This is a partial reconstruction of the Lafayette Pro Fiber blog that John St. Julien ran for many years, chronicling the grassroots fight for and establishment of LUS Fiber in Louisiana. Many of the links have gone bad and images are missing, but most of the ideas are here and we believe well worth preserving. Site archived by the Community Broadband Networks program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Some of the articles that have disappeared are still available via the WayBack Machine.
From a tip in the comments, a KATC story.
Cox is “Your Friend in the Digital Age?” Sure……. With friends like these who needs enemies?
A Wardville family whose home was destroyed by a fire on Christmas Day has been told they must pay 500 dollars to replace cable television equipment lost in the blaze.
Do you think a small, locally-owned company would act this way? (Much less one that was owned by the customers?)
Pretty pathetic… even more pathetic that this is the type of people that Bill Leblanc and Neal Breakfield seem to be alignning themselves with.
Imagine how many cable boxes they may be charging for in the towns hit by the tsunami. Good thing they aren’t an international provider.
Notice that all of the online video’s documenting the event are having to be pulled. Why? Because the “little guys” can’t afford the bandwidth. KATC.com was getting national visitation, but had to pull the video because of the expense associated with bandwidth.
From: KATC – KATC 3 Home
Posted At: Thursday, December 30, 2004 10:07 AM
Posted To: Inbox
Conversation: Tsunami Video Removal
Subject: Tsunami Video Removal
http://www.katc.com/global/story.asp?s=2747574
Due to the EXTREMELY high amount of traffic KATC.com has received from our streaming tsunami video-clips, we have removed these clips to compensate for Internet bandwidth overages. We apologize for any inconvenience. Stay with KATC TV3 at 5, 6 and 10 PM for complete coverage and latest videos!
Anonymous,
Interesting point about the Tsunami stream being pulled. A chance to associate Lafayette with high-tech avaiability, at least for those watching across the country, has been lost due to the expense of bandwidth.
There is no particular reason that bandwidth inside an LUS system should be limited–in the future residents should be able to watch all the video local channels want to make available or that AOC wants to put up in a library. That would really change the way we get news. Right now print has an advantage over video source in that you can read at the pace you want and at the time you can spare. TV you have to watch when it is offered. It would be great if that could change.
But, as I understand it, the practical reason for there being any bandwidth limits at all is mostly due to the cost of paying private carriers for getting us from our own (municipal) system to our own (federal) backbone. Because that is metered even LUS would have to charge for out-system bandwidth usage.
But, as you infer, LUS’ charges would likely be much less expensive.
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