The Indpendent blog checks in with Terry Huval, director of LUS, and gets a nice chunk of good news for supporters of the system. The system will be complete in "around July," 9 months ahead of schedule. Even more heartening is:
LUS Director Terry Huval writes in an e-mail. "Early in the planning of the project in 2004, we estimated that our breakeven for the project would be about 23 percent. In the areas where we have done the most of our limited marketing, we are already well-above that target. We are opening up new areas for service every week, so naturally those early take rate level are lower in those areas. But, we are pleased with the response we are getting. All indications are that we will easily meet all our financial obligations moving forward." He adds that the business has also exceeded its projection of customers who buy all three services — phone, TV and Internet. LUS Fiber first began serving customers in February of last year.
That's all good news! To unwrap that last a bit...having higher than expected take rates for the full triple play is not only a vote of confidence, it also means that the very large expense of taking on a new customer (paying for the truck rolls and expensive electronics inside and on the side of the house) will be paid off more quickly than expected. Purely in terms of paying back the bonds this is a "better" pattern.
<grump> The Ind unfortunately continues to feel obliged to report meaningless and misleading monthly revenue vs expenditure figures. (I know, this quarter's numbers are "good" in that for two of the three months it shows a paper profit. It's still misleading to cite them.) It's meaningless because now and for several years into the future LUS is making huge upfront capital investments in plant and customer acquisition. NO business like LUS' should be making money at this time. It's also meaningless because the figures mix in the revenues from the mature wholesale business with the still-building retail network. Without accounting for build out and separating mature and growing parts of the division it is impossible for reporting on those numbers to be anything other than sensationalistic—whether they look good or not. </grump>
If you follow Lafayette's LUS Fiber but don't get the Baton Rouge Advocate you'll want to check out Richard Burgess' latest story, "LUS: Fiber on right track." The heart of the story is found in the first paragraph:
Lafayette’s publicly owned fiber-optic based Internet, television and telephone service appears to be moving toward sound financial footing a year after its launch.
and the kicker:
Huval said this week that LUS Fiber should easily achieve the 23 percent market penetration needed to break even.
That's the story and it should be understood as a huge and exciting one. LUS Fiber is on track to making its financial nut. The bottom line in the story of the new utility division is no more complicated than getting the take rate needed for success.
What's nice about this story is the careful attention to the right detail. The first thing the citizens of Lafayette need to know about their new utility is whether or not it will pay for itself. This story makes it clear that as of right now it is on the expected path towards that goal. (At a moment when the network is not yet completed.) That path includes large upfront investments in expensive infrastructure that we have always understood would be paid out over the 25 year life of the bond issue.
LUS Fiber should not be "making" money in its first years. In fact the presence of a "profit" in the early years would be a terrible sign since it would indicate that LUS is not taking on the very heavy expenses of customer installations that raise its take rate and result in income which leads to the eventual timely retirement of the bond issue. Stories that lead with the "expenses" and "loses" in these first years are being sensational and hoping for no more than an excited readership. But worse than sensationalism they are actively misleading their readers about what is important about this developing public resource. Burgess' story does not to succumb to this temptation and so it is not an "exciting" read — unless you understand the basic dynamics of the situation. I've argued (repeatedly) in these pages that the first duty of a news story is educational. Kudos to the Advocate on this one.
Click through to the report; there's more interesting and encouraging tidbits about things like the higher than expected proportion of those taking all three services. It is a good solid read.
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."
Still, I've had several calls or emails from folks in the area who wanted fiber and were hoping to get it...they're gonna be some especially happy people in the triangle described by the hospital, the university, and downtown—a natural hotbed of high-fiber consumers.
It's certainly getting to the edges of phase 1; and , I've no doubt, is straying over the line in some places.
Be of good heart all of ye hungry hopeful; it's coming:
LUS is on track to meet its goal of being able to provide service to anyone within the city limits by the first quarter of 2011. Currently, Huval says, LUS is offering service in some areas around the Acadiana Mall and in the Broadmoor subdivision. “We have the system built there,” he says. “And we’re opening up small pockets at a time to take in customers. We’re not opening the whole system, we’re taking bits at a time, just whatever we can handle with the manpower we’ve got right now. But as time goes on we’re going to have more and more manpower installing services so we’re going to get much faster.”
But:
Even though you may see crews laying fiber in your neighborhood, don’t expect the service to be available the next day. Huval says it generally takes four to six months from the time fiber is buried or hung on poles in a subdivision to the time when LUS will actually start taking customers there.
I'm not sure what the title, "Occupational Hazard," to this IND story is supposed to refer to other than the fact that sensationalized media stories are a mainstay and thus it's an "occupational hazard" for public efforts to receive breathless coverage. (I've complained about this with the Advertiser before. And, when deserved, occasionally praised a media outlet.)
The story is that LUS rented a storefront a little more than a year ago and hasn't moved into it. LUS has paid up front for the year we are in and so the Independent chooses to report the grand total for the first two years as the cost "to date." It will be the same figure in December of this year. In fact it's hard to figure out why this is a story now. The contract was approved in a public meeting of the city council and all the details have bee available for more than a year.
The gist of the story is interesting:
As the launch date neared for the fiber project, LUS re-evaluated its plans, opting to locate its initial fiber-to-the-home customer service center alongside its utilities office at City Hall. This bought time to plan for a more cost-effective way to utilize the storefront on Pinhook Road.
LUS now plans to provide customer service for both its fiber business and its utilities business out of the Pinhook space. A call center will handle customers over the phone, while other reps will be standing by to service walk-in customers. In addition, Huval says the store will double as a floor room for LUS fiber, with computers and widescreen TVs showcasing LUS’ cable and high-speed Internet service. “We’ll have the facilities necessary for customers to be able to actually test the system,” Huval says. He now hopes to open the center this fall
That LUS hasn't done much with the location is strange—and Huval's explaination that they felt that they had to snatch up a good property when it came available is surely part of what's going on. —My extended family owns a fair amount of commercial rental property around town and it is quite true that prime space was extremely tight. On that score LUS might wish it'd waited. Of course, waiting would have been betting on the sort of commercial rental market collapse that still hasn't taken place even in the wake of the huge financial mess that unexpectedly came down on the country. It's hard to see how LUS should be blamed for not being more preseient than the financial hig-flyers on Wall Street who had the whole country convinced that the good times would never end.
Another part of the explaination appears to be a change in plans—the initial idea was apparently to open a full-blown LUSFiber-only customer service center in the Pinhook location when the project launched. But, according to the story, they decided instead to house the service center with the other utiltity services at the existing location at City Hall during the early months of the expansion and follow up with a multipurpose, mulitutility store at Pinhook & Kaliste Saloom. That, at least in part, was motivated by a getting a larger than expected estimate for remodeling the location. (That was during the post-Katrina construction boomlet and the headend facility was caught in the cost jump. —LUS scaled back its plans then as well in order to stay within budget.)
