A West Jordan fiber-optic network and services provider and a local investment heavy hitter have joined forces to pull the financially-troubled iProvo network out of the red and, hopefully, into the black.

Broadweave's board of directors include Robert Frankenberg, former chairman, president and CEO of Novell, and Fraser Bullock, Sorenson's founder and chief operating officer of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics. Bullock is also chairman of the board of Orem Web analytics company Omniture, which received capital funding from Sorenson and went public in 2006.

By serving as both the network owner and the service provider, Broadweave hopes to overcome one of iProvo's key limitations -- its business model.

"Provo was limited in the business model it could implement. By law, the city could only operate the network. It couldn't provide retail services, and iProvo's cable head-end [which distributes cable television services] and phone switches were owned by third parties. That meant it was hard to troubleshoot if something goes wrong," Bullock said. "But now, we have an integrated company operating the network, providing services and having the solid financial backing to promote its retail services."

Steve Christensen, Broadweave's CEO, said the company will take over the operations center of iProvo and become a retail service provider. He declined to comment on the fate of the existing service providers on iProvo for now.

"Our primary goal is to make the transition as smooth as possible for existing customers," he said. "Soon we will add more HDTV channels, upgrade set-top boxes and provide more broadband services." Residential customers will be able to get Internet speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second.

"We are required by contract with Provo to keep prices competitive with similar service providers in the marketplace," Christensen said. Further details on pricing and service packages will be announced in the coming weeks.

He said that Broadweave will also sharpen its focus on business subscribers -- a large revenue segment Provo has failed to tap to date. Of iProvo's total customer base of 10,412, there are only 513 business subscribers as of March, according to the city.

"There's a reason why services to businesses have been neglected. It's because services to residential users cannibalized those to business customers. There are no upgrades for business users. We will need to make substantial upgrades to voice and data offerings that will make the network compelling to business users," he said.

To attract more businesses, iProvo will have to address its Achilles heel -- a weak telephone offering, Christensen said. "Most business customers on the network are taking data services, not voice," he said. "If your voice services aren't up to snuff, you can't compete. We will be extending Ethernet IP to businesses, and offering traditional telephone services, and hosted telephony services integrating phone and e-mail."

That's the kind of industry understanding that iProvo needs to address its marketing and product issues, said Steven Titch, a policy analyst with Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation. "Provo approached the telecommunications industry as if it was a public service that people would buy, rather than a product that has to be positioned and sold. Not everyone is an automatic default user of 100 megabits of fiber. The biggest opportunities are clearly in areas like tele-medicine and corporate networking. These business customers, depending on their size, can bring in anywhere between $1,000 and $100,000 a month," he said.

The iProvo acquisition will bring an immediate customer base of more than 10,000 to Broadweave, which has had to contend with slow customer growth in Traverse Mountain and Sienna Hills in the past year because of the housing slump. Of the 21,000 customers in Sienna Hills that are projected to take up Broadweave's services over the next decade, the company so far has garnered less than 100. The company has 1,000 customers out of a total of 7,500 projected to take up its services at Traverse Mountain.