighborhood?

UTOPIA Article in the DesNews Shows Growth and Goals

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The Deseret News ran a brief article on UTOPIA that, while light on a lot of specifics, includes their current subscriber growth rate and goals for subscriber growth. According to the article, they’re adding 300-400 new subscribers per month and plan to double or triple that number in 2009. I’ve also heard that in Tremonton, their door-to-door campaign resulted in an impressive 50% take rate.

It’s good that UTOPIA has some public goals and accomplishments, but there still needs to be more public disclosure so that we can all evaluate how things are going. Hopefully they’ll be able to show big gains in other areas Real Soon Now(TM).

Qwest Threatens New UTOPIA Lawsuit, Wants to Block Centerville RDA Funds

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Qwest’s business model should be “If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em.” The Davis County Clipper reports that America’s least competent incumbent is threatening Centerville with a lawsuit if they decide to move forward with their plan to use RDA funds to build out UTOPIA. Qwest’s accusations are, natually, light on specifics and big on puffery. Maybe Qwest should take some cues from Comcast and try competing instead of litigating its way to success.

Broadweave Fails to Make November Payment

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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.

UTOPIA in the News, makes Telephony Online and DSLReports

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Telephony Online has a great article on UTOPIA that gives some insight as to what exactly they’re doing over there. It also includes some quotes from Fibernet and FuzeCore, the new providers on the network. DSLReports also picked up on the article and offered some additional commentary worth checking out.

Mstar, DynamicCity Were Also Bidding for iProvo

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The Salt Lake Tribune reports that city records show that Mstar and DynamicCity, the network management company for UTOPIA, also put in bids to either manage or run the city’s fiber optic network. A fourth company also reportedly made a bid, but their name is being kept secret by the city. DynamicCity President Cory Turner (who I know and who wasn’t president of DynamicCity at the time) said that the bid to operate the network was a long-shot at best. That proposal was put together by D. Keith Wilson.

Mstar’s involvement in the process, however, is rumored to be very different from how it is portrayed in this article. Word on the street is that once they caught wind of the sale and were denied based on their account being in arrears, they quickly made a deal with Broadweave to sell the customer list and have their debt forgiven. The rumor mill says that Broadweave then double-crossed Mstar when board member Fraser Bullock threatened to pull business from the law firm that employed Mstar’s principal investor and demanded payment to settle the matter.

The major dailies reportedly are all aware of these shenanigans but have gotten a lot of pressure to keep it all under wraps. I’m privvy to only the surface details of the matter, but any current or former Mstar employees who’d like to fill in the gaps is invited to call or e-mail me.

Mayor Billings Put on the Broadweave Board

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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.

Headend Brawl: UTOPIA and Provo at Odds on Shared Assets

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As the clock ticks down on a contract between UTOPIA and Provo for a shared video headend, the fight over who owes who money is starting to heat up. I’ve had a lot of anonymous tipsters relating details and rumors over some strong disagreements regarding compensating UTOPIA for their portion of the headend, a subject that appears to be strongly muddied by unclear contracts with Broadweave.

I’m no lawyer, but from looking at the headend agreement, it appears that Provo sold UTOPIA’s interest in both the VOD and Wildvine servers to Broadweave as a part of the sale of iProvo and used UTOPIA’s unused exercise of the right of first refusal as consent to do so. If that is the case, UTOPIA would naturally like to be paid for their share of that asset; it just isn’t clear who should cut the check, City of Provo or Broadweave. Given that the total is rumored to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars range, I can imagine that all parties involved are taking a strong stance on their respective positions.

The Daily Herald reported that both Kevin Garlick of Provo and Todd Marriott of UTOPIA are confident they can work something out, though I’ve heard that the problem in all of this is Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen who refuses to reach any kind of agreement. It looks like the headend agreement with Broadweave was signed in August of 2007 and I don’t think UTOPIA was involved in that discussion. This is coming back to bite Provo since they decided to make a lot of assumptions instead of talking it through with their partner.

Given the price tag and the tight financial situations with Provo, UTOPIA and Broadweave, I’m anticipating that this disagreement will get ugly if none of the sides plans to budge. Here’s to hoping they work out some kind of equitable solution instead of ended up in an “all sides lose” expensive legal action.

Centerville Mulls Using RDA Money to Expand UTOPIA

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The David County Clipper reports that Centerville is thinking about using redevelopment agency funds to push UTOPIA construction in their city. The idea, which is in very early stages, is to use the presence of the network as a lure for high-tech companies. Nothing in final, but this presents a unique way for cities to expand UTOPIA using an existing funding mechanism.

Utah Fiber Networks, Watch Your Back

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It looks like there’s a new sherriff in town: UTOPIA Watchdog and Broadweave Watchdog. The sites are registered anonymously, but the information posted leads me to believe that the person(s) operating them has been following both systems very closely and plans to not hold back at all. For instance, the websites allege that Provo intentionally over-valued the video headend in an effort to prevent UTOPIA from exercising the right of first refusal. (That would go a long way towards explaining the acrimony between the two over this shared asset.) I’m sure that as time goes by, we’ll see some interesting developments popping up on these two sites.