"City seeking $9.2 million in stimulus grants to address digital divide"

The Independent blog reports that LUS and LCG have submitted a pair of stimulus funding grant applications worth 9.2 million dollars that are directed at reducing Lafayette's digital divide. This has been a central issue in Lafayette for a long time and this is the first attempt to move beyond lower prices for better services as a way to close that divide. (See LPF digital divide coverage—LPF also offered some background on this grant application back in February when the authorizing ordinance was proposed.) The Library, the Housing Authority and Je'Nelle Chargois' Heritage School of the Arts and Technology are also partners. The grant money would come from the second round of BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunity Program) stimulus grants. LUS won a first round stimulus grant for its smart grid program back in February.

BTOP provides separate programs to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers, and sustainable broadband adoption projects. These two applications are for the computer center and the sustainable broadband adoption sections.

The coalition has applied for $3.9 millon to build out or expand public computer centers in the library, senior centers, and the Housing Authority. The money will be spent on new computers and personnel.

The second grant is focused on "sustainable broadband adoption." That's bureaucratese for finding ways to help folks who are not currently getting service or who underutilize service available to get up to speed. That one is worth $5.3 million and:

would go toward 55 direct or indirect jobs in providing 35,000 hours of computer training and 1,000 new PCs, as well as pay for two-year subscriptions to high speed Internet through LUS Fiber for graduates of the program.

Details on the plans for the training program would be very interesting.

The Independent is also the first local news source outside this blog to mention the community broadband survey that will be providing supporting evidence for this grant. Hopefully we will soon see the release of the study and the supporting dataset.

"Huval: LUS Fiber 'well above' target"

The Indpendent blog checks in with Terry Huval, director of LUS, and gets a nice chunk of good news for supporters of the system. The system will be complete in "around July," 9 months ahead of schedule. Even more heartening is:

LUS Director Terry Huval writes in an e-mail. "Early in the planning of the project in 2004, we estimated that our breakeven for the project would be about 23 percent. In the areas where we have done the most of our limited marketing, we are already well-above that target. We are opening up new areas for service every week, so naturally those early take rate level are lower in those areas. But, we are pleased with the response we are getting. All indications are that we will easily meet all our financial obligations moving forward." He adds that the business has also exceeded its projection of customers who buy all three services — phone, TV and Internet. LUS Fiber first began serving customers in February of last year.

That's all good news! To unwrap that last a bit...having higher than expected take rates for the full triple play is not only a vote of confidence, it also means that the very large expense of taking on a new customer (paying for the truck rolls and expensive electronics inside and on the side of the house) will be paid off more quickly than expected. Purely in terms of paying back the bonds this is a "better" pattern.

<grump>
The Ind unfortunately continues to feel obliged to report meaningless and misleading monthly revenue vs expenditure figures. (I know, this quarter's numbers are "good" in that for two of the three months it shows a paper profit. It's still misleading to cite them.) It's meaningless because now and for several years into the future LUS is making huge upfront capital investments in plant and customer acquisition. NO business like LUS' should be making money at this time. It's also meaningless because the figures mix in the revenues from the mature wholesale business with the still-building retail network. Without accounting for build out and separating mature and growing parts of the division it is impossible for reporting on those numbers to be anything other than sensationalistic—whether they look good or not.
</grump>

"Cabling America: Fibre in paradise"

The Economist, Britian's venerable and well-respected newsmagazine, reports on Bristol Virginia's BVU and its FTTH project. Long-time readers will recall Bristol, Virginia: claims that BVU was a failure were a regular and regularly ugly feature of the fiber fight here (summary). The truth was that Bristol was very successful, the first municipal utility to offer the triple play, and has done extremely well for its community. The Economist points this out, emphasizing the rural nature of the location and the jobs it brought to its Appalachian corner of Virginia.

It's satisfying to see Bristol being recognized as an economic success by the Economist.

It's also a treat to read the Economist—the weekly news magazine is known for its unusual combination of tight, fact-filled language and light-hearted tone. The reader is encouraged to read through the article for themselves just to reassure themselves that it really can be done. The following is offered up as an example of clean reasoning that will resonate with Lafayette readers:

Should cities be in the business of providing fast internet access? It depends on whether the internet is an investment or a product. BVU could not afford to maintain its fibre backbone without selling the internet to consumers. And it could not build a subscriber base without offering cable television and a telephone line as well; households these days expect a single price for all three services.... Fibre is expensive, and a purely commercial business would not have been minded to pay for it.

All this is true for much of rural America, and it is an analogue of the reason why municipal utility companies were launched in the first place: to electrify thinly-populated areas where commercial utilities would not go.

Good stuff.

(via Christopher Mitchell @ Muninetworks.org)

LUS and Deconsolidation...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cox: Costs too high for high-speed service

Our neighbors in Franklin are being told that it'd be too expensive for Cox or AT&T to serve them all with real broadband. It's not that the incumbents wouldn't earn money...they just wouldn't earn it as easily or as quickly as they want.

A story in the Advocate shows that the nub of the matter is well-understood by Franklin's Councilmen:

“I think everyone should have it and you all should bend a little, especially if you will be making a profit in 10 years,” Foulcard said.

Councilman Logan Fromenthal argued there are many areas of the parish where Cox is making a good profit.

What Foulcard and Fromenthal have in mind is treating telecommunications as a utility in the same manner that your residential telephone service was understood in years: the company that was granted the right to use our public right of ways for private profit was supposed to serve everyone (not just the low-hanging fruit) and it was well-understood that they weren't supposed to be making the same high rate of profit that was available to businesses that weren't dependent upon getting favored use of public resources.

The councilmen are right: That is the way it should be.

Unfortunately, the federal government long ago exempted the telephone companies from any local control and our state legislators have spent the last few years passing a series of bills that transfer most of the power to say how local rights of way are used up to the state level and put up barriers to the local communities that own and maintain the land providing these services themselves. The consequence is that communities like Franklin can't easily do much more than complain and ask politely.

