WBS: The Path to Leadership

What's Being Said Dept.

They're talking about Lafayette's network in New Zealand. Or at least David Isenberg is. David visited recently and I am embarrassed to admit I haven't written about it. (Yet. I will.) I've written about Isenberg & the Internet and his F2C conference here before. For now let it suffice to say that he has the sort of stature in the field that people happily fly him across the globe in order to get his advice on what should come next in telecommunications policy. (For a well-written overview of the man, and a review of his speech hit the NZHerald.)

He went to New Zealand intending, apparently, to walk the Kiwis through a path toward internet leadership that included fare like "structural separation," and "unbundling local loops." But he ditched that complex policy message and decided that the real message should be:

"...let's face it, fiber, the all-optical network, is the end game."

His recommendation to New Zealand: Just go for it. And he thinks its pretty reasonable financially. He uses Vermont's rural and Lafayette's urban networks to run up an estimate for the cost of fibering up the whole nation. Here's what he said about Lafayette:

"In town, it costs a lot less. I visited Lafayette LA two weeks ago. Lafayette is a city of 110,000, or about 40,000 households. They're building a municipal fiber network to every house in the city, rich and poor, black and white, for about 300 million, or about $2000 a house at a 50% take-rate. If you factor in OPEX and everything else, their cost will be about $50 a month. They plan to charge $70, for TV, telephone and 100 Mbit/s Internet."

I think several of those numbers are off but the basic point remains true: It's not too costly for a determined community. And Isenberg's advice to the nation of New Zealand is to follow Lafayette's lead in building fiber to every home.

That's what I call good press. And sensible advice.

Smart Power, Networking, and Lafayette

(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.
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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.

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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

"Lafayette lauded for innovation"

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...)

"LUS fiber project still on schedule"

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.)

Against the Grain

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.

New Orleans' Wi-Fi Gone

It'sa gone pecan....or less colloquially and jocularly: sic transit gloria.

New Orleans' Earthlink WiFi network, launched with much fanfare as the leading edge of public-private partnership in muni networking in the days after Katrina is gone--completely. As Earthlink abandons its network of city-wide wireless networks New Orleans will not be left with even the truncated, city-services-only networks of Corpus Christi or Milpitas, Calif. In those cities Earthlink was able to give the networks to the city and cut its loses. But in New Orleans neither the city nor anyone else apparently was willing to take it. Earthlink will remove its networking equipment as it folds shop in the Big Easy.

This is the last whimper of a story that started out bravely. One of the shining moments of New Orleans municipal government after the storm (and there were shining moments) was the way it hacked together a working telecommunications system in the hours after the storm passed through by quickly repurposing a network of wifi connected cameras to serve basic police, fire, and emergency communications—long before BellSouth (now AT&T) began to get itself back together.

As the city stumbled to its feet it announced that it would use that network, expanded by volunteer workers and donated equipment, to provide basic voice and data communications for its citizens who BellSouth and Cox admitted would be without phone and data service for many months. (At right a Washington Post graphic from a story showing the core of the city unserved three months after Katrina.) For several months battered New Orleans could proudly claim to own North America's only big-city wifi cloud. BellSouth and Cox ignobly objected, using as a basis Louisiana's (un)Fair Competition Act; a law that BellSouth had recently pushed through the state legislature in an attempt to first prevent and then to at least cripple Lafayette's plan to build a fiber optic network. (A plan which has since come to fruition.) The incumbents demanded that the city jump through a series of legal hoops meant to make it all but impossible to build community-owned telecommunications networks and, in any case, to delay ones progress indefinitely. New Orleans, lead by a former Cox executive, bravely refused to be cowed, cited emergency exemptions, and—backed by Governor Blanco—continued to provide the basic services private corporations were unable to quickly restore to the community.

BellSouth and Cox eventually, of course, got their way when emergency regulations expired and the Louisiana legislature refused to reform the law in light of post-Katrina realities. New Orleans turned its community-owned network over to Earthlink who had entered the municipal market aggressively. But then the public-private muni network bubble burst when the limitations of wireless networks in general and WiFi networks in particular became obvious.

The only large muni network still standing is, as far as I know, Minneapolis'. There the city owns the network and provides substantial anchor tenant fees to the locally-based operator and builder who, in exchange for a long exclusive lease shouldered the expense of construction. (Interestingly for close watchers of Lafayette's network, the city started with a substantial fiber ring and factored in an extensive expansion of that fiber network as part of the bid specs for building the wireless network. Minneapolis owns a fiber backhaul backbone for its network--which may well be part of the explanation for its generally acknowledged above-par network performance.) Retaining ownership of the network was not a path open to New Orleans as BellSouth's law forced an outright sale. For the same reason, New Orleans could not take the network back and run it or and lease it to a private provider as Minneapolis has successfully done. We'll have to see if the lack of municipal competition will result in the bevy of new services for New Orleans and Cox and AT&T have claimed would result from eliminating "unfair" municipal competition or whether, just perhaps, places like East Ascension parish and Lafayette where small local providers --public and private-- are going up against the big boys are the places where good deals and new services are rolled out first. Anyone want to bet on whose populace actually gets the better deal?

