(Note: Lafayette is about to get its introduction to this topic when Terry Huval addresses the League of Women Voters tonight. Invited to talk about Lafayette's new network he says he wants to bring up ways to use that network to cut the community's electrical costs. Lafayette may be the place where the electrical and the communications networks first merge in ways that preview what will happen more widely as soon as the current, ongoing energy crisis echoes through to electrical market place.) The electric service of the future.)
Want to get a sense of what that is about? Try the AP article that appeared in Sunday's Advocate that explored smart electricity. -------------------
Lafayette's POV It's all about peak demand. Or: It's all about saving money.
Your choice of focus depends on your Point Of View.
Network Engineers will focus on the first, peak demand. It's a constant source of irritation for neat, tidy, frugal, engineer types that they have to add hugely to the expense of their networks in order to accommodate a few days in August when all the AC units are chugging on high. The customer POV, on the other hand, focuses on saving money. With the rising price of energy this motivation looms larger every day.
And of course there are those pesky, forethoughtful sorts who claim that we can't keep on doing what we're doing to the environment and simply must burn less fossil fuels if we don't all want to sink into the Gulf faster than is necessary.
All these groups can hope that Lafayette's new community network will help lower peak demand and cut costs and usage.
Lafayette is positioned on the cutting edge of all these issues: unlike most communities we own and produce our own electricity. We are about to own our own advanced telecommunications system with fast fiber and, eventually, ubiquitous wireless. And, in a time of climate change and rising waters, we sit in a spot where the alluvial plain sinks into the Gulf. Had Rita come ashore southwest of Lafayette instead of south of Lake Charles we'd have seen storm surge in the southern half of the parish and up the Vermilion River to I-10.
Doing Less with More We can hope to do less (use less energy, spend less money) with what we have more of (networking and community).
The AP article talks about what is being done in some locales--and neglects to mention how important a capable, pervasive network is in making its dreams possible. Without two way communication between the customer and the electrical grid none of the potentials can be realized.
What the engineers at power companies want is to eliminate the spikes in demand that drive the costs of providing service up dramatically and make the network dangerously unstable. Here in Lafayette you might be surprised to know that our Fiber To The Home network is not the most expensive public works project undertaken in last few years. In fact building a set of gas-fired power plants here in the parish to handle merely the occasional peak demand cost nearly twice as much! (Nobody much noticed that project and it sailed through the council with out much public notice or media comment.)
Saving money on that cost is something that, if you have smart communications, you can share with your customers who are willing to help cut such peak demand. Power companies have long sought a way to give customers breaks who cut their usage during such periods--but the technology simply has not been available in a world where the finest grained reading of meters is done monthly. With smart, continuously read meters and a tight connection to a household network a dramatic set of possibilities for helping the power company, the consumer, and the environment emerge.
You can simply charge more for electricity during peak usage periods. Smart consumers and especially businesses can shift their usage cycles to respond to that price savings. Big electricity users like chemical plants have had such capacity for years--and have responded well, running power-intensive processes in the middle of the night helping providers save on new capacity. Other, more sophisticated programs give the consumer a substantial break for allowing the power company the ability to reach in to the home and raise the AC temperature 2 degrees, or to turn off the hot water heater or refrigerator for an hour during crisis moments. Just being able to monitor how much running various electricity-hungry processes costs can have a surprisingly good effect on holding down wasted use.
-------------------- So, if you're interested in this sort of value-added convergence of LUS Fiber and LUS Power consider coming to this evening's LWV meeting. --The focus will be the network but expect Huval to introduce this new potential to the community.
Monday, May 5, 2008, 6:30 @ City Hall, Conference Room (6:00 for Social/Refreshments) Lafayette Consolidated Government Building—705 W. University Avenue
Trying to catch up from a conference trip (on which more as soon as I do catch up) I've been alerted by my spouse to an article in yesterday's Advocate that Lafayette's partisans might enjoy reviewing.
Lafayette was named one of the "Top 10 Great Innovation Markets in the South" by Southern Business and Development magazine.
The fun part as relayed by the Advocate:
“From its world-renowned cuisine and festivals to its state-of-the-art virtual reality center and high-tech infrastructure, Lafayette is founded on creativity and innovation,” the magazine writes.
The magazine points to Lafayette’s multicultural and multi-industrial makeup, along with innovative projects such as the Lafayette Utilities System fiber project, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, and the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise as key contributors to the ranking.
Lafayette is the only Louisiana city named in the listings, which also include Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Orlando, Fla.; Huntsville, Ala.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; Roanoke, Va.; Hampton Roads, Va.; and Savannah, Ga.
The story's not online as of this recounting but the magazine has had similar kind things to say about Lafayette's business potential in past years. For your self-indulgent reading pleasure I offer up links to "The 10 Coolest Mid-Markets in the South" circa 2004 and "Ten Places in the South for the Creative Class" from 2007. (The magazine clearly likes decimal systems...)
