Infrastructure matters

As the municipal fiber project in Provo, Utah, transforms into a more vertically integrated model, it illustrates some of the flaws in a particular brand of muni broadband commonly referred to as “wholesale-only.” But it also speaks to the larger ongoing issue of the threat to telecom carriers of being reduced to “dumb-pipe” providers.

Carriers’ response to that threat has long been to assert an unrivaled ability to ensure user service quality (which brings up all sorts of Net neutrality concerns I won’t rehash here). Retail service providers on Provo’s municipally owned and operated network found a similar theme in their struggle; because their systems were not sufficiently integrated with those of the network provider, service quality often fell through the cracks in between. New-service activation was tedious; troubleshooting was Byzantine.

And with the network-operations work (as well as its construction costs) sequestered to the city, “It reduces the barrier to entry [for service providers on the network],” said Steve Christensen, CEO of Broadweave, which is buying Provo’s network. “What you’re left with are marketing companies, basically.”

Since that quote appeared on our site, an employee with Veracity Communications, one of the three service providers on Provo’s network, emailed me to say, “While MStar and Nuvont are what you would label as ‘marketing companies’ with no voice switch or Internet backbone of their own, Veracity Communications is a CLEC and certified ISP, meaning they have their own Class 4 and Class 5 voice switch, and their own Internet backbone.”

And that distinction is apparent in Broadweave’s handling of its new assets: Broadweave is acquiring Veracity as a company but only the customer bases of the other two firms.

(In the original email, the author capitalized the words “voice” and “switch,” which might tell you even more about the importance he sees in the distinction made by infrastructure.)

As we report the challenges being faced by a range of other providers hoping to ensure the quality of services over someone else’s network, these same themes seem to keep resurfacing, lending credence to the above-mentioned argument for carriers versus their over-the-top competitors. Infrastructure matters. And infrastructure takes capital. So when you spell it, make sure you capitalize that I.

Email me at ed.gubbins@penton.com.