Month: April 2006

Sharon Kleinpeter (based in Baton Rouge, not Lafayette—a claim Cox employees should learn not to make.) has a letter in this morning’s Advertiser. In it she returns to Cox’s failed strategy of trying to scare Lafayette into submission with what can, sadly, only be called lies. The real question is what exactly is it that so scares Cox Communications that it will risk returning to methods that have backfired on it so badly in the past. Could it be real competition unfettered by the state restrictions and regulations imposed on LUS but not on Cox?

It really is pretty astonishing the lengths to which Ms Klienpeter will go. Let us start with the most dramatic falsehoods and advance to the minor bits of misdirection.

In Bristol, Va., where a fiber network was recently constructed, residents experienced rate increases of 40 percent in electric, 22.4 percent in water and 4 percent in sewer. Without cross-subsidization protections, Lafayette could see similar increases.

That’s just dishonest and, frankly with the reams of material that have been published on this question, I have to believe Ms Kleinpeter knows that its not true–or she should start doing a little fact-checking of her own before signing her name. Virginia, like Louisiana, has a law which prohibits public telecommunications utilities (but not private ones) from using income derived from one branch of the business to “cross-subsidize” its telecom business. That’s not the end of the similarity: the local phone incumbent in Virginia, Sprint, sued alleging cross-subsidization when Bristol Utilities undercut their phone prices. The ensuing, costly battle resulted in Bristol being cleared of the charges more than a year ago. This is a matter of easily accessible public record and Ms Kleinpeter does her reputation (and credibility with those of us across the basin) no good in repeating a disproven charge in a transparent attempt to make us distrust our local utility.

The specific numbers she site, 40%, 22.4% and 4% sound solidly factual but are similarly deceptive and are just as easily shown to be unrelated to Bristol’s fiber project. For instance, the dramatic 40% jump in electricity prices was a cause for concern locally, as you might imagine. But the Bristol paper reports a story that has no fiber involvement:

Bristol Virginia Utilities’ 38 percent power rate increase may be a significant spike for its customers, but the new charges will be more in line with those of other electric systems.

BVU’s seven-year contract with Cinergy ends Dec. 31, and the utility has entered into a three-year wholesale supply agreement with American Electric Power, effective Jan. 1. The switch is costing BVU 81.81 percent more, half of which it’s absorbing and the other half it is passing on to customers.

So the truth is that the local utility, which had negotiated an unusually favorable rate for its customers couldn’t get as good a rate when it had to look for a new supplier. It absorbed half the cost of the increase with the net result that its customers, who had enjoyed years of unusually low rates, now paid something much closer to, though apparently still a little lower than, the going regional rate. Relationship of this issue to the utility offering competitive, inexpensive, phone, cable, and internet over fiber to its citizens? None at all.

So Bristol has not been cross-subsidizing its telecommunications division and local increases in utility costs have nothing to do with the cheaper services the telecommunications division is offering the community. Regardless of what the competition would have you believe is true.

Now on to mere misdirection:

First, It’s LUS, a local public utility, not “the local government” that will be competing with Cox and offering lower cable prices to Lafayette citizens; something Kleinpeter well knows. She just doesn’t think it would get her company as much sympathy to try and stir up resentment against a local utility if she used the more accurate terms.

Second, I don’t think that Mr. Huval has ever said that “government” (or even LUS) needs cross-subsidization. After all, though admittedly under duress, LUS agreed to the law that includes that clause. I do think that Huval and LUS have asked for the same rules applied to LUS by the “Fair” Competition Act apply to private providers. That’s what one of the bills Ms. Kleinpeter lumps together and dismisses would do. Cox is opposed. Why? Is it because the Cox conglomerate would like to retain its freedom to be able to cross-subsidize its business in Lafayette on the backs of millions of rate-payers across the US and to use the proceeds of any of its other newspaper and media business to fund its (un)Fair Competition in Lafayette?

Third, Cox — who used to tell us that fiber was like an unnecessary luxury car — is now playing little games of misdirection in implying that its “state-of-the-art fiber network” is desirable. Of course Cox has the same hybrid fiber-coax system that it had before it started billing itself a fiber network and handing out little flashlights with a bunch of plastic fibers attached to one end at community events. At least Cox understands now that we want fiber–but what we actually want is Fiber To The Home. And that is what we voted for.