The most interesting "explanation" for the long-dormant rental is one that the story itself doesn't mention: that LUS at one point hoped that a retail "showoff" store would be useful earlier than it now judges it will. This joins the list of things LUS is not doing to promote the fiber. LUS is very noticeably not marketing LUSFiber products. It is available in some areas that have not gotten so much as a notice in the mail that you can buy — much less local sales persons or media advertising. (Some eager people have called in spite of being warned not to call until their mailer showed up and found that they could, in fact, purchase service.) This is the "controlled rollout" that you hear so much about. As long as LUS is in shake-out mode they don't want the raft of new customers that a retail store is designed to draw and are apparently making the judgment that opening such a store prior to that promotional stage would be a waste of money and energy. I'm sure they didn't initially think they were renting space for use a 16 months out. But having done so the subsequent decisions appear to be financially conservative rather than extravagant.
LUS Fiber sent out another email to folks on their list recently. It is reproduced below. This one gives some detail about the areas within phase one in which it is possible to order services. There are three elipses in north Lafayette (2 around Louisiana and one east of Pinhook) and two in south Lafyette (near the mall).
Call 'em!
LUS Fiber is now serving customers throughout the City of Lafayette! Once access to Lafayette's only 100% fiber optic network is available to your home, you will be invited to switch your video, Internet and phone services to LUS Fiber.
Currently LUS Fiber is serving homes in the general areas circled below. If you live in or around these locations, call 99-FIBER (993-4237) or visit us at 705 W. University Avenue to speak with one of our customer service representatives to determine if your home is ready for service and to learn about our product offerings. So start planning your switch. We look forward to serving your video, Internet and phone needs.
Click here to review our products, services and channel line-up.
The depiction above represents an approximation of current service area. Call 99-FIBER to confirm serviceability to your home.
Here's another Flicker set "illustrated story," this time of the final, interior install. And yes, I love it. Fast. Clean picture. And a phone that sounds just like a "real" phone used to sound.
But on to the install: This, like the first visit, took about 2 hours. For a triple play install that's likely to be on the quick side. My install was straightforward and the locations easily accessible. The inside work is likely to be of a more variable length than either the sign-up call or the outside install. A lot will depend on how your house is built, where you want to pull service and how many services you've bought. Those are all small factors in the outside work but major ones once you start coming inside.
If you're getting the full package (and I recommend it) the task is pretty convoluted. They'll need to get power from an inside plug to power up the Alcatel fiber box in order to get much more done. That involves a special bit of wiring to go from an interior plug to largish power brick out to the battery power pack that feeds the fiber box. Cable needs to be run to your entertainment location or locations and a standard phone cable exits the outside setup bound for the old demarcation point between AT&T's wiring and your house. You'll usually patch your new LUS services into the already established coax and phone wiring system of your home. But you'll need to decide where you want the new internet service to go. Give this a bit of thought: right now likely have it coming in where someone, years ago, decided was close to the TV or the house phone. If you have a wireless router (or want one) you'll want to choose a location that is central to the places where you use your laptop. If you've got a real home office with several devices that sit on an ethernet system (desktops, net storage, printers and on..) you might want to consider a closet into which you could drop a switch or router without leaving a wiring mess exposed to spousal disapproval or the ministrations of pets and small children.
A slidehow "illustrated story" of the installation is embedded below. I tinkered with several formats and am not sure which would be easier for most folks...so here are two more links; frankly, I'd probably prefer these to the slicker slideshow but that's me. Best, IMHO: the familiar standard page with a largish readable image and text easily accessible below. If you want to just peek at the photos and decide if it looks intresting: There's a "detail" page with good text that lets you decide which, if any, picture you'd like to investigate. And finally there's the slick slideshow with big, screen-filling pics and floating text with a transulucent background. You can get to all glitz by starting the show, mousing to the bottom left to popup the controls and pausing the show, then click on the expand button that appears at lower right hand corner, go to the upper right and turn on "show info" to get the narration. Then you click through the nice big images and read the story..a lot of work...and all this is way too much to read....
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?)
I'm behind on my LUS Fiber reporting...I've tried something new: here's a Flicker set "illustrated story" of the outside part of my installation.
Long story short: the outside installationg went smoothly and took about 2 hours; that seemed like a pretty quick install considering all that they did; that they were still getting used to the process and were training a new guy.
The slideshow story is embedded below. You can just play it--but that won't be very interesting since the descriptive narrative won't be visible. To get the story start the show, mouse to the bottom left to show the controls and pause the show, the click on the expand button that appears at lower right hand corner, go to the upper right and turn on "show info" to get the narration. Then you click through the nice big images and read the story...Or you could take the easy way out and just jump to the standard page and read the story while looking at the photos in the regular way.
When my blue fiber announcement came in the mail I immediately rang up the new LUS call center to sign up and lay claim to an installation date. A comfortingly local accent answered the phone, was overwhelmingly solicitous and had clearly been trained to explain what he was doing and why in patient detail. I'm the sort that likes understanding every little bit so I enjoyed the experience. YMMV. :-)
The order didn't go overwhelmingly smoothly. They've just started up the ordering process, and clearly have in place an elaborate computer database setup to methodically walk through the necesarily complex details involved complex services—getting you registered, address, identity validation, phone numbers, porting, 911 service, email address, passwords, confirming question (like mother's maiden name), multiple channel packages, and other seemingly endless bits and pieces. I managed to find oddnesses in the software. (My street name has a St. before it & a St. after & my name has a St. before...that software can be confused by such I know from long, unhappy experience with university databases--my guess is that the software designer didn't live in South Louisiana...)
I didn't buy a simple bundled package, but broke it up into high end internet, a middling channel package, and a minimal landline phone order. The folks on the other line handled all that quite easily and when you order you should know that you can unbundle almost anything...including buying phone services a la carte. Just ask. One thing I forgot to ask about in my eagerness was static IP addresses--a beta tester told me that he's got one and that it is supposed to cost $5.00 a month. If you want such just ask. My experience was that the folks on the other end of the line either actually know all the details or when they are uncertain just ask...a good norm in a service center.
At the end of the afternoon after a couple of callbacks all was done, and I was and remain an exceedingly happy man. (Who now has to take that Cat 6 out of his trunk and actually finish rewiring the house.)
For those who've asked for the nitty-gritty details...remember you did ask...here is the long version:
The Process:
You get a nifty sheet folded to make it into a two page (4 page front and back) promotional brochure. The brochure comes folded in half to make a mailer the size of a large postcard. It's sealed with tape and tucked inside you'll find two informational sheets with all the prices and the most current channel lineup.
You eagerly tear it open
Get with your significant other/s and decide on what you want
Call the number on the flyer (99-Fiber)
Transverse the phone tree to get to hold of one of those new LUS service reps. Punch 1 and then 1 again... I got a very nice guy with a distinctly local accent who was both methodical and very solicitous.
