The Economist, Britian's venerable and well-respected newsmagazine, reports on Bristol Virginia's BVU and its FTTH project. Long-time readers will recall Bristol, Virginia: claims that BVU was a failure were a regular and regularly ugly feature of the fiber fight here (summary). The truth was that Bristol was very successful, the first municipal utility to offer the triple play, and has done extremely well for its community. The Economist points this out, emphasizing the rural nature of the location and the jobs it brought to its Appalachian corner of Virginia.
It's satisfying to see Bristol being recognized as an economic success by the Economist.
It's also a treat to read the Economist—the weekly news magazine is known for its unusual combination of tight, fact-filled language and light-hearted tone. The reader is encouraged to read through the article for themselves just to reassure themselves that it really can be done. The following is offered up as an example of clean reasoning that will resonate with Lafayette readers:
Should cities be in the business of providing fast internet access? It depends on whether the internet is an investment or a product. BVU could not afford to maintain its fibre backbone without selling the internet to consumers. And it could not build a subscriber base without offering cable television and a telephone line as well; households these days expect a single price for all three services.... Fibre is expensive, and a purely commercial business would not have been minded to pay for it.
All this is true for much of rural America, and it is an analogue of the reason why municipal utility companies were launched in the first place: to electrify thinly-populated areas where commercial utilities would not go.
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?
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).
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...
I posted earlier on the predictable objections of Cox to LUS' request for a waiver of FCC regulations that have been waved for everyone else for a long time. I complained that LUS wasn't being treated fairly and suggested that LUS' competition and the innovative services it has already offered are just what the FCC has been saying it wanted to accomplish through its regulation.
I've snagged Jim Baller's reply to Cox and the Consumer Electronics Association's objections to LUS' waiver request. (And I am still trying to track down the initial petition and Cox's written objections, just for the record...if any of you see a copy floating past or know how to burrow at the FCC better than I please drop a line.) —see post script.
Baller does a great job of laying out his points clearly and tightly—it's easy to see why he has such a good reputation. Here's an argument extracted from his reply to comments in the case (all emphases mine):
In January 2009, LUS launched a multichannel video programming service over this system, designed from the ground up to operate on LUS’s advanced FTTH network. The LUS video service – offered in direct competition to Cox Communications’ cable service in Lafayette – includes a full lineup of basic, expanded basic, and premium programming in digital form through LUS’s IPTV system...
Cox seeks to thwart or delay this competition by urging the Commission to deny LUS a waiver....
Baller reviews the history in which all the market segments have been granted repeated time extensions and finally unlimited waviers.
By its present petition, LUS requests a waiver similar to those which the Commission has already issued for similarly-situated IPTV system operators. While the Commission’s prior orders included various complex considerations relating to the DTV transition and other matters (addressed in LUS’s petition and below in response to Cox’s comments), the issue in this case is simple and straightforward: LUS would sincerely like to comply with Section 1204(a), but having performed a diligent search, it has been unable to find commercially available navigation devices that would enable it to do so. In other cases in which this has been true, the Commission has granted the MVPDs in question waivers from its rules. LUS merely asks for similar treatment, until such time as commercially available devices are readily available...
Baller points out that LUS' request can be granted based on different sources of regulatory authority and that in one —
Under Section 629(c), the Commission “shall” issue a waiver from the integration ban “upon an appropriate showing by a provider of multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems … that such waiver is necessary to assist the development or introduction of a new or improved multichannel video programming or other service offered over multichannel video programming systems, technology, or products....”
Under Section 629(c), “waivers of [the integration ban] are granted when doing so ‘is necessary to assist the development or introduction of a new or improved’ service, such as, for example, a nascent MVPD offering from a new competitor.”
Congress could not have intended that the FCC derail state-of-the-art projects like Lafayette’s by imposing standards that are technologically impossible to meet. For that simple reason alone, a waiver under the Commission’s general waiver authority is appropriate.
I'm enough of a policy nerd to actually enjoy reading such a nicely crafted piece and if you have any such unsavory tendencies I recommend you click through and read the entire thing. If you do you'll find a few nice hooks left in the text for LUS to pull tight if circumstance warrants. For instance when Cox requests that it be granted a similar waver if the FCC grants one to LUS, Baller replies:
Cox claims that it is already complying with the integration ban. If that is true, then it presumably does not need a waiver, and there is no factual basis for the Commission to grant one.
Of course Cox is not really complying with the law now and there is substantial reason to believe that an FCC dominated by Democrats will be tempted to recognize that and act forcefully on it....leaving Cox to worry that its latest promise to bring its technologies up to date so that its navigation technology will actually be separable from its legitimate security issues won't work again this time if the issue is opened up before the commission. In the unlikely event that LUS is denied its waiver the tables would be turned and LUS would be in the best possible position to turn the tables and assert that a level playing field required that the FCC force Cox in full and complete compliance immediately. In that case making the open claim that it doesn't need a waiver opens up the possibility that LUS — or other competitors — will call its bluff. There's a little of the old "make my day" threat lying just under the surface. I can feel the chest-thumping silverback lying just under the surface of the measured writing and I have to admit that I like it.
A final caveat: Cox apparently argues that only fully digital systems qualify for a waiver. While my inner policy nerd is happy, the geek side evoked by Cox's silly claim that LUS' service isn't all digital wants to point out that LUS is actually providing a fully digital service to every household that buys its service—but that some people choose to have the digital signal transformed (digitally! :-)) into an analog format for use with older equipment. Technically that is exactly what happens. That little twist, on my account, is a nifty bit of digital innovation...and the tongue isn't pressing too hard against the cheek when I say it. LUS's system is all-digital already and they've creatively found a way to comply with the integration ban for those tiers of service that are sold for use without any set top box or with a DVR, like a TiVo, that the consumer is allowed to buy and freely use as their own navigation tool separate from LUS'...they've already gone the extra mile. I'd also lean harder on LUS' actual innovations, like the 100 megs of internal bandwidth and, especially the internet via the IP set top box that couldn't be practically accomplished without the box for which the FCC is being urged to deny a waver. But, I suppose the policy nerd that insists on sticking to the central point and dismissing silly claims about digital as the distractions that Cox clearly hopes they will be is right. Don't muddy the waters or help your opponent do so. But....the FCC might find the truth of Lafayette's all-digital network compelling policy arguments if they take Cox's bit of misdirection seriously and the details of innovations that would be harmed by the denial of a waver could only strengthen that part of the argument.
PS—As we came into New Orleans but before I found the signal I could use to post this I got a set of useful links requested of Jim Baller: the original petition, both Cox and the CEA's objections, and LUS' response. The obsessive among you might want to peruse them too. As will I if I ever get a reliable signal.
The essence: Cox would like to throw a kink, into, to again delay if possible (or to impose additional costs on LUS if it is not) Lafayette's FTTH project by using the FCC to force LUS to deploy technology that doesn't exist. It seems, I suppose, like an clever way to try and use the feds to cause trouble for a competitor. The bitter irony is that the technology doesn't exist largely because Cox and its cable brethren have refused to obey the law and develop the technology to comply with what Congress mandated 14 years ago.
If none of those short versions satisfies you're going to have to settle in for a long, history-laden tale replete with bureaucratic battles, crippled 3rd party set top boxes, a long, successful rear-guard action by incumbents determined to keep consumers from controlling the boxes attached to their cable network and dueling technologies favored by self-interested players in a three-sided match-up. It's one of those stories that nakedly reveals "the way things really work" in a way that doesn't say much good about any of the major players.
Ok, first there is the cast of characters:
FCC: the federal communications commissions playing the part of the pitiful big guy all the tougher kids enjoy messing with.
The Telephone Companies: playing the confident old-timer with generations of home field advantage; the telcos have traditionally dominated the FCC game, but breaking into the video big time with IPTV-based set top boxes instead of the older cable tech requires all their lawyer's talents.
