"Slashdot | AT&T Silences Criticism"

On
Why We Need Local, Public, Internet Providers
And
Why We Need Common Carriage

A friend passed this on in an email with the subject line: "This must be illegal." I hope so...

5.1 Suspension/Termination. Your Service may be suspended or terminated if your payment is past due and such condition continues un-remedied for thirty (30) days. In addition, AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. Termination or suspension by AT&T of Service also constitutes termination or suspension (as applicable) of your license to use any Software. AT&T may also terminate or suspend your Service if you provide false or inaccurate information that is required for the provision of Service or is necessary to allow AT&T to bill you for Service.

Oh...and by the way:

5.2 Deletion of data after Termination or Cancellation. You agree that if your Service is terminated for any reason, AT&T has the right to immediately delete all data, files, and other information stored in or for your account, including email messages, without further notice to you. (All emphases mine)

Slashdot links to the new AT&T TOS (Terms Of Service) and has an only fair section of commentary—this isn't in a technical realm in which its readership excels. But it is worth thinking about and talking about...AT&T might well be within its "rights." We'd only find out through a court battle and the main purpose of the clause might well be less to impose real punishment than to have a chilling effect on any discussion of its failings.

What adds insult to injury, of course, is that AT&T has shown no hesitation to participate in wiretapping of (at best) "questionable" legality. Insults to the company's dignity are worth draconian posturing. Invasions of your privacy and legal rights are just another thing to be examined in terms of the company's potential profits. If that seems to be unbalanced to you--well it is. Only a monopoly could think this way.

This would be illegal if it was about phone service. AT&T is clearly a "common carrier" there and this venerable legal tradition both forbids AT&T to deny anyone service on its whim and, in return, absolves AT&T of any legal responsibility for what people talk about on the phone. (AT&T is not on the hook for aiding you if you plot murder.) But that principle is eroding and it is just about gone in the ISP world. Notice that a part of the clause above I didn't highlight gave AT&T the right to deny you service if something you do could be construed to:

(b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws)

So AT&T reserves the right to not only to nanny you on its own account but to be a nanny-for-hire (enforcement won't be free, you betcha) for the entertainment industry. (And, oh yeah, the government--but we can't talk about that....) This is merely carrying through on AT&T's earlier commitment to Hollywood to enforce it Digital Rights Management schemes. It ties into their hopes to establish a two-tiered internet (fast and notsofast) based on deep packet inspection. If they can get deep packet called a legal necessity to enforce the laws then they can put in place everything they need to route "paid up" packets down the fast lane.

This is serious stuff.

It is also dangerous stuff. Not just for you and me but for AT&T. Does AT&T really want to go down the slippery slope of deciding that it will monitor the taste and legality of action taken over its network? (That is exactly what is promulgated here.) I hope not. And it is dumb, IMHO, to give up the protection of common carriage.

I am IMMENSELY grateful that I will soon be able to cut myself completely loose of such dangerous and foolish petulance. The elephant is dying and I don't want to be anywhere near its death throes.

That a TOS like this is conceivable and possibly legal is EXACTLY why we need net neutrality and a clear reinstitution of common carriage. And it is a substantial reason to say we need LUS Fiber.

(Just for the record: none of my sites is on an incumbent server, nor is any email account I use. Yours needn't be either. And soon you should be able to get off their copper.)

Good Sense Spreads...Muni Broadband comes of age

Two stories came across my virtual desk yesterday that tell me that the municipal telecom movement is maturing. The time is ripe for Lafayette's resolution to the disagreements within the camp of those who favor municipal and regional public networks.

Background
The quiet, background, argument within that community has been between those that saw WiFi as the obvious way to provide ubiquitous, cheap internet connectivity and those who saw fiber as the only sensible long-term foundation for a municipal telecomm utility that would provide public capacity for internet, phone, cable, wireless and other services as they emerged.

I've argued that muni networks would need both fiber's capacity and the mobility of wireless if they hoped to provide a valuable and competitive alternative to the increasingly interlocked camps of private incumbents. The opposition between Fiber and WiFi has always been false one but, for a host of reasons, the only practical way forward is to make the committment to building a FTTH network and only then build out a wireless network that would piggy-back on the crucial fiber infrastructure. That's Lafayette's plan.

With the recent shakeout of muni wifi market the hope that cities could get a private provider to build a network without any local risk or investment has been revealed as an impractical one. We're now getting down to a more realistic appraisal of what cities will have to provide—and when it's their own money on the line cities appear to be taking a more sophisticated view of what their citizens really need and the crucial role of fiber in providing it. When the "free," "good enough" alternative evaporates people buckle down and actually think about their needs and how to make sure their investment pays for itself.

In Minnesota and Vermont
In the first of the two stories that indicate that muni telecomm is maturing, one a city has made the decision to push for a fiber network even though its neighbor is famous for one of the more successful WiFi builds. In the second, a successful fiber build has announced its intention to add wireless.

In Minnessota's twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minneapolis has gotten a lot of publicity for moving forward, apparently on pretty favorable terms, with a WiFi network. It's next door neighbor, however, isn't buying in. St. Paul opted for a fiber network:

Minneapolis can keep its Wi-Fi network. St. Paul says Wi-Fi is too slow, and it wants something faster. Much, much, much faster.

On Wednesday, the City Council unanimously approved an advisory committee's proposal to seek partners for a publicly owned fiber-optic cable network for high-speed Internet access...

St. Paul's broadband system would be fixed in place, but the 20-member advisory committee said the city could add a Wi-Fi service later though a private provider. That would let the wireless system piggyback on the fiber-optic network, which it would need anyway to connect back to the Internet.

A sidebar succinctly makes the case:

WHY NOT WI-FI?

St. Paul quickly rejected the idea of Wi-Fi, City Council Member Lee Helgen says. Some reasons:

Too slow. Typical Wi-Fi speeds are 1-3 megabits per second, but research indicates average users may need speeds of up to 25 megabits per second by 2012.

It's flaky. Wi-Fi doesn't penetrate far into buildings; leaves, rain or snow can interfere with its signal.

In Vermont Burlington's FTTH system has taken the go-slow approach to success and is now planning its move into wireless.

"We are going to build a wireless network," said Tim Nulty, BT director, in an interview. "But the best way to build wireless is to build fiber first. That way we already have backhaul [capability] and every telephone pole is a potential antenna site."

Like many municipalities seeking to deploy their own networks, the challenges in Burlington, the largest city in Vermont with 39,000 residents, were daunting. It had to convince state and city politicians and the town's voters that the network was a good idea, as well as fend off criticism from established telecom providers. And early financing problems nearly sunk the project.

