CenturyTel to Buy Qwest in $10.6B Stock Swap - NYTimes.com

The third largest telephone company in the United States will be located in Monroe, La...Bastrop really.

Really. Honestly. No kidding...

The New York Times reports that CenturyTel will buy Qwest, the western Bell company for 10.6 in a stock swap deal announced today.

Bits-And-Pieces:

The combination would have about 18 million phone lines serving customers in 37 states, but would still be dwarfed by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. It would be based at CenturyTel's headquarters in Monroe, La., rather than in Denver, where Qwest is based.

The number of landlines in the U.S. shrinks by about 10 percent per year as consumers chose to rely on their wireless phones or service from cable companies. The fourth-largest provider of landline phone service in the country, by number of subscribers, is now cable company Comcast Corp.

Official LPF reaction: Wowser. This new company will create a national rural wireline carrier. It may well have the largest footprint in terms of square miles in the country.

Fiber Fête, bandwidth touted

"Fiber network looks to bolster local economy" appears on the front page of this morning's Advertiser and focuses on the value of big bandwidth and Lafayette's upcoming fiber fête conference. Tom Cox and Golfballs.com are featured as a business which is already using LUS fiber to real advantage and that plans to use the speed even more in the future. Cox, not surprisingly, will be on Thursday morning's panel "Driving Lafayette's Digital Economy."

"Pixel Magic to make 100 hires in Lafayette"

An update on today's Advertiser website says that Pixel Magic has committed to hiring a 100 artists to work at its new Lafayette location. They will work at rendering "old" 2-D films into new 3-D formats. That type of boost to the digital arts community plants the sort of seed that every community is looking for these days. It is the potential beginning of a hothouse economy built around the digital visual arts. 100 highly trained visual 'magicians' will have to have something to do in their off time...and some other personal projects to keep their juices flowing. For Lafayette it's those spin-offs that will be the real payoff. [If the economic development people haven't put aside some petty cash to sponsor a visual arts club for kids built around these folks as the core group then they aren't doing their job. It's stunning how much real development has sprung from cold pizza and warm coke...]

Looking for some of that work? From the article:

Pixel Magic will work with Louisiana FastStart to provide training for interested candidates. Knowledge of stereoscopic 3-D is a plus, but anyone with a visual arts background is eligible.

Candidates who are selected will complete a specialized training course taught by Pixel Magic artists. The course will be taught over 2-3 weeks starting May 2.

This announcement a tremendous success for LITE. And Louisiana, and Lafayette, and, I very strongly suspect, LUS Fiber (even though utility companies seldom get a fair share of the glory).

Pixel Magic is the real item—it's not a start-up hoping to leverage the fallow assets of Lafayette into some star gig that lets them move up and out...it's a major established house that has come here because it can accomplish more of what it wants to do for less money than elsewhere. It's up to Lafayette and the region to set the hooks deep so that nobody ever wants to leave. Festival International will be a good start....and Mardi Gras and crawfish etouffe. [Never heard of Pixel Magic? Shame on you. Check out their site, with the Lafayette location prominently featured on the fly-in, and their list of movies, and, for real fun, go to the "reel" they've put up of special effects. Imagine being able to do that sort of stuff...it really does look like magic.]

Pixel Magic bringing employment to Lafayette is not the result of any simple, "silver bullet" approach to development. This had to look good to the company from a number of different angles. Starting at the state level a big chunk of their favorable decision has to be Louisiana's "aggressive" tax benefits for film and digital production. The company will get some extremely nice tax credits for the work that is done in the city. But that's not nearly enough. Many states have copied Louisiana's generosity. There's also Lafayette's location on big backbones like the Internet2 and LambdaRail consortiums. Shipping big buckets of bits back to Los Angeles won't be an issue. Then there's LITE itself—with a 3D rendering setup and multiple varieties of 3D visualization venues testing out films in settings from theatrical to flatscreens will be easy. LITE also has a couple of monster underutilized rendering farms on site. Pixel Magic no doubt gets a good deal and LITE gets a client that will actually use its massive facilities for more than a prestigious address.

Finally, we're down to LUS Fiber. You have to know if you've been down to "the egg" at the LITE building that they're not going to put 100 cubicle workers in that facility. No way they'd fit. However they do have to do the tedious work in Louisiana to get those credits. So some large percentage of those 100 workers will have to be off-site. But they'll have to be able to do their work as if they were in the same building with, at a minimum, the 100 megs of connectivity that standard ethernet LANs provide. That, of course, is exactly what LUS provides on its justly acclaimed 100 meg intranet. A person setting behind a nice workstation setup on Moss Avenue with a nice VLAN setup could work within the Pixel Magic network as if they were just down the hall from the boss's glossy corner office (something both would probably prefer). The ultimate in working from home. I'll not be surprised if Pixel Magic opts for an offsite work center like NuConn did—but there too LUS' fiber-to-every-nook-and-cranny make it possible to shop for the cheapest appropriate location rather than the cheapest location that has something close to real connectivity. In that sort of situation it would be easy and damned inexpensive to leverage LUS Fiber to provide a gig or several of commercial grade connection between the two points.

All of that taken together—each element individually impressive but not uniquely decisive—turned out to make Lafayette very hard to match.

The best thing is that this little coup will put the "three 'L's"—Lafayette, LITE and LUS Fiber on a lot of people's radar in the digital video arts. Rev up your motors guys....the race is now beginning.

