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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."
Looking at the local offer by Cox, I would argue that the program cannot get any worse. Perhaps with better access for people like you and me we will see less influence by the so called news networks, religious propaganda machines (why shall I pay for this junk?) and instead get an educated program from local universities, concerned citizens and political parties other than the two half parties who are running the show, and possibly from people who would otherwise never dare to go public. The perspective of affordable high-speed Internet access is also good news for small businesses and those who could not afford it before. Sounds like a win-win situation to me. Two thumbs up for the voters in Lafayette!
You're looking at this situation with far too simple of a mindset. This isn't about providing everyone with cheap TV. This is nothing less than a massive investment into the future of their community. If they are able to provide cheap, reliable Internet access to many locations within the city, then they are setting themselves up for an amazing tech boom.
Besides the obvious influx of hosting companies, opportunities are also opened for other online businesses. And remember, when there's an influx of techology-related businesses they need employees, and such employees are often amongst the most well-educated people. That leads to lower crime rates, and a general improvement of the city's well-being.
The ecomomic benefits of investing in such a broadband system will be widely felt throughout the community. You speak of higher taxes; the taxes themselves may actually be lower due to the crime drop resulting from the influx of highly-educated tech workers. There is a very good chance that the broadband costs are far less than the costs of a police officer. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'm not familiar with the US model of church and state separation. Do US cities forbid religious parades on the grounds that public roads are maintained and operated by the government? Or is there some subtle legal difference between common roads and a common fibre optic network? Or is this, perchance, just a bit of puffed smoke?
Maybe things are different down there, but in my experience, almost every city provides public access programming that is created, produced and performed by whoever wants to be involved. The shows are broadcast over cable, by the cable companies but these are based on agreements they (as a utility) have with the local governments.
So if the government forces private broadcast carriers to provide public access shows (including religious content which seems to make up 50% of public access -- the other 50% being guys from NORML and crazy naked guys like Jim Spagg), I would expect them to have the same provisions for themselves.
Not to mention, a number of network stations also provide religoius programming. I think UPN and WB both provide some. One of them broadcasts Oral B every Sunday. Also, Trinity Broadcasting Network (ugh) usually finds a way to get a toe-hold into anything so they can broadcast more Benny Hinn throwing his coat on people and shoving crippled people violently to the ground.
There will be no substantial conflict as long as they are not promoting for or discriminating against any people who want to produce and broadcast their religious content. Just like places where the telephone is a municipal property, churches are still allowed to own and use telephones.
They have a broader set of ordinances mandating fibre to the home, and business-- all with nearby access to the National Lamba Rail.
The good news is: this is a trend that ought to shake up how we think of broadband-- as a utility like water, gas, and electricity.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Now we'll get to see whether the libertarian cries that internet access as a municipal service will cause incurable diseases and economic collapse hold true. I mean, we'll actually have a test case, a normal one not based on ridiculous circumstance (like San Francisco being so incredibly tiny that you can actually serve the entire thing with 802.11).
...
Of course I'm a little worried that maybe Louisiana is not the best place to try something like this... since Louisiana is by some metrics of measurement the most corruption-plagued state government in the union... does the City of Lafayette tend to suffer from this similarly?
I'm also REALLY curious about what happens if the cable/phone monopolies try to "retaliate" against Lafayette. I think the easiest way for the nation to start seeing the cable/phone companies for what they really are is if we start seeing stories in the media about how if you don't pass laws in your local community the exact way the telco/cable corps want, they'll make you regret it
but of course considering most people get their news from cable television itself maybe the media just won't speak of such things.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I grew up in Lafayette. Rather, I grew up in Carencro, a few miles north, but since two Interstates cross in Lafayette (I-10 and I-49) more people know where it is. I spent much of my childhood there, since both my parents worked in "town".
Louisiana, despite the craven Christo-Republicanism currently grippping the state, has long and deep populist roots. Louisiana was one of the first states to have free textbooks for public school kids, and during a time when the state's agricultural base was in tatters, Huey Long rode to success on taxing the oil companies who were then punching a hole in the mud wherever they could, and using the money (well, most of it, anyway, or whatever didn't fall under the table) to build roads across the waterways that divided the state.