The last act for New Orleans brave WiFi experiment has now played out. In substantial part it ran aground on the implacable opposition of Cox/AT&T, the irresponsibility of the state legislature, and the poor business planning of Earthlink. Sic transit gloria

AT&T, Cox: Our favorite flavor is Cherry/Red

This week's edition of the Baton Rouge Business Report contains an informative story about the spirited battle that EATEL is waging against Cox on the eastern edge of the privately-held cable giant's central Louisiana market footprint.

One comment that immediately jumped out was that the competition between EATEL (with its superior fiber network) and Cox (with its very deep corporate pockets) has prompted an in-your-face element of competition that neither the locally-owned phone company (EATEL) nor the Atlanta-based cable company (Cox) is accustomed to using:

Brad Supple, the director of sales and marketing with EATEL, says the ads represent the first time they’ve countered the competition in such an aggressive fashion. Cox says it’s a first for them, too; the companies have battled for customers for nearly three years.

EATEL's most aggressive move (detailed in the BRBR article) was the running of ads in Lafayette informing Cox customers here about the special bargain rates Cox was trying to limit to the market in east Ascension Parish, where it competes head-to-head with EATEL.

The ad has been discussed here before, but there is news in the article and it deals with the flavors of the video franchise bills up for consideration in the current session of the Louisiana Legislature.

For starters, it quotes Cheryl McCormick of the Louisiana Cable and Telecommunications Association (LCTA) for noting that one of the three bills up this session dealing with video is actually the LCTA's bill (HB 869); the other two (House Bill 1009 and Senate Bill 422) are AT&T's bills and would create the statewide video franchise.

The real news, however, comes from a woman who once held McCormick's job but now works as Cox's vice president of government and public affairs, Sharon Kleinpeter. Commenting on AT&T's push for passage of statewide video franchise legislation here, Kleinpeter confirmed a point made here recently — specifically, AT&T and the state's largest cable provider are engaged in a carefully choreographed effort to relieve both elements of this communications duopoly from current legal requirements to serve all segments of the communities where local franchise agreements now exist.

Here's the money passage:

While AT&T’s earlier efforts to get statewide authority have failed, Kleinpeter says Cox doesn’t oppose it as long as it can also get options that would free the company from 55 20-year and 30-year franchises it has in 13 parishes, which have more stringent provisions. So far, AT&T hasn’t agreed to the move, which she says would otherwise give Cox a competitive advantage. Talks are under way on this issue.

This is the Cherry/Red flavor of regulation they love.

That is, both AT&T and Cox (and other Louisiana cable providers) want the ability to provide services only in those neighborhoods where they believe they can make the highest rate of return and not have to provide services, say, all over Lafayette Parish as would be the case under the terms of the current franchise agreement here (and in, the article says, 55 other parts of the state).

They want to be able to legally cherry pick what they consider the best neighborhoods and legally redline those that they want to ignore. Thus, Cherry/Red.

Stunts, Scams & Sirens

The recent — but thus far not detailed — franchise agreement the AT&T signed with Baton Rouge is a public relations stunt, coming as it did on the heels of the recently-announced Cox rate increase. If the statewide video franchise legislation passes, the Baton Rouge/AT&T agreement will be meaningless. The statewide video franchise legislation would lift all local requirements included in that mysterious document before any of it took effect — and, I'll wager, before AT&T spends a penny on new services in the Baton Rouge market.

This clever dance that these two corporate giants are staging for us is an elaborate flim-flam. The fact is that this legislation will not bring new competition to Louisiana. How do we know this? Because similar legislation has not brought competition to Texas, North Carolina or Ohio.

But, the Louisiana version of this legislation will do long term damage to at least the 55 communities with franchise agreements by allowing companies like Cox and AT&T to discriminate against low- and middle-income neighborhoods in the delivery of modern network services. For that reason it is particularly disheartening to see the head of the Louisiana chapter of the NAACP fall for the competition scam at the heart of this legislation.

The Louisiana Legislature is being bamboozled by AT&T and the big cable companies which are acting in concert to get legal permission to leave significant portions of this state on the far side of the digital divide. "Competition" is a sirens' call that is only being used to convince our tech-illiterate legislators to sell out the hopes and aspirations of Louisiana citizens and communities to become full participants in the network-dependent global economy.

This legislation serves no other interests but those of the phone and cable companies. It is terrible policy for Louisiana citizens, consumers and communities. Rate relief will not come, but a widened gap between the tech haves and have-nots will.

Count on it.

ALERT: Call or Email Your Legislators

Please begin the process of defending Louisina's local communities by calling or emailing your legislators with your objections to the "Consumer Choice Television Act." It is lousy law intended to benefit a single large, out-of-state corporation whose burden falls especially hard on Lafayette and small communities across the state. This will be a long fight in our legislature with the opening shot fired tomorrow during the Senate Commerce committee's initial hearing.