With the country sinking into a recession and the housing market collapsing nationwide it is somewhat comforting that Louisiana is going against the grain.
Loren Scott, the media's go-to economist from LSU, predicts a continued strong economy and particularly a strong housing market in Lafayette according to an article penned by a local realtor in today's Advertiser.
What did Scott say specifically about Acadiana? He noted many positive indicators including a low unemployment rate, a strong oil patch, a large number of building projects, LUS fiber system, hospital expansions, Acadian Ambulance expansion, Dynamic Industries contracts and discovery of more oil in the Gulf. In other words, Acadiana has a vibrant economy and an excellent housing market. They are predicted to remain strong for the next two years. (emphasis mine)
What's interesting in the context of this site is that the LUS FTTH network has already graduated from a gee-whiz, that-would-be-neat-if-they-get-it status to an accepted, off-hand element in a list of strengths for the region.
Here's to hoping that the lower prices, an amazingly advanced product, and better service that LUS Fiber are bringing will do its part in keeping the wolf from the door locally.
TechSouth starts up tomorrow and is Lafayette's premier tech event. If the intersection of new technology and Lafayette interests you, you really should attend.
The usually interesting seminars appear to have been dropped this year in favor of visiting with experts at two "ask the experts" booths on the floor of the exhibition area. Of particular interest will be Geoff Daily of killerapp.com who'll be available to talk about how to "use our new high bandwidth broadband service." Go talk fiber with a national advocate. (He's shown a lot of interest in Lafayette.)
The local players are out in force as exhibitors--you can talk to folks from the three major telecom companies serving up retail in Lafayette (Cox, AT&T & LUS--Cox is the prime sponsor). Other local media (a bit of a surprise) and local tech companies (from Abacus to WOW) will also be in attendance. With LUS having already committed its construction monies the flock of national companies we had been seeing are not in attendance this year.
The website is classy but thin....the floor is where the interest will be. Wander around. Talk to folks.
The old saw goes: "Play to your strengths." The Advertiser's Bob Moser pens a blip that points to a set of new economy jobs for Lafayette: "Foreign" language call center agents. It's a work-at-home job that routes calls from non-english speakers to bilingual agents. The money, like all call-center money, isn't grand but the job setting can't be beat, especially for shut-ins or stay-at-homes.
Many of Arise's larger clients in retail are expanding their call center contracts to regions of Canada where they sell to French-speaking customers. They've begun rerouting more English and French language customer calls from Canada to bilingual agents in the U.S., said Jared Fletcher, vice president and ACP of admissions and certification at Arise.
The job requirements are fluency in a second language and fast internet connection.
It's no wonder that Arise Virtual Solutions is recruiting in Lafayette--according to the last census a healthy 13% of the city speaks french in the home. And, as readers well know, a really fast net connection—more than sufficient to access reams of data for customer suppor—will soon be both cheaper and faster from LUS.
2007 was the year Lafayette's fiber project emerged from the wilderness and people began to dream in earnest. The final delaying lawsuit was dismissed, the bonds sold, and contracts let for construction. Dreams followed the announcement of intriguing new features like a wireless addition and the 100 megs of intranet bandwidth and people began to dream of what we might do with it it to close the digital divide or provide new ways to strengthen the community.
January........ At the year's beginning we were still awaiting a decision from the State Supreme Court on the last lawsuit holding up the bond sale. The Fiber to the Schools project advanced, ensuring a parish-wide fiber backbone and early hints of a wireless project were realized when LUS put out a bid for a municipal wireless network — one initially designed to provide government services. The competition was clearly still out there as Cox introduced Video On Demand, upping the ante on what Lafayette's network needed to provide in its initial offerings.
February........ In early February Durel's "State of the City" address lauded the fiber build but failed to slake our appetite for new news on the wireless component. The Advertiser's attempt to move into an internet-centric future advanced in fits and starts but it emerged with arguably the best local video site in town, far outclassing the efforts of the local TV stations and proving that with the construction of new net-based infrastructure the race will not necessarily go to the established incumbents. An attempt to resuscitate the breathless prose of the fiber fight fell flat at the Advertiser as a story about the cost of defending ourselves against the incumbents produced no discernible ripple of concern from a populace immunized against such sensationalism by the long fiber battle.
Late in the month, after weeks of waiting, came the Supreme Court decision we'd been waiting—and hoping—for. The Court unanimously overturned the 3rd Circuit's ruling and pretty roundly spanked them for their mistakes in letting the argument go on for so long. The final victory for Lafayette was widely heralded as one that would have consequences in locales beyond Lafayette or Louisiana. Cox, after years of vigorous attempts to delay or destroy the project, testily denied that it made any difference to them. Dreaming about what we could do with the shiny new toy starts almost immediately and LUS announced plans to solicit ideas from the community.