John Breaux and Bennet Johnson continued this tradition on the federal level to a certain extent; while Louisiana never had a large Air Force, Army, or Navy presence, and missed out on much of the Space Race southern welfare programs of the 60s, the state did get some heap-big federal dollars for I-10 across the Atchafalaya, I-55 through Manchac, and I-49 from Lafayette to Alexandria, which was one of the largest earthmoving projects in Insterstate highway history, and opened a remote part of the state to high speed travel, cutting the time from Lafayette to Alexandria to just under two hours in 1999 from a little under five hours in 1980.
Because of the infrastructure building, Louisiana is a far, far different place today. Lafayette's vote is a reflection of the very deeply-held Louisiana belief that big comanies get their money from the citizens anyway; why shouldn't we try to build one ourselves, with our money, and do it better?
Lafayette, by the way, has one of the best public utility systems around. LUS has always been self-sustaining, sells power to other utilities to lower ratepayer burden, and Lafayette is one of the cities that when hit by a hurricane, always amanges to get the power back on within a few days. They've also done an amazing job of cleaning up the neglected Vermilion river.
I'm proud to be from there, especially with the outcome of this vote, and the margin.
Go Cajuns!
I didn't say that Republicans were cowardly for hiding behind the Christ, but here are my thoughts on it.
I think the "Christo-Republican" political base is in fact quite bold in it's assertion of principles, picking and choosing chapter and verse as necessary, as Jimmy Swaggart was so good at. Like Swaggart, they'll likely be forgiven time and time again as long as they duck behind an unimpeachable icon: the church.
Among other things, the Republican party and their allies in the "pay for Jesus" movement teach that old testament principles (the angry, world-destroying, testing God) should be intermingled with new testament principles (Forgiveness despite intent) by followers as they so please and dictate.
Abortion? Wrong in every case, despite intent, original sin, etc. Eye for an eye death penalty? Right in every case, despite the imperfect and often jaundiced legal system available to the poor.
As to your roads comment, it's arguable that most of those bad roads (and I agree, most have seen better days) wouldn't even be laid down if it weren't for the populist movement in Louisiana during the late '30s. Huey was many things: a drunk (or was that Earl?) a cheat, a liar...but he was also godawful poor when he was a little boy, and he knew that if he could spread the money around to his friends and make things marginally better for the little people living under the twin threats of flood and remoteness, he would be revered. And he was.
Back to the roads. The roads that I liken to Lafayette's existing dark fiber ring and proposed FTTH. (Have to stay on topic.)
Consider that the Houston->New Orleans corridor sees 1: more heavy truck traffic than most other continuous four lane interstate routes (I-5 from L.A. to San Francisco sees less heavy truck traffic.) and 2: that Louisiana Interstates and highways below Alexandria are mostly built on fill or ground that is given to subsiding, unlike the mixed swamp and prairie west of Lafayette and 3: that Louisiana has one of the highest ration of bridge (expensive to build and maintain) to bedded roads in the nation...
(By the way - the elevated freeways above the Atchfalaya Basin and Lake Ponchartrain are pretty amazing engineering feats and...did I mention Free? It's not like traffic would have a choice if they decided to make it a toll road.) The Atchafalaya Basin freeway handles more traffic than most Interstates...and it sits on 60 foot pilings.
whew. Had to catch my breath there.
My home town of 30,000 did the exact same thing as Lafayette after the cable companies and BellSouth failed to meet their promised goals of providing service. Citizens voted overwhelmingly to authorize the local power system to provide cable, internet and telephone service, and almost immediately coverage in the area more than doubled. Since then, every citizen within the city has access to cable, telephone or broadband. There is no local subsidy; under terms of the authorizing legislation, users pay all infrastructure and operating costs. But guess what? They still come out less than the cable company and Bellsouth were charging. I think more than 60% of the people have swapped service to the local utility (which will also respond faster to any problems).
If citizens had had to wait on the cable and telephone companies to get their act together and roll out service, a lot of them would still be communicating via papyrus scrolls.