After picking its way through complicated political and financial minefields, BT developed a city-owned network that will supply Burlington citizens with low-cost triple-play broadband and, when its debt is retired in 15 years, should provide the city with 20% of its general fund.

"BT will be able to pay down its debt very quickly," said Christopher Mitchell, of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self Reliance. "On the cost side of the equation, Burlington once faced massively growing telecommunications expenditures. It now views the telecommunications sector as an important source of new revenues."

"...We resisted pressure to do wireless at first," he [Nulty] said, adding that he expects that BT will one day provide Burlington with a "wireless cloud." Nulty is beginning to look at various wireless approaches including Wi-Fi, WiMax, mesh, EV-DO, cellular resale, and 700 MHz among others.

BT is reported to have started negotiations with other Vermont cities including Montpelier and Rutland as well as smaller neighboring communities interested in gaining access to the Burlington network.

Dealing realistically with the difficult facts of an endeavor is always a sign of emerging maturity. Muni broadband is coming of age.

Sun's McNealy Returns

Well Scot McNealy of Sun Microsystems was back in town...and closeted with a lot of the cities tech big wigs (LUS, LCG, the University, and local business—tech enthusiasts) for a couple of hours before a press conference at LITE. Sorry I didn't get to this earlier, but I was mired in a recalcitrant web site that was too close to launch to neglect. But luckily the regional media covered it in force. What happened in that meeting—why McNealy made a return trip—was not immediately made public though hints could be gleaned from the reporter's coverage.

The Advertiser lead with and focused on the announcement of Lafayette's ranking on a jobs growth ranking and didn't mention the McNealy press conference, at which the ranking was mentioned, until paragraph five. KATC and The Advocate lead with the McNealy visit itself and didn't mention the job growth ranking which was apparently a reference point in the presentation. The two stories do dovetail, of course, but the focus of interest on this site is the technology issues implicated in the visit.

Seasoned readers will recall that McNealy made a supportive stop here right before the fiber referendum. He appeared on one of Joey's morning radio shows and was generally encouraging about our building a fiber system. Back then I laid out an enthusiastic, but I think still pretty accurate assessment of the potential of a Sun-Lafayette partnership. The gist is that LUS' big bandwidth, Sun's open source source software, and the immense potential of on-system storage and distributed computing in Lafayette's intranet has got to have smart companies like Sun thinking hard about using Lafayette as a test bed for new technologies. There really will be little to match the size and diversity of our user population, or the intranet-speed in-system bandwidth supplied between customers. That is a match made in heaven for those that have hankered after the bandwidth to make real changes in the (computer, video, cloud computing, name-your-techish-dream) area.

Sun's bread and butter has been building top-notch servers, and more recently, integrated server farms. That's a business built on the need for fast networks. Sun has in recent years pursued some pretty interesting ideas pretty relentlessly. Sun signed onto the open-source movement early. Free and more importantly open, readily fixable and extendable software is the result. Sun has also swum against the tide in insisting on a pushing a "network-centric" computing model. This involves big central computing facilities and distributed dumb terminals — though some Sun models can run as traditional independent stand-alone computers. Sun also has relentlesly pursued its vision for JAVA. The hope was for a platform for writing software that was independent of the underlying hardware and could run and interconnect processes on everything from toasters to big iron server hardware. JAVA has yet to becom the platform for realizing the more blue-sky versions of those dreams but much of the intuition is being realized in web-centric AJAX apps.

The potential of having a whole community with fast, cheap, universally available broadband capable of ripping the roof off the network limitations that have kept many of Sun's ideas barely viable has got to be tempting to the company. And the digital divide and development potential for Lafayette are obvious. There is surely partnership potential here.

But what is on the table now? I'd guess both LUS' fiber program and the city's computing needs.

Keith Thibodaux regularly complains about the need to update a creaky computer system. The dark lining on the silver cloud of having had an early strong computer department at ULL is that Lafayette's networks were developed back in the days of COBOL and significant portions of the city's core network runs in that crusty framework. Slipping in a modern Sun-based but still centrally organized, terminal-heavy system would allow that sort of mainframe-oriented system to move into the modern day relatively painlessly. As the tenders of that system reach retirement age (yes we are that far into the computer age) such a move might become critical.

The Advocate did a stellar job of focusing on the potential interaction of Sun and LUS' fiber to the home project. I recommend you go take a look. It is exciting stuff and doesn't bear much cutting here is a stream the good bits:

Durel said Wednesday that the project’s highest-profile cheerleader reinforced and supplemented the LUS team’s “vision” to not just provide “me too” products with the state-of-the-art network.

“It’s not just about saving customers 20 percent,” Durel said. “It’s much, much bigger than that.”

Durel said McNealy is a big fan of “open source” products, software allows tech-savvy users to upgrade and add their own innovations.

In an open environment, coupled with the vast bandwidth promised by LUS — which has said that traffic inside its network will be unlimited — there’s a great potential for people working out of their garages to develop innovative products in Lafayette, McNealy said.

LUS Director Terry Huval said McNealy talked about the potential for Lafayette schools to utilize curriki.org, which provides free, open source educational materials.

McNealy said Sun Microsystems offers a product called Sun Ray that could also be of great use with LUS’ system to help get more people using technology in their everyday lives.

Sun Ray is a simple, low-cost computer that serves as a conduit between the user and a massive server, where all information, software and processing power is stored.

The interactive display of Sun Ray is merely a way for the user to tap into the network, meaning that any user — with a pass code or swipe card — could use any Sun Ray to access their information, be it at home, work, the library or wirelessly, Huval said.

It's a grand dream and could get most of the city on the network in an extremely exciting and potentially sophisticated way. Serving (free) programs off a server to inexpensive computers is clearly the next step a city could take after offering cheap, universal, big bandwidth. Open source is the way to go and Sun is a leader. Partnering with someone who not ony cares about these ideas is a natural--especially when that partner has already bet the company on the ideas.

As always there are caveats, especially in the context of the digital divide: Sun's terminals are inexpensive--but no longer notably inexpensive in comparison to arguably more capable standalone computers. (And their standalones are more expensive.) The most price-attractive hardware is proprietary and not all open source material is ported to run there. It is a pretty closed ecology without the diversity found in the larger computer market. And it isn't clear what direction will be open to Sun as the mobile market continues to expand.

Without a doubt, it's all exciting and the relationship with Sun will bear watching.