Fourth, it is Fiber to the Home (FTTH) that we voted for on July 16th last year. Nobody that voted for the FTTH initiative was voting to support the restrictions that Cox and BellSouth put on our local project with the help of the legislature. They were voting to support the project. It was the people who voted against the project, and lost 62 to 38%, that were worried about such issues. Cox isn’t worried about “fair play” or your utility rates. Implying that the peoples’ vote somehow supported Cox and BellSouth’s position must rank as some sort of new high in the art of corporate misdirection and misinformation.

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All in all, this letter does Ms Kleinpeter and Cox no credit. It reawakens the judgment that you can’t trust anything the incumbents say. I had thought they had learned from previous mistakes. What Cox is offering here is what Cox offered the community during the initial months of the fiber fight: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. This is not merely a failed political tactic that will lose them points with our community. It is also lousy business practice. People have a hard enough time trusting their Cable company as it is. People don’t want half the channels they are forced to buy just to get the few they actually watch. They really don’t like that they almost never see the rated cable speed that was advertised for the tier they bought. Giving the public an objectively verifiable reason to believe that Cox will lie to you and that it will mislead you is not just dangerous politically; it is a really bad business practice. It’s hard to think of a better way to ensure LUS’ success.

On Sundays I sometimes offer up something for folks to read that’s more of a thought piece. This Easter I’d like to share a piece that, in my mind at least, has a lot to do with both the day and with broadband in Louisiana. (Bear with me!)

You’ll see the author’s not Christian… but does subscribe to the concept that two or three gathered with common faith and purpose can accomplish great things. He cites Ecclesiastes rather than Matthew but the underlying theme is familiar. You’ll also see that he’s talking most immediately about wireless. For most of our country, without the resources of a strong local public utility, wireless is the last, best hope for communities being able to control their own communications destiny. Lafayette is a little luckier but the hope is similar.

The author, Feld, suggests that we can change the world. And that we should. And that we shouldn’t at any point be embarrassed by the belief or the effort. That’s worth considering today.

It’s not an easy read because in the end the object Feld leads us to examine isn’t the usual “look at this thing over here in this way;” instead you end up looking at yourself. Never comfortable; often valuable.

Harold Feld’s “My speech from the Community Wireless Conference“

National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” ran a piece today (realaudio link) on how New Orlean’s might be forced to give up its free WiFi system–and on the city’s dramatic promise to defy state law if necessary.

The story sets the conflict up pretty simply as a matter of a state law that prevents New Orleans from continuing after the state of emergency ends and talks to Meffert, CIO of New Orleans, and to Sharon Kleinpeter of Cox. (Local color is provided by an interview in a “trendy coffehouse in the French Quarter.”)

It is an accurate story and fun to listen to but like so much in the national media about local issues it misses some pretty crucial points.

They miss, for instance, that the law in question was not aimed at New Orleans, but at Lafayette. When Sharon Kleinpeter defends the law as something New Orlean’s legislators voted for the interviewer is no doubt unaware that no one ever anticipated that the consequence of trying to reign in Lafayette and to block the future her plan represented would leave New Orleans in the lurch after Katrina. Her representatives certainly never voted for that. Of course the truth is that New Orleans’ didn’t particularly care to back up the small city across the basin and the compromises that Lafayette felt forced into have rebounded on the city. New Orleans apparently has yet to join Lafayette in asking for repeal–a repeal which would return to them the right to do whatever they want with their own property (without having to defy state law).

More seriously, it misses what’s been widely reported and never publicly resolved: that the real target of the city’s ire is BellSouth (soon to be AT&T). BellSouth has threatened to take back the donation of a building to the New Orleans’ police over this issue and by all accounts is the force blocking the repeal of the wireless portion of the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act in the Louisiana Legislature. Cox is earnestly against its repeal too…but the real story is BellSouth/AT&T vs. New Orleans; not the city vs. the state.