The Story:
The Louisiana Legislature is about to make a mistake....one the state avoided in 2006 when a smilar law was rejected a law that was also supposed to promote cable competition. That year a similar bill became law in North Carolina. The effects have been disastrous.

Back in '06 BellSouth, already in the midst of being sold to AT&T, lobbied hard for a bill that would have moved control of the rights-of-way that belong to local communities to the Louisiana legislature. AT&T told legislators that they were so eager to bring competition to the cable industry that they needed the legislators in Baton Rouge to relieve them of the "burden" of negotiating contracts with local communities to use the public's property for their new business. They assured the legislators that their law would would not hurt customers or communities but would instead provide wholesome competition.

That year the law was turned back in Louisiana. But succeeded in North Carolina. The Tar Heel's experience tells us that North Carolina did NOT get more competition. Two years later AT&T has still not applied for a single state-wide video franchise. Just as in Louisiana, prices continue to rise and no new cable service was deployed by the phone companies in rural parishes. But it did make a difference in NC--just not the difference AT&T lobbyists told legislatures it would make. Though AT&T did not use their law to get into the cable business the cable companies used them to get out of their contracts with local communities--117 at last count had switched to the state franchise that was more "generous" with the rental of local communities' land.

The state collected only 62% of the rental that corporations had formerly paid local governments for the use of public land. That shortfall in revenue had to be made up locally. In spite of lobbyist promises PEG channels (like Acadiana Open Channel) were no longer fully supported. Without a local contract citizens with a complaint were told they should talk to the secretary of state--or sue some of the nation's largest corporations.

Lafayette is the largest city in the state of Louisiana that will be effected by this law. New Orlean's, Baton Rouge, Alexandria, Shreveport, and Lake Charles will all retain their rights to control their own property. Only the smallest communities — and Lafayette — are being asked to take this risk to placate a corporation which, frankly, does not need give-aways from the state of Louisiana to profitably conduct its business.

North Carolina's legislature got taken and the customers and communities of the state bore the brunt of that mistake. Please spend a moment to encourage your senators and representatives not to follow in that path. The first hearing (but not the last!) on this bill is scheduled for tomorrow. A quick phone call to the office to leave a message or an email to your legislator will let them know the public is waking to the problem.


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How To:
Your most effective contacts are always your own legislators. They represent YOU and generally do listen to constituent voices.

To find your legislator, email, and phone number jump to the legislative search page; enter your address and use the resulting links to jump to your Louisiana House and Senate representatives.

Also:
Consider letting the senators and house members who will recommend or not recommend this bill to their colleagues know your opinion of this legislation.

The Senate Commerce Committee’s members are – Sens. Duplessis (chair), Crowe (vice chair), Alario, Nick Gautreaux, Marionneaux, Michot, (Lafayette) and Scalise. The Senate switchboard is (225) 342-2040.

The House Commerce Committee—
Arnold, Jeffery "Jeff" J. Chairman
Waddell, Wayne Vice Chair
Badon, Bobby G. Lafayette Member
Hardy, Rickey Lafayette Member

The interest of communities in Louisiana and the interest of huge telecommunications monopolies are not the same and our legislators should be encouraged to vote in their constituents interests, not the interests of a single company that would rather change the rules than play by them.

"Vehemently Opposed" To AT&T's Law

As you were warned on these pages AT&T's state-wide video franchise bill is back again. The title: "Consumer Choice Television Act" is as deceptive a label as the infamous "Fair Competition Act" that the same corporate players used to attempt to kill competition from LUS when the network was little more than an idea. The idea that any law that the state legislature could pass would change the fundamental economic situation so much that AT&T would change its investment plan for rural Louisiana as consequence is a dumber idea than most that come out of the capital building.

The Louisiana Municipal Association (LMA) has come out as "vehemently opposed" to the proposed law. (They've issued a dramatic alert to their members calling for local officials to talk with their senators in advance of the Senate Hearing on the 23rd.)

They are right to do so.

It is an astonishingly bad idea.

In a nutshell: 1) It's astonishingly bad policy, 2) such laws don't work, and 3) there's no need in Louisiana anyway.

1) ASTONISHINGLY bad policy:
The state legislature proposes to take local property—our rights of way—from the governments that own and maintain them and substitute the Louisiana legislature's idea of what would be good for each community for what the people of the community have decided would be best.

This is plain flat bad policy and the law should be defeated for this reason and this reason alone: the guys in Baton Rouge should NOT be deciding what we do with our own property.

Even worse the plan is the "brainchild" of a single huge out-of-state corporation whose sole motivation in our state is find a way to get the most money out of our people while putting the least into building and maintaining their network here. Our state government should not be in the business of handing over local community assets to private enterprise.

The legislature overriding the will of local communities and telling them that they can't use their own property in the way they see fit in order to benefit some private concern simply cannot be justified.

