Copyright is Dead. Is the Network Stranglehold, too?

An opinion piece by Larry Downes in the January edition of CIO Insight makes the argument that copyright is dead. He bases his opinion not on legal decisions but on the way large segments of the American population have opted to ignore the law.

Downes is the Associate Dean of the University of California @ Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems and the author of Unleashing the Killer App and The Strategy Machine. He says copyright was killed, ironically, as a result of the attempts of the entertainment industry to strengthen it.

Here’s the crux of his argument in three brief paragraphs:

A few statistics have been bothering me for a while. Here’s one: 72 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 years old who use the Internet say “they do not care whether the music they download onto their computers is copyrighted or not.”

That’s from a survey performed by the Pew Internet and American Life Project in July of 2003. Here are two more: Just a few months ago, as the Supreme Court was getting ready to hear arguments in the Grokster file-sharing case, the Pew project found that over 7 million adults had already copied a file from someone else’s iPod or other MP3 device, moving beyond the embattled peer-to-peer networks. And as of July of this year, another Pew survey found that nearly 90 percent of all teenagers were active Internet users.

Then this:

Fueling the backlash against the entertainment industry is an emerging ideology among young consumers of collaboration, free culture, open source and bartering value for value in an economy of information. Add to that the long-standing tolerance by the content industries of home taping and other limited, technical copyright violations, and we have a generation of new consumers who don’t care what the law says, or even what the Supreme Court says. The law simply doesn’t reflect reality anymore. Game over.

It is this emerging ideology and a backlash against the network operating giants (the Bells and the cable companies) that has the potential to undermine the efforts by these companies to erect toll gates at all levels of networks and their gateways.

There is, as has been amply commented upon here, a pretty intense battle being waged in Congress, at the FCC, and to a lesser extent in the media about the power grab of the network operators and the resistance that has sparked from content providers.

One relevant, but thus far unreported aspect of this issue is that the Bells, at least, are actually seeking to position themselves in position to tax their competitors. That is, the Bells all view themselves as becoming content providers. Yet, all their tiered network/walled garden talk focuses on charging other content providers for the kind of network performance that, you can bet your last dollar, they are going to provide their own services as a matter of course.

No doubt they’ll have some video on demand service or partner with some companies on search or music, or whatever. A term of the agreement would be guaranteed access to the fastest, sweetest spots in the network. While the specific deals might be vague now, what is certain is that others, not part of those deals would be expected to pay the going freight on network access.

The Bells have been here before.

It was when they were required to open their networks to Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs), but particularly CLEC DSL providers. Many times the CLECs were attempting to drive new services over the network that the Bells had not yet developed. As a result, the Bells would routinely sabotage efforts by the CLECs to deliver those services over their networks. Once the Bells actually had services which matched the CLECs, things did not improve; in fact, they got worse. The Bells were able to undermine the service reliability of CLECs (and thus their very businesses) precisely because they owned the network they were charging the CLECs to use.

So, now the Bells are claiming that they want to charge their competitors again as a means of paying for the shiny new networks they are building in some parts of their respective service areas.

It’s ‘deja vu all over again.’

So, how could this ideology of “collaboration, free culture, open source and bartering value for value in an economy of information” undermine the great network power grab of the Bells? I think the answer is in two places: one, the power of the ideology itself; and, two, the great fiber network busts of the turn of the 21st Century.

First, the ideology isn’t just confined to college students. There are a lot of young, wealthy, free-culture oriented entrepreneurs who have no allegiance to the phone companies, no respect for them, and who might well rebel at the limits that Bells are salivating to put on networks.

Second, those entrepreneurs could still buy up national fiber networks for pennies on the dollar as a result of the great fiber network busts of the first part of this decade. Enron, Global Crossing, 360 Networks, XO, Williams, and others sank 10s of thousands of miles of fiber into rights of ways across the country in the 1990s. Just about all of that fiber led to the largest markets in the country, but passed plenty of mid- and small-sized markets on the way.

A Google, Microsoft, or other company or even individuals could scarf up fully operational networks whole and circumvent the backbones of the Bells (now owned primarily by AT&T, Verizon and Qwest).

Last mile? Municipally owned networks! Co-0p networks. Utility-owned networks. Fiber and wireless. IP over power line. Suddenly, there are many viable paths to the consumer that by-pass the Bell’s Maginot Line of tiered, tarriffed traffic.

Like the entertainment industry Downes depicts in his column, the Bells and their (thus far) more discreet brethren in the cable industry are making a serious blunder by making this grab. Their efforts of control run smack into the face of what people want and how content companies want to respond to those needs.