NPR has had folks in the region reporting on Lafayette’s referendum, so there should have been a little institutional memory available.

But NPR would have no way to know that Sharon Kleinpeter’s snippy remarks that the “everybody agreed two years ago that it was a perfect instrument” and that legislators were now hesitant to change it because everyone agreeed back then that it was a good law is purest balderdash. Legislators are hesitant to challenge the most powerful lobbying force in the state, BellSouth, and they are hesitant to challenge the industry that now controls a majority of the television sets in major markets, the cable guys. What makes Ms Kleinpeter’s remarks laughably misleading is that it was Cox, not the municipalities, that came back the very next year with the now infamous Broome Bill that changed the referendum portion of the law and tried to get the state to fine Lafayette 900,000 dollars if its citizens went ahead and voted to provide cable with a little competition. Nobody thinks it a good law, but Cox was the first to demonstrate its disappointment by trying to change a law it had just approved, not New Orleans.

Granted, in the flush of making an agreement that looked livable some florid language was used and people are no doubt now deeply embarassed by remarks that blessed it as “model law.” (For the record, LPF stalwarts consistently objected to the compromise and Mike Stagg was the lone voice to object in the hearings.)

But it’s hard to complain too loudly about NPR’s lack of memory about the issue and it less than full analysis of the question when our own lacks in these departments are so evident. After all NPR’s got three minutes and 8 seconds for the story but we have to live with the consequences of our memory lapses. Truth is New Orleans didn’t exert itself for Lafayette during the initial legislative battle and Lafayette didn’t particularly try to protect other cities when it reached its forced compromise. Lafayette spiked the parts of the Broome amenments that were most damaging to it and let more onerous referendum requirements fall on cities with few resources to fight huge corporations. This time through New Orleans is repeating history by just trying to get its wireless exemption passed. And Lafyette, while showing the good sense to at least offer a full repeal, appears to be ready to settle for much less. Everybody is ignoring the franchise bills that hang out there threatening a huge expropriation of local rights of way to lock local communities out of any control of their own property in order to back an AT&T/BellSouth plan that limits its souped-up DSL plans to no more than half of Lousisiana’s people.

No, we’ve got nothing much to criticize NPR about. Lafayette and New Orleans need to ally on repeal before the post-hurricane opportunity passes. The Louisiana Municipal Association needs to recognize what Michigan’s Municipal Leaguee understands: that the ability of towns and small cities to determine their own future is seriously threatened by state and federal franchise laws. It’s pretty clear that pursuing every locality’s immediate interests has led everyone to a dead end. If Louisiana learned anything in the last two years it is that relying on outside interests like BellSouth is an invitation to betrayal. Nobody alone has the support they need to pass laws that protect the interests of their individual community. We need a firm alliance on all municipal telecom issues. We need to rely on ourselves. Ben Franklin got it right:

Update 4/14/06: Boing Boing, supposedly the world’s most popular blog, links to the NPR story on New Orlean’s WiFi. I’m sure it will do traffic at NPR a world of good. It’d be nice if it did New Orleans’ some good as well.

Louisiana Legislation Dept.

There are a couple more bills for those interested in municipal telecommunications to track. One is a new wireless bill newly introduced by LaFonta, one of New Orleans’ representatives that would exempt wireless technologies from the provisions of the (un)Fair Competition act and another two by Ellington, Telecommunications Corporation’s representative, that just sits out there as blank checks to be used if needed.

In broadest overview: nothing is moving. No repeal Bills are up for a hearing. No noxious franchising bills are scheduled to be heard and no new onerous amendments to the (un)Fair Competition bill are being offered. That’s odd. With Lafayette’s fiber-optic bond ordinance set to become unchallengeable on April 24th (thirty days after its passage and publication) the window is closing on one important tool that BellSouth/AT&T has used to stop the crucial sale of bonds: suing to prevent the bond sale. There had been every indication that BellSouth would challenge the latest ordinance as well…after all the bond market is still getting more expensive and any delay hurts LUS and the citizens that spurned BellSouth’s arguments. Even without a good case everyone expected BellSouth to sue. I hear the gears of the sausage-maker grinding in the background. I wish their song were clearer. (Thoughts?)

