US Municipal Fiber Networks a "Model for failure"?

In Australia critics have seized on the failure of a municipally owned wholesale fiber to the premise network in the US as a warning that the proposed Australian NBN model could be commercially unviable. The municipal fibre network in Provo, Utah - passing some 36,000 homes - was sold to a greenfields FTTP provider, heralding the end of its life as a wholesale-only proposition. New owners Broadweave Networks intended to scrap the wholesale model to make it economic. Tim Nulty, former GM of a retail municipal fibre network in Burlington, Vermont, dismissed the wholesale fibre model "a recipe for financial failure" - noting that wholesalers often ended up having to beg service providers to participate in order to meet the debts racked up by building the networks in the first place.