March........ The first, and in retrospect apparently last, of the Fiber Forums is held and the community had plenty of ideas. (Cox and AT&T also attended and took conspicuously copious notes.) If nothing else the forum demonstrated that the LUS understood that a generous attitude will pay unanticipated dividends. And that simple insight is one which will do more to make the system a success than any elaborate business plan. Wireless hopes, big intranet bandwidth, symmetrical speeds and more were all promised and their implications discussed.
An old issue, the digital divide, returned, Lafayette was named a "Smart Community," and the first high paying jobs attracted by the fiber arrived. LUS started to spend visible money on the networks construction, selecting a design firm to lay out plans for the headend building that would house the electronics and for a warehouse to store the masses of equipment that would be needed in the construction phase.
April........ April brought a shower of small advances. The Digital Divide Committee was reconvened, the location of the headend facility at the intersection of I-10 and I-49 was set, and an engineer to oversee the construction and help make crucial decisions was chosen.
May....... March brought a reblooming of the old FUD tactics from the incumbent corporations. Cox kicked off the festival with an embarrassing attempt to pretend its hybrid fiber-coax network was a fiber network in a venue where everyone knew better. Just a bit later we got a whiff of old push poll tactics when a new, apparently limited version was trialed in Lafayette. Then Naquin's (AT&T's PR team?) attorneys carried water for the incumbents by engaging in a rather transparently false threat to sue LUS just a week before the city went to New York to interview for the crucial bond ratings.
June........ As the seasons turned Huval went to Councilor William's "Real Talk" and talked—about the retail wireless plans, about a faster construction schedule, about a larger basic cable lineup than anticipated, about internet speeds where the slowest package would be faster than the fastest speeds available in most of the country. Oh yeah, and symmetrical bandwidth coupled with a 100 meg intranet. Enough to leave the most ardent proponent breathless. Lafayette Pro Fiber floated a dream about a "Lafayette Commons" that would take our commonly owned network and use it to make a place to share local information build community.
The bond sale was authorized and the bonds were put on the market. The first unit sold solidified the legal standing of the entire business plan since bond holders are constitutionally protected from any change in the plan no future legal challenges to the basic plan can be successful.
July....... In July LUS' Huval was honored by his national peers—he was both given an achievement award and made the chairman of the board of the American Public Power Association. The success of the fiber fight clearly raised his stock nationally as well as locally. The bond sale closed; meaning the money was in the bank and available to spend. The newly hired engineer's men were in the field surveying poles—making sure there was plenty of room for the fiber to be hung.
August........ Joey Durel took over leadership of the Louisiana Municipal and pledged to work "to give local governments more ability to control their own destinies while not placing roadblocks in the way of our progress." Among other things, that probably referred to the infamous imposition by the legislature of the (un)Fair Competition Act. An LMA with aware leadership will fight such laws. The City-Parish Council approved the fiber funding plan. Dreaming about what might well turn out to be the nation's best telecom system continued apace and a new Digital Divide report was made to the council.
September....... Another small media tempest erupted as the kids headed back to school. The headend building came in way over budget and LUS had to scale back and issue a new set of specs to keep its price under control. The headend was one in a series of public projects whose price spiraled upwards in the wake of Lafayette's post-Katrina/Rita building boom.
Cox fired its most effective shot yet across the bow of LUS by securing a long-term contract with ULL athletics for exclusive rights to telecast replays of coaches programs, sporting events and university athletic programs on its cable systems—and we can rest assured they'll not be reselling such valuable material to the local opposition. For ULL fans this is a very big deal—such deals have lead to a lot of fan anger on both coasts where such deals are more common.
The Advertiser endorsed the dreams of bridging the digital divide in a supportive editorial and Huval spoke up on Federal broadband policy in his role of APPA chair saying plainly that the incumbent telecom corporations had failed American in spite of massive subsidies and called for letting "the public sector take the reins in communities where citizens want them to do so."
October........ Dreaming of a better wireless network provided a bit of fun in October. The surprise announcement that LUS would imitate Apple and open its own "fiber storefront" to educate and promote the brand was greeted with approval. And the construction news rolled on with Alcatel being picked to provide the electronic guts of Lafayette's new system.
November........ LUS signed a franchise agreement with the city-parish that was virtually a copy of Cox's and immediately tried to reassure folks during its approval that the agreement wasn't nearly all they hoped to provide the community. One of the few areas where LUS laid out a plan in their franchise agreement for going beyond what Cox had already done was in its support of AOC, the local access channel. That touched of some dreaming about what a 21st century AOC might really look like. Mike weighed in with some dreams about an asynchronous Lafayette in which AOC or a surrogate would play a major role.
If history repeated itself with the franchise agreement, an awareness of the recent fiber battle seemed completely missing from the minds of some candidates for the state representative seats up for grabs this year. Let's hope their more aware colleagues educate them as to what a successful telecommunications utility could mean for the hopes and dreams of their community.
