LUS and Deconsolidation...

The Advertiser runs an article this morning focusing on the City-Parish councilmen's attitudes toward LUS governance. What makes their positions on so technical an issue a story on this fine Wednesday morning is the burgeoning question of deconsolidation.

It's good to get this issue on the table early. As far as I can tell the issue of who controls LUS is the nub of the practical (as opposed to more theoretical) fears driving the proposal to take apart the current city-parish government by reconstituting a city of Lafayette. The pretty clear intent of the current charter is that LUS should be solely controlled by the LPUA (Lafayette Public Utility Authority)—a subset of the council made up of those members who have represent areas with 60 percent or more city of Lafayette residents. But that has never been the case in practice as other parts of the charter also require that full council approve matters relating to rates, taxes, and fees with no exception clearly made for those matters covered in the LPUA portion. The thing is poorly drafted and the consequence has been dual LPUA/Council votes on every LUS issue. Traditionally the LPUA votes first and the full council votes with the majority, deferring to their judgment about city matters.

That system came to within a hairs-breadth of breaking down recently.

The current situation is that the 5 members of the current LPUA, who represent city citizens in percentages ranging from 72 to just a hair this side of 100, can be overridden by "rural" members who represent from 48 percent to just shy of no city residents. This became painfully visible recently when LUS' electrical arm applied for its first rate increase in more than a decade. After patching up poor relations with some members the LPUA passed the increase. But there was real doubt that some of the rural members—who pride themselves on a reflexively anti-government stance and insist on viewing rate increases as "tax" increases—would go along. The final count, in fact, came down to a 5-4 squeaker of a vote with the two most anti-government rural representatives (with the smallest number of LUS customers in their district) voted against it. They joined the two most liberal members of the board who represent poorer, mostly black districts, and had voted no to avoid the cost increase in a bad economy. It's not a natural lineup and not one that you'll see often. Had one more rural representative decided to not honor the LPUA majority they could have overturned the vote.

Much of the current feeling that there is a "crisis" is directly attributable to this vote in my judgment. It was apparent that Theriot and Bellard would pursue their anti-government stand even in if it meant overriding the vote of the LPUA. They had made it clear that the old deferral to those on the LPUA was dead as far as they were concerned. As a consequence a lot of folks started to realize just how much the traditional workable solution depended upon "good behavior" by the non-LPUA portion of the council. With Theriot and Bellard making it clear that they could not be counted upon to cooperate other solutions were sought. And so deconsolidation became a hot issue. Theriot has certainly not been happy about that outcome—he's made his position that now is not the moment for deconsolidation in several venues. That's most likely because, by most accounts, it is the rural districts like his, and especially those constituents that are not in any municipal area, that will lose the most by the creation of the newly impoverished parish government that will be left when Lafayette becomes a full-fledged city again. The irony, of course is that he and Bellard did more than anyone else to make this an active issue. (Maybe a strong parish government is not such a bad idea after all? Hmmm..)

LUS stands at the center of this gathering storm. Fixing LUS' governance issue would take much of the immediate, practical, wind out of the sails of deconsolidation. (Though the issue is quickly becoming a question of the city of Lafayette's sovereignty—a beast that will be much harder to put down once it is awakened.) LUS is, as it stands now, the symbol of Lafayette's sovereignty. It is both a point of pride and an enormous practical and financial asset. We decided to build our own fiber optic network on the basis it provided. We can use it to carry out policy and attract new business. The ILOT money that it provides substitutes fees for service for taxes—without LUS the city's property taxes would have to rise. The rest of the parish doesn't have that asset. But, in my judgment at least, it should—and I've always suspected that the endgame in Lafayette parish was to extend LUS Fiber out into the parish. Deconsolidation done poorly or rancorously could make that impossible. And that would be a lasting tragedy for our community.

"LUS: Fiber schedule, meetings, software and more

Who DAT! You Dat! :-)
If you're recovering from Saints fever I have just the antidote. A long post on the latest in Lafayette's fiber fortunes. If you're starting to think that maybe anything is possible, well, read on.

Amanda McElfresh over at the Advertiser has an article up that apparently derives from following up remarks made by Joey Durel in his state of the city-parish address. In that speech (video) Durel devoted a fair amount of his time to touting the LUS Fiber network (@ minute 8:00). He revealed publicly what had been widely rumored locally: LUS Fiber was far ahead of schedule, and that the city-wide availability was expected by July, 18 months into a 24 month schedule. Durel linked the completion of the network to a series of meetings meant to engage the community with discussing what the "fiber-powered future" could look like.

Discussing that Fiber-Powered Future
As long time readers and friends will recall the general idea that Lafayette's people need to get involved meetings that would shape the future of the new network is something I've long advocated. Both here and and in various community groups like Lafayette Coming Together and the League of Women Voters. So the ears pricked up at the idea that the City-Parish President would be promoting a series of meetings to look at our fiber utility and the future of our city.

The first item on Durel's list of community meetings is "campfiber" a series, according to Durel, of "participant-driven conferences will be opportunities for local innovators to share their projects, get feedback from the community and for everybody to discuss their fiber-powered future." There have been several CampFiber meetings already (LPF coverage) and to date they've been strongly oriented toward software developers as participants and not toward public response or discussion. If they are to serve the purpose Durel describes they'll have to change. Engaging the imagination of the technology-types is crucial, of course—they've got more to dream with—but two other groups will be needed as well: the public and LCG/LUS. Both are crucial to a worthwhile discussion. The need for public involvement is obvious. But just as critical is a fully engaged LCG administration and LUS. LUS and the administration did attend and engage at the first campfiber. But in the end that participation seemed mostly defensive; real progress here will require the developer and the larger community be given more information with which to work. Two useful models occur to this writer: bring together distinct community groups beyond developers—nonprofits, church, medical, educational, creatives, small business, and neighborhoods all come to mind and ask them what a community-owned network could do for their sectors. (The Lafayette League of Women Voters has held the prototype of this model in two meetings involving nonprofits and community service organizations with fair success.) The other angle would be to organize around specific elements of the new system...for example: channel selection, internet storage, TV-phone integration, TV-internet integration, or set-top box uses (I can guarantee interest in the set top box.) For CampFiber meetings to engage the community will require focus and commitment from LUS and LCG.

The other item on Durel's list of meetings was Fiber Fete (website) which he described as designed to "bring experts from around the world to Lafayette to meet with local innovators to discuss what our fiber future looks like and plan on how to get to there from here." I've talked with the organizers—David Isenberg and Geoff Daily—and sit on what passes for the local board. The quote from Durel is just about the current extent of the planning; it is only now getting into any concrete planning. I've pushed for a more consistently social approach and for bring in speakers who are prepared to speak about how technology can be part of making communities stronger and people within them more active and powerful participants. Too many "visionary" tech conferences are trapped by the amazing technical wizardry and raw possibility of new technologies. Others go beyond that narrow vision only to focus solely on the business potential of these same technologies. While both of those motives are proper enough in their place that is not what a new community network needs and I'd hate to see
Fiber Fete captured by such limited visions. What's needed is a sense of how powerful communications technologies can be leveraged to create a stronger community and a more active and informed citizenry. (I am aware of the irony of suggesting that at a moment when deconsolidation is the talk of the town.) Having David Isenberg as one of the chief organizers gives me considerable hope that we might actually be able to accomplish this. His Freedom To Connect Conferences (F2C) are directly about promoting the idea that ensuring that we can freely connect to one another over the new network is the modern equivalent of freedom of assembly and free speech...That, rather than technical gee-whizary, is the right starting point for Lafayette and its people (not merely its "innovators") to start their thinking about a the responsibilities of a community-owned network.