The Cable Companies: playing the fiesty tough kid from the sticks the cablecos have fought a successful delaying action against federal regulations that try to impose teleco-like requirements that would allow mere consumers to attach their own devices to the tough kids' network—and rob those tough guys of their traditional set top box charges.
The Consumer Electronics Association has wandered in from left field wanting to make sure that the big consumer electronics companies have a big single, unified market for set top boxes that keeps them from having to develop separate toys to control satellite, cable, and telco video set top boxes.
oh and:
LUS, the lonely little new kid on the block in the supporting role of the outsider whose seemingly innocuous question sets off a major battle. (This is the character whose fate is so unimportant to the plot that it's never resolved...and only the friends and family of the actor notice.)
The background story, the setup for the latest battle: Gather round kiddies, this story goes back to that dim time before the internet, 40 years ago, a time when things were different...Back then the FCC actually had the power and the will to break up huge monopolies like AT&T (really, it was broken up before the modern FCC midwifed in its rebirth). This all starts with the almost mythological Carterphone: a device that was to morph into the analog sound-based "modulate/demodulate" device that in turn became the digital modem of recent history. That's right sprouts: without the Carterphone there would be no internet for anyone today. And we almost didn't get the Carterphone. I won't tell the long version of the story (but it's a goodun.) What interests us today is that the FCC told the telcos that they had to let any device connect to the telephone network as long as it didn't damage the network. Ma Bell (what we used to call AT&T) howled. But the FCC stood its ground and soon all manner of phones that hung on the wall or had push buttons, or were wireless, or were pink replaced the phone company's black table-top rotary-dial ringer that had produced such a nice steady stream of income for Ma Bell. Though nobody knew it then the internet and VOIP and all manner of things that were to humble the once-invincible phone company flowed from that single brave decision to tell the phone company that it was only the owner of the network and had no right to tell legitimate users how they used the connection they bought.
—No, nobody knew back then but the story is oft-retold now... and the fiesty cable guys who'd once been little local municipal video providers but had coelesced into monopolies fully capable of taking on the telcos—and the sadly diminished FCC knew the implications of the Carterphone decision. And they had no intention of losing control of their network to consumers the way that the old AT&T had. Back in 1996, at the dawn of the internet era when the country was flush with enthusiasm for the new communications network, Congress passed a new telecom act which among other things, tried to reproduce the success of Carterphone by requiring that cable companies open their lines as well and specifically that they allow
"other converter boxes, interactive communications equipment, and other equipment used by consumers to access multichannel video programming and other services offered over multichannel video programming systems, from manufacturers, retailers, and other vendors not affiliated with any multichannel video programming distributor."
In other words, Carterphone for cable. Congress passed the task of enforcement off to the FCC confident that they had done their part to insure a brighter future and turned to confusing other issues. Alas, the FCC of 1996 was not the FCC of their grandfathers and, long story short: this never really happened. The cable companies successfully argued that they had to retain control of "security" and the FCC responded by requiring that the necessary proprietary security be separated from the rest of the box and located in a device that could be used in either the cable company's or a third party company's box. The cable card. Delay followed delay. The FCC's enforcement was pitiful indeed. So pitiful that it tolerated delays that meant that the first generation of cable cards was outdated by the time it was available and cable has still approve a card that is able to give third party producers access to their networks. This dithering about had damaging consequences: it left the producers of products that were clearly superior (in that people were really willing to pay for them); products that had usable interfaces and pioneered Digital Video Recording either bankrupt (Replay) or barely hanging on (TiVo).
Fourteen years later the FCC rule still stands and nobody is expected to actually follow it. Everybody has garnered an exception of one sort or another. All the players have their own version renewed occasionally on ever-varying grounds. The only constant is that the networks have never had to let their customers attach the equivalent of shiny new pink digital phones to their networks.
The consequence is that the much-anticipated digital convergence still hasn't happened. You can't surf the internet on your TV (well, there is an exception we'll get to), you can't do video telephony using your TV as a monitor, setting up recordings over the net or from your smart phone remains an uber-geek activity....and on. We could have used a cable version of the Carterphone. Instead what we got was a slightly faster version of the same access that the telephone companies had been forced to accept over their lines designed for voice. Faster internet, not access to a whole new communications network designed for video and much larger capacities.
The satellite companies never really had to comply with the law—the cable companies successful defense meant that satellite never really had to come up to bat since big brother cable proved capable of fending off the very idea. So satellite got an exception until cable could figure it all out...and cable wasn't about to. As workable cable cards finally neared market acceptance cable whirled around and managed to get the day put off a bit longer by instituting a new non-hardware based software standard which would be oh-so-much better. They got an extension of their exception to work on that. When the telephone companies finally started to get into the provision of video over their networks it was built on the back of the new internet (the one that their lose in Carterphone days helped create), implemented a version of IPTV—and taking a leaf from the well-worn book of cable have claimed that their special technology wasn't compatible with the old cable-card technology either. And (you see where this is going?) they got their version of an exception.
Who does that leave who does have to comply?
Surely you remember the lonely new kid on the block who asked the uncomfortable question? LUS? Apparently the argument is going to be that LUS should be the only guy in the neighborhood that has to follow the rules. This argument comes from none other than Cox Communications whose own exemption to the rule is still in place. Cox doesn't argue that the technology exists to allow LUS to follow the rule. (And it doesn't) Cox just argues that LUS should comply with a rule that it has never, ever, over 14 years done anything but fight itself. Citizens of Lafayette will be amused to learn that they are arguing that they only want to provide a "level playing field." Again. Like the state's (un)Fair Competition Act, you can be sure that when Cox says it wants a level playing field what they really mean is that they want the government to impose limits on Lafayette that it has never had to abide by itself. What is fair about asking your small local competition to abide by rules you yourself have successfully evaded? Of course this isn't about fairness. It's about advantage. In a halfway sane world the FCC would laugh in the face of an effective monopolist like Cox that tried to impose rules on a brand new competitor coming in from the outside any of the major sectors to provide the very high-speed, fiber-to-the-home, low priced competition that the FCC has been sniveling about wanting for the entire 14 years it has failed to enforce the law....but we don't live in a halfway sane regulatory environment.
To pile on the insult the latest is that the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has weighed in. Understandably frustrated after all these years, all the companies that want to make the magical media devices that record all and control all in your living room have demanded that the FCC quit making exceptions and enforce its rules....on a small municipal provider that is actually providing an innovative, powerful, cheap alternative that the FCC says it wants and that is the model of everything the CEA should hope happens to US broadband. Just for the sake of completeness I should note that each of the three-telco, cable, and CEA--have their own candidates for a new technology to enable video network openness. Each of them would dearly love to control that technology and no one can doubt that the one they'd come up with would 1) advantage them, 2) disadvantage their competitors, and 3) enrich the owners of the tech. Nobody's hands are clean.
LUS, of course, doesn't have the wherewithal to develop a new technology itself. The set top box family deployed in Lafayette is apparently the only one that is usable with both the Alcatel equipment the community is using and with IPTV. The fact that the network is all IPTV (translation into analog for analog tier users takes place on the wall of the house) opens up vast new areas for innovation. The 100 meg intranet "campus" is a good example of what a really innovative community-oriented network can do. Neither Cox nor any other cable provider is providing free unthrottled in-network bandwidth to its users. Even more on point: LUS offers our community an internet connection through the IPTV set top box. That the box is natively IP is crucial to that very desireable feature. Subscribers that don't even own a computer are able to surf the net. That's something that IP enables...and something, again, that I don't see that Cox or any of the other guys who have set top boxes have done. Really opening up the set top box is something that Congress was right about. There is huge room for innovation. The FCC's failure to enforce, and Congress' failure to provide adequate oversight to see that the nation's laws are enforced have cost the country dearly.
