Provo, Utah is the next stop for Google Fiber

Google is bringing its gigabit, fiber-to-the-home network to Provo, Utah, a little over a week after it announced that it was taking its ISP dreams to Austin, Texas. The announcement was made by Provo Mayor John Curtis on Wednesday, and a local Provo site has a nice run down on why Provo is the next stop on the GooFi express.

Those reasons include an updated web site, attributes the city shares with Austin, such as universities, and the fact that Provo previously attempted to build a fiber to the home network. Provo was home to the UTOPIA project, a municipal fiber to the home effort that experienced financial troubles and was later sold to Veracity, a private company. Apparently, those network assets changed hands about a year ago and were purchased by the city. That means the city could be working with Google to provide the underlying dark fiber.

If this is the case, this is significant for a variety of reasons — not the least of which is that Google is planning to keep pushing its gigabit network to more places. It already is building a fiber to the home network in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Mo. But it also signifies the changing cost-benefit equation that municipalities and private companies are facing when it comes to fiber to the home networks.

More municipalities from North Carolina to Seattle are trying to entice gigabit networks to their areas using a combination of leasing existing city assets or tax breaks for newcomers. Companies like Google and Gigabit Squared are trying to take advantage of the willingness of city officials to deal and the underlying assets in those cities, but even companies like AT&T and Time Warner Cable are also starting to play ball.

The nature of network deployments are changing, and hopefully it will change the cost models to the point where more fiber to the home networks can become viable. However, it’s important to remember that private companies must act responsibly to their shareholders, while cities are accountable to their citizens. That’s a mix that might explode later on.