BellSouth Suit in the News

Media on BellSouth’s lawsuit:

KATC

The Advertiser:Fiber battle heads to court

The Advocate: BellSouth sues utility on funding –(A fuller, more interesting, version is in the paper; I’ll post an update if and when it appears This URL now points to the fuller version of the post, thanks are due the Advocate online staff.)

Pretty much everyone has a skeletal recounting of the involved legal rationale behind BellSouth’s suit (one which Cox has joined). I have to say that the media has shown its smarts in mostly ignoring the transparent excuses and feeble justifications that BellSouth put forward in its publicity release in favor of an analysis of what the suit actually asks for and intends to do. Stop LUS.

Update: 10:42 am, I’ve gotten acknowledgement that the version of this story on the Advocate website is incomplete. We’ll see if the online staff will get on the stick and fix it. Update 2: 11:50 pm The problem was due to the Baton Rouge and Lafayette versions of the story being slightly different, most likely due to there being a difference in the available space left for the story in each edition of the paper. Once that was straightened out the folks over at the Advocate were great about getting the fuller version online. Go take a look, the URL remains the same, but now you get the extra textural goodness described below–and more…

In the interim here is some of the missing text:

But City-Parish President Joey Durel said that recent statements by Oliver saying that recent statements by Oliver saying BellSouth would be willing to talk about partnering in LUS’ project have proven “insincere.” “This (a lawsuit) is not how you forge a partnership.” Durel said.

….

Durel said he thinks the voters who elected him and the council did so because they trust their judgment.

“In my opinion, BellSouth is suing the people of Lafayette.” Durel said. They’re trying to dictate the direction of this community, rather than the elected officials.”

BellSouth and Cox are burning bridges.

These corporate bureaucrats should be advised that this isn’t some sort of corporate dance where its ok to manipulate and deceive your opponents for marginal advantage since you both understand that negotiations have nothing to do with character and everything to do with a game of incremental advantage. It may look like they are playing a corporate game here. But they are wrong. They are dealing with people who are earnestly trying to do good; such people care about honesty and character and are perfectly capable of refusing to negotiate with people, who in their judgment, lack the character to make negotiations meaningful.

We’re looking at a conflict of cultures here. And BellSouth is wrong if they think they can’t poison the well.

You can still get anti-BellSouth “Get Our Of Our Way.” bumper sticker art at our ArtWorks page and Jon Fitzgerald still has some bumper stickers left from the first batch.