They go through a process to verify that you really are in the area that is currently open for service. This verification apparently is separated from the sign-up process so they ask for a few things a second time later on. (But my guy told me he was going to be asking again and apologized in anticipation. I was in no mood to worry about such.)
Once you are confirmed as a potential location they want to know who you are. You get to verify your identity, in my case by SSN, and get an identity in their system. I provided a password and the answer to a standard security question.
Then you get to give your address and billing address. That should be easy. But in my case having a "St." in front of the street name caused problems. We eventually hit on a series of letters that the database acknowledged existed. (Saint needs to be spelled out.)
Part of confirming your address is that you need to have one that the 911 system acknowledges. So the address needs to go in and be accepted in that database. We wrestled with that a bit too...as it turns out that field doesn't like the other "St." —the one that denotes "Street." (That one needs to be left off entirely.) Coming out of that series of retries we got a "unexpected error" error. —Another of those ever so informative computer messages. He couldn't get unhung and asked to call back.
He got unhung and called back. We managed to duplicate the error. Great for bug tracking. Frustrating to my service guy. He let me go again.
My callback was from a nice, brisk, and apologetic woman who apparently was the supervisor. Anyone who has hung on technical support lines for hours recognizes that I'd had a level upgrade... She muscled past the buggy screens and finalized my setup.
At that point I "just" had to specify my order. That was complex. Even the most minimal land line has to go through a lot to port a number and set up all the required 911 details. I asked a lot of questions (being who I am) about service details on the internet side, got the fancy 50 meg symmetric package, and a digital DVR box with one premium channel...That involved a lot of talk.
She set me up on the spot for an inside install and let me know that the outside installer would be coming but would ring us up first.
She apologized for everything one more time, checked my particulars and let me go. Done!
It's a lot to get hooked up with, validation details, all those services, myriad supporting details, and to setting up two appointments all at one blow. Especially since I was so eager. But my experience with folks on the other end were that they were methodical with and unfailingly helpful toward even for an over-eager beaver like myself.
The Independent came out today and in it is a story on LUS Fiber—the launch, the short delay, and (very little on) the pace of the rollout. There's info there that I've not seen elsewhere; evidence that the reporter probably actually called up and asked some of the more obvious questions—and found the limits of what LUS is currently willing to say.
On immediate service:
This week, it is sending out mailers to a select number of Lafayette residents eligible to begin receiving service. Connecting the service will take approximately two weeks from the time an eligible resident calls in to subscribe. Billing will begin March 1. LUS Director Terry Huval will not say how many mailers will be going out through the week, or how many people LUS is ready to begin providing service to.
On longer-term rollout plans:
As far as a timeline for its rollout, LUS is sticking to its initial projections. Last year, LUS released a build-out map breaking the city down into four rollout phases. Huval did say that all residents in Phase I will likely be able to receive service by the end of this year. Beyond that, he says only that LUS expects to have offered the service to everyone within the city limits by the first quarter of 2011. “That’s the objective we’ve set for ourselves.”
The emphasis on quality appears to partially explain both the delay and the slow rollout:
For those customers who do receive service, Huval says he expects they will immediately notice a difference in quality. “The quality of our system is going to be pristine by all standards,” he says. With an all-fiber network, he contends customers should never experience the kind of TV picture pixelation or delay that sometimes occurs when cable providers push their bandwidth to the limit. “The picture quality even on standard definition is significantly superior to what I have seen on standard definition on other providers,” Huval says. “In fact, in some cases, our standard definition doesn’t look too much different than what you would see on high definition. It really has a difference.”
Huval adds LUS’ controlled rollout is due in part to its commitment to quality service. “This is just the beginning,” he says. “We’re hopeful that our customers will be pleased with our customer service, with our constistency, with our reliability.
There's also some good, meaty stuff on the struggles to get the extensive cable channel lineup complete—and a bit about the crucial National Cable Television Cooperative (a coop of small independents that are federally chartered and protected) that has recently re-opened membership. As I understand it, there is also a coop for small telecos...and with LUS an official CLEC, a phone company, they might be in the unique situation to pick and choose between different coop schedules and their own independently negotiated contracts. And it's not just about money—the conditions of use, which could be very important on LUS' very flexible system—would also be in play. Complex stuff indeed.
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.
An Electronisa.com article reviews the pricing structure for LUS Fiber and, usefully, both briefly reviews the history of the fight and compares the offering to national standards.
Lafayette's fiber comes despite significant opposition to the deal and others like it in the US from cable and DSL providers Cox and AT&T, both of whom have publicly objected and are believed to have quietly funded private lawsuits attempting to thwart the plan for city-wide fiber.
Much of the resistance is believed to come from fears of competition, as the Lafayette Utility System is estimated to cost about 20 percent less per month than the strictly private alternatives but is also as fast as otherwise very expensive services such as Comcast's DOCSIS 3 and Verizon's FIOS, both of which cost at least $140 per month for 50Mbps Internet service alone.
A hint of memory about how hard we had to fight to get this network and the national advantage we've already gained is notably missing from the accounts in local media. One would expect that a review article about the history of the network and the advantages it offers would be forthcoming. Such gracious coverage would surely be seen if the new network were being brought in by an outside corporation who was investing $110 million dollars in a superior infrastructure that promised dramatic savings to the community. Why doing it for ourselves should be less noteworthy is difficult to understand. It's hard not to believe that the incumbents' advertising budgets don't have something to do with the stilted delicacy of local coverage.
Not too much to report here except that LUS has sent its first round of emails out to what I presume was the list I signed up for way back when. (You can get on what is probably the same list at their signup page: http://www.lusfiber.com/feedback/)
Here's the text of the message:
Welcome to your future!
The time has come! LUS Fiber will begin serving our first customer early 2009. To ensure quality customer service and a timely installation, we will launch a controlled roll out of our TV, Internet and Phone services. Customers in Phase One of our four-phase city-wide build-out plan will be notified by mail when service is available to them.
We are also very excited to give you the first look at our residential VIP (Video, Internet and Phone) Bundles. Our full suite of products will be announced soon.
Our 100% fiber optic network will provide the highest quality communication services over Lafayette‚s only customer-owned system at competitive rates. Our strategy is to keep our pricing simple and straightforward. In the coming months, we will keep you updated on our products, services and the status of our city-wide build-out.
We look forward to delivering enhanced television programming, lighting-fast Internet speeds and crystal-clear phone services. As always, you can reach the LUS Fiber team by calling 99-FIBER (993-4237) or visiting our website at LUSFIBER.com.