It’s an untenable position. The hierarchy-flattening revolution of Internet Protocol networks is in full swing. The network companies behave like we live in a public switched network world. They might, but the world, increasingly, doesn’t.

This will probably not end well for them.

Franchise: New Tactics in Virginia

Here’s a change of pace: a look at a Virginia telecommunications law. Normally I wouldn’t impose my attempts to understand other state’s laws on the readers of this blog but this one just might turn out to be important for Louisiana. Here’s the deal: I’m expecting the next regular session of the Louisiana Legislature to have a real battle over a state-wide video franchise bill likely to be introduced by BellSouth. In other states this has been a battle royal between the cable and phone companies. The phone companies want to change the rules that govern TV-channels-for-sale-over-wires to allow them to serve only the most profitable neighborhoods while sticking cable with its current universal service requirements. As you might imagine the cable companies aren’t happy and ally with municipal organizations and consumer groups to fight it. It’s a combination that is potent enough to fight even the infamously effective Telco lobbying machine to a standstill.

That’s been heartening to those who think that communities should have a say in its own future–especially when the phone companies are fighting to gain unrestricted access to city property without having to serve all of the community that owns that property.

But what’s going on in Virginia right now suggests that the cable companies might be willing to join the phone companies and sell out local communities if they can get a good enough deal for themselves. What should be interesting to us here in Acadiana is finding out what cable wants and what phone companies are willing to give up.

If you’d like to look into all this yourself a local paper has an article, and you can even look at the law itself. (Warning, tough sledding.)

Background:
Some background: Northern Virginia is significant on two grounds. First, it’s emerged as the most important battleground between the cable giants and the phone company Verizon’s new fiber-optic based video services. Secondly, it is the home of Bristol, VA’s “Optinet,” a municipal fiber-optic utility which is proving both successful and aggressive. Optinet is capturing market share in excess of its business plan and has provided services and facilitated the development of local networking beyond its home town footprint.

Both of these unique factors appear to have had major effects on Virginia’s bill. As far as Lafayette and Louisiana are concerned the first feature, phone company fiber to the home, is in contrast to Lafayette’s situation. BellSouth is in no position to exert a competitive advantage in the same way that Verizon is in Virginia. The second, a successful local, public utility willing –even eager– to play the role of a regional telecom leader is a parallel that must give BellSouth Louisiana nightmares.

It’s also true that Verizon needs to be making money right now off its enormous investment in fiber in the Virginia region. The market is expressing doubt about its huge national investment in what is surely a long-term winner but does not promise much in the way of short-term profit taking. Add to that its (amazingly self-confident) “strategy” of building out an expensive network that can only be paid for in anything like the near term with the profits from the cash cow of cable TV service without first getting permission to offer cable TV. Verizon obviously decided that it would be easy enough to change the law and ignored all that “nonsense.” Unhappily for them they’d never had to really deal with the idea that “all politics is local.” They failed to take into account that offending every mayor, and town councilman in your little state house district by killing a traditional revenue stream just might not be considered smart politics even by legislators who’d happily trade less obvious local interests for re-election funds. Verizon’s push to get state legislators to knife local government by removing local franchise agreements has ground to a halt in state houses along the east coast–bills that once seemed assured of passage are mired in rewrites and many doubt that any such bills will actually pass.

Add to this the growth of a successful muni fiber-optic based utility and the development of a regional coalition anchored by that public utility in the Appalachian western area and uncertainty and potential danger is high for all the incumbents.

So both the cable companies and Verizon had good reason to compromise here. A lot was at risk, the outcome of a blood-letting in Northern Virginia has no clear winner and a growing public insurrection in the western coalfields threatens to introduce significant new player. A compromise between the big telecoms that stabilized the situation and better defined the risk was in everyone’s interest.

The take-home message? Things are in a complicated, chaotic, and dangerous moment in Virginia. What the corporations are willing to do there might prove unique…or, to the extent these factors spread, it might well prove a model for the future.

The Virginia Law
So, given that background, what do the cableco’s and Verizon want?

From reading over the current version of the law (passed by the house and senate but not yet signed into law):

What cable wants is 1) parity. They want telephone companies that deliver video to be subject to the same rules they are. This law would provide that. (Fees, public access channels, etc. are provided for from all competitors.) 2) quick reduction of competitive disadvantage. Force any competitor to serve most (at least 65%) of a community on a relatively short 3-year schedule. 3) freedom to drop least profitable neighborhoods. If the teleco’s decide not to build out to the last, presumably non-profitable 20% of a community the cablecos want the freedom to dump them too by getting out of old contracts with cities that required universal service.

