Saturday, Mayor Sam Adams, Hopworks Brew Master Christian Ettinger, city staff and local Google fiber initiative supporters were present to send the gift of five kegs of special organic Portland Gigabit IPA to Parish President Joey Durel of Lafayette, Louisiana -- the first American city to establish a fiber-to-home infrastructure. Layfayette has proven how useful and efficient the ultra fast network technology can be and Portland is working toward doing the same.
The Gigabit send-off ceremony at PDX was a thank you to Lafayette for leading the way in fiber development and will be enjoyed during their Fiber Fete, an international summit of fiber-to-home, 'celebrating our future connections,' Tuesday through Thursday, April 20 - 22.
Now what can you say to that? Besides "Thank You."
Scuttlebutt has it that Mary Beth Henry, of Portland and NATOA, will be the bearer of the good tidings. Looking forward to it! All five kegs...
The city floated $110 million in municipal bonds in 2005, fought telecommunications companies that cried foul over the move, and proceeded to build the network in addition to a sophisticated 3D imaging center used by Hollywood movie companies to render their animated films into 3D images.
“We had a unique opportunity because we have our own utility company that already had a fiber optic loop that was already in the wholesale end of this business,” says Durel. “This project was about doing something great and raising the bar.”
There are interesting blips about the purpose of the event:
“What Lafayette can show to the world is how to create a network that’s just about state of the art, and that the whole community supports,” explains David Isenberg, FiberFête’s co-organizer along with journalist Geoff Daily. Isenberg is a long-time advocate of such community-driven telecommunications networks. “Lafayette’s leadership also realizes that they need help, that you can’t just hang the fiber on the poles and miracles will happen – they know there’s a lot of expertise out there, and they’re hoping to bring people with a clue into town.”
....The conference is a timely one since the Obama Administration has just released its National Broadband Plan, a national blueprint for how America can stay competitive in the global race to get connected to anyone else in the world through high-speed internet networks. Durel hopes that the city can serve as a model for other cities around the nation.
There's a lot to learn. It's an interesting world....
LPF noted LUS' application to the "Google Fiber for Communities" project several weeks ago as a bit of lagniappe to an article about the city's tech efforts more generally. Both the Independent and the Advocate caught the story late this week, in advance of Fiber Fête. Google's Minnie Ingersoll, a product manager for alternative access and one of the people shepherding the project will be a speaker at Fiber Fête on Tuesday of next week and that connection is noted by the Independent.
[For those of you who were on a different planet for the last two months—or just from a place which already has its fiber—and missed the fevered internet excitement, here's the short version: Immediately prior to the unveiling of a National Broadband Plan that pushed an anemic goal of 100 megs in 10 years Google announced that it would fund a testbed project that would offer communities a gig FTTH network. Conditions to apply were minimal: not more than 500,000 people, and a demonstrated eagerness to "accept" a 1 Gig, open network. More than 600 communities officially applied and another 190,000 individuals applied on behalf of their communities.]
Both stories reported that LUS based their appeal on Lafayette's vision, willingness to battle to build its own network, and on how cheap it would be to up grade LUS current system to the 1 gig standard. As the Independent wrote:
"We already have a system in place and that's what we were trying to sell to them," Huval says. He notes that LUS' fiber network, which reaches internal speeds up to 100 megabits per second, could be upgraded to 1 Gig per second speed relatively easily. "We looked at what kind of things do we bring to the table that might be unique," Huval adds, "and yet still substantive enough to attract Google's attention and we felt that the fact that we already have a fiber to the home infrastructure almost completely in place that we have clear unambiguous community support because we had a vote of the people [on fiber] with strong support. We also talked about the strength of the utility system and we talked about our visions for the future, that we didn't build this system only to have competitively priced cable TV, telephone and Internet, we were looking at building an infrastructure for the future."
The Advocate's coverage made it plain that LUS was intent on moving to a 1 gig to the home network even without Google's help, even but that it would take till the next scheduled round of network upgrades to get there:
The city’s LUS Fiber system already offers top-tier Internet speeds and has the capacity to eventually offer 1 Gbps service, but Huval said Google’s project could speed the pace of development.
He said the advantage that Lafayette offers for Google is that the 1 Gbps speed would be easier to achieve here because the city has already installed fiber lines in most areas.
LUS application chose to present what some might say were Lafayette's weaknesses in such a competition into strengths—to turn the fact that we already have fiber and some of the fastest, cheapest speeds in the nation into a testament to the community's dedication to the vision of a faster, cheaper, community-controlled network.
But another part of the difficulty in applying for Google's support is that the LUS network is not an open network in the sense that Google set down as a condition for gaining its support. Google's version of network openness is that of "open access" which means that any service provider could provide services in competition with LUS. LUS almost certainly can't afford to travel that path. It can't afford to take the risk that the much maligned (un)Fair Competition Act would be used to force it into a premature forced sale if it ran for even a short time a loss—particularly as the law's chief consumer effect is to put a limit on how low the local utility can drop prices in response to price competition. (The enormity of that unfairness is whole 'nother post. Or two.) The most immediately obvious problem is that opening the network to Cox invites the cable operator execute a double edged strategy that would use Lafayette's superior network to undercut LUS' network offerings on, say the high end, where its own network is bandwidth-constrained, while lowering its price for its low-end offerings to levels LUS would not be able or even allowed to follow. Cox would not, of course, be under any obligation to offer its low-end network to LUS at prices that would allow it to compete fairly over the cheaper, slower network. The slightest misstep in such an open access scenario would put our community's hard-fought and very expensive network on the block for fire-sale prices. As much as it pains me to say it, unless circumstances change it simply would be irresponsible to open Lafayette's network.