There is an alternative and Lafayette has shown the way. Do it yourself. Build a world class fiber-optic network yourself. Don't wait for someone else to do it for you. Yes, it would be costly, but yes, it could pay for itself in a perfectly doable period of time if it didn't have to pay for itself in a short 2-4 year period as the private companies demand.

There are possibilities out there besides "asking politely."

Apply for some of the federal broadband stimulus money from RUS (the rural utilies service). Look to Google's recent offer to supply 1 gig of broadband to up to 500,000 people and make your case. Or just make up your mind to do it yourself.

You do have one advantage in making such an effort: Lafayette. Lafayette just up the road has its own publicly-owned state of the art fiber optic network with a brand new head-end that is the technical heart of the system. If St. Mary were to set up their own network they could farm the head-end work out to LUS and avoid the problems associated with building and maintaining that highly technical facility. And I'd bet that an intergovernmental agreement there would be a lot cheaper than any private alternative. (LUS is already a utility, it doesn't have to make its money back fast. But would surely welcome any additional revenue.) There is already fiber running down the railroad track between the two cities.

Just light it up.

Lagniappe: A lot of people in Lafayette think that owning its own utilities was the key to Lafayette becoming Acadiana's "hub city." Awareness of that history was one good reason the community supported extending the idea to LUS Fiber. Ownership made sure that modern electricity and clean water was reliably available when that was what made a city "modern" and livable. Owning those facilities meant that the city was not dependent on any outside force to provide the necessities and attract new citizens and businesses. And it meant that all those dollars of profit stayed and circulated in the city. There was a day when both New Iberia and Opelousas were bigger and more important than Lafayette...but those days passed. Any community that wants grow and prosper needs to own its own local resources. Owning your own telecom utility is today's equivalent of electricity. Now is the moment.

LUS/Lafayette to apply for more stimulus funds

LUS received permission from the City-Parish Council to apply for "BTOP" stimulus funding in a special meeting held after Wednesday's Council session. You can take a gander at the meeting minutes or view it on at UStream online (@ 1:54)

The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) is part of the ongoing federal recovery stimulus funding. BTOP provides grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers, and sustainable broadband adoption projects. LUS won't need to apply for infrastructure—that's something we've already done for ourselves—so the focus of Lafayette's grant application will likely be in the area of community computing centers and sustainable broadband.

This new application follows the success of LUS' application in the first round of stimulus funding for which it received $11,630,000 dollars to build a smart grid addition to its electrical and water departments. An attempt to add a computer center component to that earlier application was dropped; reportedly because there wasn't enough time to get it together and because there was trouble finding community institutions that could promise to sustain the new centers once the initial grant funding ran out.

The new effort, according to Terry Huval, LUS director, looks for locations already available within the Lafayette Consolidated Government such as those already available at library locations in public centers and space within public housing authority sites. It will also look at providing computers and network access to at-risk youth in underserved areas of the city. (Grant guidance for both computer centers and sustainability grants can be found online for those interested in thinking about the possibilities.)

During the brief council meeting at which the enabling ordinance was passed Councilman Theriot raised the question of the matching funds that the community would have to provide should this grant be won. Huval said that the grant was being designed so that the 20% match would be achieved by LUS' in-kind donations of bandwidth and connectivity. In discussion Councilman Bertrand and Huval raised the point that the city's investment in its fiber to the home network could be used to leverage federal money to help us "do some good things for our community."

Doing this right could help fulfill the promise that public ownership of the network could be used to help close the digital divide in Lafayette.

"LUS: Fiber on right track"

If you follow Lafayette's LUS Fiber but don't get the Baton Rouge Advocate you'll want to check out Richard Burgess' latest story, "LUS: Fiber on right track." The heart of the story is found in the first paragraph:

Lafayette’s publicly owned fiber-optic based Internet, television and telephone service appears to be moving toward sound financial footing a year after its launch.

and the kicker:

Huval said this week that LUS Fiber should easily achieve the 23 percent market penetration needed to break even.

That's the story and it should be understood as a huge and exciting one. LUS Fiber is on track to making its financial nut. The bottom line in the story of the new utility division is no more complicated than getting the take rate needed for success.

What's nice about this story is the careful attention to the right detail. The first thing the citizens of Lafayette need to know about their new utility is whether or not it will pay for itself. This story makes it clear that as of right now it is on the expected path towards that goal. (At a moment when the network is not yet completed.) That path includes large upfront investments in expensive infrastructure that we have always understood would be paid out over the 25 year life of the bond issue.

LUS Fiber should not be "making" money in its first years. In fact the presence of a "profit" in the early years would be a terrible sign since it would indicate that LUS is not taking on the very heavy expenses of customer installations that raise its take rate and result in income which leads to the eventual timely retirement of the bond issue. Stories that lead with the "expenses" and "loses" in these first years are being sensational and hoping for no more than an excited readership. But worse than sensationalism they are actively misleading their readers about what is important about this developing public resource. Burgess' story does not to succumb to this temptation and so it is not an "exciting" read — unless you understand the basic dynamics of the situation. I've argued (repeatedly) in these pages that the first duty of a news story is educational. Kudos to the Advocate on this one.

Click through to the report; there's more interesting and encouraging tidbits about things like the higher than expected proportion of those taking all three services. It is a good solid read.

Regional Fiber UltraBroadband Network in Lousiana?

They're beating the drum in Baton Rouge on Google's FTTH (fiber to the home) project. A facebook page, "Bring Google Fiber to Baton Rouge," was launched almost immediately and quickly became the leading Facebook page devoted to the topic. The page reports meetings within the city leadership. Baton Rouge is enthused.

Lafayette's cadre of pro-fiber partisans are urged to support Baton Rouge's effort. Join the facebook page and voice your support.

A fibered-up Baton Rouge would create a regional ultra broadband fiber to the home corridor stretching from Gonzalez through Baton Rouge to Lafayette. My back of the napkin calculations using year 2000 census data shows that network would pass around 419,000 people. That would just about double the bang-for-the-buck that Google would receive for fibering up Baton Rouge alone.

