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Mea Culpa: an earlier version of this post contained a major misinterpretation of the Advocate story. In it I was working from the mistaken reading that the hearing was before the Judge....not so, as the story clearly states. The hearing was before the LPUA. My apologies for spreading my poor reading far and wide. The Advocate carries a story this morning about a new hearing slated for today in the class action lawsuit directed against LUS' fiber optic project. The LPUA has expedited pleadings on the issue at the direction of Judge Rubin. Tomorrow's stories should be interesting. Update 4:00: The Advertiser is running an brief on this hearing in preparation for a fuller story tomorrow.
The academic internet is about to be upgraded by a factor of 80....from a 10 gbs backbone to an 800 gbs one according to Sci-Tech Today. Now 10 gbs per second is pretty impressive--that is the speed of the current, famous "Abiline" research backbone so taking an 80X leap is a little breathtaking--and inspiring. Two points come to mind almost immediately: First, it's a demonstration of the oft-repeated and oft-doubted thesis that fiber optic installations are "future proof" and, second, that there are exciting ideas out there on how to use big bandwidth; exciting enough that people are dramatically improving their networks to accommodate them. Future ProofThe idea that fiber optic based networks are future proof is regularly dismissed by folks who aren't technically inclined. I've always been impressed by the fact that this claim is most often originates from the least likely source: engineers. Engineer types are seldom seen touting products, much less touting them with phrases like "future proof" that sound like marketing-speak. But the engineers are really making a fairly limited, relatively technical claim. They are not saying that network upgrades wont' be necessary, a claim that some appear to think they are making. Instead they are taking almost the opposite position: that upgrades are inevitable and that installing fiber optics now make the inevitable upgrades--whatever unpredictable form they may take in terms of specific protocols--easy and cheap compared to all alternatives. They are saying that installing the fiber-optic hardware is a one-time affair. You won't be tearing out Fiber to install some new network in order to accommodate the unforseeable specifics of inevitable upgrades. This upgrade is a good example of why they think upgrades are not an issue; they can squeeze almost two magnitudes of speed increase out a strand of fiber simply by upgrading the electronics/photonics at each end of the fiber. Metaphorically (the actuality is a little more complex) what is being done is that each fiber that formerly carried 10 gbs over light is having new electronics installed that will use 8 different wavelengths--that don't interfere with each other--to carry 10 gbs each. Said that way it's easy to see that Dense Wave Division Mulitplexing (DWDM) can make it possible to subdivide the wavelengths being used to achieve dramatic raw speed improvements coupled. The electronics to achieve that can be imbued with whatever fancy new algorithms emerge to make things more efficient. So a huge amount of new upgrade capacity is possible before you ever has to commit to the expense of running more fiber. For all practical purposes the fiber that gets pulled is all but future-proof. It's the electronics that get upgraded. Exciting IdeasMost of the Sci Tech article is devoted to how folks will use the new capacity--and that's where the fun really is. With Lafayette getting a shiny new fiber-optic system that we'll control it behooves us to think about how we'll use more capacity than most folks can dream of. That's real fun. Here's the way the Sci Tech author finds his way into the question:
Someday, we might conquer the vast distances of space and visit the stars. But right now, on this planet, we are on the verge of eliminating distance itself. And the vehicle for eliminating distance is the next generation of the medium you are now using: the Internet.
The current Net has little to impede you as you search for information...
But if you want to have a live conversation with someone standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, at night, as if they were on the other side of a clear window -- with the tower shimmering in more realistic detail than you can absorb -- you have two choices. You can either fly there right now, or you can use a PC hooked into the next-generation Internet. The article emphasizes "telepresence" applications: surgery, virtual travel, advanced cooperation between scientists, access to rare tools, and other forms of "being there." It closes with: Even when physical distance is dissolved by bandwidth, we'll likely find new reasons to get together in real space. As the New World Symphony's Shook notes: "We'll never replace live interaction in the same room with other people." But we're getting pretty close.
Telepresence is hardly the end of it...the potential for grid computing, massive multiplayer gaming, and changing our relationship to television or government is enormous. Accessing and manipulating huge data sets may one day be enable each of us does to compose personalized weather predictions keyed to our locales over the course of the day. Or to "look ahead" and help determine the best route for our daily commute dynamically. Each of us could, for the price of a cheap web connection, be our own broadcasting station. Making movies or shows might well become a home craft. A lot of things could change. By far the biggest limiting factor will be imagination.
Give it some thought: what could you do in a community where everybody had a 100 meg connection?
The AP reports Earthlink won a franchise from the New Orlean's City Council yesterday. The franchise covers the entire city. The highlight reel: Internet service provider EarthLink Inc. has won approval for a wireless Internet network in New Orleans that will be built around a free city-owned system that made its debut last fall in the wake of Hurricane Katrina....
Initially, EarthLink's system will cover about 15 square miles of the 181-square mile city, including the downtown business district and the French Quarter...
The company also said it would allow competing Wi-Fi providers to use its network for a price...
The city is not taking down its system. In addition to continuing its current operation, it will provide a dedicated network for first responders to disasters...
EarthLink said its free service would operate at up to 300 kbps and its high-speed service would be 3 1/2 times faster. Tolpegin said the free system would operate "as long as the city is rebuilding and it makes sense to offer the service." Good for New Orleans. I was really worried that the legislature's shenanigans would completely torpedo the project. What seems to be happening here is that the city's current infrastructure and free service will remain in place indefinitely. The description of where the new Earthlink network will debut is in the same area that the city's network already operates. That only makes sense if the play is to fill in the gaps in current coverage with Earthlinks new service before moving on. That, in its turn, is probably left-over from what seems to have been the earlier plan to build an integrated network. What New Orleans has sacrificed to Baton Rouge's subservience to the incumbents is ownership of the network that serves it citizens. This is no longer a partnership--it is a straight franchise deal. Earthlink is doing a good and risky thing here and I've no desire to denigrate them in any way but the truth is that in the long run the new network will now have no more allegience to the citizens of New Orleans than does Cox's or BellSouth's. The citizens will have no real handle over how it is run or who it benefits. Profit and control will flow out of the city and into the hands of absentee owners. It could have been different. For the more technically minded Sabludowsky over at Bayou Buzz also covers the deal and has a bit more detail on the network hardware--Tropos nodes and software with a Motorola "Canopy" backhaul system. Unless I'm mistaken this is pretty much the setup that the current New Orleans-owned network uses, so they ought to "mesh" well. Sadly, no one seems to have the details on the deal itself. (Does the T-P really not cover city council meetings? I find that hard to believe. But I'm not able to find the report.) Is the deal exclusive? How long does it run? In other places that Earthlink is building systems there are citizens panels and discounted service for low-income neighborhoods. Will New Orleans get any of that? Will schools be served? Will first responders be able to pull needed bandwidth in times of emergencies? Is there a public service/police element to the contract?-- That could save New Orleans a bundle. Regardless of questions: Good for New Orleans and good for Earthlink. They're both sacrificing the easy path--and what would have been the less risky path--to serve the people of New Orleans. It's sad that the incumbents, and a subservient legislature, forced them to take additional risks and sacrifice any element of community control.
My mother used to call things "kooky" when she was trying hard not to use more colorful language in front of the children. The latest developments in our legal battles are kooky, damned kooky. Both the Advertiser and the Advocate run stories attempting to make sense of the latest developments in the legal case brought by a batch of class action lawyers from Plaquimines on behalf of two mysterious clients that are supposed to be from Lafayette. Here is, if I've got it right, the list of developments: - The Lafayette Parish Utility Authority (LPUA) met and passed new rules governing the appeal of rates changes.
- Members of the LPUA expressed a desire to be shown the
extortionists plantiffs Matthew Eastin and Elizabeth Naquin; apparently some doubt exists that they exist and have standing to sue. - LPUA chair Marc Mouton calls the whole affair: "some net-dragging class-action lawsuit."
- Lawyers for Lafayette ask Judge Rubin to follow the intent of the bond law and not "suspend" a court hearing for 21 days that is required by law to be decided in 10 days. (uh...duh)
- Lawyers for Lafayette ask Judge Rubin to find that the LPUA can't rule on bond issue questions because state law defines rigid ways that involve him ruling quickly and exclusively based on that law on any matters concering bond issues.
- Lawyers from Plaquimines get around to a formal complaint against the bond issue with the LPUA.
- In the same filing where they ask for bond relief lawyers from Plaquimines ask the LPUA in to recuse itself because it is the agency responsible for making decisions about utility matters, including rate increases, and because the larger council of which the LPUA is a subset passed the laws governing, well, the LPUA. (Recuse yourself from deciding on the request we just made because you are the decision-makers. How Kooky is that?)
- Lawyers from Plaquimines also ask for the lawyers for Lafayette to recuse themselves. Because they are also lawyers for the city. Wait, won't that be the case for any lawyers that defend the city? Wouldn't that logic that make it impossible for the city to defend itself against "net-dragging" lawsuits? ...Oh! Clever boys! (Kooky? Kooky.)
I think that's most of it. Read the articles for details. I saw a show last night in which an actor said he'd never want to be a lawyer because the work was "too much like doing homework for a living." This morning I think I understand what he meant.
An editorial in the Shreveport Times urges legislators to be cautious when considering House Bill 699, the state-wide cable franchising bill. Whether it's "cable competition" or a "sweetheart deal," the legislative proposal to give BellSouth a leg up into the world of television delivery service appears to be a case where technology again outstrips both the law and the public's ability to comprehend. The author tries to balance the competing issues of technology, fairness, and concern for the future of local government income and confesses some personal confusion on these fronts. (Some of that caution is justified--remarks in the story indicate that he or she thinks that the technology involved is fiber to the home. It is not; it is a brand of DSL.) It was particularly heartening to see the poorly covered issue of lost franchise fees revenues and the importance of universal service make it into this editorial. Tinkering with the current cable TV landscape could put a cloud over the future of franchise fees paid by cable providers to local government, which is a chief reason organizations such as the Louisiana Municipal Association oppose the BellSouth bill. Local government also would lose leverage that now ensures cable operators provide service to all residents. In the end the editorialist decides to opt for caution. And this is indeed wise: the best action when you're uncertain about how to proceed is often to do nothing and see if the situation won't clarify itself. The legislature would be wise to do the same. Once AT&T is actually providing the service it now promises the issues involved and AT&T's committments to local communities will be much clearer. That will be soon enough to decide whether special legislation favoring the corporation would be useful to the people of Louisiana.
BellSouth/AT&T, Bad Actor
My previous post reported on the responses of local government to HB 699--the state-wide franchise bill. Both the Louisiana Municipal Association and the Police Jury Association have recently issued urgent alerts to their members. I was struck by the prominence of the belief that BellSouth/AT&T won't pay the franchise fees they are promising. That's a little unusual. Thinking a law is a bad one for the people you represent is one thing. Telling those people you believe the proposed law is dishonest is something entirely different. The local governments of Lousiana appears to have concluded that BellSouth, and its new master AT&T are bad actors. One of the most striking and unique features of the battle in Louisiana over this issue has been that Louisiana's local governments have clearly recognized the likelihood that AT&T (after it has bought BellSouth) will not pay franchise fees as the bill appears to promise--and regard the conciliatory phrases in the bill that indicate that the telephone company will pay fees as so much flash and noise. The corporation's real object, they clearly understand, is to prevent local government from making service for all -- and equal prices for all -- a condition of AT&T/BellSouth using community-owned rights-of-way by moving control of the rules governing the use of local property to the state level. The basis for thinking they do not intend to pay local communities a dime is clear cut: AT&T has repeatedly made clear that it considers its product an "information service." It has written a clause into HB 699 that excludes "information services" from the definition of services for which franchise fees are owed. The conclusion is pretty obvious and doesn't require an advanced degree in the law or technology--or experience in anything other than human nature. In two separate negotiating sessions over the last weeks BellSouth's representatives have pretended they did not understand the implications of the phrase "information service." That's just not credible and has to be seen as a sign of fundamental dishonesty. The FCC's definition of this phrase is what allowed the phone companies to enter the internet business and is at the heart of their current DSL broadband business. It is impossible to believe that any executive or telecom lawyer is not familiar with the phrase or the way that their DSL business is dependent on the exclusive federal control the FCC established for that category. Similarly it is just not credible that any BellSouth executive does not understand that their new product is an xDSL-based product. They MUST understand what their counterparts across the table are worried about. The refusal to deal with that legitimate concern directly, and the unfulfilled promises to get their lawyers to "look into it"and "get back" with them are fairly interpreted as deceptive. There is a cure: the phone company could acknowledge the central significance of the phrase "information service," acknowledge its belief that its IPTV service is an information service, acknowledge the role of federal definitions in exempting such service from local or state control, and then explicitly and voluntarily give up exclusion for video services delivered by "channels" in Louisiana and agree to pay for the use of local property in the same fashion that cable companies do. That's the sort of thing a corporation might do to clear up any uncertainty about whether or not it will actually pay what it is promising the people of Louisiana it will. BellSouth/AT&T has not done anything like this--and has not even been willing to acknowledge the existence of the issue in a fair and open manner. There's a very rancid taste left by all this. What the people of Louisiana need to recognize based on this (and similar dishonesties in Lafayette and New Orleans) is that BellSouth simply cannot be trusted to negotiate openly and honestly. In our everyday business dealings we understand what to do when we come across people whose self-interest overpowers their integrity. We first try and exclude them from anything for which we have responsibility. And, if that is not possible, we try and hem them in with rules and watch them like a hawk with the plain presumption that they will exploit any opening for their own benefit. Finally we try and develop alternate partners for the future. Lousiana should do the same.
Local Governments Oppose State-wide Franchise
Louisiana local governments are begining to trumpet the danger that HB 699, the state-wide cable franchise bill, presents to local communities. Alerts have been issued by both the Police Jury Association and the Louisiana Municipal Association. It's the "hot topic" on the Police Jury's current legislative report where they debunk the idea that this bill will benefit rural areas. The Police Jury also has an information page which details their objections point by pont. Of particular interest is their conviction that this law's build out prohibition is particularly bad for rural areas and the concern for the exemption from franchise fees. From the Police Jury info page:
2. HB 699 prohibits local build-out requirements.
- Without this provision, local government will not be able to ensure service to the citizens in rural, less developed areas, or poor areas.
3. HB 699 specifically exempts “information services” from franchise fees.
- AT&T/Bellsouth is litigating around the country that video programming over internet lines is "information services” which, under the bill, are not subject to franchise fees.
The Louisiana Municipal Association's most recent newsletter has yet to make it to their online archive. Here's their lead article on the franchise bill. It emphasizes even more strongly the hidden "loophole" that allows the phone companies to evade paying franchise fees:
House-Passed Telecommunications Legislation
Set for Senate Commerce Committee Next Wednesday
“A very real economic threat for municipalities, local governments”
The Senate Commerce Committee is the next stop for the LMA-opposed HB 699 by Rep. Montgomery, the “Competitive Cable Services Act.” The committee hearing will be held Wednesday, May 31. HB 699 proposes to allow providers, such as BellSouth, to enter the cable television business (with Internet Protocol Television, or digital television delivered through fiber optic service lines) in a municipality without negotiating a franchise agreement with the local governing authority or making franchise payments directly to the municipality or doing “build-outs” of services in rural areas.