For any of these public meetings to be useful rather than ornamental they'll have to involve more than the usual crowd labeled "innovators" — they'll need to involve a real cross-section of the community's most active citizens and the sense that LUS and LCG are open to sharing the information the community needs to assess what the network can accomplish and the sense that their conclusions will matter after the conference closes. That's a tall order. But it's one worth striving for.

The Rest of the Story
But Sunday's report had a lot of fiber news beyond the revelation of an early completion date and the prospect of public meetings. The new customer service center that we've heard about for so long is now scheduled to open by June. Says LUS' Huval:

a customer service center set to open at the corner of Pinhook and Kaliste Saloom roads by June. The building will include samples of LUS Fiber products, and will also be equipped to handle the needs of utilities customers, thus freeing up some of the gridlock at the customer service center at City Hall.

That will coincide with the completion of the network and, hopefully, a more vigorous public relations campaign promoting the new network.

Huval continues to be coy about adoption rates but says that "many" thousands have joined up. I've talked to friends who talk about most of their block or street moving over. I can't say that of my northside neighborhood and suspect that take rates are a very local phenomena at this early moment.

What should be welcome news was the declaration that LUS Fiber is going to be going through its first major upgrade. Again, from Terry Huval:

"It's tied to the set-top boxes and enhanced DVR services," he said. "It was a technology that was not completely ready for us to use when we deployed our system, and it's something that's not costly to us."

The software used on the Motorola boxes just isn't very good...it's older and the interface is a pain to use. So I don't use it. Now I am an interface nerd of sorts and also refused to use Cox's set top box software. With both LUS and Cox I have done most of my TV watching via the two old TiVo's that sit precariously perched on a rickity table by the widescreen. My understanding is that the new software will be an iteration of Microsofts' Media Room. That software package has been used by Verizon in its FiOS FTTH build out in the northeast. Verizon also uses the same family of Microsoft set top boxes that LUS has purchased so it should be a fairly mature implementation and full-featured platform. It will also be a much easier basis on which to build extended services than the Alcatel-supplied software currently in use. Heck it might even be usable.

A real concern has to be the internet capability which was the bright spot in the less-than-stellar Alcatel software. That feature is a great idea but its current reliance on a WAP-based browser both limits its practical utility and makes it extremely dificult to use. That capacity exists in the set top box and represents LUS' most innovative attempt to date to bridge the digital divide in Lafayette. It should be possible to utilize it on Mircrosoft's software--after all media room for the PC allows for internet connections. If it is not baked in developing a real net connection would make a great contest with which to involve local developers.

LUS wins rate increase, smart grid

Well, LUS won its rate increase...about 15% over two years, the first rise in electricity costs since 1998. If you want to see the sausage being made you can tune in to AOC or download the video off UStream.

The central story tomorrow will be that increase, of course. And that is probably all you'll see in the papers. I'll leave any detailed reporting on the back and forth to them.

On the other hand, I expect that there'll be no reporting on the sidelight issue of the status of the smart grid funding and I'll take that up here. (If you've not followed this you can catch up the earlier posts on the issue: 1, 2.) The smart grid package, which includes both water and electricity utilities will go forward and the Feds will cough up half the money necessary to pay for communications infrastructure and the electrical side's new meters—11.6 million dollars. It's a great deal. But if the rate increased had failed, as it initially appeared to have done, then LUS would have had to turn down the stimulus money that would have made the smart grid deal so attractive for Lafayette. With that would have gone the opportunity for the service improvements that would come with the utility having instant, detailed information on the status of every customer and the potential for home owners to save money by actively managing their consumption.

There was a fair amount of back and forth on this topic and it's apparent that LUS believes that the grant money is still there and that with the approval of the rate increase they will have no trouble convincing the Feds to turn over the money they have won.

Now that the money has been secured I'm hoping for more interesting news sooner rather than later on just which information technology will be used to connect the meters to the network. Whether it will be wired or wireless will be the first question and the answer will shape the future of the LUS communications division....stay tuned.

Update: The local and regional media has weighed in and as I suspected there no mention of the 11.6 million dollars in federal lagniappe that goes with the decision. From the Advertiser: "LUS rate hike OK'd" and from the Advocate: "LUS rate hike wins approval." From the Independent: "LUS rate increase approved."

"Dore clarifies position on LUS rate hike"

That title might better be: "Dore commits to LUS rate hike."

According to the Independent blog Sam Dore is now a committed supporter of the LUS rate hike and will both vote for it himself and work for its passage. Dore explains it as less a shift in position than a matter of timing but that commitment changes the odds on the measure's passage.

In a LPUA meeting late last year Dore was sided with Ken Boudreaux and Brandon Shelvin to make a 3-2 majority in favor of voting down a rate hike. The five-person LPUA board must approve any changes concerning the city's utility assets and that loss made a vote by the larger council pointless. Dore, and in particular Boudreaux, cited timing, a lack of information and the feeling that the administration had put forward and a take-it or leave-it position that didn't brook compromise or negotiation.

Among the non-LPUA members of the council, the so-called rural districts, it rumor has it that Purvis Morrison who is planning a run for mayor of Scott is now in support of the increase. That decision could only have been reinforced by the power outage in Scott during Monday's frigid night that was attributed to an overtaxed connection by Entergy and when that same connection went out again Tuesday night LUS' Huval pointed to outages as just the sort of problem that he wanted to avoid by doing the timely capacity upgrades the rate increase would fund.

That brings the pro-rate increase count up to 4...with 3 of those votes being mostly out of the city and thus having few LUS customers to contend with— and the few that they do have are in the more prosperous southern reaches. It seems likely that this time around the administration and LUS have done a better job of vote counting.

Time will tell.

LUS rate hike returns

LUS will be going back to the City-Parish Council for another go at a rate hike on January 19th. Or so report the Independent, (not once but twice), the Advertiser and KLFY.

Of the early reports the most interesting has come from the Independent's Walter Pierce who starts looking into the background politics of the matter. His speculations focus on shifts toward rate hike support from Purvis Morrison and (very tentatively) Sam Dore.

But my guess is that some serious negotiating has already been going on with Brandon Sheldon and Kenny Boudreaux being taken more seriously than in the first pass when the complaint was heard that little explanation was given and no inclination to discuss mitigating the increase was entertained.

There is a lot sitting in the background of this issue, including the upcoming redistricting and a prospective change to the home rule charter that raises uncomfortable questions about city vs parish revenues and charter-based restrictions on how LUS' in lieu of tax revenues are controlled and how that money can be spent.

This might well get more politically sticky before it is put to bed.

For tech infrastructure interests that are a focus of readers of this blog the consequence of securing the rate increase might well be to put the federal stimulus money for LUS' smart grid infrastructure back on the table. (See earlier coverage.) Without the rate increase LUS was going to have to turn down $11,630,000 dollars. It'd be nice to get the feds to pay for all that build out—and smart too. Having to walk away from that much money might well have influenced the administration to quickly take another stab and the Council to reconsider its earlier action.

It should be interesting to watch the sausage being made.

Curtis, Cox, and LUS

Today's "Curtis" syndicated comic, found in this morning's Advertiser could easily have been inspired by the marketing tactics we're seeing Lafayette... (The story line involves young Curtis hoping to con his dad into a special cable "deal.")

A friend tells me he was recently offered 3 months of free cable service when he called to cancel his Cox service and move to LUS. That, apparently, is just how desperate Cox is beginning to get as LUS continues to roll out its service—ahead of schedule. The incumbents have repeatedly insisted that "goverment-owned" LUS would never be able to meet its ambitious roll-out goals but that particular canard hasn't been repeated recently as it became obvious that the service would not only achieve its goal but that our community-owned utility is actually ahead of schedule (LUS recently announced that it would finish its roll-out in July, about six months early.)

