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

[vought]

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!

Re:The cities have a right

[vought]

Do you really think the " Christo-Republicanism" "gripping the state is "Characterized by abject fear; cowardly"?

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.

...and it's no surprise the roads suck. Louisiana also has a lower per-capita income, so the tax base is less than Texas. Sorry our roads suck. Why don't you fill up in Lake Charles next time you're in the state and help out? Better yet, stay out of the Casinos - they're a net loss of tax dollars. Eat, drink, be merry and stay in a hotel instead - you'll eat better, fell better, and help the Bayou state keep it's roads up.

Re:The cities have a right

[spewey]

I see no issue with Govt. providing that infrastructure, but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure.

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.

Re:The cities have a right

[Hungus]

Yeah, you just have more faith in the Govt. than I do.

Sounds like your town did things right, but I tend to think that puts it in the very small minority.

Thats the nice thing however about Local vs fed. as an AC in this thread completely got wrong, or just trolled about, the Feds are supposedly restricted to only what powers were granted to them in the Constitution, local/ state etc are free to do anything else (i.e. what powers not specifically granted to the feds is allowed to the states) the best example of this is the church, People (especially arch conservative Baptists) rant about separation of church and state and how any collusion between the two is evil by definition seem to forget that the states had their own churches for quite a while .. lie the State Church of Virginia which lasted until the late 1800's and it was constitutional! In any case I ramble on what I am saying is that local communities are (or should be) free to make such decisions themselves, I just tend to think we are all a lot better off when govt. is small rather than large.

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

[Reignking]

Are you kidding? I'm sure all of the foreign readers automatically think of the Bayou State, and not the smog city in California when "LA" is written...

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:

Dirty Cox

[Seumas]

including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming

Cox is right. After all, we saw that happen with roads and highways. You know, if they were privatized, you'd be able to drive them any hour of the day as much as you want, but since they're owned by the public, you have to ration your usage of them. Sometimes you'll be halfway to your destination only to find that your allocated monthly miles have expired and you have to walk home... and then you find out that your monthly allocation of side-walk travel has expired as well and you're all sorts of fucked.

Seriously though, I do wonder how difficult it will be when there is an outage? What are your means of resolution?

and block religious channels

Yeah. Because god knows we can't do without the umpteen thousand religious channels on cable. Why, that's why I pay $120 for my digital cable. Just so I can have to surf through the 10 religious channels, the half dozen stupid local/public access channels with idiots and their religious/nude/idiotic shows and the half dozen shopping network channels. Why, dear lord we can't do without all of that. Thank god Cox sets us up the Jesus so sufficiently.

As for Cingular threatning to close the call-center... Come on... like they hadn't already planned to ship the jobs overseas or open up a call center in the midwest where they can get labor for half the cost? This was just a convenient point of leverage for them to use. If they won, they won. If they lost, they still win because they were going to move 'em anyway.

Re:Dirty Cox

[Seumas]

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Re:Speed

[Seumas]

If brains were bandwidth, you'd be dialup.

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).

Better programming, more public access

[msbsod]

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!

A business investment.

[CyricZ]

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!

Re:A business investment.

[Alucard454]

yet again i'm going to have to call you on the fact that you have no clue what my city (lafayette) is like, or what this campaign was really all about.

newflash buddy, this is NOT a "massive investment into the future of our community" but a massive investment in the future of LUS, our local utility provider, who just got voted a $125 million dollar gift from our government. furthermore, we already HAVE cheap reliable internet access (5mbps cable for $40... not the best, but no more expensive than what LUS promises to offer) and we have already SEEN our fabled "amazing tech boom." We are home to golfballs.com and yes, that amazing cingular call center, as well as tons of smaller computer and engineering firms. horrraaaaaay.....

what has the minor tech boom of the past 8 years done for us? caused the city to grow beyond its logical and reasonable size, basically. we've absorbed several formerly suburban and rural areas, as well as a few former outskirts areas, and just kinda merged them into the urban sprawl, for what it's worth. Lafayette has been the number one favorite louisiana city to live in, raise a family in, and educate your children in for a decade running, but we've been slipping in the last few years, because we're starting to become "just another big city" and it's pretty damn sad. the school segregation problem has become epic in scale since this growth spurt, and thus the city was forced into this horrible bussing program that is threatening to destroy our gifted program.

ok, rant off, sorry.

and no, the economic benefits of investing in this sort of thing are not likely to be widely or even mildly felt in the community. there are going to be precisely two major benefactors overall: LUS (the utility) and ULL (the university). As i mentioned previously, we already have a fantastic telecom infrastructure, with nearly all homes in the city limits being either DSL or Cable modem eligible, and this LUS plan is going to change nothing substantial about this. in the two years that it will take for LUS to acheive anything concrete (there own best-case estimate) BS and Cox will likely have extended their reach to everywhere that LUS was planning to wire.

Not that job-making and -killing is a viable economic argument in the first place, but if LUS does succeed in making any significant impact on the job situation in lafayette, it will mostly likely be because they force out BS or Cox and destroy those jobs.

to be fair, the higher taxes argument is also bunk though. In the wording of the measure passed yesterday, the parish cannot raise taxes to help with LUS's plan, but only sell revenue bonds. Yes they are open-ended revenue bonds and could theoretically be used to buy the LUS director a new car or luxury catering services for the LUS Fiber employees (both of which problems this state has sadly dealt with in the recent past) but I sincerely doubt that this will happen in this case. I believe LUS means well, oddly enough.... I just think the government has NO business intruding on the telecom industry. Ultimately this debate was not about Fiber. It was about good government.