LUS points out that every other IPTV-using network has already received this waiver and that all they are asking for is the same waiver that Verizon and other established IPTV providers have already secured. To ask new entrants who are actually competing and using the new technology to offer a cheaper, faster, more innovative system is to bear a burden the established corporations do would be stunningly counter-productive.
Let's hope the FCC can find the courage that the FCC forty years ago had, do the right thing here and refuse to reward the bullying of a large corporation who has evaded the very rule that they hope to impose on a cheaper, local, competitor. A competitor who, incidentally, is actually demonstrating the value of innovation on the set top box that the rule is designed to achieve.
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.
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?
The Advertiser reports that Mayor Durel has penned an article on our fiber project in the NATOA Journal. The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers lauded Durel as its "Broadband Hero of the Year" last year and the article is an apparent outgrowth of that award.
The NATAO story (not available online) celebrated the economic development potential of the new system and highlighted the 100 meg intranet according to the Advertiser.
The Broadband Hero award is worth highlighting itself. I had a post prepared on this that never made it out of the draft stage back in November and am chagrined at the omission. NATOA is a muscular association of telecom officers for public bodies that is extremely influential nationally and has lead the fight against bad laws — and kept up the pressure after the laws predictably failed—on issues like municipal broadband and state video franchises. Louisiana has first hand experience in both these areas of how badly these incumbent-written laws have been for local communities. NATOA, then, is both prestigious and determined. Getting an award from them, being invited to present at their conference, and having an article placed in their national journal bragging on your mid-sized south Louisiana city is no small thing on the national scene.
The reason for the "Hero" designation is evident from the wording of the award:
...for championing the need for robust, competitive communications services in his community; for championing the cause of local decision-making in communications; and for leading his community to counter efforts to thwart local communications initiatives.
Durel and Huval's muscular, public, relentless defense of the fiber project was absolutely essential to its success. Many communities lack determined leaders and the award is well-deserved.
According to a couple of friends KVOL has been hosting a rerun of the same old FUD attacks on the fiber optic network LUS is currently building. It's August and, I suppose, they can't find anything real to cover in these hot, lazy summer days. The latest bit of retreadnonsense came yesterday when one of the 3 antifiber guys during the referendum, Neal Breakfield, was on the afternoon drive-time show. (He's supposed to be on again this afternoon, so if you want to tune in and put up your two cents worth try 1330 AM from 4 to 6...It would be useful to remind him why his argument lost back during the fiber fight.)
The folks at KVOL are trying to make a go of this talk radio thing. (And not too successfully apparently: The last Arbitron rating has the station bringing up the rear with a 24 out of 28 rating in our market based on a .5 market share.) They've apparently decided that being anti-everything is the formula for success in talk radio—but it's not working so far. Maybe only about .5 percent of people of Lafayette are that negative.
Be that as it may, the current jihad they're apparently carrying on against the LUSFiber build is a nonstarter that is guaranteed to put them on the wrong side of most of the community. The whole issue was thoroughly "talked" out 3 years ago and the fiber advocates won a resounding victory at the polls. KVOL would do better to go after the nearly 2/3s of the population that voted for the idea and leave their .5 percent antis to the pleasant pursuit of complaining about unprofessional dress of the guys that cut grass along the highways and their neighbors' chickens.
Update 8/15/08: Neal Breakfield has said in the comments that my remarks about KVOL's Arbitron rates were "baseless." They are not. Though Todd Elliot called and tried to demand that I take this post down and Stephanie Ware tried to make the same plea the truth is the truth. Arbitron does ranks KVOL at the bottom of the barrel in listenership. Neither Todd nor Stephanie tried to deny that what I said was true—they just didn't, contrary to their fearless-truthtellers on-air personas, want the public (or their advertisers, I presume) to know this inconvenient truth about their own organization.
KVOL may well be on to something regarding their redflex crusade. I don't think automated, privatized "policing" is wise public policy either. It might even do something for their ratings. But whatever good they do the community—or themselves—by pointing out real problems they lose when they make the common criticism that they are just "anti-everything" credible. Attacking even the good things this community is doing for itself is a sure-fire way to give ammunition to those who would criticize KVOL as merely anti-everything. Lafayette is pro-fiber. We proved it at the polls 3 years ago. Lafayette went through a huge public battle over fiber, the community was as well-informed as one can be over a complex public infrastructure issue. There were full page ads filled with the names of people and businesses that were willing to publicly support our fiber initiative. And the community decided to do for itself what the incumbents plainly said they would not do for us. The vote was 2 to 1. The people know what they want and they know what they voted for and hearing KVOL attack it only serves to confirm the idea that KVOL is anti-anything. I'm giving good advice here: if you have a good cause stick to it. Don't muddy the waters.
The reader who wants to confirm KVOL's rankings for themselves can travel to the Arbitron radio page and in the pull down menu on that page labled "market" select "Lafayette, LA." There you will find that I was actually as generous as possible in my characterization of KVOL's ranking in my original post. In the latest rankings, in Spring of '08, Arbitron ranked KVOL as tied for last place with with KPEL and WYPY among ranked stations with all 3 clocking in at a .5% listenership.
Other corrections: I had mispelled Arbitron in the original post. That is now corrected. I've also included the link to the radio page in there.
A key issue for any community network is the hardware users have to have to connect to the network. Certainly that was a, perhaps the, big issue during the fiber fight here in Lafayette. LCG and LUS promised to work hard to get appropriate hardware into poorer households. (We've been keeping our eyes open here. —1,2, among others.)
That's getting cheaper. Amazingly cheaper. We've reported on cheap alternatives before but today's winner in the cheap Network Attached Device (NAD) sweepstakes is a little laptop that cost 130 dollars apiece in batches of 50... Well, wow......You can get 50 for 6500 dollars.
The device is one of the new category christened "netbooks." (Remember "ultraportables?" Like that. Only less.)
The price of these guys continues to fall....without visible limit. At 130 dollars a pop this would make a very interesting—and pretty damned affordable—digital divide device.
Not a perfect one, mind you. The specs are kinda puny, in line with the price: A 7 inch screen, a slow (by this year's standards) processor, no wifi, no hard drive (well a, 1 gig solid state drive, aka flash memory).
The lack of wifi or even a real network connection makes this thing a poor digital divide for Lafayette. A laptop whose only connectivity if via a dongle? Hunh? Sometimes you really do need to talk to the marketing guys. But if it had wifi then a network like Lafayette's could easily make up for the meager specs in things like storage space and processor power. That can all be located on the network. All you need to have in your mobile device is a fast way to get online and the capacity to run a decent browser. In lafayette the 100 meg intranet will allow anyone to run programs and store data online without much penalty. (Imagine an on-network server with all of Google's apps -- or a homegrown equivalent-- serving out services over a 100 meg connection. Who needs to pay endlessly to keep up Microsoft Office?)
This may not be quite the thing. But the day is coming when a iPhone type device is crossed with a tiny laptop like this and becomes the tote-around thing to keep you connected and on top of your work. ...
And when it comes it will cost less than 130 dollars. And places like Lafayette will be where it will be most valuable. Keep you eyes open.
BellSouth-AT&T Lobbyist/Jindal Legislative Ramrod Tommy Williams is going back to being a lobbyist again the T-P reports. No big surprise, that.
We've been watching Tommy's career ever since he was a BellSouth Louisiana Vice President during the fiber fight here in Lafayette. Tommy's son, John, was the BellSouth rep in Lafayette at that time. John was the one, you may recall, who first denied that BellSouth had anything to do with the infamous Lafayette push poll but later had to admit that BS had, in fact, come up with the idea, while complaining that, his father's standing not withstanding, he didn't know anything about a poll run in his area. Not an illustrious clan. Tommy left his job lobbying for BS and became an indpendent contractor for them back when AT&T bought up BellSouth and continued lobbying for the company right on through the transition—he still officially represents the phone company on the Broadband Advisory Council.
Williams senior is giving up his job as Bobby Jindal's Legislative Director. In that position he was responsible for making sure the administration's legislative agenda made it through the House and Senate.