Fiber Plans:Deployment, Tiers, Pricing, Digital Divide and More
LUS Fiber is here. Welcome to your future. That was the message as LUS director Terry Huval stood before the City-Parish Council and laid out the near-term deployment plan and the basic products that will be offered by the new community-owned network. Joey Durel, in his introduction, took visible pride in the system, saying that they had under-promised and over-delivered—something which he's a bit paradoxically claimed was his startegy from the start. If that was the plan; they've met their goal. The network's first offering of services is more than I'd have said possible or likely when we were first thinking about it. —But not more than I and others fought for as ideas about the community's network matured. (One of the huge advantages of owning your own network is that you can make suggestions, fight for them and sometimes help open the door to new directions. Local, public ownership, frankly, is an innovation as important as any technology to LUS' success.) It's a world-class network that we're building. We've every reason to be proud.
I'm goining to hit the highlights here but if you want to see the goods for yourself visit the LCG Auditorium channel at ustream.tv and watch the archived video there.
As always, the LUS presentation was tightly and logically structured: Huval broke the power point into news about the rollout & construction, pricing, unique features, and customer service.
Rollout & Construction First and foremost, the January date for lighting up the first customers is holding. Just who, when, and how many remains vague but the system will launch with paying customers next month.
Fiber will rollout first at the two ends of the "phase 1" area building out from fiber huts—"hubs"— located on the grounds of the power substations at each end of the build area. The first customers will apparently be signed up in the area around the Acadiana Mall at the southwest end of the build area and those in the Northeastern segment served by the "PEC" substation will also start seeing availability. (See my Google map, or LUS's version to get an ideaof the geography involved.)
When fiber becomes available on your street every address will get a nifty piece of mail announcing: "LUS Fiber is here. Welcome to your future" reversed out of a light blue background. Watch closely for that distinctive piece of mail. And then call.
Pricing & Tiers The big announcement today was was the service plans and prices. The short story is that more-for-20%-less promise is being kept. And in some situations it MUCH more.
Here's a list of the pricing bundles. In some ways it's misleading to call it a bundle since bundle's usually mean some complicated formula for discounting the price of the services if you buy an approved bundle. LUS' packages won't work like that. There will be no penalty for mixing and matching service levels like there are in the incumbent's bundles. All the service are offered for a single straightforward discounted price. Clean and simple and easy to understand. And no attempts to entice you into spending more for service levels you don't really want in order to get a price break for something you do want. (Why? Hint: you're being treated with the respect accorded an owner.) So you could order the top tier internet and the cheapest Video and Phone, or NO video and phone, without penalty.
VIP (Video, Internet, & Phone, get it?)
Video: expanded basic: more than 80 channels $39.95 Internet: 10 Mbps Up and down. $28. 95 Phone with services: 15.95
VIP Silver
Video: over 250 channels incld High Def $63.31 Internet: 30 Mbps Up and down. $44. 95 Phone with a long list of services & 5 cents a minute long distance: 28.95
VIP Gold
Video: over 250 channels incld High Def plus Premium Movie suits $98.09 Internet: 50 Mbps Up and down. $57.95 (wow) Phone with a long list of services & unlimited long distance: 43.95
More for less. —Now some will try to point to the cheapo bundles that Cox is already offering (and for whose existence you can thank the threat of competition) but those aren't "real" prices, lock you into a set of services for a year or more that you might not want, isn't customizeable, and is a LOT less product. How much for an internet tier to compare with LUS' 30 or 50 meg tiers? There really is no similar product from Cox or AT&T. For value the LUS prices can't be beat considering the number of channels or speed of the offering. But there is no truly cheap, low end offering. Cox offers a 768 kbps thing they call "high speed internet" for goodness sakes. That's cheaper than LUS' 13 times faster 10 meg low tier...but not, I think, much of a value. Of course, LUS really low price for internet is access free...and probably works at at least 768 Kbps—see below.
Unique Features: Digital Divide & 100 Mbps Intranet These are the bragging points—and pretty impressive they are too...taken together I think they are truly unique to Lafayette.
LUS' response to the Digital Divide question is to enable the internet capacities of their digital set top box. Using a limited browser a user will be able to read email and do basic web surfing on their TV. And Lafayette is going to do it For Free. There is not surer way to get folks online than to package it into their cable service. Once the rollout is complete Lafayette will inevitably become the most connected city in the nation. Technically, at least. Now helping folks use that capacity fruitfully is a whole 'nother matter. And properly something the community shold pitch into to do. (Any takers?)
The 100 Mbps intranet has been discussed on these pages for a long time. Suffice it to say that any regular customer will have access to blinding 100 meg speed over the internal community intranet. Want to download the 6 hours of one of those interminable contensious council meeting? In HD? No problem. It will come down in a flash. Video telephony. Shuttling those huge files will become trivially easy—if only inside our net. That will encourage businesses and tech-oriented citizens to locate inside the city...which might do more to encorage "smart growth" than any suggestion I have heard to date.
Customer Service There'll be two customer service centers down the road. The customer service people—both in the buildings and on the streets—will be your neighbors.
And.... Finally, I'd have to say that LUS didn't talk about one of the greatest features of our network: the money you spend on LUS, the money that gets you more for less, will stay here in Lafayette and won't be shipped off to some high rise in San Antonio or Atlanta.
Frankly, it's all we asked for initally and more...it's fiber to the home with its near-infinite expandability. It's cheap. It will be offered to every last person and business in the area. We will own it and can do with it what we like — and both the 100 mbps intranet and the digital divide initiative are the products of local folks pushing for them and evidence that community ownership can make a huge difference right off the bat. Sure there's more that I can hope for and fight for now. But on this day to have all the hopes that we held back in 04 realized is enough...It's amazing. A dream realized.
LUS presented its budget to the city-parish council last night and the Advertiser headline read "LUS utility bills may drop." The gist of that story was that Terry Huval, the head of the utility, expects the fuel adjustment rate --an amount the PSC allows to be tacked onto your rates due to the changing cost of fuel--to fall. That shows some confidence that fuel costs will fall...a confidence I wish I shared.
More interesting was a brief mention of LUS reducing costs by leading the charge to convince Congress to to change "non-effective" laws having to do with coal. If that seemed a bit confusing when you looked at the article you need some background and Lafayette pro fiber is happy to serve (see 1, 2) . Huval is referring to Lafayette's first "last mile" monopoly situation: the overcharge the monopoly railroad charges to tote coal the last few miles to our generating plant near Alex. AT&T and Cox are just the latest monopolists to impose costs on Lafayette's people. Better federal regulation is being sought to correct the coal situation. (We're working on a home-grown solution to AT&T and Cox.)
But for avid followers of LUS' Fiber plans there was some straight on fiber news. The standard fiber news:
Huval added that LUS plans to soon open a customer service center at the corner of Pinhook and Kaliste Saloom roads. That location would house a showcase area for the Fiber-to-the-Home initiative, and serve as a call center for customers.
The first Fiber-to-the-Home customers are expected to receive service in January.
