On Tuesday, the Provo city council formally approved the transfer of its iProvo fiber network to Google, making the city the third metro area to gain that sweet, sweet gigabit service. Google is only paying $1 for the network, but in return it will have to provide a “basic five-megabit” connection to all residents for seven years and provide free gigabit service to 25 public institutions.

As it turns out, though, it’s as good of a deal as it might seem. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Provo Mayor John Curtis revealed Tuesday that the city now owes an additional $1.7 million to keep those fiber-optic lights on.

The city must also pay “about $500,000 to a civil engineering firm to determine exactly where the fiber optic cables are buried, a requirement by Google," the Tribune reported. "Curtis admitted that the construction company that installed the fiber cables underground did not keep records of where they buried all of them.”

Provo completed its iProvo network and made it available to all residents in 2006, but since then the city has been burdened with huge financial costs. Within two years, the city sold the network to Broadweave, which was subsequently acquired by another company called Veracity Networks. In short, the city didn't own the fiber network between 2008 and 2011, at which point ownership reverted back to the city when Veracity couldn't make enough money off it. At that time, Veracity continued to operate the network and paid more than $100,000 in monthly lease payments, which went into the city's "telecom fund."

"We don’t know—it’s a possibility that [Veracity] had moved fiber," Corey Norman, deputy mayor for Provo, told Ars. "When we did not own the network, we did not know where the fiber was. When we didn’t [own] it, there was no reason for us to spend the money to [make a fiber map.] If we’d had $500,000 sitting around at the time we would have done it, so we’re doing it now."

Not including interest, Norman estimated that the city had collected more than $2 million in the telecom fund between 2011 and the present.

Saving for a rainy day

Provo also has to pay a total of $722,000 to local contractors to upgrade existing infrastructure to be compatible with Google's fiber setup. This would include traffic lights and police and fire communications among other upgrades.

Finally, the city has the option to buy a $500,000 insurance policy to, as the Tribune reported, “mitigate any possible legal damages should Provo’s network not be presented to Google as promised.”

The deputy mayor added that the city's existing "telecom fund" should be more than enough to pay for these new costs.

"We haven’t made a plan for the remaining amount," Norman said. "We may be able to pay down some of the bond."

As we reported previously, Provo taxpayers are still on the hook to pay off the city’s $39 million bond that was used to fund the network’s construction—the city still collectively owes $3.3 million in payments in the next 12 years.