On Monday, May 15, the House voted 73-26 to send this measure to the Senate. This bill poses grave concerns for LMA and local governments in Louisiana, and LMA and its allies have conducted several meetings with telecommunications and cable television providers to discuss concerns over HB 699.
The LMA, the Police Jury Association of Louisiana, and the cable television industry all oppose HB 699, which would create a loophole enabling telecommunications companies (like BellSouth and AT&T) to escape payment of franchise fees, a significant source of revenue for local governments. That loophole is created by exempting revenues from “information services” from the definition of gross revenues covered by the bill. AT&T, the company that will utilize the provisions of this legislation, has adamantly stated that its new video service is not a cable service but is an information service. By exempting information services from franchise fees, HB 699 would give AT&T sole discretion for payment of any fees to local government. What this means is that HB 699 would leave local government subject to economic threat and intimidation by the largest telecommunications company in the nation. This threat is very real and will leave local governments defenseless against AT&T/BellSouth.
A May 23 Shreveport Times editorial states that the broadband TV proposal raises issues of competitiveness fairness. According to the editorial, “Tinkering with the current cable TV landscape could put a cloud over the future of franchise fees paid by cable providers to local government, which is a chief reason organizations such as the Louisiana Municipal Association oppose the BellSouth bill. Local government also would lose leverage that now ensures cable operators provide service to all residents.” It advises lawmakers to tread carefully with HB 699, stating “They must keep an eye first on the short-term economic and governmental impact, as well as creation of a fair playing field. But they must also divine the long-term effects in making our state competitive for both entertainment consumers and industrial prospects.”
ACTION CALL: The AT&T/BellSouth alliance has a very strong and well-financed presence at the Legislature and has placed advertisements in many Louisiana newspapers urging consumers to contact their legislators in support of HB 699. The LMA and its allies believe this is an attempt to overhaul the Local Government Franchise Act, and mayors and other local elected officials should demand fair play and insist that the new video services be subject to the same franchise agreement and fee requirements that are imposed on telephone and cable services. Your presence at the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, May 31, would be a convincing demonstration of the importance of franchise fee revenues for all local governments in Louisiana, and the need for a level playing field for ALL telecommunications and cable operators in the state. If you cannot be present, please call or email your Senators immediately and urge their opposition to HB 699. The Senate switchboard is (225) 342-2040.
It's the fundamental dishonesty of presenting a bill to the legislature that will allow the company to avoid paying local governments altogether while arguing to legislators that the bill might in fact increase their revenues that is so disturbing. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that BellSouth and AT&T are dealing dishonestly and are simply not to be trusted.
LaFonta's wireless bill ( HB 1188) made it out of the House's commerce committee yesterday but was neutered to near meaningless by amendments offered by its sponsor. Gone are clauses that would have repealed the Local Government Fair Competition Act for wireless technologies which was the cause that was at the heart of the original bill. What has been substituted is a one-year extension of the right of disaster-stricken communities to run a wireless network for one year after a declared state of emergency is lifted--but only if it is free and unsupported by advertising. It extends the life of New Orleans' WiFi network. Gone with the hope to free cities from state interference, one has to assume, is the millions of dollars in investment in infrastructure that had been promised by Earthlink. (That investment, which was to fund a free, ad-supported wifi indefinitely, will not be legal.) Microsoft's promised support was to have integrated wireless capacities into its mix. That portion will no longer be worth investing in either. You have to ask yourself what high-tech companies must think of a state who refuses their attempt to provide New Orleans with free recovery infrastructure and resources in order to protect the profits of incumbents--especially when those incumbents aren't offering to do anything remotely similar to help out. There is a silver lining: The current version of the "Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act" allows a municipality to offer any service it wants to the public if the speed is restricted to 144 k--an effective ban since that speed is basically useless. The new law, if adopted unchanged, would raise the number to 512 k. That's the current speed cap on New Orlean's free network and the provision will presumably allow that network to continue to operate at that speed even after the ban is reinstated. That's a real value. For New Orleans. But only if the city can afford to support it without the fees or advertising that would have kept it from being a drain on the treasury. New Orleans may well decide to do so--chiefly because a skeleton of the network is already paid for and because large swaths of the city remain without phone service. (Ironically, expanding the current network to included underpopulated areas of the city as was recently planned will directly benefit BellSouth by lessening the pressure on it to provide its traditional services.) For other communities--the new speed is not much of a concession. 512 K is simply not a fast enough speed to justify building a new network. 512 k, even reliably provided, is slow under present conditions. It would be a waste of the public's resources to build a network with no possibility of expanding to meet the needs of the public that would be solely responsible for funding it. Even with all the reservations noted this bill, and more pointedly New Orleans, still deserves support. It's passage will allow the city to continue to serve its citizens in some fashion and in Louisiana these days we can apparently hope for little more.
Just so you know: The Advocate reports that the LPUA will meet Thursday night to approve rules for appealing LUS rate increases. On Monday, Rubin ordered the authority— which governs LUS and is made up of the five city-parish councilmen who represent mostly city districts — to decide the plaintiff’s complaint within 21 days. Rubin said he will take up the matter again once the authority has decided.
It's more than a little hard to understand what Rubin is up to here. A ruling on the merits of the extortionist's plaintiff's case has no logical connection to whether or not the bonds can be blocked. The bond question will have to be decided regardless of which way the LPUA rules and does not depend on the findings of a hearing; in addition, the delay Rubin imposes appears to ignore the clear mandates of the law that governs bond issues. It's hard not to wonder if this is one of those cases where the judge has overstepped his bounds in order to realize his personal vision of what the case should be rather than decide the case set before him. What's Lafayette's real alternative to doing as he asks? To appeal? That would delay things even more. And it would offend the judge who still has standing to hear the case. Being the one who decides what a law means gives a judge power beyond applying the law to the decision at hand. But applying the law to the case at hand is all that is supposed to be happening.
Last week's attempt to roll back the Local Government Fair Competition Act failed in committee. LaFonta is back today for another bite at the same apple. You can watch the process by logging into the House Commerce committeee hearing this morning at 9 from the link on the Legislature's front page. (An icon will appear when the stream is live--this can be as much as 10 minutes after the scheduled hour, depending on how slowly the committee is brought to order.) Last week's version was structured as an indendent law that had the effect of repealing the law in relation to wireless technologies. This week's version is set up as a straight exemption of the provisions of law in regard to wireless. Expect to see the same faces and the same arguments at the table. Oddly, BellSouth did not appear to testify against the bill, leaving Cox and the Cable guys to carry their water. BellSouth has much more immediately at stake--they offer a version of paid wifi that they'd like to substitute for real landline service for some areas of the city and Cox has no WiFi product and no visible plans for one. BellSouth's lobbyists are working the topic and BellSouth has consisitently opposed New Orleans on this issue. The most dramatic instance was when threats that it presumed were made in private were made public in the Washington Post. Granted it's all been a real PR nightmare for BellSouth, so it is understandable that they'd not want to be upfront if they could manage it. But the real question is why Cox would carry water for BellSouth. Especially at this moment when doing so frees up BellSouth's lobbying contingent to pursue a state-wide cable TV franchise bill that is aimed directly at Cox. LaFonta, the author of the repeal bill was reportedly furious at Cox and had not expected their opposition. You gotta wonder: What's the deal? You have to think that there is some horse-trading going on in the background.
Update: The Advocate also has an article on yesterday's court hearing. (It's not available from the news page so I missed it until I sat down with the physical paper and a cup of coffee.) It's a good bit more informative than the Advertiser's brief. In this instance the clearer understanding of events only leads to a bit more confusion. As far as I can tell the judge isn't fond of the fact that all either side care about is the issuance of the fiber bonds and are mostly ignoring the faux question of whether or not LUS is overcharging its owners that gives the class action lawyers their thin opening to challenge the bonds. Apparently the judge has stepped around the cases set up by both LCG and the class action suit lawyers and structured the proceedings to his own vision of what should happen next. --And what will happen next is more delay than people one either side believed would be possible based on the laws involved. Puzzeling...and frustrating. Here, from the Advertiser article, is what you need to know: In 2004, when the project first was proposed, city officials predicted LUS could offer all three services for lower rates than its competitors charged at the time. The project has yet to get off the ground. Competitors, including BellSouth and Cox Communications, have battled the city's plans in the state Legislature, before the Louisiana Public Service Commission and in court. The story, such as it is, is that Judge Rubin has told the LPUA--the governing body of LUS--to get on about the process of hearing the complaint.
This is all about trying to stop or drive up the cost of the sale of the bonds that will support the fiber build. --That bond sale is has NO logical connection to putative complaint. My guess is that this lawsuit, which began as a way to smear LUS during the fiber fight, has degenerated (if that is possible) into a pure extortion game. Eastin, Naquin and the bevy of lawyers probably want to get paid off for going away. That's not uncommon in class action lawsuits.
The Journal-Star in Lincoln, Nebraska discusses a study reporting to a state task force charged with finding a way to bring broadband to Nebraska. The study's chief conclusion is that the best way to get broadband to more of Nebraska is to allow Nebraska's public electrical utilities and municipalities to get into the business. The study points out that the private providers have had more than a decade to provide competitive services and haven't done so and that prohibiting local competitors puts Nebrasksa at a disadvantage. That involves getting rid of a law that unduely constrains public competion. Repeall!! They get it in Nebraska.
The Advertiser carries another article on BellSouth's state-wided cable franchise bill. The event prompting the story is: The battle goes behind closed doors today, when warring sides will meet privately with Sen. Ken Hollis, R-Metairie, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, who has invited the four major groups involved in the fight to a meeting to see if there is any common ground. The telephone companies are on one side; joining the cable industry in opposition are the Louisiana Municipal Association and the Louisiana Police Jury Association.
The local government group and BellSouth/AT&T tried meeting before the hearing in the House Committee as well. It didn't go well. BellSouth/AT&T was willing to compromise on a lot of issues that were not central and unwilling to compromise on things that were. The bill reported out of the House Committee was an odd creature: a bill that was extensively amended, ostensibly to please local government, that was implacably opposed by local government. The story gets the basis for local opposition at least partly right: The police juries and cities have different reasons from cable operators for opposing the telephone companies. Local governments have two major issues: They want a requirement that the telephone companies would have to build out to every possible customer within their jurisdictions, and they do not want to lose control over the rights of way as they would under the legislation. Those are the two related issues that were emphasized at the House hearings. But the Louisiana Municipal Association has also promoted two other reasons to oppose the law to its membership in a recent action alert. A third reasons to oppose the bill is that it is unnecessary--nothing stands in the way of BellSouth or any company getting a franchise now and providing competitive services. But the fourth reason is still not being talked about much publicly: BellSouth and it's purchaser AT&T who will actually be the corporation to benefit from this law has put itself in the position to pay NO franchise fees. People are uncomfortable talking about it because to bring it up is to all but accuse BellSouth of lying and its allies in the legislature of being dupes. Southern delicacy aside, for the people of this state, this is will be the big issue downstream. The gist of this matter--and the line of questioning that reporters and legislators should pursue--is whether AT&T/BellSouth: 1) Believes that its IPTV service (Project Lightspeed) is an information service? AT&T has repeatedly made the claim that it is. 2) Ask if it is true that the Federal government, in the guise of the FCC has forbidden any regulation of information services and forbidden local governments from, in any way--including franchise fees or buildout requirements--from having any influence over information services. (If they try and give you any guff on this ask if AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre didn't claim as recently as two weeks ago in Detroit that IPTV was not subject to franchise rules because it wasn't "cable TV.") 3) Has AT&T/BellSouth ever paid a franchise fee anywhere based on it having served its IPTV cable TV "information service" to any community? 4) Whether the answer is no (as I believe it is) or yes:What obligates AT&T to pay Louisiana franchise fees given that the current bill explicitly exempts income from information services from franchise fees? Is there any legal mechanism by which BellSouth could be compelled to pay its franchise fees if its own definition of its IPTV services holds up in court? (At this point there will be fluff about a term in the bill called "video services" that is supposed to cover IPTV. Pay no attention. Stay focused on "information services," federal regulations, the FCC's exclusionary rules and the letter of the proposed law.) 5) For good measure ask: "Has AT&T ever, in any locale, no matter how densely populated or potentially profitable, ever been willing to compromise on its position that it is unwilling to offer its new cable-like services to the whole community in order to use the community's property? When you get the answer "NO" --or more likely some mealy-mouthed hedge--ask: "Is avoiding build-out requirements the real point of this law? --Is AT&T/BellSouth willing to say anything in regard to fees, or other non-buildout franchise issues (since it has no plan to comply with them) in order to secure a state-wide exemption from the legal consequences of local property rights?" (Ok, number 5 is a rhetorical question. Ask it anyway. Sometimes we learn from the way people evade answering questions.) John Hill appears to be the only reporter in the state that is covering BellSouth's state-wide cable franchise bill. That's extremely unfortunate. It ought to be a huge story and, even in this post-Hurricane milieu, we ought to be having a vigorous public debate. This is one of those issues for which reporters exist: they ought to be educating the public. If I am correct, and I really think I am, the consequenes of passing this law will be enormous in every town and city in the state when AT&T decides it is not obligated to pay local governments a penny. (At 3%--2% below the more common 5% maximum--cable franchise fees are a quarter of Lafayette's budget. New Orleans gets 5 million dollars.) Any reporter that is on top of it will have a career-making set of stories to write. As citizens we all have an obligation to contact our Senators and drive home the risk they will be taking if they approve this law. Call, write, and complain. Let you Senator know that a vote against Ellington's bill, SB 386 is what you expect. Contact your Senator ( find your Senator)
Dreaming Dept.Here's a Sunday think project..play with CosmoPod, a free, remote desktop with a batch of nifty programs installed. At heart it's a Linux remote desktop. As far as I can tell it consists of the remote desktop and apps, both located on a server, and a downloaded client to let you access "your" desktop. (KDE.news has a short interview with the devoloper that will fill you in on more details if you'd like them.) The downloaded client is a small cross-platform java app hooks you up to the online desktop regardless of your own computer's OS. Play with it a bit. Devote a little time to thinking about how you could use this to improve your life--and how a community could use the same technology to make itself a better place to live. The technology behind all this is apparently not too exotic in the Linux world and the designer of this website looks to be cobbling together readily-available, for-free pieces to achieve the effect. Whether it works well or poorly right now the question it raises is profound: Do you really need to have your own computer?