December........ As the year wound down toward the holiday season the bid on the revamped fiber headend was accepted and the crews were spotted in a North Lafayette neighborhood moving wires on poles in preparation for hanging fiber.
The future is upon us. Since the plan is to light up a section of the city somewhere near the first of the coming year, with any luck next year's edition of this missive will be able to say that fiber has been lit up in Lafayette and that we no longer need to wait for the future.
Well Scot McNealy of Sun Microsystems was back in town...and closeted with a lot of the cities tech big wigs (LUS, LCG, the University, and local business—tech enthusiasts) for a couple of hours before a press conference at LITE. Sorry I didn't get to this earlier, but I was mired in a recalcitrant web site that was too close to launch to neglect. But luckily the regional media covered it in force. What happened in that meeting—why McNealy made a return trip—was not immediately made public though hints could be gleaned from the reporter's coverage.
The Advertiser lead with and focused on the announcement of Lafayette's ranking on a jobs growth ranking and didn't mention the McNealy press conference, at which the ranking was mentioned, until paragraph five. KATC and The Advocate lead with the McNealy visit itself and didn't mention the job growth ranking which was apparently a reference point in the presentation. The two stories do dovetail, of course, but the focus of interest on this site is the technology issues implicated in the visit.
Seasoned readers will recall that McNealy made a supportive stop here right before the fiber referendum. He appeared on one of Joey's morning radio shows and was generally encouraging about our building a fiber system. Back then I laid out an enthusiastic, but I think still pretty accurate assessment of the potential of a Sun-Lafayette partnership. The gist is that LUS' big bandwidth, Sun's open source source software, and the immense potential of on-system storage and distributed computing in Lafayette's intranet has got to have smart companies like Sun thinking hard about using Lafayette as a test bed for new technologies. There really will be little to match the size and diversity of our user population, or the intranet-speed in-system bandwidth supplied between customers. That is a match made in heaven for those that have hankered after the bandwidth to make real changes in the (computer, video, cloud computing, name-your-techish-dream) area.
Sun's bread and butter has been building top-notch servers, and more recently, integrated server farms. That's a business built on the need for fast networks. Sun has in recent years pursued some pretty interesting ideas pretty relentlessly. Sun signed onto the open-source movement early. Free and more importantly open, readily fixable and extendable software is the result. Sun has also swum against the tide in insisting on a pushing a "network-centric" computing model. This involves big central computing facilities and distributed dumb terminals — though some Sun models can run as traditional independent stand-alone computers. Sun also has relentlesly pursued its vision for JAVA. The hope was for a platform for writing software that was independent of the underlying hardware and could run and interconnect processes on everything from toasters to big iron server hardware. JAVA has yet to becom the platform for realizing the more blue-sky versions of those dreams but much of the intuition is being realized in web-centric AJAX apps.
The potential of having a whole community with fast, cheap, universally available broadband capable of ripping the roof off the network limitations that have kept many of Sun's ideas barely viable has got to be tempting to the company. And the digital divide and development potential for Lafayette are obvious. There is surely partnership potential here.
But what is on the table now? I'd guess both LUS' fiber program and the city's computing needs.
Keith Thibodaux regularly complains about the need to update a creaky computer system. The dark lining on the silver cloud of having had an early strong computer department at ULL is that Lafayette's networks were developed back in the days of COBOL and significant portions of the city's core network runs in that crusty framework. Slipping in a modern Sun-based but still centrally organized, terminal-heavy system would allow that sort of mainframe-oriented system to move into the modern day relatively painlessly. As the tenders of that system reach retirement age (yes we are that far into the computer age) such a move might become critical.
The Advocate did a stellar job of focusing on the potential interaction of Sun and LUS' fiber to the home project. I recommend you go take a look. It is exciting stuff and doesn't bear much cutting here is a stream the good bits:
Durel said Wednesday that the project’s highest-profile cheerleader reinforced and supplemented the LUS team’s “vision” to not just provide “me too” products with the state-of-the-art network.
“It’s not just about saving customers 20 percent,” Durel said. “It’s much, much bigger than that.”
Durel said McNealy is a big fan of “open source” products, software allows tech-savvy users to upgrade and add their own innovations.
In an open environment, coupled with the vast bandwidth promised by LUS — which has said that traffic inside its network will be unlimited — there’s a great potential for people working out of their garages to develop innovative products in Lafayette, McNealy said.
LUS Director Terry Huval said McNealy talked about the potential for Lafayette schools to utilize curriki.org, which provides free, open source educational materials.
McNealy said Sun Microsystems offers a product called Sun Ray that could also be of great use with LUS’ system to help get more people using technology in their everyday lives.
Sun Ray is a simple, low-cost computer that serves as a conduit between the user and a massive server, where all information, software and processing power is stored.
The interactive display of Sun Ray is merely a way for the user to tap into the network, meaning that any user — with a pass code or swipe card — could use any Sun Ray to access their information, be it at home, work, the library or wirelessly, Huval said.