But justify it they do... or at least try to. Which brings us to:

(The Justification)
The justification for telling local people to "act right" is that big brother in the state house is just doing this for your own good....(You knew that, right?)

Here's how it works: AT&T told their lobbyists to tell our legislators that keeping local governments from writing their own contracts about using Lafayette's and Bunkie's and Folsom's rights of way along the roads and ditches they own and maintain will "encourage competition" in cable TV. The idea is that AT&T is just too big a guy and too important to ask to talk to the mayors of little Bunkie and Folsom if they want to want to use local property. It takes too much time and they're busy. The AT&T execs flatteringly let it be known that they'd much prefer to deal with the "big boys" over in Baton Rouge and not trouble with all those tedious little people in backwoods. Dealing with the actual owners might have been good enough for all those cable companies who've been doing business locally for decades but it is beneath the dignity of the phone company.

As god is my witness! Really. They won't tell the story just like that but the basic rationale for the whole thing is that it just takes too much time to go to all those local people and that they're so anxious to give us competition that they just can't stand to wait. (Don't expect any legislator to notice that when they tried for this law two years ago saying they were just raring to go and offer every town and crossroads "competition." They weren't so eager that they used those two years to actually negotiate. Legislators should notice that they haven't been so eager to compete that they have actually done any negotiating in any town that law would have effected.—That's not what we call eager in my part of the state.)

What they don't mention much while they are promising the moon of quick competition in return for imposing state control is that they'd also, just incidentally, like to see a few fine-print items included as well like to avoiding certain fees, paying for public access channels like AOC, providing services to the owner of the land (your local government), and having to deal with being brought to heel for lousy customer relations by those little councilmen and, most of all eliminating the requirement that if they are to use the people's property to offer their product that they have to offer it to all the people--not just the most profitable few....they'd like all that eliminated while you're at Mr. Legislator. (wink, nod)

What's more: the legislators of 19 states have bought this sort of stuff. Starting with our neighbor Texas back in 05. So there is at least the beginning of the a record as to whether or not this thing works.

It doesn't. At least not quickly. And, least we forget, working quickly was the rationale....

2) Such laws don't work.
Some studies which have relied on asking the telephone companies whether or not they've rolled out more services because of these laws have, to no one's surprise, found that the companies tell you that yes. Of course they've rolled out more services. AT&T says: "All the expansion that we've done is because of those nice guys in the statehouse. We're mighty grateful, too." These studies don't ask about rollouts in comparable locales that don't have such laws.

Note: Verizon, who actually was eager to build new Fiber To The Home networks and actually is offering advanced new services over much of the the Northeast lost an attempt to get the feds to pass a law similar to the one proposed in our state and (gasp) is actually negotiating, quite successfully, with the local owners of the land they want to use. Of course, the explanation might be that they are actually radically upgrading their system and want to use it to offer new services, and really can't afford to wait. Unlike, frankly, AT&T. Who, on the evidence, just wants to slide by on the cheap and easy road.

If asking the phone company if they did what they promised they'd do when the solicited favors from state legislators resulted in "discovering" that they had kept their promises, studies which actually looked at hard figures had a radically different result. The whole point of competition is to lower prices, right? So if these laws work you'd expect lower prices...or at least no rise in prices. --Incidentally, not even AT&T is willing to say in public that it will offer video services in those rural areas that cable companies don't currently serve. Extending service is NOT on the table...only, supposedly, "competition."

But on prices, which is a nice hard measurable, Texans haven't gotten much of that competition thing. Since their "Consumer Choice" law came in their cable prices did not fall at any point and have actually risen substantially. Keep in mind that the Feds year after year issue findings that document that in those rare places where real head-to-head competition exists between cable companies the prices for cable are substantially cheaper—and AT&T (then BellSouth) showed those statistics to legislators two years ago. If real competition was going on you'd expect cheaper prices. It's just not true. If the law worked you'd expect cheaper prices.

But: Such laws don't work.

Lagniappe: Texas was first to the slaughter and our neighbor but, hey, these laws don't work in North Carolina either. And the telecos aren't even pretending to build out there.

But even if this lousy public policy could be justified, and even if these laws worked the truth is:

3) There's no need in Louisiana anyway
If AT&T is being truthful when it says that it just wants to quickly be able to get services to the poor, suffering little people of Louisiana (without having to actually talk to any of them) then you'd expect that they'd be thrilled to have an easy, quick way to bring almost all of the people of the state under a quick and easy franchise. And the fact is that this law won't speed up much of anything....

AT&T has made it perfectly clear that it isn't about to roll this out to everyone that has an AT&T telephone in their home. That would be too expensive. In fact they plan to serve, mostly what they call "high value" customers. And to serve as few as possible of their "low value" ones. That's what they tell their investors, and lying about investments can get you put in jail, while lying to legislators...well, that's a sport in Louisiana.