Of course, circumstances can change. LUS could conceivably reach a tête-à-tête with Google by promising to open their network to any provider that does not own a competing network in Lafayette....there might be something to talk about. Or Google could simply agree to shoulder Lafayette's risk. It'd still be a cheaper way to build a network as all Google would have to do is promise to get the city out of any hole the new policies put it in. I doubt that LUS suggested any such thing (but would be pleased to stand corrected). Much more likely is that they put their best foot forward where they had a good argument and intended to deal with the hard parts when, and if, Google decided on further talks.
There is, however, another way to try and dodge the bullet of Google's desire to experiment with an open network; one that I suggested. Eventually I went ahead and made citizens application on behalf of Lafayette that tried to make lemonade not only out of the lemon of already having a network (using the same approach as LUS) but also leaned on the fact that Google went to great lengths to insist that their experiment, well, was an experiment. As far as I can tell most analysts cynically assumed that all that "science" talk was feel-good misdirection meant to underline the fact that Google wasn't trying to establish a toehold in the business of building a national network. It's more likely that Google is being perfectly honest. Anyone who has thought much about the roots of their search engine and then watched them build services like Google Apps has to believe that experimentation is is the company's genes. Google looks like a company that actually took the "knowledge-based" economy seriously. The bit about being the most profitable business in the world is a by-product of successfully making that commitment; not the goal.
What Lafayette could do is offer to make Google's experiment a LOT better. To improve their knowledge.
Science wienies will tell you that a good experiment controls independent variables...and to make even a stab at that you have to have multiple conditions. Helping Lafayette reach a gig and installing the same experimental apps and resources it does in other "Google gig communities" would give the overall experiment a lot needed validity; it would let you, for instance, decide whether open networks OR local ownership or experimental apps were more important factors in rates adoption and levels of innovative use...or at least it would allow a researcher to think about it with at least some contrasting data. (To prove that Lafayette also cares about research itself I'd point you to the fact Lafayette did its own full-throated "pretest" evaluation of internet attitudes and usage—on its own dime. The DIY attitude extends beyond simply building our own network.)
Sooo...if you want a look at the ridiculously dense, full-throated, Lafayette fan-boi version of the idea that I submitted to Google you can have a gander for yourself: Google Lafayette, La Proposal
technology innovators to review government and community services and develop tools that will improve lives by making it easier for citizens to receive these services through mobile and online applications.
For the FCC's part—they are interested in increasing the rate of broadband adoption in "lagging" sectors and see potential in useful apps for achieving that goal.
The Knight Foundation is fronting the money. Details are not yet available but the Knight Foundation suggests that they've got three core beliefs that this challenge would serve:
First, our ideal of informed, engaged communities; second, our conviction that universal broadband is key to achieving this ideal; and third, our deep interest in using new approaches to connect with innovators.
The inclusion of mobile platforms and highlighting it with the allusion to "Apps" is probably pretty good policy. Recent research shows that more of the poor and minority populations that are lagging in net connection are adopting wireless devices more rapidly than the rest of the population...mobile's probably a pretty good target.
There's been a recent push in Lafayette to get more governmental data available online. We've even got a placeholder location for hosting data in an accessible form. Some places, like San Francisco, are a bit further along in having its data available in a form developers find useful. It'd be a neat project for somebody—or some civic-minded group of geeks. I'd sure like to have a version for the Lafayette Commons' gadget page....
The response to the National Broadband Plan has been muted nationwide, at least in part because it was released at the climax of the health care debate. The response has been even more muted, if possible in Lafayette...after all, we've got ours Jack...real 3 way competition even if AT&T is an also-ran. (Caveat: Economists say a 3-way is not enough. The fact that we've got a public option will help immensely.)
But for most of the country the plan would be uninspiring in any context, mainly in that it has failed to grapple with the underlying problem of competition. The plan as currently constructed simply accepts the current nation-wide wireline duopoly. The pretense that wireless competition is large enough and that it is separate enough from wireline to generate genuine competition is just foolish. (I have two friends who've worked, in differing capacities, on the plan. Both have expressed deep disappointment. One bitterly.)
Almost uniquely among OECD countries, America has adopted no policies to require the owners of broadband cables to open their infrastructure to rival sellers in order to enhance competition. America relies almost exclusively on “facilities competition”, the provision of rival infrastructures: a cable provider may compete, for example, with a network that runs optical fibre to the home. True, there is a legitimate worry that forcing a company to rent out parts of its infrastructure to competitors may deter investment, but a review of international broadband policies prepared for the FCC by Harvard’s Berkman Centre for Internet & Society revealed a range of successful compromises in use in other countries. The FCC has availed itself of none of them, and suggests that wireless broadband could instead provide more competition. But wireless data transfer is very much slower and less reliable than fixed broadband; it is more a complement than a competitor.
If America’s facilities-based system were really working, the country would at the very least enjoy first-rate broadband in dense urban areas where providers are most likely to recoup their investments quickly. Yet in February the Saïd Business School at Oxford and the Universidad de Oviedo released a study, funded by Cisco, that produced a broadband quality score based on bit volume and speed, mapped against current and probable future applications. Chicago, America’s best-performing city, ranked 26th, below Sofia and Bucharest.
Lafayette is lucky not to have to rely on the "beginners" sort of broadband plan that has been generated so far. It's yet another instance of it being demonstrably wiser to do for yourself.
That's not to say that there is nothing positive to be said about the plan....most importantly it's a plan worth criticizing. Up till this moment the US has had NO plan. We are admitting that not having a plan is a problem. And, as we all now recognize, admitting that there is a problem is the first step in solving it.
That said there are parts of the plan that, if implemented, could have a real effect on communities like Lafayette. More on that as time allows....
Ok fellas, it's happening....Video is joining text in laying down an accessible version of history's first draft. The NYTimes reports that C-Span is in the process of finishing uploading its entire video record going back to 1987—and all that it has archived going back to 1979.
Now before you yawn and switch channels: this is a big deal. Really.
