LA City Votes For Municipal Fiber Network

An anonymous reader writes "On Saturday, Lafayette, Louisiana voters gave BellSouth and Cox the collective finger and approved a municipal FTTH network by a 62% to 38% margin. The Daily Advertiser has coverage of the vote and possible repercussions. The hotly-contested vote was prompted by a lawsuit by BellSouth and Cox Communications, who bitterly opposed the plan. BellSouth threatened to close a Cingular call center if the plan passed, and the companies employed push polling, including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming and block religious channels."

Comments

The cities have a right

[gbulmash]

The phone companies have long enjoyed local monopolies that were only recently (last decade or so) broken down with requirements that they have to share their copper. The cable companies on the other hand won a recent FCC ruling that they don't have to share their coax.

The fact is that these companies are rolling out fiber to the home on their own phased schedules, the timelines of which do not sit well with a lot of bandwidth-starved consumers, particularly those in markets that are far down the roadmaps. So it's not surprising that the municipalities are trying to accelerate this rollout with a DIY philosophy. The municipal governments are doing what they really should be doing, which is serving their residents. You don't see the cities implementing municipal-run ISPs to compete with existing, viable solutions from the cable and telephone companies. The municipal-run ISPs are being constructed precisely because they're filling a gap the big communications corporations are voluntarily leaving.

The sad thing is that the cable companies and telephone companies are trying to protect these markets by suing the cities rather than rolling out the services that they want. Their philosophy is "you'll get it when we get around to you, and if your government tries to provide services in the meantime (or invite in alternative service providers), we'll try to prevent it". This is wrong and arrogant. It treats consumers like a resource these companies have some sort of divine right to exploit, rather than a market which can and should be able to vote with its ballots and pocketbooks.

In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it. While I can understand the desire of the big communication companies to protect their markets, they should protect them by serving them, not by suing those who would fill the gaps they're leaving.

We are in a world where broadband is synoonymous with prosperity, or close to it. The availability of broadband is an economic growth factor and an economic indicator. No single corporation should have the power to determine the timeline when such a powerful tool comes to a community. - G

Re:The cities have a right

[Hungus]

I see it from the other angle. This is about infrastructure, and that is one of the reasons taxes are paid. I see no issue with Govt. providing that infrastructure, but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure.

Example: Govt. should build roads, not cars.

That said Govt. should build water mains, waste lines and electrical connections, but I don't necessarily want to see private industry providing water to individuals or processing sewage. I do not mind private electrical generation or a mixed public/private electrical co-op. What is the difference between these though?

Perhaps it is because given a stable grid power is power there is no difference in electrons at the level of the home user. A unit of water on the other hand can be fundamentally different coming from different processing facilities, but since it would be carried in a single medium there is no differentiation except for local.

Anybody else's thoughts on the matter?

Re:The cities have a right

[geekee]

"The sad thing is that the cable companies and telephone companies are trying to protect these markets by suing the cities rather than rolling out the services that they want. Their philosophy is "you'll get it when we get around to you, and if your government tries to provide services in the meantime (or invite in alternative service providers), we'll try to prevent it". This is wrong and arrogant. It treats consumers like a resource these companies have some sort of divine right to exploit, rather than a market which can and should be able to vote with its ballots and pocketbooks."

No, companies treat customers like a market. They no fiber is too expensive and no one would pay for it in a market where cable and twisted pair are available. So now everyone's forced to pay for something that will be of real benefit to only a small minority in the near term.

"In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it."

Govt. is not a market force. Govt. intervention means, by definition, that the market is not free.

"The availability of broadband is an economic growth factor and an economic indicator. No single corporation should have the power to determine the timeline when such a powerful tool comes to a community. "

It is local govt. who have set this artificial monopoly. No local govt. just lets anyone string cable, fiber, etc. Companies are at the mercy of govt. regulation, not the other way around.

Re:The cities have a right

[Dark Paladin]

Considering that it was the will of the voters, which could said to be the equal footing of, say, voters in a corporation, and it was over 70% of the voters who said "yes", I'd say this is a form of market force - only here the "corporation" is also called the "city council", and the voting is "one person, one vote" not "they who own the most shares get the most votes".