"Tech efforts getting noticed"

Sunday's Advertiser carried a story that —as my father might have said—"Does Lafayette proud." I recommend locals and fans give the full story a read. The article hangs its hook on Kit Becnel's Academy of Information Technology (AOIT). A school within a school at Carencro High, AOIT prepares students for careers in the broad field of information technology and is affiliated with the national academy foundation. AOIT is a leader in the national academy and its leadership sits on several committees driving changes in the national program. The award cited in the story was actually given to Louisiana Public Broadcasting and showcases several of Lafayette's tech jewels including LUS Fiber, LITE, AOC, and AOIT:

Louisiana Public Broadcasting partnered with Lafayette Utility System, Bay Area Video Coalition and Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (LITE) to enhance technology and instruction at Carencro High School. This project provided more bandwidth to the school, expanding instruction to include creation of 3-D models and training students for careers in technology.

But beyond AOIT's award the article also delves into Durel, Huval, and Bertrand's recent appearance at Google's DC headquarters. Not surprisingly, since attendees at that conclave included the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Bay Area Video Coalition, and the CIO of San Francisco AOIT's reputation was already well-known.

...many of those invited to the event at Google's headquarters already knew about the academy and Becnel's work."The pioneering spirit exists in Lafayette with our LUS Fiber and the work and energy of people like Ms. Becnel," Bertrand said at the meeting. "You're going to hear her name again and you're going to hear it a lot. The entire United States is envious of what we've done. It's no small feat."

Also in this mix is Acadiana Open Channel (AOC) who is providing support and training for AOIT. Part of the conversation

The invitation-only event in D.C. was a workshop on broadband and the public interest, and was co-presented by the Ford Foundation and the Paley Center for Media...."Their purpose was to talk about how digital public media networks should advance in broadband and enrich connected communities," Huval said...

Lafayette officials discussed LUS Fiber, including how it is used in all Lafayette Parish public schools and is expected to be throughout the whole city by this summer. As the infrastructure portion of it nears completion, Huval said the focus will turn toward how fiber can be applied in both schools and the community.

That last (my emphasis) is what the community is waiting to hear. The benefits to education through the school system and to public media through AOC are simply the entering edge of the wedge.

The dreams continue to come...Huval, widely know for his prowess on the fiddle and his advocacy of Cajun culture, tossed out this one which will surely resonate with Lafayette's Creole and Cajun communities:

"You could have the ability for a French immersion school to work on a project with students in Paris, France, and have this real-life collaboration," Huval said. "The technology now allows you to have the exchange of ideas and understanding that you could only get in-person before. This is only the beginning. To have this little oasis of Lafayette, La. have the ability to do these kinds of things is really exciting for a lot of people."

Perhaps unknown to Huval the futuristic dream of cross-cultural francophone educational collaboration is already being realized in a project organized by WSIL (World Studies Institute of Louisiana). The pilot project, underway currently, connects classrooms in New Brunswick, Louisiana, and Haiti. Students and their teacher collaborate through Lafayette Commons, a Lafayette nonprofit that supplies the educational edition of Google Apps and support to the project.

The benefit of a community-owned fiber-optic telecommunications system to Lafayette and communities like Lafayette lies less in the technology than in the fact of public ownership. Having built our own network we can now choose to do things to benefit the people and community institutions.

Building our network was the first step—and that is nearing completion. Taking the resource of our new network and firing up the process of doing something useful with it was the next step. That process has already begun.

(full disclosure: I sit on the board of AOC, the advisory board of AOIT, and help supply services via Lafayette Commons to WSIL's project.)

Lagniappe: LUS and Lafayette have applied for the Google Gig FTTH project; apparently as a direct result of conversations held at the meeting in DC according to an exchange I had with Huval...more on that surprise when I get a little time.

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.

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.

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

The Bad: St. Mary council demands Internet, cable service for all

Early this morning I posted the good news that a small rural carrier in northeast Louisiana was building out a fiber to the home network for its customers using stimulus money. What made it news was that a poor rural area was getting advanced connections.

Today the Advocate carries the bad news story that rural residents in St. Mary parish are complaining that they can't get a decent internet connection—and that the council there is calling the incumbents Cox and AT&T in on the carpet saying: "If you are going to serve St. Mary Parish, you have to service all of St. Mary Parish.” It's not news that rural folks don't have decent broadband. What makes this news is that their local representatives are trying to do something about it.

What reading these two stories back to back makes pretty clear is that explaining the difference between the two isn't hard. The rural areas that have little chance to get world-class connectivity are places "served" by large national carriers like Cox and AT&T. Places that do better are served by local folks, be they private or publicly owned.

That might be something for the people of St. Mary to think about. The people of Lafayette already have.

The Good: Fiber To The Home...in Morehouse Parish

Hey, it's true...Northeast Louisiana Telephone Company up in Morehouse Parish is going to rebuild its aging copper network and roll out FTTH in rural parts of the parish. It serves customers in Collinston, Bonita, and Jones. They are up in the NE corner of the state outside Bastrop.

Read all about it in the Monroe News Star. The heart of the story:

The Collinston-based company will replace its current copper network with buried fiber optic cable that will give its customers access to high-speed Internet, digital TV service and expanded telephone service.

The funds, awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture following a grant application by the company last summer, include a $4,359,000 grant and a $8,124,600 low-interest loan. The company must complete the project within three years under the terms of the grant.

Congratulations!

"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?

