After Dynus scandal, fiber-optics network still closed to most Butler Countians

By many accounts, Dynus’ dream was too good to be true. But some say the core idea — using the county-owned fiber-optics network to spur competition among telecom companies and bring down prices for residents — is still sound.

“(It) clearly would’ve worked and is working in other communities,” said Michael Fox, one of the network’s biggest advocates before he left the county commission in 2007. “The model that we envisioned was the county would get a cut of the revenue, and I think that model is solid,” Fox said, though he believes the $6 million-plus estimate is probably over-blown.

But Dynus was the second fiber-optics deal to go awry; building the network became a mess when the company originally contracted to do it went bust. And Fox believes Dynus turned fiber optics into a political problem, “associated with political risk and political negative.”

“Here was a wonderful vision, and (Dynus) literally may have conned Butler County residents out of a better future,” Fox said.

It’s not as though the fiber network is wasting away, county officials said. Miami University uses it every day, along with companies at Vora Technology Park and elsewhere. It has been a great tool, county officials said, for luring business with the promise of cheap, fast connectivity.

But, so far, no one has opened it up to the general public.

Commissioners Charles Furmon and Gregory Jolivette said they’re happy to entertain proposals to make that happen — as long as it doesn’t cost the county anything.

Furmon is skeptical. “If there was that much value to it, it would seem some of the other companies would be clamoring more for strands of the fiber,” he said.

“I hope that someday, when the economy comes back, it will be utilized more,” Furmon said. “It’s there in case we need it for economic development, and I think we’re sitting really well having that.”

Commission President Donald Dixon, who replaced Fox, thinks the fiber-optics network was a waste of money from day one. “I think it started off a bad idea and continually got worse,” he said. “It put the public sector in a position where it clearly should not have been.”