IProvo is $40 million mistake

In an effort to "put Provo on the map," Mayor Lewis Billings has spent the past couple of years touting iProvo, the city's fiber-optic telecommunications network. Because so few subscribers signed up, the mayor has now asked the City Council to approve the transfer of $1 million from Provo's electric utility reserve fund to keep the project going. Seems the city can't afford the first payment on the $39.5 million bond it floated to fund the project.

City staffers are confident that the iProvo project will pay for itself over the next 20 years or so.

On Feb. 23 The Wall Street Journal reported "Google Inc. and EarthLink Inc. abandoned competing proposals and joined together in a bid to bring wireless Internet access to San Francisco . . . Google, of Mountain View, Calif., said that it would provide free wireless service citywide."

The iProvo project is 90 percent complete. Workers are still digging trenches and laying cable. Tucson has launched its own free Wi-Fi Zone for the downtown area, with donated time, products and services. Many other cities have done the same. IProvo's first-generation infrastructure doomed it before it was completed. Provo utility customers will pay for the $40 million mistake.

John Hafen Jr.

Provo