The showcase has been mentioned before and with the January light-up date are indications that everything is still on track. (Hurrican Gustav's threat is worrisome in that regard. If Gustav comes up through Barataria Bay as a category 3 storm we'll lose a lot of poles. While the electrical outage, with the help of regional colleagues of LUS, won't last long we can't expect the same sort of ability to help in getting the fiber reworked. A delay might well result.)
I attended Zydetech's rebirth at LITE yesterday evening and healthy rebirth it was. The snacks and conversation were good, the attendance great, and the presentations better. Congratulations go out to David Goodwyn, the driving force; Keith Thibodeaux, CIO of LCG; and Erin Fitzgerald of LITE, all of whom I happen to know worked hard to make it happen and happen right. Similar high fives to those who labored beyond my view. Zydetech was long the premier association of techheads and tech businesses in Acadiana and active in promoting both tech and the region.
Zydetech was at the heart of much Lafayette's tech explosion back in the day, as demonstrated by a huge chart locating the "tipping points" in Lafayette's development as a tech center that stretched across the LITE main theatre screen. Its return augurs well.
The Advertiser has an article on the event — and you should click through to get their overview — but my take here is going to focus, as you might suspect, on what was revealed about our fiber network. (Incidentally, even if you have read the printed version, click through to the online one. The printed version cuts off abruptly after Louis Perret's presentation. The online version has an overview of the others as well. Maybe the Advertiser figured that stuff would only matter to the geeky sorts and that they'd get it online anyway.)
Among the gathered tech types, the LUS presentation was clearly the hit of the evening. After the applause died down following Mona Simon's presentation, Logan McDaniel, who represented the school system, got up and, tongue planted firmly in cheek, thanked the organizers for putting him after LUS . . . which got him a nice bit of laughter to launch his bit.
LUS presentations are all of a type, whether the presenter is at a civic organization or at technical gathering: a charge through the major characteristics of the network with a staccatto list of highlights for each. The term "bullet points" was invented for these guys. But it goes so quickly that it does make it hard to keep good notes.
Some highlights. (Using bullet points, of course.)
What's Done:
The public schools are connected with a 1 gbps backbone and each school is connected with a 100 mbps connection. (McDaniel made it clear that the system was very happy with that, describing it as "rock solid.")
250 of the 800 miles of fiber that will be built are completed.
The head end is completed and the electronics are being tested.
The huts housing field electronics are being built.
The launch schedule is holding. Still looking for a launch in the first section of January, 2009 and completion of the city by 2011.
What's Coming:
20% less. LUS is still saying that they will launch their triple play at 20% less than their competitors. They were originally only promising to charge less than the incumbents were charging at the time they announced the plan, but that's kept shifting to a current time frame. Caveat: LUS' price will be the "real" price – no 6 month specials – and their competitors' real price is the one they promise to beat.
Lots o' channels on video.
DVR--Digital Video Recorder, like TiVo.
VOD--Video on Demand, download TV through the TV interface.
VOIP--Voice over Internet Protocol, aka phone, aka nifty integration.
10 mbps symmetrical will be the lowest, cheapest internet tier you can buy.
The cable service will be IP-based and Mona was direct in saying that they were going to make use of that to intro new features and integration.
The Peer to Peer intranet will run at 100 mbps. No matter how little you spend on internet connectivity with LUS, you will be able to communicate at 100 mbps with every other citizen in the city that has purchased the service. This has emerged as the signature feature of the new public network and Mona actually paused for a few seconds to emphasize they expected folks to do really interesting things with all that capacity. By which, I think she meant that she expected the people in the room to do really interesting things and write the apps to let anyone else do so as well. (CampFiber anyone?) This is the part of the presentation where the crowd murmur really got loud.
The video service Digital Set Top Box will be used for Digital Divide purposes. After a bit of a hesitation she said that she'd say that. I gather that there is still some question about that or about just how it will work. (I've fretted about this pretty often. It's not the perfect alternative that it should be just now, but the upside is that it would get a NAD-Network Attached Device into every house that bought cable.)
Simultaneous wireless deployment is ongoing. LUS is wiring up and lighting up a wireless system as they deploy the fiber. Right now it is only open to their employees but the intent is to open it as a retail product — a free or very cheap feature of internet service. (Done that way, they wouldn't have to worry about pushing signal to the interior of houses or businesses; if you have fiber service you'll have plenty of in-home bandwidth. So they can just concentrate on getting high bandwidth rates going. TRULY ubiquitous, TRULY high-speed connectivity throughout the city would be available. (3G? Paugh. I spit on your 3G. ;-))
Connections to LONI and the Lambda Rail are in place.
Energy: this has been a low key but constant emphasis of LUS – which is, after all, an energy company. But the recent energy crisis has made this topic newly salient to the public. Being considered are: demand-side appliance management (lower peak demand costs, saving capital costs and fuel costs), time of use metering (get lower costs if you use off-peak electricity). Mona also pointed out that teleconferencing will be dead simple over the LUS intranet and that has the potential to save transit time and money. (And maybe even help unclog Johnson Street? Nah, technology can only do so much.)
During the question and answer period most of the questions went to LUS. While several were about just how soon the questioner could get hooked up, the most consequential one was on the uber-geeky topic of static IP addresses: Would customers get static IP addresses? As I understood from across the room: Business accounts would. If I heard right, that's a disappointment. The concern is with some users abusing their bandwidth. IMHO that's not the best solution. Cap uploads if you must, but with IPV6 there is no technical reason not to give every household a unique address and a whole host of applications and communication tools that I could imagine would be facilitated by static IPs. (If you're whacky enough to think so too, I urge you to contact LUS. They've already heard from me on this one.)
It's a fun and exciting list. And very few people have any sense of what we are about to get. LUS needs to get that information out there and create a sense of excitement.
Begin Meta Media Aside: Alert readers will note that the story, "Faster service set for ’09, Lafayette Utilities readies fiber optic lines," is written by Richard Burgess rather than Kevin Blanchard. Kevin, who I had admired unreservedly, has gone back to school and taken a job with Cox researching the (un)Fair Competition Act that he so ably researched and covered as a reporter. As a Cox employee he's working for a company that he well knows wishes his community ill. I'm hoping that he's accumulated enough good karma from his years of journeyman reporting to offset a move to the dark side. Be that as it may, Burgess is a reporter cut from the same strip that Blanchard was: a solid worker that follows a beat in depth and whose stories show signs of real background work. His beats have included environmental (the tornadoes, the derailment chemical spill), government (the bus station, police and fire back pay) and general civic issues (like the Attakapas-Ishak bike trail). He's often assigned work with a challenging technical foundation. He'll be good on this story and I (with mixed feelings) expect the Baton Rouge Advocate to remain the best source of Fiber To The Home stories as Burgess comes up to speed on the social and business implications of the new system. End Meta Media Aside
There's not much that is new news in this story—the point is to review the basics and signal what is coming. So if you want a refresher on the plan and the basics of how the connection will work take a good gander. But the clear overview offers some interesting tidbits for those who've been following closely. To wit:
On the build itself:
LUS is rolling out the service in four phases.
