It is all armchair quarterbacking at this point.
It went wrong at its inception.
A guy named Arthur Brady with Telecom Choices played the part of Harold Hill
in the Music Man.
He got paid for the band instruments and blew out of town.
So, the cities were sold a bill of goods in my opinion. But the largest
city was smart enough not to put its foot in the trap. Salt Lake City.
Then they had issues with contractors and quality of work.
They overpaid. They borrowed too much etc etc.
They honestly expected Qwest and Comcast to ride their network.
There was a point in time that Wireless Beehive was installing at a weekly
rate greater than UTOPIA and almost had as many customers. We were in the
hole perhaps $2-4M and they were in the hole more than $100M. I think it
was more like $216M. All backed by bonds that were tied to sales tax
revenue.
Originally they needed 120,000 customers they said to be viable. That was a
1/3rd take rate.
I am guessing they don't even have 25K at this point but that is just a
guess based on nothing.
So the debt service was more than they could ever cover it appeared at one
time. I fully expected bankruptcy. Then they attempted to do a deal with
an Australian company that would have forced personal debt on everyone
owning property in all the member cities.
It has been a cluster from the start. Sounds like Roger has turned it
around.
I personally am philosophically opposed to governments providing goods or
services that private companies can do. Obviously streets are better done
by government. Arguably water and sewer. I have lived in cities with two
power companies. But all the rest should be done by commercial providers.
More importantly government should never compete with businesses.
They have many unfair advantages.
-----Original Message-----
From: fiber...@mail.com
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 1:49 AM
To: af@afmug.com
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Ammon City fiber
Chuck McCown wrote:
Utopia tried that method in Brigham City and it didn't work so well (for a
variety of reasons).
Did UTOPIA have any option? Municipalities in Utah are barred from
providing retail services.
Where do you think they went wrong?
Jared