It may well be that Baton Rouge's strongest argument for Google to invest there will be to leverage the spirit already shown by its neighbors.

The number of people effected is no small issue. As Google is undoubtedly aware, the major stumbling block to developing really big pipes here in the US is that building out little pockets here and there do not provide the critical mass of users that would prod application developers and service provider to provide apps and services that make full use of the available bandwidth. If 90% of your audience is limited to 6 megs or less you develop and plan for—maybe—10 megs. Of download. Upload speeds are a fraction of download in most of the country. Everyone knows we want big broadband and symmetrical up and download speeds eventually but we're caught in a chicken and egg situation and no one wants to go first. Google is playing on this national stage and hopes that dropping half a million people into the pool of those with really big broadband will: First, drive the incumbents to try and match their efforts, particularly if Google can prove that it is not nearly as expensive or daunting a task as the incumbents claim. Secondly Google hopes that by jump starting a market of a half million (and if they have calculated well another 1 or 2 million more to that in incumbent responses) they will have created a tipping point in the development of truly high-speed, low latency, big pipe applications. That would be a GREAT thing for leading-edge communities like Lafayette.

But its not just the number of people effected—it is the density as well. One of the things we know from studies of new tech adoption in the realm of communications is that it is strongly subject to local network effects. Take telephone service. If you are the only subscriber it really is pretty much worthless. The more people take the service the more valuable it becomes. If you can count on everyone having it you can start organizing everyday activities around it and integrating it fully into your social life. That is what Google wants to have happen on its new fiber. Network effects are most powerful within a city or region. Most telephone calls are local and most of the remaining are regional. By ensuring that an entire region, approaching 500,000 people in that area alone, is fully-fibered Google can have the greatest hope of seeding a game-changing demonstration project. (By the way: my prediction is that one of the first high-bandwidth apps to come out of the famous "google labs" complex will be HD video telephony and conferencing for just these reasons. Google Voice HD anyone?)

And wait, wait, there's more! :-)

As Lagniappe Google gets to watch 2 distinctly different FTTH providers closely interact with one of its big pipes project. Lafayette is a utility—a municipal FTTH provider. EATel is a classic rural telephone company. Both are offering some of the highest speeds over FTTH in their categories. How do the 3 differing models interact? What form really drives adoption the fastest?

Google's 1 gig, low-latency pipes will, I believe, drive the development of amazing new gaming, cloud, and communications applications. They could get an awful lot of additional data by building in Baton Rouge and partnering up with EATEL and LUS.

Wi-Fi, Buses, and Student Productivity

If you've got kids (or 6 grandkids) in school these days the following will catch your eye:

Wi-Fi access has transformed what was often a boisterous bus ride into a rolling study hall, and behavioral problems have virtually disappeared.

The story is from the New York Times and it details the tale of a school district in Arizona turned long bus rides into a productive "study hall." The problem with school bus rides, as any student or parent will tell you, is that there is absolutely nothing useful one can do...and with nothing useful available the next alternative is things you do when bored—like aggravate your fellow students.

...stir-crazy teenagers break the monotony by teasing, texting, flirting, shouting, climbing (over seats) and sometimes punching (seats or seatmates).

But on this chilly morning, as bus No. 92 rolls down a mountain highway just before dawn, high school students are quiet, typing on laptops.

The good idea came, for a wonder, from a group of district administrators that had to make regular rides into the capital city over an hour away (sound familiar anyone?) and would car pool so that the riders in the car could use their laptops and cell cards to get something done during the two hours that the transit took out of their day. A bulb went off when one of them saw an ad for a "mobile hotspot" that paired cellular wireless to a wifi access point. So for the $200 dollar cost of the wifi router plus the 60 buck cellular subscription you had a rolling study hall.

This would be a great idea for any district. My guess is that eternally abused bus drivers would die for a solution like this. The problem is that it costs money. Maybe not a lot for one bus...but real money to equip a fleet and hire someone to keep them going.

That cost would be a lot more manageable if that 60 dollar toll to the telecos could be avoided and you just used wifi. This is a great use case for the delayed LUS wireless network. If you put in a wireless network with mobile capacities. (As would be sensible for serving LUS and municipal employees as well...if you don't want them checking into to a coffee shop to get new work orders.) It could make a lot of kids (and bus drivers' and school disciplinarians' and parents') lives much easier.

And that's the point, finally, of a community owning its own network. N'est-ce pas?

Photo credit CC BY-NC 2.0

Google Hires Baller for I Gig Job

According to Marguerite Reardon, a veteran reporter on these matters now working for CNET, Google has retained Jim Baller. For reasons those of us in Lafayette can easily understand Google feels the need to hire seasoned council to defend itself against the incumbent legal onslaught that is sure to come as soon as they begin to consider actual locales. Baller was the national-level lawyer that defended Lafayette throughout our long battle...from the negotiations over the (un)Fair Competition Act to supporting the city through a long series of lawsuits. He's earned his stripes and the fact that Google is retaining someone with his history shows that they are at least thinking realistically about the political as well as the technical and economic barriers they and their partner communities are likely to face. From the article:

"Even if Google isn't planning to compete with broadband providers in the near future, it recognizes that network operators may still feel threatened. This could be why the company has hired Jim Baller, president of The Baller Herbst Law Group, as a consultant. Baller, who is working with Google on this project, has been battling incumbent broadband providers for more than a decade, helping municipalities develop projects to build-fiber-to-the home networks in their communities.

Incumbent phone companies and cable operators have lobbied state governments to pass laws to stop these deployments. Some companies, such as Qwest Communications International and BellSouth, which is now owned by AT&T, actually sued municipalities to stop some projects. Baller has been involved in many of these cases, defending municipal clients against phone companies and cable operators.

In some instances, the incumbent service providers have been successful. But in other instances, they have not. A handful of municipally owned fiber networks around the country have won their battles with incumbent network operators, including one in Lafayette, La., and another high-profile network called Utopia, which connects several communities in Utah. With new federal funding pouring into communities as a result of President Obama's stimulus package, a new wave of projects is emerging."