Cox Employee Causes BR Phone Outage

An outage in Cox's Baton Rouge system earlier this week was apparently caused by a disgruntled employee according to a story carried in the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

After being asked to resign, Bryant remotely shut down portions of Cox's system, causing the loss of computer and telecommunications services, including access to 9-1-1 emergency services, for Cox customers in Dallas, Las Vegas, New Orleans, and Baton Rouge, La. Cox technicians restored service within hours.

This follows Cox's apology for a "widespread outage" in their cable systems early this week which is likely the incident to which the story referred. In probably unrelated news of Cox troubles, a friend here in Lafayette reports that the LPB channel out of Baton Rouge was so pixelated throughout the showing of "The War" last night that it really wasn't watchable. Everyone has their occasional problems but it's not been Cox's best week.

AT&T kills BellSouth Plans?

Who knew? David Burnstein, the highly respected telcom pundit with the unbearbly clunky html, says that AT&T's acquistion of BellSouth frustrated BS's plans to move to an all IP network and rip out the old phone systems antiquated operational guts.

The best minds in this business think it is now cheaper to replace the old PSTN network with a new all-IP network. British Telecom is essentially throwing out all the existing gear and running broadband to every home by 2011. Phone calls will be all VOIP, and there is no technical reason they can't turn on data to 95% of the British Isles. New Zealand is thinking similarly, parts of Trinidad and Tobago are moving ahead, and BellSouth planned the same thing until the empire took over and cut everything back. (Has anyone else noticed they've decimated BellSouth's network plans this year? Capital spending plunged.) (My emphasis in bold)

While that's the first I've heard of it, the claim that BS planned an upgrade and that AT&T is keeping that money for its own purposes instead is fairly believable. —One of the most reliable patterns of the reconsolidation of the regional phone monopolies into a few national powers has been that those that phone companies that chose to spend their cash on acquisition swallowed their brethren that were investing instead in network capacity. The acquiring companies invested their current profits not in additional profit-generating capacity but in "buying" debt. That is a substantial part of the reason that the newly merged companies killed earlier promises to build national fiber networks. (Take a look at an overview (and then the massive documentation) of these broken promises—it'll shake your confidence in our regulatory system.) They used the money to buy out each other and enriched the banking industry instead of their shareholders—and the communities they served.

Our regulatory regime allowed two behaviors that destroyed the US' chance to stay ahead in the network race by allowing the phone companies to seek profit outside their core wireline networks: it allowed the phone companies to spend their monopoly income on buying up pretty much the entire potentially competitive wireless cellular market. We lost both competition and investment in fiber optics at one blow. 2) it allowed AT&T and the other Bells to further waste their substance by transferring huge amounts of money to the financial sector solely to make their companies prettier on the stock market selling block. Capacity was again sacrificed.

I've said it before and I'll repeat it again: Deregulating monopolies is a recipe for disaster.

This time BellSouth customers (who would have benefited from an upgraded core even if BellSouth did not to have the courage for fiber they of all the baby Bells could have afforded) will be paying the price for our regulators' fantasy that they could magically create a competitive market by allowing monopolists free rein to purchase their competition and reconsolidate.

What were they thinking?

monticelloprofiber: Minnesotans For Fiber (Update)

Light a candle for the people of Monticello, Minnesota.

The citizens of Monticello, MN are going to the polls today (Tuesday, the 18th) in order to vote on a fiber-related initiative. Monticello is at the other end of the big muddy—up near the headwaters of the Mississippi. The vote will be, not to approve the network per se, but to approve using it to provide phone services. —Apparently the Minnesota legislature hasn't been bamboozled into passing anything as draconian as Louisiana's incumbent protection law. On the other hand, the phone approval requires a super-majority vote of 65% the people. Apparently it is important to protect the phone monopoly from a mere democratic majority. So maybe Louisiana needn't be too embarrassed. The city is committed to the project so the vote will only have a negative effect on the construction if it fails to garner a majority.

As you might expect they've had the standard opposition. The incumbents say they are just worried about helping out the local taxpayer and intimate that the locals are incompetent to run their own system. But Monticello has also had its loyal defenders. And the defenders are a hardy bunch by all evidence.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. By that measure Mike and I are flattered. The pro-fiber website's URL is MonticelloProFiber.com. Nifty—may a thousand "X___ProFiber.com" bloom! Their front page right now points to two incidents that will sound familiar to Lafayette citizens and to the citizens of across the country who've faced similar opposition. In one the local cable incumbent has threatened a local business (shades of the Cingular call center) and in the other they've had to endure phone calls that lie about the project's funding (like Lafayette's, no tax dollars are involved; it will be paid for by revenue bonds). Our series of push polls was similarly misleading.

There are other parallels: The mayor is willing to slug it out toe to toe; such leadership was essential here and the people of Monticello are well served by their mayor:

Make no mistake; this citywide project is a war to the current providers. They don’t want competition. Current providers of telecommunications will use scare tactics and disinformation in communities where municipalities are forward thinking and look to build their own fiber network....

Now this is funny if it wasn’t so sad. Last week I received a phone call at my home from an anti-fiber group caller. They told me two lies. The first was that the City of Monticello was building a fiber network which duplicated services by TDS. Secondly, they told me the fiber network was going to cost the taxpayers of Monticello $25 million. Both of these statements were lies and the spread of misinformation. I told the caller that I read in the local newspaper that revenue bonds were paying for the fiber network and asked if they knew about that? They said, “No.” I told them the fiber network is not going to cost the taxpayers a single dollar because revenue bonds don’t raise taxes. I finally asked where this person was calling from and they told me, “Nebraska.” Obviously, this person was not a concerned citizen of Monticello. They were hired by the big guns to make these calls.

I caution the citizens of Monticello, beware of the lies told in the newspaper ads from cable companies fronting as “Concerned Citizens Against Fiber” and Web site called Monticello Fiber Mistake Coalition when they are supported by industry groups outside of our community. Don’t be concerned with phone calls you receive that are propaganda from the anti-fiber group who is uneducated about the facts here in Monticello.

That kind of forthrightness would do a Durel or Huval proud.

There is also, clearly, an aroused citizenry. Richard Van Allen says:

If you read last week's Times, you saw a half page ad authorized and placed by Mike Martin of Saint Paul as Treasurer for the “Monticello Fiber Mistake” folks, a coalition comprised of state associations for the Telecom and Cable TV industry. These are not local citizens who live in the Monticello community. He is speaking for the Telco and cable industry which does not want local competition for better services or better prices. Mike is obviously not a citizen of Monticello and speaks for an industry that has fiercely attacked any new services coming into the communities they serve. Why should citizens of Monticello be persuaded by the paid spokesman of the Telco and cable industries?

