What went wrong?

From the beginning, UTOPIA and iProvo either chose, or were saddled with, a business model that has proved least successful in fiber rollouts, analysts say.

In 2001, the state Legislature passed the Utah Municipal Cable Television and Public Telecommunications Services Act, which allows cities to construct telecommunication infrastructure but not become the retail service provider for those systems. Instead, they have to use a wholesale model in which they build the digital pipe and then lease the lines to retail service providers such as Mstar.

That leads to underselling of the system and friction between the municipality, which needs to see a return on its multi-million dollar investment, and the service providers, which haven't risked as much, says Michael Render, president of RVA, a market research company that focuses on private and public fiber systems.

"They don't have skin in the game," he said. "The more difficult ones have been the wholesale systems such as iProvo and UTOPIA."

A consultant's report released last week found examples of that in iProvo.

"I found a lot of problems in the relationship between the two parties. Almost universally the telcom employees dislike or distrust the retailers, and this is then manifested in the working relationship between the two parties," wrote Doug Dawson of CCG Consulting. He said that Provo's contracts needed to be renegotiated to clearly delineate each party's tasks and responsibilities.