IProvo - Why Fiber and Not Other Technologies

Why Fiber and Not Other Technologies

The city considered a variety of other technology choices including wireless, broadband over power lines, and hybrid fiber-coax.

Fiber to the home clearly had advantages over hybrid fiber-coax, and a sharp decline in costs during the years from when the city first began to study the technology encouraged the city to build a fiber to the home system. While the equipment on each end of the fiber would need to be changed out at regular intervals, studies showed that fiber technology would ensure a long term future for the telecommunication project.

The city chose not to use wireless technologies because they are tenuous, affected by weather, and require line of sight between antennas for good connection, which is not always possible. Security was also an issue, and networks are often crowded and result in reduced bandwidth speed.

A fundamental mission of the city was to build infrastructure that would be for the long term and available to all residents. The incumbent regulated carriers had communicated to the city that the Provo market was low on priority lists for receiving a fiber network. The city felt confident that if a municipally owned network was not built that it would be a number of years before fiber technology would be available to Provo.