Month: October 2004

There has been a fair amount of business news recently expressing doubt about Cingular’s ability to easily absorb AT&T Wireless. According to a brief on Techweb, Standard and Poor downgraded Cingular, SBC, and AT&T wireless’ credit rating.

“The cell-phone wars are taking their toll on BellSouth Corp. and SBC Communications, as well as on their jointly backed Cingular Wireless cell-phone service provider, as Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered its ratings on the three companies. Cingular has been struggling to integrate AT&T Wireless into its system.”

This will increase BellSouth’s costs and make it less likely that they can upgrade their core infrastructure. The investment shift to wireless may be a good idea for the company. (Or may not–it is pretty clear that recently shed wireless investments in Latin America were never a good idea) What is clear is that they are milking the cash cow that they have to invest in wireless and that this isn’t necessarily in the best interest of those customers that provided the dollars. We’d most likel prefer that they upgrade the systems we are using.

One nice thing about a municipal utility is that the money that comes from its owner/customers will remain in the region and will be used for system upgrades or to support local community services.

Jon Fitzgerald, fiber factotum, forwards the following Coffee and Fiber Report:

“Discussions by anonymous citizens (anonymity being the only house rule) started around 10 AM @ Mello Joy. A wide range of topics, surrounding FTTH, were discussed in the truest Socratic spirit; topics ranged from exciting visions of ubiquitous open wireless networks, all the way to the whole bandwidth as a utility issue. Just think of the fun if 4 citizens show up.”

“Next ‘Coffee and Fiber’ will be held @ CC’s on Johnston and South College- 10 AM Saturday the 9th”

Conversations over coffee are an honored tradition of Acadiana. Sound like a great way to spend some out of the house time to me.

We’ve posted the latest in our our “Monday Conversations” series. Katner represents World Wide Packets, the company who serves Provo, Utah. Lafayette recently had a visit from the Mayor Billings of Provo, whose network setup sounded intriguing. Katner’s company supplied Provo (and hopes to provide other municipalities like Lafayette) with basic network designs, architectures, and hardware. Mr. Katner responds to questions about his company and its technologies.

Remember that TiVo/Netflix deal that I posted about with such wild enthusiasm? And the despondent entry later because it looked like the story was a mistake?

I should have stuck to my opinion that it was just too good an idea not to be true. The deal has been inked! I am back to my original enthusiasm. Making it work still requires that TiVo convince to the major studios to go along with an Digital Rights Management system that they are uncomfortable with—and fought at the FCC. But, I repeat, remember iTunes. The big recording commpanies didn’t like Apple’s DRM either. But once it was made clear that they could profit—and provide a credible alternative to piracy—those objections evaporated. They will again.

It’s gonna be huge. For all the reasons I laid out earlier.

All we need is big bandwidth. There are ways around that. Multicasting is one. Of which more in a later post. But they aren’t very good ways. Lafayette will be perfectly positioned to take advantage of this when the moment comes. With a nice true broadband connection it could be real Video On Demand. Just order and watch, no waiting for a download, no hoping it is already on local storage. And that part of the TiVo/Netflix service will need a nice big testbed. I offer Lafayette, eagerly, happily, gleefully.

Of course I can’t walk away from this without repeating my little fantasy about how to eliminate the digital divide: opt for a linux-based TiVo settop box, partition off a portion for an X-11 Graphical User Interface, drop in open office and one of the free, pair that with an open source browser, use the TV screeen for an admitedly low-quality monitor and BAM…a low cost computer in every household with digital cable. At a stunningly cheap price, especially when you consider that you get cable TV and a little internet connected computer. TiVo has been trying to get in as a cable settop box supplier for a long time. I’d bet they’d be willing to cut a real deal to have a full-fledged proof of concept location.

Annie Collins, who was our first Monday Conversations interviewee, has appealed to Lafayette for help in their fight for Fiber. The pro-fiber group there needs money or design help to counter an ad campaign by the Comcast and SBC, the local equivalents of Cox and BellSouth. They are going up for a second vote on their proposal on November the 2nd.

Annie represents “Fiber for Our Future” a group of citizens who have been fighting the good fight in the TriCities region of Illiniois—a cluster of cities near Chicago. They went to a referendum in 2003…and lost. The incumbent providers there, SBC and Comcast, unleashed an overwhelmingly expensive blizzard of disinformation using tactics like dual push polls, glossy brochures, a large ad campaign, mail campaigns that blanketed the regions and more, all of which quite deliberately misrepresented the plan and blatantly attempted to confuse the real issue with claims that were intended to make people uncertain about what was proposed and what realistic alternatives were open. The cities had to rely on citizens like Annie to promote the plan because of legal restrictions on cities mounting a ad campaign to “promote” new services. The Fiber for Our Future band was overwhelmed by the campaign to which they were not in a position to adequately respond.