At the September 18 referendum-Vote YES for Choice; say No to a monopoly.

James B. Fleming:

All I ask is that you take the time to find out the facts before you vote. Don’t be scared into a “No” vote by inaccurate information being pumped into the community by greedy corporations with no interest in Monticello’s future other than their own pocketbooks.

The city also has an informational pro-fiber website.

It's reassuring to know that the battle is the same all over.

So light a candle for the good guys.

UPDATE: The city fiber site heralds the victory: 1,055 Voted YES • 354 Voted NO. That's more than enough to win the super majority vote and assure that the city will be able to offer a triple play package that includes phone service.

Inventing the Future in Korea (and Lafayette)

Korean broadband is regularly cited as some of the best in the world ranking number 4 in the percentage of connected users and first in the percent of users working from a fast fiber optic connection.

Lafayette is set on the path toward having an even higher percentage of its population on fast fiber than the Korean average. Some folks (well the incumbent providers Cox and AT&T) suggest in ways subtle and not so subtle that people just can't use all that bandwidth.

The Korean stats tell a different story. If you build it, the Koreans at least, will come. I suspect that Americans too would find their own field of dreams.

Korea
So what do all those Koreans do with all that bandwidth? Invent the future. An article in the Korean Times suggests the shape of that future:

The Samsung Economic Research Institute said that the so-called Web 2.0 movement is the main reason behind the surge of online traffic. For example, the number of blog users has increased 16 fold in the past two years, and the number of monthly blog postings by 10 fold, it said.

The most dramatic growth was seen in the circulation of short video clips, often referred to as UCC (user-created content) in Korea. Visitors to video sharing services at major portal sites more than quadrupled between March 2006 and March 2007.

The volume of information flow on the Internet will continue to expand at an ever-increasing speed, the report said.

"The amount of two-way data traffic has soared as the role of Netizens has changed from that of spectator to active participant...'' (emphasis mine)

Koreans are becoming producers of content and in the process are eating up bandwidth an ever-accelerating rate. Their patterns of use are changing and they are becoming the worlds first natives of a new communications regime. In that new regime they are becoming the writers and the video producers and easy uploading of their product has become one of the drivers pushing up bandwidth usage.

Lafayette
This bodes well for Lafayette. Our system will provide symmetrical bandwidth to all subscribers. The "intranet" feature—meaning we will be able to communicate with each other locally at the full speed of the local net, probably upwards of 100 megs—will facilitate just the shift that is taking place in Korea. It also bodes well for LUS—LUS' bandwidth potential will be unmatchable by the competition. It is in LUS' interest to push this transition and help push bandwidth consumption since a shift to higher consumption broadband habits would play to their advantage.

The most significant difference between Lafayette and Korea is the size of the local population. Korea's population was large enough to provide for local lift-off without much aid. They were in a position to exchange information between people spread out over a larger region. (Korea is about 75% of the size of Louisiana so Southern Louisiana to above Alex would be a rough equivalent.) Friends in adjacent Korean cities could participate in the net-based exchange. Most of my friends live in the city but some do not--they are in Boussard, Sunset, Baton Rouge or Lake Charles. It would be helpful if all of them could particpate as well.

So if Korea is any indicator LUS will make Lafayette an interesting place to be as far as "web 2.0" usage is concerned. But LUS should try and do two things to help this along:

1) Expand in the region. Take in, as rapidly as possible the surrounding parish and try to move beyond. Not just because this would benefit more of our citizens but because a larger network would drive more of the high levels of broadband usage that will give the advantage to the locally-owned network.

2) Support citizen production of local content and, especially, the local trading of local content. The Korean experience suggests that " The most dramatic growth was seen in the circulation of short video clips, often referred to as UCC (user-created content.)" Support AOC. Support clubs & classes. Provide an online locale where nice, big video clips can be stored and used for in-system display—let people store the local parent-filmed football and soccer games there. In HD. (No more postage-stamp video). Make it cheap. Make it easy. Supply some online editing and storage to users....LUS should do what it can to make using big broadband the norm.

It's gonna be quite a ride.

"New" Web Business Models in Lafayette

Food For Thought Dept.

Here's something worth thinking about: Arguably a Lafayette firm is running its business based on what web-folk will tell you is the hottest new cutting edge business model. That firm, as reported by the Advertiser's Bob Moser, is Fugro Chance. Fugro Chance is a survey company specializing in the Gulf of Mexio. It sells its ability to locate things accurately on a map. That is its product. But Chance appears to know that what has really kept in it in business for 30 years is trust: its customers believe that they can trust them to locate things accurately and they trust Chance isn't about to turn their special knowledge into an excuse to rip off their customers. So their customers return...

What got Furgo Chance an admiring piece in the paper is that they gave away their most valuable product, a comprehensive map of the pipelines, old and new, active and inactive, in the Gulf, for free. Apparently no one else has the history and focus to match their expertise and after the storms of '05 ripped up the Gulf offshore platforms an accurate map of the pipelines was crucial to quick, efficient recovery. Everyone from FEMA to 200 industry insiders needed the map. They got it. From the story:

They could have charged thousands of dollars for this map, and most would have paid it. But this mainstay of oil and gas mapping knew what was right, says Marine Data Manager Lionel Cormier. Plus, generosity builds loyalty.

"We e-mailed pdf files (of the map) possibly to 200 people within a few weeks of the hurricanes, it was a handout to the industry," Cormier said. "We felt we were the only one who could produce that map in that timeframe. ... There was more to win than to lose."

That might not strike you as exactly a hot, new, cutting edge business strategy. It might seem remarkably long-sighted in a business climate that trumpets short-term gains and ruthless, immediate, exploitation of every advantage over you customers as a some sort of business virtue leading to "maximizing ROI." You may remember a time when people understood that greed wasn't good business. But this approach to business probably doesn't strike you as new; rather it seems like the "old" model.

But that might be because you're from down the bayou...from a place where shopkeepers used to give away lagniappe in an effort to give "a little extra" in the form of an inexpensive treat for the kids or the customer. That little extra served to prove that the transaction wasn't purely motivated by faceless profit-taking; that the store owner was willing to give a little back in a form that acknowledged the life of the customer.

Not everybody has that, or a similar experience, in their history.