The Times-Picayune article's take on the resignation emphasizes the tattered relationship between the legislature and Jindal in the wake of the last session--and it hit the net before Jindal flopped back to flip and vetoed the legislative pay raise after all this morining. Tattered is probably now a mild description of the legislature's pique at loosing that particular perk.
My perhaps cynical guess is, however, that the AT&T lobbyist had already managed to pass what his longer-term employers thought was most important, even if it wasn't particularly part of the Governor's agenda: passing the state-wide video franchise law.
Truth be told, putting a lobbyist in charge of the lobbying for an ethics package never made all that much sense. The judgment that the administration's legislative ethics package actually damages the cause of ethic's reform in the "gret state of Louisiana" has been coalescing since the resignation of 9 of the 11 members of the ethics board.
Williams didn't actually get much done for Jindal that Jindal he could be proud of. On the other hand, AT&T will surely be happy to have him back home. Practically speaking, spending much more time representing a governor's ethics program whose main thrust has turned out to be making sure that legislators bear the brunt of the public disclosure laws that Jindal thinks will heal our state's image (while opposing transparency for his own administration) will not endear him to the legislators that are his audience in his real job. As a lobbyist he needs to get back on the job of glad-handing and getting on the good side of his real constituency.
His resignation, breathless reporting aside, is no big surprise.
All in all though, his abscence has to be good for Lafayette's fiber project. As we've noted before, his presence in the governor's inner councils can't be a good thing for a project that he has vehemetly opposed.
(Tip o' the hat to Mike who sent in the pointer to this one.)
History counts for a lot in trying to understand a community and Terry Huval's commentary in today's Advertiser lashing the railroad monopoly is a good starting point for understanding how history works.
There's been a lot of comment on "conservative" Lafayette could have voted, overwhelmingly, to start its own community-owned telecommunications utility. As a community which relishes confounding the expectations of outsiders we are happy to encourage the perception that we can't be easily predicted.
In truth, what this community calls conservativism has very little to do with what is called conservative elsewhere in this country. (I suggest you spend a few minutes reflecting on Mardi Gras, Festival International, and the multitude of drive-through daiquiri shacks before you too quickly reject that statement.)
We often make reference to our latin heritage in explaining the cultural differences between South Louisiana and the rest of the South or the rest of the country—and that is accurate, as far as it goes. Just "being different" goes a long way toward explaining how a community that takes bold stands understands itself. But more particular histories count as well.
The fact that Lafayette has an LUS — a broad community-owned set of utility systems— makes it different from the adjoining towns. Our experience is different; we have a different history because we've decided to do things, like build a utility, for ourselves. We pay attention to different parts of the world precisely because we can make a difference in how our utilities are delivered--something most communities do not bother to interest themselves in because the cannot change it much.
So nobody here is surprised when the head of our local utility reaches out to repeatedly lash the railroad monopoly.
We don't realize that ideas like these are vanishingly rare in the public conversation of most of our United States:
A recent guest column inaccurately addressed attempts by the Lafayette Utilities System to curb monopolistic railroad pricing....The real issue is that Lafayette is a captive rail customer that has no reasonable choice but to use railroads for coal deliveries to its power plant and has become subject to uncontrolled monopolistic rail pricing power...Rail companies take advantage of customers like Lafayette because they are allowed to do so.
Monopoly corporate power—and the federal government's collusion in maintaining it—is not a topic for discussion in most communities because most communities don't have utilities which are victims of monopoly pricing which are consequentially forced to pass on overcharges to the community they serve:
Due to these rail price abuses, LUS customers and businesses are paying a $15 million premium in electricity costs annually - with a cost share of $1.5 million being paid by our local education system.
And LUS can do something about it on our behalf. Terry Huval has repeatedly testified in Congress regarding the railroad monopoly's exploitive pricing. There, no doubt, having the head of a small southern utility company stand shoulder to shoulder with giant mining corporations, the chemical companies and the oil industry, lends credibility to the claims that last mile monopolies in the rail industry are bad for everyone.
A number of public and private industries, including our state's petrochemical industries, have banded nationally to form Consumers United for Rail Equity. Together, we support the passage of laws placing rail companies under the same anti-trust restrictions imposed on other businesses.
Monopolies are, in short, bad for business and bad for communities. Lafayette's ownership of its own utility is a continuing source of rational, non-ideological conversation about such issues. LUS is a constant reminder that public ownership, good service, being pro-business, and being pro-community stance are not inconsistent.
Conversations like these are opportunities to take another look at the odd modern rhetoric that demeans taxation, recoils at public ownership, dismisses reasonable regulation of natural monopolies, and glorifies private greed. It isn't true, for example, that all public services are a result of taxation. LUS is supported by fees-for-service. And those freely paid fees actually displace some of the taxes that other communities must impose:
Contrary to the misstatements made by the guest columnist, LUS is not supported by tax revenues of any kind. Instead, LUS makes substantial payments to help support the cost of local government functions, such as fire and police.
By contrast the federal and state governments often directly subsidize or give other special breaks to huge industries like the railroads--these cost governments income which must be made up by taxes. In most of the country mentioning such favoritism is considered an impolite violation of the illusion that corporations don't seek or accept . Not in Lafayette:
On the other hand, the major railroad systems have had a long and continuing history of receiving governmental assistance directly from tax dollars paid by citizens and businesses....
Rail companies falsely suggest these proposals will "re-regulate" or place financial burden on the railroads. Reading the elements of the proposed legislation and reviewing the financial growth in recent years of the railroad companies quickly dispel those myths.
In short, we have an ongoing, concrete conversation in Lafayette about practical local decisions that are mostly abstract and ideological in other parts of the country. It makes a different sort of sense in Lafayette to rail against railroad monopolies (and telecommunications monopolies) because we don't have to just lie down and accept it. We have utilities that can fight back in our defense. That makes a lot of difference in the public discourse here. And helps explain why we were able to understand how empty the ideology offered by the incumbents during the fiber fight was: we'd heard it all before.
As Huval says in his closing statement:
LUS will continue to represent its customer-owners by standing up to fight entities and practices that hurt our community.
Having someone to fight for us is a huge advantage. Having someone to keep or local conversation grounded in reality is an even greater advantage in the long run. Thanks, LUS.
Cox Communications has opened its new headquarters for what is left of its operations on our side of the Atchafalaya basin. (Cox shed its former holdings to the north and west back in 2005) It's a serious investment in the region and looks like a nice building—complete with meditation rooms. The Advertiser's tone is in the traditional laudatory vein that local newspapers inevitably adopt whenever a company opens a new building or invests in the area. It's a welcome relief, I am sure, from the usual grind of the news beat where "good" news usually means "no news" and I'm pleased that Cox, its employees, and the area have a new building.
But I can't help but be annoyed by Cox continuing to run out its silly "Me too!" line about it having fiber and nobody knowing about it. [Note that the online version has a final "press release" paragraph on fiber that didn't make it into the print version.] This is smoke and mirrors and it is intended to confuse the public about the difference between Lafayette's new system and its older one. It also reveals that Cox still doesn't understand what happened during the fiber referendum fight and why it lost that fight.
Cox has tried, in its press releases and its advertising to say that it has "a fiber network." This article, to its credit, doesn't repeat the silliness of using that phrase—whether that is due to the good judgment of the writer or the fact that Cox has quit trying to run that particular form of misinformation is not clear. Just for the record: the implication that Cox has anything like the fiber to the home network that LUS is currently building is just silly and Lafayette is now sophisticated enough to both understand that and to understand why Cox would want to obscure the difference. Every network in town has a fiber core: Lafayette's ring, AT&T's network, Cox's, and the miscellaneous national networks that also have terminations in our city. Cox, like all its competition uses fiber's massive capacity as a the cheapest way to handle massive amounts of bandwidth where it has to have that capacity: in the backbone that supplies the less capable copper leading to homes. Having a fiber backbone just isn't noteworthy—what is noteworthy is how close you bring that fiber to your final customer. Only LUS will bring that massive capacity all the way to your home or business.
