A $36 million bond. Zoning and planning. Years of construction work. And finally, yesterday, Provo's high-speed fiber optic network reached my neighborhood.
I can't imagine a candidate more perfect for this new service than me. I mean, c'mon. If you're reading this, you know me. Fiber optic Internet and phone and TV? The future is here! Now!
But there's a catch. The flyer on my door declared, "All of these services are now available for a fraction of what you've been paying for them, through Veracity Communications powered by iProvo." A salesman's phone number was scribbled on it. I prepared to call him by grabbing my most recent telecom bills to compare.
I'm currently paying:
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(Comcast) Limited Basic Cable TV -- $12.62
(Comcast) Internet -- $29.95 ($52.95 minus a $23 discount introduced just before iProvo came...)
(Qwest) Phone -- $32.29 ($20.45 basic service, $11.84 fees)
Total: $76.46
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Veracity's "fraction of the price" package:
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Faster Internet, though the difference between a 1-second load time and a .045-second load time is small
VoIP which requires me to buy a new phone
Cable with more channels, but most that we don't want
Total: $94.94
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April said she'd consider it if the TV lineup included TLC. It doesn't, though. To get that, we'd have to do the $113.94 package. Over a year, that would be almost $500 extra.
That's a fraction, by the way, of 3/2 of what we're currently paying. Their flyer was right.
So, sarcastic humor aside... what does this mean for Provo? If they're not willing to compete with the big boys (the salesman told me they couldn't match what Comcast and Qwest are charging me -- "we don't do that") they had no business getting into the arena. And we just wasted $36 million dollars. That I suppose I'll be paying anyway, since they'll just raise my ultility prices to cover it.
And I was so excited about having fiber optic! Maybe once iProvo goes bankrupt, Comcast will buy their dead lines and upgrade. That'd be cool.
(And I'm not going to get into the predatory tactic of discounting your product when a competitor enters the market -- that's legal, smart, and not a problem because there's still competition from Qwest and MStar and Digis.)