Really--the ultimate in low-cost computing is having NO computer. Do you want to travel light-weight and are still trying to get you laptop bag under five pounds? How 'bout no pounds? Interested in bridging the digital divide? There's nothing like non-existent to beat even free. Really don't like viruses--and even worse being afraid of viruses--messing up your machine. If you don't have a machine it's not your problem. Hate having to upgrade your software just to keep on being able to exchange documents with those who upgraded last week? Let somebody else worry about ensuring interoperability. Store everything on the web. Apps, docs, everything. Access it all from whatever is to hand. Why not? Well I, for one, can think of a number of reasons. But most of them have to do with how I live with technology--and I'm not a typical user, either. With that caveat, here's what I think would be really nifty: an environment where your basic apps and your important storage was both online and offline and kept synched up automatically. Different users could choose their own points on the continuum of use. Some wouldn't own their own machine and would use public ones or friend's machines to access their secure account. Their essential data and apps would reside online and, at some cost in convenience and accessibility they could have access to a complete computer environment for free or very close to that. Other users would work out sharing arrangements--with family or roommates typically--and store some material online and some off, depending on available connectivity and personal preference. Others still would use their online account mostly for backup and "emergency" use, keeping essential or 'active' docs backed up automatically. This class of user might only logon to use some "exotic" application that they don't use often and can't justify owning. Such a setup could be marginally useful today--as CosmoPod seems to be. (Yes, everyone complains about the name.) To make the user-experience better you need raw speed, low-latency, storage capacity, and perhaps most importantly: ubiquity. The speedier the connection the more you can do with it. A speed that would be enough for writing letters wouldn't be anything like good enough to drive photoshop manipulations to the local screen. Everything is better with more speed. Related to speed is "low latency" which leads to things that applications are consistently and smoothly responsive--not slow sometimes and fast others. That's best accomplished (IMHO) by simply having the server local so that data doesn't have to hop all over the web in fragments to get to you. You also would need a lot of local on-network storage for documents. Ubiquity is more subtle and harder to accomplish. The ideal network service would be available whenever and wherever the user was and on whatever device he or she was using. Cell phones, wireless laptops, PDA's, desktops, next generation iPod's--whatever the device a person ought to be able to get to and alter the material in their account. Unless it was always available, even if in constrained ways, people wouldn't be able to make the transition to trusting enough for most folks to change their behaviors. If something like this were available reliably enough I might quit my habit of carrying my laptop almost everywhere "just in case" I need it. Long-time readers might be suspicious that I'm about to point out that Lafayette would be the ideal place to try this out. Such readers would be right. With 1oo meg or faster insystem bandwidth every local user could have access to vastly beefed up version of the functionality of CosmoPod. With a wireless component integrated into the system the potential for making access truly ubiquitous in the city and available over the net from Breaux Bridge or Bangkok would be exciting. All the technical prerequisite are available or could easily be made available here. But with the big portals like Yahoo or Google already drifting in this direction and with Web 2.o apps popping up all over its probably not all that apparent that it needs to be local. Frankly I'm not sure that it does need to be local. But I do suspect that it ought to be. It's easy to be generous locally. Lafayette have bandwidth to burn internally--the incremental costs in terms of infrastructure would be limited to funding the server farm that drives it. A local version could be integrated into LUS telecom services more broadly. Your voice mail, calendar, video recording schedule, email, and much more could be easily accessed from this desktop. Local neighborhoods, schools, and churches could have calendars. Local neighborhood watches, the police, and events like Festival International and could have alerts. You could subscribe to any calendar or set up any alert to notify you directly. Catastrophic public safety alerts could go out on all "channels." The possibilities go on and on--and would do much enhance any community. The digital divide committee, way back when the fiber optic network was first being discussed, suggested a "super ISP" or portal that would leverage the speed and capacity of a locally owned fiber network to make computing inexpensive and to enhance the community. A few short years has made available technologies available that have transformed what was then vague and visionary into something that a determined cadre of tech types could snap together out of available parts. To repeat, the developer of CosmoPod appears to have done nothing more than bring together readily available parts, come up with a name and some graphics, and put ads down one side of the page in order to pay for it all. The model that is emerging for such services when they are stand-alone commercial services is to pay for the free version with advertising and to make the more capable version/s available for a monthly fee. It remains to be seen whether this model will fly. But Lafayette need not be tied to the commercial model. The major portals like Yahoo and Google who are doing a version of this are not paying for them directly and there is no "super" version. These services are so cheap to deploy that the Portals are using them as loss leaders; as enhancements that build traffic. That's smart business and getting people to put their valued content into Google or Yahoo's mail or calendar program is arguably the smartest and cheapest way to build the value that is needed to keep folks coming around and making the companies money by their presence. LUS could do a very similar thing to enhance the value of its upcoming product. Following Google it could offer a good, clean set of online apps and capacities. With its promised 100 megs of internal bandwidth to all users it has already moved past the biggest barrier to a robust setup: the differing speed of users and the very limited speed of some. By reducing the price people have to pay to get a full computing experience and by building a strong community-based ISP/Portal/Web Applications nexus that exploits its bandwidth advantage it could build a services strategy that its competitors simply could not match. Those services could be offered at an additional cost to LUS that would be trivial in comparison to the additional members the services would draw. Like any new entrant LUS will have to distinguish its product from the established ones and highlight its advantages. It's hard to think of anything more appropriate for a publicly-owned utility to do than to leverage its advantages to lower the costs of entry and to enhance the community in which it operates. We're going to have something unique here. The key to its success it to take advantage of its unique capacities to build value for those who are once its owners and consumers: the citizens of Lafayette. Update 12:10 5/22/06-- I followed my own advice and played with CosmoPod thing this evening. I'm impressed! It's a real desktop environment. You're able to load open office, email, browsing, datebooks, calendars, etc. --the whole range of productivity tools in very sophisticated forms. There's games and creative tools available as well. Anyone using this would have basic equity with folks using windows or mac office products and a buncha other "personal" type apps as well. (Cookbooks, photo organizers and the like.) It's not a "cheap" or less capable version of a "real" computer. It is, instead, the real thing. Arguably, it's more capable than most folk's "default" computers that they use with the apps provided by the manufacturer. And it is free--and could be free and even more capable if we'd do something similar locally. It is the final link in the digital divide conumdrum--with hardware costs dropping like a rock and already into the commodity range for new machines a person could have the capacity to runs such a system off a fast local network for very little. And once in wouldn't have to update their local machine very often since all the real work would be done on the net. A second big cost is connectivity. That gets to be more than the machine costs very quickly. LUS as a public utility will take a big bite out of those ongoing connectivity costs--giving folks more for less. The last great barrier is the cost (and for many the hassle) of getting useful apps going and keeping them usefully updated. A remote desktop system like CosmoPod's could kill that cost as well. The costs of real participation could be driven into the ground. And should be.
As municipalities in Louisiana fight to merely be allowed to build free wireless networks other states "get it" and are actually encouraging municipalities to get into the provision of wireless and other broadband networks. According to an AP story: Georgia communities interested in establishing wireless, broadband networks can apply for state funding to help. and Separately, a state program is providing $5 million to rural communities seeking to establish any kind of broadband networks. Now be aware that both Cox and BellSouth are headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Apparently the state of Georgia doesn't think that private corporations alone are going to be sufficient to meet the needs of the people. During her election campaign Governor Blanco promised to bring broadband to the whole state--but all we got was an industry-dominated broadband commission that, no surprise, has not been able to find much to do. If she really intends to do something she'll have to stand up to the industry as Georgia's Governor Perdue has apparently done. As a start she could back repealing laws that prevent local people from building their own networks using their own resources. Georgia is actually doing something other than waiting around for others to act; we ought to do the same References:Georgia grants for wireless communitiesGeorgia grants for all broadband
New Orleans is apparently in the midst of final negotiations on a vague but tantalizingly described deal with Microsoft. From the outset it ought to be said that holding a press conference without your putative partners in order to announce a deal you've not yet signed off on is a bit unusual--and suspicious. There are at least two reasons for rushing the announcement. The most obvious is to give Nagin something to brag about in the last two days of the mayoral campaign. The less obvious reason is to metaphorically line up Microsoft with Earthlink as partners in a rebuilding plan that involves "free" or minimal cost contributions to new infrastructure that are dependent on New Orleans' free, public, wireless network. New Orleans has to be hopeful that it can get the state to repeal the part of the law that prevents it from taking full advantage of such largesse. --Another bill concerning a legislative exemption for wireless networks is currently scheduled to be heard on Monday (the first didn't make it out of committee.) From the Times Picayune story: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Thursday announced a "new partnership" with computer giant Microsoft Corp. that he said will make public education, public safety and city finances more efficient by using Windows-based software developed for other cities around the country.
The part that is most likely to be interesting to folks outside of New Orleans is the digital divide and educational aspects of the partnership. Nagin and his chief technology officer, Greg Meffert, said that part of the aim of the program is to close the 'digital divide' that separates rich and poor in New Orleans. The new technology, the mayor said, would be available to low-income families, who he said would pay $100 or less for a personal computer. They would access the Internet for free on a wireless wi-fi network the city is building.
As for the $100 computers, the mayor said such machines already exist. But Meffert noted that they're not available "off the shelf." Officials did not explain how low-income residents will be able to purchase one. We've confronted a number of these issues in Lafayette--it's not nearly as easy as it might seem. As far as $100 dollar PC goes it seems that Meffert and Nagin are conflating two projects that aren't compatible. Microsoft's version of a digital divide computer would cost more than $100 dollars while a version of a laptop from an MIT-backed consortium has a target price of about $100 but is committed to a Linux OS. ( One story) Gates has been heard muttering darkly about it not being a capable enough computer and software stability. MIT's Negraponte has fired back about proprietary software. There are also the dark horses. One set is network "thin clients" from the likes of Sun (recall the flurry about Sun during the referendum) or Linux-based computers with similar functionality (I've even thought Linux-based cable settop boxes could stand in for network-centric clients). Groups in both India and Brazil have put together low cost machines--the Indian one runs on a chip intended for cellphones. Long story short: A $100 per seat computer suitable for distribution and subsequent use over New Orleans is not yet available; the most likely candidate is MIT's laptop but Microsoft wouldn't be part of that deal. It'll be interesting to see how this story plays out. Stay tuned.
An Advocate article this morning carries a brief review of the legal filings made in preparation for Monday's hearings the Naquin-Eastin class action lawsuit. The lawsuit is another in a series of lawsuits that seek to stand in the way of Lafayette issuing bonds in support of LUS' fiber to the home project. Regardless of pretext preventing the bonds sale has been the central element in all these lawsuits. With luck we'll see a favorable decision on Lafayette's arguments and the suit will be dismissed around June 1. I think I'll light a candle come Monday. 2theadvocate.com | News | Lafayette wants LUS suit dismissed
AT&T is speaking plainly in Michigan and we will be making an enormous mistake if we don't listen here in Louisiana. BellSouth is currently ramming a state-wide franchise bill through the Lousiana legislature. It is doing so by issuing promises that it cannot keep and which its new owner, AT&T does not intend to keep. No less than Ed Whitacre, AT&T CEO, told the nation plainly Monday that he doesn't think he has to pay franchise fees regardless of what laws states and communities pass. Here is what he said in Detroit: If Michigan doesn't pass a new law, AT&T may begin delivering TV service anyway, Whitacre said after his speech, noting that Internet-based TV is not cable TV and therefore existing regulations don't apply.
'Could we just come in and do it? Sure,' he said. 'We're still contemplating that. But we'd rather work within the system. We hope to make friends.' So he doesn't have to sign state--or national--franchises; he can do what he wants to do. The laws don't apply to his company. He's only agreeing to hand over to locals 5% off the top of his gross because he's being nice and wants to make friends. I don't believe that. I don't think anyone who watched the telecos manipulate the 1996 telecom act to neuter and then eliminate competition from CLECs like EATel  does either. They're not in it for nice. Whitacre is the last monopolist. He's in it for control; for empire; to recreate, quite literally, the old AT&T monopoly. In Michigan they are zeroing in on what Whitacre really wants--and it is not about being thought of well: If bills pending in the Michigan legislature pass, AT&T and other cable providers would be able to get a statewide franchise that lets them decide which neighborhoods to serve. AT&T has told investors it plans to serve 90 percent of what it calls "high-value" customers and 5 percent of "low-value" customers. Municipal officials fear that means low-income areas will be bypassed and that cable companies eventually will stop serving unprofitable neighborhoods. Existing local franchise agreements require Comcast Corp. and other providers to offer their services to everyone in a community.
Municipal officials don't just "fear" their communities will be abused in this way. They know they being taken for ride--municipal officials across the country belong to national organizations and actually talk to each other. They know that AT&T brooks no compromise with local communities. They are hearing from their colleagues that AT&T is suing where locals assert that their laws apply and is being sued where they ignore local ordinances. In every venue what AT&T has refused to compromise on is what is called "build out requirements," local requirements that would force them to serve all of the people of the community if they want to use the public's rights of way. AT&T fully intends to keep its promises to its investors and it can't do that unless it runs over local resistance. AT&T intends to use any law it gets from the states to exempt it from having to follow local rules to serve all and to serve all at the same price. That's what it's all about. It doesn't matter a whit what outgoing BellSouth lobbyists and executives claim. Their AT&T overlords have spoken clearly. The boys from BellSouth have been claiming in conference calls to local leaders, in committee hearings, and when they eat lunch with legislators is that the franchise bill they are pushing is merely a convenience for them. They are dangling a huge pot of money in front of people and suggest that they'll serve almost everyone with shiny new systems. It's just not true and their AT&T overlords are willing to say so: Whitacre himself says they don't have to get anyone's permission. AT&T promises their investors that they'll offer service to 90% of "high value" customers and only 5% of its "low value." Low value customers spend $110 a month and less on telecom. What percentage of Louisiana's users spends that much? We need to stop listening to the BS puppets. Whitacre is telling us plainly: they'll be no money and they'll be no huge buildout. Not in Michigan and certainly not in much poorer Louisiana. We're being told clearly and plainly. We need to listen up. And we need to tell our legislature to junk this bill. This bill has already cleared the house. Contact your Senator ( find your Senator) and let them know that you expect them to do the right thing here and preserve the local franchise.
A letter to the editor that I submitted about three weeks ago popped up in the Advertiser today. Back then (so long ago!) there were several active repeal bills in the legislature and Sharon Kleinpeter had had published a pretty seriously misleading letter that attempted to discredit LUS and present the (un)Fair Competition Act as, well, fair. She was ostensibly responding to an editorial by Terry Huval that focused on disaster preparedness and the potential for using "go zone" money available in the wake of the storms to build modern communications systems. (An editorial in support of repeal by the Advertiser, which presented a target that couldn't be portrayed as self-interested, was conveniently ignored.) All that context has gotten forbiddingly distant. At the time I posted an fuller objection to Kleinpeter's letter that included my sources for claims I made about the accuracy of the letter. Here is today's letter reworked to include similar references. New Cox is the same as the old Cox
In a recent letter, Sharon Kleinpeter, a Cox official in Baton Rouge, sings a song that sounds like the old Cox. That Cox, you may recall all too well, raised Lafayette's rates 49 percent between 2000 and 2004, commissioned misleading push-polls, sponsored a dishonest 'academic forum' that misled the public, dismissed the competence of Lafayette officials and sneered at our desire to have a state-of-the-art telecommunications network.
We've not seen any new price increases since LUS' plan was announced, and most of the Cox officials who tried to scare us are now gone. This new letter, however, reawakens that old distrust.
Kleinpeter's letter tries to convince us that repealing the (un)Fair Competition Act that has been used to block the fiber optic utility we approved last July would leave us open to 'cross-subsidization' problems that beset Bristol, Va. The trouble, as Ms. Kleinpeter knows or should know, is that Bristol was cleared of cross-subsidization charges a year ago. The electricity rate increases she tries to scare us with came about because an unusually good long-term contract with its electricity supplier expired. The increase merely brought Bristol's rates up to the regional average and was unrelated to telecommunications. The truth is easy to find in Bristol's local newspaper.
Cox should to stop trying to block repeal of a law that serves their interests - but not those of our community - and try building a relationship with Lafayette based on trust, not deception.