There's likely to be more work than any one man or firm can handle. Google is smart to hire him on now.

Google To Fund 1 Gig FTTH!

Google plans to build at least one 1 gig FTTH community network somewhere in the United States.

WOW. (Respectful pause while we collectively gather our wits.)

This stunning announcement is, in part, Google putting its money where its mouth is. Google has been a strong advocate of the FCC's upcoming national broadband plan showing some imagination and has been a strong advocate of fiber to the home in that context. My guess is that part of what Google found out that fiber is the necessary first step during its initial experiment in public networking. In its hometown of Mountain View they built a public WiFi network. While that has been a mild success by most accounts wireless simply cannot push the bandwidth Google wants to watch people explore; especially without a dense fiber network. Fiber To The Home is the endgame here and Google is going directly for the gold in its second experiment.

Google has issued a request for information (RFI) asking communities to express an interest. They've announced a few constraints. First, they want to fund full communities projects, 50, 000 to 500, 000—no big announcements and small 100 house "pilots" for Google! Besides size they are also planning to explore open networks—they want to build open networks that any service provider can use. That goes hand in glove with their open source stance in other areas. The model of municipally-centered open networks has show tremendous success in Scandinavia and that is likely the model they are taking as a starting point.

This is, of course, all great stuff. With most of the scuttle-butt about the upcoming National Broadband Plan warning of a less than exciting document Google is offering to blaze a path forward out of the national ennui. Good for them.

Basically this would be great for Lafayette: we desperately need large population in other parts of the country to get onboard with truly high speed broadband. Until there is a sizable population there won't be much development of new apps. And since research shows that most communications (as opposed to passive consumption) takes place between people who live close by the only way to get a handle on the next generation internet is to wire up whole, concentrated communities. Another several dozen full fiber communities is what Lafayette and the few fully fibered communities in the US really need.

The catch for Lafayette, and the few communities that have already invested in advanced networking, is that, well, we've already built our state-of-the-art fiber network. But it would be really great to participate in the "innovative apps" part of the game. And our network is up and running. If I may be so bold: Google, can we play too. You can use our community as a contrast to the one you build elsewhere....

Update: Here's the smartest analysis of what Google is doing here that I've seen. And by smart I mean that once I read it I say. Oh...wow...yes..of course. :-) Harold Feld over at Tales of the Sausage Factory does that to me on a regular basis. Recommended

"LUS: Fiber schedule, meetings, software and more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUS wins rate increase, smart grid

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

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

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

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

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

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

LUS Fiber - SaintsReport Community Forums

Ok, just can't resist the Saints madness of the moment here in South Louisiana — I saw a tie-in to our local network pop up on the SaintsReport Forum. A Lafayette Saints partisan says that they're switching to LUS, links to the LUS Fiber pages on internet and TV and asks if any fellow fans are going to switch. The ensuing banter is informative and refreshingly free from the trolls that infest the local news boards. If you're from down here take a walk through the unvarnished opinions on the incumbents and the potential of LUS from folks who are mostly interested in something else.

It's folks like these that will drive LUS Fiber uptake.

(If history is any guide: watch out for the numbskulls who are newly registered and clearly logging in just to poison the well...sigh.)

Photo credit : Justanuptowngirl / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Acadiana "Program aiming at tech gap"

If you missed the story Je’Nelle Chargois and her computer rebuilding project then you need to take a look at the story in the Advocate. The project exemplifies all those grassroots, community-driven public/private ideals you hear about so often—and so seldom see in full-blown action. Here's the gist of the story; one that will hopefully drive you to read the whole thing—and maybe even contribute to the project at hand or start one yourself:

Through a partnership between community organizations and local businesses, at least 200 computers will be placed in the homes of Faulk students who wouldn’t otherwise have access to the technology outside of the classroom.

“We’re trying to close the digital divide and give them to the tools to compete,” said Je’Nelle Chargois, manager of KJCB radio and coordinator of the Heritage School of the Arts and Technology, partners in the project.

The group has worked with the school to match 137 students with computers. By next month, the group will have reached its goal of placing 200 computers, Chargois said.

The computers have been donated by area companies and, as needed, refurbished by volunteer computer technicians.

Those students who receive a computer and their parents must attend computer literacy workshops. The parents also agree to get more involved at Faulk.

There's more, of course; there's a neighborhood center involved, Vision Community Services, founded by Sessil Trepagnier, a computer analyst with Halliburton. I've worked with Je'Nelle briefly on a rebuilding project a couple of years back and can testify that she's devoted to doing this right.

If this sort of thing interests you and you think you'd like to help out or do something similar I've got a meeting you might want to attend: the League of Women Voters of Lafayette is bring together a group of folks who have previously expressed an interest in starting projects in Lafayette concerning both computer rebuilding and community computer centers. That meeting is next Monday, Jan. 25th at 5:30 at AOC (Main at Lee downtown). Both Sessil and Je'Nelle will speak as will a number of others ranging from League membe Thetis Cusimano reporting on research on current community center resources done by League members to Sona Dombourian of the Lafayette Library.

WBS: "LUS Fiber: Already running a network"

What's Being Said department

LUS Fiber is serving as an example of a real community fiber network in places like Champaign-Urbana Illinois that want to start their own fiber network. Now I admit to having a soft spot for C-U for both personal and technical reasons—it was my first "real" professorial appointment and it was the original home of ideas foundational to our current tech surround— like Eudora email (which I only recently gave up), the Mosaic browser (the www's first browser), and "the Cave" 3D immersive technology we see at Lafayette's LITE center. For long years C-U's NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) was the biggest node on the infant internet and fount of new, imaginative applications that made the network useful.

Champaign-Urbana is trying to build its own fiber-optic network. It's a place both cursed and blessed by its history. If you work at the university you've got all the connectivity you could dream of. If you live in the community...well the contrast is stark and the place is small enought that everyone knows how much better things are campus. Town & Gown is a real distinction in C-U.

