Bailey called iProvo a mess, based in part on a delayed start and city documents that show revenue and subscriptions well below projections at midyear. Billings said revenue and subscribers are catching up with projections now, but numbers from the end of the fiscal year, which ended June 30, remained unavailable Friday. City officials would only say the system has more than 1,800 customers.

"Not only do we not know what we're doing," candidate Bailey said, "we're doing it at a time when you can't buy a product that isn't obsolete by the time you get it home. . . . We're behind schedule and over budget. Subscriptions are way off mark, and user feedback about the product and service are dismal."

Billings said the system was built with future technologies in mind, capable of expansion to 1,000 megabits per second.

"Those who have disparaged this project, I don't think those are very informed opinions," he said. "I don't think he's (Bailey) invested the time and energy to understand the issues. It's a system to build jobs on and build our economy on."

At 10 megabit capacity, iProvo is cutting edge and cheap, MSTAR's Hansen said. An iProvo broadband Internet connection will cost $40 a month, or $4 per megabit, nine times less than the national average.

Hansen said too many new products, like video on demand and video conferencing, already outstrip the capacity of most networks.

"It's important to have networks like iProvo," Hansen said. "Inferior networks will not do.

"Over the iProvo network, MSTAR will be able to provide the same family-friendly Internet services 178 times faster than the service we were previously able to provide," Hansen said.

Veracity Communications was founded in 2002 and is Utah County's largest provider of Internet phone service, Peterson said, with more than 500 lines in operation in Provo and nearly 2,000 in Utah County.

MSTAR began as Deseret Online in 1998 and has 1,500 customers in Provo alone.

HomeNet backed out of iProvo, reportedly to focus its business on self-owned networks instead of as a service provider leasing space on other networks. HomeNet had a contract to be iProvo's exclusive service provider for the first six months, but that time expired recently.

The iProvo model included competing providers, and Billings said the city had been courted by six companies in recent months. City officials chose to certify only Veracity and MSTAR. Others could be certified in the future.

"If HomeNet hadn't decided to refocus its business, we'd still be bringing these two on today," he said. "We're getting to the point in our build-out where the network is mature enough to make it attractive to businesses in the industry. People will have two excellent choices. These providers will compete, and the residents will be the ones who benefit."

The providers pay the city a premium for each resident who subscribes. Provo's projections are that about 10,000 of the city's 30,000 households must subscribe to iProvo products for the city's $40 million investment in the infrastructure to break even.

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E-mail: twalch@desnews.com