What's more interesting to me than that old story is that telling it seems to mean that Cox actually believes that it lost the vote in Lafayette because the people believed that they wanted "fiber." So Cox is determined to pretend that it will give us fiber (not quite to the home) too.... But "fiber" is not the reason that Cox lost that election. It lost because it tried to deceive us about fiber to the home—something it is still trying to do with its current PR double-talk. In the end it all came down to trust. And Cox proved itself, through deceptive PR, silly "academicforums," insulting push polls, threatsto our jobs, and endless rhetoric about the dangers of a trusted local utility providing local services cheaply that it couldn't be trusted. Every time its PR personnel try pass off some half-true claim about fiber networks Cox reminds us why we didn't trust them back then. Until it figures out why it lost in 05 Cox will continue to lose in Lafayette.
-----on reflection------ Truth is that fiber isn't all that Lafayette wanted by the time we got to the end of the fiber fight. By the time we voted we knew we wanted to control our own destiny and the fiber fight just proved the context for coming to that decision. As our national history has played itself out telecommunications has turned out to be an essential, and a monopoly business. Those sorts of businesses ought to be public utilities, not private monopolies. It took our wanting fiber and the ugly battle to win it to get Lafayette to realize that. But now we understand that every community should own its own network. Even if it isn't fiber. The social and economic benefits of controlling that locally and keeping that economic stimulus entirely in local hands is enormous and every community that can ought to do the same.
It isn't fiber.....it is trust...and local control.
It's a very Joey Durel speech. There's a touch of humor, some testiness, some pride, a bit of anger, and a dash of drama. You heard it during the fiber fight and you can remind yourself how hopeful that sounded back in the day by listening to this latest installment.
And it's worth the listen. Tidbits to whet your appetite:
He emphasized the purpose of keeping our children home...a central, perhaps the central theme, of the fiber fight.
About Lafayette's network:
We're going to have something—and I think this is a strong statement—we're going to have, that you are probably not going to have in Washington for 20-25 years from now.... And I think that is a sin for America... And when I say that, and I'm not just stressing the fiber optics....We are going to be able to provide our citzens, peer to peer, customer to customer, a 100 megabits for free.
Later he corrected himself to say that you'd have to buy some level of service...but that your insystem, "intranet" bandwidth would be that fast and wouldn't cost extra. That wowed the committee and they asked about it later.
About the digital divide:
People on our system will be able surf the internet from their television's with a wireless keypad and a wireless mouse.
That is the really new news from this session. I know what folks have been talking about and I am not positive what this refers to but I suspect that what Durel is referring to is a settop box arrangement where you can surf and work email from the same box that decodes your cable signal. I like the idea—if it is done right and it would be easy to get very wrong. ....More when I know more.
On Congress acting to protect municipal broadband— With tongue firmly in cheek Durel said:
I hope 49 states outlaw doing what we are doing....What I would tell those states is: "Please send your technology companies to Lafayette and we'll welcome them with open arms and a gumbo."
The point he was making was that he really hoped was that the Congress would pass the law they were discussing at the hearing and give other communities the right to follow Lafayette's lead.
Joey Durel presented Lafayette's case for municipal broadband to Washington this morning. He spoke today before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The committee hearing was in reference to a proposed new law called the "Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act." Most attention on the net and in trade news has focused on the first section of the bill which focuses on making wireless networks more consumer-friendly. Somearticles have suggested that such a law would result in open, unlocked cell phones. The iPhone, for instance, couldn't be locked in to only AT&T. Others would force companies to provide more transparent and accurate information on coverage and terms. All that, of course, would be a great thing.
But the primary interest of those of us in Lafayette, and the reason our Mayor showed up on capital hill, lies in the second part, Title II: Community Broadband Empowerment. That portion would prevent any state forbidding municipal networks—something that lobbyists have successfully promoted in a number of states...and something that they tried to do in Lousisiana where only Governor Blanco's clear signal that she'd veto anything that both sides couldn't agree to lead to a compromise that allowed Lafayette to proceed, though with significant unfair restrictions on its ability to compete. The gist:
No State or local government statute, regulation, or other legal requirement may prohibit, or have the effect of prohibiting, any public provider from providing advanced communications capability or service to any person or to any public or private entity.
Now that leaves significant wiggle room for endless litigation. (Lafayette knows well the danger of laws being used to simply delay a local project. We lost years going down that path.) Louisiana's (Un)Fair Competition Act significantly cripples the fiscal operation of any municipality in the state that wants to offer its citizens a cheaper, more competitive deal—large swaths of the law incongruously force the state regulators to raise (not lower, raise) the price they offer their citizen/customers based on expenses that municipalities do not have. (NO portion of the law sets an upper limit on prices....this is "regulation in the public interest" where the public's interest is scarcely served. Clearly no one thinks the citizen-owners will overcharge themselves. So all that is left is to protect is...the enormous corporations??? AT&T don't need to be protected from Lafayette, quite the opposite is true.) Sadly, Lafayette may prove that such laws, as unfair as they are, do not "prohibit, or have the effect of prohibiting" an exceptionally determined municipality. It would be unfair to the nation as a whole if Lafayette's unusual energy and determination had the effect of barring communities across the nation from safely following its lead.
A good federal law would not leave such large loopholes--states ought also to be prohibited from enacting laws that would make local communities labor under regulatory disadvantages that do not apply equally to their large, corporate competitors.
I didn't hear about the session until it was already underway but thanks to the miracles of the internet was able to tune in to session then. I missed Joey's initial remarks but captured most of the discussion that followed. That went as you might expect: Representatives reperesented the interests of their state (or corporation). The representative from California was worried that strong California consumer guarantees not be diluted--while the speaker from the industry clearly hoped it would be. The senator from AT&T's San Antonio hometown insisted that "government" had some unfair advantage—completely ignoring how crazy was the idea that Lafayette's little power/sewer/water utility could ever operate at anything other than a huge competitive disadvantage to the immense monolithic power of AT&T.
Joey acquitted himself well; insisting that we were doing for ourselves what corporations refused to do for us and had done so with the uniform support of local business and local bipartisan political endorsement. Not to mention an overwhelming vote of the people. That seemed hard for the opponents to respond to—as well it might. The contrast between someone whose first interest was his community and someone who was trying promote corporate interests instead was, I am sure, uncomfortable for the representatives who are hoping to prevent the passage of such a law.
Some fun sound bites: Durel was talking about taking the fight all the way to the state supreme court. He commented:
"those were probably the best marketing dollar we could had ever spent. It was great publicity for us."
Now thats a bit of bravado. It might even be kinda true.
Several times Joey was challenged with some industry rhetoric—mostly about promises that the incumbents made or didn't make. Several times he answered:
"Smoke and mirrors."
That's the Joey we know and remember from the fiber fight. There was little such bluntness in the rest of the discussion.
Some of the questioners seemed to be suspicious of the very idea that the community might offer a product for less money than the amount they were paying to buy their service from private providers. Durel was ready for that one. He said that he'd tell them what he told his own community:
"You'll still be able to have less quality for more money."
And the room erupted into laughter.
NOTE: My thanks to the alert reader who pointed me to this event!
Update 10:20 PM: The archive for this meeting is already up. I'm happy since I missed the first of the live meeting. You can get the written version of Durel's remarks and stream or download an audio of the meeting. That's pretty impressive transparency...and a pretty nifty use of the internet to make government accessible. Durel's set-piece talk starts at 28 minutes. He deviates significantly--very significantly, it is almost a completely different speech from the written remarks and the spoken version is much more interesting, emphasizing keeping our children home, development, that we'll have peer to peer 100 megs for "free," and about the digital divide: "People on our system will be able surf the internet from their television, with a wireless keypad and a wireless mouse."
