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

[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

[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.

Los Angeles

[Tablespork]

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

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).

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: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