All in all they plan to serve, eventually, about 50% of all their current customers...In individual states that are rich and densely populated that number will be substantially higher. But in poorer, rural states like Louisiana you can count on it being lower. They just don't want to bother and when they have to be honest about this they say so.

So let's generously say that they plan to serve maybe 40% of Louisiana.

Which 40%? Well the "wealthy cities" a reasonable person might guess. Densely packed, relatively wealthy cities are where major buildouts are occuring.

But, and here is the real kicker: Those cities aren't available in Lousiana. New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Alexandria, and Lake Charles are all "old home rule charter" cities. The legislature can't force any such law on them. Lafayette was also included in the exempted cities in the 06 law and you can expect our legislators to work for that again. Even if they don't succeed this time (and I'd be surprised if they don't) AT&T would be foolish to spend a small fortune to beef up its network so it could remain the least powerful network in Lafayette. (Both LUS and Cox will have much more capable networks than the one that AT&T hopes to upgrade to.) So the big cities of Louisiana, comprising 35-40% of the population will live in places where AT&T will have to deal with local governments anyway.

In fact Baton Rouge has already negotiated a franchise agreement already. (And did so surprisingly quickly and apparently painlessly...see the bottom of the linked post.)

That 35-40% of the population is most of where AT&T will want to build anyway. And the LMA has put together a simple model franchise, it has gotten over a 100 of the remaining cities and towns to invite "cable competition" from their telephone company and to promise a quick and easy deal. That's a pretty credible invitation, if you ask me. I can't imagine the local councilman, alderman, or police juror who could manage to be reelected if he was seen blocking competition for the local cable company!



No, there is no real need to run over the rights of local communities to accomplish the goals a state-wide franchise is supposed to serve. AT&T doesn't need and probably won't use state-wide franchises--just as it hasn't used them in rural, relatively poor North Carolina.

But perhaps, as in North Carolina, the cable companies will benefit. Though the North Carolina legislators were assured that municipalities would not loose revenue, they did--they retained only about 62% of their former income from the lease of their land to cable companies as cable opted out of their contractual obligations to local communities and adopted the "good deal" offered by the legislators' law—a law that was supposedly passed to encourage the telecos to offer new, cheaper services which, in fact, they have not. That didn't work. No competition. Higher prices. Loss of local income. But the Legislators got the warm satisfaction of having been patted on the back by the big boys at AT&T.

North Carolina's legislators were played for fools. And their people were the ones who suffered. I'd hate to see Louisiana follow that path.

You can do your bit to help by calling your legislators and urging them to oppose SB 422.

The LMA says it well:

There’s ample time between now and April 23 to speak to your Senators about this harmful legislation. If your Senator is on the Commerce Committee, please contact him or her to discuss the measure. The Senate Commerce Committee’s members are – Sens. Duplessis (chair), Crowe (vice chair), Alario, Nick Gautreaux, Marionneaux, Michot, and Scalise. The Senate switchboard is (225) 342-2040.

Lafayette residents, in particular should note that Michot is our senator and Gautreaux is one of the Acadiana caucus senators. Both should hear your plea. While you're at it also oppose HB 869 by Rep. Arnold and HB 1009 by Rep. Ellington. Arnold's bill focuses narrowly on giving control of local property to corporations. Ellington is a special case: this house member was term limited out of the senate where he was the guy who signed his name to the (un)Fair Competition Act that would have prevented Lafayette from building its fiber network had it passed in the form that Ellington submitted. To see him carrying AT&T's water by introducing the house version of this franchise bill is completely in character.

It's working in Virginia...& Tennessee

It has been a while since we've checked in with Bristol, Virginia's Fiber To The Home (FTTH) Network. Telephony Online provides another encouraging update.

Followers of Lafayette's saga will recall Bristol as the city that the "academic" astroturf organizations and Cox/BellSouth supporters tried to portray Bristol Virginia Utilities (BVU) as a failure in order to discourage Lafayette's citizens from considering building our own network. It was always a crock but the system has recently become such a roaring success that opponents of municipal networks have had to start simply ignoring it. But it's not about to go away. BVU's success has inspired its across-the-border sister, Bristol, Tennessee to do the same. The projects, located in economically struggling Appalachia, have brought much needed jobs to the community, saved their citizens money, and kept local dollars from draining out of the rural communities.

The story "Fiber beat still pulses at Bristol" is well-structured and I recommend reading the whole article. Here are some highlights that are sure to hearten muni fiber supporters:

On BVU's home town success:

BVU has fought major regulatory battles along the way, at one point suing the state of Virginia and helping to push through a new state law. The company has faced its own critics down, including local telco Embarq, which claimed BVU was cross-subsidizing its telecom services with its electric and water revenues...

“We had two very good success stories that happened with Northrop Grumman and CGI, which brought in 700 new jobs with average salaries of $50,000,” said Wes Rosenbalm, president and CEO of BVU. “The average salary here is $24,000 to $27,000. And we have a couple other deals we are looking at internally.”