Re:The cities have a right

[ctr2sprt]

*shrug*

The government is the biggest, baddest monopoly of all. It's also an insidious one because there is no direct correlation between its fees (taxes) and its expenditures. If your cell phone company, for example, charges you a ruinous rate, you can see exactly how ruinous it is. You can then decide whether their cell service is really that important to you, and if it's not, you can cancel and take your money elsewhere. If it's your government providing your service, not only can you not take your money elsewhere except by moving (which can have very high costs), you also have no idea how much of your yearly "bill" is actually going to the service. It's like paying your rent, electric, water, sewer, garbage, telephone, Internet, and cable bills all at once, with no idea how much goes to each. Your rent may be $500/mo or it may be $5000/mo. And of course, if you don't want telephone service - maybe you have a cell phone - you have no way of saying "Don't bill me for this, because I'm not using it." You're paying for it whether you use it or not.

So those are some of the reasons why governments providing services is usually a very bad thing. Now for what I think would be the right way to handle broadband, and yes, it does include government intervention.

Basically, the government would own the fiber and some of the supporting hardware (routers etc). It would buy it all at first and pay for it via loans or bonds or whatever else (but not taxes). It would then turn around and lease the fiber to private companies at cost, plus some more to pay off the initial investment in, say, five or ten years. Obviously companies could lease part of the network - for example a high-speed link between two offices - or some of the bandwidth of the entire network (an ISP). All maintenance and upgrade costs would be split up among the interested lessees. The government would be involved in this only as an arbiter and guarantor of quality of service (i.e. it ensures a base level of maintenance and that there is enough bandwidth for everyone who wants it).

(One important part is that this has to be leased at cost. No more, no less. If the government makes a profit, it will dump it into other projects: see Social Security. If it loses money regularly, it will try to raise it via taxes or by diverting funds from other projects. It's really critical that this be a self-sufficient, not-for-profit program. Obviously with floating costs, lessee turnover, etc., some years this will turn a profit and some years it will take a loss. But with good planning this should be manageable, and it goes without saying that any profits should be set aside to cover future losses or, hell, refunded directly. As long as the program isn't running an annual loss, most lessees would be content to pay the remainder at the end of the year if they were given refunds years when it made money. If you are running in the red every year, then you need to consider the possibility that people in your area really don't find this a valuable service and settle for providing high-speed Internet access just in libraries or other centralized areas.)

The neat part is that this really opens up the market to small area businesses by knocking out the enormous initial investments. It also allows the fiber to be "multi-use" through multiple providers: you can get Internet, phone, and cable TV over the same fiber from three different companies.

Of course, this will never happen. Either it will be blocked by the big companies or it will become yet another socialist pork project (because we really need more of those). But Slashdot is the forum for subjunctive dreaming!

Re:The cities have a right

[Big Jojo]

... but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure. Example: Govt. should build roads, not cars.

Neither road nor car is a "service". They're both objects.

Policing roads ... service. Cleaning them, snowplowing, maintaining ... service.

Your position is clearly bogus!

One way to look at this is historically. And in the historical sense, community infrastructure has only very recently come to be seen as something that governments "should" stay out of ... you know, because if they were to offer service near cost, then more money would stay in the hands of citizens; there wouldn't be as many ways the corporate oligarchies could rip them off.

Notice by the way that your example of a "stable grid" for electricity assumes artificial scarcity. No reason that we couldn't be using lots of local energy sources -- methane from recycling, wind, solar, a factory's off-hour capacity -- and have an economy that's not so readily gamed by the Enrons of this world.

Re:The cities have a right

[penix1]

"If your cell phone company, for example, charges you a ruinous rate, you can see exactly how ruinous it is. You can then decide whether their cell service is really that important to you, and if it's not, you can cancel and take your money elsewhere."

Therein lies the problem. There is no "elsewhere" to take it in most rural areas. Cable & phone companies are government sanctioned monopolies. I'm sure you have cable in your area. Let's say it is Cox. Try taking your cable business to Charter and see what answer you get.

Governments provide services like these when corporate entities can't or won't. That is one of the jobs of government.

B.