Huval said the first phase will make the service available to about 25,000 homes and businesses, nearly half of LUS’ current customer base of about 57,000
That is interesting--you might wonder why LUS is rolling out to fully half of its customers in what is clearly at least two separate segments instead of biting off smaller chunks and doing promotional sign-ups of each small segment to build excitement. The simplest answer is the (un)Fair Competition act. Lafayette cannot do anything that a suit-happy incumbent could call "offering service" until it has the largest possible number of subscribers. That is because the law has set up a minimum date for "profitability" based on when the first "offer service." So Lafayette is well-served by waiting to start the clock until they can bring lots of customers on quickly--regardless of otherwise smart marketing possibilities. (And, yes, our "conservative" legislature has legislated a time-bound, state-structured definition of success for our project. The big boys at the state house think they know best. As in the looming state video debacle the legislature's idea of conservativism apparently has little to do with keeping control as close to the people as possible everything to do with pleasing out-of-state corporations. Such is the new "conservativism.")
On the heart of the system:
The fiber system’s main hub is a building near the intersection of Interstate 10 and Interstate 49, where LUS will tap into one of the main Internet lines running along the interstate system, receive satellite feeds for the television service and operate the telephone switch.
The fiber lines will run from the main center — built with 6-inch concrete walls to survive hurricanes — to one of 13 existing electrical substations and then along city streets.
On what is emerging as the signature feature:
Huval said that regardless of what service someone signs up for, anyone on the LUS fiber system will be able to send or receive at the 100 mbps rate when communicating with someone else within the LUS system.
“It’s just opening things wide open for the creative class of the community,” Huval said.
The high speeds could also give freedom to workers tied to the office because of data-intensive work.
“You will truly be able to work from home,” said LUS Fiber Communications Engineering and Operations Manager Mona Simon.
Simon said at speeds of 100 mbps, the quickness of most file transfers will be limited only by the user’s equipment.
“It’s not going to be bottlenecked by virtue of the system,” she said.
On the services to be offered:
LUS officials are not yet talking about specific service or pricing options, but they tout “breakneck” Internet speeds and a wide variety of TV choices at a price about 20 percent below competitors.
The minimum Internet speed with the service will be 10 mbps — more than enough for casual Web browsing, quickly downloading media, streaming high-quality video or playing multi-user games over the Internet.
Users could opt for up to 100 mbps, which would allow for quick communication of the massive files used in everything from data-intensive oil-and-gas research to filmmaking and music production.
...Simon said the television service will also run at 100 mbps, allowing for seamless video-on-demand and the ability to watch multiple high-definition programs at once.
The Internet and television do not share bandwidth, so intensive use of one service will not cut into the other, she said.
That's all pretty deluxe.
It's an understatement of the first order to say LUS' cheapest, slowest offering of 10 mbps (symmetrical!) is "more than enough" for common web uses...it's an astonishing speed. That low end product is a capacity that is only available as the most expensive option for the cable incumbent and is unavailable for any price, anywhere from AT&T. It's national news on the net when one or two private providers begin to offer a "limited to a few subscribers" speed of 20 megs. Here that speed will be cheap, available to all and popular enough to be the basis of real business plans. It is simply not purchasable, at any price, to almost all in the rest of the country--and never at a price regular folks can afford.
That alone is a digital divide story that deserves to be told but on top of all that is 100 megs of intranet "peer-to-peer" service. Giving everyone equal communications access to one another is to lay the groundwork for an equitable community in the coming net-centric era. Lafayette will be in a position to allow participation, both live and asynchronously, that will simply be unparalleled and will allow Lafayette to move onto completely uncharted ground and create new models of community. (We better get cracking with that imagination thing.)
As the story notes, LUS has remained chary of committing to detailed service plans months in advance of market situation when it actually begins to sell product. But a recent bit in a consultant's critique of iProvo's recently sold service hints at the initial thinking:
For example, Lafayette has told the public they will be offering three residential products – a 10 Mbps, a 20 Mbps and 50 Mbps symmetrical data products to the Internet. In addition, they plan to offer 100 mbps Intranet for connections between any two customers on the network within the City.
That consultant is LUS' primary advisor and presumably knows whereof he speaks.
The Advertiser published a small update on the LUS fiber project "LUS fiber project still on schedule" whose title just about says it all.
The headend building near the I-10/I-49 junction is now up; I was by there the other day and it is a solid looking building—massive prepoured concrete slab walls give a solid impression. It's not the showcase building LUS might have originally wanted but it ought to weather the storms.
But here's the part I liked; a quote from Huval:
"But I can tell you that it's going to be everything we promised and more. We've got people working six-plus day weeks trying to make this thing happen."
That's what I like to hear. (Incidentally, I talked to one of the engineers in charge of the project the other day and from the way she described her job it sounds like the director's description of the work week is pretty much literally true.)
—The obvious disclaimer: this publicly editable map is neither official nor complete nor guaranteed to be accurate :-) (It is only as accurate as its users. If you want to "fix" it you can; that's the idea.)
HISTORY: Originally posted: 1/18/08, Updates: 1/24/08, 2/08/08, 2/28/08, 3/14/08, 4/3/08....
The Sunday morning Advertiser has a full page LUS Fiber ad...the first, but not the last, we'll see.
At left is the page. The blue banner is explanatory—they want folks to know that they'll be seeing "visible signs of progress" because the "crews will be working hard to bring you a fiber-fast, fiber-fantastic network." (Whew!) "And with it , lighting-fast internet speeds an miles of expanded bandwidth. Plus crystal-clear cable TV and telephone service" Now that's somewhat florid language but not inaccurate—we hope. You can get a larger picture by clicking on the one at left.
The pic below is a scan out of the ad... if you click it to get the big picture you should be able to read the ad text yourself. And for local fiberistas it is a lot of fun to read...and reassuring to see list of all the things we've been promised make it into advertising. It's one thing to tell the loyalists what they want to hear and quite another to put into print advertising.
And the advertising is still more conservative than the talk...the promise in print is that the triple play will average 20% less than Cox (and AT&T if it every gets around to offering its cable package.)
The body copy opens with a bit of bragging: Fiber to the Home and Business Technology is the most advanced means to provide what is typically referred to as a 'triple play' of communications services—cable TV, phone, and high speed internet—directly to homes and buisneesses. There are no FTTH systems serving entire commuities in Louisiana and very few in the U.S.
Other bullet points:
will serve apartments (Happily for competitors like LUS the FCC is trying to outlaw exclusive apartment contracts—the cable companies are, of course, suing)
All the local media has at least a blip on yesterday's announcement of the construction schedule of our new fiber to the home project.
If you want to run down the list here are the links: Advertiser, Advocate, KLFY, KATC. There is a lot of overlap.