You want "transparency" in government? All transparency really calls for is having a good enough record to hold the people in charge accountable for the mistakes they make. CSPAN making this archive available in a freely searchable internet archive that allows anyone to stream the full record is an enormous step forward in transparency.
And a lot of the usual suspects like the idea:
Having free online access to the more than 160,000 hours of C-Span footage is “like being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time,” said Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC host.
Ed Morrissey, a senior correspondent for the conservative blog Hot Air (hotair.com), said, “The geek in me wants to find an excuse to start digging.”
They've got a point; this means that everything, everything done on the floor of the House or the Senate and most of the major committee meetings going back a full generation are going to be available for free on the web in a form that allows us all to witness history directly. And it's going to mean that a lot of people, fairly and unfairly, are going to be held accountable for past actions.
Remember the old saying that "Hindsight is 20-20?" You're about to get a great view of a huge undigested glop of history that before now was either concealed by "the mists of time" or visible only through the lens of other people's interpretation. That doesn't mean, of course, that you will be able to understand everything you see, after all, we don't understand everything we see in the present when we are immersed in the context. History needs interpretation. In some ways History is interpretation. We are going to need to get a lot more sophisticated about understanding history if we are going to get full benefit...but this is one way; and a very important way that the web is making us more knowledgeable.
It will be up to us to make sure it is making us smarter.
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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
I continue to hear stuff like "Broadband is not a utility" and "broadband is a luxury" all of which is supposed to lead to the conclusion that we should all stand back and let the the incumbent duopoly do whatever they want. That has always seemed like a stunningly short-sighted and unimaginative position to me. Happily Glenn Fleishman over at Publicola in Seattle (where their new mayor is committed to a publicly owned FTTH project) has dug up the perfect rejoinder to such foolishness. Glenn analyzes this at length and his dissection is worth the read. But for our purposes the raw quote from the Richmond, Virginia's 1905 Times-Dispatch newspaper will suffice:
“Unless we adopt the principles of socialism, It can hardly be contended that It is the province of government, either state or municipal, to undertake the manufacture or supply of the ordinary subjects of trade and commerce, or to impose burdens upon the whole community for the supposed benefit of a few….
“The ownership and operation of municipal light plants stands upon a different basis from that of the ownership of water works, with which it is so often compared. Water is a necessity to the health and life of every individual member of a community…It must be supplied in order to preserve the public health, whether it can be done profitably or not, and must be furnished, not to a few individuals, but to every individual.
“Electric lights are different. Electricity is not in any sense a necessity, and under no conditions is it universally used by the people of a community. It is but a luxury enjoyed by a small proportion of the members of any municipality, and yet if the plant be owned and operated by the city, the burden of such ownership and operation must be borne by all the people through taxation.
“Now, electric light is not a necessity for every member of the community. It Is not the business of any one to see that I use electricity, or gas, or oil in my house, or even that I use any form of artificial light at all.”
Sound familiar? A century more or less makes little difference in the way some folks think...though the passage of time does change what they are wrong about.
Fleishman is writing in support of a fiber to the home network in Seattle but it is worth noting that he is more familiar as one of the net's go-to guys on wifi and related wireless technologies — and has been a great advocate of those technologies. But even he says that fiber is the end-game for fixed locations.
You'll excuse my wry grin when I say I didn't think I'd see the day when we could say about any technology that Seattle would end up following a trail Lafayette had blazed.
Fiber is a winning issue...from the deepest blue to the most vermillion red parts of our country
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)
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.
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).
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.)
You may have heard of "dark" fiber—that's the miles of fiber that run across the country that has never been lit; fiber that has never been used. So it's common to talk about "dark" fiber and "lit" fiber and its differing costs and availability.
But you've likely never heard of "black" fiber. That's because you're not supposed to have heard anything about it. Apparently that's the trade term for the ultra-secure fiber that the government intelligence agencies use. So it's a special kind of problem when it gets cut. That problem is apparently particularly intense around the D.C and Northern Virgina areas where the various agencies have their headquarters...
Here's a fun snippet:
This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of Tysons Corner [VA] a few years ago hit a fiber optic cable no one knew was there.
This part doesn't: Within moments, three black sport-utility vehicles drove up, a half-dozen men in suits jumped out and one said, "You just hit our line."
Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say.... But Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was "black" wire -- a secure communications line used for some of the nation's most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.
"The construction manager was shocked," Georgelas recalled. "He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you've got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing."
...he figured that the government was involved when an AT&T crew arrived the same day to fix the line, rather than waiting days.
Spooks, apparently, care about their fiber...and get good service. :-)
Broadband advocates here in the good old US of A have been getting a little giddy at the sight of the federal government's machinery groaning into low gear to actually start the process of formulating a National Broadband Plan. (Yes, that explains why we haven't appeared to have a plan. We haven't.) Why just yesterday we started the planning process. First, in the distantly snide tone only the WSJ can pull off: the FCC "approved a broad set of questions designed to solicit opinions from consumers, telecom companies and state and local governments, to name a few." The FCC is gearing up to gear up because Congress has delegated to them the task of being the big thinkers on the 7 billion of the stimulus plan dedicated to broadband that is to be administered by bureaus within the Commerce Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The FCC is supposed to devise the "national broadband plan" that will guide the decisions these bureaus make. (It's all in the law.)
I've been feeling pretty hopeful about the process...hey, it's a start. And a big step up from facing toward Fort Knox, closing our eyes, bowing low, and repeating the mantra "the market" 20 times as a substitute for telecom policy. Now I know that the money is actually being distributed in bureaus elsewhere and the people making those real decisions are all the way across the District of Columbia from the FCC...and it won't be ready in time to make a difference with the current stimulus money anyway, but still...to have something on the books that is supposed to be rational and comprehensive would be helpful, won't it? At least a start?
But all that feel-good sorta melted away when Austrailia announced its broadband policy: FTTP; Fiber To The Premise. At 100 megs. For the whole country, or 90% of the population anyway. (The most rural 10% will have to make do with a minimum of 12 megs—but everyone is offered real service.