It's a grand dream and could get most of the city on the network in an extremely exciting and potentially sophisticated way. Serving (free) programs off a server to inexpensive computers is clearly the next step a city could take after offering cheap, universal, big bandwidth. Open source is the way to go and Sun is a leader. Partnering with someone who not ony cares about these ideas is a natural--especially when that partner has already bet the company on the ideas.
As always there are caveats, especially in the context of the digital divide: Sun's terminals are inexpensive--but no longer notably inexpensive in comparison to arguably more capable standalone computers. (And their standalones are more expensive.) The most price-attractive hardware is proprietary and not all open source material is ported to run there. It is a pretty closed ecology without the diversity found in the larger computer market. And it isn't clear what direction will be open to Sun as the mobile market continues to expand.
Without a doubt, it's all exciting and the relationship with Sun will bear watching.
A report from the Advertiser presents an overview of the speakers on "technology and knowledge economy" at a Chamber breakfast at the Petroleum Club (a location redolent of the old rather than the new economy). The Advertiser's Bob Moser leads with the money qoute:
Lafayette has put itself in a great position to lead the future "technology and knowledge economy," a Mississippi economic leader told a local business crowd on Thursday.
Randall Goldsmith, head of the Mississippi Technology Alliance, was the leadoff in a session that also featured Lafayette's Ramesh Kolluru, Keith Thibodeaux, and Doug Menefee.
The Reality I was pleased to see some positive discussion of the essential role of the University in any hope Lafayette business might have of riding the technology wave. Not mincing words: I am often appalled at the dismissive attitude that I find pervasive in the Lafayette business community regarding the role of ULL as the engine of tech growth. Put plainly, without ULL there would be not tech be a sector in Lafayette. There is no hope of staying ahead of the curve without the academics. They are the essential players. It really is that simple and a Chamber breakfast that seems to treat that as a given is a great relief.
LONI and LITE were apparently the focus of discussion and both, of course, are academic ventures. (Again: without ULL neither could exist—and more pointedly neither would have even been conceived.) LITE will need careful, tolerant, encouragement from the local community. It is a new concept and is a tool rather than a product to boot; as such it so will take time to develop its niche. (Impatient parties should review the rocky early history of Baton Rouge's Pennington Biomedical Center and consider what the consequence would have been if Baton Rouge's business leaders had demanded immediate, local payback in terms of focusing on fostering old-style local private medical practices and hospitals in Greater Baton Rouge. —It would have destroyed what has become an outstanding world-class asset.) In a similar vein LONI—and its connections to Internet2/LamdaRail, are all fundamentally academic interconnects. It is a creature which, will benefit a larger community but not something that would exist as an asset for Louisiana or Lafayette if it hadn't been created by the Universities.
It goes without saying, or should, that without the private and governmental sectors actively and passionately involved the possibilities that ULL offers the community cannot be realized. They, too, are essential. But no one should mistake the reality: while a strong business community and a wise government are central to Lafayette's growth they could not create the resource that is represented by ULL; they could, however, fail to take advantage of it.
Oddly in my view, the "technology and knowledge economy" event did not include a focus on the most significant (academic or non-academic) initiative in the city—and arguably the very one that will have the greatest immediate impact on the ability of Chamber members to compete from a position on the high ground with their national and international opposition: the LUS Fiber project. That project will provide a ground-breaking 100 or more megs of intranet connection to every citizen who signs on—and that could easily be 50 or more percent of the market. Young and old, poor and rich, white and black, Creole, Cajun, French, and Americain. It will be coupled with a state-of the art wireless network that will actually work. It will all be available in the least expensive parts of the city to large, small, tiny entrepreneurs and regular folks who, if they so chose to grasp it, will have bandwidth previously available only in to mega corps and university campuses. What will we do with all that? Who knows? But rest assured that the vacuum will be filled. Why no mention? What's up with that sort of blind spot?...The really interesting discussion would have been of how to leverage this uniquely Lafayette convergence of the muscle of private initiative, municipal community-mindedness, and the restless exploratory energy of Academia to benefit the community.
The Potential It would be pretty easy to imagine a research project that encourages ULL professors to develop an expertise in the popular use of really large bandwidth. It would involve both social and technical research and would draw in artists, playwrights, and mulitmedia folks of all strips in testing content. It's the sort of research project with tentacles into every department that a first-rank research 1 University would salivate over. But none of them have the essential resource. Consider: Lafayette will shortly have more bandwidth in the hands of a larger number of people of all races, ethnic backgrounds, and incomes than any place in the country. It is going to be the richest feedbed of data imaginable for next generation theorizing and practice in disciplines ranging from networking to interface design; from multimedia art to interactive theater. Properly designed and funded such a program would attract top-notch, ground-breaking young scholars to ULL in numbers sufficient to make the university a national center in a field of interdisciplinary studies it, and Lafayette, could create.