With tongue firmly in cheek Durel also said: "I hope 49 states outlaw doing what we are doing. Please send your technology companies to Lafayette and we'll welcome them with open arms and a gumbo."
LUS launched its brand and a new informational website this morning. Not at the site of the new headend building, as had been planned, but at city hall. A storm rolling the through Acadiana led to the last minute change of venue.
We did get a groundbreaking ceremony of sorts. A group of advocates from the administration and the public lined up in the front of the council meeting room and posed for a series of photos with golden shovels. As symbolism it was effective: we saw folks from the administration who'd been instrumental in the plan coming together standing shoulder to shoulder again with community activists and supporters. All lined up proudly in front of the room grinning to beat the band. There were two golden shovels and in a nice bit of symbolism Mayor Joey Durel handled one while community leader Gobb Williams posed with the other. I've gotta get a picture of that.
For those of us involved in the fiber fight as members of Lafayette Coming Together it was a special point of pride to see some of the key members of the activist organization that drove the referendum forward honored: Andre Comeaux, Kevin Domingue, Max Hoyt, Mike Stagg, John St. Julien, and Gobb Williams.
Less symbolically and more substantially we got our first glimpse of the new branding devices. What's the service to be called? "LSUFiber." That's what you were already calling it? That, I think, is the point: without any other name by which to tag it we all got in the habit during the long fiber fight of calling what we were fighting for "LUS fiber" --everyone already knows what the term refers to; the identity is already well-established in the community. Why spend a lot of money trying to get some new term accepted? The new logotype that is pictured above was also on display. Expect to see it on a new fleet of trucks and service vehicles in your neighborhood. They'll carry the slogan: "Building a Fiber-Fast Community."
Citizens should start looking for door hangers announcing the upcoming service--that door hanger will carry a return card that will allow people to express interest and get in line for first crack at serrvice when it is finally offered in their region.
We also got access to the new informational website. It's a flash-dependent site you can find at http://www.lusfiber.com/ There you'll find an initial FAQ and, tantilizingly, a chance to sign up for news updates. As the rollout gets underway the site will include updates on the construction and new services—both of which announcements are eagerly awaited.
What didn't we get? Any announcement of just where the build will begin and who will get first crack at our new service. I'd hoped we get that today since I've had hints that a large percentage of Lafayette, including my neighborhood would be in the first section. But we're to be kept wondering a bit longer though Terry Huval promised that it'd be revealed soon...and that eager citizens would be given a chance to express their interest and get in line early as the day of deliverance came near. (Ok, no he didn't phrase it quite like that. :-) )
I spotted this during a weekend drive in the country with out of town friends. It's on Wilderness Road (aptly named) in the extreme northeastern corner of the parish. I'm pretty sure the sign is one of those Robert Dafford, the muralist, put out on his own dime during the fiber fight.
No, this house, won't be among the first to get served by LUS...in fact it will probably be one of the last places in the parish to get it, even presuming (as I tend to) that one day fiber will blanket our area. No doubt the owner of this house knows that—and supports the idea anyway.
But the desire is clear. We all share it. We all should get it.
Food For Thought: Wouldn't you rather your master be you?
I'm going to have to lay out an unfamiliar thesis: You, fair reader, are almost certainly not on the internet. Not really. You are a second class citizen who is not allowed to make many of the most basic decisions that full members are free to make; you are a dependent of your modem and the wireline owner it is connected to. Generously: you are a client of AT&T or Cox or ____ (your local duopolist here). Less generously: you are a second class citizen of the internet allowed only the access that Big Daddy allows you. And Big Daddy, as in Tennessee Williams' play, is more interested in wealth and power than he is the welfare of his dependents.
Full citizenship on the web can be defined simply enough: full citizens can use their connection in any way that they want. They are independent actors who are free to make available or view anything.
That's not you.
Take a look at your TOS (Terms of Service). Cox and AT&T's, for instance, do meaningfully differ. But they agree about the essentials that concern us here:
1) You are the client, clients of clients are forbidden; you may not distribute service to others, 2) You can't talk bad about Big Daddy, (e.g.: Customer is prohibited from engaging in any other activity, whether legal or not, that AT&T determines in its sole discretion, to be harmful to its subscribers, operations, network(s). This includes ... or which causes AT&T or the AT&T IP Services to be viewed unfavorably by others.) 3) Free speech? No sucha thing. They get to say what you can say. (e.g.: "Cox reserves the right to refuse to post or to remove any information or materials from the Service, in whole or in part, that it, in Cox's sole discretion, deems to be illegal, offensive, indecent, or otherwise objectionable." 4) No Free Enterprise. You can't sell things, for that you need the master's special permission and a (higher-priced) service, regardless of how much traffic you use, 5) It's not your connection. "Unlimited, always-on" connections are both limited and subject to an abrupt end. AT&T is bizarrely vague while Cox gives clear limits--which are seldom enforced. It's notyour connection; you need to remember that. 6) Your client status is a privilege, not a right. They can kick you to the curb at any time using whatever rationale seems most useful at the moment. (e.g.: Customer's failure to observe the guidelines set forth in this AUP may result in AT&T taking actions anywhere from a warning to a suspension of privileges or termination of your Service(s). ...AT&T's decisions with respect to interpretation of the AUP and appropriate remedial actions are final and determined by AT&T in its sole discretion.)
7) Lucky 7 Laigniappe clause: Masters don't have to follow the rules, only clients. (e.g.: AT&T reserves the right, but does not assume the obligation, to strictly enforce the AUP.)
You are in a master-client relationship with your network provider. You are NOT a full citizen of the internet. Your "location," your IP address belongs to someone else. They have an assured, static IP. You do not. As long as they own that property you are dependent upon them and they can dictate the terms of that use.
Be aware that this is not the way it was supposed to be. The internet, right down to its IP core was designed around your freedom to connect.
One way of looking at network citizenship is through the lens of internet protocols and the operation of "the end to end principle." From wikipedia:
The end-to-end principle is one of the central design principles of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) widely used on the Internet as well as in other protocols and distributed systems in general. The principle states that, whenever possible, communications protocol operations should be defined to occur at the end-points of a communications system, or as close as possible to the resource being controlled.
That's a mouthful. Translated: The internet is designed as a transmission device that is supposed to be controlled by those on ends of a communication. You and the person at the other end. A request from one end is simply passed on to the other end—no single positive, centrally-controlled "circuit" exists. No controller stands in the middle. This is in contrast to the underlying design of the phone network with its centralized circuit switching system that designates a circuit for you and holds it open. (We're talking about protocols, now....not physical implementation or the practical experience of users.)
Net neutrality battles are raging around the edge of this nascent war. We want to be full citizens of the new order. The incumbents would prefer that we be clients, vassels, and that they be the masters. Right now they are winning. Right now few of us even realize that current order is not necessary or natural—it was arranged for somebody else's benefit; not for ours.
It really is that simple.
What we need to recognize is the nature of the war. What we need to be fighting for is ownership of our own connection. For full citizenship. To kill the Master-client relationship that constrains our current access to the network.
Ownership of the network is the most complete solution. Any limits we impose on ourselves are limits that we impose; they are not the dictates of the master. We may start out copying what we know in some ways. But that won't last.
Lafayette, with its community-owned, fiber-based network utility is a good example of how that will work. From the begining things will be different here. We'll have static IP addresses...and a lot of potential will flow from that. We'll have full access to the speeds and capacity of our own network--that is what the 100 meg intranet is all about. As it becomes more and more obvious that many of the limits imposed by the current owners are not natural and not in the interests of users we'll change those aspects as well.
That's the real value of the battle fought and won here in Lafayette.
Here's an appalling bit of news: Governor-elect Bobby Jindal has chosen Tommy Williams, a recently retired BellSouth lobbyist, to be his top legislative lobbyist.
Really.