What the phone company wants is 1) quick deployment. They don’t want to wait more than 3 months after they decide they want to offer video to be able to provide it to paying customers. 2) quick profit. To be able to cherry-pick the most profitable parts of town for initial service and so show some fast payoff to investors. 3) no dregs. To never have to offer service to the least desirable 20% of a town or county (Significantly, not serving this last 20% is what BellSouth here in Lafayette made clear that it would refuse to do without taxpayer support.) 4) utterly predictable franchises. In practice this Bill impose a nearly uniform state franchise on all players. (The only possible changes would be if a provider decided it wanted to give a community more than the minimum provided in this bill–since the city must accept the minimum they’ve got no leverage to ask for anything special.) 5) no expansion/no teleco competition. The phone companies don’t want to be required to ever have to step beyond the boundaries of their already paid-off phone-based infrastructure in order to compete in a community. This clause insures that, for instance, ATT will never have to compete with Verizon head to head in order offer local video service. (These guys are all monopolists by inheritance…competition does not come naturally and competing with your brothers baby bells for the same “ecological niche” must seem especially unpleasant.)

What both Cable but especially the Phone Corps want: 1) containment of the public “threat.” No public entity that isn’t already running an electrical utility gets to play in the telephone field. (No similar restriction exists for new private “overbuilders.”) 2) reduction of phone price competition. As in Louisiana, public entities are forced to pretend to have expenses the do not have when setting prices they charge their citizens. (An example being that they are supposed to “impute” the cost of rental fees for property and poles they already own.) No similar “offsetting” fee is charged for the natural advantages of private providers–such as huge advantages in buying equipment in bulk. 3) force the public phone provider to operate without the financial support of the full utility company. This is accomplished by a no “cross-subsidy” rule. No similar rule applies to Verizon’s wireless or phone divisions. Significantly the State Corporation Commission, the body that regulates utilities can approve a subsidy at its discretion…but not if it would result in lower prices than private providers. See #2 immediately above. (This cross-subsidy issue is the morass that is currently keeping Lafayette from deploying its system.)

What the munis and countys got: Mostly not as much. 1) preservation of the status quo ante in video and its applications to new cable providers. The phone companies have tried in various places to simply eliminate the franchise and its fees, cable access channels, community access provisions and the like. This, sad to say, is a huge win for the communities of Virginia. 2) no special, unique regulation of municipal cable services. Listing this as something the munis wanted and got might seem like a stretch. Who’d do something so whacky? Louisiana, that’s who. Our nutty version deputizes the legislative auditor to regulate only municipals–meaning only Lafayette–because the constitution forbids the Public Service Commission to do what Cox desired. Virginia’s solution is much saner.

This law, unless there is something I’ve missed, is only bad for fundamental reasons: the state should stay out of local attempts to help themselves and especially shouldn’t dictate to local governments that they let outside corporations use community property without agreeing to serve the whole community. This law also persists in the malevolent silliness that little towns have some sort of unfair advantage over ruthless, international megacorporations. A sane level playing field should tilt toward the small local entities, not the big corporations. But beyond the basics this appears to be an almost honest law. The legislature in Virginia must be growing up.

Interesting; Wireless Emergency System?

FYI

The Lafayette Public Utilities Authority is going to consider allocating 850,000 dollars toward the purchase of a SmartNet Trunked Radio System. This is a sophisticated “two way radio” system operating in the 800mhz range (as far as I can tell) that has been deployed chiefly to manage complex public service radio communications (police, fire, 911, emergency preparedness, etc).

If it interests you:
705 W. University Avenue, Ted A. Ardoin City-Parish Council Auditorium
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
4:30 p.m.

Wireless Bill Introduced

Of possible interest to our readership: A bill introduced in the state’s House that would direct the office of homeland security and emergency preparedness to develop a wireless emergency system to cover the entire state.

This is not the wireless bill both Mike and I have commented on earlier but still might be interesting to proponents of muni involvement since it appears to mandate an emergency wireless cloud statewide. Developing that capacity on a statewide level would be truly amazing. I’d be surprised if anything this sweeping passes but since it puts the responsibility for devising the system off on the executive, maybe it will.

…amend and reenact R.S. 29:726(F), relative to the office of homeland security andemergency preparedness; to include within the authority and responsibilities of the office to develop a wireless communications system; to include within the system coordination between local and state responders; to include within the system component that includes direct communication during an emergency between authorities, media, and citizens; and to provide for related matters.