The people of Lafayette owe the TriCities a debt of gratitude: their experience, coupled with our initial, very similar, experience of Cox and BellSouth’s “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” campaign demonstrated that allowing the city to be pushed into a referendum by the incumbents would be simply result in an unfair media onslaught that would only serve to confuse the issue. Since Lafayette, like the TriCities, would be legally prevented from defending the idea only the incumbent spin and disinformation would be available to citizens. The Council, wisely in this writer’s opinion, chose not to cave in to pressure for a referendum which would have inevitably resulted in the people of Lafayette being systematically lied to and mislead. Without the experience of the TriCities and similar cases elsewhere Lafayette might well have been enticed into that trap.

After the incumbents won in 2003 they thought they didn’t need to worry any longer. Service remains subpar and prices for cable, amazingly, jumped more than a third. They didn’t count on Annie and her band who have roared back with a new plan and recently won petition drives for a spot on the ballot in all three cities.

They need our help now and are trying to raise money or any other sort of support. If you can help or have ideas get in touch with Annie at: acollins@tricitybroadband.com;

Their postal address is: 9 N. Lincoln St, Batavia, IL 60510

Checks can be made out to: Fiber For Our Future.

More info at the Fiber For Our Future website.

10/6 UPDATE: Fiber For Our Future has put a PayPal Bug on their website. Travel to their front page, click on the pay pal button and you will be brought to a secure site where you can quickly and easily contribute any amount, large or small. A nifty web tool.

George Graham of the Graham group public relations firm has a letter in today’s Advocate. It’s a great letter lauding to the skys both Kathleen Blanco and Joey Durel for their very concrete actions in LONI, Lambda Rail, and the Fiber for the Future Initiative. He’s right and they deserve the praise. Durel, especially, has taken action that has very real, direct political risks. He’s staked his career on this while many of his natural allies hang around waiting for the “perfect plan” to emerge. (And, not incidently, for the plan to become so overwhelmingly accepted by the public and the council that they bear no risk in joining in.) Its past time for those folks to show some public support. (I am gratefully aware of the cadre of leaders who have been steadfast. My quarrel is with the “official” leadership organizations.)

It shouldn’t be George Graham writing that letter.

Which brings up another quarrel. Certainly no one who is tuned in to Louisiana politics or the Lafayette situation will be unaware of Graham’s deep political connections or that his firm is representing, quite actively I might add, the Durel administration and LUS in the Lafayette fight over fiber. But, most folks don’t follow that closely and Graham really should let readers know that he is paid to work for fiber. I am a big advocate of being straightforward—it pretty much always works out better in the end.

(Sorry, the Advocate apparently doesn’t put their letters online so you’ll get no link. You’ll have to go down to the newstand to get your copy. If you do you’ll get the lagniappe of one of Kevin Blanchard’s more insightful pieces on the contretemps over road work at the recent council meeting. Ah, local politics. The Advertiser didn’t cover it.)

Update/Correction: A kind reader points out that the Advertiser has also run George’s letter today. (Good Coordination!) And the Advertiser puts its letters online, partially offsetting my little snark about missing the streets issue. You can get the text of the letter at: Blanco, Durel have vision of the future

“While it seems an unlikely pick, Lafayette, with its progressive University of Louisiana, Lafayette, and the city’s entrepreneurial spirit, is doing a lot of things to attract high-tech businesses.”

That’s the pitch from Entrepreneur Magazine. Today’s Advertiser runs a story inspired by the article and extending some of its points. LEDA and its ATIC (Acadiana Technology Immersion Center) received most of the praise. And that’s appropriate. But ATIC appears to this old academic to be a pretty straightforward implementation of “the CAVE.” Having it will be a boost and its certainly a lot of fun to play with. –The University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana had one when I was there in ’96 and as a techy sort of new hire I got to go and tour the facility. Great stuff, but it all depends on what one does with it nowadays. Those were the days of virtual worlds and the CAVE is certainly the best developed example of that enthusiasm. The technology is there; the issue now is applications and interface—and Lafayette has a great opportunity to help make the technology useful.

The fiber connection? Oh there are technical things… but for my money the real implication of this story for a fiber project is that if a CAVE could get us this sort of press just think what being the nation’s biggest and best fiber community would garner. The publicity alone oughta be worth a few miles of backbone.