An element in making such a push credible to an outside world that sees Louisiana through the lens of the White Citizens Council and the Jena 6 would be a real digital divide initiative and a strong, community-backed program to encourage every citizen to make the fullest possible use of the potential of the new network. With public, private, and university backing Lafayette could find itself among the Austins' and Research Triangles' of the US: places where people come and want to stay in order to build something special that they could build nowhere else. Dell Computer is an engine in Austin (and the US) becaue a student wanted to earn some extra cash and explore what he'd learned in school and for very little other substantial reason. That Hollywood is all but synonymous with riches worldwide is not due to any natural advantage but to an accident of history.
We could create such an accident here.
The real potential of such an open collaboration between the public, private, and university sectors would be in the spin-offs, the Dells, the Steve Jobs—the companies marketing the "inconsequential" by-products of new fields in the form of new services offered by drop-outs and folks who don't want to leave but have gained new, almost unique skills and put them to productive use. Texas poured its oil revenues into academics and, along the way, into a "far-out" and esoteric "computer science" department back in the days when the internet was a gleam in a researchers eye. An orthodonist's kid who showed up intending to become a doctor got hooked, got his hands dirty, and decided to drop out to really do this stuff. Dell Computer and a high-tech industry in dusty then-backwater Austin was the payback. That sector alone will return its investment many times long after the last oil is pumped from the sands beneath Texas.
Joey Durel (reelected recently when qualifying ended with no opposition registering) laid out two markers for his second term: Over-delivery on the LUS fiber to the home project and smart growth.
Durel said he wants to continue the progress made in his first four years, including Lafayette Utilities System’s telecommunications venture, which is expected to hook up its first customer by the second year of Durel’s second term.
Durel said he hopes to “over deliver” on the promises made about what the new telecommunications business can do for Lafayette.
When a politician talks like that he's got something in mind. Wonder what it might be?
Geoff Daily's third installment in his series on Lafayette came out today in the AppRising blog at KillerApp.com. This one focuses on his tour of the LITE center and examines that unique facility. (Not quite so unique as LEDA says, however. It's not "the world's first six-sided digital virtual reality cube" even if it is one of the very few that are publicly available.)
Geoff's pretty clearly wowed by the experience. I took the tour recently and know how he feels. It's pretty cool to draw in 3D—not draw a 3D representation on a 2D device but actually draw in 3D. It is also cool to walk around in 3D immersive environment, as you might well imagine.
Geoff Daily does us the courtesy of providing his video of the tour online as an aid to your imagination. But you should really go yourself. It's fun; it's free; and it's pretty much only available in Lafayette. (Well you could go to Sweden or Germany but wouldn't you rather make an appointment down at the egg?)
LITE will also be opening its doors to the public every first Wednesday of the month for 30-minute tours. For information or reservations, call (337) 735-LITE (5483).
Geoff Daily over at the AppsRising blog registers the first of two promised pieces about his trip to Lafayette. This one focuses mostly on his discussions with local business folks...Abigail Ransonet, Ray Abshire, Joe Abraham, Casey Deshotels, Howard Chaney are all mentioned and he talks to Logan McDaniel, the CIO of Layette Parish School District, as well.
TechSouth starts next Tuesday in Lafayette's Cajundome Convention center. It's one of the premier tech conferences in the South and this year's lineup is no exception. If you've got an interest in technology--either from a business or an enthusiast perspective--going for TechSouth's quick, FREE pre-registration is a no-brainer for locals. You'll be treated to a set of resources unavailable in most of the country and certainly rarely free.
There's the usual variety of exhibitors, seminars, and interesting keynotes (The ever-popular CTI of SGI makes a return appearance at the sold-out luncheon but you can still sit in on the presentation sans food.) If you scan the lists of events (especially the seminars) you'll be able to pick out the ones that suit your personal or organizational interests.
Of course readers of this blog will have a special interest in matters relating to Lafayette's new broadband systems. I say systems because it has become a quietly accepted assumption that a municipal wifi system will be coupled to our fiber to the home network. So now we've got two leading-edge technologies to watch--and TechSouth is a great place to finger the goods.
The exhibit hall is where you'll find the fiber-related stuff. LUS has taken up a suite of four booths. Go and get your info from the horses mouth; the engineers that will be running the project will be on on hand. Wave7, a major fiber player, has a booth. But fiberistas should also make their way to local Abacus (home of fiberina), the Motorola booth for its fiber products, and, if sufficiently hard-core, Cisco's.