Wowser.
And the way they're gonna do it! The government had been negotiating to fulfill a campaign promise to expand broadband access with the incumbents and some foreign corporations who, of course, wanted to be made lords of the domain for the next 50 years or so if they were to deign to do anything very useful. That part sounds familiar. We've got campaign promises and lords of the domain too... But the Austrailian government did something that it is hard for Americans to understand: they took a look at the I-want-it-my-way suggestions of the big corporations and grew a spine. They told 'em that they weren't offering a "good value" in return for the public's investment and that rather than accept any of their self-serving plans that they'd rather do it themselves.
They announced that they were intending to fund a Australian 43 billion dollar (30 billion USD) National Broadband Network (NBD). The government would get no less than 51% of the company and effective control; private investors would be allowed to buy in to 49% with the previously rejected telecom corps strongly urged to buy in...and to contribute their network assets to pay for their share. Take it or leave it. And if the telcos want to leave it: be aware that the Aussie national government fully intends to issue a new set of regulations enforcing structural separation that would effectively force open access on the current network assets they retain. The new National Broadband Network will be open as well. The old way of doing business is over; there is no comfortable monopoly—vertical or horizontal—to go back to.
Australian broadband advocates are pretty much stunned. (Imagine the US government saying anything remotely like this to Cox, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon? You know: "Take your greedy plans to feed at the public trough and shove it. We can build our own advanced network for the price your asking buddy, thanks plenty.—and by the way, no more local monopoly for you either, we're going back to real regulation of you guys." Oh You can't imagine it? Neither could the Aussies. Until now.)
We in Lafayette are in a particularly good position to see how much sense this all makes. We were happy to build it ourselves when told by the incumbent lords that we did not need and were not competent to run a modern FTTH system ourselves. That system is up and running and serving customers today—and doing so quite well, thanks. Since making that committment we've benefited by consistently being spared rate increases placed on other communities and, most recently, by getting a second 50 meg provider (albeit only 50/5) at a price that is 1/3 off what they plan to charge the rest of the country for that speed. And we got that before any of the big markets Cox serves or even the larger cities in our own market. Almost any other part of our country would kill for that sort of service and absolutely no place has it for as little as we pay. It pays to stand up for yourself in public as in private life.
Good on the Aussies. There's is a real national broadband plan. It will fix what's really wrong the current system. The current Aussie system, modeled in part after the mistakes we in the US were making, had resulting in a market with even more of the markers of monopoly dominance than ours. Aussie markets were more monopolized. The equiavalent of AT&T/Verizon, the telecom Telestra, was at least as insistent on maintaining its virtically integrated monopoly position and the cable sector was much weaker. Australians paid even more for broadband than Americans and an even smaller percentage of them were capable of getting really world-class speeds.
Going forward this will no longer be true. Australia will have a truly world-class network running at stunning speeds and capable of massive upgrades at minimal costs. Where homes in places where the villages have less than a thousand people don't have direct fiber they will have fiber-fed wireless. The final few deep in central desert will get satellite at no less that 12 megs. This is a public policy (and a stimulus) that will bear fruit for generations. When people talk about "forward-thinking" this is what ought to be meant.
While we cheer on the Australians ("Go for it, mate!") we on this continent have to feel a little bummed and whiny. Why can't we have a rational telecom policy, too? The up side is that the unthinkable is now finally thinkable. An English-speaking continent has taken the plunge and told their teleco monopolists that the current system is broken and then put forward a credible plan for fixing it that doesn't grovel and plead before of those that have failed them. Maybe we can do the same. Or at least talk about it!
In fact, not all is yet lost on these shores: One of the guiding lights of the Austrailian success was Paul Budde, long an advocate for a smart national plan in Australia. To read his blog these days is a real joy. He's as stunned as his fellows but is rallying nicely—telling the doubters in one example "Yes, we can!" in a deliberate reference to the hopes for a positive change that are now dominant in the U.S. Even more encouraging is the fact that he's also been in consultation with the Obama administration since before they took office and has no doubt been an advocate for much of this before our own leaders. I'd guess that until a few days ago his ideas, while judged rational in some sort of ultimate way, were not considered "pragmatic"—a key desiderata for the new administration. That judgment may now have changed. Indeed, on Budde's blog he remarks in the comments to his well-worth-reading analysis that:
I also received envious but very supportive comments from the Obama Team, they are very interested and several of the experts are eager to participate in our work group to contribute and to learn.
Not to get your hopes up but, perhaps, just perhaps someone here will say: "Yes! We can!"
Lagniappe: New Zealand, who recently announced a great plan too, is also jealous now: "Newman said that while the NZ National proposal looked visionary a year ago, it now looks comparatively limp." Aussie Envy; it's the latest syndrome to afflict the digerati.
A quick note from the F2C conference. You can watch the live stream—and it looks very good. The conference this year is highly recommended: the speakers are amazing ranging from Pulitzer Prize winning authors to absolutely top notch fiber partisans to the guys who actually build the networks. Some, like Lafayette's own Terry Huval qualify on multiple grounds.
Tim Nulty, the force behind Vermont's fiber to the home projects (yes projects, plural) is on as I type this now, next on the same panel is the guy who put together Amsterdam's ground-breaking system. And that is only the first panel. Watch!
Update: 3/31/09 — I'm not sure who else is blogging this conference but the Broadband Census guy just down the isle is doing a pretty good job. Coverage of Tom Friedman's keynote is provided by CNet. (I'm hoping that the streaming video is being archived somewhere and I'll be able to post an update with that link...)
Well, I'm about to take off for the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington DC. That'll explain any upcoming odd missives posted from D.C. :-)
The agenda is great—and the conversations in the lobby even better. (Organizer David Isenberg-—yes, that Isenberg—explains the theme of this year's conference quite nicely.) If you have an interest in the internet and public policy and ever get a chance to go you really ought show up. I hope to visit with good people, a few of which occasionally read this blog, and soak up a some bright approaches to my most recent interest: Lafayette Commons.