The community, to its credit has a long history of dealing with digital divide issues. It is the home of PrairieNet, a legendary old line Free-Net organization that has transformed several times over the years and still serves the community, and it was the home of some of the smartest community WiFi experiments so the new push to fiber up the community is not a huge surprise.
C-U is putting the digital divide issues at the core of its project and there are more than a few ideas in their proposal that Lafayette could profitably copy.

All in all, it's gratifying to see LUSFiber discussed with admiration as an example in C-U. What's even more fun is to see a little real news leak out through that venue. The author of the page interviews LUS' own Amy Broussard who reveals that LUS' take rate is above the break-even point in the older parts of its brand-new footprint. (That's something LUS should be publicizing more widely.) There are three nifty postage-stamp videos — remember they don't have fiber yet — talking about the service (speeds and 100 mbps intranet), the different motivation a publicly owned network has, and the obstacles the incumbents put in the way.

"Dore clarifies position on LUS rate hike"

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

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

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

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

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

Time will tell.

"Municipal fiber needs more FDR localism, fewer state bans"

Christopher Mitchell, the best researcher/commentator on municipal fiber in this country bar none (IMHO) has an outstanding essay up on Ars Technica today that you ought to read.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/municipal-fiber-needs-more-fdr-localism-fewer-state-bans.ars

It holds Lafayette up as the premier example of a city that has done the right thing by its citizens. I have to say that I agree. But more than that: this essay lays out as coldly and directly as I have seen it done the rock-solid case for municipal broadband. It doesn't pull punches, and it doesn't bother to engage in histrionics.

I cand do no better than to excerpt the case he lays out and emphasize the parts that delight a Lafayette partisan but really, you'd be better served to read it yourself and not bother with my abridgement...it's not long and it's well-crafted.

The “broadband market” in much of the US happily provides snail-speed connections at inflated prices when compared to many of our peer nations....Recognizing the disconnect between the best interests of distant shareholders and the best interest of their community, cities across the US have built their own networks, taking a page from the thousands of small cities that built their own electricity networks a century ago when private utilities ignored them...

Lafayette, Louisiana is a good example. The city begged its incumbents to beef up local broadband networks and was rebuffed. This Cajun country community decided to build its own next-generation network. The incumbents argued that the households and businesses of Lafayette had all the broadband they needed and sued to stop the city. This year, after years of litigation, the victorious city began connecting customers to LUS Fiber.

LUS Fiber may offer the best broadband value in the country, offering a true 10Mbps symmetrical connection for $29/month. Those wanting the 50Mbps symmetrical connection have to pony up just $58/month—about what I pay to my cable provider in Saint Paul for "up to" 16/2 speeds.

Lafayette and Monticello were lucky because they had the power to build a digital network. Many communities do not.... Eighteen states impose some barriers to community broadband....Though Monticello and Lafayette have succeeded in spite of barriers, many other communities are unable to persevere, and watch their younger generation leave for modern opportunities elsewhere...

...communities have fought this fight before—when electricity was only available to the urban and affluent. Profit-maximizing companies not only refused to build the grid to low-profit areas but argued those areas should not be permitted to wire themselves. Fortunately, FDR saw things differently:

I therefore lay down the following principle: That where a community—a city or county or a district—is not satisfied with the service rendered or the rates charged by the private utility, it has the undeniable basic right, as one of its functions of Government, one of its functions of home rule, to set up, after a fair referendum to its voters has been had, its own governmentally owned and operated service.

We need FDR to remind us that we are discussing the basic right of a community to invest in its future. Communities must not be held hostage by an absentee company that knows it can overcharge and under-invest without consequence.

Wireless is nice for mobility, but does not threaten the wired monopoly or duopoly. These networks—particularly full fiber-optic networks—are natural monopolies. There is no natural “market” any more than one could imagine a competitive market in streets or metro airports. This is infrastructure—the foundation for many other markets...

Industry-funded think tanks have produced many reports claiming publicly owned networks are failures. Their methodology is suspect—equating long-term investments in next-generation networks with lost money....The truth is that publicly owned networks do quite well. Communities typically borrow from outside investors to build the network and pay off the loans over a 15-20 year period with revenues from phone, television, and broadband services...

State barriers to publicly owned broadband networks may benefit monopolistic cable and telephone companies but can cripple communities within those states. Of course, such policies also give a competitive edge to cities in other states who have moved ahead.

“Actually,” says Lafayette’s Republican Mayor, Joey Durel, “I often say with tongue firmly planted in cheek that I hope that the other 49 states do outlaw what we are doing. Then I will ask them to send their technology companies to Lafayette where we will welcome them with open arms and a big pot of gumbo.”

Cold weather is gumbo weather and we can sit down over a bowl and watch TV with our grandchildren, and later help with their homework over a medium that we own. It's been a good week for self-reliance in Lafayette regardless of the icy weather and Mitchell's essay is nice reminder of how good we have it.

PS: Check out Christopher's blog: muninetworks.org, and for some background on the topic of municipal restrictions his recent post.

Getting His Fiber

Pat Ottinger is the happy new subscriber in this photo. It came with the following note:

Is this a great country, or what?

Can't wait to deliver my boxes to Cox.

Merry Christmas, Pat

Pat is the city's attorney and was our local lawyer in the many delaying lawsuits brought by the incumbents and their allies. (Like the one we won with a unanimous decision of the state supreme court.) He has earned his little silver LUS box. Congrats! (another post, this one with videos...)

PS: Isn't the slogan on the truck: "I'm proud of my LUS Fiber" perfect for the occasion and wouldn't it make a great yard sign?

Curtis, Cox, and LUS

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

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

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

Cox Raises Rates...

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

Merry Christmas!

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

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

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

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

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

Lafayette Pulls Down $11,630,000 in Smart Grid Monies (Updated)

Congratulations to Lafayette and Lafayette Utilities System....