"LUS sacks Cox with Saints vs. Cowboys game"

From the Independent blog:

"If you’re paying $39.95 a month for LUS’ 83-channel expanded basic cable service, breathe a sigh of relief. You’ll watch the undefeated Saints take on the Dallas Cowboys (8-5) on Channel 38 Saturday night at 7:20 p.m. But if you’re one of Cox Communications’ approximately 100,000 Acadiana customers who subscribes to expanded basic, 72 channels for $52.99 per month, it’s going to cost you more."

Couldn't have said it better myself. —You can sign up with the local guys or you can pay more for less and still not get what you want from Cox. It's a choice that ought to be easy. What do you think Lafayette?

The Saints Mania that has taken hold here (and across south Lousiana) has made people more than a little crazy and I've got email this week asking whether LUS will have the game. I had a hard time understanding what folks were anxious about since it is on expanded basic, and expanded basic is pretty much the default level for most folks. Now that I see that Cox is only carrying it on a more expensive tier I have to suspect that the truly fanatic were hearing about that and worried that the same would be true of LUS...there was a big blow-up in the Baton Rouge media earlier this week and apparently Cox worked hard at getting it set up there even though BR wouldn't normally be allowed to see it. I'm sure they'd like to have been able to do the same in Lafayette—if only to avoid the unfavorable contrast with LUS Fiber.

It's not really just about this game and single, immensely popular show...it is more about the contrasting corporate policies that Cox and LUS Fiber pursue. Cox has, time and again, moved "must have" weather, French language, TV guide, and sports channels off the basic tiers and pushed them up into the upper, more costly, tiers in unpopular if financially understandable, moves. After all they are in it to make money for their owners. LUS Fiber, on the other hand, really doesn't have nearly the same pressure to "upsell" its customers since those customers are its owners. Keeping your owners happy means entirely different things to a large corporation and small town utility.

And that's the real lesson of this story.

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.)

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.

Google Needs Lafayette

“Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world”

...Archimedes, 220 BC

Google needs Lafayette, and Amsterdam and Vasteras and....any of the fibered-up cities you might care to name. And, of course, Lafayette needs Google. That's been true for some time. But it recently became much clearer. The big news on the internets these last few days has been Google's newly announced Google Chrome OS. Most of the coverage has been predictable and mediocre but more thoughtfully analytical stories have finally begun to appear. (cf. the NYTimes) Even in the better articles the focus is inevitably on Google vs. Microsoft. While that might be understandable given that a battle between the two has become a journalistic stock-in-trade that is used to "explain" every move that either makes it really doesn't seem like the best analytic starting point for understanding what is going on. The fact that Google's OS isn't good for Microsoft is incidental to what Google—and a few other web players—are trying to do aid an ongoing process. Exactly what that process is requires a little explaining:

What's Going On Anyway? The backstory

The world is shifting yet again; this time onto the web from the computer. Not so long ago we moved much of our activity onto the computer —be they mainframes, PDAs, desktops, or laptops. The world shifted from only having physical objects that were unique or functionally identical copies of the unique object (think newspapers) to having perfect digital copies that paradoxically almost infinitely changeable, copyable, and decomposable (think email). The myriad internets focused on finding other computers and on transferring files between them. Mostly you worked on files locally in your own complete environment—even when you were actually a client "your" computer desktop had a separate copy of the document that you worked on. No more: while we struggle to come to grips with the social changes accompanying digitalization we find ourselves undergoing yet another shift off computers and onto the web. This shift widens the scope; it is easy to have a single unique copy that many people alter in addition to single, stable copies and many transforms of the original. That shift promises to make it possible to do our work with less duplication—of files, of storage, and of processing power and promises to pass the savings on to the final user.

Really, it's all about leverage
The world is shifting and Google, with one of the longest levers, is trying to increase its leverage by moving the fulcrum ever closer to the weight it wants to move. The whole point of levers is to move a huge weight with a small force and the closer your fulcrum is to the weight you want to shift the greater you mechanical advantage. [image] The huge weight that Google wants to move is the "dead weight" of the existing paradigm of single, local, users that periodically transfer files. The emerging model is one which shifts toward multiple, distributed users that remain connected to files that are, themselves located in multiple, distributed "places."

The new Google OS is all about building an OS that is optimized for that new environment. Right now we have an operating environment in which we are using a computer/local-user-centric OS to access the web. From the standpoint of web-centric use such OSs are bloated, slathered over with useless "features" and surprisingly anemic when it comes to operating quickly and securely within in the new "always-connected" world.

Note that moving us in this direction is what Google has been from the beginning: making it easy and cheap to move to a web-centric mode of interaction. Google's innovation in web search is all about using web links and web stats to make good guesses about what is sought. That made finding things much easier—and then they made if free...It displaced a hierachical organization (cf. Yahoo's (still extant!) example) arranged by respected experts that more closely resembled the library's Dewey Decimal System or Linneaus' taxonomy than anything that we'd now call search. You can perform pretty much the same analysis for Google Apps, Google Chrome, Android, and, now, the Google OS. Those are all fulcrum points that give Google (and Google's user) additional leverage as we shift the weight of the past. With Google OS that point is very near the center of gravity of the opposing paradigm.... The point here is not that Google does NOT have want to "beat" Microsoft (or Apple or Linux) at any of these tasks. It will be sufficient for the purpose if the new browser or operationg system forces a shift on the rest of the field. It will be quite alright with Google, I suspect, if MS beats them in the browser war as long as the winners all support HTML 5-Ajax-multiple threading and the like. Google will have won if its Apps—and similar web applications that rely solely on nonproprietary foundations—run beautifully on all browsers. It is investing in winning the war; not the battles.