Re:The cities have a right

[Anonymous Coward]

The government coming in and choosing to shut down an entire sector of business by underwriting the operation with TAX PAYER MONEY is communism.

That's not what's happening here. A nationwide bunch of companies are basically telling a bunch of small towns:

We'll get around to running fiber to you when and if we feel like it. Because we all agree that it's not currently profitable to run fiber to you, it could possibly be several decades before we get to you (if we ever do). In the meantime, you can kiss our asses and feel rotten that a small part of the fees you're paying us now are funding fiber in _real_ towns. Suck our assholes.

--The Cable and Telephone Companies

Because what's profitable for the goose is profitable for the gander, it could seriously be decades before fiber comes to some towns. It hasn't been all that long ago before there were still one or two spots that didn't have telephone service. What this town is basically doing is creating competition for those companies. If the companies want that area now, they'll have to do it sooner.

If this was occuring on a national scale I dont think people would even tolerate that for a second.

You're probably correct; however, in that case (and on that scale) the government would be competing against businesses. Here, the local government is competing against nothing.

the government is not supposed to be "in business" the are supposed to guide and maintain the legal infrastructure for us the people to do it ourselves throuh business.

No business is helping these people because they aren't profitable enough to deal with, so they're going to help themselves. This could even wind up being more efficient because the local money is directly going to help that small area (if there's enough oversight).

Re:The cities have a right

[Anonymous Coward]

Markets do not exist without government interference. State issued money and police-backed courts come to mind as examples of government interference.

Re:The cities have a right

[Kadin2048]

Well, what the municipalities really maintain is the road network, not just "a road."

Of course, a stretch of road, in the middle of nowhere, connected to nothing, would be simply an object. Over time, it would deteriorate, and eventually become nothing but a line of dust. The roads which are built by the government are first of all part of a complex network, useful not only because of what they are, but because of other roads that they connect to. Also, they're useful because they are maintained.

Really, the municipalities are in the business of road maintenance. Road construction is simply a sideline. However, because much of the same equipment is used for road construction as in maintenance, they might do construction from time to time -- and why not, if they can do it cheaply. However I know where I live, road construction in new developments is normally handled by private contractors, and then later upkeep handled by the state.

But the real reason why municipalities do maintenance, or anything at all for that matter, is because there is a perceived public interest in doing so. People think that maintaining the road network is important, and they also think that the government can do it better than private industry can. Thus, they vote and continue to allow funding to be allocated for those purposes. Although some might argue that private firms could do a better job maintaining the roads, I think they'd be in the minority.

Our government however is not in the business of producing cars, because most people would not agree that this is a function better handled by the government than public industry. (Except maybe for the few diehard fans of the Trabant.)

What we are seeing in the case of internet access is a market that was previously served only by corporations, but poorly. As a result, people are going to the polls and demanding (retroactively, in this case) that their government provide a service which private industry is not. That is certainly their right, and given the history of the U.S. I very much doubt that people would do this unless they felt dramatically under-served by Industry.

The communication-industry, if they had two brain cells to rub together, would do itself a favor to stand back and let the people through on this one. They might just find themselves getting a very nice free ride in a few years: it's doubtful that the local government really wants to operate an ISP, once the infrastructure is built they'll probably want someone to operate it and provide content down the fiber. If the telcos and cablecos haven't alienated consumers too badly by then, they'd be in a perfect position to step in. But at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the people told them where to stick it and cast out further for a content provider.

With all the money that corporations spend trying to understand their markets, it slays me that they can be so blind when 'their market' rises up and kicks them so savagely in the ass for their slowness and attitude.

Re:The cities have a right

[Guppy06]

"I live in Texas"

"While the Fed. govt. is bound by the constitution I do not consider the state to be bound by the federal constitution"

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

--Article VI, Clause 2, Constitution of the United States of America

Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, and the maintenance of our free institutions and the perpetuity of the Union depend upon the preservation of the right of local self-government, unimpaired to all the States.

--Article I, Section 1, Texas Constitution

They're your constitutions. You'd think someone as proud of your home state would actually attempt to read these documents once in their life. Unfortunately, you're far from the first Texan I've come across who showed a gross lack of knowledge not only of the US Constitution but also the constitution of their own state that they claim to hold more alliegance to.