If you have time for only one you should spend it on the Advocate's coverage (and that's not because yours truly is briefly qouted.) The article spends less time on describing the boundaries—which is better dealt with via a map anyway—and more on the why of the build schedule and immediate plans for other elements of the startup like the storefront and headend construction. There's also a brief bit about expansion:
There are no plans to extend LUS service outside the city limits — as LUS is owned by city residents — but that doesn’t mean LUS Fiber service couldn’t one day extend into the parish or the smaller municipalities, Durel said.
Outside areas could annex into the city, or they could raise the revenue necessary to provide the infrastructure LUS would need to provide service, Durel said.
Several reporters talked to Durel about this issue and he was pretty expansive...I'd stay tuned. Lots of people in the parish want this and it's only now sinking in that this is a city build.
The Advertiser's full article adds some man-on-the-streeet remarks from residents that are pretty typical, I think. But more interesting is the discussion in the comments section of yesterday's brief online blurb following the press conference. As much as the omnipresent reflexively resentful naysayers irritate me I have to say that I was proud of the level of understanding of a pretty technical issue that the pro-fiber crowd showed in forum often noted for its ugliness, and uninformed "opinionating." I don't think you'd see that level of technical and economic sophistication in many places—or here before the fiber fight. Politics can be educative. It was also interesting to note the folks from outside the area that are following this issue closely enough to find the story before it is actually published in the paper. Nevada and Germany are on the list....and surely many more who are also watching attentively.
I've worked up an easy to navigate map of the first phase of LUS' fiber to the home buildout. You should be able to use this just as you'd use any standard google map.
This should make it fairly simple to tell whether your home is in or out of the first stage of the buildout scheduled to be completed by January of 08.
The light orange "blotch" on the map below is taken from one of LUS' maps of phase one and overlaid onto a standard google map of Lafayette. It's transparent so that as you zoom into the map you'll be able to read your address through the light tint. Clicking on the map lets you dive into it. Just click in your area of town and dive in till you can see your neighborhood street names appearing. If you get a little off target click and drag in google window and pull the map around so the part you want to see is visible. You can also jump to the "larger map" and use the standard google interface to look around for your home or business.
A reader complained in the comments to my earlier post that the map on the LUS Fiber site was hard to use. I had to agree....and tinkered this up in Google maps to accommodate him. Enjoy!
Well the big announcement has finally been made. The first areas to be served by fiber are now set. Here's a screen capture from the interactive map on the LUS website:
Someone in that map will be the first person served with a projected date of January 2009 for the official launch of the network.
Take a good look at that map (click for a larger version or jump to the interactive map on the LUS website)—that's an awfully large chunk of the city encompassing almost all of the traditional core neighborhoods. Just at-a-glance I'd say that it covers around half the population. Maybe more. It's a very aggressive first stage.
Here's the 4 part buildout map: The system will be complete by 2011 with those in Phase 4 the last customers brought online in the city.
"How'd they decide that?" those of you in Phases 3 and 4 may be asking. LUS says that there were a number of factors, among them:
Huval said: "...how can we get to the most customers at the cheapest cost." meaning densely populated regions where the utility anticipates a high take rate
They also said they wanted a good mix of residential and businesses but preferring a higher than average percentage of residential. The rationale there is that businesses are slower to move to new services and they want a quick uptake. (Of course it also has to factor that the residents are the owners...and when the owners want service they tend to get preferential treatment.)
Terry Huval also said that areas with aerial service (service on poles) were preferred in the initial build because it is cheaper to run services in those areas. LUS should get more bang for its buck out of those investments.
Now if you know Lafayette you can see how these points played out by looking at the map. Older, hence for the most part more densely settled neighborhoods with smaller lots are in Phase 1. Those are also the neighborhoods with aerial service. And that all makes financial sense. But it also makes political sense. There is a northern and a southern segment--and in our city that denotes, fairly or unfairly, black and white, creole and cajun/Americain, and poor and well-off. Read by Lafayette eyes it is a declaration that all will be served; none will be left out. The pattern that falls out of LUS decision making-parameters has the consequence of serving more people in the city core, and a larger percentage of the community's most needy first. This, we should note with satisfaction, is exactly the opposite of the pattern shown by corporations like AT&T who have consistently demanded they be allowed to serve the wealthy suburbs in preference to the core community and who will not, in fact, promise to serve that population at all. Public ownership makes a real difference and a difference our community can see from day 1.
Three other things of interest: 1) pricing was briefly discussed and, contrary to the impression that the speakers gave, there was a bit more info on pricing. 2) There are already rumbles about service outside of Lafayette. Diplomatically handled by the administration....but not dismissed. 3) Durel is very big the intranet and the potential for all that enourmous peer-to-peer bandwidth to change the equasion in Lafayette. He's right about that. But more on those points in a follow-up post.
(And YES: I AM in Phase 1! On the southern edge of the northern area. YESSS! :-) )
The first installation crews are out in Lafayette neighborhoods today. The neighborhood southeast of Acadiana Mall off Robley drive is decorated with the color coded paint lines and little flags that mark the location of underground utilities. On Remington Drive, toward the back of that neighborhood, you'll find the contractors' trucks and the initial holes in the ground that positively locate the current utilities and will serve as install points for the fiber and supporting electronics.
Soon, folks, soon...
Click for a larger view of the pics... (And thanks to the anonymous commenter for the tip...anyone spotted more locations? I'd love to see some fiber strung from poles too,)
Broadband Reports, which has followed the fiber battle in Lafayette exetensively, continues to track the story. It now covers the announcement of the groundbreaking last Thursday. The site is probably the largest discussion forum devoted to broadband issues in the nation and its always interesting to see what folks have to say in the comments. In this one we are treated to a repise of the debate as to whether or not Lafayette is "in the woods." Oh well; it's fun to read anyway. One guy does seem to have a handle on how arduous the planning for a fiber network has to be.
The media covered yesterday's groundbreaking in force. The Advocate, the Advertiser, and KLFY all have online stories you can check into.
The Advocate's story is the most extensive. In addition to covering the statements by public officials it also explored recently let contracts:
Chain Electric out of Hattiesburg, Miss., has been awarded the approximate $11 million contract to install underground lines — in areas where utility lines are already buried.
Where utility lines are already on poles, the lines will be run by an Indiana company, ElectriCom Inc., as part of a $4 million contract.
But the reporter tripped up a bit when trying to summarize the recent contracts as Blanchard acknowledged when I dropped him a quick question. But the Advocate quickly corrected it online. I've edited this post to account for that, striking the parts that no longer apply.The following bit that appeared in printed edition isn't correct:
LUS Fiber’s Mona Simon said only one of those contracts — the underground line contract — came in under budget. The same goes for the head-end building construction, as well as the large contract with Alcatel-Lucent, which is providing all the large electronics including the boxes that will be at customers’ homes and businesses.
In fact, you need to invert that meaning: only the underground line contract came in over budget.