I still think Cox would be smarter to quit trying to impose special disadvantages on Lafayette and simply compete. The "poor pitiful me" routine doesn't work when the purveyor is obviously one of the biggest bullies on the block.
The Advocate carries the odd story, splashed across the front page of its Acadiana section this morning, that retells the tale one Steve Pellessier told the Concerned Citizens for Good Government yesterday. Pellessier wants Lafayette to sell off LUS to pay for current shortfalls in road funding. Thank heaven that at least some folks have a classical education. Joey Durel responded humorously but basically dismissively to the suggestion by saying that do so would be like getting "rid of the goose that laid the golden egg." The idea of selling off a consistent money-maker, to the tune of 17.2 million and a quarter of the city-parish budget each year, for a one-shot, quick fix play to meet the parish's road needs following Katrina & Rita is plain foolish. It has to be one of the purest examples of the lessons of Aesop's fable concerning "the destructiveness of greed, the virtue of patience." First, historically LUS has had lower prices than its private competitors (the current rough equity is unusual) and Pellessier appears to know that. Citizens would end up paying twice: once in the form of 25% higher taxes--the money has to come from somewhere--and once in the form of higher utility bills. Second, and this point appears to have very discretely not been raised considering the current divisiveness of the issue in the council, it would be a sale of city assets to benefit almost solely suburban needs and the downstream cost of more expensive electricity would be borne solely by city residents as well. Politically this should be a major nonstarter. The current push to dissolve the city-parish form of government is mostly based on formless resentment. Any movement in this direct would give that movement a basis in real injustice and a real constituency. Beyond the foolishness of the idea of killing the goose you've got the fact that this goose is fertile. The goose in the fable is obviously sterile--it lays golden eggs but those eggs don't hatch. It is unique. LUS however is incubating another goose that promises to lay even larger golden eggs. The mere threat of an LUS Telecom network has kept Cox from raising prices. The reality of a cheaper, more capable alternative will save us all a bundle off our monthly bills. Beyond the cost savings we should all be aware that the income to the city-parish coffers should be substantial. That 17.2 million LUS gives us comes chiefly from electricity...a low-margin utility. The money coming into the coffers from the Telecom division will mostly be from high-margin cable industry competition. How much do you spend on electricity? How much do you spend on cable, internet, and phone service? Think about it... If there is anything that's more foolish than killing the goose that laid the golden egg it's killing one that has offspring that also lay golden eggs. Though the Advocate story doesn't mention it Pellessier, in a recent letter, did say that LUS could keep its recently voted-in telecom division. That's a crock and Pellessier, an opponent of the LUS plan, should know it. Much of what makes the telecom unit economic--and the main reason more cities are not in a position to make the same decision Lafayette has--is that Lafayette already owns and operates the necessary infrastructure in poles and maintenance crews in order to service its electrical division. It is hard not to suspect that a suggestion this off the mark isn't motivated in some part by left over resentments from having lost that fight. You'd think a "Certified Commercial Investment Member" -- someone who specializes in commercial real estate investments--would understand that trading a growing revenue-producing asset for a one-shot wasting asset is always a bad idea. Don Bertrand makes the point more succinctly: Don Bertrand said he's glad to have a discussion about how to fund roads, but that LUS is the city's best asset. Bertrand said there are other options to raise funding without giving up a revenue-producing entity like LUS. "When we're done, we'll have roads, but roads don't produce money," Bertrand said. Labels: Advocate, BestOf, Fiber fight, Lafayette, Local, LUS, Opposition
Franchise Bill Passes in House
Correction 6/5/05: A reader email alerts me to an error in this article: Trahan voted for the bill, not against it as I originally reported in the summary table below. I must have misread the officially tally that I'd linked to in the paragraph above. My bad. (Strikethroughs denote the original mistake and red text the corrections.) The state-wide franchise bill backed by BellSouth moved through the bowels of the House today. (You may correctly assume I think this bill s__t. Insert appropriate scatological jokes here.) This is the same bill that strips localities of their property rights in regards to Telecom (and only telecom) companies. Local governments ability to make contracts that serve the interests of local citizens based on their ownership of local rights of way would be usurped by and handed over to corporations. The most immediate effect will be to exempt AT&T/BellSouth from the current rules that require that cable service be offered to all in a community by any corporation that leases their property. AT&T has been insisting that it won't pay a dime in franchise fees, and doesn't have to pay attention to local desires about how its land is used and what is placed on that land. In some places it has sued to forbid local governments from exerting their property rights and in others it has been sued for ignoring them. In all cases it is clear that AT&T believes it has no obligation to pay franchise fees. This will have a huge impact on local income. Lafayette gets $900,000 a year and New Orleans got $5,000,000. That's based on cable income. Every dollar BS takes from Cox will mean another dollar in taxes that someone in those cities has to pay. There has seldom been so raw an example of our state representatives selling out the interests of localities to boost the profit margin of one of the world's largest corporations. Their mothers would be ashamed. The bill passed 73 to 26. If you like to see a list of the heels and heroes visit the page detailing the final vote. If your representative is a heel you really ought to let him or her know. Here's how Lafayette's reps did. Even up. That sad showing is twice as good as the state average. I expect that's pretty much a product of Lafayette's first hand experience with the untrustworthy nature of BS. No better than the state's average and that's a real shame.Pinac, who represents the sliver of Lafayette that includes Duson was particulary embarrasing though. As the chair of the committee he has used his leadership role to pretty consistently help the telecos out on several bills. Maybe the mayor of Duson should give him a call. though. As the chair of the committee he has used his leadership role to pretty consistently help the telecos out on several bills. Maybe the mayor of Duson should give him a call.
Found in the " notes" to both wireless bills being considered today in the House Commerce Committee: The Lafayette City-Parish Government is also studying the feasibility of providing a wireless Internet system for public access. A representative of the Lafayette Utilities Systems told us that capital costs for a typical wireless system could be $110, 000 to $140, 000 per square mile, depending on density and geography of the covered area. Operation and maintenance costs could be 25% to 40% of the capital costs per year. These Fiscal Notes are from the office of the legislative auditor and serve to inform legislators about the fiscal impact of proposed laws. The analyst says these bills will have no impact on state government and will only impact local governments if they choose to build wireless networks. It's good to see this a bit more out in the open (though responding to the legislative auditor's questions don't really constitute public discussion). It's also gratifying to see that LUS is studying the possibility in useful detail. According to Wikipedia the city of Lafayette covers about 47.7 square miles. Working with the figures LUS gave the auditor the cost to provide Lafayette with a wireless system would work out to between $5,247,000 and $6,678,000. That's roughly between 4% and 5% of the $125,000,000 planned investment in our fiber-optic network. (But with a substantial continuing cost.) That's been the cost estimate bandied about on Lafayette Pro Fiber for awhile. It would be a great thing to go ahead and build out a wireless net concurrently with and integrated into the fiber-optic network. LUS would achieve some economies by combining the two operations. But more important would be the integration of the two networks. Since we began the odyssey toward a publicly owned telecom network the "holy grail" of a triple play of cable TV, telephony, and internet has expanded and has become a "quadruple play" with the inclusion of wireless data/cellular services. Such a package is in the works by both AT&T/Bellsouth and Cox. A strong, high bandwidth wireless system would allow LUS to offer its own, tightly integrated, powerful counterpoint. Such a network could, by building on the ubiquitous LUS fiber backbone provide much more bandwidth than is being contemplated in any other wide-area wireless network. The difference would be as striking as the difference between the fiber-optic based system and older technologies. High bandwidth wireless would support wireless VOIP and a partnership with a cellular company would provide roaming capacities outside the local network. By offering such a product LUS could again leapfrog its competition and provide its citizen/customers services that would be unrivaled in capacity. There'd be a raft of associated benefits--the possibility of a free (or very low cost) low bandwidth tier could be an effective way to address the digital divide (and make visitors and tourists remember us fondly). Full available bandwidth could be a part of, or a cheap add-on to standard bundles--and could be so inexpensive as to make that addition an easy decision. This is the sort of bold move that has always marked Lafayette; Let's go for it. (And let's all hope for a quick resolution of the current lawsuits.)
I try and point to something fairly thoughtful and, usually, upbeat on Sundays in the hope that people will find something interesting to reflect upon on the day many of us devote to rest. Today that's Feld's " Outsourcing Big Brother" which qualifies on the thoughtful if not upbeat dimension. (I've been chewing over a wild idea that is at the intersection of geeky and social and, if I get it formed up before obligations of the day you might get that to chew on too.) Most of us have a pretty upbeat sense that the internet is a technology that promotes freedom. Feld agrees and celebrates that aspect. At the same time: It is the paradox of our time that just as new technologies offer unlimited possibilities for freedom of speech, government “deregulation” creates new bottlenecks. It is a race between the new technologies for freedom and what I call “censorship by outsourcing.” While Feld's thesis might appear to be derived from this week's headlines this essay is actually almost a year old and sounded its warning before the recent revelations of collusion between big government and big corporations made this topic the day's hot ticket. What seems most worth thinking about is Feld's contention that some forms of "deregulation" that we usually think of as fostering freedom collide with free speech rights on the internet. The tension between frees speech and corporate ownership of media is nothing new--we even have a hackneyed saw about it: "Freedom of the press belongs to those that own it." In this instance the worry is that deregulation is actually in the service of concentrating ownership (not the usual intent) and that the resulting huge corporataion (Like SBC/AT&T/BellSouth/?) have a vested interest in pleasing and sustaining the regulators at the federal level on whom they depend for their very existence. The thought that deregulation leads to corporate consolodation and a general loss of freedom is an idea that seems counterintuitive on the surface but looks pretty credible if you look at the actual dynamics of this particular case. So, if you're interested in a little dark reflection on what is an overcast day here in Lafayette, take a look. Oh, what the hey...Here's a teaser: ...[The internet's] nirvana of free speech did not arise spontaneously out of nature, or even as the result of technological determinism. The internet grew out of two important principles. The first was “common carriage,” the idea that the provider of the essential service (here, the phone lines that carried the original dial-up internet) must make that service available to everyone at the same rate and cannot interfere with anyone using the service. Mark Cooper has called this principle of common carriage “essential to the DNA of capitalism.” Historically, we have applied it to inns and tolls, so that goods could move freely. We applied it again to railroads, then public utilities like electricity and phones. This prevented the entity that controlled transport of goods or information from using control of this essential facility to extort monopoly prices or favor one type of goods or services over another.
The second principle was the right to interconnect. If I run a communications network, I have a right under US law to interconnect with any other communications network. This allows networks to compete. Without this principle, a rival network could never have a chance. The competing network would refuse to connect, and the few customers on the new network would not be able to reach the majority of people on the other network. (Economists call this phenomenom a “network effect.”)
The internet arose from this universe of common carriage and interconnection. It placed control of content and services in the hands of the people at the edges of the network, rather than under the control of the network operator.
But the FCC has eliminated both of these requirements...
From a CNet story dealing with the fallout from recent revelations involving the NSA and phone records. Without further comment. Emphasis mine. A CNET News.com survey published in February asked telecommunications carriers whether they 'turned over information or opened up their networks to the NSA without being compelled by law.' Neither Verizon nor AT&T would answer yes or no to that question.
But BellSouth did answer in the negative at the time. A BellSouth representative on Thursday said he could not explain the discrepancy, and provided News.com with a statement saying: 'BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority.' The statement did not elaborate on what 'proper legal authority' might be, and whether it would encompass a mere request from the White House.
BayouBuzz's Steve Sabludowsky posted a story yesterday that is worth pointing to here. In a story titled "Louisiana Faces Most Important Issue In Legislative Session On Monday" he makes the case that Monday's house commerce committee vote on freeing wireless communications from the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act is the most important piece of legislation this season. That's a pretty dramatic claim but he makes a good case.
The immediate issue is emergency preparedness--the Fair Competition Act prevents cities from using city resources to build public networks that are used to provide services directly to the public--whether free, paid, or emergency-based. New Orleans is evading the law by ignoring it during the "emergency"-- a dicey move at best and strictly time-limited. The city would like to continue to offer free wifi service to its beleaguered residents but BellSouth and Cox are standing in the way of a partial repeal.
New Orleans' need is critical but the need across Louisiana and especially south Louisiana is chronic as Sabludowsky documents. We simply don't have a decent emergency communications network in place. Neither does the rest of the country as 9-11 demonstrated but in our case the need is utterly predictable. There will be another hurricane, and another, and another. We need to be free to take care of our own. No emergency service is profitable and the incumbents are NOT going to do this for us. We have to do it for ourselves and we have to be allowed to defray the cost however we please--after all it is our resources and we bear the costs both monetary and social. The state should stand out of our way--as they stood out of our way before the incumbents had this odious law passed.
I can add this personal note: I worked at the Cajundome after Katrina and Rita and modern telecommunications, when they came back up, were immeasurably valuable in the immediate aftermath of the storms. Part of what Lafayette Coming Together did at that time was put in VOIP phones, a WiFi node, and a computer lab with an internet connection. Members helped rework the dome's network infrastructure to handle new traffic and stabilize the existing framework. All this was not as visible as other relief efforts but without them the Cajundome would have worked much more poorly and the evacuees would have had a much more difficult time locating resources. Communications is absolutely crucial.
Sabludowsky asks:
Is there any more important issue on the Legislative agenda than saving lives, saving parishes and saving our state? He's right.
The article closes with this plea.
Here are the members of the House Commerce committee. They must know you want the best protection possible. http://house.louisiana.gov/H-Reps/Cmte_CO.asp
Please contact them now. Please attend the hearing on Monday. The lives we save, might be our own and if we fail to set up every means to communicate when we have had a year to do so, Lord help us because Congress won't. Please forward this column to your friends and business associates. For the record, I am not being paid by anyone for writing this. I have written this column because I truly believe this is the only way to save Louisiana and Plaquesmines, St. Tammany, Orleans, Jefferson, Cameron, St. Bernard and other parishes in the direct path of the storm.
He's right about all that too...please let your legislators know that the people are watching and that they care whether or not their representatives allow local people to do for local people with the state stepping in to forbid it because a couple of contribution-wielding corporations wants to protect what they imagine to be "their" future profits.
It's our state.
A brief article about appears in the Advertiser this morning covering the death of C. C. Hargis, the former utility director of LUS. Hargis led LUS during a period when many public electrical utilities were allowed to wither and eventually be sold to private providers. He didn't allow that to happen the organization for which he was given responsibility. LUS last year returned 17.2 million dollars to the city-parish treasury. It is an extremely successful company which keeps Lafayette's money in Lafayette and sells electricty on the open market at a profit that benefits the local community. Old-timers, like Hargis, believe that Lafayette's having control of its own electrical system, and its ability to retain that wealth locally over many years, was one reason Lafayette's became the dominant city in the region. Being willing to go their own way, to start, and to repeatedly decide to refurbish and rebuild a utility is one of the clearest indications of how the citizens of Lafayette have always made their own decisions and gone their own way. That spirit of independence and willingness to strike out on their own path served the community well. Success builds on success. The planned fiber-optic network this site is so concerned with would not be a practical alternative had the local electrical utility not been healthy and well-supported by the community. Hargis supported LUS' broadband plan and proponents of the project talked of his support with humor and respect. One of the nicer things about living in a place like Lafayette that you can see the difference that single people who are determined to do the right thing can make. Hargis is one of those whose life yielded great benefits to his community; it is a testemant to the ways in which people can make a difference in the lives of their neighbors. He earned the honored place in our history that he will occupy.