(Oh yeah: Lafayette will be well represented...Terry Huval will present on our Fiber to the Home project. David has been a stauch supporter.)
Geoff Daily of App-Rising posts a video chat with Terry Huval, LUS Fiber head celebrating the launch of LUS Fiber. Terry brags on the speed, the reliability, and the 100 meg intranet. Geoff notes that the speed he can get in the nation's capital with the dome visible from his window is less than the slowest speed that LUS sells.
Venice will become the first city in the world to provide newborn residents with free Internet access, a spokeswoman for the city council said Friday.
Newborns will receive a user ID and password entitling them to free Internet access at the same time as they get their birth certificate, the spokeswoman said.
"The resident's new digital identity will give free access to the Web, because we consider that's an important universal right,"
Whoa....
(From NetworkWorld via the inestimable Baller list.)
After Thought: Yes, the remark about New Orleans is snarky. I suppose sad recent news has made the residents of other sinking cities a bit nervous... Another connection: Where Venice is using a fiber infrastructure to power a municipal wifi system in hopes of keeping from sinking financially as well as physically that avenue to pride and hope was closed to New Orleans by the incumbent's (un)Fair Competiton act and Cox and AT&T's unwillingness to give the city a break when it became apparent that a law aimed at Lafayette was doing unintended damage to a city staggered by Katrina. We can all hope that one consequence of the change in Washington is real change in telecom policy that would allow communities to use their own resources as they see fit. At the very least maybe they will go ahead and pass that bill that been pending for years to gaurantee that the states can't forbid municipal networks.
There was a time, not all that long ago where Louisiana voices were front and center on the community side of this issue. If Tauzin and Breaux had had their way maybe New Orleans could be bragging on, and attracting business on the basis of, their shiny new muni wifi network. Landreiu? Melancon? You listening? Want a good way use your new found power and influence? Be seen as progressive? Help communities?
Lafayette, in the person of Terry Huval, participated in Monday's "National Broadband Strategy Call to Action" in Washington. He was among a high-flying group that have worked to build a national policy to promote broadband availability and use. The signatories range from Google to AT&T to the American Library Association to the Communications Workers of America to Cisco to Teletruth to Internet2...and the Lafayette Utilities System. In short: a baker's list of representative of every contending group that has an interest in promoting a more available and better internet.
Quite frankly some national policy is needed. It may come as a shock to hear that the US doesn't have a policy—to hear that it doesn't have a coherent approach to the most basic infrastructure need of our time. The record is clear: countries that have widely available, capable, inexpensive wired and wireless networks have them because they've instituted real national broadband policies. Not necessarily the same strategy—but some strategy. (The US experience is a substantial part of how we know policies work: the US is the clearest example of what happens when you lack such a policy: we dropped from 1st in the world to near the back of the industrial pack in the last 15 years and pay more for broadband than countries with much better service. Countries with a systematic plan have roared to the front—and saved their citizens real money to boot.)
Frankly, the whole Fiber Fight here in Lafayette has been a consequence of our national failure to deal with the issue. With a real national policy building our network would have been either 1) impossible (had the incumbents had their way) 2) explicitly legal and federally protected (had the progressives prevailed). A fight was only possible because there was no policy. So Lafayette has, as the highest profile and most successful battle to put in place a real forward-looking plan in at least one place in the US, involved in this issue for a long time. Lafayette is also involved because Jim Baller, LUS' attorney and champion through much of the fight was the organizer and chief proponent of the gathering.
So, with such a long-standing good reason to get on with it why does the idea of a national broadband policy take off now? Well, Baller has been driving this forward on the basis of national pride and competitiveness and that provided some traction as the US continued to slip in the rankings. But with a new, progressive administration and the collapse of the financial market there is a the new acceptance of infrastructure construction as economic stimulus. It's apparent that there will be a big(ger) stimulus package soon that shifts the emphasis from giving money to people who have made bad decisions to stimulating the economy by building things that we can all fruitfully use. With money on the table for the incumbents, the unions, and the equipment manufacturers the dawning possibility of actually getting a national broadband policy in place that will promote the interests of the municipalities, the internet companies, and the net citizen groups all see the value of coming to an accommodation before the moment passes. That may be (is) a somewhat cynical view. But it fits the moment it seems to me. Economic stimulus in hard times seems an effective motivator.
With some background out of the way on to the Call itself: It is only a call...not the plan itself. Probably the most important single accomplishment so far is getting such broad consensus on the idea of a national policy. To date the incumbents have fought the very idea of a national policy or promoted the idea that our current incoherent approach somehow constituted an implicit one. Getting them to help promote the idea that a policy is desireable is the biggest single accomplishment of the day. The meat of the two page call is the suggested goals.
Goals
Every American home, business, and public and private institution should have access to affordable high-speed broadband connections to the Internet.
Access to the Internet should, to the maximum feasible extent, be open to all users, service providers, content providers, and application providers.
Network operators must have the right to manage their networks responsibly, pursuant to clear and workable guidelines and standards.
The Internet and broadband marketplace should be as competitive as reasonably possible.
U.S. broadband networks should provide Americans with the network performance, capacity, and connections they need to compete successfully in the global marketplace.
Even a cursory read of that reveals a lot glittering genralities...the "built by a committee" nature of the thing is apparent. Baller himself, during the introduction (see video above), spoke of the judgment of some that the call is "mealy-mouthed and watery." His point the current document is only a start on a larger project. The call for universal, affordable access is particularly noteworthy. That, by itself, calls for a huge project to reach everyone and substantial change to the current structure of telecommunications policy.
