Minnesota scraps multicity muni fiber plans

But after years of discussion, a fundamental change in the proposed model may have been a hard sell to city councilors. And critics of the project, including incumbent providers, still pointed to Utah’s troubled projects as cautionary tales.

“For over two years, the [Iron Range fiber project leaders] were using [Utah’s networks] as the business model, going to [Iron Range] cities and saying, ‘This is what we should do,’” said Gary Cerkvenik, a consultant with the Costin Group who helped Qwest Communications oppose the project. “Only this year did Gary Fields say, ‘I found a new business model, and his name is Timothy Nulty.’”

According to Cerkvenik, Hibbing city council members (who were unavailable to comment for this story) may also have been put off by the lack of specifics on the latest version of the project’s model. When asked by Telephony for a copy (or a detailed summary) of the proposal made to Hibbing, Fields said, “I don’t know that there’s a good accurate description of it. There’s not a lot of detail. Part of the problem is that the next step in providing more detail is to get more community commitments and then frame it a little more precisely. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

Still, some of the project’s supporters blame incumbents, including Qwest, for the project’s demise.

“I believe it failed because incumbents were successful in sowing the seeds of doubt in the council’s mind in terms of the ultimate feasibility of the project,” said Brian Redshaw, Hibbing’s city administrator. “Obviously it was more than just the $15,000.”