On the consumer side, BVU has a 65% penetration rate for its triple-play services inside the city of Bristol...

On neighboring Bristol, Tennessee's following suit:

The Bristol, Tenn., City Council urged BTES to get into cable after it saw how BVU was selling cable service at lower rates than Charter Communications, the primary local cable operator, Browder said. After going through the process of becoming a CLEC, BTES added voice service.

“The local cable company, Charter, lowered prices in Bristol, Va., after BVU started competing with them, but they wouldn’t lower prices in Bristol, Tenn., so the city council sent us a petition,” Browder said....

“Right now, today we have almost 25% penetration, but we have areas where we have been out there a little longer that we have over 50% penetration,” he said. “We are quickly bringing up the distribution system. We have now passed 27,000 homes. The original plan was to pass 20,000 in four years. We are hooking people up as fast as we want to, based on the fact that we want to serve every customer really well. If we did some advertising, we could bring in a lot more customers in a hurry.”

On nifty-keeno services:

Both offer high-definition TV — Browder says the Tennessee side has more channels — and digital video recorders. BVU offers caller ID on the television via Integra 5 technology, and in February it announced on-demand video from Cisco Systems, to be available by July...

“A huge piece for us is what we can do with the electric system; we can read meters,” Browder said. “They do automatic power outage reporting, and it automatically reports to our dispatch. When we very first started, we had a lightning storm. Thirty-four customers were out; two were on fiber. We knew it right away. A lineman went and fixed it before we got the phone calls.”

“With this system, they can buy $50 of electricity, and when it goes off, it quits. It’s been a great service to this particular group of people that need that. Also we have 14,000 water heaters in one area that we cycle off during peak times to save electricity. We can move that to very off-peak time by monitoring them and leave them off much longer times. If temperature drops we can turn that one back on.”

The line the hacks in astroturf organizations have always promoted was that municipalities could never get an effective network built or run it well. Bristol should put a stake through the heart of that nonsense. Here's to hoping Lafayette will will help finish that line of "reasoning" entirely.

Has Lafayette Found its de Tocqueville?

It seems that Lafayette, the city that honors the Marquis de Lafayette, might well have found its de Tocqueville in Geoff Daily.

De Tocqueville was the Frenchman who toured the newly sovereign nation and became our nation's most insightful commentator. He came to the new United States to survey its penal system and came away an an ardent fan of the new democracy. A product of his own culture and station in French culture his judgments on the way the new nation was growing were oft ambivalent but his insight into the reasons for the growing differences between the old world and the new world aborning were and remain influential. He turned an outsider's eye on something new and saw shapes emerging that were difficult for those participating to recognize. De Toqueville concluded that the free availability of enormous amounts of new land for every citizen —the frontier— made impossible the old world feudal relationship based on the nobility's ownership of the land and the tenant's dependent relationship. In the new world every yeoman could own his own land. And they did. The emerging culture of equality had much to recommend it; and, on de Toqueville's account, much about which to worry. He was concerned that equality might too often become mediocrity and overpower the natural nobility he attributed to the founding fathers. De Toqueville remained hopeful about the American experiment and kept an attentive eye on its development.

Daily came to Lafayette to see a new fiber-optic network. He has repeatedly published his notes on our experiment. He appears to have found something more than just a network--just as de Tocqueville found something more than just a penal system. He finds a community-owned network and attributes much to the culture of the area and the nobility of its leaders. And he Daily has an advantage de Toqueville never had: he may have missed the revolution but is in a position to see the launching of the new network from the beginning and to see if the potential of enormous amounts of new bandwidth has effects on our community that are analogous to the frontier in our nation's history. Like his predecessor, Daily, is already warning that our future is what we will make of it.

A sympathetic outsiders eye has come to Lafayette. That is a good thing, surely. It will be interesting to see if Daily proves as insightful about the cultural changes that follow as his predecessor.

WBS: "Why Lafayette Can Be That Shining City on the Hill"

What's Being Said Department

Geoff Daily over at AppRising has posted a remarkable article, "Lafayette Can Be That Shining City on the Hill." It's remarkable for the sympathy and insight that he shows. Enough so that you really ought to go read the whole piece. Go on, I meant it...

But I do want to preserve here the opening and closing bits of the post and briefly comment.

Opening 'graph:

During my week in Lafayette a message I attempted to leave behind is that building a full fiber network isn’t enough; it’s as, if not more, important to focus on getting the community engaged with the use of broadband.

Closing:

Lafayette is a unique and special community that I can’t wait to continue exploring, but for now I’ll end this coverage with the following charge to the people of Lafayette:

Your community is poised to take a bold step into the 21st century.

But your investment in a new network means nothing if no one uses it.

Your community can become that shining city on the hill for fiber and the use of broadband.

But only if you leverage the strength of your history, culture, and people to make the most of what’s possible.

If done right, Lafayette can guarantee its economic prosperity for the next 100 years.

But it’s going to take hard work to do so, not just building the network but getting the community ready to use it.