The story has been corrected online--the portion struck above portion now reads:
LUS Fiber’s Mona Simon said only one of those contracts — the underground line contract — came in over budget.
That's not entirely surprising since digging up yards carries a lot of unknown risks--nobody can "look" at the job and see what it really entails. I'd bid high on any job of which I wasn't confident.
If you're curious as to how LUS will pick the first area to be served (and who isn't?) you should check out the story:
LUS is picking the initial areas on using three sets of criteria, Huval said.
The first is which areas could provide the most potential customers at the lowest cost.
The second is which areas have a good mixture of residential and commercial — though with an emphasis on residential, as those customers are more likely to sign up in larger numbers.
The third is an area with a mixture of overhead and underground utility lines — again, with an emphasis on overhead lines because running fiber on poles is faster than having to bury them.
The idea of picking a diverse area is to get early experience and feedback in all aspects of the roll-out, Huval said.
That would describe almost any area of the city....though I'm personally hoping that it best describes the residential areas right around downtown. ;-)
The Advertiser's story is much briefer and focused more exclusively on the event and quotable quotes from the participants.
Huval said the service will have a long-lasting impact for residents and businesses.
"The real purpose is to provide a super broadband highway," Huval said. "We're going to be primed for new technology."
City-Parish President Joey Durel said the service is going to "be something much greater than we ever dreamed."
"We have underpromised, and we're going to overdeliver," Durel said. "A lot of things had to come together, but it's here and it's going to happen and we're going to knock your socks off."
There's a picture of of Huval with Mike Stagg, Keith Thibodeaux, John St. Julien, and Gobb Williams in the background. (I'm still looking for that pic with with Gobb Williams and Durel both holding golden shovels, digging them into the council carpet, and grinning like mad.)
KLFY has only the briefest of stories, but if you own a windows machine you can probably view the video. (I'm weary of complaining...but will note that the mac market share has hit 8%, and the percentage of internet users on that platform is higher yet... Maybe the Advertiser will publish one of its nifty multimedia stories that are easily the best edited, and most accessible, net video in Lafayette.)
At this morning's "groundbreaking" ceremony the initial moments were occupied with the obligatory remarks and reminiscences by officials and influentials. Much of the remarks were actually interesting—Durel again reiterated his promise that the Fiber project "over-deliver" and struggled to voice his enthusiasm by saying "We are gonna knock your socks off." Purvis Morrison, representing the council as vice-chair read a short bit by new council chair Don Bertrand who played a large leadership as a private citizen during the fiber fight. Those remarks focused on the hope that the community's goal of becoming "most connected city and parish in the country has taken a huge step forward." Morrison, who represents a rural part of the parish that isn't currently slated for service, made it clear that it was his hope that Bertrand wasn't just being politic when he referred to the parish. He wanted fiber brought to his rural part of the parish.
But it was the reminiscences that intrigued the historian in me. Especially interesting was Randy Menard's story. Menard was a member of the outgoing council that backed LUS fiber before that was an easy thing to do and which soldiered through the worst of the battle to secure it. His recounting pushed the story back more years than any tale I had heard before. Apparently Terry Huval recommended that council members attend an American Public Power Association conference in Toronto that planted the idea of a community communications network—12 years ago. On Menard's retelling he went and came back an advocate. A fiber ring for city use came up later and was eventually built. When a discussion about trying to get other people to build a fiber network in the city came up Menard says he asked Huval "Why aren't we doing that ourselves?" Huval's careful answer was that some people up the line weren't in favor. Translated: the then-current administration had put the kabosh on it. Menard and Ardoin, a former councilman, worked around that opposition. Menard, who does not live in the city proper, jokingly expressed a desire to be annexed. (I won't be surprised if that desire becomes more widespread.) Apparently there was a time when Huval was not the most enthusiastic proponent of further extending fiber...but that changed. On Mayor Durel's recounting Huval set him down even before his inarguration and laid out a plan to offer fiber to the home. When Durel committed to its support the course was fixed.
The rest, as is said, is history.
Correction: In the original version of this post I wrote Menard when I should have written Mouton ...Mustaches, "M" names, recent retirement, and a southern parish district...Mea Culpa.—A hearty thanks to the reader who pointed out my error.
Correction to the Correction: Ok, I was wrong about being wrong. It was Randy Menard and after talking to others who were there I am now confident about that. I still need to absolutely confirm that Menard lives outside the city—that's what my evidence shows, but... Anyway, a hearty thanks to the anonymous reader who encouraged me to think I might not be in error. :-)
LUS launched its brand and a new informational website this morning. Not at the site of the new headend building, as had been planned, but at city hall. A storm rolling the through Acadiana led to the last minute change of venue.
We did get a groundbreaking ceremony of sorts. A group of advocates from the administration and the public lined up in the front of the council meeting room and posed for a series of photos with golden shovels. As symbolism it was effective: we saw folks from the administration who'd been instrumental in the plan coming together standing shoulder to shoulder again with community activists and supporters. All lined up proudly in front of the room grinning to beat the band. There were two golden shovels and in a nice bit of symbolism Mayor Joey Durel handled one while community leader Gobb Williams posed with the other. I've gotta get a picture of that.
For those of us involved in the fiber fight as members of Lafayette Coming Together it was a special point of pride to see some of the key members of the activist organization that drove the referendum forward honored: Andre Comeaux, Kevin Domingue, Max Hoyt, Mike Stagg, John St. Julien, and Gobb Williams.
Less symbolically and more substantially we got our first glimpse of the new branding devices. What's the service to be called? "LSUFiber." That's what you were already calling it? That, I think, is the point: without any other name by which to tag it we all got in the habit during the long fiber fight of calling what we were fighting for "LUS fiber" --everyone already knows what the term refers to; the identity is already well-established in the community. Why spend a lot of money trying to get some new term accepted? The new logotype that is pictured above was also on display. Expect to see it on a new fleet of trucks and service vehicles in your neighborhood. They'll carry the slogan: "Building a Fiber-Fast Community."
Citizens should start looking for door hangers announcing the upcoming service--that door hanger will carry a return card that will allow people to express interest and get in line for first crack at serrvice when it is finally offered in their region.
We also got access to the new informational website. It's a flash-dependent site you can find at http://www.lusfiber.com/ There you'll find an initial FAQ and, tantilizingly, a chance to sign up for news updates. As the rollout gets underway the site will include updates on the construction and new services—both of which announcements are eagerly awaited.
What didn't we get? Any announcement of just where the build will begin and who will get first crack at our new service. I'd hoped we get that today since I've had hints that a large percentage of Lafayette, including my neighborhood would be in the first section. But we're to be kept wondering a bit longer though Terry Huval promised that it'd be revealed soon...and that eager citizens would be given a chance to express their interest and get in line early as the day of deliverance came near. (Ok, no he didn't phrase it quite like that. :-) )