On the wifi end you'll notice a wealth of exhibitors. Tropos is the most obvious--LUS' RFP has made Tropos equipment the standard by which they will measure other equipment. So go take a look at their latest and greatest; you'll see it, or something like it, going up on polls here. Nortel has a muni wireless division. Motorola has wide-area wireless as well. But the wifi moment of note will be the two morning seminars (8:45!):
Municipal Mesh Wireless Networks: Practical considerations when building large public wireless networks. Presented By: CISCO and
Municipal Wireless Broadband Technologies. Enabling the entire solution to provide a network that works for you. Presented by: Nortel
Lagniappe of possible interest: LATG out of New Orleans is a Sun partner that appears to specialize in governmental contracting...readers may recall the early-in-the-fiber-fight discussions with Sun -- Joey Durel had Sun CEO Scott McNealy on his radio show discussing the possibilities of using Sun terminals hooked up to high-speed fiber for really low cost computing. (Don't recall? Try: (1,2)) I know some folks are still enamored of the idea and it would be one way to attack digital divide issues. So it's interesting to see LATG make an appearance across the basin.
TechSouth sent out an email blast with nothing in it but the following LUS teaser:
(click for a larger image)
LUS and TechSouth are promoting LUS' booth as a place to find out more about the fiber to the home project.
If you've got an interest (and who reading this blog doesn't) you'd be well-served to visit LUS at TechSouth; it's always interesting. Last year they quietly announced in a looping slide show what has turned out to be a cornerstone of the project: full peer-to-peer bandwidth between subscribers; aka intranet speeds. That item, which means that every subscriber will be able to communicate with every other subscriber at the full available speed of the intranet, is a huge plus for both the digital divide and the entrepreneurial hopes for the local project.
Expect to be able to glean interesting details by talking directly to the folks who'll be running the project.
Oh, and hey: TechSouth is worth visiting for a myriad of other reasons. It's about time for a post.....
Lagniappe: Bop on over to the TechSouth site and scroll to the bottom. There you'll find an unexpected sight: LUS, Cox, and AT&T all lined up, and sharing a common banner... :-)
Lafayette has been ranked as one of the Top 10 Cities in the South for the Creative Class by Southern Business and Development magazine.
So saith this morning's Advertiser. The phrase refers Richard Florida's book The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida's analysis points to the fact that fast, clean economic growth has been associated in recent years with a welcoming environment for the so-called creative class. The thesis runs something like this: Wealth in the new economy flows from youthful creativity. To an unprecedented degree the information economy means that those most productive people can live where they want. And they want to live in a cool place. They want to live in Austin, not Pittsburgh... So Austin booms and Pittsburgh languishes. The conclusion is obvious: if you and your community want in on some of that new, cool, clean, high wage growth you make sure that you provide the sorts of things those folks want. A great music scene, good food, tolerance, outdoor fun, diversity, a relaxed ambiance, low barriers to outside participation in the economy, night life, cool tech, an open politics....and so on.
It is encapsulated in the words of the subtitle to a Florida essay in the Washington Monthly: "Why cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race."
(If all that sounds somewhat familiar it'll be because you've been hanging around with economic development nerds...or, more likely, you caught a whiff of the discussion surrounding last year's Richard Florida lecture in the Independent/Iberia Bank Lecture Series.)
That's the category Southern Business and Development thinks Lafayette excels in. It's a good place to be. It's fairly easy to see why Lafayette might have ranked. The cool tech factor would be pretty amazing for a major city much less a smaller, laid-back one like Lafayette. The magazine specifically mentions the Fiber To The Home project that is our focus here--and it has to be a nice feature to think that you could tap into your office net at 1 or 200 meg speeds if you want to work from home this week. There's nothing more laid back than staying home. The food and the music is legendary and if you travel in Zydeco circles you might think tolerance wasn't obviously a problem. Cajun and Creole cultures are a huge draw--and huge reason why our talented are hesitant to leave. There's nothing else in the US like Festival International. Francophone music? Really?! From all over the world? Neat indeed.
Sounds pretty good for the hometown...
Of course the effect is spoiled if you scroll to the bottom of the page and read the irrational—and irrelevant—bigotry in the discussion space spouted by some resentful local fool. Talk about leaving a foul taste in the mouth. And putting a stake right through the heart of any feel-good that you might have been harboring. Jeez.
Update: The Advocate also picks up on good publicity the morning after it appeared in the Advertiser. That version points explicitly to Richard Florida and has the following nice fragment:
In naming Lafayette, the magazine pointed out that while the smallest city on its list, “Lafayette keeps strides with the larger metros with the kind of cultural diversity and forward thinking that sets this creative city and parish apart.”
Lafayette Utilities System’s telecommunications project — which will bring an ultra high-speed fiber-optic network to each home and business in the city — is an example of Lafayette’s risk-taking, the magazine wrote.
“Locals still exhibit proudly a ‘wildcatter mentality’ founded on risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit,” the magazine wrote.
So if you need a URL to send those friends from college that you've been trying to entice down here for years you can send them this one without fearing that they'll have to run into evidence that contradicts the upbeat substance of the report.
(Please note: this was first published on April 1st)
LUS has revealed its Fiber to the Home plans!! Daylight savings glitch apparently causes early release of press release.