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.

Religious channels

[charvolant]

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?

Re:Religious channels

[Akai]

It's a big bit of puffed smoke.

The seperation of church and state is not the exclustion of all religion from the public space, it is the avoidance of sponsoring or establishng a state religion.

In you public grounds example, if a local government were to allow a christian group to hold a christmas pagent, then they legally would be oblidged to allow the local pagans to celebrate the soltice on the same or comparable grounds.

For TV, that's another thing, because religion on TV is a private enterprise function, not a government function. A municiple cable company most likely would be governed by the same FCC statutes that corporate cable companies must follow. These statutes include a provision called "must carry" which allows any TV Station over a certain signal strengh to request and recieve carriage on the cable network.

For non-broadcast cable relgious stations, that would be a business, as opposed to a legal decision I think. The Click Network is Tacoma, Washington's municiple network, run by the city-owned power company. A quick perusal of their cabler offering includes many local channels, some no doubt religious, as well as several cable religious channels. Tacoma isn't exactly the bible-belt, so if there were going to be challenges to the programming content they most likely would have occured there, than in the heart of the south.

Outcry

[cloudscout]

I imagine all four of the citizens who watch the religious channels were lobbying heavily against this.

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.

Re:La not LA

[Mahou]

yeh http://www.netstate.com/states/links/la_links.htm LA is for postal and La is traditional abbreviation.

Lafayette LA isn't the first--Loma Linda CA is

[postbigbang]

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.

Well, this is good.

[mcc]

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.

Re:Well, this is good.

[vought]

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?

No. While Louisiana is famous for it's politicians who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Lafayette is one of the brightest spots on the map when it comes to honesty and relative transparency in city-parish government.

Unlike most other states, many Parishes and Cities in Louisiana have joined to form city-parish governments. (Parishes in Louisiana are analogous to Counties in other states).

Lafayette, once the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, is now the seat of the city-parish government, which is responsible for the oversight of Lafayette Utility Services, which is in turn responsible for installation (done)*, buildout (ongoing) and maintenance of the fiber network.

(In the olden days (pre-1983 or so), Lafayette Parish's unincorporated areas were maintained by the Police Jury a quasi-enforcement non-rulemaking entity. Now the city and unincorporated areas are goverened by the same entity; municipalities within the parish maintain their own town/city governments.)

*As far as I understand it, most of the dark fiber ring encircling most of Lafayette (the city) was put in place over the last ten years during significant drainage and road upgrades.

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.

What is Push Polling:

[boijames]

From Wikipedia:

A push poll is a political campaigntechnique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll]. Push polls are generally viewed as a form of negative campaigning. The term is also sometimes used incorrectly to refer to legitimate polls which test political messages, some of which may be negative. Push polling has been condemned by the American Association of Political Consultants.

The mildest forms of push polling are designed merely to remind voters of a particular issue. For instance, a push poll might ask respondents to rank candidates based on their support of abortion in order to get voters thinking about that issue.

More negative are attacks on another candidate by using polls. These attacks often contain information with little or no basis in fact.

True push polls tend to be very short, with only a handful of questions, so as to make as many calls as possible. The data obtained is discarded, not analyzed. Any poll that does not ask demographic information -- such as age, income, or race -- is generally not a legitimate poll, but some form of advertising.

Perhaps the most famous alleged use of push polls is in the 2000 United States Republican Party primaries, when it was alleged that George W. Bush's campaign used push polling to torpedo the campaign of Senator John McCain. Voters in South Carolina reported being asked "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" an allegation that had no substance but planted the idea of undisclosed allegations in the minds of thousands of primary voters. McCain and his wife had in fact adopted an Asian child.

We've been through this, and it worked

[botlrokit]

Our local municipal utility company wanted to get in on this game about three years ago. They wanted to raise the money through bonds, and were successful with the City Commission in securing the bonds. Work began, but not before two voices were raised: A local upstart Bell$outh-Buyback company, and a multimagillion dollar flash-in-the-pan cable company both went to the public airwaves and local newspaper, and began fomenting all kinds of arrogance about how the public shouldn't fund this venture without public approval, and "how dare the city council speak like this on behalf of the community", and "we're going to sue your nuts off, you mere public utility!" Then on May 4, 2003, a tornado swept through our downtown district and wiped the Internet Upstart's building right off the map. Instantly, they had a new home, and were up and running again in relatively short order, thanks to the utility company's kindness in letting them use some unusued space in their building. The Internet Upstart's commentary quickly dissipated, and the fiber was strung through the city on schedule.

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:Broadband and prosperity have little in common

[Capsaicin]

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

so?

What do you mean "so"?! Don't you know ideological purity is sooooo much more important than positive outcomes?

Confusion

[Presidential]

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

I wholeheartedly agree! After looking all around Los Alamos, the only computer related stuff we could find were some old, discarded hard drives http://tinyurl.com/btatd.