Fiber, Convergence, and Communities of the Future

If you want broadband, you basically have two choices—the phone company or the cable company. Both are expensive, bureaucratic, unresponsive, non-progressive, non-innovative, near-monopolies. Sometimes you want to scream at them, "Just give me what I want!"

Well, how would you like to be able to tell both the phone company and the cable company to shove it? That's what some of the residents of Provo, Utah, will soon be able to do because they'll have access, over the city's fiber optic network (known as the iProvo network), to a converged IP service from HomeNet Communications. And that will give Provo residents not just leverage over the incumbent providers but also all the much-trumpeted benefits of true IP convergence.

iProvo has been getting a lot of attention lately because of the trends this leading-edge project might spark. Municipally-owned networks like iProvo have been growing in popularity, particularly in rural areas, where cable and phone companies fear to tread. Keen to boost economic development, many of the government leaders in these rural areas aren't willing to wait for the phone and cable companies to get their acts together and offer broadband. The iProvo project (though not a rural project) is an example of just one impatient U.S. community that has chosen to forge ahead on its own. Pundits predict that success in Provo will spur other communities to follow suit.

Provo is one of several U.S. communities that are building their own fiber network and opening up the infrastructure to bidding from service providers. One of the first municipal fiber networks was set up by the Grant County Public Utility District in Washington state in 2001. That's when HomeNet got its start as well. Formed in as Video Internet Broadcasting (VIB TV), HomeNet Communications first job was to deploy its high-speed Internet and video (IpTV) services over the Grant County municipally funded network. Today HomeNet provides services to about 1,500 residents who are part of this 11,000 home fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network.

The Provo project began in the late 1990s, when the city-owned power company decided to offer telecommunications services over its planned metropolitan fiber network. In July 2004, HomeNet won the bid to become iProvo's first retail service provider, giving them exclusive use of the network for an undisclosed period of time. That means they get a jump start on cable and phone company competitors, as well as on other IP service providers, who will eventually also be granted access to the iProvo fiber network.

The iProvo network is not yet complete. It is being rolled out in eight phases, covering eight different sections of the city. The first phase will be completed by the end of January 2005 and will give HomeNet 3200 potential new residential customers. HomeNet's current subscriber base is limited to about 200 homes that are part of the iProvo "demonstration project," which is a sort of beta test program that was launched by the Provo City Council in 2002. The next seven phases of the iProvo rollout will continue through 2005 and reach completion in July 2006. At that point the network will join together 27,000 homes and 4,100 businesses.