If Microsoft, or Apple, or Linux responds to a Google OS with popular instant-on, secure, web-centric OSs and Google's dies a slow and embarrassing death the larger battle will have been won. And, for my money, that is the most likely outcome. Google to date has done an amazing job of creating the ecology in which it can thrive. Google Search made an impossible-to-navigate complexity suddenly usable—and that encouraged the myriad of small, eccentric, impossible-to-classify sources to find an audience and thrive. That in turn made search ever more dominant and gave Google search the page views it needed to thrive through even the lightest-weight advertising. The old hierarchical web was designed by and for graduate students. The new searchable web is usable by almost anyone who has a vague idea of how a topic is discussed.

Now, back to the topic

Google is leveraging the brutal fact of efficiency, its method is so much more cheaper per person than the oldr way that it can afford to give us significant services for free. We do waste enormous amounts of processor cycles and memory storage. The current system is inefficient by design: We buy memory to store our copy of a file stored (but not easily accessible) in a myriad of other places. How much space do you devote to browser cache alone? We purchase computers with several times the processor power necessary to do what used to be called supercomputing (and was illegal to export only a decade ago). Indeed, much current supercomputer design is consists basically of hooking up many personal computers or even game consoles together through a very fast network. We only very occasionally need the enormous power that is at our fingertips in the current personal computer. Web-based apps and systems do not need to waste anything like that amount of firepower. The difficult, processor-intensive tasks can be done on the web. The big storage can be on the web.

The web is, or can be conceived of as, a big, oddly configured computer. It's got great memory and a great, if wildly distributed, CPU. And it can be radically cheaper to use because of those facts.

But...

The Catch
But, the catch is that the web is great computer that has lousy and expensive I/O by comparison. It is only the beginning of a great computer. You have to be a touch geeky to recognize all three parts of a computer...memory, cpu, and I/O. We are sold computers and parts on the basis of memory and CPU speed; not I/O. I/O is code for input/output. It defines what sort of and, crucially, at what speed, information can flow in and out of the computer. On your personal computer I/O is seldom a bottleneck and its expense trivial. Not so for the web where the I/O is the network itself. On the web I/O IS the bottleneck, always.

Most of Google's initiatives can be conceived of as trying to find ways to minimize the effect of the webs' I/O bottleneck. When we hear talk about running faster or yielding a better user experience that is what is typically where the real bottleneck is. Google Apps, Google Gears, Google Chrome, the Google OS and more are all shaped by getting more out of a slow and expensive connection. They've bee surprisingly successful. (The idea that you can do good word processing over the web is really pretty shocking.) The Google OS is merely the latest and potentially most powerful way to evade that constraint and keep that huge weight moving.

But, really, it's all a sad hack.

Google needs Lafayette, and Amsterdam and Vasteras and....
What Google really needs is for everyone to have better, much better, bandwidth. And damn near no latency too, while you're at it. Google needs Lafayette, and Amsterdam, and Vasteras and every other local fibered-up high-bandwidth network in the world as testbeds to showcase what is really possible. It (and others) need a place with no I/O constraint, with a network that has the quality to take advantage of the infrastructure that it is building and surely wants to extend. It needs to build an on-network cache and server system to explore how it can use a decent I/O network to compliment its current products and develop new ones. It needs real communities to really test those new ideas. (Like Google Wave, which could be launched today in a place with real bandwidth.) Google is creating the conditions for the next big shift. It'd be a pity if like xxx it moved the world only to find that the effort had left in a place where others benefited first and most.

If Google's attempts to move the system can be understood as trying to shift the fulcrum to give them more leverage, promoting big-bandwidth communities might well be likened to making the lever longer...that is what most needs to be changed to really shift the old world to a new place. And Lafayette just might provide that crucial place to stand and use that longer lever.

Lafayette is a special case...
because Lafayette is a campus—it provides 100 mbps of speed, with amazingly low latency, between every household it connects. It's hard to overstate the value of that. What make most great networks less great is, ironically in this context, network effects. In most cases network effects are good [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Network_effect.png] things...the value of your phone connection only increases when your neighbors also get one. But if your network is great and other networks that contain the people you want to contact are not then the added value of what you get from a great network is seriously diminished. So Google, with its large suite of apps that emphasize interaction finds it difficult to find a population that has a large enough population to use its products who all have the same fortunate circumstance. Even networks, like Verizon's here in the United States, which have some higher bandwidth tiers sell mostly lower bandwidth tiers. And they do NOT give their customers large bandwidth between themselves. These networks do not form a cohesive pool of high-bandwidth users.

Lafayette's will.

And, wait, there's more! What Vasteras teaches us is that a high-bandwidth community can flip from having most of its traffic connect to places outside of the local community to making most of its connections inside its own network. Various reporters say that 70% to 80% of Vasteras' traffic is internal. That really shouldn't surprise us; it has happened before. When the first phone networks were built they were conceived of as substitutes for the long-distance telegraph and few thought their use would extend beyond the business world. In short order, of course, it became apparent that the people we actually want to talk to are right down the street; those are the people we know. Phone traffic is, and has been for a long time, mostly local and the widespread adoption much less expensive long distance calling has not changed that.

There is no reason to think that a more robust network, one that is rich in ways to communicate will not follow a similar pattern. People want to communicate and trade information with each other, not someone far away.

Lafayette et al. needs Google
Google can make the local network truly valuable, it can significantly erase the negative weight of the old network by locating caches and services on the local network. Local networks like Lafayette's need that support to make their own business case. Such networks would be wise to court Google (and many others, Google here stands for the new web aborning) and to suport the company in its efforts. A partnership would be of enormous value to both sides. And would help in shifting that weight.