Heck, the entire premise of the Tenth Amendment relies on the idea that things were actually denied to the states in the original document to begin with.

Los Angeles

[Tablespork]

Anybody else think that title could have been worded better to avoid confusion with the more common LA?

Re:Los Angeles

[Anonymous Coward]

It says LA City. Calling Los Angeles LA is much more common to most people than the abreviation LA for Louisiana. Most people that don't live in the state don't use that abreviation that often. The headline was pretty clear specifying it was a city and not a state.

Re:Los Angeles

[Rickler]

"LA city" usually means a city. Not a city in a state.

Would you write "NY city" and expect people to think your talking about Buffalo and not the city of New York? :rolleyes:

LA City Votes For Municipal Fiber Network

[Scoria]

including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming and block religious channels.

I considered giving that argument a minimal amount of credence until I realized that the story was referring to Louisiana, not Los Angeles!

After all, I would speculate that the religious community in Louisiana would be just a little more powerful.

When the free market is subjected to harm..

[CyricZ]

.. the government is the one to step in. In this case it is the city-level goverment. Indeed, that is what the government is there to do: provide what the free market cannot. The free market has been obstructed in this instance due to the monopolistic practices of the cable and phone companies. So it's more than acceptable for the people to unite, in the form of the city government, against the monopolistic forces that are obstructing the free market.

Some simple-minded individuals like to cry "communism" or "socialism" at this point. But anyone with any economic knowledge knows that you sometimes need the government to intervene in order to maximize the benefit and potential of the capitalistic free market for all of society (not just a few cable and phone companies).

Re:When the free market is subjected to harm..

[Anonymous Coward]

seriously, why are americans so afraid of communism? your government is so outstandingly capatalist its not like your going to look the other way and you'll suddently become a communist country. Even so, that might not be a bad thing.

Business and Religion

[fm6]

...a city-run cable system might ... block religious channels.

That's an ironic claim. There used to be a lot more religious channels on commercial cable than there are now. What happened to them? Providers needed their bandwidth for all those useless "bundles" that they're forced to buy. Viewers complained, but business is business.

In a free market

[vlad_petric]

In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it.

Let's not forget that the free market is nothing but an idealized abstraction. This case is yet another example of market forces being incapable of driving the services/products in the right direction. Sure, it's generally much better when market forces alone take care of the situation, but this doesn't mean that when it can't we should do nothing and invoke the free market dogma.

Re:This will not hurt religion.

[Seumas]

As an agnostic, I am tired of people confusing seperation of church and state. Yeah, it's a bad idea and I'm a tad offended by putting religious monuments of a specific popular religion inside a courthouse. And yeah, I'd be offended if the Christians and Muslims got to have their cable and public acccess shows and the Wiccans and whatever-elsians didn't. And I'd be pissed if someone tried to force me to believe a religion. Or spent public funding on it.

However, as most public access policies seem to be fairly liberal, I dont' see a problem. They let on crazy old women who want to rant about the good baby jesus for an hour every week. They let on crazy old fat men who want to get naked and smoke a joint on screen every week. They let on punks skating around town having fun. They let local clubs broadcast their events on them.

As long as everyone get's a fair shot, I'm all for it. A Christian or Jew or Muslim shouldn't get preference because of their faiths over other faiths (or people without a faith at all), but they also should absolutely not be subjected to extra qualifications and difficulties and hassles because of those faiths. If I'm allowed to make my show about how to safely protest without being beaten down by the man in Little Beirut (Portland, Oregon) - then you should get to have your show about converting sinners to the arms of Jesus.

If these municipal fiber to the home things take off across the country and people find themselves being discriminated against because they want to put religious material (of any sort) on and everything ELSE is accepted, I will gladly stand by and protest with them. Promoting the ability to spread and share ideas is far more important than censoring any idea, whether I'm offended by that idea or completely indifferent to it.

More idiocy on broadband...

[suitepotato]

...this is the same /. that is generally leery of statist anything and so pro-personal rights, right?

But as soon as municipal broadband is broached, people who'd usually don a tinfoil hat with regard to any government involvement start drooling like idiots if they think they're going to get higher speeds at lower costs, and screw it if the big bad government is doing it. Suddenly they aren't so bad.