Jindal--who ran emphasizing an ethics platform—is putting a lobbyist in as his legislative director. And not just any lobbyist: The former chief lobbyist of the most legislatively powerful corporation in the state. That's gotta be a funny man to put in charge of what Jindal has said was his first priority in the legislature: Ethics reform. My guess is that no legislator will misunderstand the obvious meaning: Ethics reform is not aimed at stopping corporations from buying our legislature. Since that is the most serious form of corruption in this state ethics reform a la Jindal must be about something else. Appointing a major lobbyist to this position is hugely symbolic: it is akin to putting the fox in charge of hen house. No doubt the Louisiana legislature breathed a collective sigh of relief. They've seen this game played out before. Lots of rhetoric but with the "right" people in charge nobody really has to worry.
An AP wire brief reports on Wednesday's announcement. The bare bones report out of Baton Rouge is simple and does no more than highlight his former position. We here in Lafayette, however, have a rich history to draw on with Tommy Williams and his family.
Tommy Williams, seasoned readers may recall, is the father of the BellSouth legacy that ran BS' operations in Lafayette during the fiber fight. John Williams was a loyal son of the company who toed the company line on both how unnecessary fiber was and on how "someday real soon" BellSouth was going to run fiber. (Contradictions never faze such folks.) Williams was the man in charge when Fiber 411's anti-fiber petition went out on company trucks. And he was the fellow who backed down when employee resistance and popular resentment made it clear that was a bad move. He was the fella whose designed-to mislead remarks about "functional equivalence" inspired the "Slick Sam Spade" video. He had to crawfish about his company's lying about their role in the season's ugliest moment: the push poll that ignited a firestorm of derision.
A paragon of ethics. But the senior Williams, Tommy Williams, was the guy who carried on the battle against Lafayette at the state level with an even more impressive lack of character. Tommy was prime mover in pushing through the (Un)Fair Competition Act--the law that tried to outlaw the project, did provide avenues for delaying it for years, and which remains a knife pointed at its heart. Tommy followed up on the legislative and legal tactics by taking the battle to the Public Service Commission (PSC) and trying to convince it to institute all sorts of anti-Lafayette rules. He mostly failed but having failed he persisted in trying to at least delay the bond issue. BellSouth's lawsuits failed--but added to the delay. That didn't work either but it wasn't for lack of trying. We will probably never know who funded the Naquin lawsuits that were the last to stretch out the delay—but we do know they used material from BellSouth lawsuits that weren't yet publicly available.
Tommy Williams (with his son) has been a consistent and relentless foe of Lafayette's aspirations. Williams balked at nothing to oppose what the people of Lafayette voted for. He was in the line of command on all the questionable tactics and had a visible hand in much of it. None of it was ethical unless you subscribe to the anything-goes-for-a-bit-of-profit school of ethics. I, and I think most Lousiana's subscribe to that older standard that has to do with honor and character. An honorable man doesn't do dishonorable things at anyone's bidding.
This is the man who will be in charge of shepherding our new governor's ethics package through the legislature. I'd watch closely.
Terry Huval of LUS, qouted in a recent IND blog item is more forgiving than I can convince myself to be. He says:
“Unless we see something otherwise,” Huval continues, “I’m going to trust that Tommy’s going to follow what the governor wants to do, and my hopes are that the governor wants to do the right things.”
That's trusting that the man is the sort that can put aside a lifetime of carrying water for his bosses and invests a lot of hope in the idea that he is only a loyal agent of his new master. I'm afraid I can't be so trusting. In my experience people who've spent most of their lives justifying something are committed to it—especially if they were required to convince others of the righteousness of that position. But even if you trust that Tommy Williams can be honestly bought he's still got a lifetime of habits in thinking about a set of issues that matter very much to Lafayette.
Who is talking to Jindal? Who in Lafayette has a pipeline to the new governor that can act as a counter-balance to the natural inclinations the man he is relying on to pass every other element of his agenda?
I hope someone is thinking about it and developing that pipeline.
She shouldn't be considered and no Acadiana region legislator should support her bid.
The fast rundown:
Broome is the legislator that "authored"the infamous anti-Lafayette revision to the (un)Fair Competition Act. That bill, eventually passed in drastically ammended form, was submitted only 1 year after the "compromise" law was passed and was the incumbents' attempt to get additional advantage before the law was ever used the first time.
That act was clearly written by and submitted at the behest of Cox Communications.
It would have forced a second referendum on Lafayette
It would have fined Lafayette $900,000 dollars if the voters approved building a fiber network of their own
To add insult to injury the law would have given that nearly $1 million dollars to Cox!
Lafayette's people rose up in a campaign of letter writing and calling that led Broome to recant the more obvious mistakes in "her" bill, ask our representatives to tell the people of Lafayette that she was not a "vicious" person, and to say that she was not planning on returning to Lafayette until "it's safe."
Ms Broome has demonstrated her incompetence and her willingness to carry water for entrenched special interests to the detriment of the people she was elected to represent.
She has not earned any position of respect or honor.
PS: If that's not enough to convince you, you might need to be reminded that this is the same Sharon Weston Broome that embarrassed the state by seriously suggesting that the state of Louisiana pass a resolution saying that it was our understanding that Darwin's theory of evolution is racist.
Kevin Blanchard over at the Advocate reports that a franchise agreement between LUS and the Lafayette Consolidated Government (LCG) will be introduced at this Tuesday's City-Parish Council meeting.
While it is 1) technical, 2) presented as an uninteresting "me too" copy of Cox's, and 3) no doubt a terminally boring read this will be extremely important to Lafayette consumers and citizens—try not to let this slide by you. To understand why the franchise agreement is big deal and what shapes it I'll have to provide some background from both the state and federal levels. Stick with it: It will have a lot to do with how much you pay for cable and internet—and it will have a huge effect on City-Parish revenues with an indirect effect on how much tax you have to pay for basic local government services. (This document should every bit as important to you as a sales or property tax ordinance--and will probably have a bigger effect on Lafayette's future than any single tax ordinance ever has.)
As Blanchard points out, the oddity in this agreement is that it will require LUS to pay itself (for attaching to its own poles) and to pay its parent organization (LCG) a fee to access its own customers over the rights of way LCG owns.
That does sound a bit strange doesn't it? Why bother? Doesn't this just introduce odd inefficiencies and distort costs?
Yes, it does — and it is intended to. On to the story behind the story.
Some State of Louisiana Background: Loyal readers will recall (1,2,3) that BellSouth (now AT&T) and Cox pushed a law through the Louisiana legislature back in '04 shortly after LUS announced its intentions to build a fiber-optic network. That law was intended to stop Lafayette from building a network at all. That story is a long and ugly tale of corporate lobbying and legislative foolishness that LPF covered extensively. Luckily Governor Blanco forced a compromise on the legislature that let Lafayette go forward — but the rewritten-by-committee bill left Lafayette open to legal challenges and imposed a minefield of restrictions and regulations that apply only to municipal telecom utilities. Regulations, that is, that apply only to Lafayette.
Flying the flag of "free enterprise" the two enormously powerful wireline cable and phone monopoly enterprises played the poor-me role of disadvantaged competitors who needed protection from the competition threatened by the city of Lafayette's local electrical, water, and sewer utility. Lousisiana's legislature rushed to protect them from this threat. Prior to this law LUS and Lafayette could have simply started up a utility in this area--as it can in electricity or sewerage or natural gas--without any heavy-handed restriction by the state. There would have been no legal basis for a lawsuit to try and prevent it and no way to impose special costs or regulation only on a utility owned by the people of Lafayette. The Louisiana "Fair" Competition Act changed that.
