|
A piece of the iProvo puzzle has fallen off the table, with Nuvont Communications declining to sell its customer base to the fiber-optic network's new owner.
Formerly owned by Provo city, iProvo was sold earlier this year for $40.6 million to Broadweave, a South Jordan-based company.
At the time, Broadweave CEO Steve Christensen said an important part of the sale was that Broadweave would be the sole owner and service provider. To that end, Broadweave made plans to purchase the nearly 11,000 iProvo customers from Internet Service Providers Mstar and Nuvont, and merge with a third ISP, Veracity.
On Friday, a spokesman for Broadweave confirmed that there will be no purchase of Nuvont's 2,300 residential iProvo customers.
Nuvont owner Brandon Grover said that the two companies simply couldn't make a deal work.
"We weren't able to arrive at terms that made sense for us," Grover said, declining to go into detail, citing non-disclosure agreements.
Instead, Nuvont's residential iProvo customers will stay with the company as it works to expand on the Utopia fiber-optic network, a municipally owned system covering parts of 14 cities along the Wasatch Front.
"We feel like Utopia is headed in a very positive direction," Grover said.
He repeatedly stressed that Nuvont's customers on the iProvo network will be taken care of.
"Nuvont is a profitable company. We're a healthy company. We have great customer service."
Of the three service providers at the time of the sale, Mstar is the only one to go through with a sale of customers to Broadweave, though it was the largest by far. At the beginning of July, Veracity pulled out of the deal, citing Broadweave's inability to close the iProvo sale in a timely manner. The sale was supposed to be complete June 30 but was extended 60 days because of what Broadweave officials said were extremely complex issues.
The company didn't purchase the network outright. Instead, Provo retains the bond used to build the system and Broadweave makes the monthly payments.
Provo spokeswoman Helen Anderson said Friday that the company has paid the first two installments on time and in full.
Provo Mayor Lewis Billings said late Friday night that while he hadn't received any information from Broadweave confirming that the Nuvont deal had fallen through, "our agreement with Broadweave was not dependent in any way upon a transaction with Nuvont or anyone else." |