Another chapter in the scandal about spying on us all has unfolded in a headlined USAToday story that has Congress in a justified uproar. BellSouth and AT&T are deep in the middle of this one too. USAToday reports on the latest aspect: The phone companies have sold our phone records to the federal government. All our phone records. Every call. Who to. Who from. Where to. Where from....everything is now sitting in federal databases. BellSouth, AT&T, and Verizon simply sold it to them. Neither you nor I nor the local police nor anyone at the state, nor even Federal prosecutors hunting Mafia Dons could purchase those records. They are not supposed to be purchasable. They are not supposed to be available to anyone without a court order. This is flat-out illegal. That the phone companies made a tidy profit off it makes it all the more disgusting. Understand clearly that this is corruption. And it illustrates how corruption always gets a toehold. It is the same story as the one that explains how policemen become bag men for criminals. One side entices the other side into a "little" illegal activity. Both sides now have something on the other--the policeman knows things that are dangerous to the crooks and the crooks know the policeman is on the take. A little mutual blackmail ensues and the pay-off and the level of illegality on both sides gets pushed up. In this case the National Security Agency seduces (most of) the phone companies into illegal but supposedly reliably hidden activity. Both sides engage for a while in their little bit of mutually profitable corruption. If the NSA want just a little more, more records, to record a few suspicious phone calls "on the side," just to "test" the search algorithms how can the Bells resist? If the phone companies want a little regulatory relief, if the want to keep the competition from snooping into their records or monitoring their networks for violations of contractual agreements can they count on the national security apparatus to run a blocking action for them with regulators. You know they can. The game is fundamentally corrupting. UPDATE: Dana Blankenhorn asks if this corrupt pattern has already played out. That's well worth considering. And this wholesale invasion of privacy not the end of it. Not nearly. You can count on it. I've insisted for awhile ( 1, 2) that the technology involved in "monitoring" IP networks of necessity involves sifting through all the data. Earlier installments of this scandal have involved the administration telling us they were not really spying on Americans without a warrant, and then taking the fallback that if they were it was only on our overseas calls. Then we heard from an AT&T technician involved in installing the black rooms that they were setting up the capacity to spy on us all--that technician's point was similar to my own: that's just they way spying of packet-based architectures have to be done. Each packet has to be examined to know what is in it. Now we get this new story that phone company records are being illegally sold to the same shadowy agency that we understand was engaging in warrantless wiretapping. It's the connection between the the illegal records sales and the warrantless wiretapping that constitutes the next big scandal... Understand that these records are like a huge index of voice-based video traffic hashed on time and person. There's a lot that's not included in IP packets--if you "wiretap" an IP stream you don't get all the data you might want about the person or the actual endpoints of calls for instance. --How deep this issue goes I'm not sure...anyone who understands VOIP routing headers better than I is invited to comment.-- I do know that rerouting VOIP calls is standard practice, that's how you can get a call addressed to one person or number locally rerouted to your traveling number. That info would not be in the header but scattered around in various servers. But by using the big carrier's records and correlating that with what you pull from the IP stream you could reconstruct the whole call and all the relevant data about endpoints. The whole enchilada. Of course, if past behavior is any indication the big brother/phone company consortium won't own up to this. They'll substitute partially valid arguments about "traffic monitoring" and the value of monitoring chatter and understanding "al Queda's" social network. But the hidden nut of all this goes back to the technician who is confident that what he helped AT&T install for the NSA is a system capable of secretly wiretapping all Americans. Just tapping the IP stream is not enough...nor is buy phone company index data. But mash those together and put some real computing horsepower and a lot of storage into it and you could effortlessly spy on any citizen you wanted to. All it would take would be the willingness to ignore a little thing called law. The Silver LiningIn all the dispiriting muck there are two real gems: Leslie Cauley, who broke the story, and Qwest, the fourth Bell--the one that didn't go along and wasn't for sale. You should remember Leslie Cauley's name and read what she puts under her byline. It took a rare combination, tech savvy, and political astuteness to know that there had to be a story to dig up. It took courage to decide to keep digging and doggedness to see it through. Plus, she can write. Of course, she'd already proven her savvy about the intersection of tech and politics..Cauley was the reporter who did the story "Bells dig in to dominate high-speed Internet realm" that focused national attention on Lafayette's fight for fiber. Qwest is due kudos as well. Qwest is the smallest of the giant baby Bells and often dismissed as financially struggling. Much of its territory is in the relatively sparsely settled west and it struggles financially. But Qwest has significant overseas lines and a strong national backbone--which BellSouth for instance does not. Qwest, under the leadership of two CEOs demonstrated that it had a corporate culture that respected its customers' more than it desired the money offered it or feared the loss of federal business the administration suggested might be the consequence of refusing an illegal request. Qwest has some of its long-haul fiber in Lafayette. There's now additional reason for LUS to drop AT&T as a supplier... and a very good reason to pick up Qwest. Between an LUS first mile and a Qwest backhaul contract we could get a least a little shelter from those who'd run roughshod over our liberty for a few bucks and a cozy relationship with the regulators. Good for Leslie, Good for Qwest. ---Bad on all those other jerks. Lagniappe: For fun-- a Whitacre/Suess mashup in poem
An Advocate story this morning points to yet another lawsuit filed by the class-action lawyers out of Plaquemine. This one demands Lafayette construct rules for rate complaints so they can get about their business of contesting rate increases years ago by blocking the current sale of LUS' fiber optic bonds. (They've constructed some tenuous connection there--a connection that, apparently, does not apply to any of the other sets of bonds LUS is in the process of selling. Sounds suspicious? It does to me, too.) This is the same meddlesome bunch that filed a lawsuit prior to the referendum that tried ( and failed) to convince various and sundry courts to hear their case and allow them to paw through LUS' records. Class action lawsuits have often been used as fishing expeditions through corporate records--something of which Cox and BellSouth are painfully aware. Turning the tactic against a local public utility was a new twist in this tale. When the original lawsuit was filed it was pretty clearly part of the incumbent's efforts to drum up public FUD about LUS' in lieu of tax payments. That bit of propaganda gained no traction with the voters. That lawsuit was an obvious legal clone of BellSouth's suit de jure recast in the form of a class action lawsuit. The legal similarity was so striking that Judge Ware dismissed the case because he understood that BellSouth had already lost the same argument in Conque's court. The current lawsuit does the same thing that the lawsuit that BellSouth and Cox let die as part of their deal with LUS/LCG: it seeks to block the sale of the bonds that would allow LUS to begin building the system the people of Lafayette voted for last July 16th. The Eastin-Naquin class action lawsuits have always been creatures of BellSouth and, LUS/LCG's "deal" not withstanding, this one is too. Make no mistake, BellSouth and perhaps Cox are behind this baby and it's new offspring. If the incumbents actually believed they could effectively compete they would. This endless round of lawsuits and lawsuits to support the lawsuits is evidence that they fear the idea LUS represents--and don't care what the people of Lafayette think of them.
A reader points me to a recent blog entry on ZDNet that asks whether AT&T's Whitacre is playing politics when it announces that it will be serving 5.5 million low income households with Lightspeed, its IPTV/data project. (Thanks, reader!) Lightspeed is what any new phone company upgrade in Lafayette will be called after AT&T acquires BellSouth. Of course AT&T's playing politics. The ZDNet reporter does the first thing that is necessary to interpret a teleco's public pronouncments: he asks how the company thinks it will benefit from what it is saying rather than simply repeating their carefully crafted words. Articles in the last few days have uncritically reported Whitacre's remarks before a group in Detroit without putting the remarks into any context which might make them meaningful. There's both state and local contexts which should be taken into account. First, AT&T is funding a huge battle in Michigan to put in a state-wide video franchising law similar to the one it is pushing Louisiana. In Michigan the Michigan Municipal League (MML) has fought back vigorously, staging events and developing coalitions over the last several months. Muncipalities representing over 60% of Michigan's population have passed resolutions condemning the law and AT&T has responded with platoons of lawyers and local advertising. The issue in Michigan is the same as in Louisiana--resisting the state taking of local property and outrage at the clause which would allow AT&T to serve only the wealthiest parts of the community. AT&T is being given a painful and damaging black eye in the state as MML hammers home the point that AT&T has promised its investors that it will only offer the service to 5% of "Low Value" customers while it will offer it to 95% of "High Value" ones. "Low value" has been defined as those spending less that $110 dollars a month on communications services. A close look at AT&T's own numbers show that it only plans to serve about 52.5% of its current customer base with the new service. Nobody in rust-belt Michigan, or depressed Cleveland misses the point--places with contracting economies, neighborhoods that are not wealthy, and rural areas with their low population density are being written off. AT&T is not going to waste their time with those guys and it wants to make sure that local governments don't make serving local communities an all or nothing proposition as current franchise agreements require. So Whitacre is not just playing politics; he is doing damage control. It has also got personal in Michigan. The Michigan Municipal League has demanded that Whitacre himself tell Michigan communities why he is not responding to their requests for competition and staged an embarrassing event to coincide with the Whitacre's speech to highlight their positions. A press release from the MML reported that: As Whitacre spoke, a 10-foot-tall, 20-foot-wide mobile billboard circled outside The Masonic Temple in Detroit with the message "AT&T: Why won't you call us back? -- Michigan's communities." To read the mainstream press's account of the speech you'd think that nothing was going on in Michigan -- or outside the doors of the club where the speech was held -- that could have promted Whitacre's concilatory remarks. But that's not nearly all. Whitacre's AT&T is also being hammered on the national level by Rep. Dingell of Michigan who painfully forced Whitacre to respond in writing to the charge that AT&T has no intention of actually entering into franchise agreements--and forced the company to restate their belief that their new project Lightspeed is an information service which by federal mandate is not subject to state law. (So why ask for a franchise bill at all? For the same reason that such bills are being driven through legislatures by the Bells across the country: to make sure that local municipalities don't force them, as they currently force the cable companies, to serve all the people of the community in order to get permission to run their lines through the public's property.) Whitacre would also love to placate Michigan's Dingell, if that is possible. Saying the right thing in Michigan right now is actually important. Is Whitacre playing politics? Of course he is playing politics. In Michigan and in Lousiaina...and in South Carolina, and in Illinois, and in the halls of Congress. That's what the phone companies do. (As I get ready to post this I've run across an article that expresses similar sentiments on Broadband Reports. Bove's doubts are more historical than mine and an interesting contrast.)
Montgomery's franchise bill is scheduled to come before the house tomorrow. Whether it will actually come up is something known only to the gods of legislature. But this is one bill which should not pass: Under the heading of " 5. House Bills on Third Reading and Final Passage" we find: | HB699 | MONTGOMERY | COMMERCE - Creates the Competitive Cable and Video Services Act |
Letting this bill become law will be a disaster for this state and particularly for its local communities. Take a look at the yesterday's analysis for an elaboration of why it will be a disaster--and for what you can do about it.
John Hill had a brief bit in the Advertiser this morning on the approval by the House Commerce Committee of BellSouth's state-wide franchise bill. It pretty much continues what I feel is a mischaracterization of the immediate battle ( as I said in response to an earlier story) in that it pitches the battle as one between BellSouth and Cox. But it is the local communities' ox who is getting gored as the state usurps local property rights in order to give BellSouth/AT&T what it most desires: freedom from the obligation to serve the whole community in return for using the rights-of-way that are owned by the people. Hill does not, in fact, repeat any of the arguments of the Louisiana Municipal Association or the Police Juries--both of whom emphasized local control and the injustice of forbidding local municipalities to continue their practice of requiring the whole community be served. Similarly absent was mention of amendments offered by the local governments which would have given BellSouth/AT&T what they claimed they wanted: fast, hassle-free granting of a franchise and a "level playing field." The local's solution: they'd back a law gauranteeing a 60 day turn around with no negotiations and a mere exchange of two letters if BellSouth would adopt the same franchise so arduously negotiated with the cable companies. What could be more fair? BellSouth, however, was uninterested--but the committee was not. The suggestions were made an amendments by Rep. Frist and quickly gained healthy support even though most of the members had not see them prior to the hearing: it went down by a vote of only 11 to 7 and the chair, Pinac, and the bill's sponsor were both clearly upset by how quickly the alternative gained support. A little more thorough preparation by local government might well have killed the bill then and and there. The story closes with a few inaccuracies. It says: Mike Stagg of Lafayette, an independent information technology consultant, said BellSouth, which will merge with AT&T in six months, warned that there could be a loss of franchise fees to local governments. In amendments adopted by the committee, Bell agreed to pay local governments the same rate of franchise fees that are now being paid by cable operators under their franchise agreements.
In fact Mike, in the fieriest testimony of the day did not say that "there could be a loss of franchise fees." He said there would be. More emphatically he said that local governments would never see a penny from AT&T since AT&T is emphatic that its service is not a cable service and is not franchiseable under Federal law and regulation. The key definition here is the definition of a cable service as being "one-way" in federal regulations. In John Hill's own recent story BellSouth representatives are emphatic that their IPTV service is "two-way." Softening this claim most likely means that Hill has been talking to BellSouth/AT&T or simply can't believe such an outrageous bait and switch can be underway. He'd be well served to google up AT&T's recent lawsuits --in the last couple of weeks!--in California and in Illinois where they are claiming exemptions from franchises on EXACTLY the basis that their service is not "one-way" and not a cable service but an information service. The characterization of their service as not like a cable service because it is "two-way" was made most recently in Hill's previous story on the issue.
And, just to set the record straight: BellSouth came in offering the same percentage of franchise fees that local governments had already. That did not change with the amendments. They did include a few more things (pretty minor) in the list of those things that made up the base for the rate. Again, this seems discomforting evidence that Hill is taking too seriously the way BellSouth reps are characterizing the bill and its consequences. Lagniappe: Just keeping score: Representative Trahan of Lafayette voted with BellSouth on this bill. Trahan has been a bit of a weak reed on the Lafayette delegation in regards to telecom issues since they first started to blow up and this issue was no exception. This bill will damage his constituents should it pass. Some representatives will be able to claim ignorance when this law sucks revenue out of local communities but any Lafayette rep should have been attending closely enough to what has happened in the city to understand that BellSouth's motives are questionable.
