MunicipalFiber.com

 

I have had the opportunity to attend the community outreach meetings held by the city at Edgemont elementary as well as Spring Creek elementary. Mayor John Curtis has done an awesome job of explaining the struggle the city had with iProvo and how Google Fiber is an ideal solution to many of the problems we had with maintaining the network.

There has been very strong public support and attendance for the proposal.

During his explanation, he allows a rep named Jenna from Google to explain at a very high level what Google Fiber is, and then proceeds to explain how the city came to work with Google to find a solution to a difficult situation.

One thing that isn’t likely to go away is the monthly utility fee that the city had to impose to cover the costs of the iProvo buildout. Most residents are familiar with the $39 million dollar bond that was taken out to help pay for the iProvo buildout. This bond was secured by sales tax, so the city never really had the option of defaulting on the bond.  In order to pay it a $5.40 monthly charge was added to every residential utility bill to cover the full cost of the bond.

As the legal documents put forward indicate, Google will be purchasing the network for $1. This will not pay off the bond. It does bring a good deal of other benefits however.

Google is looking to begin conversions this year, and will likely have households online with their service in that same time period. They will be offering a similar line of services to that of Kansas City with a similar price. The TV stations in Provo will likely look like this.

The meeting concluded with a Q+A where many common questions were answered.

I will be updating the site as we get more information from Google, but please take a look at these two documents handed out at the local meetings.

 

Tags: community meeting, contracts