Time to abandon iProvo
Earlier this week, the city decided to hire two consultants to tell it how to stop the hemorrhaging. If current trends continue, the city would lose more than $2 million on the project during the current fiscal year. That would be about $850,000 more than the anticipated loss the city already included in its budget.
This comes despite the city having surpassed the 10,000-subscriber mark it originally said it needed in order to break even on the network, which provides the fiber-optic backbone to provide Internet, digital television and telephone service.
A report in this newspaper on Tuesday said city leaders are leaning toward having city departments pay more for the services they get from iProvo. But this would be little more than a shell game. City departments get their money from taxpayers or from utility rate payers. Making them pay more would simply spread the cost of the system to those Provo residents who choose not to pay for the digital services iProvo provides. The city already has borrowed from the Energy Department to keep iProvo afloat.
In its rebuttal, the city chose to focus on perceived conflicts of interest on the part of the study's author, ignoring these larger philosophical questions.
By now it should be obvious that private businesses, faced with such losses, would consider abandoning ship. Provo is treading where only private business ought to go, and doing so badly. Telecommunications is a market demanding the nimble feet of private investors. Trends and technologies are constantly shifting.
We doubt the consultants will tell Provo what it really needs to do, sell iProvo and go back to simply being a city.
Recent comments
Brent: I was at the meeting and my understanding is that the city...
Jesse Harris | Dec. 6, 2007 at 2:26 p.m.
Jesse Harris:
"Once the city starts paying iProvo for its...
Agit8r | Dec. 5, 2007 at 6:37 p.m.
I'm surprised that all the people who are complaining about the...
samhill | Dec. 5, 2007 at 4:01 p.m.
