Provo's backbone connects homes and businesses throughout the city, as well as municipal buildings, schools, power stations, and traffic signals.
[1] In the late 1990s, a community task force was asked to review the work of technical and business consultants and to explore whether or not the city should build a telecommunication system.
The city chose not to use wireless technologies because they are tenuous, affected by weather, and require line of sight between antennas for good connection, which is not always possible.
The incumbent regulated carriers had communicated to the city that the Provo market was low on priority lists for receiving a fiber network.
The city felt confident that if a municipally owned network was not built that it would be a number of years before fiber technology would be available to Provo.
In late 2006, the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think-tank, issued a report characterizing iProvo as financially unstable and ineffective at lowering Internet costs or raising broadband use.
[2] Provo responded with a white paper challenging Reason's analysis and stating that any conclusions were premature since the full network had been in place for less than a year.
In June 2007, "the Provo Municipal Council voted to add $1.2 million in sales tax revenue to the city's budget for the fiscal year 2008 to help iProvo pay off its debt."
The Reason Foundation report says Provo "faces the dilemma of continuing to fund iProvo with no break-even point in sight, or it can sell and recoup as much of its investment as it can.
As part of the deal, ownership of the network reverts to the city of Provo should Broadweave become unable to make its payments on the loan.
The loan is currently backed by a $6M letter of credit from Sorenson Capital but requires no up-front money on Broadweave's part.
[14] It was revealed Google acquired iProvo for $1, and agreed in exchange for completing installation and offering free 5 Mbit/s internet service to all households or businesses for 7 years, after a $30 setup fee.