There's a lot of hoo-ha online about "new" business models (for example, Google) that involve giving away valuable products (like maps or search) and showing respect for your customers (by not abusing their trust) in return for customer loyalty toward your product (in Google's case a tolerance for their advertising). Similarly Linux's open source business model is built around a free "product," the Linux operating system. What is sold is the expertise to extend the product and to provide high levels of support and integration. In a word: trust.

That trust-based business model is reported to be some sort of new discovery driven by network economics and constructed by brilliant young bi-coastal entrepreneurs and especially suited to the internet's economy.

Now giving away your central product--as Google arguably does with its search engine results—might seem a new element that would justify.

But right chere in Lafayette, cher, there is the example of Furgo-Chance; who operates successfully in the cutthroat oil industry to prove that the gift economy—the framework for understanding Google, Commons-based peer production, and the open source buisness model—isn't particularly new nor something particularly suited to the internet.

The old and the new collide in Lafayette. It'd be a good thing—and a wise thing—if local tech businesses were to learn the lessons taught by both Linux and old french shopkeepers: business is about Trust. Dollars are a by-product.

Public-Private-University: The Reality & the Potential

A report from the Advertiser presents an overview of the speakers on "technology and knowledge economy" at a Chamber breakfast at the Petroleum Club (a location redolent of the old rather than the new economy). The Advertiser's Bob Moser leads with the money qoute:

Lafayette has put itself in a great position to lead the future "technology and knowledge economy," a Mississippi economic leader told a local business crowd on Thursday.

Randall Goldsmith, head of the Mississippi Technology Alliance, was the leadoff in a session that also featured Lafayette's Ramesh Kolluru, Keith Thibodeaux, and Doug Menefee.

The Reality
I was pleased to see some positive discussion of the essential role of the University in any hope Lafayette business might have of riding the technology wave. Not mincing words: I am often appalled at the dismissive attitude that I find pervasive in the Lafayette business community regarding the role of ULL as the engine of tech growth. Put plainly, without ULL there would be not tech be a sector in Lafayette. There is no hope of staying ahead of the curve without the academics. They are the essential players. It really is that simple and a Chamber breakfast that seems to treat that as a given is a great relief.

LONI and LITE were apparently the focus of discussion and both, of course, are academic ventures. (Again: without ULL neither could exist—and more pointedly neither would have even been conceived.) LITE will need careful, tolerant, encouragement from the local community. It is a new concept and is a tool rather than a product to boot; as such it so will take time to develop its niche. (Impatient parties should review the rocky early history of Baton Rouge's Pennington Biomedical Center and consider what the consequence would have been if Baton Rouge's business leaders had demanded immediate, local payback in terms of focusing on fostering old-style local private medical practices and hospitals in Greater Baton Rouge. —It would have destroyed what has become an outstanding world-class asset.) In a similar vein LONI—and its connections to Internet2/LamdaRail, are all fundamentally academic interconnects. It is a creature which, will benefit a larger community but not something that would exist as an asset for Louisiana or Lafayette if it hadn't been created by the Universities.

It goes without saying, or should, that without the private and governmental sectors actively and passionately involved the possibilities that ULL offers the community cannot be realized. They, too, are essential. But no one should mistake the reality: while a strong business community and a wise government are central to Lafayette's growth they could not create the resource that is represented by ULL; they could, however, fail to take advantage of it.

Oddly in my view, the "technology and knowledge economy" event did not include a focus on the most significant (academic or non-academic) initiative in the city—and arguably the very one that will have the greatest immediate impact on the ability of Chamber members to compete from a position on the high ground with their national and international opposition: the LUS Fiber project. That project will provide a ground-breaking 100 or more megs of intranet connection to every citizen who signs on—and that could easily be 50 or more percent of the market. Young and old, poor and rich, white and black, Creole, Cajun, French, and Americain. It will be coupled with a state-of the art wireless network that will actually work. It will all be available in the least expensive parts of the city to large, small, tiny entrepreneurs and regular folks who, if they so chose to grasp it, will have bandwidth previously available only in to mega corps and university campuses. What will we do with all that? Who knows? But rest assured that the vacuum will be filled. Why no mention? What's up with that sort of blind spot?...The really interesting discussion would have been of how to leverage this uniquely Lafayette convergence of the muscle of private initiative, municipal community-mindedness, and the restless exploratory energy of Academia to benefit the community.

The Potential
It would be pretty easy to imagine a research project that encourages ULL professors to develop an expertise in the popular use of really large bandwidth. It would involve both social and technical research and would draw in artists, playwrights, and mulitmedia folks of all strips in testing content. It's the sort of research project with tentacles into every department that a first-rank research 1 University would salivate over. But none of them have the essential resource. Consider: Lafayette will shortly have more bandwidth in the hands of a larger number of people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and incomes than any place in the country. It is going to be the richest feedbed of data imaginable for next generation theorizing and practice in disciplines ranging from networking to interface design; from multimedia art to interactive theater. Properly designed and funded such a program would attract top-notch, ground-breaking young scholars to ULL in numbers sufficient to make the university a national center in a field of interdisciplinary studies it, and Lafayette, could create.

An element in making such a push credible to an outside world that sees Louisiana through the lens of the White Citizens Council and the Jena 6 would be a real digital divide initiative and a strong, community-backed program to encourage every citizen to make the fullest possible use of the potential of the new network. With public, private, and university backing Lafayette could find itself among the Austins' and Research Triangles' of the US: places where people come and want to stay in order to build something special that they could build nowhere else. Dell Computer is an engine in Austin (and the US) becaue a student wanted to earn some extra cash and explore what he'd learned in school and for very little other substantial reason. That Hollywood is all but synonymous with riches worldwide is not due to any natural advantage but to an accident of history.

We could create such an accident here.

The real potential of such an open collaboration between the public, private, and university sectors would be in the spin-offs, the Dells, the Steve Jobs—the companies marketing the "inconsequential" by-products of new fields in the form of new services offered by drop-outs and folks who don't want to leave but have gained new, almost unique skills and put them to productive use. Texas poured its oil revenues into academics and, along the way, into a "far-out" and esoteric "computer science" department back in the days when the internet was a gleam in a researchers eye. An orthodonist's kid who showed up intending to become a doctor got hooked, got his hands dirty, and decided to drop out to really do this stuff. Dell Computer and a high-tech industry in dusty then-backwater Austin was the payback. That sector alone will return its investment many times long after the last oil is pumped from the sands beneath Texas.

If that strikes you as worthy thing to hope for there are few things you could do. You could support the university and especially its research arms in doing the "far out," esoteric things they are supposed to do. Hang around and hire the dropouts. Be tolerant of the oddities of those you don't fully understand. Feed 'em and share the music. Celebrate Mardi Gras. You could support a local survey of Lafayette's needs to provide all those future researchers a baseline from which to work. You could support LUS fully, regardless of any previous leanings—and say so. You could work to close the digital divide and to bring everyone in our community into full use of the technology we will own.