LaFonta’s wireless New Orleans bill looks like an evolution of the New Orleans’ bill last seen during the special session. The thrust of the bill is to exempt wireless from the provisions of the (un)Fair Competition act and to vest control in the elected parish executive. There are some confusing sentences about a minimum speed of one meg and about raising the speed during an emergency. If there is no upper limit then the second sentence is unnecessary. I’ve got a query in on this point and if I get clarification I’ll let you know.

Ellington’s two bills seem as senseless as some of his public remarks. For instance, the instrument that modifies the state’s regulation of bonding authority for local governments looks like an utterly meaningless bill which proposes only to insert a dash between words so that it would read “revenue-producing” instead of “revenue producing.” A waste of time? Only if that change is the actual purpose of introducing the bill. If, instead, your purpose is to make sure that you’ve got a bill parked in the proper committee that will allow you to later put in any amendments your clients might desire that could restrict local bonding authority it makes pretty good (if despicable) sense. His second bill, the one that amends the (un)Fair Competition law, makes the same sort of twisted sense. You can read and re-read the bill and you can’t figure out how the changes make any meaningful difference. That’s because it doesn’t make any meaningful difference and isn’t supposed to…right now. These bills are blank checks made out to the sponsoring corporations who’d like to make sure that they’ve got a legislative instrument to ride if they need it. (Ellington has written blank checks before. In fact the (un)Fair Competition act was originally a bill to promote rural broadband before Ellington endorsed it over to BellSouth and Cox.)

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Here is your updated list of muni-related telecom bills.

Repeal or anti-repeal in various degrees and flavors:

• HB 244, Robideaux, SB 192–Michot, Poison Pill, Would apply most of the rules that apply to municipal telecom entrants under the Local Government Fair Competition Act to “subsidized” private telecom providers. (Senate Commerce, House Commerce)
• HB 245–Robideaux, SB 495–Michot, Repeal!!, Would Repeal the Local Government Fair Competition Act. (Senate Commerce, House Commerce)
• HB 257, Robideaux, SB 243–Michot, Exemptions Would exempt Lafayette from the Fair Competition Act and exempt all wireless technologies. (Senate Commerce, House Commerce)
• HB 537, Robideaux, Exemptions Redux, Would repeal all restrictive clauses of the fair competition act except the feasibility study and referendum provisions. Would exempt all wireless technologies. (House Commerce) [This version of the bill has several Acadiana co-sponsors: Representatives, Robideaux, Pierre, Trahan, and Alexander as well as Senator Michot]

• New! SB 395, Ellington, Blank Check, A placeholder bill that allows the incumbents to come in after the filing deadline and introduce any amendments to the (un)Fair Competition Act they might desire. (Senate Commerce)
• New! SB 585, Ellington, Blank Check Too This bill would would allow the incumbents to come back in and, should the (un)Fair Competition Act be substantially repealed, get another bite at the apple by restricting the bonding capacity of municipalities. (Senate Commerce)

Wireless-only Repeal Bills

• SB 211, Murray, Wireless Exemption, Would exempt all wireless technologies from the Fair Competition Act. (Senate Commerce)
• New! HB 1174, LaFonta, Wireless Exemption for Parish Executives, Would exempt all wireless technologies from the Fair Competition Act and vest decision-making power in elected parish executives. (No Committee Assignment)

Bills that would move cable franchises from local to state control

• SB 386–Ellington, HB 699–Montgomery, State Video Franchise-panel, Would eliminate local video franchises and vest control in a panel appointed by the governor. (Senate Commerce, House Commerce) [co-sponsored by in the Senate by Smith]
• HB 258, Farrar, State Video Franchise-PSC, Would eliminate local video franchises and vest control in the Public Service Commission. (House Commerce)

Emergency Telecommunications bills with implications for municipal broadband

• HB 540–Burns, Emergency Preparedness, Would mandate the development of a an emergency preparedness system. (House Commerce)
• HB 619–Burns, Emergency Preparedness–Coastal, Would mandate the development of a an emergency preparedness system in coastal regions. (House Commerce)

(This post is a little off the beaten track for this blog; if you’re pretty purely telecom or tech focused, you can safely skip it. But if hurricane recovery and local energy costs are of interest, or if you think simple fair play should be a factor in the repeal of the (un)Fair Competition law that hampers Lafayette and New Orleans, read on.)