"Noble" Ellington, the man who introduced the Local Government Fair Comptetion Act for the incumbent telecom providers will be sheparding a new bill for them this year. It amounts to a "repeal" of the Act for private corporations only. Public property could be used, and the risks of public indebtedness may be freely taken on by local governments--if and only if its new property were to be used for services offered by private, profit-making enterprises. (Is this the free enterprise ethic these guys touted during Lafayette's referendum...it really doesn't sound familiar.) Due to be heard in the Senate Commerce Committee, it's an ammendment to the (un)Fair Act, the second proposed by the corporations since that bill became law. Like the first ammendment this one is meant to "fix" a portion of that (un)Fair Competition Act that wasn't working out to the advantage of BellSouth and Cox. There's the old story and the new story, but it' s the same song. You can see the ugliness by streaming video by clicking through the Senate Commerce Committee's link on the legislative front page at 9:30 this morning. It's a bit down the published agenda but might be moved up... Old Story:The first time BellSouth and Cox returned to the well was with the infamous Broome Bill, which tried to fine Lafayette to the tune of 900, 000 dollars a year if the city actually had the nerve to build a fiber optic network of its own. ( Read all about it.) The issue then was that BellSouth and Cox had only belatedly realized that taxes they'd had imposed on LUS would not have the intended effect of driving up prices for LUS customers ( which purpose is central to the law) since LUS was already paying more in "in lieu of tax"--which they could count against the new taxes BS and Cox thought they'd imposed. Oh oh..no competitive advantage. Whoopsiee. So they tried another way: they'd void Cox's contract and make LUS pay the monies that contract said they owed the city-parish for 10 years. Really. You can't make this level of arrogance up. A firestorm of protest from Lafayette and municipalities state-wide beat back the worst portions of the bill and an embarassed Broome backed off much of the bill. BellSouth and Cox had to settle for tacking a new referendum requirement onto the bill. New Story:This year the issue is a little different...then it was about stopping municipalities from getting into "their" business in any way. This year they've realized that they earlier cut off their nose to spite their face. They put such heavy restrictions on municipalities that they would never be able to take advantage of Louisiana cities--and that was never the point. Let me explain: the original bill contained no exceptions for "public-private" partnerships. In fact it contained a raft of hedges against using private companies as cover for public ownership of the infrastructure. Times change. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Earthlink, Google and others are rushing into "public-private" ownership structures of various sorts with municipalities like Philadelphia and San Francisco all across the nation. It's starting to look like their competition will help fund municipal networks. At the same time they lost in Lafayette and are faced with a purely public competitor there whose network will be vastly superior to both BellSouth and Cox's. Public-private cooperation suddenly doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Half a pie is better than being cut out of the deal altogther. BellSouth, for sure, has a long history of using public monies to build its networks and then extracting monopoly rents. It may have forgotten that lesson for awhile. Similarly Cox and the cable companies have a lot of experience in "partnerships" with communities that essentially lead to monopolies for cable. It too may have had a little senior moment. BellSouth and Cox have both made wistful remarks about offering to "help" New Orleans with it WiFi network. Surely they meant they wished they were the ones inside the exclusive deal New Orleans appears to be cutting with Earthlink. However, under their own law that would be illegal. But it would be just too obvious to "repeal" the portions of their law that were suddenly inconvient while they had an offer on the table. So, having read the tea leaves a little better BS and Cox are seeking to repeal the parts of their law that would keep them from joining into entering into exclusive deals with local governments to exclude their fellow private "free marketers." Irony, apparently, knows no bounds. The new law would make such public-private partnerships exempt from the draconian restrictions of the Local Government Fair Competiton Act; making it almost impossible for local governments to go it alone without "sharing" their resources with companies that would use public property to profit off the owners of that property. Here's my guess: this "little" change passes with very little debate. BellSouth and Cox use its passage to beat back New Orleans' attempt at limited repeal of the (un)Fair acts wireless provisions, saying there is no longer any reason that New Orleans can't take Earthlink up on their offer--or accept deals that they, together or seperately propose. Earthlink has already indicated it doesn't want to invest 10-15 million in an investment that is dependent on a struggling New Orleans adminstration winning a referendum vote while BellSouth and Cox are waging a public relations war against it. If I were Earthlink I'd back off my very generous offer which leaves ownership of the free, ad-supported network in the hands of New Orleans. Suddenly, like white knights come to the rescue one or both of the incumbents come forward and offer to take over (emphasis on take) the current network and provide the public with a "reasonably" priced network that would, by dent of the (un)Fair Competition Acts restrictions, never be powerful enought to compete with their own offering by supporting VOIP or streaming video. WiFi remains a neutered technology in Louisiana and a publicly developed network's resources are turned into a nice, if minor, revenue stream for the incumbent/s. BellSouth and Cox must be very happy that Lafayette's bills that would have repealed the act entirely aren't on the table while they go back to repeal the portions they don't care for. It's the same song:Old story or new, its all the same song: The Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act is a vehicle for the incumbents to work state law to their advantage. The legislature has time and again rolled over to these corporations in the same way that has proven embarrassing to the state for generations--most recently with the House Commerce Committee's vote to send BellSouth's state-wide video franchise to floor over the strenuous objection of both the cable industry, the Louisiana Municipal Assocition and the Louisiana Police Juries Association. The Local Government Fair Competition Act must be repealed. (It doesn't have to be this way. We could stand up to these guys and make our own decisions about what is best for our local communities. Today's story on how quickly even huge energy corporations fold when the state stands up to them should be a lesson. ATT/BellSouth is going to build its network in Louisiana whether or not we hand them extra profit, public resources, and shut out local governments. The only question is how much we are going to let them take us for.)
If you want to know how to defeat the BellSouth/AT&T you need look no further than Florida. A bill which breezed through the Florida house with little opposition wasn't able to get reported out of committee in the Senate. The bill's "author" ...attributed the failure of the bill to grassroots lobbying by the cable industry, with local system managers visiting senators, known to be undecided, when they returned to their districts; all-out opposition from local and county officials and groups like the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and cable’s anti-bill advertising. BellSouth can be beat. A coalition of cable, vocal opposition from local officials, and opposition from the state's black and rural caucuses should do it. Building that coalition and holding it together will be the trick. Interested?
Despite the combined efforts of the cable industry, the police jurors, and local municipalities BellSouth prevailed today in the house commerce committee. A heavily amended state-wide franchise bill passed by a vote of, I believe, 13 to 9 13 to 5. While it had been reported that Montgomery's bill, HB 699, was to be considered this morning it didn't appear on the agenda until a few moments before the committee convened. 699 was quickly moved to the first slot of the day and testimony on it lasted most of the morning. New Orleans' wireless bills, which had been on the agenda were withdrawn from consideration, presumably to make way for the last-minute appearance of the franchise bill. The session, which should show up in the house archives, was worth watching. In a nutshell: BellSouth and Montgomery said it was all about faster competition and getting a better price for the little guys. Cox said it was about unfair competition. The locals said it was all about stripping local communities of their rights. The most interesting speakers were near the end and Mike Stagg, a writer on this site, laid out the ugly truth is that this law is destined to be a huge ripoff that leaves local communities without promised income or control of their own property. I'm very interested in following up on the "new" bill. A huge set of bills were offered and accepted with little comment by Montgomery, BellSouth's front man on the bill. They were all said to be amendments put forward to convince local governments to back off the bill. That didn't work and local governments remain adamantly opposed, so the new shape of the bill will likely call for a review. Tune in.
AT&T's Contempt for Louisiana is Showing
BellSouth is working a scam in the Louisiana Legislature on behalf of its once and future owner, AT&T. It centers on bills (HB 699 and SB 386) that purport to bring cable competition into Louisiana via a statewide video franchise. There are huge problems with the bills, not the least of which deal with the state giving away local rights of way and relieving the largest telecommunications company in America (AT&T) of any obligation to buildout its network to entire communities (not just, say, gated neighborhoods). These are real and legitimate problems that local government leaders from across the state recognize and which AT&T (through its surrogate BellSouth) has refused to 'compromise' on. But, AT&T's contempt for our state comes screaming through in that portion of HB 699 (the first try to get this franchise thing done) that deals with the definition of gross revenues. The bill ostensibly would create a mechanism for collecting and distributing proceeds from a five percent state video franchise fee. The gross revenues section (page 3, line 21) defines the term by enumerating exceptions. The key section is actually starts on page 4, line 4: 4 (g) Any revenues from services provided over the cable system that are not
5 classified as cable services including without limitation revenue received from
6 telecommunications services, information services, Internet access services,
7 advertising services, and home shopping services. (emphasis added).
There are the critical words: information services. Anyone who has followed telecommunications since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 knows that information services are a separate and distinct class of service which have been the source of intense litigation and rule making by cable and telephone companies during that time. Essentially, the Federal Communications Commission has ruled that providers of information services are exempt from some of the network regulations that apply to telecommunications service providers. It was the classification of cable modem services as an information service which gave cable companies the right to shut independent Internet service providers (ISPs) from their networks. Last year, the FCC classified telephone companies digital subscriber lines (DSL) to be an information service, thus giving phone companies the right to shut out competitors from their DSL-ready networks. The information services category is particularly relevant to these Louisiana bills because of the type of service AT&T/BellSouth propose to roll out in this and the other 21 states in their soon-to-be combined market. AT&T is rolling out something called Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) which, the company argues, is a two-way communications system and is, in fact, an information service. How do we know this? We know this through the lawsuits that AT&T has filed against communities in Illinois, California and Michigan that have tried to collect a cable franchise fee from the company when it tried to introduce its new IPTV service. AT&T, in court filings, claims that IPTV is not subject to franchise fees because it is an information service. BellSouth, in meetings with Legislators and with local government leaders, has offered to scrap the entire state regulatory regime and it has offered what it claims to be a compromise on the issue of whether IPTV is a cable or "video" service. BellSouth has offered to allow both cable and "video" services to be covered by the new franchise law. This is no compromise at all, but a deliberate attempt to deceive Legislators, local leaders and the public about the true nature of this legislation. I can find no more suitable word for it than contempt. Why do I believe it exhibits contempt? Because BellSouth was an active participant in the FCC rule making process that resulted in DSL being classified as an information service. Video service has nothing to do with information service. By insisting that revenues from information services be exempted from the new video franchise regime, BellSouth is setting the stage for two things: 1) for local governments to lose local franchise fee revenue on every customer AT&T (which will actually be the company to deploy the service) IPTV wins; and 2) AT&T will have the legal standing to refuse to pay ANY franchise fees anywhere in Louisiana based on the language in this bill which exempts revenue from information services from the statewide video franchise regime. BellSouth's legal staff and lobbyists are insisting on this information service exemption from gross revenues knowing full well the implications it will have on local governments, yet still they push the phony compromise of including video services under the franchise piece. It is contemptuous because BellSouth's lobbyists and lawyers know full well AT&T's intentions and that it will be AT&T (not BellSouth) that moves to take advantage of the new act should it become law. How do we know this? We know this because BellSouth insisted that Lafayette and LUS not oppose the AT&T/BellSouth merger as a condition for BellSouth dropping its most recent lawsuit against the LUS fiber project. Getting this merger approved quickly is a top priority of both AT&T and BellSouth. The sooner that merger is approved, the sooner AT&T will be officially calling the telecom shots in this state. It will be AT&T that moves to deploy IPTV in Louisiana, not BellSouth. And, AT&T insists this is an information service that is not subject to franchise agreements. BellSouth knows this but continues to try to deceive the Legislature and the public. Their contempt for Louisiana does not end there. Another layer of contempt grows out of the fact that BellSouth's lobbying team is putting on their best "good ole boy" front on this cynical transfer of wealth from communities to AT&T. That is, by having BellSouth's well known fleet of lobbyists argue for these bills, it has the effect of masking the magnitude of the changes that would result from passage of this legislation. Hey, would ole George, or Tommy or Danny try to screw us? Well, they might well be watering hole buddies of a number of legislators, but they are also trying to either save their jobs by producing for their new masters, or they're trying to go out on the high note of victory -- regardless of the impact of this legislation on the state or its communities. Profoundly cynical. But, their contempt does not end there. The company has members appointed by the Governor to the Broadband Council, the body whose task it is to bridge the digital divide in this state. Yet here are representatives of that same company (in fact, the same people!) arguing that the Legislature should authorize AT&T and other companies to make the digital divide permanent by relieving them of the responsibility of bringing their new networks and services to every resident of every community they want to serve. That's right! Members of the Broadband Council arguing for the right to make the digital divide in Louisiana permanent! They want legislative approval to leave rural communities on the far side of the digital divide. They want legislative approval to leave poor and middle class neighborhoods in any community on the far side of the digital divide. AT&T's contempt for Louisiana is matched only by the cynicism behind the efforts of BellSouth's lobbyists and attorney's to somehow convince legislators, the public and the Governor that these bills (which serve only the interests of AT&T) are good for Louisiana. These bills are anti-Louisiana bills. They are anti-rural Louisiana. They are anti-urban Louisiana. They are anti-local government. Representative Montgomery and Senator Ellington should be ashamed of themselves for doing the bidding of AT&T with these bills.
Update: The wireless bills were not heard today after all. Instead the franchise bill appeared on the calendar right at 9:00 and was heard first. It passed out of committee by a vote of 13 to 9 if I heard my jerky video stream correctly. --------------- Two wireless bills sponsored by LaFonta of New Orleans are going to be heard today in the house commerce committe hearing today that starts at 9:00. The agenda shows them somewhere in the middle of day's business. These bills, HB 1174 and HB 1188 would allow Louisiana's local governments to build wireless networks which would be illegal under the regime established by Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act. That act, BellSouth and Cox's response Lafayette's fiber plan, had the draconian and perhaps unanticipated effect of making it illegal for New Orleans to use its wireless security network to provide free wifi access to its citizens in the post-Katrina era. New Orleans went ahead and did it anyway, despite continued opposition from BellSouth, but it can only continue to do so as long as a state of emergency stays in place.
That (un)Fair competiton act is bad legislation all around and Lafayette was leading a fight for its repeal when it cut a deal to withdraw its bills in return for BellSouth and Cox withdrawing a lawsuit that would have further blocked the city issueing bonds to support the fiber plan ratified by last July's referendum.
With Lafayette's bills gone New Orleans has moved on more limited bills which would exempt all wireless networks from the restrictions of the (un) Fair Act.
New Orleans deserves support--particularly from Lafayette residents who both understand what its like to have the big boys breathing down your neck while you try to do the right thing. People statewide need to understand that New Orleans difficulties are only the needed excuse to strike this portion of a bad law that limits the rights of citizens in Louisiana to do what other communities across the country are doing right now.
Wireless municipal networks are spreading like wildfire with cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco adopting city-wide plans. Louisiana does not want to be shut out. Earthlink, who has promised 10-15 million dollars in new investment to expand New Orleans system, is a major player in many of these plans and has proposed an extraordinarily generous system for New Orleans--if its planned system can be made legal. For the legislature to pass laws that destroy the possibility of such investment is revealed as the height of foolishness in the wake of last years hurricanes.
Louisiana does not need its legislature to continue to rubber-stamp the desires of a handful of out of state telecom corporations whose self-interest is unrestrained by an sense of fair play or decency in the wake of Katrina.
If you'd like to see how this hearing goes you can watch it on streaming video--this is real reality TV. You can link to video stream a few minutes before nine from the legislative front page. If you can catch the first few minutes of the session the when changes to the agenda are being announced you'll have a better sense of when the fun parts will start.
BellSouth's Bait and Switch: The Franchise Bill
In a recent post I promised a review of the Bait and Switch that BellSouth (soon to be AT&T) is attempting to pull on Louisiana. It's a story that takes a bit to unfold. You need to know what it is that Bellsouth is trying to sell to the public and the communities (the bait) and something of what it is really up to before you get to the final quick switcheroo. The story BellSouth tells:
BellSouth tells a very attactive story about this bill. They tell us (and legislators not in on the game) that it is all about enabling them to compete on an level playing field with cable companies, who they imply, are engaged in a subtle collusion with local governments to exclude their competition. They are simply asking for a little relief and are willing to pay local governments for the use of their property. Voting for the bill is supposed to be a vote for competition and cable and local objections are only sour grapes. You are intended to visualize BellSouth as riding to the rescue on a white horse. However, there is a more complicated story in which it is pretty hard to see BellSouth as wearing the white hat.