And there are a few points of real progress: Beyond agreeing that a broadband policy is necessary and should be affordably available to all, the various interests seem to agree that broadband is infrastructure. Getting agreement there is a real advance. Even more specifically: both AT&T the Communications Workers union talk about an refreshingly ambitious target: a 10 megs standard and making broadband cheaper overall.
With LUS already setting up to offer 10 megs as their cheapo, slow tier and offering it all for 20% less Lafayette will have already met that goal. Nation, please take notice. Frankly, that should make it easy to see that the municipal alternative should be encouraged in any national policy....
The INDblog carries news of Mayor Durel's Christmas list for Santa Obama. MSNBC sent out an email asking 100 more than 1000 mayors for their top two wishes of the new administration. Durel's reply could be summarized in a word: infrastructure. First he wants the Feds to fund I-49 between New Orleans and Lafayette (we've been registered for that gift for a number of years now). But the second wasn't so much an ask as a tell:
The city of Lafayette is installing fiber optics to every home and business in the city that wants it. We will give our citizens, peer to peer connectivity of 100mbs -- for free! This is being done through our city-owned utility and we will have something 80 to 90% of America won’t have 20 years from now. The federal government needs to do all it can to encourage municipalities to do what we are doing.
Durel touts our FTTH project and recommends that the nation follow our lead and invest in useful infrastructure.
Can't say as I disagree.
[.......pssst: Joey's first name is really "Lester?" For true?]
Apparently, the geniuses over at the McArthur foundation spent a lot of time studying the internet use of teens and how it affected them.
Surprise: apparently hanging out online isn't really bad for for the under-twenties. In fact it teaches "important social and technical skills." Touble is, the parents (roll eyes) just don't get it. (You can get more on this from the source, or read the study, or, hey, more appropriately: watch it on YouTube
So it's been since the world began: kids hang out together and do weird things, the adults grumble and sputter and it turns out that it really was a good thing "developmentally."
"The social worlds that youth are negotiating have new kinds of dynamics, as online socializing is permanent, public, involves managing elaborate networks of friends and acquaintances, and is always on."
So, if it's good to hang out and geek out on the internet then what about this finding that US kids don't get as much interenet as kids from, say, the Czech Republic...are we falling behind in the geeking out on obscure interests and hanging out with friends on the net competition?
Anyone who's against the idea of America moving aggressively into a full fiber future tends to cite the enormous cost of doing so as a reason not to.
Yet the cost to do so is pretty clear: about $1000 a home, with about 100 million homes, that roughly equates to $100 billion.
If we can come up with a trillion dollars to make up for the reckless actions of irresponsible parties simply to stave off the potentially devastating impact their mistakes may have on our economy, why can't we invest a tenth of that in our future by upgrading the most important infrastructure of the 21st century?
That's from Geoff Daily of App-rising. The brutal answer, of course, is that this isn't actually confusing--though it should be. Geoff's complaint only makes sense if you assume that the current federal regime is run in the long-term interests of the country and its citizens; as it should be. If you instead assume that it is run in the short-term interests of corporate wealth then there is nothing confusing about failing to support fundamental infrastructure because large corporations might be offended and bailing out a whole class of non-performing corporations.
Leslie Cauley of USA Today has a well-organized report on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's dream of cheaper, ubiquitous broadband. While much of the clarity is in Cauley's writing (we in Lafayette have reason to recall how well she understands telecom issues), Martin is actually advocating something very close to what you would hope that someone with his responsibilities would try to accomplish. Coming on the heels of his critical vote upholding fundamental net neutrality principles re Comcast, Martin is beginning to look pretty good. (Of course the devil is in the details but getting the principle right is more than half the battle.)
Here's my synopsis of the article:
The Principle:
High-speed Internet access is so important to the welfare of U.S. consumers that America can't afford not to offer it — free of charge — to anybody who wants it, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin says.
"There's a social obligation in making sure everybody can participate in the next generation of broadband services because, increasingly, that's what people want," he says....
The Windup:
The way Martin sees it, broadband is quickly becoming what copper phone lines were for decades: the main means of communication for millions of Americans....
Consumers living in rural areas are one of Martin's biggest concerns. In these areas, he says, dial-up and satellite-based Internet still rule. Owing to technical limitations, they don't offer enough speed to handle advanced, interactive services....
No matter where, Martin says, he worries about availability and cost of high-speed services. Broadband runs about $40 a month, on average, though you'll pay a lot more for faster speeds...
Cost is a big factor, according to the report. Among households with incomes of $100,000 or more, 85% subscribe. The figure drops to 25% for households with incomes of less than $20,000.
The Pitch:
Martin wants to use a block of wireless spectrum to help bridge the gap. By attaching a "free broadband" condition to the sale of the spectrum, known as AWS-3 (for advanced wireless services-3), Martin thinks he can help drive broadband adoption in rural areas in particular. Only 25% of network capacity would have to be reserved for free broadband. The rest could be used to provide premium broadband services...
As for the high cost of broadband generally, Martin says he'd like to find a way to use a very old federal subsidy — the universal service fund — to ease costs for lower-income people.
Oh yeah, The Antis:
Some cellphone providers are howling...
And
Rural phone companies, which use that money [the universal service fund] to help offset their costs, would likely resist such a plan.
Now folks haven't been treating this proposal all that seriously—it was floated a while back by a company that wanted access to a nation-wide chunk of spectrum, and it didn't fly back then. Martin's advocacy has reawakened the whole idea. Most importantly, however, having the man in charge of the nation's spectrum treating new spectrum as a resource for pursuing needed public policy is hugely heartening after almost a generation of principle-free official policy.
In what is being widely touted as an historic decision the FCC has issued a ruling that that Comcast's did indeed illegally monitor customer connections and block specific protocols. They've been ordered to stop doing so, to submit details of what they have been doing, and to inform customers as to what it will do instead.
The small firestorm of comment on the web is a bit anticlimatic since FCC chair Martin made it clear more than a week prior to the ruling what the outcome would be but the ruling itself is bracing.