The Advocate reports on House Bill 887, which is one of those proposed laws that, on the face of it it anyway, can probably be justified in the wake of a disaster. Its purpose is to provide private electrical utilities with the cheapest possible financing for their disaster rebuilding funding. The idea is that such cheap funding will mean cheaper rates for Louisiana customers in the long run.

That’s a good goal, if it does in fact result in the energy companies’ lowering our rates–which seems a bit mushy. Cheap bonding authority, to the extent that it doesn’t harm or obligate the state, seems like a pretty decent way to achieve the goal of lower prices.

But it also seems like what is good for the goose should be good for the gander. Why in the world does our Legislature pass laws that make it cheaper for private utilities to borrow money to run their businesses, but impose special disabilities on public utilities that want to do the same?

Louisiana’s Local Government Fair Competition Act includes clauses that are, quite deliberately, designed to make investors anxious about the security of Lafayette’s bonds and so to raise the costs to the City-Parish. With the bill currently being considered, we see the Legislature extending special privileges to the private sector–and indeed only to one segment of the private sector–while continuing to impose special disabilities on the bonding authority of local communities that want to offer new public utilities.

I sincerely hope this means that the same legislators who vote for this bill will vote for the bills that would repeal the (un)Fair Competition Act (especially Lafayette Rep. Trahan, who is signed on as a sponsor). Favoring both would mean they were really voting with their citizens’ best interest in mind.

But it’s not altogether clear from reading the story and glancing over the bill that it is as simple as that.

For one thing, the law does appears to obligate the state to extend a huge raft of unspecified privileges and special protection for the “storm recovery property” (very complexly defined) that secures the bonds. In the proposed law the state promises not to:

Take or permit any action that impairs or would impair the value of storm recovery property

There’s a clause further down that opts out the PSC and the city of New Orleans from being limited by this bill but that is a huge open-ended commitment that I can’t believe needs to be made or should be made. The scope of things which are legitimate matters for public lawmaking and regulation that would “impair the value” is huge. The public is granting privilege–a favor–with this bill; it shouldn’t be asked to pass on its sovereignty at the same time. What, by the way, ever happened to the old concept of tit for tat? What do the private corporations have to give up to gain this favor? Nothing visible.

What makes all this even stranger is that, actually, the law does not obligate the private utility companies to actually return any of their savings to the people of the state. And our legislators get all huffy when it’s politely pointed out to them. Really. You can’t make stuff like this up. The AARP rep wants to change the word “may” to “shall:”

….changing the word from “may” to “shall” would guarantee the companies and lawmakers would pass along any savings to consumers, he said.

Our lawmakers are astonished at his temerity.

“I am astonished at your opposition,” said Rep. Diane Winston, R-Covington. She said utilities, like other businesses, need to increase their rates to cover their increased costs.

Winston said the wording changes sought by the AARP amounts to a mandate that consumers reap the benefits of any savings realized by the utility companies.

“Everybody’s cost of business has gone up,” she said. “You have to give a little allowance for them.”

Hey, I’m astonished that Ms. Winston is astonished that anyone would want to make sure the declared purpose of a law she favors should actually be served. She ought to want to “mandate that consumers reap the benefits of any savings realized by the utility companies;” that is the only reason for our public officials to get involved. Without such guarantees, the only purpose of the law is to hand over special profits to the corporations who wrote this law. (And yes, this is another bill that is openly admitted to have been written by the corporations who benefit from it.)

