iProvo welcomes the debate

PROVO — Glossed in the light-blue glow of computer screens and six flat-panel TV monitors, the city network operations technicians man their stations at the heart of iProvo's system.

Someone's always on deck monitoring the electrical and the fiber system — 24/7.

But you don't hear about that often. Especially now less than a week out from the day Mayor Lewis Billings is slated to present a budget to City Council that is expected to include a combination of proposed remedies to pull iProvo's finances out of the red and into the black.

You don't need to tell that to the technicians who work in the Network Operations Center at 744 N. 300 East in Provo — they already know the score. They know about the reports stating the city's fiber optic network has cost the city $7.5 million and that it's on track to lose another $2 million this year. They know about the think tanks and critics blasting the city for trying to compete in the telecommunications realm. And they know Councilmen George Stewart and Steve Turley have repeatedly said they want to see the network privatized. They've heard it all before.

"It gets pounded all the time," power system control operator Dave Roger said of iProvo. "Pounded, pounded, pounded."

With all the hammering, people hardly get to hear about the network's benefits, he added.

Before the fiber network came along, the city basically relied on customer calls to report power outages, said Travis Ball, systems operations manager for the electric department. But now with the fiber coursing through the city's veins, work crews can pinpoint the location of a downed power line quicker to reduce a blackout's duration. Ball estimates the system has prevented at least 10 major outages in the past five years.

But the system has more to offer than that, NOC technician Michal Czarnecki said. Businesses can utilize the system to increase their network's speed, reliability and security.

For example, he said, Nature's Sunshine Products Inc. has two locations in Provo's East Bay area and one in Spanish Fork. Using iProvo's system, and with a little cooperation from Spanish Fork's telecommunication system, they set up a virtual LAN so the company's computers communicate as though they were attached to the same switch, although they're miles apart — all without the need to tap into the Internet.

"You can't hack (the system)," Czarnecki said. "You can't beat the speed."