Steve Mensing, Editor
♦The Fibrant debacle grew even more alarming in Tuesday’s staff report at City Council. Not even halfway to its projected goal of 4,800 signups needed to break even, Fibrant, who stumbled through its “soft rollout” in November 2010, now qualifies it as a mature network. Perhaps Fibrant might be considered an “aging network” if you consider all the recycled equipment on which it blew its initial startup millions. In a burst of honesty last year Fibrant admitted some of its equipment might breakdown at any time. They attributed these breakdowns to the network’s “maturing” process. Seriously.
Fibrant continues to flounder badly. In 2012 the municipal broadband fell 600 subscribers short of its projected requirements, had 57 subscriber disconnects in December, and suffered 3 major outages that rocked the shaky network–one lasting 3 full days. In early 2013 it was discovered their general manager was only a part time employee who ran his own broadband companies in Georgia and Northern Florida as well as a consulting firm out of his home in Matthews, North Carolina. A real go getter–give him credit. A month later it was reported by the RFP that Fibrant was no longer the fastest internet service in Salisbury or Rowan County, the new super high-speed champ was TWCBC providing a Gig per second to the school system.
Time Warner Cable announced the further build up of its massive fiber optic network throughout Rowan, Salisbury, and the Charlotte region. Further TWCBC is launching a gig per second services in mid to late 2014 in the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NCNGN) in partnership with Duke, Wake Forest University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, making the cities of Raleigh, Winston, Chapel Hill, Durham, Carrboro, and Cary the North Carolina epicenters of high-speed broadband for business, education, and research. While no hope ever existed of Salisbury fulfilling it’s “visionary” dreams of becoming the Silicon Valley of the East–those hopes appear even more ludicrous now with a Gig per second broadband mecca sprouting up in those six cities. Its not hard to guess where all the internet entrepreneurs and high-tech businesses will be flocking.
Fibrant reported a paltry 2,300 hundred signups total in their city council staff report. These signups lag far behind what was originally projected. Further it was reported Fibrant’s small number of TV and phone customers fell this March which was expected due to their non competitively priced phones and TV. DirecTV, TWC, U-verse, and Dish offer far more generous TV packages and now provide aps so their subscribers can watch a large array of TV stations on their PCs, Apples, IPADs, laptops, IPHONES, and Android devices. Fibrant keeps dropping further and further behind its less expensive competition. Fibrant still dares to pimp its First Step TV package of 26 broadcast channels which anyone can get for free and in 1080p HD from an indoor digital TV antenna. And who would toss away 45 bucks a month on Fibrant’s VOIP phone when they can get their VOIP phone from Google Voice for FREE or from MagicJack Plus for peanuts a year.
According to the city, Fibrant’s phone service lost 19 phone customers from February to March and lost 6 TV customers from February to March. Not good. But at least some people are getting it that Fibrant is not a bargain.
What increases Fibrant’s bad rep is the fact it dips into Salisbury’s water and sewer reserve funds for millions and has never paid a penny back. Fibrant also dipped into neighboring county town’s water and sewer funds as well. Not exactly going to endear Salisbury with its water buying neighbors in the county. Salisbury plays an upper rung shell game. And dare we not mention that Salisbury taxpayers, utility payers, and fee payers are feeling the intense heat of Fibrant’s massive and growing 73 million dollar debt. City workers are experiencing the heat too as a growing number were let go due to this mismanaged municipal broadband.
Keep in mind that Fibrant must pay back over 3 million dollars a year in debt and interest on its certificates of participation from now until 2029. That is quite a weighty millstone around Fibrant’s neck in its impossible quest to break even. Now the city is claiming they changed their strategy of trying to sign up large amounts of customers to trying “money saving” gestures. May we call this strategy “resignation”? That final deep sigh before a death rattle? It won’t be getting any better–their dipping into the reserve funds may halted in the not too distant future by the lawmakers in Raleigh who take a dim view of shell games on the backs of taxpayers.
How might Fibrant survive its growing debt and the potential loss of shell games? My current best suggestion would be to make Fibrant into a “cooperative” like Yadtel. I’m sure this would have some appeal with the downtown “True Believers” who could join Fibrant via membership. It would be a step toward taking an immense tax burden off Salisbury’s taxpayers who either can’t afford Fibrant’s prices or who have zero interest in it because they do better elsewhere. To learn more about Yadtel’s cooperative visit their website and their “about us”: http://www.yadtel.com/yadtel_telecom/index.php
Fibrant is indeed a staggering debacle played down by local media and the city. It is not going to get better. They blew all of their certificate of participation millions by June of 2011 and now have to survive off the fumes of their general funds and any money they can scrape together from their limited subscribership. Their competition is getting better, cheaper, and faster. Back during the soft rollout Fibrant announced they would raise their already over-priced services in 2013. Hopefully they will duck out on this scheduled price rise and their non-competitive contract because both will make the road ahead more hopeless.
Some previous Fibrant articles:
http://rowanfreepress.com/2012/11/11/fibrant-meltdown-is-fibrant-tanking-after-chronic-outages/
http://rowanfreepress.com/2012/11/11/saving-big-bucks-on-internet-phones-and-tv/
Featured photo courtesy of Ingrid Taylor.