Part of the way this bill works is that it authorizes a special, dedicated rate increase to fund storm recovery cost (costs incurred directly or indirectly) and to build up a reserve fund for that purpose (though no visible restrictions are placed on funds so reserved). The Advocate story doesn’t make the rate increase visible. But the law itself certainly makes clear what the Public Service Commission is authorized to do:

If determined appropriate by the commission and provided for in a financing order, such amounts are to be imposed on customer bills and collected by an electric utility or its successors or assignees, or a collection agent, in full through a charge, which may be collected as part of the electric utility’s base rates or in any other manner deemed appropriate by the commission, for the time period specified in the financing order, paid by existing and future customers receiving transmission or distribution service, or both, from the electric utility or its successors or assignees under rate schedules or special contracts approved by the commission. The commission may provide for payment of such charges even if the customer elects to purchase electricity from an alternative electricity supplier including as the result of a fundamental change in the manner of regulation of public utilities in this state. [emphases mine]

That last sentence would keep the surcharge on your bill in the unlikely event that this state follows Texas and other states and “deregulates” energy. These representatives are being careful, very careful, to make sure that corporations benefit. Would that they were so careful in pursuing our interests.

If these representatives are being honest about their true motivations, they’ll vote to repeal the (un)Fair Competition Act and amend pro-private utility act to make sure that it serves the people of the state. Cheaper bonds would benefit the citizens of this state in both cases. If, instead, they are actually simply motivated by a desire to pass laws benefiting the private utility providers of this state, they’ll keep the (un)Fair act and not do anything to hold Entergy to its promises.

It’s not really all that hard to tell who our legislators are representing. You watch what they do.

AP carries news of the ABC announcement that drives another nail in the coffin of the Broadcast/Cable TV model: Free, ad-supported Downloadable Video.

ABC will offer four prime-time shows including “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” on its Web site for free for two months beginning in May as it continues to expand the ways consumers can watch TV online.

The shows will include advertising that cannot be skipped over during viewing.

This will require real bandwidth. The idea is basically to trade you an online PVR in exchange for you, the consumer, agreeing to keep the old advertising model and not skip the ads.

This is not a stable solution. People will save the video stream to disk and skip the ads just as the users of DVRs like TiVo do now. The result will be that users will come to view the ABC site as a large online storage place for “their” videos.

Once people get used to the attractive combination of DVR functions and price (free!) that this represents the only issue will be how quickly the material can be downloaded in High Definition.

Downloadable Video will be the killer app that drives the demand for really big bandwidth and this little announcement heralds that day.

I’ve already got a nice, hot swappable drive bay. Now if I could only get that fiber bandwidth that would make filling it feasible. Soon…

CableWorld sez:

In 1986, BellSouth, born from the 1984 divestiture of the old AT&T, built what its developers believe was the first fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) digital transport system for cable video service.

The system, built for Hunter’s Creek Cablevision near Orlando, Fla., used FTTH to send digital signals to about 300 paying customers.

‘I realized this really represents the 20th anniversary of digital cable,’ says Bill Strickler, former system director of Hunter’s Creek Cablevision. ‘Everything happened right there in Hunter’s Creek.

What is that the old son says? Everything old is new again?

A new story on the warrantless wiretapping scandal has implicated AT&T, BellSouth’s suitor in the unfolding warrantless wiretapping scandal.

–timeout for a quick background paragraph with an emphasis on how packet technology and political calculation appear to intertwine in this instance–

That crux of the affair has focused on whether or ont the president had the authority to order “wiretaps” (and the modern IP equivalents) of American citizens without a specific warrant. To date the administration has claimed that it does and that, in any case, its “intercepts” were limited to those calling Al Queda oversees. Technical types understand that such limited targeting would be difficult to achieve with any packet-based technology. Networks packets from one source are mixed with packets from other sources as a regular and necessary part of the way packet technologies work. Intercepts, therefore, would have to be based on various filtering schemes that would require dipping into and examining everyone’s material. (The old, circuit-switched technologies did allow one to capture, or “wiretap” only the one “circuit” that comprised a phone conversation.) Not understanding this basic technical fact has lead political pundits to exhibit confusion as to why the current administration was unwilling to ask permission from a very agreeable secret court. If all it wanted to do was monitor calls to overseas Al Queda operatives that court would surely have granted it and was even empowered to grant permission retroactively (odd, contradictory concept, that; but it is part of the law) so as to not impede anyone who had to act quickly to block an immediate threat. The trouble is that the nature of the technology really requires spying on packets pretty much randomly and nearly universally to be useful enough to bother with. (An earlier version of this sort of technology, “carnivore,” provoked a huge public outcry in the late 90’s.) My guess is that once the administration fully understood that it was unwilling to go to a court and either 1) go on the record with deceptive characterizations of what it intended to do or 2) admit that it wanted to run its fingers over the whole internet, in effect spying not only on our citizens without a warrant but pretty much anyone whose data ran over the world wide web’s key backbones.