Their recovery act grant application returned $11,630,000 dollars to the city in order to install a smart electrical meter system in the city. This has been something that LUS director Huval has long sought and winning the grant means that it can go forward much sooner. The "Brief Project Description" put up by the grant-giving agency says:

Install more than 57,000 smart meters to reach the full service territory with two-way communications, enable consumers to reduce energy use with smart appliances and dynamic pricing, and automate the electric transmission and distribution systems to improve monitoring and reliability.

We've commented here before on the potential of smart meters using the internet to communicate; it is all about shaving the top off peak power usage. These meters allow users to save money by monitoring their own usage and shifting the use of electricty-hogging services to times when power is cheap. (Charge your new electric car between 1 and 4:30 in the morning and get a 20% discount just like the big industrial users do now.) And they'd allow the electrical provider to spend less money on peak capacity. (We won't have to build an expensive new plant if most of those new electric cars charge during off-peak hours.)

Now I'll be very interested in seeing just how that "two-way communications" will be accomplished. Fiber to the home works great...for those that have fiber. But to serve all the city's electrical customers it would likely prove cheaper to lay down a WiFi network — after all we've already got fiber running down every block. Just hang the WiFi off the polls and put a node on every meter.

That gives the city a pervasive cloud of wifi. Use a muscular 802.11N version and there'd be plenty left over to give LUS Fiber subscribers a very nice wireless addition to their already capable network.

Stay tuned. There'll surely be more to this story.

(Hat tip to Mike for the lead on this story.)

Update 10/31/09:
Both the Advertiser and the Advocate have now picked up this story. LUS apparently issued a press release and Huval has talked to reporters. The most interesting new tidbit is in the Advertiser's article:

Because the grant requires a match from LUS, it remains unclear whether the city will actually be able to receive the funds.

LUS Director Terry Huval said the application was submitted with plans of a rate increase for all LUS customers. But because some City-Parish Council members have opposed the increase, a final vote on it was delayed last month by Lafayette Consolidated Government officials, and it is unknown when that vote will take place.

Since the rate increase is in jeopardy, the smart grid project is temporarily off the table, but could make it back onto a project list if the increase eventually passes.

"Unless we're able to find funding for that or get the rate adjustment, we would not be able to meet the match requirements," Huval said.

Here's to hoping that our green council (who are all in their first term) has the good sense to realize that this is the sort of "expense" that more than pays for itself. A "rate increase" that allows customers to save money through their own decisions and helps keep the utility from having to pay for excess, seldom used capacity saves the people money in both the long and the short run. Especially when our federal tax dollars will pay for half of the cost. It's a one-time, limited-time offer, folks.

One Story? Economic Development

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

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

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

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

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

Only in Louisiana

In the Only in Louisiana Department:

What to do if your commercial fishing ecology is threatened by an invasive new creature that might breed wildly....How does the state department responsible for such problems react?

Well, only in Louisiana: You publish a recipe. ;-)

From the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, via the IND blog:

Broiled Lemon and Garlic Tiger Prawns
1 1/2 pounds tiger prawns, peeled and deveined
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Preheat oven on broiler setting. With a sharp knife, remove tails from prawns, and butterfly them from the underside. Arrange prawns on broiler pan. In a small saucepan, melt butter with garlic and lemon juice. Pour 1/4 cup butter mixture in a small bowl, and brush onto prawns. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over shrimp. Place broiler pan on top rack, and broil prawns for 4 to 5 minutes, or until done. Serve with remaining butter mixture for dipping.

They'd make a good experiment for your best BBQ shrimp recipe, too...and this sounds a whole lot better than those recipes for Nutria Rat Gumbo. (On the other hand, I have it on the best authority that Nutria and Garfish Gumbo was served to unsuspecting toddlers in the Houma region as far back as 1970—nobody needs the wildlife and fisheries guys to give us any ideas in the culinary arena.)

(Off topic, but too damned good to pass up.)

WBS: Lafayette as the Example

Glenn Fleishman has an article up that mentions Lafayette as the premier example of a city that has built a network in order to bring advanced technology to all its citizens:

In Lafayette, Louisiana, the city fought a multi-year battle against incumbent providers for the right to build its own fiber network. It won, and the FTTH network went live for the first phrase of the city–with about a fifth the households of Seattle–in February.

The reason for the fight wasn’t about the right to 500 channels, about low prices, or about the city wanting a piece of the action. It was about the city’s desire to have 21st century technology in place reaching every person, company, and institution. (emphasis mine)

The context is Seattle's mayoral race; the candidate who came out of the primary in first place, McGinn, has made providing a city-owned FTTH network a major plank in his campaign for office.

Fleishman's point is a good one: The real reason for building a community-owned communications utility is to gain control of your future and to directly benefit the citizen-owners of the new utility and their community. Other oft-mentioned rationales, from fancy services, to the benefit for businesses is derivative of that motive and not the main rationale.

It's a good thing to have our real motives recognized by someone outside the city—and nice that the real meaning of the victory in Lafayette is being learned.

OneWebDay Celebration in Lafayette @ LITE, and via Webcast

Tommorrow—September 22nd—is "One Web Day" and it will be celebrated in grand style here in Lafayette. One Web Day celebrates the power of internet connectivity and will be observed in cities throughout the world. From the national press release:

OneWebDay was founded in 2006 as an all-volunteer campaign to build a constituency for the Internet in the United States and around the world. Originally imagined as a celebration of the World Wide Web - the services and content the Internet carries - OneWebDay has grown into a movement of organizations, citizens and consumers who are committed to universal and equal access to the Internet. Now in its fourth year, OneWebDay has a full-time Executive Director, powerful new partners and will see events in 50 cities across the globe.

Given that drive toward "universal and equal access" it is no surprise that Lafayette has one of the marquee events, and given the local joie de vie, no surprise that it involves some fun:

In the U.S., 9/22 events include: a documentary and discussion on copyright in Milwaukee; a broadband policy panel Washington, DC; a New York City rally with an Iranian political activist; elected officials and a Cajun band in Lafayette; a forum with Mitch Kapor in Berkeley; a Philadelphia panel on that city's broadband grant.