You could decide the future is worth working for.

Huval on Federal Broadband Policy

Huval, speaking as the chairman of the board of the American Public Power Association, on the problem with American broadband:

Broadband access is a top priority for American Public Power Association board Chairman Terry Huval. “Despite all the promises of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to create a competitive telecommunications market, the mega-incumbents sufficiently intimidated smaller players and succeeded in stifling desperately needed infrastructure upgrades,” he said. “As a result, the definition of American broadband is based on the smallest investment necessary to produce the greatest profit for the incumbents, leaving the United States’ ability to respond to worldwide global competition alarmingly hampered. It’s a dangerous situation that needs to be corrected soon.” Huval is the 2007-08 chairman of APPA and director of utilities in Lafayette, La. After a protracted battle with incumbent telecommunications providers, Lafayette Utilities System is constructing a citywide fiber-to-the-premises project to fill the city’s unmet broadband needs...

Huval believes local governments are potentially the best providers of advanced telecommunications infrastructure. They are accountable only to citizens and will price services reasonably, he said. “Local governments should not be hamstrung in any way that keeps them from meeting the vision and needs of their communities,” he said. “The incumbents have had their share of tax breaks and incentives. . . In a large way, those companies have failed to keep their promises. It’s time to let the public sector take the reins in communities where citizens want them to do so.”

That focuses directly on the real problem—incumbent greed—and the real solution—taking matters into our own hands. (It should go without saying that "the mega-incumbents" haven't intimidated everyone. Good.)

National Broadband Policy Gem

A real gem:

“We are probably the only industrialized country without a national strategy,” said Copps. “We have let the world go by while we deregulate and reclassify things and move them from one part of the Telecom Act to another, as if we are accomplishing something. We proceed with the naive assumption that an invisible hand will somehow get this done.”

That's just about as right as one can get in two sentences. And refreshingly tart to boot.

(From U.S. Lags in Broadband Deployment by Cathy Swirbul)

Durel's Second Term

Joey Durel (reelected recently when qualifying ended with no opposition registering) laid out two markers for his second term: Over-delivery on the LUS fiber to the home project and smart growth.

It's the first that interests us here. From the Advocate article:

Durel said he wants to continue the progress made in his first four years, including Lafayette Utilities System’s telecommunications venture, which is expected to hook up its first customer by the second year of Durel’s second term.

Durel said he hopes to “over deliver” on the promises made about what the new telecommunications business can do for Lafayette.

When a politician talks like that he's got something in mind. Wonder what it might be?

"Cox, Ragin' Cajuns join forces"

The Daily Advertiser ran a story on the Cox/ULL "partnership for victory" deal in the Sunday paper. Its a pretty straightforward tale, and they've got new details on the including the breakdown on how much is being paid for each element of the $200,000 dollar a year for 10 year deal.

The highlights are 350,000 dollars as an in-kind for running Cox fiber to ULL buildings here, and in New Iberia where Cox also owns the cable franchise and a 100,000 dollar a year purchase of the naming rights for the athletic building. That's half the fund, a cool million for putting Cox before the name of the Athletic Complex that contains Cajun Field.

What's not highlighted, nor even mentioned, is any exclusive redistribution rights like the ones I worried about at length on Friday. That claim was featured on the Independent's blog but has not appeared elsewhere. In fact the Advertiser story, and its accompanying sidebar detail how much was paid for what---and no money is allocated to such a deal.

I'm unsure what is really going on.....and it will be interesting to see how the story will mature.

"Group Tries to Close the Digitial Divide"

The Advertiser surprises this morning with a story—a good one—on Lafayette's Digital Divide Project. It's surprising because there is no particular "event" to hang it on and events are usually requried to make the paper. Instead this is an educational article that straight-forwardly informs the public about that which they should be aware. Education is a too-oft neglected function that legitimates real reporting—good for the daily.

The author interviews Huval and Walter Guillory on the efforts of the Digital Divide Committee. That committee has been quiescent since the referendum battle heated up but before that produced an excellent roadmap for "Bridging the Digital Divide" in our community. (Full disclosure: I am a member of that group.) After the fiber bonds were cleared and the process of building the network gotten underway the committee was reconvened.

The article outlines the roadmap pretty clearly; it gets the goal right:

A committee set up as part of Lafayette Utilities System's fiber-to-the-home project is moving forward in its efforts to try to provide Internet service to all residents.

That is the point; that and trying to make higher-level, more valuable capacities usably available to the people of Lafayette—to make the city truly "digital" for all.

The paper also focuses attention on what research shows is, hands down, the most effective way to increase participation:

LUS Director Terry Huval said that one major goal of the fiber initiative has been to provide telephone, cable and Internet service for about 20 percent less than what consumers currently pay..."If we offered that 'triple play' pricing, a consumer could pay the same for all three services as they pay now for phone and cable."

Walter Guillory, chairman of the Digital Divide committee, said that with that type of pricing, more residents could use the Internet for personal, business or educational purposes.

Guillory is right....and Huval is right about the target:

"Whatever we do, we want something that could be available to every residential consumer," Huval said, adding that consumers may be able to pay for the devices over time.

Things are moving to the next level and the list of projects (read work) is growing:

Huval said committee members and LUS are still examining what type of products could be used to help bridge the gap. Among the possibilities are devices that connect to TV sets and laptops that could be sold at a reduced price.

That's a difficult project all by itself....Computing power is getting cheaper and it's moving into all sorts of mobile devices—think Blackberries and the iPhone. Laptops originaly designed for 3rd world countries and children are now falling below the 275 dollar mark with a clear target of 100 dollars. (See the OLPC project for the best-known example.) Making wise decisions about what to support and promote is critically important to the future of the community.

More for the to-do list:

Make donated or low-cost computers available to qualified customers.

Develop community training facilities.

Support high-level local products that would reflect local cultures.

Provide low-cost or free Web-based programs.

Provide CD-based free software for off-line use.

I encourage any reader to consider joining up to tackle the job. Lafayette's advanced network is already slated to be more than mind-numbingly fast and cheap. It will have the unique feature of being configured to give everyone the same, high, at least 100 megs of intranet bandwidth. We'll all be able to pull things off the local network at speeds limited not by our income but only by the limits of the network itself. And those limits boggle the mind. Lafayette is poised to become the world's largest big bandwidth community; it could easily have the majority of the population connected at the same internal speed to that enormous pipe. Developers and users will be able to count on that capacity in developing new products and services. No one will have to "dumb-down" their offerings because a large part of the audience has to take their data in little dribs and drabs.