Incidentally, LUS' is a great service and my friend (IMHO) was right to spurn the short range savings for the long-term savings, no-nonsense, no "deals" package the hometown alternative offers. Not to mention: our money stays here and it builds infrastructure we own.

Cox Raises Rates...

The Independent, the Gonzales Weekly Citizen and the Baton Rouge Business Report all have up stories based on a Cox press release that announces rate increases for both cable and internet packages in South Louisiana starting December 8th. Price increases range from 2 to 3 dollars on each effected service...with 1 dollar bumps on some (unspecified) premium packages. So if you get both internet and cable from Cox you'll be looking at at least $4 on the low end to $6 and up on higher end combos. It would be pretty easy for all those small changes to add up to a substantial surcharge of 10 dollars and more a month and it will be interesting to see a more detailed accounting of the changes.

Merry Christmas!

Details are still murky (expect pieces with some real reporting in tomorrow's news cycle) and "Along with the channel launches, some channels will move within tiers and into new service levels." Thats' pretty vague and sounds like it might mean that some tiers will actually lose channels. At any rate Cox is claiming cost increases in retransmission fees (that refers to fees paid to local stations) and cable channel packages to account for the increases cable side. Nobody is saying why internet has to increase as well.

Cox's "Ultimate Tier" —that 50/5 tier was introduced in Acadiana to compete with LUS Fiber's 50/50 tier—is the only internet package that will not see an increase.

(Hmmn...I justed checked the Cox site for Baton Rouge and Gonzales zip codes. Baton Rouge's announces that you can't get the Ultimate package there. But in Gonzales, where small local provider EATEL is also providing fiber to the home, the site now shows that Cox is willing to sell the "Ulitmate" service there as well. My...doesn't Baton Rouge wish that it had something more competitive than AT&T's UVerse to spur a little competitive energies?)

Cox announced some service increase candy alongside the bitter medicine of a rate increase. Among them are more HD channels, and speed increases on some of the internet tiers. The intent behind announcing them together is, pretty clearly and sensibly enough, to encourage folks to think that Cox is giving you something extra for your money. But they extras don't line up that neatly: on the cable side the lower-priced tiers and the movie packages get an increase but the higher-priced tiers are the ones that benifit from new HD channels.

Cox has been holding off on price increases in South Louisiana and especially in its Acadiana branch since LUS Fiber came onto the scene but apparently that long drought has ended. Cox is not going to continue to give all of South Louisiana a break just to keep its prices lower in Lafayette. You can look for semi-permenant "special introductory offers" to be given at a drop of the hat if you zip code is right, of course. But those things are time-limited and I doubt many people will be fooled for long.

One Story? Economic Development

Some days there's not "a" story but several stories taken together that tell the tale. I suspect that today is such a day.

Here's a list of marginally interesting stories that have hit today: Firm relocating to Lafayette (Advocate), City lands corporate office (Advertiser), LUS Fiber expands Internet service (Advertiser), Lafayette, LA: Best places ranking: #2 among midsize metro areas (CNN Money) and Lafayette Location Of Transcom Announces 700 New Jobs (KATC--from earlier this month). Each one interesting and encouraging enough in its own right.

Together they tell a tale of a city that, even in these hard times, is expanding its job market, making itself attractive to newcomers, and is providing shockingly cheap net services to small businesses. Most of the story, frankly, is in those headlines...the meat of the stories add detail but not substance.

Without making the silly claim that all of this was driven by fiber, I have to say that I think that LUS' fiber network is not getting its fair share of the credit in the stories. The 700 jobs that Transom brought? Don't recall those guys? Well, Transcom is the new corporate parent of NuConn...the call center guys that constituted Lafayette's first big, directly-connected-to-the-fiber-vote win. Back when NuConn/Transcom first came to town they were clear that fiber—and the community's gumption in voting it in—were the deciding factor in coming to Lafayette. As far as being able to run an engineering/consulting firms' national corporate office out of a mid-tier city like Lafayette? NOT possible without really massive, really world-class connectivity. The fact that it is as cheap as dirt here is only a huge cherry on top of having that sort of connectivity available at all. Engineering firms are among the most voracious of bandwidth users. Without really good connectivity there'd be no such firm considering a move to our fair town. And that brings up the announcement of a 100 megs of symmetrical bandwidth being available to every business, small or large, in every neighborhood, rich or poor, in the city for the crazy price of $199.95. Or the low end (low?) version of 10 megs symmetrical for $64.95? This has got to be the best place to start up your own garage internet business around.

Credit where credit's due: LUSFiber is making a big difference.

"Fiber rollout continues"

The Advertiser has a very measured piece about the fiber project on its front page today. Titled "Fiber rollout continues" it reports that things mostly are proceeding as expected. New news, such as it is, consists of notes about the locations of some phase 2 areas that are getting built a little early and a new reason for the slow, "controlled" rollout.

On phase 2:

LUS Director Terry Huval said crews are working in Phase II of the rollout, which includes downtown Lafayette and areas along Ambassador Caffery Parkway north of Congress Street and a small area along Johnston Street.

Huval said it can take four to six months to prepare an area to receive fiber service, which is why crews will often be seen working in multiple phase areas at the same time.

As to the slow rollout:

As for Phase I customers, Huval said the rollout continues to be slow, something that LUS officials expected. The main reason is that LUS is still using a manual system to sign up customers. Eventually, an automated system will be in place that will make the process quicker.

"That's one of the things that keeps our rollout schedule slower than a lot of people would like to see it be," Huval said. "When we want to serve more customers, we want to have that automated system to do it quickly and seamlessly. That's probably going to be ready sometime this summer."

"First phase of LUS Fiber runs smoothly"

This Sunday The Advertiser runs a fairly substance-free story on LUS fiber at the top of the front page: "First phase of LUS Fiber runs smoothly." The basic point, of course, is that the service is up and running and that Huval says that it is gathering the expected number of subscribers..but that's where the story reveals its lack of solid information. That's not entirely the fault of the reporter: she spends paragraphs 2 through 4 reporting that LUS, Cox, and AT&T won't say what their subscription figures look like. In LUS' case this will eventually be pretty easy to discern simply from the public records of the budget—or so I would think. So it's not clear what long-term benefit accrues from copying the incumbents on this. Though I do know that the infamous (un)fair competition act includes some provision for LUS shielding proprietary data I doubt that the practical politics involved will allow anything like the obfuscation the incumbents have engaged in. The wind is changing at the national level and, it looks like the federal context is changing in ways that may preclude keeping all this secret even for the incumbents.

The not-news aside there is an intriguing picture and one bit of news. The intriging picture shows Huval comparing LUS Fiber with Cox. I'd have loved to hear those claims—Huval is pretty notoriously conservative about the claims he makes and it'd be fun to know what he feels certain enough to remark on. Alas, there's no clue in the story itself. The bit of news is that work has begun on the buildout for section 2; my guess there is that crews specializing in laying down trunk fiber are simply being moved on to the next pieces of the project as section one's trunks are are completed. (Anybody in section 2 seeing digging or lines being hung in their area?)

It's great to see everything moving along.

LUS Fiber at the State of the Cty-Parish

Archived Broadcast by Ustream.TV
Fiber figured prominently in Mayor-president Joey Durel's state of the City-Parish address. (All those hyphens have to do with our peculiar consolidated form of government, something which got direct attention in the speech when Durel shared his belief that we'd never have true consolodation.) While political manuvering and recriminations about the failure of the sales tax proposal occupied much of the presenation, friends of fiber had their highlight reel.