The release goes on to quote internet sage Mitch Kapor as saying in reference to this year's theme:

"Ultimately, we want to ensure that anyone who wants it has access to the Internet and, importantly, the skills they need to fully participate. The ability to access and use a fast, affordable, and open Internet is essential for every student, every entrepreneur, and every citizen who wants full access to our government and the democratic process," said Kapor.

That's the serious purpose...Ah, but the local fun...what of that? —From the local press release:

Lafayette, LA – On September 22nd as the world honors OneWebDay, Lafayette, LA will step up to add its voice to the chorus of gatherings across the country and around the globe with an event of its own, a celebration of Lafayette's connectivity, culture, community, and innovative spirit.

This event will take place at the LITE Center, starting at 5:30pm with a reception in the lobby that will include free beer and wine, and continuing on from 6-7:30pm with a multimedia program in the main auditorium.

This program will feature a series of speakers talking about Lafayette's commitment to becoming a hub city for broadband innovation, including City-Parish President Joey Durel, LUS Director Terry Huval, UL President Dr. Savoie, UL Provost Steve Landry, AoIT director Kit Becnel, LEDA Chairman Tom Cox, LITE CEO Henry Florsheim, Firefly Digital owner Mike Spears, and local big thinker John St. Julien.

In addition to the speakers, this event will feature a live Cajun band that will help showcase Lafayette's rich culture.

The event will also be webcast out onto the Internet for the world to tune into to get a better idea of the exciting things happening in America's most wired and inspired community. Tune in to learn about Lafayette's cutting edge full fiber network, its commitment to establishing models for the next generation of education, and to supporting the development of 21st century businesses.

To watch the webcast, go to www.aocinc.org at 6pm Central on Sept 22nd.

Ok, I admit to being embarassed by this big thinker thing—but that's what you get for practicing the trade without a real title...on the other hand everyone should be reassured to note that I know for a fact that the speakers have been sternly told to keep their remarks to five minutes—so nobody will have to put up with much of it.

More seriously, it's great to see such broad local support for the ideals expressed by the OneWebDay Coalition; it is a set of ideas well worth supporting.

Come and celebrate the fun! Preferably in person, but if disability of location keeps you from making it please grab the webcast from AOC.

Update 9/25/09: The webcast of the event is up for "asynchronous" viewing at AOC's UStream account and interested readers might want to review the Advocate's coverage.

WBS: Lafayette Attracts Talk

WBS Dept. In my catchup from being in B.R. series...two more

One of the more interesting (and, ok, personally gratifying) things that have resulted from the fiber fight and the creation of LUS Fiber is that Lafayette has gotten a pretty iconic status in the admittedly small (select?) world of high speed internet mavens. Lafayette is seen as something of a touch-stone...people watch and people compare what they're getting to Lafayette.

People watching includes Benoit Felten in France who runs a well-respected fiber-oriented blog called Fiberevolution. Benoit's day job is as an analyst tracking this sort of thing in Europe for the Yankee Group so he's pretty much up on this stuff. After reading the recent Ind article he says:

When I look at the delays of the French commercial FTTH deployments, what LUS is facing is, at this stage, fairly insignificant and certainly doesn't seem to compromise the operation (despite what a number of telco/cable lobbyists seem to be implying if I read the comments below the article...)

Those comments are not from lobbyists—they are just lobbyist-inspired...

Lafayette also comes up on dslreports when Cox launches its 50/5 meg package in Arizona. The news is, that for the first time, someone else is getting the 1/3 off deal Cox gave Lafayette when it launched the new tier. From the write-up:

Cox is offering the service in Arizona for $90 for the first year, the same low price they're offering customers in Lafayette, Loisiana, [sic] where Cox does battle with dirt cheap municipal fiber. Other markets aren't so lucky, with customers in Northern Virginia paying $140 for the tier, and customers in Rhode Island paying $145. Behold the benefit of actually having competition in your local market.

Qwest, the west's equivalent of AT&T or Verizon, recently launched a fast new 40/4 mbps tier at a cheap $99.99 and the new service, and lower price are responses to that development. —Cox's deployment strategy with its new 50/5 meg tier seems to be reactive rather than proactive. It offers the tier where it has competition that is much faster than its regular offerings and only lowers the price where the regional competitor has a much-cheaper-than-US-standard pricing structure.

Catch Up: Lafayette Gets It...in two senses

In my catchup from being in B.R. series ...Lafayette Gets It...in two senses

First off, just like those big cites Lafayette now not only has traffic, hey Lafayette has Google traffic tracking! Aren't we big time. (Well actually, only the Interstates' traffic get tracked so far as I can tell by tinkering around with it, but still it marks some sort of coming-of-age.) From the map page click tracking and play around with the time-of-day and week projections. [Hat tip to Adam Melancon.]

Lafayette gets it: Tipitina's music co-op has got to win some sort of prize for being the perfect blend of tech and music for Lafayette. (To bad N.O. came up with the idea first.) The co-op is putting on some free lessons today; it's making me wish I wasn't in Baton Rouge.:

Wed, August 26th, TONY DAIGLE teaches BEGINNING PRO TOOLS 5:30-7:00pm then thursday BRAM JOHNSON teaches BEGINNING ILLUSTRATOR 6:00-7:00pm

WBS: Slick Sam Slade Rides Again...

Governing Magazine has a good story on Lafayette's fiber network: "Bandwidth on the Bayou." The heart of the article is to inform its readership about the obstacles they'll have to overcome if they try and pull down some of the broadband infrastructure stimulus money for their unserved or underserved communities—and Lafayette is their comprehensive example. Apparently we've seen it all!

The tale opens with the Now-famous slick Sam Slade "fast-talking his way through a mock TV commercial comparing an exotic sports car to a bicycle." (The video is embedded in the story or you can travel directly to the YouTube video if you'd like to sample it.) From there you are walked through a very nice history of the fiber network—most of which is the story of incumbent opposition to the community's plan and how Lafayette overcame the obstacles. It makes for a pretty stirring read (if you think public engagement in policy issues is exciting).