So.....
There's a major shift underway; it's hard not to feel everything straining toward that change. But a single constraint keeps the current edifice from falling: Bandwidth. Kick out that constraint and the new web comes into its own. Quickly. There are a few places where that bandwidth constraint is not in place. Those are the places where, with a little judicious midwifery, the new web could be born. And Lafayette shows how the initial densely interconnected communities that would kick-start the process could be developed.

It is a dream. But it is just barely beyond our grasp.

How Things Work: Louisiana Edition

Long-time LPF blog readers will recall Bill Oliver, the president of AT&T Louisiana with something less than fondness. Oliver was (and is) the man at the helm of AT&T Louisiana that directed the campaign that sought to prevent Lafayette from building its own competitive network. Oliver's signature style in Lafayette was back-room dealing and public bluster. The back-room dealing, at least, he brought to the national level as the Advocate article indicates:

"Another old Jefferson cohort was Bill Oliver, president of AT&T Louisiana in New Orleans. Oliver, who has known Jefferson for 16 years, would go on hunting trips with him, attended the Kentucky Derby with him and once served as king of Washington Mardi Gras, where four of Jefferson’s five daughters served as queens.

When Jefferson asked Oliver to look into iGate and its unique technology of transmitting audio, video and data over copper wire, Oliver agreed out of “a combination of friendship and respect.” The two companies never linked, but Oliver ran the idea by his product representatives for Jefferson, he told the jury.

“It mattered to me that he was a member of Congress and I was reporting back to him,” Oliver said."

The reporter doesn't say if the prosecutors asked who paid for those hunting trips and the Mardi Gras Ball expenses (both peculiarities are traditional forms of influence-peddling in the Gret State). Nor does it note how the trip to Derby was financed. The story's intro does note that Oliver would take trips on the company's Lear jet with Jefferson's wife. It would also be interesting to know if AT&T's "product representatives" actually sold any of the third party iGate tech—and, if so, who got the commissions...

Lagniappe:
Oliver, BellSouth, and the infamous push poll.
Oliver threatens to pull Cingular call center from Lafayettte (twice)
Oliver tries to deny having threatened Lafayette.
Oliver's offers to partner with LUS prove "insincere" as BellSouth launches lawsuit.
Oliver, New Orleans, and Lafayette

Digital Media Facing Cuts

Lost amid the stories of the Louisiana Legislature's most recent set of follies is the damage being done to those odd corners where people actually try and develop a better future. We're not talking here about the gauzy langauge that always envelops grabbing the state's cash for perfectly standard special-interest projects like funding I-49 South or giving money to some California company to help them buy a chicken plucking plant. No, what's actually future-oriented is much more vulnerable almost by definition. The real deal has yet to develop it a "constituency" beyond a core of the most creative and imaginative. And those folks are not special in any sense that a state legislature can recognize.

This is all in reaction to a story in this week's Independent that surveys the probable cuts to some of Lafayette's technological jewels. Interestingly, they're all into digital media of one sort or another...the LITE Center, 3D Squared's game/education curricula, and the UL Cinematic Arts Workshop at UL. The cuts to those programs aren't the end of the story either: cuts to the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the Louisina Endowment for the Humanities indirectly cuts alternate funding to these efforts and to the rest of the digital arts band in Lafayette. Long-term infrastructure is losing its opportunity as well with Regent's declaration that no new degree programs can be launched this year putting the breaks on UL's proposed moving image arts degree.

The sad thing is that these programs are just the sort that plant the real seeds for the future; its a pity that our legislature doesn't see the long-term value for such in the future and have the courage to actually support what's right rather than what's expedient. It's short-sighted. But then short-sightedness is what got us into the state's current mess. The legistlature last year tossed decades of hard-won fiscal reform into the toilet when it repealed critical parts of the Stelly reform plan during a freak year when a massive influx of federal dollars due to hurricane recovery and a predictably temporary spike in the price of oil produced a large surplus. Rather than husband that windfall for the easily foreseeable rainy day they did the easy—and irresponsible—thing of giving the voters a tax break in perpetuity. Without that we'd have enough money to fund higher education....and maybe a few other things that would actually be the seeds of a better future.

Maybe next time.

One Big Happy? Family

Cox has announced that it is combining its New Orleans operations with "Greater Louisiana" Market — Greater Louisiana is made up of the former Baton Rouge and Lafayette divisions which were combined three years ago.

The new division has half a million customers and will be Cox's 3rd largest market.

But Cox the spokesperson is careful to note:

Ann Ruble said the move would not affect rates.

Now that might sound reassuring. But what it means at the current moment is that Baton Rouge and New Orleans should not expect to share in Lafayette's good fortune with a cheaper, installation-cost-optional version of Cox's only-in-Lafayette 50/5 mbps ultimate tier.

Cox Gets 50 megs (Updated)

Cox announced yesterday that it is launching its first DOCSIS 3 product, a 50 meg down "ultimate" tier in, of all places, Lafayette, LA. That's a huge feather in the cap of Lafayette and is certain to get Lafayette press across the country.

Despite the fact that yesterday was April fools this appears to be no joke even though it has yet to make it onto the official Cox page... Cox really is launching it first offering of the much ballyhooed DOCSIS 3.0 service in Lafayette. DOCSIS 3 involves "channel bonding" —taking up a mutliple "chunks" of the available bandwidth on its hybrid fiber-coax systems and its current rollout by Comcast is widely seen as a response to the FIOS fiber to the home project being marketed by Verizon in its territories.