The launch of LUS Fiber in early February has to be the signature success of the Durel administration. It was a daring move on Durel's part to so aggressively develop the fiber initiative in his first months and to unfailingly support it in the face of oft ugly opposition from two of the nation's largest and most politically powerful monopolies. That courage was tested locally as well; while the community from left to right overwhelming swung into support, the original power base of the City-Parish's first republican Mayor-president—the monied elite that promoted his candidacy and helped put him in office—was at best tepid and never came through with promised support. Durel's commitment never wavered and he has earned the credit that he began to claim in this speech. He's already reaped the political benefits: his reelection without opposition could be attributed to the fact of his high-profile success in this venture, and to the support he built among those who initially thought he'd be a typical Chamber of Commerce politician. By confounding expectations he both won new constituiencies and freed himself from old obligations. Durel is now, without doubt, both independent and the reigning political power in parish. (For an interesting view into his character I'd recommend reading this week's cover story on Dee Stanley in the Independent. His relationship with his chief luetenant is revealing. Don't miss, as well, the fact that he unflinchingly backed Tery Huval's fiber project even though, as the story reveals, Huval had cut an ad in support of his opponent. Character.)

But on to the story of the speech: Both the Advertiser and the Advocate covered the speech. The Advertiser also has its own video and you can get the LCG version off UStream. (The Advertiser's looks to be of higher resolution but autoplays.) AOC ran it live through convoluted technological tricks and you should be able to find it in rerun there.

The fiberlicious aspects:

It's Neat:
Via the Advocate:

The fiber system, which went on-line this month, offers residential Internet service up to 50 Mbps, a speed available in few areas of the country and generally costing more than twice as much as in Lafayette.

Connection speeds from customer to customer on the fiber system within Lafayette will be at 100 Mbps.

Via the Advertiser:

Durel also showed a snapshot of what LUS Fiber television customers will see when they turn on their sets. Viewers will be able to see a menu with local and national news, weather, public events and announcements, as well as the current agendas for City-Parish Council and Lafayette Parish School Board meetings.

We've Been Bragging on it:
Via the Advocate, Durel said:

“Last March I testified before Congress about our fiber,” Durel said. “I was able to look two dozen congressman in the eye and say that what we are going to have in Lafayette they wouldn’t have 20 or 25 years from now. That’s how far ahead of the curve that I think Lafayette is.”

Others have noticed:
Via the Advertiser

Durel said that LUS Fiber, which launched earlier this month in some parts of the city, has been a major factor in Lafayette's high rankings on several national lists. In the past year alone, different publications have named Lafayette one of the top 10 cities for the creative class, one of the top 10 innovative markets, one of the top 50 best places to work and play and the No. 1 city in America for new employment, among other recognitions."What makes many of these recognitions exciting to me is that several mention our Fiber to the Premises initiative," Durel said. "I don't think we would have received some of them had we not pursued it. Last March I testified before Congress about our fiber. I was able to look two dozen congressmen in the eye and say that what we are going to have in Lafayette, they wouldn't have 20 or 25 years from now. That's how far ahead of the curve I think we are."

Getting to this point required a political effort and Durel was at the head of that teamwork. He helped make it sure that the inevitable fiber network that will be built in Lafayette will be ours. And make no mistake: The most important feature of our network is that it is our network—not speed, not cheaper fees, not channel lineups, not bragging rights, not jobs, or development: the fact that it's ours and we can do with it as we think best is by far its most important feature. It is independence that we won; that first and foremost.

"Residents consider fiber"

The Sunday Advertiser runs a person-in-the-street story on fiber, talking to a few folks about their decision-making process. (In so far as they've formulated one. I doubt that most of us have.) Reported reactions range roughly from "I need to know more." to "I can't wait."

There's no doubt for me, of course. I'm thinking more like Dr. Feinburg:

...who lives along Twin Oaks Boulevard, said he is eager to sign up for LUS Fiber and is particularly interested in using its Internet service. Officials have said that the almost-unlimited amount of bandwidth and speeds will mean a faster Internet for LUS customers.

"I'm doing more than thinking about it," Feinberg said. "I think it's progressive and forward-thinking for our city."

Sure there'll start-up glitches. I'm looking forward to grousing about them. It's all part of being able to brag later that I signed on first chance I got. In the end we'll get much better service and the chance to use our money to develop resources in our city instead of lining the pockets of somebody in Atlanta or Dallas.

"LUS Fiber network generates buzz"

The Advertiser reports on the happy local buzz about the new community fiber-optic network. Ron Guidry is heard promoting a series of workshops for small business owners, I exhibit enthusiasm about our enhanced ability to communicate with each other, and Tim Supple now frets about LUS being too successful (an encouraging change from his earlier tune).

It's a fun read.

"BREAKING NEWS: LUS Fiber launches"

The Advertiser is up with a brief breaking news story, a pdf of the description sheet, and—most interesting—the channel lineup.

Basic Tier ($17.00)

2 Channel Guide
3 Acadiana Open Channel 1
4 Acadiana Open Channel 2
5 KATC / ABC
6 KADN / FOX
7 KPLC / NBC
8 QVC
9 EWTN
10 The Weather Channel
11 KLFY/ CBS
12 KLPB/ PBS
13 KLAF/ MYNetwork
14 CSPAN
15 KLWB/ CW
16 WAFB/ CBS
17 WBRZ/ ABC
18 Louisiana Connection Network (KLFT)
19 LPB+
20 KAJN/ FAM


Expanded Basic Tier ($39.95)

2 Channel Guide
3 Acadiana Open Channel 1
4 Acadiana Open Channel 2
5 KATC/ ABC
6 KADN/ FOX
7 KPLC/ NBC
8 QVC
9 EWTN
10 The Weather Channel
11 KLFY/ CBS
12 KLPB/ PBS
13 KLAF/ MYNetwork
14 CSPAN
15 KLWB/ CW
16 WAFB/ CBS
17 WBRZ/ ABC
18 Louisiana Connection Network (KLFT)
19 LPB+
20 KAJN/ FAM
25 Home Shopping Network
26 TNT
27 TBS
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513 DMX - 70's Hits
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516 DMX - 90's Hits
517 DMX - Adult Contemporary
518 DMX - Soft Hits
519 DMX - Coffeehouse Rock
520 DMX - Adult Alternative
521 DMX - Hottest Hits
522 DMX - Classic Rock
523 DMX - Alternative
524 DMX - Album Rock
525 DMX - Dance
526 DMX - Subterranean
527 DMX - Urban Beat
528 DMX - Edited Rap
529 DMX - Hot Jamz
530 DMX - Urban Adult Contemporary
531 DMX - Classic R&B
532 DMX - Blues
533 DMX - Reggae
534 DMX - Childrens
535 DMX - Holidays & Happenings
536 DMX - Hurbano
537 DMX - Salsa
538 DMX - Rock en Espanol
539 DMX - Latin Contemporary


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"LUS Fiber delays start" (Updated)

LUS has missed its deadline to serve the first customers in January of this year. They point to uncompleted contracts for cable channels as the reason for the delay—contracts LUS has signed but the folks that control the channel packages have not returned. All the recent coverage has hinted at such a delay: Huval has said for at least a month or six weeks that the only thing standing in the way of a launch was those contracts.

-----------
As to the story and the situation: Arrrgh. Let's start with the headline.

"LUS Fiber delays start"? Start? Really? How 'bout "LUS Fiber delay starts"? *(See update below) See what a difference the accurate placement of a single letter can make? I've complained endlessly and without effect about the tendency to sensationalize in the Advertiser so I won't belabor the point today. Just note that it's not a new frustration. I'll also take the opportunity to renew the plaint that the Adverstiser not ignore what has really delayed this project for years: the unremitting opposition of the incumbent providers: AT&T and Cox. As story about "delays" that carefully doesn't mention the source of years of delay is simply suspect reporting.