A fuller story: Bellsouth, in pursuit of competitive advantage over the cable companies in the coming war over video and broadband customers is trying to enlist the state legislature to create a special competitive advantage for its new cable services. They'd like to be able to compete with the cable companies only in the most profitable neighborhoods. BellSouth/AT&T want high-value, highly profitable, cable customers. None of those low-value cheapo basic cable types. Trouble is, local governments won't write a contract to allow BellSouth to use publicly-owned rights of way property--without which they can't offer cable services--without including a provision that requires the phone company to offer the same service at the same price to everyone in town. Cable companies have all signed such franchise agreements and are contractually obligated to equitable service: they have to offer the service to all and to offer it for the same price throughout the local community. Were BellSouth to receive such a gift from the state legislature it would not only be in a position to reap unusually high profits by competing only in the "sweet spots" in a town (aka the richer, newer neighborhoods) it would also force the cable companies to either forgo competing for their best cusotmers or offer the same low prices to its whole, mostly less proftiable, customer base in the community. BellSouth would reap a higher profit from each of its customers than cable would--and could use that disparity to drive cable out the "best" areas. If that sounds unfair and bloodthirsty rest assured that it is. It uses the power of the state to put its only real competitor at a major disadvantage. All that stands in their way is the local governments which own the property to which they must have access. (Well they could try negotiating a separate contract with each landowner to pass over their property but, however much juicy new business that would mean for Louisiana's landmen, rest assured that telecom companies know they have always gotten a better deal from local governments.) Since local governments stubbornly refuse to compromise away their franchise's "build out" requirements ithat all citzens be served equally local governments need to be eliminated from the equation. They need to get the state to forbid local governments from making such frustratingly equitable requirements. That beneath all the stage dressing is what HB 699 and SB 386 would do. (The specific clause lies at §1363, Prohibition against build-out requirements) Local governments are simply in the way and the local property rights of the communities is at risk because of it. Rest assured that were BellSouth suggesting that private individual's property rights could be redefined by state law to prevent owners from writing contracts that BellSouth didn't like they'd be faced with a firestorm of opposition about "expropriation" and legal "takings." The principle is no different. Ok, that's the background for the story...So far it's a pretty straightforward story of misrepresenting your purposes in an attempt to get what you want. Anyone with children (or who's been a child) knows the tale. But the next step in the story is a good bit uglier, it is what parents call a lie: making a promise that you have every intention of not keeping. BellSouth is promising local communities something it has no intention of delivering. Communities are supposed to get a new revenue stream; they're being promised that they won't lose vital income that is crucial to keeping the sidewalks repaired. But BellSouth/AT&T has no intention of paying them a cent. We're all being played for fools. BellSouth's Bait and Switch
Let's trace out the sneaky logic of the HB 699: 1) In one place the bill would exempt any “certificate holder” from build out requirements that municipalities typically use to ensure that all citizens are offered service. 2) Elsewhere the bill provides that non-cable service providers who offer video services that are not covered in the act may become a “certificate holder” and that doing so does not make them a cable service provider. (Start paying attention now, the curve ball is coming.) 3) Federal law and HB 699 share the same definition of cable services, in particular, cable services are said to be “one-way systems." (Be patient.) 4) AT&T (which is buying BellSouth) has always held that its IPTV video system is not a cable system, in part because it is “two way.” It tells the feds that when they ask and they even tell local reporter John Hill that their service is not cable because their service is two-way. (Can you see it coming?) 5) BellSouth's proposed law defines the gross revenues franchise fees are based on in terms of “cable services.” So only "cable services" will owe any franchise fees. (Here it comes) 6) BellSouth doesn't intend to offer any of those old "one-way" cable services. It is going to offer its snazzy new "two-way" IPTV instead. BellSouth does owe anyone anything. (Bam!) 7) But thats not all...reach back to #1 on this list: even if it's not offering a cable service BellSouth can have a "certificate" that will exempt it from build-out requirements. (Home Run! BellSouthAT&T strips local communities of their right to control their own property and doesn't even have to pay for them anything for using it.) Tbat is a real switcheroo.
John Hill, Gannett political writer, runs a story on the front page of the Advertiser this morning that paints the upcoming set of bills being introduced by Montgomery in the Louisiana House and Ellington in the Senate as a three-cornered debate between BellSouth, the cable companies, and local governments. Here's how he characterizes the situation: South Central Bell wants to offer on-demand digital television services statewide without having to negotiate individual franchise agreements with governments. Louisiana's cable television operators - the big ones are Cox and Time-Warner - are fighting a bill that would allow South Central Bell that freedom...
Now, aside from the fact that BellSouth hasn't been known as South Central Bell in decades, that intro sets the conflict up as a classic battle between huge corporations. The story goes on to endorse the claim that the fundamental issue is competition: whether BellSouth will be allowed to facilitate its competition with Cox, Time Warner and others by gaining the right to an easy, fast state-wide franchise. Based on that framing the story goes on to give brief position statements by each of the two corporations and a final bit by local government officials concerned about the loss of their authority. Trouble is, as someone who has been reporting on the legislature for long enough to recall the time that the dominant political player in the state legislature was called "South Central Bell" instead of BellSouth ought to recognize, that's not the most accurate way to frame the story. The story needs to start from the presumption that BellSouth is playing for advantage on its best field: the legislature. Here's what needs to be the starting points for analysis: 1) There is absolutely nothing stopping BellSouth/AT&T from competing with the cable companies right now. 2) BellSouth has more influence in the state legislature than any other corporation.
3) BellSouth, aka South Central Bell, has always used the state legislature and the Public Service Commission to enhance its profit margin. (The most notable recent example being the now infamous anti-Lafayette law, the "Local Government Fair Competition Act.") Once you understand that background clearly the real question must be: "What advantage does BellSouth seek to gain over its adversaries by using the legislature?" The answer lies in an obscure but vitally important issue to local communities: "build out requirements." That's the pivot point upon which the entire story turns. BellSouth wants to eliminate the local franchise because local governments would require them (as they currently require cable companies) to "build out" service to the entire community as part of the lease they sign to rent the public rights-of-way which they must have to string their wires. BellSouth would much rather build out to only the most wealthy and profitable areas of each town. That would offer them a huge competitive advantage over their cable competition. Any retailer understands the difference between high-margin and low-margin products. Right now the cable companies have to service areas that make lots of profit ( and we do mean lots) and areas which are much less profitable. People who take only basic cable aren't very profitable. People who take tons of extra channels, all the premium channels, hit pay-per-view regularly, and might even sign up for the new Voice Over Internet Protocol phone services are hugely profitable. BellSouth only wants to serve those profitable ones. The prefer the new, wealthy, densely packed, areas. In Lafayette, for instance, think: River Ranch. They'd like to offer those folks the more profitable, advanced service. They are much less eager to offer the older, poorer neighborhoods off Willow street on the north side the same level of service. If they succeed in the state legislature any price drop they offer to win customers away from cable will effect only the wealthy areas they serve. The cable companies, bound by current contracts to serve all equally, will have to cut prices to everyone in order to match the prices that BellSouth is offering in only a small fraction of the community. This is what BellSouth calls "competition," and, yes; they love that sort of competition. In order to get to that sweet spot they'll have to take local governments out of the equation. That's where going to the state legislature for "relief" comes in. Local politics will make it impossible for the mayors and councilmen to accept a contract for an outside corporation to rent the community's property without requiring that all of that community's people be served. Issues of class and race, and the resentments associated with that history make it impossible for any city to allow a new, more advanced and cheaper service to offered to only the most privileged parts of the community. That raw political fact is not going to change and BellSouth/AT&T recognizes that. Bellsouth's ruthless solution is to have the state step in and limit the contracts local governments can make with telecommunications companies (and only telecommunications companies) to outlaw build-out requirements. Frankly, this amounts to a substantial "taking" of the property rights of the local owners. So that's what you need to understand as you read John Hill's reporting. The real battle is between BellSouth and local communities. The cable companies are the ultimate target but it is Louisiana cities and towns that must be run over to get to the point where it is possible to disadvantage the cable companies. Reading Hill's article with this framing in mind the reshapes the story into a very interesting set of details about the strategic positions and the way the participants want to frame the nature of the battle. Well worth your read. Langiappe: Here's a little extra spice for the story. The players have a real history and you can figure out who is acting on whose behalf by who they've supported in the past. Montgomery and Ellington have carried water for BellSouth many times, a fact that is widely understood in the halls of the legislature. Ellington, for instance, gutted a rural broadband bill he had sponsored and substituted the BellSouth attack on Lafayette that eventually emerged from the sausage grinder as the Local Government Fair Competition Act. If you see Ellington's name on a bill you should think "Phone Company." The back and forth of amendments offered and rejected often tells a clearer story of what the bill is really about than the text of the bill itself. For instance, representatives of local governments offered an amendment that would have guaranteed BellSouth a franchise in 90 days from any municipality where they wanted to compete with cable. BellSouth rejected it. Trouble was, it achieved that end by the simple expedient of offering BellSouth a truly level playing field: BellSouth would have simply agreed to the same contract already negotiated by the cable companies locally. (They could have chosen to negotiate their own, separate agreement.) What could be fairer competition? By rejecting that solution out of hand BS was making it clear that ease, a level playing field, and the rapidity of achieving the go-ahead to compete were not really their most important issues, no matter how they played their rhetoric to the public. BellSouth, for its part, offered the cable companies an amendment which would allow them to invalidate their current franchise contracts with cities. Supposedly this would level the playing field an allow the cable companies to join BellSouth in abandoning marginally profitable areas. Cable was tempted but its legal eagles apparently let them know that an amendment that was so blatantly unconstitutional would be severed from the law and struck down. (Clever BS lawyers!) Speaking of clever BS lawyers, the intricate language of the bill makes it possible for BellSouth to get out of both build out requirements and avoid paying any franchise fees to local governments by differently defining who can get a certificate that exempts them from build out requirements and who has to pay fees for offering cable services. It's a huge bait and switch. (This deserves a post of its own. More later.) Eyes on the prize folks: the issue is build out requirements and the law takes aim at the local control of local property that makes build out requirements a political necessity.
A not-to-coherent letter to the editor today appears to be concerned about the recent deal cut between Lafayette and the BellSouth/ATT-Cox alliance. That's worth being concerned about. But the letter writer appears to be most worried that the Big Bad Lafayette Utilities System, master of a local electrical utility, the waters works, and the sewer system inside the city limits of Lafayette, Louisiana somehow was in a position to "blackmail" BellSouth, a multinational telephone and wireless company with huge political and economic clout. Get real. The attempt to raise a purely ideological panic about a small publicly-owned local Acadian utility having some sort of unfair advantage over a corporation of the size and power of BellSouth or Cox can't be made to seem sensible--which is probably why the letter reads so ambiguously. A little history should suffice to make the real situation apparent. BellSouth and Cox had used their enormous economic and political clout to come within a hairsbreadth of forbidding Lafayette to use it public utility to provide a little competition with two monopoly corporations. BellSouth was a monopoly in land line phone service at the time and widely understood to be the most politically powerful corporation in the state. Cox has a monopoly over an unnaturally profitable cable service and was bitterly opposed to losing it. The idea that coming down on the side of multinational media conglomerates in opposition to a local public utility is somehow a conservative position is just whacky. The time is long over when anyone in Lafayette should be taken seriously when putting forward such a position.
Settop boxes are the maligned stepchildren of the digital revolution. When you hear about them it's mostly complaints. And yet, treated right, they just might be the key to making everything work. Here's the key: that digital box is really a stealth network computer. We seldom think of them that way but they have the same digitally-based flexibility that any computing machine has. I've got two in my house. One from Cox and Motorola (which I totally ignore) and one from TiVo (which I love). The TiVo is a straight-on linux box. Entire user communities exist to "mess" with its software. It's currently a a top-notch Digitial Video Recorder (DVR) but there is no reason to think that's all it could be. There is some current, locally-relevant news on TiVo's boxes--that's what touched off this Sunday morning ramble. It beginning to look like TiVo might cut a deal with Cox, or at least that's the way some TiVo fanatics read the tea leaves. That's good local news, I've written a bit about why you'll like TiVo and why DVR's are the leading edge of a new TV model. Being able to get it directly from Cox would be the proverbial very good thing. TiVo should also be available from LUS when the time comes. According to the story the people at TiVo also: have a deal with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), a purchasing organization that represents over 1,000 independent cable operators, which collectively serve around 14 million subscribers. The NCTC is the federally chartered organization that's designed to ensure a level playing field in the provision of cable content to the little guys. LUS has said they'll be using their service and picking up on the TiVo alternative would please the geeky sorts in town. So it looks like you're going to be able to choose TiVo from a cable provider in Lafayette. Preferably from LUS. But back to the question of the settop box as a stealth computer. If LUS provides it, it could conceivably become the hub of a truly different community-based computing experience. And that's well worth dreaming about. I want to be clear, however: this is dreaming. It's the nature of settop boxes and the fact that TiVos are Linux computers that will be available in discounted bulk to LUS that inspires the dreaming. (Currently you can get a new dual tuner TiVo DVR/Linux computer for about 50 bucks up front plus a 17 dollar monthly fee.) But I've no indication that folks are thinking down this pathway. (But, hey, we could start that up!) Any settop box that LUS provides will be, ipso facto, the default Lafayette computer standard. Its potential may go unused but it will sit out there as the single "best-selling" computer in Lafayette. It's still unsettled what video technology LUS will use initally. Some choices, which were new when the initial planning was done, have matured and those choices would require a settop box. By all indications LUS is leaning toward a technology that doesn't require a settop box. But in either case you can bet that there will be lots of LUS boxes in Lafayette; those are required for the more interactive, profitable services that evey cable company is pushing. LUS will be no exception to that rule. But consider the potential of having a community-standard, probasbly community-owned computer sitting at the end of a big pipe in most households in the city. Once you wrap your head around that the possibilities explode. --ok, I've gotta run for Jazz Fest, but let me just toss some words out and let you chew on the possibilities and fill in the blanks: (remember Sun) network computing, Digitial Divide, Grid Computing. local portals Distributed computing Distributed storage Big network caching online ajax-powered (or similar) network applications common community databases common community calendars All, all much easier, better, much cheaper, and more consistently implemented if we make good use of the settop box computers that we'll have. ---more if I've got the energy when I get back from N.O. Otherwise talk it up in the comments and do the work of dreaming for yourselves.
Add to your list of forward-thinking telephone companies Wilkes Telephone and Electric. According to a story in the Lincoln County Journal they're in the midst of a two stage fiber to the home buildout (see also accompanying brag ad). Never heard of 'em? That's because they serve three counties in extremely rural Northeast Georgia. Fiber to the Home (FTTH) is apparently not too expensive to be deployed by small locally-owned telecos. It's also not too expensive in rural Louisiana: FTTH is being deployed by locally owned telephone businesses in East Ascension, Kaplan, and Cameron. In Louisiana, as in the nation as a whole, up-to-date telecom infrastructure is being spearheaded by locally concerned and invested business and municipalities. It it the big international companies that are dragging their heels and holding out their hand for public subsidies. You would have thought that it'd be the big boy Bells (AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth et al.) that would have the technical capacity and the financial resources to roll out FTTH. After all they've been telling small towns and cities all over the country that they're the only ones competent to do it--and that it was too technically difficult and expensive for those little communities. At the state and national level the tune was a little different: the big Bell phone companies have been promising fiber for at least two decades in return for federal deregulation and massive state-level subsidization. Neither produced the promised fiber-optic based last mile networks and the lack of any follow-up on those promises by either legislators or the press is a major national scandal. The question of how much to trust these guys is especially relevant as we gear up nationally and in Louisiana to pass "cable" franchise laws that will strip local communities of the right to control contracts that lease public rights-of-way to telecom companies.
