Sad Day?
May 7, 2008So much for our grass roots effort to get more subscribers onto iProvo. Provo just announced today that it is selling iProvo to a private company, Broadweave. Though I haven’t had time to research this potential sale, it effectively kills the original dream of an open network, with ISPs competing to get our business. On the surface it appears that the iProvo network will be nothing more than a really fast, but privately owned and closed Comcast-like network.
Guess that was about the shortest grass-roots campaign in history. Unless, this deal falls apart, or I find out it’s not just another private network, I’ll be suspending my efforts.
If I may elaborate on my thoughts by quoting myself… From my post on the Daily Herald:
This is a sad day. The dream of an open network appears to be dead. I like how the city made sure it’s bases were covered, good for them, but now us citizens are stuck with yet another private, closed network! So much for ISPs competing to get our business, now we are locked into a single vendor, just like we were with Comcast. I predict Broadweave will stay just barely ahead of Comcast, in terms of offerings. And why not, they don’t have any real competition on their network.
Those who are happy about this, are very short sighted, and don’t really get the idea of free market, and competition. Of course iProvo lost money up front, that was the point all along, if it was instantly profitable to build an extensive infrastructure, private companies would be doing it everywhere, but they aren’t because it’s too expensive in the short term. But the tail of fiber is very long, and would become a valuable asset to the city and to it’s citizens.
Even though I’m a libertarian, I recognize that there are times the government should step in and look at the truly long term. Infrastructure is an excellent example. Roads, sewers, electricity, airports, etc. It’s very difficult to do those type of long term infrastructure build outs, when you have to answer to today’s stock price.
I had hoped the city government would have the long term vision to see the value of building an open network, but apparently, the city’s vision appears to be only as long term as an election cycle. Sad… sad… sad…
Open networks don’t work. Provo proved it, Utopia is proving it. The business model is slightly different than hooking a linksys router to your dsl connection and allowing people to connect for free….you people need to understand the economics of business prior to touting your own opinion in a short sided view of “we should get it all for cheap and free”..it doesn’t work like that. You can hate Comcast and Qwest, but they are still in business and not begging for taxpayers money!
Hi “Smokey” - Just because iProvo is pulling the plug early isn’t even remotely proof that open networks don’t work. Utopia is getting approval nearly across the board from the various cities involved. And for the record, Utopia’s past problems have nothing to do with the viability (or lack thereof) of an open network concept. Utopia’s primary problem was the federal government reneging on a promise. This is a setback that Utopia is well on it’s way to overcoming.
Where in my post did I even imply “cheap and free”? I think you are using the wrong definition of “free”. When I say free network, I mean open standards and free for anybody to buy access to at a wholesale price. Not free as in no-cost.
I simply said that the concept of government building the infrastructure that private industry can then take advantage of, is a sound one. It’s been done many times before, and nearly always to the benefit of the citizenship.
Including, and this contradicts your last point, the original phone network that Qwest currently “owns”. If you research the history, you would learn that governments at all levels helped finance and build the original (POTS) phone network. Sure Qwest isn’t asking for money NOW, they’ve got their antiquated network payed for on the backs of the taxpayers (which by the way was a very smart investment at the time, imagine a world without phones!). The internet is at least as important for the current century as the phone network was for the last.
And government SHOULD spend taxpayer money building for our future and the future of our children in areas where private industry just can’t look that far ahead.
Don’t give up yet. The municipal council hasn’t signed off on this scam yet and it’s going to take people like you going to the meetings and fighting the beast head-on. I plan to be at all of the meetings they plan to hold next week to combat this in any way I can.