Ok, glad to get that off my chest. Still, there's a bit more complaining to do. :-)

The story does report on a real question that does need to be covered. The only thing worse than sensationalism would be to not cover it at all: LUS has missed its self-imposed deadline to serve the first customers by January of this year. And it let that date pass without making a public announcement in advance of the event. That's just not good public relations—or marketing. Better, much better, would be to hold a press conference lay it all out explicitly and to put it in the context of a huge project the people have been patiently waiting for — and a minor delay in comparison to the other painful delays that have occured as a consequence of outside interference. Get ahead of this sort of thing is the advice I would have given. My honest hope is that LUS intended announce this at last Tuesday's Council meeting—but if so I think they were mistaken to have honored the council's request to put it off. Granted the Council was right about their agenda and that did turn out to be an ungoodly long meeting. But LUS and the administration would have been smart to have asked for 5 minutes of the council's indulgence for a quick update that covered the change in plans if they could not stomach a full press conference. I strongly suspect that we will hear about it tonight's council meeting...I do expect that LUS will send out those promised blue announcement cards as soon as possible; possibly even this week. But the PR mistake will linger.
---------------

Beyond my frustrated complaint about the way the Adverstiser and LUS have handled this affair there is likely a really interesting story to tell. Or several. Which contracts with national providers have not completed signing? (We know the ones with local stations are done—including one that ended up in an FCC complaint.) What factors are playing into the decision to not launch with an incomplete linup? What is the source of the dispute? Was there another way to handle these contracts? Any one of these would make a useful story.

The question of which providers have neglected to return signed contracts might be interesting because we know that some packages are actually owned by incumbent cable providers who might well think it useful to embarass a standard bearer for municipal broadband. For instance, Time-Warner includes among its subdiaries major cable provider Time-Warner Cable as well as a huge set of cable channel packages including HBO, Turner Broadcasting (TMC), WB, CNN, and the Cartoon network. Comcast owns Cox owns the Travel channel. It's not a big stretch to think the cable companies might find this an easy tactic to use: Comcast, for instance, is famous for using its control of various sporting channels and contracts to its advantage in larger contract negotiations.

Why not just launch without the last few channels? You could always give a price break/rebate on the portion of the final package that customers don't get. The factors that are in play in deciding to delay the launch, and bear the cost of bad publicity, must include the so-called "Fair Competion" Act that the incumbents initially wrote and the legislature finally passed. The purpose of the act was far from "fair competition," instead it consists of a series of restrictions that apply only to the publicly-owned competition. (Only LUS in our state.) One of the elements in that law starts a time clock with dire consequences for LUS if it doesn't make a paper profit by a particular date. So any slow start imposes penalties by law...LUS needs to start off fast, and could easily conclude that not having the channel lineup complete would lead people to take a "wait and see" stance—not something they can afford to encourage.

If there are contracts outstanding one has to think that there have been disputes over carriage terms. LUS has apparently not just accepted anything that they are offered and have tried to hold out for good terms. The most obvious reason to hold out might well be simple cost: there is some push and pull on cost and providers naturally want to get as much as possible for their product and could well think that LUS doesn't have as much to bargin with as the monster companies like Cox or Comcast. But there may well be more subtle and even more disturbing possibilities. We here in Lafayette think its a great thing to get a 100 meg intranet and set-top boxes with even limited internet capacity. But content providers in this country are well known for their at-times irrational response to the rapidly growing dominance of the internet and all digital media. They've been noticeably antsy about IPTV (Internet Protocal TV as opposed to RF-based cable) and I've heard that the mention of opening the settop boxes through which "their" media flows to the evil internet for digital divide reasons causes them some irrational spasms. Trying to step in and dictate local policy as to who does and does not get internet access under the guise of protecting their interests would be all too in-character for an industry everyone has learned to disdain. (Video owners would be wise to learn from the painful experience of the music industry.—Standing in front of the engine of change and trying to slow it down only gets you run over.)

Finally, LUS initially intended to join a coop to get its programming and probably could do so in the future. But at the moment they became set on trying to write their own contracts that window was closed by an odd set of events that temporarily closed the coop to new membership. I'd heard that they'd actually managed to secure some improved deals on the contracts they were able to close early on...but that may not have proven a consistent consequence. They may eventually decide to backout and take advantage of the coop offerings in some cases—contracts that might be cheaper or have fewer use restrictions. This is a murky area, but like I said, an interesting one to follow-up on.


Laigniappe: There's also a story on the line cuts that have followed digging up a big chunk of the city. While any breaks in service, and especially gas breaks, are disturbing they are also inevitable as the utility digs up a huge chunk of the city.

Update 12:42 am 2/4: My wife suggests another interpretation of the headline "LUS Fiber delays start" that points out that "delays start" is ambiguous it could mean that the delays are beginning (what I took umbrage at) or that the startup is delayed (a fair depiction). The first she primly informs reads delay as a noun and starts as a verb while the latter reads delays as a verb and starts as a noun. She's the grammarian. My best guess is that the misinterpretation is mine and the headline poorly written but not mean-spirited. Mea culpa. (She now leans over and insists I say that she brought in the paper and supplied the initial interpretation. True enough...but I wrote it up without noticing anything else. Partners. :-) )

"LUS fiber means strong growth"

This morning's Advertiser editorial lauds Lafayette's Fiber to the Home project. It offers well-deserved high fives to Durel and LUS as movers in the project but neglects the central role played by citizen support and activism...ah well:

The path has not always been smooth, but the Lafayette Utilities System and the Durel administration have been victorious in regard to the legal scuffles and citizen opposition.

This simple formulation oddly erases the often mean-spirited and widely resented opposition of the incumbent cable and phone companies that was the real pivot point of the fight and ignores the kudos Lafayette has received worldwide for taking on the incumbents—and winning. The NATAO Broadband Hero award Durel won and the Advertiser proudly cites was, in fact, focused on just that bravery. That sentence also rewrites history in another way: Citizen opposition? Real citizen opposition was extremely limited throughout the referendum fight. The four Fiber 411 guys were pretty much the only visible opponents and their visibility was largely a creation of the media who needed someone to play the role of "she" in the "he said, she said" narrative structure of the newspaper article. (I've flogged this horse before. See: "How LUS Beat the Big Guys" )

Economic Development
The Advertiser gets it largely right, however, when it points out that utility revenues and cheaper prices aren't the real point:

While generating revenue is essential to paying off the bonds and keeping up with constantly changing technology, revenue is not the basic goal.

Competition will result in better rates, but as desirable as that is, it is still not the focal point of the administration vision. The vision is one of technological leadership that will result in explosive economic growth.

Economic growth is certainly the basic emphasis of the City-Parish and motivates a substantial amount of citizen support—especially among the business community. Economic growth in the guise of "Keeping our Children Home" was a major element in the winning referendum campaign as well. The fiber project, before it has even launched, has already paid dividends in both national prestige/mindshare and in actual jobs in both the private and the public sectors.

Human & Community Development
But there is another, perhaps even larger, potential that goes beyond the immediacies of revenue and frugality or even simple economic development. Lafayette will soon be in the possession of a community-owned fiber to the home network that has few rivals world-wide. This will, potentially, make Lafayette's people into a unique community with the widespread ability to access affordable (rather than forbiddingly expensive) connectivity. Everyone on the data network will have a minimum of 10 megs of symmetrical capacity—and a full 100 megs of peer to peer connectivity. What's important about that is not the technical specs but the human and community ones: Lafayette's network

1. will be available to everyone,
   
2. will have a lower price and hence greater potential for widespread adoption higher, and last,
   
3. has enourmous capacity for communication between citizen-owners, and
   
4. most importantly, WE will own and control this network and be able to use if for the benefit of the community, not for the profit of outside owners,.

