Feasibility Plan Media Roundup

The media have posted their digests of LUS’s feasibility study. (I posted the basics on the voting date and public forums from last evening’s council meeting yesterday) They are worth a pretty careful read. What’s new is in the details rather than the basic direction of the proposal.

The new version of the feasibility study has a more realistic breakdown of adoption rates, and target market penetration for various services than the previous draft version released under pressure from Cox. Other interesting tidbits for those who are following closely include hoped-for bond rates, break-even points for the (25 year) bonds, breakdowns on the proportions of the money going to various hardware installations and the like.

At the Advocate: Council sets fiber-optics plan vote

At the Advertiser: LUS fiber study released; no fees finalized

At LUSFTTH—Doug posts a bit on what to expect in the coming weeks from the opponents. I feel sure that we’ll see more disinformation.

Doug also expects FTTH announcements from the incumbents. I doubt it—suggestions that they might, intimations that really they’d already planned to do so, flashy stuff on what they might do if they decided on a wholely different business and technological strategy here than in the rest of their footprint—we might hear about that sort of stuff.

But actual announcements, No, I’d be very surprised. The incumbent strategy if FUD, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, and they don’t seem to have it ’em to actually compete. Their strategy at every level from the federal to the municipal is to pursue monopoly power and to frighten and mislead anyone who might stand in their way. An example: In my judgment the incumbents nation-wide, with BellSouth leading the way, have just run a number on Chairman Powell and the FCC. They’ve crawfished out of previous deals they’d made to allow access to competitors in order to get into the long distance market by holding the threat of not running fiber to the home over the FCC. Powell caved on that, giving in to both to the demand to cut competitors off their system and to giving FTTH regulatory status to mere fiber to the curb, in effect subsidizing BellSouth’s current strategy without requiring them to give up anything or speed up deployment at all. Craven. The FCC is supposed to be the one running the show on our behalf—not acting as agents for the monopolies they are supposed to regulate. We need some new commissioners and with any luck we’ll get that soon.