Cajuns know that through hard work great things can be achieved.

So set the goal to be great, make the commitment to do what it takes, and anything is possible.

Geoff is exactly right on these points and we'd do well to heed his call.

My small quibble is that by characterizing our place as Cajun he misses the parallel histories of the French, Creoles and Americains in this small area and the role of that admixture in building the unique place for which he clearly holds affection. A trip to some Zydeco haunts and more thorough introduction to the flavors and implications of gumbo can await a return visit.

Cable Vs Fiber

It's the same all over department...

Cable companies across the country are having to deal with Verizon's FTTH network and are coming up short. In response to a real fiber network they are trotting out an advertising blitz claiming that they have a fiber network too. This is, of course, a blatant attempt to mislead. Verizon's advantage lies in the fact that it carries the fiber that every (every) carrier has in the backbone all the way, all the way to the home.

According to multichannel news the strategy is widespread:

[Verizon exec] Walls said cable providers confuse consumers with their claims to fiber architecture. As examples, he cited commercials from Cox Communications (an animated spot that asserts the phone companies are a decade behind Cox as far as fiber investment) and Cablevision Systems (the voiceover states that “they're” talking about fiber but “a lot of their network isn't”).

Cable's claims to a fiber network on par with that being built by Verizon is “like saying a Volkswagen and a [Rolls-Royce] are the same because they both have tires,” he said."

Now Verizon is suing...

Verizon Communications filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Time Warner Cable, alleging the cable operator’s TV ads make “blatantly false” statements about its FiOS services in an attempt to dissuade customers from switching.

It would be good if the courts would find that such advertising is an attempt to deceive the consumer and hence illegal. It is certainly nice that Verizon, with legions of legal staff to rival AT&T's, were to establish this for all the EATels and LUSs of the country.

Without such a finding expect the same sort of advertising here...in about 9 months.

Humor: Cox, Eatel, & LUS

Kevin Blanchard does his usual exemplary job of capturing the little ironies and quirks that make following the news so interesting.

In this morning's story on yesterday's big TechSouth Governor's award luncheon he covers the highlights of the event. If you'd like to find out more about the technology behind LITE and how BP uses in oil exploration the story is a great starting point. Our own Ramesh Kolluru comes in for well-deserved praise as well.

But if, like me, you're starved for a little knowing smile skip down to the end and read the bit about EATEL winning its Governor's award for best "Technology Company of the Year."

And just so you don't have to even click for your smile:

Gonzales-based EATEL was presented the Technology Company of the Year for its phone, cable and high-speed Internet service delivered over an entirely fiber-optic network.

EATEL President Robert Burgess thanked Cox Communications — a major sponsor of TechSouth — for its “formidable” competition.

“Because of (Cox’s) size, capability and market strength they force us to be at the top of our game every day,” Burgess said.

That competition has “helped” EATEL succeed, Burgess said.

Burgess than made a joking reference to Lafayette Utilities System’s fiber-optic based telecommunications service, expected to start up early next year — also in competition with Cox — saying he’s sure LUS would appreciate some help.

“We’ve had more than enough assistance,” Burgess said, drawing laughter from the audience, which included LUS and Cox officials.

“Please, any attention you give to us, please give it to (LUS),” Burgess said.

What Kevin does not have to say out loud is that lead sponsor Cox (with its name on every piece of promotion and occupying the suite of booths spanning the entrance to the affair) has recently been locked in an unusually public and expensive battle with EATEL. Cox is offering a super special that amounts to a 12 month 50% discount on its triple play package (with HBO!) but is only advertising it in the small area south of Baton Rouge where local telco EATEL is eating market share with the same FTTH technology for which they were receiving the technology award.

That's rich.

EATEL, as faithful readers of this blog will know, responded by taking out a series of full-page ads in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser which promoted, in vivid red and black, the deal in Lafayette as well. Louisiana law forces Cox to make the deal available throughout its service area but does not force it to promote it as evenly. So EATEL stepped up to "help" Cox out. So, on EATEL's account the two companies are engaged in an exchange of "favors." (That's rich, too.) After an initial confusion among Cox's operators, who initially denied the price reduction was available in Lafayette, the company trimmed its sails and made the best of a bad matter by allowing Lafayette residents in on the deal. Lafayette is a much larger market than East Ascension parish and extending the deal to Lafayette surely makes the attempt quash little EATEL with long-term price specials MUCH more expensive.

(Wanna know how you can get in on the deal? As a little fillup you'll be using a unified technology whose protocols will be similar to LUS' even if the capacity of LUS underlying infrastructure is vastly larger. After you get used to an all-IP household you can flip over to LUS' faster, locally-owned version. The Cox deal does not require a contract but is guaranteed for 12 months.)