That part about direct communication with citizens would mandate a state cloud if it were interpreted to mean every citizen. But even hooking up “direct” communication between all the local authorities and the state would be a very large undertaking.

Not to beat a dead horse but the long-distance links between regional nodes really ought to be in buried fiber. Anything burried will stay up during a hurricane (and most disasters) better than wireless links. High wind causes alignment failures in point to point wireless communications and rain interferes with significant parts of the spectrum. Wireless is very unreliable during a storm. Wireless comes back quicker–it is easier to repair–than wires (copper or fiber) strung on poles but the ideal emergency system would include as much buried wireline as is practical.

R.I.P.: The Telegram, 1844-2006

Accoding to a short in the Washington Post the telegram joins the list of extinct technologies. The telegram was the first electrical, arguably digital (though not the same discrete bits we are used to using) telecommunications infrastructure. It engendered a huge amount of excitement and investment in its day. The collapse of the bubble associated with overbuilding its infrastructure was arguably the first telecomm collapse. RIP

Founded in 1856, Western Union — which now specializes in long-distance financial transactions — used the cutting-edge technology of sending messages cross-country via telegraph wire.

It died negleced, unoticed, barely attended even by its last owners…the WaPo waited a week before finding the space to report it.

Telegrams peaked in 1929 with 20 million messages sent. Last year, there were 20,000. The final one was sent last Friday…

In its final years, many of the senders delivered their words to Western Union by e-mail or phone. “I do recognize the irony,” Chayet said.

Good News From the Federal Front

No, no, not on the hurricanes; that would be too much to hope for. But there is good news on the arcane but vitally important question of video franchising.
Ranking Senate Commerce Committee member Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Co-Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) have released a “series of principles” they say are “essential” to any video-franchising reform legislation.

Now being happy over a “series of principles” promoted by two of Washington’s power brokers may seem like a pretty dubious emotion but in this case I think it is actually warranted.

These two men are announcing a set of principles that would affirm the rights of local communities to control their own property and use that property to pursue what they (and not the Feds) think would be best for the community free from Federal “guidance.” Here is the skeleton of the principles as reported by Broadcasting and Cable:

•Recognize and Reaffirm the Role of States and Localities in the Video Franchising Process.
Consistent with existing law, state or local franchise authorities should retain the authority to supervise rights-of-way use and recover the associated costs, to require the payment of a reasonable franchise fee, and to require sufficient outlets for local expression and appropriate institutional network obligations…
•Promote Competition by Facilitating Speedy Entry on Fair Terms.
…Nevertheless, the desire for a process facilitating swift entry should not result in a blank check for would-be competitors. Instead, franchising authorities must ensure that similar (though not necessarily identical) responsibilities attend to any would-be franchisee, so that consumers throughout the franchise area can enjoy the benefits of such services on a non-discriminatory basis…
•Promote Competitive Neutrality and a Level Playing Field.
The regulatory regime should be the same for providers of video services where the operator, and not the consumer, controls the video content offering. Definitional arbitrage on the basis of a particular technology should not be permitted.
The franchising process should be designed to promote fairness for consumers in local communities and to promote a level playing field for providers. If a competitive entrant negotiates better terms and conditions for a franchise, other providers in that community should be entitled to adopt those same terms and conditions.

That phrase “definitional arbitrage” is fine piece of language. What they mean is that the phone companies should not be able to get away with defining their for-pay video channels as an “information service” which, by federal definition, gets a ride free of local obligation while cable companies are providing their for-pay channels as a “communications service” meet such obligations. (Believe it or not our entire national telecommunications regulatory regime rotates around this wholly false distinction all areas, not just in video.)

Now the alert reader will notice in the influence of cable companies in the last paragraph above where the federales take it upon themselves to limit the rights of several hundred thousand local communities to make distinctions between cable and incumbent and any local upstarts that might want to join the competition. But I guess you can’t expect any better from our current bunch. The notion that the only fairness in the legislative world is fairness to huge corporations (and that local communities don’t need any of that stuff) is deeply ingrained.

You’d think that endorsing the set of principles enunciated above would be a no-brainer. You’d think no sane federal legislator would step into morass of trying strip every little community in their district of traditional tools to meet the needs of local people. You’d think that any federal senator or representative that was hoping to be re-elected would flee from the mere suggestion that they would and rush to support their local colleagues. (As Burns and Inouye are doing.)