These are the qualities that level the real challenge: to do something with this rich potential to ratchet the very definition of community up a notch. We've made a fair start: both the 100 meg intranet and the use of settop boxes as internet devices can be traced back to citizen-suggestions and pressure. On the evidence it seems LUS and LCG is able to listen. We can make a real difference. So...

What is next? What can we do to improve our community? There is no one else in the world that can answer those questions for us.

Network Testing & Testers

A second story fiber story on today's front page is "LUS testing network as date of launch nears." The focus is on the system's beta testers—folks who are getting to test out the currently available setup and services. I'm sure that's both fascinating and frustrating and hope that someone will tell the tale of their trials and tribulations after the system launches. LUS is getting valuable information about both the technical end of the service and about how people get tangled up in the new offerings. I'm not sure which would be more valuable.

"These citizens agreed to help us test our systems knowing we would frequently interrupt their services to add and adjust the features needed on our system before we can begin commercial operations," Huval said...

"We're getting positive responses, and some suggestions," he said. "It's also training for us so we can learn how customers will ask questions and what information they need."

There's also the proviso, repeated often of late, that the main holdup at this point is contracts to fill out the channel lineup. That's been an issue for a while now. In the background is a complex set of issues about two different coops for securing channel contracts, the temporary closing of one of those coops to new members and LUS decision to forge on by cutting its own, separate deal with suppliers. In many cases, evidently, that's lead to good deals but its a slow and painful process—and one that leads to a mesh of differing constraints on what they can and can't do that may lead to difficulties downstream.

"LUS continues to build a fiber workforce"

The Advertiser this morning runs two front page stories on the fiber project in advance of expected news on the network later this week. The boldface, above the fold headline is "LUS continues to build a fiber workforce." That article is pretty much a bare-bones list of project costs. The most interesting bit in the article is a listing of some of the good-paying workman-level jobs:

Of the employees, five are fiber optics technicians who make anywhere from $22.71 to $25.14 per hour. There are also four communication network technicians, all of whom make around $18 an hour.

There also are two customer service supervisors, one of whom is paid $27.25 per hour and the other who is paid $23.12 per hour. Two communications customer service representatives are each paid $14.16 per hour.

The printed version of the story (but not the online one) contains what looks to be a listing of all hourly wages of the division's 47 current employees. The 14.16/hr is the lowest paying job on the list.

Those are good jobs—steady, good-paying Lafayette jobs. Folks should be reassured that the community network will produce a core of good-paying high-tech jobs in Lafayette solely on the basis of maintaining the network.

The rest of the story is pretty much a recounting of the contract costs. Again, the printed version has a long listing of the contract amounts and a sketchy label telling what the company supplies.

I can wish for more complete reporting....what's missing is any context, any background, any education of the public. Providing such is the civic purpose of any newspaper.

For instance, about wages: How much money do these wages add up to? It's common in businesse reporting to report on the total wages that a new company will bring into the local economy. Are these wages comparable to the others in the industry? To wages paid by local competitors like Cox and AT&T. How many employees of Cox and AT&T are based in Lafayette? (If the private providers refuse to reveal such information that too should be part of the reporting.)

Or about contracts: A sentence or two of background on the low-bid law governing the awarding of contracts might be useful as would be some indication of just how specialized the work is and how large this project is. This is a big enough network that there are really few companies world-wide that could tackle it. The specialized network equipment—like the IP-capable Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) is likewise only available in the large quantities required from a few companies with world-wide reach.

(Broadband Hero) "Durel details fiber project for journal"

The Advertiser reports that Mayor Durel has penned an article on our fiber project in the NATOA Journal. The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers lauded Durel as its "Broadband Hero of the Year" last year and the article is an apparent outgrowth of that award.

The NATAO story (not available online) celebrated the economic development potential of the new system and highlighted the 100 meg intranet according to the Advertiser.

The Broadband Hero award is worth highlighting itself. I had a post prepared on this that never made it out of the draft stage back in November and am chagrined at the omission. NATOA is a muscular association of telecom officers for public bodies that is extremely influential nationally and has lead the fight against bad laws — and kept up the pressure after the laws predictably failed—on issues like municipal broadband and state video franchises. Louisiana has first hand experience in both these areas of how badly these incumbent-written laws have been for local communities. NATOA, then, is both prestigious and determined. Getting an award from them, being invited to present at their conference, and having an article placed in their national journal bragging on your mid-sized south Louisiana city is no small thing on the national scene.

The reason for the "Hero" designation is evident from the wording of the award:

...for championing the need for robust, competitive communications services in his community; for championing the cause of local decision-making in communications; and for leading his community to counter efforts to thwart local communications initiatives.

Durel and Huval's muscular, public, relentless defense of the fiber project was absolutely essential to its success. Many communities lack determined leaders and the award is well-deserved.

Alert: Huval to answer questions Wednesday (updated)

Alert: LUS Direct Terry Huval will answer questions in a live chat at the Advertiser's on-line forum tomorrow evening. Take note, those of you who've asked questions in the comments section of this blog: you can get your answers straight from the horse's mouth.

Particulars:

Where: online @ theadvertiser.com: Access Page
When: Wednesday, 1/14/08 starting at 6:00 PM
Mode: "Live Chat"

Huval has already been doing a great job of modeling how a really open and responsive community-owned telecom would act in the comments section of the Advertiser. He's come on and answered questions from everyone—for pages and pages. (See, for instance: Announcement story, Advertiser Digest.) I've been gratified by the generally respectful tone of the commentors there; it's a noticeable contrast to the ugly, uninformed approach that too often dominates in that and other anonymous forums. (The fact that Terry is speaking without the "protection" of anonymity seems to help. I recommend that participants who want to be taken seriously follow suit.)

Kudos to the Advertiser and Bill Decker. These Q&A sessions are proving useful to the community.

Update: 1/14/09: I just went to the access page and found an interesting and I think encouraging set of rules about the Advertiser's "Live Chats."

• There's nothing to do during a Live Blog other than read, watch and occasionally send in a comment or vote in the polling questions.
• It's not a chatroom. You go to largely find out what the writer has to say. An open chat with thirty or more readers turns into poor, disjointed content very quickly.
• Your comments are published at the Writer's discretion. The Writer can view all comments sent to them but only they can publish your comments for everyone to see.
• Our 'autoscroll' feature ensures you're always shown the newest content without having to refresh or scroll your screen. You can turn this on or off by using the controls at the bottom of the Live Blog.
• Subtle sound effects alert you to new content as the writer publishes it. This can also be turned on or off as needed

Nice; particularly the "It's not a chatroom" caveat. The Advertiser has already taken care of much of my concerns. The net evolves.

LUS Announces Pricing at the Council Meeting

Terry Huval made another appearance during the "President's Address" portion of last night's council meeting. In this one he provided more details on pricing and installation....

My trusty TiVo picked up the broadcast; it will be rebroadcast by AOC on Channel 16 Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. and Saturday at 1:00 p.m. It is also available anytime on the newly established ustream channel "lcg-council-auditorium."

If your interested in the details (and who isn't?) I recommend you take a look at Huval's presentation. It's well-organized and packs a lot of information into a small time frame. You can also check out the press release at the LUS Fiber site and pages there on video, phone and internet pricing.