The point about the government not being there to make cars, just the roads is applicable. Heck, they can't even maintain the roads under the cars. Some places are under perpetual construction. And mostly, it is because of incompetence and venal attitude. Hey, we can draw it out as a permanent taxation reason.

It's far from paranoia to suggest that government would do the same with this. Nor is it paranoia to suggest that once they had total coverage that they'd abuse their power to force private companies to sell their services at a dead loss until they went out of business or at least stopped serving those places.

Do you want the same US government that has given us interstate fights over segregation, womens' rights, gay marriage, the Meese Porn Report, etc., etc., ad nauseum, to be controlling your information pipe?

Since George W. Bush took office the first time, we've heard nothing but paranoid anti-American ravings of vitriol aimed at him and his admin. Yes, let's suddenly forget our stance about government taking our Internet away and censoring everything and lying to us and suddenly act as though we never said any of that. As long as you get gigabit pr0n and sub 5ms ping times to frag your friends, right? As long as you get to thumb your nose at the cable company, right?

Wake up and smell the contradictions here people. The same government that can't keep a shuttle from blowing up every few years and launch the remaining one it has without turning into nervous piles of drool... The same government that drops trousers and bends over for the MPAA/RIAA and nods like a bunch of doofuses at the mention of requiring DRM... The same governments that can't manage their cities, can't get along with their suburbs, can't respect the freedom of their citizens nor understand that the government manages at the leisure of the citizenry and that the citizenry aren't free at the leisure of the government... These are the people you want running your Internet and tv entertainment pipes.

I don't think so.

Right

[mcc]

Because everything the government does has to be either all good or all bad.

There's no way that government could be something with both positive and negative aspects, or a necessary evil with potentially useful functions. There's no way you can view referendum-based local democracy and a national governmental bureaucracy run by termed elected representatives as somehow different. There's no way that you can consider the removal of checks balances and constitutional limitations on law enforcement to be bad, while considering taxing the public and providing public services in return to be potentially good.

Nope, either you fully approve of all potential uses of governments from bombing randomly selected foreign countries to city-level arts funding, and approve equally of all government leaders regardless of the rightness of their specific actions or level of public support they're acting with, or you're an anarchocapitalist.

There's black, and there's white. Anything in between is just hypocrisy.

Cash Cow for the telcos

[javakev]

Not sure why the Telcos and cable companies are fighting this. They can make a killing in managing these networks. Lets do the math, the city incurs all the cost of building the infrstructure. But, the city will have no experience in managing and maintaing a high speed network. Well the only folks with that kind of experience are the big telcos and cable companies. They can charge hugh fees to montitor and maintain these networks without owning any of the infrastructure.

Re:Broadband and prosperity have little in common

[Anonymous Coward]

> The government getting involved to compete is socialism, not capitalism.

so?

Re:Dirty Cox

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

You don't sound like you'te from Lafayette. The vast majority of us go to church. I would guess that over half of my high school classmates go to church - and that's probably the one demographic with the lowest religiousness. One website I saw reports around 80% church membership for Lafayette.

(Interestingly, for all that Slashdot does to promote the First Amendment, you do seem a little touchy when someone starts to use the freedom of speech to promote freedom of religion.)

I'm from the city of Lafayette...

[optikshell]

where this vote took place. We've been subject to waiting for Cox and Bellsouth to get off their a$$ and offer us something other than sub-par services. If not for anything else, we'll have a little more competition... and the consumer always wins with more competition.
Lafayette, LA has been gradually moving toward being a more tech focused city. With this development, hopefully we'll see some businesses spring up or be attracted to the area. I'm a CS student at UL (http://louisiana.edu/) located in Lafayette, and would love to be able to find a decent job after I graduate without having to move.

Re:Dirty Cox

[maxpublic]

you do seem a little touchy when someone starts to use the freedom of speech to promote freedom of religion

Mainly because the people so bloody interested in "freedom of religion" refuse to acknowledge that this also means "freedom FROM religion".

Max

Re:Dirty Cox

[swiftstream]

Nobody's forcing you to watch those channels.

The problem is, athiests want secularism to mean athiesm. It doesn't.