WBS: Lafayette Becoming Most Wired Community in America

What's Being Said Dept.

Geoff Daily over at his blog AppRising has posted "Lafayette Becoming Most Wired Community in America." He touts LUS' speed, price, and our access to a 100 mpbs intranet (and bemoans the price he has to pay for his 10/2 connection — more than I pay for a 50/50). But that's pretty much old hat, the heart of his story lies in a remark that was made at his CampFiber event last week. A Cox rep attending* said that AT&T was planning on bringing U-verse to Lafayette. Add that to Cox launching their very first 5o mbps docsis 3 service here (at a unique discount I might add) and you end up with Geoff's headline. If AT&T does launch U-verse we could at least try to lay claim to the title. Pretty impressive results for our little city which, however much we may love it, has to be seen as a backwater worth ignoring by the big guys...except for the fact that we own our own local fiber utility. Something they do not want to succeed and become examples to other towns that don't care for backwater status. I'm not sure that giving Lafayette the best of everything is the way to make that point but I'm happy enough with the result.

U-verse, as you may be aware, is AT&T's attempt at a "next-generation" network. It's a fiber to the node (FTTN) sort of architecture which involve pushing fiber optics deeper into the network so as to enable a cable-style video experience and higher speeds over the old phone twisted pair copper. The key metric for Lafayette users is that its internet tops out at a laughable 18/1.5 mbps; nowhere near the Lafayette standard of 50 mbps. Of course that's a real step up for AT&T whose physical plant is aging badly but it doesn't hold a candle to the old BellSouth's VDSL-2 plans which had promised 80 mbps down before they sold out to AT&T.

Supposing that AT&T is coming to Lafayette the most interesting question by far is just where. A big chess game with hidden pieces is emerging in Lafayette. LUS is, so far, is only in the city proper. Cox is parish-wide in its available footprint; presumably at least partly to stymie any LUS expansion. AT&T, unlike Cox, is actually available everywhere in the parish. Will it offer the service to the whole parish? Just to Lafayette? Just to Lafayette and the more densely settled towns and newer subdivisions? It makes a lot of difference in the game being played out here for mind share, market share, and profits. If the point is to try and reduce LUS' marketshare in video by providing a third wireline provider then they'll go only to the city and accept that the Lafayette unit will never have the marketshare in a three-cornered market to be remotely as profitable as spending the same money elsewhere. If they want to find a local footing in our regional market where their network is literally 3rd-rate they'll provide their premiere service in the rural areas where Cox and LUS will experience the most difficulty in providing their products. What folks in the region need to realize is that LUS is setting the pace here—and they are benefiting. Normally three providers do not provide real competition on price. Modern corporations will try just about any trick to avoid lowering their profit margins and what is happening across the country where Verizon and AT&T are competing with the cablecos is differentiation of product (speed, bursts, integration, etc.) and an exploitation of the areas in which they do not compete on a block by block basis. (Verizon, in fact, recently raised its FIOS rates.) Cox has lowered its top rate in Lafayette because, and only because, they are faced with a differently motivated competitor who does not want to maximize the profits it extracts from the community. LUS' 20% cheaper policy forces a price cut by giving one. Other parts of the country, like northern Virgina where Cox launched its second 50 mbps service, are not getting cheaper prices.

Frankly, I don't see the business case for AT&T in Lafayette or the parish....so I'm still not convinced that U-verse is coming. I have, from multiple people, heard that an upgrade in the local network has been underway but the Cox guy is the first that I've hear claim U-verse was in the offing anytime soon. He said that it was in fact overdue and that the original schedule had said that it should have already been launched. I've no doubt that network upgrades are underway and have been for some time. But whether they are being done to simply shore up the current network and make Lafayette's plethora of iPhones work a little better or as prep for an immenient U-verse launch hasn't been made clear to my jaundiced eye. I'd love to be told differently. What eagle-eyed readers want to do is look for the tell-tale DSLAM installations. They've excited a lot of trouble with local communities in some places where they are considered huge eyesores. If you see a batch of these big new boxes somewhere let me know.

So...Lafayette may be in line for the nation's most wired; at least in the sense of having multiple, cheap, top-of-their class options available for less.


*Yup, the event was well attended by Cox and AT&T reps, who were mostly extremely reluctant to admit the fact. Fiberina pushed 'em on it. Good for her. :-)

PS...AT&T's big advantage is wireless. If they show up here with a better wireline side sometime soon then expect them to find ways to bundle wireless to give them some sort of lever with local customers. But the wireless side isn't a clear long-term win either. Both LUS and Cox are on record as intending to supply a wireless network. Wireless is a big deal in this three-sided chess game. Expect more on that when I get a little time to write it up.

WBS: "The Future of the Internet is in Lafayette, Louisiana"

What's Being Said Dept.

A reporter for Governing Magazine has blogged a nice piece on Lafayette's Fiber network. An excerpt:

What if you could hold a video conference from your home? What if your doctor could send your MRI electronically to another of your doctors who needs it? What if you could upload a video of your child's soccer game and send it to grandma in seconds?

...we may all be looking to Lafayette for the future of the Internet.

The post is a teaser for an August story that I'm now looking forward to. It briefly points to the local struggle, to critics of the idea of a city showing such gall, and promises the final story will set out more detail. It's nice to see the positive publicity—and in a place that may well influence other communities to follow our lead.

One caveat: the author talks about the intranet as having "bursted" speeds of 100 mbps. That's a misconception; the up to 100 mbps intranet is a real speed, not a short, temporary burst. I get 95-96 mbps on the intranet in a constant stream. —And with low latency to boot. (Bursting is what Cox does when it gives you a few seconds of higher speed on a large download; it's a widespread cable company extra—and a gimmick allowing advertising I consider deceptive. Cox will not "burst" your video chat or gaming stream. Don't confuse those numbers with real speed.)