I first heard about Cox's launch through the Lafayette Technology Google group where the press release was posted but have since found references on Broadband Reports and the Baton Rouge Business Report, both of which add interesting details.

Here's the lowdown as gleaned from the press release and stories....

• Speed down: 50 megs
• Speed up: 5 megs
• Install cost: $99.95 for a "pro install"
• Modem cost: $99.99 from Cox (you must buy a Cisco DPC3000)
• Introductory/Louisiana/Lafayette Price: $89.99/month
• Regular/not Lafayette Price: $139.99
• Contract length: ? not specified
• Extras: 3 IP addresses, no transfer caps "at this time,"
• Offered in Cox's footprint in Lafayette Parish--Broussard, Carencro, Duson,
  Lafayette, Scott and Youngsville
  

What's interesting about this announcement, of course, is that it represents an attempt to challenge LUS' just-launched service. The Business Report, however, posts that Cox national spokesperson

Ruble says the high-speed Internet was launched in Lafayette because of "loud and vocal demand." The Lafayette Utility System has launched its own fiber-optic Internet, phone and cable service. Ruble says LUS wasn't a factor in introducing the new service in Lafayette first.

That's a bit of newspeak if ever I heard it. "Loud and vocal demand" probably can be fairly interpreted to mean that Cox has finally heard what Lafayette said on July 16th four years ago when the people overwhelmingly voted to get LUS to provide them with fiber to the home. If you can look at it that way I guess that LUS wasn't a factor.....but it seems a pretty far stretch and I hope the local PR folks won't keep up such an unlikely position. Reasonable people have to think that what Lafayette has to recommend it as the place to launch a major new initiative is that it has a unfinished FTTH project. It is not a major market by Cox's standard...and is, in fact, the smallest market in Louisiana that Cox retained after shedding mot of its rural and small city holdings (Alex and Lake Charles got the boot).

As a response to LUS' 50 meg offering it doesn't come off too well. Cox only matches LUS on download speed; upload is a 10th of what LUS offers and both monthly cost and upfront costs are higher. A comparison:

• Speed down: 50 megs
• Speed up: 5o megs
• Install cost: 0
• Modem cost: 0 (what modem?)
  
• Introductory/Louisiana/Lafayette Price: No special pricing
  
• Regular Price: $57.95
• Contract length: No Contract
  
• Extras: 100 meg intranet, Internet on cable box, Money stays in hometown (my favorite),
  
• Offered in LUS' footprint in Lafayette Parish (the city of Lafayette currently)
  

On the upside is, mainly, that folks in the neighboring smaller cities can get 50 megs—and that has got to be a good thing. Theyll be able, for a price, to join the elite few in our country who have that much bandwidth. I've got family in Broussard and I know they've looked longingly at what the city is getting. Demand is great in the surrounding cities. What's interesting is everything I've heard Huval say recently has lead me to believe that LUS will move into the surrounding areas as soon as they are done with Lafayette proper. All the folks in the parish have to do is ask. It seems likely that Cox making this treat available is intended make take some of the fire out of those requests.

But will folks really be happy to pay more for what the people in the city are getting for less? Especially when they will still be outside the 100 meg intranet and have to make do with 1/10 the upload? It seems risky to me: It's one thing for fast bandwidth to be a "city" thing. It's another thing all together to be offered a product but to find out that you will be paying more for one that isn't of the same quality as what those in the city is getting.

Interesting times.

UPDATE: 1:25 PM, 4/2/09: The national prss release release is also available on PR Newswire. The Advertiser has a story up on the topic this morning: "Upgraded Internet launched." MarketWatch, reporting on a speech by Dallas Clement, Cox's senior VP of strategy and development, noted that Cox was rolling out their 50 meg docsis 3 service in Lafayette:

He added that the company will be careful about rolling out the service more widely, as it would be an expensive proposition. It will rely on what it learns about consumer demand for the service in a given location before committing to a new launch.

That explaination is a little puzzeling...a slow rollout makes sense in general if you are afraid that the demand won't be there. But if so, Lafayette seems an odd place to roll it out first: They can't possibly assess how it works for them in most of their footprint since our situation is uniquely difficult for them. In most places the 50 meg product would blow away the competition. It doesn't here.

UPDATE: The Independent Blog has a post on this subject as well. In it the national Cox representative takes a more realistic stand than the one she apparently took with the Baton Rouge Business Report:

While Cox says the decision was not based solely on the competion it faces here from Lafayette Utilities System, it clearly was a factor. “It has to do with competition period,” says Cox spokesperson Ann Ruble. “I think Greater Louisiana was chosen because we have competition from many different sides. This is described as a hyper-competitive market across the entire footprint, the Baton Rouge market and the Lafayette market. We put so much investment into Lafayette that it made sense for the first place to launch.”

That makes a little more sense; obviously launching your first docsis 3 product in a place where you have a competitor that is offering much greater speed than you are makes a certain specie of sense—especially if you realize that "Greater Louisiana" aka the Lafayette-Baton Rouge market is NOT getting this service. ONLY Lafayette is...Baton Rouge where there is no LUS doesn't get ANY access, not even at the 139 dollar level. The only thing that is "hypercompetitive" about the "Greater Baton Rouge" market is the presence of two fiber-based competitors. EATel in East Ascension also offers a FTTH alternative. Maybe Cox will offer it in Ascension Parish, where EATEL is offering Fiber To The Home if EATEL puts up a 50 meg tier too. Either way, Baton Rouge is out of luck....