Some highlights & notes of interest:

1. There will be "no deposit, no contracts, and no charge for a standard installation."
   
2. There will be some very low prices for some cable services—lower than had been previously anounced. The basic, no-box "analog," tier will only cost $17:00 and includes "20 channels including local channels and The Weather Channel." (Interestingly the "analog" channels on the local system are analog largely in the sense that they don't require a set top box: the system itself is all IP. Customers who don't want a box and have an analog TV will have their digital signals transformed into coaxial-happy analog at the fancy box on the exterior wall.)
3. That low price, and other low prices for local phone service and internet will be mitigated by a minimum required purchase of $44 dollars. No customer will be signed up unless they initially agree to purchase $44 dollars worth of service. That's a marketing mistake, I believe. You want everyone to sign up, even if they are low-return initally. Of course, without a contract I don't know what is to prevent a frugal customer from signing up, paying for one month and dropping any extra services. Frankly, I don't see the point of this requirement. Without a contract it won't prevent folks from doing the obvious; will give the naysayers something pretty concrete to complain about; and will be used to by the opposition to undercut the city's otherwise legitimate claim to be lowering prices and offering poor and working people a break. (This isn't conjecture on my part—that was the response of the incumbents to a similar condition to join Bristol VA's municipal system.) [Yes, sure, I do understand the rationale: that fancy box on the side of the house that translates light into analog and digital cable over coax, internet over cat6, and emulates a Plain Old Telephone system is very costly...and LUS reasonably wants to recover that cost in some reasonable period. Still; IMHO, dangling unattainable low prices in front of the public is a mistake that only accountants and engineers would make. It's logical and sensible but mistaken. Where are the political, PR, and marketing folks? LUS needs a citizen's advisory council.]
   
4. The internet service will include email, 70 megs of personal web space, Instant Messaging, personal calendaring and file sharing....pretty nifty. Making those service available universally will potentially open up a huge range of network effects akin to having universal phone service. All these are more valuable if all have them.
   
5. It looks like only HD digital boxes will be deployed, some with and some without DVR capacity but all with HD. Planning for the future, I presume.
6. There will be "an interactive TV Web Portal, Video On Demand, Pay-Per-View and Digital Video Recording." I'm still interested in that TV Web Portal.

Still missing: a channel lineup, details on the premium channel packages and any wireless hints.


PS: The Advertiser has a short piece up this evening. Expect a fuller story tomorrow and one from the Advocate as well.

"Locals curious about fiber"

This morning's Advertiser has a short (though front page) article on public reaction to the imminent launch of the Lafayette fiber project. It's a color story, with not much in it but the public reactions to what they've been informed (and misinformed) about concerning the new system.

On the upside they get the basic reactions of people on the street pretty much right: cautious excitement.

Two things on the downside: 1) The Advertiser persists in repeating the mistaken idea that all LUS has announced so far is the prices of the three "VIP" tiers when Huval clearly has said that the prices announced for services were the same whether you bundled them together or not both in the council presentation and in their own comments pages. (Incidently, this is a feature; something to like...) 2) that bit of repeated misreporting gives the Advertiser's coterie of local Lafayette-haters something semi-concrete, if mistaken, to whine about...every city (and every barbershop) has its little group of nay-sayers. But it is a pity that the Advertiser has chosen to give their ugliness both anonymity and a semi-legitimate forum.

Media Roundup: LUS Fiber Announcement (Update)

All the usual local media suspects weighed in with coverage of LUS' Fiber announcements at last night's city-parish council meeting. If you comb through the media landscape you'll find bits from KLFY, KATC, The Advertiser and the Advocate.

If you've just got time for one: read the Advocate. It's more comprehensive and is the only one to mention the announcements of features that will truly set Lafayette apart even in the rarefied ranks of fully-fibered cities. On the free internet-over-the-TV feature for digital subscribers:

LUS Director Terry Huval said the basic residential service will also allow customers without computers to have basic Internet browsing capability through the television.

“We think it may well be the first in the world,” Huval said of the television-based Web browsing capability. “It’s for the child at home trying to do a book report and cannot access the Internet today.”

On the 100 Mbps of intranet, customer to customer, connectivity:

All customers on the LUS fiber system will be able to exchange information with other fiber customers at 100 Mbps, Huval said.

The Baton Rouge Advocate also covers pricing, tiers, the launch date, and the likely first neighborhoods to get fiber.

The Lafayette Adverstiser, and local TV station KATC and KLFY restrict their coverage to pricing and rollout details, though KATC does mention the fact that LUS bragged on being the only "100 percent fiber optic network and the only customer-owned telecommunications network" in Lafayette. There's also a bit of video at KATC.

In a story that headlines the front page the Advertiser fleshes out the details on the residential bundles; lays out the plan for business bundles, and makes clear the places where the first customers will be served.

They're all worth a gander and report slightly different parts of last night's ephocal announcement. Take a look.

It's certainly a nice Christmas present for Lafayette.

UPDATE 3:35: Terry Huval, in the best tradition of local responsivness, went down to the Advertiser site and answered questions from all comers. (Starts here.) Great stuff! It takes several pages and a lot of ground is covered. This is one of the few times that reading the comments is worthwhile—and Terry does it using his real name, a rarity in the not-so-courageous atmosphere of the Advertiser site. It's all pretty respectful, thankfully. I suspect that this is because the denizens there are stunned by dealing with someone who 1) puts their reputation on the line by using his real name, and 2) really knows what he's talking about. That's the natural basis for respect.

(Try getting a response, any response, from Randall Stephenson or Patrick Esser. They're the heads of AT&T and Cox respectively. Never heard of 'em? And they've never heard of you or your neighborhood, nor have any idea that there is an Advertiser or an Advertiser forum. That's my point. You're better off with Terry. And he plays a mean fiddle, too.)

"Fiber taking shape"

The Advertiser runs up the second local story anticipating the LUS Fiber launch this morning. Like the Independent story it unfortunately leads with what isn't known. What's far more interesting is what is... Still, it's hard to write a story about the product launch when there is so little to report about the product's standard commercial details. As the story reports:

...there's been virtually no marketing or promotions surrounding the project, and officials have been quiet on details such as the channel lineup and what kinds of pricing packages will be offered. Also unknown is exactly when in January the system will be unveiled.

Parts of the article repeats things we've know but that are nice to see repeated: The January launch is still on. There will be "mulit-hundred" channels—with lots of HD. On Demand and Digital Video Recording (DVR) service. There will be caller ID on screen. And internet capacity will be huge. (Though, in an obvious editing error the 10 meg minimum low-end package gets presented as the maximum offering. That's simply a mistake on the part of the Advertiser.) We'll have 100 megs of intranet.

With the Advertiser reportw a few more interesting details leak out. About the set top box:

A small box also will be available in which customers who do not have regular online access will be able to access some parts of the Internet through their television. Huval said some features, such as videos, may not be available, but the goal is to bring the Internet into homes that otherwise might not have it without those customers having to pay additional fees.

That makes it sound as though 1) Any telecom subscriber will be able to get a box that enables limited Internet on the TV and 2) that it will be available without "additional fees." That sounds good!

It also looks like they are contemplating some sort of community portal:

The televisions also could have several menus for users to choose from, with some featuring community news and announcements.

Terry Huval (LUS head) also addresses the reasons why local denizens would switch saying:

"Our pricing might be more attractive to them," he said, adding that the costs are expected to be an average of 20 percent less than current providers' standard rates. "The quality of the product they're going to get is going to be superior. And it's a local operation, tailored for Lafayette. We look at what our community needs. This system is owned by the citizens of Lafayette."

Price, quality & hometown pride. I'm not sure what other reasons there can be.... I'm looking forward to signing up when it becomes available in my section of the first build.