You’d think wrong.

On issues where the desires of large corporations are at stake the distinctions between democrat and republican, or conservative, moderate, and liberal are meaningless. The real divisions in our “leadership” are between those that are wholly owned by their corporate masters and those that maintain a semblance of independent thought and some regard for the people who actually elected them. These days corporations pay for election campaigns and all too many legislators act as if their first allegiance is to those who “paid the freight.” This franchising issue is a test case. Want to know who’s wholly owned and who’s not? Watch this seemingly obscure issue for an indication. (It’s only and indication and not a litmus test because the cable companies, who’ve not worked the political game to any degree that resembles the phone companies have begun to wake up to the fact that their interests, in this moment, align with local communities.)

At any rate, this set of principles are only a good idea–nothing secure. All it means is that there will be a real and influential voice on the commerce committee and in Congress that will fight for the interests of real communities. It’s a lonely hopeful sign.

Zydetech Revived

Folks interested in Fiber, the Digital Divide, or for that matter, grid computing, ultra high speed networks, and the intersections of IT and Education or Medicine, should welcome Zydetech’s latest venture. According to incoming chairman Jeff Leblanc Zydetec wants to put together a master plan to coordinate and promote Lafayette’s pretty amazing array of technology projects.

The basic idea seems (to someone who just attended the meeting) to line up the projects running, in process, or on the table and pair them with a “champion” whose job it is to coordinate their area and promote that portion as a part of a picture of Lafayette as an emerging technology center. The Advocate’s Blanchard was there too and his interesting version is online as well.

That’s not hard to do. With projects ranging from LONI’s ultra high speed network to LITE’s (Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise) supercomputing and immersive visualization projects to Fiber To The Home and a prospective wireless project, to a growing TechSouth conference, there’s plenty of material from which to weave a convincing story.

The three categories most likely to interests readers of this space are Fiber To The Home, the Digital Divide, and a prospective new project: Sibon. I’ll not dwell on Fiber to the Home in this context except to say that big internal bandwidth and high penetration will combine to create a unique situation in Lafayette–one ripe for both commercial an social exploration.

The Digital Divide area, championed by Andre Comeaux, is–at least currently–focused on establishing a baseline of data in hopes of understanding the changes fiber is sure to bring. But it will also be interested in using that data to close any divides that emerge from the research.

Sibon was new to me, but sounds very interesting; it is the logical extension of the cascade of next generation networks running through Lafayette. The National Lambda Rail, the latest, greatest iteration of federally funded research networks (an earlier version was the seed of our current internet will be running down I-10 thanks to some forward-looking politicking by Louisiana leaders. A Louisiana project, the Louisiana Optical Network (LONI) will connect Louisiana’s research universities including our own ULL at the LITE center. Sibon, it is hoped, will be a high-bandwidth, dedicated fiber ring using LUS fiber to drive a commericial research network operating at 10 gigs. It will hook into the LITE center, making it much more practical to use its supercomputing resources and could provide a connection to LONI.

At any rate, it sounds as though Zydetech has awakened from a slumber and is stepping forward in a useful way. This is something to watch.

The Special Session: Wireless?

The Call” for the upcoming special session to deal with hurricane related questions came out yesterday evening. Such calls are what make as special session “special”–they are specially called to deal only with the issues raised in the official proclamation. So the very first fight of any special session, and possibly the most important fight, occurs before the legislature ever convenes: the fight to get on the agenda. So its worth noticing that the very last item in the Governor’s call for a special session is one on wireless broadband that is presented in a very different typeface than the rest of the document. A late addition? The item:

Item No. 41: To legislate relative to construction of wireless internet networks for the establishment of basic and reliable communications among state and local law enforcement and emergency agencies.

That sounds sensible enough, especially in light of the fact that post-mortems on both the 9-11 and Katrina/Rita disasters have listed communications failures as the top problem encountered in reacting to the events.

The trouble with that sensible, comfortable explanation is that there is no immediately visible reason to legislate “relative to” construction of “basic and reliable communications among state and local law enforcement and emergency agencies” since there is no legal impediment to doing so right now and it is impossible to imagine that the state intends to open up new funding resources at the state level to help localities build such considering the current state of the budget.