The law provides for a way to drive up the "paper" costs and a regulatory mechanism for ensuring that those higher costs are actually paid by the customers of LUS' Fiber division. LUS is required to, for instance, pay itself a fee for the use of its own poles and the rights of way that the community owns that is the same as it or the city would charge private companies. (Note that LUS already bears the real cost of building, maintaining, and replacing that property and that those costs are not subtracted from these state-imposed fees. We, and only we, pay twice.) These pay-it-to-yourself "costs" would merely be the silly imposition of a paper shuffle if the state had not required that those costs be passed on to the customer. But that is what the law does.
What is interesting is that the state constitution specifically outlaws using the Public Service Commission (PSC) to regulate publicly owned utilities. (Based on the presumption, I assume, that we as both owners and voters can do that for ourselves.) Since using the PSC to regulate public bodies is illegal, the tortured solution was to place the supposed responsibility in the hands of the state legislative auditor, who has neither the expertise nor the staff to do the job. Recognizing that "problem," the (un)Fair Competition law directs the PSC to both suggest rules to the auditor and to then enforce those rules. This is pretty transparently an evasion of the state's basic law but, hey, they write the laws, right?
Even more interesting, the regulations that the PSC are required to enforce are designed to raise the costs to the consumer. If that seems to you like a funny role to ask a PUBLIC Service Commission to play, I'd have to say it seems odd to me too. I had thought the role of the PSC was to protect the public from being overcharged or taken advantage of in other ways. I was not under the impression that it existed to protect large corporations from competition. Silly me. My guess is that the folks over at the PSC aren't all that happy about it either. It is not the job they signed up for.
The central mechanism that these PSC/Legislative Auditor regulations use to raise your rates is to tote up all the costs to LUS from equipment costs, to billing costs, to interconnection fees, to salaries, to taxes, to pole attachment fees, to franchise fees (the latter two are the elements being considered by the Council Tuesday). The will use a baseline industry cost based in part on what the incumbents say their costs are to establish a "fair price" that must, by law, include the costs to "rent" property they own and fees to use poles that they have already paid to install and maintain. They will then set a minimum price that LUS must charge. Slow down and read that again: they set a minimum price. They will NOT allow LUS to charge you the least that it could...they will force Lafayette's utility to charge more than it would have to without a set of regulations that force false costs on it.
This is all transparently designed, not to force "a level playing field" or "protect the public" as the incumbent providers claimed in the legislature; it is designed to limit the price competition that LUS will provide AT&T and Cox in Lafayette. Cox and AT&T don't want to be forced to lower their prices to compete in Lafayette. They most especially don't want to be forced to lower their prices to compete ONLY in Lafayette. That would make it all too obvious that public utilities like LUS could be a success and provide real value to its citizen-owners. LUS would be a "bad" example for other communities; one that might encourage them to do for themselves what Lafayette has done.
And that would never do.
The Federal Regulatory Issue at hand: Now all this messy state law and regulation might be preempted by Federal regulation -- without the benefit of an enabling law. (I know this is getting convoluted. Stay with me for a while longer; it's important. :-) )
The FCC just this past Wednesday gave "relief" to cable companies on the issue of franchising in a partisan 3-2 vote. This ruling is yet another extension of the FCC's decision to insert itself into the national franchising issue. The ultimate outcome is pretty disturbing in that the ruling will pretty much will allow a cable company to quit honoring any part of its franchise contract it doesn't like beyond the monetary fee. Look for support for AOC and governmental networks to vanish. Whether it allows any cable company to immediately quit honoring its contract is in dispute. (Didn't know the FCC could abrogate contracts? Me neither.) Earlier remarks by the FCC chair had indicated that it wouldn't void current contracts.
The History: State and federal franchise issues are also topics that have been covered on these pages, but in synopsis: The incumbent phone companies, lead by AT&T, are determined to get into the cable business. It is easy to see why since estimates I've seen show the profit margin at somewhere between 40 and 60% and their own year-to-year reports show that their core business, landline phone service, is declining every year even with margins cut to the bone. But the old Bell phone companies don't want to have to follow the same rules that cable did in developing this lucrative market: they don't want to have to go to the public bodies who own the land and negotiate a franchise contract to use the public rights of way. Their first tactic was to go to state governments and get them to take over the localities property rights and establish a state-wide franchise that allowed the state to control the money and disburse it to the localities. Not surprisingly state legislators found shifting this power into their hands an attractive "pro-business," "pro-competition" policy. This state-level tactic worked in the early rounds but then the municipalities began to unite in opposition and the laws were more and more often either vetoed (as Blanco did here in Louisiana) or defeated in the legislature.
With the preferred state-level alternative failing the phone companies turned to the federal government. They first asked the FCC to establish a federal-level franchising regime. (This is essentially what they have for phone service--the feds reached down and simply "took" state and local rights of way and allowed the phone monopoly to use them for free. This was in an earlier, less ideological, time and for the "good" cause of universal phone service and no one much objected.) The FCC demurred as the Congress was in the midst of gearing up for a major rewrite of telecommunications law. At that point in time no one had any trouble believing that the incumbent providers would mostly get what they wanted. But then AT&T's CEO went and started the big war over Net Neutrality and the whole bill went down in flames. (Comcast has recently restarted the controversy.) Congress considered but was unable to pass a law that would have redefined franchising.
The FCC then stepped in, and in the face of a obvious lack of Congressional support for the idea, decided to do for the phone companies what they had previously directed the Bells to ask Congress for: they instituted a regime that removed much of the control of rights of way from their local, municipal owners. As you might imagine, lawsuits are underway that argue that the FCC has overstepped its boundaries and is attempting to legislate by regulation. The FCC ruling forbade local governments from requiring cable franchisees to serve the whole community ("buildout" requirements); and basically it forbade municipalities from asking for asking for much of anything beyond money—which was already strictly limited by federal law. As a consequence all sorts of contracts between local governments that cut deals for schools or police or government office, and deals that supported local media like AOC with funds and channel space to provide coverage of city-council events and locally produced programming are all now on the chopping block. Those contracts, by federal fiat, don't have to be honored. And the city cannot try very hard to negotiate a better deal (not that much is left to "negogitate") since the FCC imposed a "shot clock:" if the city and the corporation cannot reach an agreement within 90 days the corporation can simply go ahead and provide services without finalizing a contract. (The room for abuse ought to be obvious--localities will have no leverage whatsoever and could easily be reduced to agreeing to whatever the company decided to hand out. Remember, generosity is not a trait of these fellas.) It goes without saying that without any real leverage the local clauses that insure that providers meet service requirements to customers goes out the door.
So does that mean that LUS could decide not to honor its contract too? No, there is no practical way that LUS is not going to meet the obligations it makes with the people of Lafayette...it is a public body and it will not desire to and will not be allowed to simply stiff the city-parish. But Cox, who you will recall, suggested the legislature fine the citizens of Lafayette $900,000 if they had the nerve to vote for fiber, is surely resentful enough to pull back from any contribution to our city that does not look good on a sponsorship form.
Conclusion: So that, as Paul Harvey might say, is "the rest of the story."
LUS is going into the Council on Tuesday to discuss a franchise agreement for its fiber-optic based cable system that will be shaped by the requirements of a state law that was initially designed to kill the project. Instead of being a document that we could proudly point to as a one which sets out the unique and forward-looking obligations of LUS to the community and its customer-owners we will likely get a defensive document that promises no more than what the city fathers could extract from Cox in the last contract round. The strange franchise and pole attachment agreements that LUS will sign with itself are by-products of the (un)Fair Competition Act and its resulting, anti-consumer regulations that are designed to drive up the price of LUS's services and so minimize the competition it can offer its citizens. To add insult to injury, federal intervention may well result in Cox deciding to abandon most of the very franchise agreement that LUS will be imitating while LUS will, regardless of federal "relief," will be obliged by its ownership and the aforementioned law to fulfill its contractual obligations regardless of the competitive disadvantage at which it is put.
I think that's all pretty sad and more than a little sick. I hope you do too. We've earned better than a me-too franchise with our local communications utility.
Welcome to topsy-turvy world of American Broadband Policy as it plays out in real local communities.