Billboards...

I went down to New Orleans last weekend and passed by this in-your-face Eatel "FiberEdge" billboard in Ascension Parish south of Baton Rouge on I-10. "Ascension loves it. Cox hates it." Whoa! Definitely playing on both localism and the generalized hostility toward the national cable provider. There's a billboard war going on up and down the interstate between Eatel and Cox—with Eatel definitely the brasher of the two. (This a tradition...remember Eatel's ads in the Lafayette papers?) So far we've not seen much in the way of LUS advertising here. But I'm hoping for something equally spirited.


Of course Cox is already in the field with its advertising and has been since shortly after the last lawsuit failed and the bonds were sold. We've even seen a few that seem localized in that they refer to fiber--but probably draw off what Cox is learning it needs to do in the Northeast where it faces Verizion's network which actually is fiber (all the way, all the way, all the way to the home) This bit of deliberately misleading advertising is found on Evangeline Thruway not far from my house and is particularly irksome. Cox is trying to lay claim to the very "fiber" that they so vigorously opposed our actually getting. Sure Cox—and AT&T and every other provider in the nation—uses fiber in the backbone where it provides unrivaled speed, lower maintenance, and huge capacity. Those are precisely the qualities that we're now going to get all the way to our homes with LUS Fiber. There's nothing particularly unusual, much less "advanced" about backbone fiber. Fiber To The Home, on the other hand is actually advanced and is something Cox is still insisiting we don't need. FUD advertising aside.

I'm looking for that LUS message that would look good on a billboard I've picked out about a mile down Evangeline: "Providing Lafayette with real fiber—At Last"

Fiber Availability Mailer Appears!!

I'm thrilled to announce that at least one person has gotten his fiber announcement delivered through snail mail: ME!

Thrilled is not really the word. :-)

Look for the distinctive blue (Cyan, or pretty near) that dominates.

After you cut through the tape that holds it closed it'll unfold into a glossy brochure with two pages of inserts detailing the services and pricing offered.

At right are what mine looked like when I threw them down on the dining table to take these pics. Click on them to get a larger version.

The cover turns out to be the "newsflyer" I fell across via Google back in January...

Man To Watch: Skrmetta & Pay To Play Politics in LA

Put Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta on your guys to watch closely list—he apparently thinks there's nothing wrong with letting the companies you regulate help pay for your office and then holding a white tie soiree to retire the debt you run up winning a public office that is supposed to regulate them. All citizens should feel obliged to watch this guy but the charge is especially incumbent upon those of us here in Lafayette who now own a piece of one of those companies the PSC regulates.

Back in the old days, before AT&T (née BellSouth) drafted up the (un)Fair Competition Act a publicly-owned and operated company like LUS was not placed under the the thumb of the guys over in Baton Rouge. In fact the constitution appeared to explicitly forbid it. The assumption back then was that local people didn't need any help from the state to do right by themselves. The old Idea behind regulation, especially the regulation of what are essentially utilities, was that people who had to rely on large for-profit monopolies to provide services needed the protection of at least a state level protector. It's been a while since it was obvious to outside observers that the regulators did much to control the behavior of companies they regulated; instead it seems that the regulators too often run the show behind the scene and use the state to raise rates, "deregulate" their monopolies, or keep down any incipient competition.

It's the latter that Lafayette partisans need to worry about: the PSC is notoriously a creature of the phone company and AT&T is hard at work making sure that doesn't change. LUS, as the only company regulated under the (un)Fair Act, is sure to be the target of rules rigged up by AT&T. And Skrmetta is gonna have some big time debts to pay off.

According to New Orlean's City Business the newly elected Republican was the only candidate running in that race that accepted campaign money from the industries he was elected to regulate.

Now that he's actually elected he is apparently an even better investment. Bill Oliver, president of AT&T Louisiana makes no bones about his sponsoring a $1000 dollar a head soiree to help pay off campaign debts. ($5, 000 dollars for corporate sponsorship) Sez Oliver:

“He’s a new commissioner, he’s got a serious amount of debt and my intent is to help hold an event that would eliminate his debt,” Oliver said. “It’s legal and I’m following the guidelines of state laws.”

and

Oliver said he doesn’t think fundraisers such as his compromise relationships because they are legal. He said if citizens feel the law should be changed, they should approach the Legislature.

Silly me, here I thought that there was a whole category of things that were legal but flat out wrong. Legal or not the real question should be whether it is the right thing to do to either offer to pay of the personal debt of a man who regulates you (or to accept money from a corporation you are morally obligated to regulate).

Good government types think it stinks; PAR, a pro-business organization generally —indeed Oliver sits on the board—has advocated and continues to advocate a law to make such shenanigans illegal since it is apparent that appealing to honor and a sense of ethics is a waste of effort.

Under heavy pressure from public opinion and those obnoxious editorial writers who think that accepting favors from those you regulate is, uh, questionable the PSC recently wrote rules forbidding its members from accepting lunch favors from those they regulate. AT&T was exhibit A spending nearly 2,000 dollars on lunch for PSC members and staffers in '08. Maybe, just maybe, lunch is less serious issue than helping pay to gain the office itself....you'd think. And they talk about pay to play in Illinois.

At any rate: watch this guy. Skrmetta, Eric Skremetta. He's made it clear that he won't do the right thing unless he's closely watched. And maybe not even then. Congrats and hearty at-a-boy to City Business who shows that they have retained some sense of what justifies papers and journalism: educating the public. Theirs is a truly incisive article.