The most impressive thing about this event is the way the Commission talks; it says that Comcast was indeed blocking legal content, that the effect was anticompetitive and that Comcast had an economic motive to drive downloaded video off its network since it was in the business of selling video. Talking that way is the regulatory equivalent of dropping the bomb—a finding of motivated anticompetitive behavior triggers the possibility of truly draconian punishments.
Beyond letting Comcast know what it did wrong the Commission also acerbically dismissed Comcast's ways of justifying its behavior; in ways that are worth qouting at length, even though the original press release is even more dramatic:
The Commission concluded that Comcast’s network management practices discriminate among applications rather than treating all equally and are inconsistent with the concept of an open and accessible Internet...
The Commission also concluded that Comcast’s practices are not minimally intrusive, as the company claims, but rather are invasive and have significant effects...In essence, Comcast opens its customers’ mail because it wants to deliver mail not based on the address on the envelope but on the type of letter contained therein...
The Commission concluded that the end result of Comcast’s conduct was the blocking of Internet traffic, which had the effectof substantially impeding consumers’ ability to access the content and to use the applications of their choice...
The Commission rejected Comcast’s defense that its practice constitutes reasonable network management. While Comcast claimed that it was motivated by a desire to combat network congestion, the Commission concluded that the company’s practices are ill-tailored to serve that goal for many reasons: they affect customers who are using little bandwidth simply because they are using a disfavored application; they are not employed only during times of the daywhen congestion is prevalent; the company’s equipment does not target only those neighborhoods suffering from congestion; and a customer may use an extraordinary amount of bandwidth during periods of network congestion and will be totally unaffected so long as he does not utilize an application disfavored by Comcast.
The Commission’s determination that Comcast was not engaging in reasonable network management is supported bythe overwhelming weight of expert testimony in the record...The Commission also concluded that the anticompetitive harms caused by Comcast’s conduct have been compounded by the company’s unacceptable failure to disclose its practices to consumers. Because Comcast did not provide its customers with notice of the fact that it interfered with customers’ use of peer-to-peer applications, customers had no way of knowing when Comcast was interfering with their connections. As a result, the Commission found that many consumers experiencing difficulty using onlycertain applications would not place blame on Comcast, where it belonged, but rather on the applications themselves, thus further disadvantaging those applications in the competitive marketplace.
Bear in mind that this is the FCC saying this sort of stuff. The only place I've seen even similarly blunt langauge has been on the blogs of open network advocates who have bitterly complained of the mainstream media's "fair and balanced" reporting which lent credeence to Comcast's nonsensical claims that it wasn't "blocking" traffic and that it was only "managing" its network for the good of the little guy. Those same news outlets religously avoided noticing that the P2P protocols that Comcast blocked were almost always used to download video that competed with Comcast's cable and Pay Per View products. I hope that having the FCC, a body well know for sympathizing with the corporations it is supposed to regulate whenever possible, lash Comcast on all these points will result in better reporting—but I doubt it since the reporting on this ruling even now avoids repeating the most damning findings. It is really outrageous that the first most folks will hear this analysis is if they track it down themselves. Only the credulous report both sides of a story without noticing when one side is plainly flat-out lying. The FCC has reacted appropriately. Would that our media had half the common sense.
Cox Here in Lafayette the question is whether Cox will take the hint and avoid the sort of public rebuke that Comcast has just experienced. As long-time readers willrecall Lafayette Pro Fiber has long followed this story and noted that Comcast's silent partner has been, since the first days of the story, Cox Communications. Cox has been engaging in exactly the same sort of blocking for which Comcast has been censured. —In fact a large-scale German study revealed that only three companies in the world were engaging in this behavior: Comcast, Starhub in Singapore, and Cox. Comcast had the bad fortune to get caught a few weeks before Cox and the bad judgment to engage in a historonic and clearly deceptive defense of its practices while Cox mummered confusing, uninteresting remarks that nobody found qoutable. If they are as smart as that reaction indicates they'll wait a few weeks and issue a quiet press release saying that they don't admit anything but are interested in finding some (confusing) new techniques to manage their service. And then cc the FCC.
Vint Cerf, a father of the internet and Google net evangelist speaks his mind and displays his frustration with the incumbent telecomm companies. It's nice to hear someone say it out loud. His distress is over the ways that the current network incumbents are trying to game the regulatory system to con the nation into granting them effective monopolies in return for doing the obviously necessary: building a real fiber network. It's well worth listening to the video.
One of the nicer things about the networked, always-on world we are emerging into is that unedited experiences can be much more widely distributed than was possible only a few years ago.
If you've ever attended a good conference you know that 80% of the value is in the conversations in the halls or at various socials...that's where people talk frankly about what really matters. But you had to attend the conference and, usually, present to get in on the good conversations.
That's what is happening in this video. Vint Cerf is at some cocktail party where he's been asked about Verizon. And with a glass of wine or two under his belt he speaks the unvarnished truth. "In Vino Veritas."
It's hard for me to listen to this without just saying "Yes, Yes!" Yes, Verizon is hardly to be praised for doing the obvious. Yes, Verizon hasn't been aparticularly "good guy" and doing what is necessary is only mildly praiseworthy. Yes, all the incumbents' behavior has been flatly irresponsible. Yes, they are trying to play a game with the country that involves their getting a free hand to control the future in return for doing what is plainly their responsibility.
I'd have to say, however, that Cerf doesn't propose a viable alternative. And he doesn't, here anyway confront the implications of monopoly power that is at stake here. The only responsible path forward is to build the network as a public good. The incumbents are only doing what comes naturally and railing against that is refreshing but not likely to be effective. Replacing them with differently motivated players--as Lafayette intends to do--is the only way forward that is likely to actually serve the public.
Watch the video, it's oddly shot and washed out but definitely worth it.