After a press release dated tomorrow, Monday, 4/2, showed up in PR inboxes across the city calls to LUS and George Graham (from whose office the missive was mailed) confirm its authenticity. The surprise release gives an amazing amount of detail (7 loosely organized pages) about topics the local utility has always deemed "proprietary information."
Said Huval:
Yes, It's real...We just decided that since it has become extremely clear that FOI [Freedom of Information] requests that revealed these details were forthcoming we thought, what the heck; just release them. Besides most of this stuff is either obvious or nothing Cox or the phone company can do anything about anyway. Why not let the community know?
Huval declined to elaborate on what was meant by "extremely clear."
Major points in the release:
The initial FTTH network will be gigabit (not 100 megs as previously discussed in the media.)
An 802.11n (N!) wireless network will be built alongside the fiber build. Service will be available as an independent purchase but "will be cheaper in the bundle." "This," the release says enigmatically, "will be the Digital Divide offering." (Side note: deploying "N" implies that Tropos will be upgrading their equipment. Presumably LUS knows something we don't.)
Probably associated with the wireless issue: "The CPE [Customer Premise Equipment] will equipped with a wireless node that can act as a repeater." (I'm not sure I fully understand that but I think I like it.)
Confirmation of the widely reported Symmetric Bandwidth feature is given; uploads will as speedy as downloads, making webmasters ecstatic.
"Full Intranet Speeds" will be featured. —What Huval calls "peer to peer" speeds. Every customer, regardless of how much they are paying will be able to communicate at the full available speed of Lafayette's network with any other customer who also has service—usually a large fraction of the gigabit limit. This is also called a "Digital Divide Feature." (Now you have a reason to buy a new router to replace the 10/100 switch you bought in 2000!)
A kitchen sink philosophy prevails: the network will offer POTS (analog phone) and VOIP; Analog and digital cable over dedicated "colors" as well as a full range of IP-based video products. (Legacy services are said to be " translated in the CPE?") Three local companies plan to offer "video-enhanced" security products. Related?: "a high-level API for service interoperability will available to entrepreneurs." (Again, I think I like that.)
And NO, they're still not saying where the build will start. Says Huval: "That really is proprietary. Let 'em guess or sue."
Extracted from the depths of the seven page, disjointed, pdf: Video Product News:
LUS will purchase membership in both the the traditional small cable video purchasing coop and a similar, emerging, rural telco-oriented coop "insuring a unique range of products." (As both a phone CLEC and a small, local cable company they apparently meet the membership requirements of both.)
An initial offering of nearly 500 cable channels plus "a similar number of IP 'channel products'" accessible either through the bandwidth product or the cable product menu. (That latter is very interesting and not something I had anticipated.)
A discussion with TiVo is in the works for "field trials of a versatile" TiVo-based set top box with "embedded" desktop, browser, and email functions. (Since TiVo is basically a Linux computer, why not go all the way and just let folks use it? That would kill the digital divide computer issue right there.)
Phone News:
Video phones will be available from LUS, at no extra charge, when a VOIP plan is purchased due to a "special partnership" with Motorola. (?) It will not work with POTS plans. If your caller does not have video capacity you will be able to use it as a standard phone. (Let's presume that you can turn off the camera. It's a cool idea but I bet my wife isn't the only one to object.)
Wifi interoperability is planned. (No mention of cellular interoperability...though that was discussed briefly at the Fiber Forum.)
If you take both phone and internet packages you'll be able to download your voicemail as MP3s and have your email read to you on the phone. "Up to the limits of your tier's personal space allotment." What personal space allotment? That is the only place having some online storage a la Google is mentioned. ARRGGH! (The email <--> internet feature makes better sense if the internet component comes with email addresses and the concomitant web space and net interface--as does Cox and BellSouth's product.)
Internet News:
What? You want more news than Gig intranet bandwidth and upload-download symmetry. Greedy you! OK....
LUS is planning on implementing IPv6. Mike tells me to be impressed. Consequently, I am.
The "Franchise Agreement" (Had forgotten about that? Me too.) will include support for AOC "similar to the current agreement with Cox" and "broadband capacity to support streaming IPTV and VOD [video on demand] functionality within the intranet" as well. (This sounds technical but will sustain AOC's community functions as the cable model starts to atrophy.)
Miscellany:
Interoperability: A lot of emphasis throughout the doc is placed on interoperability. The API issue cited near the beginning of this post is part of that as are features pointed out that flash incoming phone calls on the TV, Caller ID, remote login to video recording features, etc.
The part on the "Franchise Agreement" mentions support for "Digital Inclusion" (Digital Inclusion is the new "less divisive" phrase for Digital Divide issues. Feel free to roll your eyes.) However, I can't decipher who will charged with doing this range of tasks.
All very, very interesting -- as with any real information it raises more questions than it answers. Stay tuned.....I'm sure this will be even more interesting tomorrow.
