Category Archives: News

Broadweave announced their plan to fix the frequent issues with phone service on iProvo, pointing to deficiencies in the portals provided by World Wide Packets. Their message? An ultimatum to Ciena, the new parent company of World Wide Packets, to fix the firmware in 90 days or they'll start replacing the hardware. The reason? They claim the current portals don't properly support SIP.

Given that portals run about $300 a pop and Provo has 10,250 csutomers, that works up to just shy of $3.1M just on new portals. That doesn't even include the cost of labor to replace and troubleshoot. Seems a bit excessive when a $50 terminal adapter would probably fit the bill just as well. After all, I have yet to hear that anyone using Vonage is having issues with telephony over iProvo.

Broadweave seems to have some trouble spending lavishly on features that a company its size simply can't afford, like their supposed carrier-grade phone switches. Also remember that they plan to spend around $1.8M upgrading set-top boxes for MPEG-4 PLUS the costs for a new head-end to support the encoding. Can anyone else smell dot-com style crash-and-burn in the distance?

Broadweave announced today that they plan to go one step further than buying out the customer lists and acquire Veracity as well. Veracity has over 10,000 clients but only a handful are on UTOPIA or iProvo. Most of Veracity's customer base is in T-1 lines or DSL services as well as business voice communications. This means that Broadweave plans to grow overnight from 1100 to over 20,000 subscribers. I seriously doubt they can handle all of that growth.

It's worth noting that Nuvont, which is still a provider on UTOPIA, buys all of its services from Veracity. XMission also has a deal to buy VoIP services from Veracity. It will be interesting to see if Broadweave will remain on UTOPIA and continue these contracts for services or pull an AT&T on us.

See more from the Daily Herald. 

This kind of news is almost too good to report. After being tipped off by an anonymous source, I did a bit of digging as to who owns Traverse Mountain. Turns out that it's a Mr. Stephen Christensen, an uncle of Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen. In short, it appears that Broadweave's sole development project is the result of an inside family deal, not any kind of business acumen. This should raise a lot more questions about the viability of this provider.

It's also reported that the supposed development in Washington County that has a video head-end doesn't have an appropriate video franchise to operate it. Combined with the lack of video in Traverse Ridge, we should be asking if Provo is best served by an exclusive provider with zero video experience. Survey says "not bloody likely".

The stink on this one grows every day.

UPDATE: According to this article copied from the Deseret News, they are actually father and son. Still shady; title has been fixed.

Talk about stretching yourself thin. Broadweave mentioned to the Daily Herald that they plan to buy a fiber optic network in Houston, Texas, likely the OEN network that went belly-up after less than a year of operations. They only manged to reach about 5,000 customers before abruptly halting service, falling far short of their goal to wire 1.6M homes. Despite the large investments from venture capitalists, I doubt Broadweave has the money to continue construction in Houston, do further roll-outs in Provo and continue to build their network in Traverse Mountain.

Wake up, Provo. This company isn't going to be around more than a couple of years and you'll still be left holding the bag.

EDIT: Almost forgot to mention that Broadweave also plans to upgrade the TV signals on iProvo from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4. This will require replacing the existing set-top boxes to support the new signals. At around $300 a pop, it would take nearly $1.8M to upgrade the existing video customers on iProvo. Yet another hunk of cash I doubt they have.

Looks like iProvo is going on the chopping block with a flurry of questions as to if it will even happen. Broadweave Networks of South Jordan has been announced as the buyer and will assume all wholesale and retail operations for $40.6M and they will assume the bond debt from the network. This means that MSTAR and Veracity are going to be cut out of the picture and Provo will have yet another vertically-integrated monopoly, one that apparently can't even deliver speeds close to iProvo's current speeds over its own network in Lehi.

Most disturbing is the lack of an open and transparent RFP process, something that makes the whole deal reek of a back-room deal. Mayor Billings just two weeks ago said a sale would be premature, then he pulls out this deal that was obviously in the works for some time. According to the Deseret News, the city had RFPs to buy the network from April of 2007 yet there was little-to-no public discussion about it. There's also the question as to if Provo can sell off the fiber rings that were paid for largely by federal grants as part of an air quality project to monitor traffic flows. While the city will still be able to use the network for municipal functions, eliminating the competitive marketplace for retailers is anathema to one of the original purposes of the network.

I'm left wondering if Veracity, Nuvont and MSTAR can survive having thousands of customers pulled out from underneath them like this and if this means that all three will no longer be viable options for UTOPIA. An implosion of all but XMission could have serious repercussions if new providers are not added soon, especially since CCG doubted that either company could escape bankruptcy for long.

I'm very disappointed in Mayor Billings and his lack of vision. I hope voters won't forget having the rug pulled out from under them like this.