NADs, the Digital Divide, the iPhone and Lafayette

Food For Thought Dept.

Mike helpfully emailed a link to a Wall Street Journal article that thoughtfully rewrites a press release from Comscore, a marketing research firm which recently released a study on the influence of the iPhone on the smartphone market.

Long story short: the iPhone is a big deal and is driving some pretty basic shifts in usage patterns. This isn't all that surprising when you realize that the iPhone is pretty much a full computer with an always-on 3G internet connection—usably fast mobile ubiquity. I recently got one to take on an extended vacation and camping trip out west and it was fantastically useful to be able to access mapping, directions, restaurant reviews—and even GPS locations while hiking far from cellular connections. I am not surprised that others find its extended all-in-one capacity both helpful and worth affording. (That trip explains the 2 week LPF hiatus for both of you that wondered.) You can do a search on the terms and find bits and pieces of Comscore's broader analysis. (The full report is a for-pay item.)

Our Focus
But the big picture is not particularly what interests us here today. Instead we focus on the implications of these usage shifts for digital divide issues here in Lafayette.

Part of what Comscore's data shows is that lower-income householders are 1) adopting smartphones and especially the iPhone at a rate that is growing faster than those that are more wealthy and 2) that their use of network functions like email and search are also growing faster than the wealthy as is their usage of music/mp3 functions. (As an interesting sidelight: the overall usage is actually shrinking for non-network centric uses like music listening. hmmn....)

The conclusion that the analysts reach is that folks who need to stretch the dollar are dropping telephone landlines and internet connections in favor of cellular connections when they are pressed—iPhone-like devices make it possible to gain enough of the benefits of these capacities over your cellular connection to make turning off the other services seem cost-effective. You also don't have to pay for a separate mp3 player or computer.

The smartphone/iPhone is emerging as an all-in-one network device that is particularly attractive to those whose need to pinch pennies. It may well become the preferred NAD (network attached device) of the working stiff.

The NAD and the Digital Divide in Lafayette
Just how people attach to Lafayette's shiny new network has been a big issue dating back to the Digital Divide Committee and the Fiber Fight. Both LUS and the city-parish council have made a strong (and specific) commitment to making sure that the benefits of the community's network extend to all. The first and most valuable commitment to equity was to make the the network as cheap as possible and to make the cheapest levels of service much more powerful than is available from for-profit providers. LUS is clearly keeping that commitment with very low-priced, extremely high bandwidth connectivity products. But there was also a commitment to find some way to get computers into poorer people's homes.

Closing the digital divide, digital inclusion, was never just a matter of do-gooder sensibility or even simple justice (as powerful as both are); the impulse always included a healthy dose of selfish realism: We will all advance further and faster if we advance together. A truly advanced digital community must be pervasively sophisticated. To the extent that Lafayette (and any vigorous local community) has decided to invest in a technological future for its children it cannot afford to leave any part of the community behind. No local community has the human resources to waste. No real community would tolerate it.

That was the basis for our commitment to digital inclusion. At the time it was assumed that the NAD would be a desktop computer or maybe a laptop. But the winds have shifted.


The New NADs
It now appears that the NADs used to bridge the digital divide in Lafayette will consist of some mix of 1) newer, radically inexpensive low-powered laptops (aka "net tops", 2) wireless smartphones, and 3) the cable settop box's rudimentary browsing and email capacities. I've discussed 1 and 3 pretty extensively earlier.

What's most interesting about these 3 paths toward accessible network connectivity is not how they differ and the hard choices those differences might suggest but how they are similar and the opportunities that they offer that Lafayette is uniquely situated to grasp.

Net tops laptops, smartphones, and set top boxes are all unabashedly network-dependent devices. Without a good, fast, reliable connection to the internet they are really not very useful or valuable. With an advanced connection, however, they are transformed into powerful, amazingly cheap devices that challenge the functionality of a powerful conventional computer for most folk's purposes. That defines the double-edged sword that inexpensive network devices represent for most people in most places: they are only as good--and as cheap--as the networks to which they connect.

The smartphone/iPhone presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for providing fair access to Lafayette's networked future.

Smartphone Opportunities
The opportunities are pretty breath-taking: hand-held, always-on network devices like the iPhone or newer advanced Blackberries offer the possibility of leapfrogging into a future that must remain a vision in most places.

That vision is of an ubiquitous, always-accessible network that puts rich comunications—ranging from video to voice to text—and huge computational and information resources at the fingertips of users at a price point so low as to make universal use almost inevitable.

If we can line up all these elements we can be both a national and even a world leader in popular access to advanced technologies. Lafayette can be the place to explore today the consequences of sort putting massive bandwidth, new devices, network storage, and online computational resources into the hands of most people in a community. It's a chance for our comunity to help define the future—and to make a place in that future for communities like our own.

Smartphone Challenges
The new, cheap NADs Lafayette is considering as tools to close the digital divide are all not only network-centric but network-dependent. These inexpensive devices all require two things to make them function as adequate substitutes for traditional computers: 1) an always-on, large-bandwidth connection and 2) —and this is less well understood—on line storage and computational resources dedicated to each NAD user.

We have the dense fiber backbone. And the crucial public ownership. But we need more.

1) We need, first, to make sure that we beef up the wireless network that is currently being deployed along with the fiber and offer it as an adjunct to a citizen's network connection. We can provide wifi within our own homes by attaching it to the fiber, but on the streets and and in public places our network connectivity needs to follow us. Wifi (for other practical reasons as well as the current considerations) shouldn't be a seperate network.

2) We need to provide substantial online storage for individuals. NAD's are noticeably short of storage space. That's part of what makes them light and inexpensive and hence good digital divide devices. There is no reason to have massive storage located on an always-connected device. But beyond compensating for NAD shortcomings, a central online repository will soon become a practical necessity as people move toward using multiple, differently capable devices online. It is easy to see a time in the near future when the typical user might login daily from 1) a home computer, 2) a work or school computer, 3) their personal NAD, 4) their settop box to view some net content communally or on the large screen, and 5) from a friend's house or public space. A single, online "home" would allow everyone to use their personal "stuff" (from docs to passwords to bookmarks to online applications and beyond) from any device at any location.

3) We need to provide real network-based computational power. NADs onboard computational resources are weak. But with a robust local network there is no need for a supercomputer in your hand...just access the computational power of the supercomputers on the network. The settop box solution would be greatly enhanced by locating a linux desktop on the network. A small server farm (or a nice virtual server like the one that Abacus has) could serve out the capacity of a full computer with a full suite of powerful applications to any screen---from the settop's TV to a NAD's small one. The technology is currently being called "cloud computing" but it could be arrayed cheaply by any community with the will to do so.

With fiber, fiber-driven wireless, online storage, and network-based computation Lafayette could cheaply and easily meet the commitment made during the fiber fight to closing the digital divide. And it could do it in a way that would benefit every citizen no matter what their income, neighborhood, race, or level of tech savvy. Meeting above challenges would help shape Lafayette into a community with an unrivaled capacity to meet future challenges. Since everyone would benefit it would be easier to sell politically. In these hard economic times it would be a huge boon to the whole community and mark Lafayette as a progressive, self-reliant locale in which to do business.

Really this should be a no-brainer.... don't you think?


Lagniappe:

Should you be tempted to think that this is ahead of its time or that Louisiana is behind those times:

About 25 percent of Louisiana's 4.2 million people have a Blackberry, iPhone or similar device, which May said "is really a computer."

That's from an Advertiser story on the community college system reformatting online coursework to make it accessible via smart phones....since it is "really a computer" qualified students can get aid in buying a smartphone since it can be regarded as educational.

The future is just around the corner. This stuff is all in sight.