/irk on/
As a little added fillip: Cox is sensitive on this matter—I wandered by the Cox booth at TechSouth (they give great floor prizes) and one of their booth guys struck up a conversation trying to encourage me to try Cox. I told him I already had cable and internet from them. He switched to urging me to try their VOIP. I couldn't resist at that point. I told him I was considering the "half-off" deal advertised in paper. ;-) He paled a little (though that might be my imagination) and said it was a good deal. As it is. But he then overreached by claiming that Cox had always intended to offer it to everyone. That it was only being "test-marketed" over there. Now that is just plain silly—and insulting. It was no accident that it was being offered in the only place in this market that Cox currently faces a local, FTTH-based competition. By all accounts EATEL is gaing substantial market share. I tried to point that out and that offering that large a reduction for 12 months had to be a bit more than a casual promotion. He countered by saying that Cox had done it elsewhere. I scoffed. He said he'd been working for Cox in Northern Virginia where they did the same. I doubt he expected anyone in little ole Lafayette to smile and point out that this proved my point about fiber competition—that is where Verizon's Fios FTTH network is going head to head with cablecos and is producing some of the highest speeds in the country. It's fiber taking market share, I said, that caused the long-term "specials" in both places. He wouldn't back off the company talking point that it was all just normal marketing and that it was just a coincidence that his company offered a 50% reduction in the one small place where they had fiber competition---and, oh yes, where they compete with fiber in Virginia. By the end I actually was insulted...Cox is, as EATEL says, a formidable competitor. They are shaping up to be the Verizon of cablecos—willing to really invest in the future of their network even at the cost of today's profits. That's both impressive and worthy. But their Achilles heal is their contempt for their communities, their customers, and even for individuals who walk up and talk to a representative at a trade fair. They need to learn how to be honest with folks. It'll go much further than hype, FUD and self-serving dishonesty.
/irk off/

Post Scriptum:
Blanchard is setting down his pen soon to go back to school and change professions. I, for one, will miss him and gently intelligent toss-off articles like this one.

The Bile Rises

Astonishing, Abusive — and in the cable industry they give prizes in "internal communications" (!) for this:

I Can Make a Difference!

Cox Communications, Inc.

Baton Rouge, LA

In launching the Cox Advocacy Network (CAN), Cox Greater Louisiana saw a unique opportunity to motivate and educate employees about how elected officials affect their business on a personal level by using three tools " All-Employee Meetings, Voter Registration Drive and Email Campaign. Through the All-Employee Meetings, a huge audience learned about what CAN is, how it works and heard first-hand from legislators how effective it can be. Many employees were able to vote in 2007 elections that otherwise would not have been able to. Employees were kept well informed of legislative activity and election information. Lawmakers want to hear from their constituents, and employees learned "I CAN make a difference!"

So they line everybody up in a room an feed 'em the company line and try and turn citizens into Cox lobbyists.

They pay their real lobbyists much better.

They tried this silliness in Lafayette (both Cox and BS) and it didn't work — BellSouth's (now AT&T) compulsory meetings of Cingular employees were regarded with particular contempt by the "participants."

There is no such thing as a corporate citizen. And stuff like this makes it clear.

Geoff Daily Itinerary

I talked with Geoff Daily, of killerapp.com and forthright fiber advocate, and have secured his Lafayette speaking itinerary for the next couple of days. (His social itinerary included a trip to the Blue Moon, as he details on his most recent Lafayette-centric blog post.)

Tuesday @ 9:00 @ techSouth booth 49 — "Ask the Experts" Booth - A discussion of apps for business that utilize broadband; will tailor content for audience.

Tuesday @ aprox. 5:30 @ City-Parish Council - On the significance of our new fiber network, charge to embrace the possibilities it introduces

Wednesday @ 10:30 @ techSouth booth 49 — "Ask the Experts" Booth - A discussion of apps for business that utilize broadband; will tailor content for audience.

Wednesday @ 2:30 @ techSouth's Sesame booth - Will discuss Fiber around the world; an appropriate topic for that group. (Sesame is a world-wide consortium of "mid-size" cities (cough) that is meeting this year in Lafayette and focusing on IT issues and development.) I attended a Sesame session at the University this morning that featured all of UL's hotest tech projects. Amazing how impressive UL and Lafayette sounds when you line it up from Cajunbot, to LITE affiliated 3-D projects, to "serious gaming." And nobody even talked about the new energy efficient residential home project the architecture folks are undertaking much less a little FTTH project.

And there may be one more...stay tuned.

TechSouth 2008

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.

It is worth your while.

LUS Fiber Construction Map

Latest: aerial fiber 1/3/08 at South Magnolia & 12th st.


View Larger Map

Pins on this map locate sightings of construction on the Lafayette community's new fiber-optic system.

This is a publicly editable, collaborative map. You are encouraged to add your own sightings to the map. Please!

Click on "View Larger Map" to go to a page that will allow you to put your own pin on the map.

(You can bookmark this map using this post's permanent URL or Googles' map URL)

—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 Latest From Lafayette, LA"

What's being said dept.

It's nice to be noticed. Especially for the things you're actually proud of. Lafayette got a bit of notice online t