The major impediment to realize some pretty fantastic dreams (what's yours?) is simply finding people with the time and energy to further these goals.

Sign up, for the committee or simply to work on a project. Get in touch with Terry Huval at LUS. Or I'd be happy, more than happy, to talk to anyone about any aspect. (JohnDD(at)LafayetteProFiber.com)

Cox & UL Athletics

Cox has rolled out the first really big shot in the upcoming war with LUS; KATC and a post to the Independent blog reveal that it has spent two million dollars to purchase:

...exclusive rights to telecast replays of coaches programs, sporting events and university athletic programs on any of its cable systems, affiliated regional sports channel or programming network.

In the land of marketing this is a big deal...a very big deal.

The contract also includes, less importantly in my judgment, some pointedly described fiber connectivity and renaming/branding rights. Look to see "Cox" perpended to "Ragin' Cajuns" on buildings, shows, the scoreboard and wherever fine UL products are sold.

On the ground in Lafayette it means that Cox can control the video marketplace for UL sports. If you want to watch endless reruns and postgame analyzes of UL sports you'll have to subscribe to Cox. In a city where the successful pro fiber grassroots organization emblazoned all its advertising with the red and black it's one more element in Cox's campaign to overcome the anti-Lafayette label it was tagged with during the fiber referendum. (Cox has shown an acute awareness of LUS' local advantage in ways large and small; from hiring the locally connected daughter of the sitting governor to make its announcements, to sponsoring dinners for the local black chamber, to, now, grabbing the Ragin' Cajuns aftermarket. Cox understands that their prior behavior has created their largest marketing problem—and they're doing what they can to counter that history.)

What's LUS to do? There's very little that they can do. This is one of the places that Cox's size and financial reach make a direct answer impossible. Cox supplies cable to all of Acadiana and can distribute the cost of this purchase over every cable system they own in the region. [The red blobs at the map on the right; click map for a larger version] No single-city provider, no matter how loyal a booster of the university, can afford to match what Cox can afford to pay if the university makes it into a bidding war for an exclusive contract. And, anywhere Cox is not competing with an alternative wired provider, they can take a little cost off the top by leasing it to that non-competitor.

The Backstory: The feds
They will not have to provide this programming to anyone that they don't want to—and in Acadiana that means Cox will not sell it to LUS or the satellite companies. This sort of tactic has a pretty long history especially up east there have been bitter complaints against cable companies that secure exclusive rights to regional sports programming and refuse to resell it to competing wireline overbuilders (like LUS) or to satellite providers as a way of controlling the fan base.

It may (or may not) surprise you to know that this sort of thing was almost outlawed a year ago. The omnibus telecomm bill, that was only derailed when the net neutrality issue blew up unexpectedly, called the tactic anti-competitive and would have ended it. Cox is taking a bit of risk—a two million dollar risk—that the current congress won't casually outlaw the practice. The short version of the story is that locking new competitors out by using regional sports loyalties is pretty clearly anti-competitive. [How long is this contract? No one seems to say. KATC tells me that the period is a lengthy 10 years of exclusivity...$200,000 dollars a year.] And sports fans are the sort who, rightly, get upset and complain when they understand that their local loyalties are being exploited for the business benefit of media machines. They'd like to get it declared anti-competitive and illegal.

In fact it has been outlawed for any satellite-provided material. The satellite companies successfully lobbied to force vertically integrated media conglomerates that owned both television or movie programming and cable companies to sell critical programming at a reasonable price. That is why DirecTV can buy HBO programming (which is owned by Time-Warner cable) for a reasonable price. But the tool that the feds used to regulate it was satellite feeds—the big cable companies only had to sell it to satellite companies if they used satellites to distribute the feed. The idea back then was that the only reasonable way to distribute serious programming was via satellite uplink and downlink so distributing the feed to satellite companies would be trivially easy. However, in order that the cable companies wouldn't have to mess with demands to redistribute the many little shows that were locally produced shows (like those shown on AOC) that were transfered to regional affiliates over wire were excluded from the rule.

That made sense then. But things change and the rise of the gigabit internet has now made it feasible—and in some instances cheaper—to send massive amounts of video over the backbone, especially if you own regional fiber. (You can bet that AT&T won't bother to invest in lots of little satellite download dish farms as it rolls out its video services.) The UL deal exploits is what is known in the trade as "the terrestrial loophole." As long as cablecast regional sports "networks" (the tiger network, the ragin cajun network) use landlines to transfer the programming to local cable providers they can cut anyone out of the deal that they want.

But all that it would take to close that loophole would be the stroke of a legislative pen.

This is (another) one of those moments when Lafayette cannot simply go its own way and pursue its own interests. The federal legislature should act on issues like this and push the FCC, which under this administration, and frankly the last several administrations, has shown no inclination to police the media megacorporations that are the field on which modern politicking is played out. In a brief moment of irony Lafayette's best hope for gaining access to UL programming is the hope that AT&T and Verizon will be successful in their ongoing lobbying to close the terrestrial loophole.

UL?
The real question for me is: What is going on with UL? Cox is easy to understand. But UL has to understand that it is taking advantage of an opportunity that the people of the Lafayette community have created. Without the looming threat of competition from LUS Cox wouldn't bother to pay much for a product that no one else was in a position to sell. Cox could have given UL a couple of million anytime it wanted to in the last decade or so—and didn't. It is not generosity that motivates them. Cox chooses to do so today because it is looking for a way to staunch the inevitable bleeding that will begin the moment a popular locally-owned competitor rolls out a competing video product. But from UL's point of view they had to choose between 1) an exclusive, very lucrative contract with Cox this year that will, in all likelihood, result in limiting viewership by the 50% in their hometown that choose to buy from LUS and 2) Two non-exclusive contracts two years down the road--both likely well above what they're getting now but likely not equal to the pot that Cox is offering now--that would serve the entire loyal fan base they've developed in their hometown. The choice was between cash and developing their local fan community.

The University opted to trade cash for loyalty. It's probably a good business deal. But is doesn't serve the fan community—or other local university loyalists—well.

If you thought the horse farm deal and a determination to sell off that property before a new president arrives showed a lack of community of awareness bordering on hostilty toward Lafayette on the part of the outgoing Authement administration, the Cox deal will only confirm your suspicions. A new university administration can't come soon enough for Lafayette.