What's Being Said dept.The battle in Lafayette has symbolic of whats' wrong with telecom incumbents in the United States. The city's travails are being mentioned as an example wherever folks are particualarly mad at the Bells. One example is Herold Feld over at WetMachine who has a series of posts dissecting the ugly beast that is the senate draft of of the rewrite of the telecom act of 1996. The bill is complex and he's split his comments up into several parts. If telecom policy is your thing you should travel over and read them all. But if you're interested mostly in muni broadband and especially Lafayette's muni broadband there's a bit you really ought to read. It occurs midway in the piece when Feld is working up a good head of steam about the author, Ted Stevens of Alaska, and portraying him as a paternalistic "Uncle Ted" whose real interest lies in protecting corporate profit centers. [Excuse me for a moment while I am briefly possesed by the spirit of Stephen Colbert.]
And lets face it, “Uncle Ted” has a point. I mean, look at what happens when you let voters decide on whether to set up competing municipal systems. Those stupid consumers actually want to have a say in what services their local governments provide! I mean, look at Lafayette, LA. Bellsouth and Cox already provided service to Lafayette. How much competition do those people need for gosh sakes? And, when Bellsouth and Cox got a court order forcing Lafayette to hold a public referendum on whether to finance the system, those stupid consumers still voted 2-1 to build the municipal system anyway!. After Bellsouth and Cox Cable spent over a million dollars, engaged in push-polling, used all the right words like “competition” and “socialism” and “limited government,” and did everything companies are supposed to do to corrupt democracy, THEY STILL LOST! I mean, what the heck do those consumers in Lafayette think they are, CITIZENS?... (--Note: this goes on for another two paragraphs. Click through to enjoy.--)
[Back to Harold again.]
(Don't know what that 'Stephen Colbert" thing is about? It's a reference to Colbert's recent performance at the White House Correspondents dinner where he roasted the president pretty much to a crisp. If you've not followed it you might want to check out the video. A lot of the langauge in Feld's rant is drawn from Colbert's. The video is available in a stream from ABC, or via bitorrent)It's clear that Lafayette's fiber fight has become symbolically important. But what it will finally mean isn't entirely clear yet. Was the battle of Lafayette the telecom corporation's Waterloo--a surprising defeat which proved decisive--or a telecom version of the Battle of New Orleans--a major defeat which no effect on the outcome of the war? In either case the idea that Lafayette is the city where telecom consumers first realized they were citizens is something of which we can be proud.
For those following the saga of wifi in New Orleans will want to puruse a story that appears in Datamation, "Free Wi-Fi Aids New Orleans Recovery." It documents the utility of the wifi system during the immediate aftermath of Katrina and the role it's played in recovery. People talk about how much easier these networks are to get up and going and how much easier they are to expand as needs expand. You get a pretty good feel for how these factors work in a real situation by reading through the story. Very clearly the ad hoc wifi network was one of the success stories in New Orleans' response to Katrina. Credit where credit is due: In its construction New Orleans, in at least one area, showed an ability to deal creatively with immediate disaster and to minimize the costs to citizens of recovery. That BS or Cox oppose this network and the investment it could bring to the recovery, is difficult to understand if you don't take into account that all they really care about is their own bottom line. The incumbents tried initally to legislate the possibility of municipal broadband out of existance. Their behavior in Lafayette, with push polls, economic intimidation, and delaying lawsuits demonsrated that their income was the real issue as did their earlier attempt punish New Orleans by playing politics over N.O.'s wifi with a proposed gift to the police force. BellSouth continues this tradition with a state-wide video franchise bill that would exempt itself from paying the franchise fees to provide video that cable companies already do and put current franchise money under state control. None of this demonstrates anything but that the incumbents are "bad actors" who can't be relied upon to act with any other interest but their immediate profits in mind. I'm at a loss to understand why BellSouth or Cox should have the right to tell any city how they can use their own property and what benefits citizens of New Orleans are allowed to have from a network their city already owns. That it's "a law" isn't enough. Legislators should be encouraged to repeal bad laws--if they did a little more of that more citizens would respect the office they hold. The Local Government Fair Competition Act should be repealed. And failing that wireless networks, which have proven vital in hurricane preparedness and recovery should be exempted.
The first order of business at Tuesday night's Lafayette City Parish Council meeting was a resolution opposing the HB 699 the BellSouth/AT&T bill that would create a state-wide franchise that would cut local governments out of the loop on cable franchise fees. The law amounts to an expropriation of locally-owned rights-of-way by the state for the benefit of a BellSouth (soon to be AT&T). Naturally local governments are opposed. But the story here is that that opposition is beginning to be made public. That doesn't begin to happen until a coalition has coalesced around a consensus position. Lafayette's resolution is one sign that local governments are aware of the danger the bill represents and have decided to simply oppose the bill. That's smart; there's no real way to compromise on sovereignty and that is what is at stake for local governments. The resolution is also a sign that the deal recently cut by Lafayette is a truce, not a peace. That's smart too.
New Orlean's City Business breaks the general media silence to cover the story of BellSouth/ATT and Cox's opposition to municipal wifi in New Orleans. The wifi network was a rare upbeat note of success and ingenuity in the first days after Katrina. It came back up long before any other means of communications and the city's command and communications relied on it to communicate--Nagin talked to Bush in the initial days on a VOIP over wifi setup cobbled together from equipment "appropriated" from business supply stores and the city's existing security camera network. It's been a source of conflict before, with BellSouth holding the donation of a building to the city's police force ransom to express their displeasure.
The heart of the article is that Earthlink is willing to invest big bucks in expanding and running a free WiFi network for New Orleans. It offers to invest 10 to 15 million over the next year upgrade the telecommunications infrastructure in a city where huge swaths of the city still don't have dialtone. But they're willing to do that only if BellSouth and Cox step out of the way and allow WiFi networks to be exempted from the strictures of the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act. BellSouth and Cox? You guessed it: no way. But to add insult to injury they give excuses that are so transparently silly that you get the feeling that they are treating this as some sort of absurd game. According to the weekly: The state Senate is expected to vote Saturday on a bill by two New Orleans senators to allow the city to provide free wireless Internet to the metro area.
But telecommunication companies are crying foul over the possibility of government competing with private companies. Sounds familiar, no? Sounds familiar, yes. The same ridiculously aggrieved tone is being used against New Orleans that was used in Lafayette: “Unlike companies, governments can cross-subsidize,” said BellSouth spokesman Merlin Villar. “They can take revenue from another source to maintain low prices if they want to. This is unfair, and this kind of situation was the genesis of the (Louisiana Local Government) Fair Competition Act.”  That's absurd, absurdist, even dadaist in its glowingly painted nonsense. BellSouth/AT&T and Cox draw revenue from 3/4s of the other states in the union to "cross-subsidize" their competition against New Orlean's cobbled-together wifi system that currently operates in two commercial neighborhoods of the city. Cox owns media and newspapers across the country. Do they segregate their profits from cable and newspapers and never fund the one business from the other? Don't be silly. Can you imagine the hysterical objections we'd hear if "the government" so much as hinted they couldn't use their profits to expand whatever business they decided they wanted to get into next? Did BellSouth/ATT buy its way into the cellular business by starving the wireline networks of reinvestment capital and using the profits from telephone ratepayers to buy its way into a business the initially spurned? Damn right they did--and they and countless analysts are proud of it. "Cross-subsidization" between the very different areas of their business is EXACTLY what allowed these multinational corporations to become big enough to piously kick New Orleans when it's down and then justify their behavior with transparently absurd claims like "Unlike companies, governments can cross-subsidize." Shameless. There's more: “We don’t want to be obstructionists but there are parts of the Fair Competition Act that are imperative to companies,” said Sharon Kleinpeter, a Cox lobbyist. Villar said illegal competition is the point of BellSouth’s protest. “We’re not preventing New Orleans from running WiFi as long as they comply with the law,” Villar said.
Sharon Kleinpeter, Cox lobbyist, (yes, the same we recently heard talking nonsense in Lafayette) and Villar of BellSouth/ATT are happy to cast a surreal aura over the discussion. What they are trying to say is that they'd be happy-happy to let New Orleans have its wifi network if they just complied with their law. And New Orleans could: at the absurdly useless speed of 144 k.... It'd be A-OK, okie dokie with them if the city would invest a bunch in a useless network. ?? --Honestly, there's no need to take these folks seriously--it's like a bunch of bobble-head dolls. You're not supposed to take it seriously; they're just there for distraction. If you read on down into the story there is some information that's actually useful: Meffert says Earthlink, an Atlanta-based Internet service provider, has agreed to invest $10 million to $15 million in free wireless equipment over the next year if the bill passes. Earthlink would then be the service provider for the foreseeable future. The plan in other cities that Earthlink has promised to provide with free wifi has been to support it with advertising. Its not all that new an idea: is the model that supports broadcast TV to this day. I don't see why New Orleans should not be allowed to try. BellSouth and Cox should be ashamed. You, on the other hand, ought to let your legislators know that you don't think that letting these corporations stand in the way of New Orlean's maintaining and expanding a successful wifi system as hurricane season bears down is a something they should be doing.
The Advertiser reports today on the legal death-by-neglect of the BellSouth/Cox lawsuit. The lawsuit filed against LUS and the city died last night as a consequence of the 11th hour filing not being followed up. Claire Taylor retells the story: City officials announced April 25 that they reached an agreement with BellSouth. The company reportedly agreed to drop its latest lawsuit if the city drops proposed legislation that would repeal the Local Government Fair Competition Act, adopted to prevent municipally-owned telecommunications companies from having an unfair advantage over private companies like BellSouth. One proposed bill, which would amend the act to avoid frivolous lawsuits, will not be dismissed, Ottinger said. City-Parish President Joey Durel said he hasn't yet asked local legislators to drop any of the proposed legislation. "We'll live up to whatever the agreements were as long as everybody lives up to all aspects of the agreement," he said. Another lawsuit, filed Friday by Elizabeth Naquin and Matthew Eastin, remains. A hearing is set for 10 a.m. May 22 before Judge Edward Rubin in Fifteenth Judicial District Court in Lafayette.
There are strange and interesting things buried in that fragment. First, the lawsuit was filed by BellSouth and Cox; not BS alone. (well, BS and the LCTA, which amounts to the same thing.) By identifying the lawsuit solely as BellSouth's the story lets Cox off the local hook at a time when the corporation is doing everything in its power to present a new face to Lafayette. (Save for the little bit of old-style deception published by the Advertiser in its letters section by Sharon Kleinpeter, Cox PR person out of Baton Rouge.) Is that oversight due to sympathy for Cox, inattention to details, or did BS abandon the suit without Cox's agreement? If you take a look at what folks are saying that the deal consisted of it's hard to see what Cox got out of it. Also strange is the continued reference to some sort of supposed "advantage" that little Lafayette was supposed to have over giants BellSouth/ATT or Cox by virtue of being publicly owned. Surely we've been through enough now that such a characterization of BellSouth's law is understood to be inaccurate? Finally, Durel's enigmatic statement that Lafayette's bills have not yet been pulled but that " We'll live up to whatever the agreements were as long as everybody lives up to all aspects of the agreement" is suggestively non-specific. "Whatever the agreements were"? Hmmnnn. With BellSouth's having let the lawsuit die it would seem that their side of the announced bargain has been fulfilled. Are there shoes yet to drop?
Alert: Franchise Bill Advances (Updated (twice))
Update2: The calendar has apparently changed again. I'm now told the franchise bill won't make a committee hearing until the 6th. You can tune in at the hearing's video page a few minutes before the action starts or navigate to the proper place from the legislative front page. This debate should be more interesting than the discussion over charges for setting graveyard tombstones that occupied much of Monday morning.
Update: The state-wide franchise bill was not considered today, Monday, May 1st. It has been carried over to Tuesday May 2nd in a hearings session that begins at 9:00.------- With the Lafayette-BellSouth/ATT/Cox conflict suspended by the recent compromise bills in the Louisiana Legisalture that have been held up are likely to start moving. The first is a statewide video franchise. It is going to be heard in the House Commerce Committee on Monday.This is one that Lafayette and the state's municipalities seem to understand is a terrible bill for the people of Louisiana so the hearing should be at least entertaining. It is our state's version of state and federal legislation that is being pushed with a vigor that only the phone companies are able to muster. The Bell phone companies are pushing hard to overturn the current practice of granting local franchises for cable service in exchange for allowing the corporations to use publicly-owned right of ways. Such franchises yield substantial income for local governments, provide for local educational and Public Access channels like AOC, and often include services for local government. They also provide consumer protection, detailing quality standards and, most cogently for understanding the current push to eradicate them: include clauses that effectively force the cable corporations to provide access to service to all the citizens of the community. Franchises are the way that cable TV has been handled for years and are provided for in federal legislation. The Bells have been telling legislators and the FCC that they're coming asking for relief because, first, that it is a burden to have to go around and have to ask all those little people for franchises. Secondly, they claim that local governments have drug their heels and asked for inane things. The truth seems to be that the Bells have barely tried. Their buildouts necessarily stretch out over years but they only come asking for a franchise when the have already built the capacity to offer TV. That's not usually considered prudent business practice. Regular businesses make sure that they can legally offer a service before they start to spend huge amounts of money investing in capacity. Only businesses that think they can get the rules changed to suit them act as if the normal rules don't apply to them. It's pretty easy to see that local government's inappropriate behavior isn't the problem. The Louisiana Municipal Association and the Louisiana Police Juries apparently suggested that if speeding up the franchise process was a real problem they'd be happy to back an amended bill that would guarantee that the process could be made complete in 90 days if they'd leave control of local resources in local hands and be willing to adopt the terms and conditions of the existing cable franchise in the area they wished to begin offering service. I don't expect that BellSouth will take 'em up on that. What the phone companies have fought for, at the state or federal level, is not speed--that's an easy excuse--but for the elimination of "buildout" requirements. The real point is to allow the phone companies to only serve the most profitable few. Beyond that after looking at the bill it seems to me that there are a couple of odd clauses that, taken together, will allow ATT/BellSouth to both take advantage of the portion of the proposed law that prohibits local governments from requiring that the whole community be served and to escape paying any franchise fees even to the state. In a nutshell: one part of the law establishes that "certificate holders" cannot be required to serve the whole community. Another part of the law establishes the principle that "cable systems" can be required to pay franchise fees according to its gross receipts. A third spot in the law sets up conditions that allow a "traditional" telecom operator who delivers video via an "alternate" technology to become a "certificate holder" without being considered a "cable system" (recall, cable systems owe money). All you really need to know to connect the dots is that ATT has been insisting all over the country that its technology, IPTV, is not a cable system and is not therefore subject to laws regulating cable systems. Put it all together and you get a free ride for the phone company: all the advantages of using local community property without having to serve the whole community and no responsibility to return any fees for the use of that property. It's a terrible bill crafted to shaft local communities for the benefit of a handful of multinational corporations. Let your legislators know that you'd like to see them oppose it.
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