As always, state politics are murky, but the most likely explanation is the New Orleans proposal Mike wrote about a little earlier. The impetus behind that suggestion was not to “construct” a wireless network for public safety use — that was already in place and they were free to add as much more as they could afford for that purpose. Since New Orleans wireless net was easy to repair and get running after the storm it’s sensible to think that New Orleans would want to upgrade it and extend it for public safety reasons alone. The wireless network only became controversial when the city allowed its citizens to use it for as long as the emergency lasted. Both Cox and BellSouth disliked the idea; BellSouth did so publicly, loudly, and with a threat to take back the “gift” of a building to the New Orleans Police department. The firestorm of national criticism that ensued resulted in some subsequent mealy-mouthed statements from BellSouth’s Louisiana President Bill Oliver but as far as I know that building still hangs in the balance.

What New Orleans really wants is to be allowed to let its citizens use the wireless network even after the emergency period ends. Prior to the 2004 “Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act” the city would have been free to use its resources to serve its citizens in any way that they wanted to be served. That act is all that stands in the way. So what New Orleans seeks is an exception from the act for its wireless system–and, in all fairness, to allow other communities to do the same.

It’s a whacky half-measure of the sort for which Louisiana has become famous. In what other state are chickens not animals for the purposes of the animal welfare laws but are animals for the purposes of butchering them for sale? We’d add to that inglorious list of nonsense that wireless is not broadband when deployed by the government but is for all other purposes. What should be sought, instead, is the repeal of an unwise law that has not only served to frustrate the will of the people of Lafayette but also to endanger all the people of South Louisiana. It has been more than amply demonstrated that Louisiana’s local governments cannot count on the Feds and state will be dicey for decades to come. The state legislature needs to stand aside, quit favoring Atlanta-based corporations in telecomm issues and allow our people to take care of themselves at the local level. The only viable message to the state now is: Get Out Of Our Way. Let us take care of our own.

All of South Louisiana should join together for repeal of BellSouth’s law.

Durel’s Speech — Fiber Update

Durel opened his state of the city-parish addresses by saying that since fiber had been the way his speech last year had ended he’d start with a review of the status of the fiber project this year. (Readers will recall Durel’s call last year for Lafayette to “stand up,” to end the “good ole boy” politics and business habits that kept people from publicly endorsing the project and to get behind the project openly. That proved a decisive moment in the fight and organizational endorsements soon were flowing freely.)

Before I offer my take on the Mayor-President’s latest speech I am happy to say that you don’t have to take my word for it…you can go to the Advertiser site and download MP3s of the speech and listen for yourself. The Advertiser has, as well, extracted budget information from the CD provided by the Mayor to all attendees and posted them as well. The mayor’s CD, also a first, contains a version of the power point slide he showed and supporting budget files. Impressive. All this is just what technology ought to be helping us do: get more real, unfiltered information to more people. Kudos to both the Advertiser and the Durel administration for making this possible.

You can find newspaper stories at the Advertiser (where you will find links to the files mentioned above) and the Advocate–though neither mentions the fiber news readers here will likely want to hear. –AOC was there as well and will surely be showing the speech on its public access station. (More if I can find out just when.)

On to the speech itself.

Durel said he wanted to first thank all that came together to support the plan. He obliquely acknowledged last year’s call for support, saying that he knew many were put in uncomfortable positions but lauded all, from businesses to grass roots organizations that “stepped up,” ignored partisanship and got this done–and contrasted that to the mess in Washington.

He thought that all that really had to happen now was to tweak the bond ordinance. He then launched in to an attack on BellSouth but included a surprise endorsement of Cox that uncharacteristically mentioned no names explicitly. He praises “one company” for becoming a good competitor but lambasts BellSouth. That’s worth quoting:

In fact I told my wife this weekend, Move everything we can to that company. [Pointedly looks over his shoulder at some Cox Advertising on Convention Center wall.–which explains the laughter you’ll hear on the tape.] I’m no longer going to do business , if I can help it, with anyone who files suit against my community. [That was met with vigorous applause.]

The fiber part is only a small part of the speech, but I’d recommend citizens go to the Advertiser’s coverage to listen to it all. The budget issue he tries to bring up are worth us all thinking and talking about. It’s rare to have those decisions put so directly before the people. Take advantage of the opportunity.

Standing Up–Layne St. Julien

In response to a recent anti-fiber letter Layne St. Julien defends LUS against the charge of “breaking the law” saying, among other things, that:

LUS’ interpretation of what is permissible under the act is not in any way odd and is apparently shared by the law’s author, the court that heard the case first, the Public Service Commission, and probably even Cox (who helped write the legislation but who did not join in BellSouth’s lawsuit).

She closes with a plea to stop with the sour grapes and get on with working for the good of our community.

I wouldn’t want to disagree with any of that.