Lagniappe: In the category of guys to watch: don't forget Jindal's legislative liason: Former BellSouth head lobbyist Tommy Williams. He headed up the Gov's ethics reform. (Convincingly putting to rest the rumor that it had anything to do with stemming the corporate side of corrruption.) He was a VP at BellSouth...and had a history with Lafayette and LUS' fiber project that included a role at the PSC you might want to recall.

Update-2/11/09: Mike took a look at the ethics reports and says that AT&T and AT&T's pac contibuted $15,000 dollars to the campaign before the "soiree." That soiree was apparently meant to retire a $350,000 dollar personal loan that Skrmetta made to his own campaign. All this brings up pretty significant questions about a system in which only the wealthy can afford to run for public office but can, if they see no ethical conflicts, rely on those whose livelihoods they influence, to "generously" retire the large personal debts they acquire running for office. I cannot believe that anyone, including AT&T and Eric Skrmetta, really thinks there is no quid pro qou, no implicit pay to play in such a scenerio.

Watch these guys.

WBS: "After Five Years Of Fighting, Lafayette Gets Their Fiber"

What's Being Said Dept.

Karl Bode over Broadband Reports is another that has been tracking Lafayette's trials for years and his take on the long-anticipated launch is similar to others who have been watching. It was a fight; one that the citizens won:

We've been tracking the deployment of municipally-owned fiber in Lafayette, Louisiana for years, the project being particularly notable for some of the sleazy efforts made by Cox and AT&T (then SBC) to kill it. Those efforts, back in 2005, included everything from hinting at exporting local support jobs if the deal was approved, to hiring push pollsters to try and convince locals that the government-controlled project would result in politicians rationing consumer TV viewing. Needless to say, Cox and Bellsouth lost.

Bode also notes that we're getting something for our efforts:

A few weeks ago, Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) unveiled their pricing for the service, offering triple play bundles ranging from $84.85 to $200, with downstream broadband services ranging from 10Mbps to 50Mbps (all symmetrical). LUS offers standalone symmetrical 10Mbps for $28.95, 30Mbps for $44.95, and 50Mbps for $57.95. There's no caps, no contracts, and no installation fee.

Those prices handily beat not only local competitors Cox and AT&T (it's now pretty clear why they fought so hard), but carriers in other markets too. Comcast offers a 50Mbps tier in select markets for $139.95 (when bundled), but its upstream speed is 5Mbps. Verizon's 50Mbps/20Mbps service costs $144.95/month standalone, or $139.95 when bundled. The fastest speed AT&T currently offers customers is 18Mbps/1.5Mbps, which is $65 a month if you bundle TV service.

But the real treat for locals is the unalloyed envy exhibited by the usually raucous and dismissive crowd of commentators at the site. The first commentator says: "I would literally murder someone to get symmetrical 50Mbps..." and the ensuing debate continues with a review of which body part other discussants would give to have that access.

As a special treat Joey Durel logs in and plugs the 100 meg peer-to-peer network:

Thank you all for your comments. We are excited by the possibilities this brings to our community. We put together a very conservative business plan and should easily be able to sustain our pricing. Of course as programming costs go up, our prices will go up, and so will the competition. One thing not mentioned is the fact that we are also giving 100MBS peer to peer, for FREE. And, if this initiative doesn't live up to the expectations, my neck is on the chopping block. I think it is worth the minimal risk. And, by the way, this is not backed by the government, so taxpayers are not at risk. These are revenue bonds backed by our utilities system, and while there is some risk it is actually very low. Thanks again,

Joey Durel
Lafayette City-Parish President

And, hey, on top of all that it is sunny and warm in the hub city.

WBS: "Lafayette, La., finally gets its fiber network"

What's Being Said Dept.

Marguerite Reardon over at CNet has been following the Lafayette Fiber saga since the beginning (and posted on-target pieces both on the fight and on the victory) so it's not surprising to see that she's capped that with a good piece on "Lafayette, La., finally gets its fiber network."

After nearly five years of planning and fighting with local cable and phone companies, the Lafayette Utilities System opened its fiber-optic broadband network for business.

Whew! I thought it was more than "discussions"..... and, on CNet's account the fight was actually about something:

It's easy to see why Cox Communications, the local cable operator, and AT&T, which bought local phone company BellSouth, are threatened by LUS. Pricing for the new triple play services are very competitive. Consumers can get a triple play bundle from about $85 to $200 a month. And the broadband services offer download and upload speeds between 10Mbps to 50Mbps. The standalone broadband service costs about $29 for symmetrical 10Mbps downloads and uploads; $45 for 30Mbps, and $58 for 50Mbps service. The service doesn't require a contract and there's no installation fee.

The maximum download speed offered by AT&T is 6Mbps for $43 a month. And it's cheapest is a 768Kbps service for $20 a month. Cox only offers Internet download speeds up to 15Mbps. Depending on what specific services are selected, bundled pricing from AT&T and Cox is comparable. The big exception is that AT&T and Cox offer these prices as part of a promotion, whereas LUS prices are the actual standard prices and will not expire.

Lafayette is just one of many cities that has tried to build it own broadband network. Other cities and regions such as Provo, Utahhave attempted to do the same thing. In nearly every instance, cable and phone companies have tried to prevent these network build outs.

Now just why is it that to get coverage that notices the real history, the actual fight, a succienct comparison of the offerings, and the real reasons why the incumbents (rightly) feared a community network we have to a national tech news source?

"LUS Fiber delays start" (Updated)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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