Update 8:10: I ran down an announcement of the deal on the ULL website. It's remarkable for two things—one which does and one which does not appear:

• 1) What is absent is any mention of what this 2 million really bought—which I've argued was the exclusive replay rights for all ULL's athletic programs and after-show commentary. (Is someone embarassed? And if so, is it Cox or ULL?) and
• 2) Cox repeats the silliness of describing its hybrid fiber-coax network as its "fiber network." Tain't so; and a lesson in what a fiber network really is is coming soon.
  

Industry Woes and State Law Limit New Orleans' Wi-Fi

New Orleans' hardest hit neighborhoods won't be getting the wifi system it was promised.

According to an AP story available in print from the Advertiser, online from KATC, which is apparently based on an article from the Times-Picayune, Earthlink is pulling back from its commitment to expand it wifi network into the areas hardest hit by the levee breaches following Katrina. (See Earthlink's current coverage area at right.—Click for a larger image.) That's a blow to those who are fighting to rebuild their lives in the worst-hit areas. In the words of a local blogger who assessed the situation last year:

In a nutshell, if your neighborhood did not flood, then you have access to free WiFi, but if your neighborhood did flood, you're out of luck. The city says the service will be free as long as the city is rebuilding, but the service is only available in places that didn't flood, and hence don't need to rebuild. I would argue that the flooded neighborhoods need the WiFi access more than anywhere else in America. For example, I won't be able to get a phone line working in my house for years, and with information and building permits online, it would make much of the rebuilding process easier and safer.

Earthlink is a partner to the woes that have beset the concept of municipal wifi as a competitor to landline services; a problem that has recently been commented on here. Basically, offering wifi as alternative connectivity to the public based on advertising and subscriptions to higher level tiers has not worked out financially. Earthlink and other participants are demanding that the cities step up and guarantee their income by becoming "anchor tenants." When you get right down to it that means is that the cities would guarantee the private concerns enough income to provide a secure basis for their making a profit. —It's not a terrible deal since muni wifi offers a potentially large savings for all sorts of city services (from police, to fire, to emergency services, to meter readers, to code inspectors and more...) that are currently tied into expensive cellular services. Cities like Corpus Christi claim to have saved a bundle.

However the bottom line is that there is no denying that the new business plan of the private providers is for cities to guarantee their income with long-term fixed-cost contracts that guarantee an at least marginal profit for private providers.

But is subsidizing private profit a good deal for the cities? America's cities, legally dependent on the states, and possessing no independent power, are perennially underfunded. New York, not long ago, almost went into bankruptcy. New Orleans couldn't afford to rebuild something as basic as its sewer system before the storm. If the cities were allowed to build their own telecommunications systems the expense would easily be paid for from the savings to city services alone. Selling access to citizens would keep dollars in the city and help rebuild a crumbling income base whose erosion has kept city centers that are vital to our economic growth blighted and decaying.

Unfortunately, cities are seldom allowed the freedom to take care of themselves and their own citizens internally. The states have often, commonly at the behest of a single monopolistic outside corporation, effectively forbidden municipalities from providing their own telecommunications services.

That has happened to New Orleans.

New Orleans, long-term readers will recall, is a victim of Lousiana's famous Muncipal (un)Fair Competition Act. New Orleans has already built a well-regarded municipal wifi system in the downtown area that provided for safety and police functions. When Katrina hit one of the success stories was that network which was quickly repurposed to provide wireless communications in a city where the private infrastructure had been wrecked. Volunteers, using materials generously donated by corporations, extended and upgraded the system in the initial days and months after the storm and the city opened up the network to citizens whose phone service and commercial connectivity was down. It was the feel-good story of the early days: hardworking, visionary local officials, in concert with a flood of talented volunteers, and the generosity of Americas' telecom equipment providers, cobbled together a bright, shiny, new free muni wifi system—the first of the nation to go into operation.

That happy glow was not enough to save the system.

That Municipal (un)Fair Competiont Act forbids municipalities offering their citizens telecommunications services (wired, wireless, or carrier pigeon) that is in excess of 128 k unless they go through a complex, legally ambiguous battle, with the well-funded incumbents. The law was passed in response to Lafayette's initial discussion of a retail Fiber To The Home network and was the incumbents first, nearly fatal blow to the project. As it was finally enacted even if a city succeeds it is still subject to a regulatory regime that does not apply to their private competition and which is enforced through an entirely new mechanism created to evade the state constitutions' prohibition on regulating municipal utility functions. That regulatory regime is openly designed, not to protect the municipalities' customers, but to protect their entrenched competition: it sets no upper limit on what muncipalities may charge, nor does enforce any quality assurance procedures. What it does do is set a lower limit on what a municipality may charge by insisting that the rate structures never show a loss and that "no loss" be defined in terms of what would be profitable if the municipality had to pay taxes to itself and other governmental agencies and pay itself for the use of its own poles and rights-of-way!

It is a thorough incumbent-protection act that stops just short of outright prohibition and does its best to make sure that even municipalities that win through to owning their own system will face unfair disadvantages during the operation of its telecommunications utility.

It is understandable that, in the wake of the storm and lead by a mayor who had once run the local Cox network, New Orleans would not choose to go through a long battle to keep its network when the emergency status that kept it legal expired. Instead they turned it over to Earthlink with the promise that Earthlink would expand the network into redeveloping areas and provide the leading edge of the spear in battle to reopen the flooded areas of the city. That won't happen now.

The bright promise of a municipal network that would lead development instead of profiting off the struggling people of the city has, sadly, faded.

----------------

The dark side of US federalism can be found in the way that its greatest cities, the engines of economic growth and the potential seat of political power, have been kept impoverished by state-level political resentments. New York and Philadelphia, for instance, have, like New Orleans, long been kept on a short leash by the states whose wealth and position of influence in the union depended upon them. The rise of a unified city electorate that distrusts state power and hangs together in support of even unsavory local political machines is as much an indictment of how the cities have been treated by "upstate" politicians and their resentful constituencies as any 'innate' urban corruption. There is perhaps no better example of this dynamic than Louisiana where cosmopolitan, Catholic, liberal, and yes "chocolate," New Orleans with its fleshpots, Creoles, Mardi Gras, and French traditions remained leashed to a state whose political engines were controlled by those who were offended by most of what made the city great.

The state's people, organized by their local communities, should pursue the complete repeal of the law that keeps New Orleans from taking care of itself. Lafayette, the original target of this malign law, who has won through to having its own fiber network, is now morally obligated to lead the way.