Every so often you run across a public official whose focus is actually on serving the public. Even in the Federal bureaucracy. Even at the FCC. Where the usual focus has been on serving the corporations that the bureau was created to regulate. At a recent public hearing in Pittsburg FCC commissioner Copps had this to say (link to word doc):
We still have much to do in making the technology tools of the 21st century work for every American. And I always underline those two words: “every American.” Because no matter who you are, where you live, how much money you make, whether you are young or old, rural or inner city, healthy or dealing with a disability, you will need—and you are entitled—to have these tools and services available to you. I think it’s a civil right; I really do...
Sitting at the FCC in Washington DC, it’s all too easy to be lulled into believing that technology and broadband are issues that matter primarily to a handful of big companies—a few network operators, a few big trade associations, a few multi-billion dollar equipment manufacturers. Because these are the folks we hear from so often—often every day—and they are also the folks who can afford to hire fancy K Street lawyers and deploy small armies of lobbyists at the FCC and on Capitol Hill. But the truth is that these issues are about each of us and all of us. We are all stakeholders, with a right to be heard, when it comes to charting our communications future. This is, after all, the stuff that is shaping how you and I are going to live our lives. Broadband matters to us as individuals, as human beings, as consumers, as small business owners, entrepreneurs, computer science professors and elementary school students, newspaper reporters and broadcast journalists, archeologists and astrophysicists, musicians and bloggers, coffee shop owners, producers, actors, and directors—the list is as long and broad as America. Broadband is reshaping how all of us communicate with each other and learn about the world around us. So we better get it right.
Gee, that's actually both smart and public-spirited. Who'da thunk?
The National Law Journal carries a summary article focusing on the propensity of the incumbent telecoms to sue when a local community decides to build its own high-speed fiber network. One of our own kicks off the story:
"It's a national playbook. The longer they [telecom companies] delay things, the better for them," said Patrick Ottinger, general counsel for Lafayette, La.
That's precisely right and could stand as a summary for the entire article. But reporters, being reporters it goes on for quite a bit longer. And I have to admit that it is interesting to catch up on Lafayette's friends in other places. Even if you do have to listen to the same old groaners from those who are trying to justify their delaying tactics. Does this sound familiar:
Attorneys for telecommunications companies say the litigation is needed because municipalities with the ability to borrow money cheaply -- and not hobbled by the need to return a profit -- have unfair competitive advantages.
"Our position has never been that it is unlawful for cities to do this, but you can't use your powers as a city to create an uneven playing field," said David Goodnight in Stoel Rives' Seattle office, who has represented Qwest Communications International Inc...
The idea that a companies like Qwest, AT&T, or Cox could ever, under the most extreme imaginable situation, ever, ever operate at a unfair competitive disadvantage to some local utility is laughable. It is not an "unfair" competitive advantage to not desire to stick it to your community...it is the way that little local phone and cable companies used to think all the time. The enormous political and economic power that vertically integrated mulitnational corporations with effective monopolies in their core products wield makes their occasional local competitors look like flies... If a community utility wins customer loyality it's because they're offering a better, more desireable product despite the power difference that is stacked against them.
Also covered are legal entanglements in Utah, and Monticello, Minnesota--our comrades-in-arms at the other end of the Missississippi are facing a delaying lawsuit that is reminiscent of those Lafayette had to push through.
Long-time readers will recall our happy fascination with Kutztown, the small town in Pennsylvania that built one of the nation's first municipal fiber-optic networks and later added its own wi-fi network. (See earlier LPF entries on the town: 1, 2, 3)
It’s not sunny every day and money doesn’t sprout from trees in Kutztown, Pa., but for cable and Internet fiends, it may be considered paradise...
Caruso said the FTTH system doesn’t just help the customers using it. He said once the system went online, the competition’s cable TV prices split in half. People out of the service area pay about $53 for cable, but residents who have the choice of Hometown Utilicom or Service Electric Cable TV and Communications pay $25 for cable.
He said upfront cost is an issue for towns looking into a FTTH system, but since Kutztown’s system was activated in 2002, the town has estimated its residents have saved $1.5 million in cable, phone and Internet billing... Compared to Verizon’s FiOS, which stands for fiber-optic service, Caruso said, “We’re not similar to them; they’re similar to us.”
He said the backbone of their system could have a gigabit of broadband for upload and downloads, which could be a real possibility in the future.
The nice thing about the Kutztown example is that its very existence quietly explodes the myths that opponents of municipal fiber networks would have you believe. To wit:
You don't need fiber; you don't really want it. (Kutztown, it turns out, knew what it was doing.)
Fiber is too hard for the dim locals (Little Kutztown's tech guy does fine, thanks)
The municipality will never get a good product. (Kutztown's population, which has put the local cable and internet product in every other house in the city, apparently thinks otherwise.)
It's not feasible in all those little rural places (Kutztown's pop: 5,000)
They'll never keep up with the tech. (Kutztown launched in '96 and is still ahead of the private competition...by a lightyear. And they launched wifi when it came along. Take that, Verizon.)
The government version will cost more. (Kutztown still offers basic cable for 18 dollars a month.)
It'll cost the citizen's money. (Kutztown has used zero tax dollars and estimates are that the citizens of the little town have saved 1.5 million in cable and phone fees since the launch.)
Incumbent FUD; they say: Fiber isn't really future proof, who knows what new tech will come along next year? (Kutztown has kept up with the demand for the last decade without rearchitecting its network—which is more than you can say for its private competition—and, as the article notes, it will be able to scale up to gigabit speeds without changing a lick of the fiber itself.)
s, Hopworks Brew Master Christian Ettinger, city staff and local Google fiber initiative supporters were present to send the gift of five kegs of special organic Portland Gigabit IPA to Parish President Joey Durel of Lafayette, Louisiana -- the first American city to establish a fiber-to-home infrastructure. Layfayette has proven how useful and efficient the ultra fast network technology can be and Portland is working toward doing the same.
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 