–close timeout for a quick background paragraph on how packet technology and political calculation appear to intertwine–

The Wired story and interview covers a BellSouth employee claims that he helped route internet data into a secret room set up at the request of the National Security Agency (NSA).

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.

With AT&T buying out BellSouth this becomes not only a national issue for citizens but a local issue for citizens of Lafayette and Louisiana: AT&T is worth worrying about when it comes to your privacy and AT&T’s willingness to allow wholesale examination of customer data outside the rule of law. Those that run AT&T clearly believe themselves to be as much above the privacy laws as does the administration that made the requests of them. From the wired story and interview with the whistle-blower.

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.”

The worker, Klein, said in the interview:

Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet — whether that be peoples’ e-mail, web surfing or any other data.

“Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA’s charter or with FISA,” Klein’s wrote. “And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals’ phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens.”

Things have gotten seriously out of whack. And your local phone company is about to become part of it. As I understand it, the Louisiana Public Service Commission can raise issues that could block the sale if it thinks the people or the laws of the state would be damaged by the merger. I wonder what they think of all this. (Oh yeah…there are state laws against unsanctioned (aka illegal) interceptions as well, for what it is worth. And, for that matter, international treaties. If federal law does not suffice.)

It’s been sinking in slowly lately that competition for Lafayette’s telecom consumers has already begun. Not from BellSouth, which continues to pursue its weak sister solution of lawsuit and litigation, but from Cox. Cox is, on the evidence, settling down for the long grind of building a basis from which it can compete.

Cox is competing in at least three arenas: Price, Localism, and Technology. That they are shooting at all these ducks means that they have a pretty good sense of what is actually at stake and how Lafayette’s consumers will actually make decisions. That’s good news for the people of Lafayette–and cautionary news for LUS and the city.

Price is pretty obvious…they are competing on price now. The nice package price on the triple play that Cox is offering is an attempt to lock in as much of the triple play market as they can in advance of there being any truly competitive offering. Bear in mind that the newly formed “greater Louisiana” district of Cox, which includes both the Lafayette and Baton Rouge markets is probably unique amount large markets in that Cox is faced with two, local, fiber-based competitors. LUS threatens Lafayette in West and Eatel, in East Ascension Parish, threatens her in the southern reaches of metro Baton Rouge. Eatel, a locally owned telecom company is already offering fiber-optic cable TV service. (BellSouth doesn’t compete with another telecom and so hasn’t found an reason to sue.) Locking in as many subscribers as you can that are interested in a full triple play packages before your opponents actually get into the field is a good idea. That would be true in any market but it is particularly true in telecom where consumers are resistant to changing providers that are doing a decent job. Getting people to buy into a nice, cheap triple-play package is a chore, cable providers know, but getting them to switch once they’ve bought in will be even more difficult. Cox is willing to put out the effort to convince people now by cutting prices on attractive packages so as to face LUS (and EATel) with the more difficult task of converting satisfied customers later.

Cox is also working hard to shed its image, won early in the fiber fight, of a surly, out-of-touch bully. It has figured out that intimidation won’t work in Lafayette and is nimble enough to chunk its old staff and bring in a set of new, non-threatening, and ethnically recognizable faces to run the local show. The new Baton Rouge/Lafayette division is headed by a black woman with regional experience, Jacqui Vines, and the local PR show is being fronted by the governor’s daughter, Karmen Blanco. (Photo from the excellent Independent story on the new leadership; from left to right: Kleinpeter, Vines, Blanco.)

This doesn’t mean that the old Cox still isn’t there…they are showing no signs of joining with cities to block state-wide franchising even though such an alliance would benefit them (and demonstrate an authentic commitment to more than the symbols of localism). But it does mean that Lafayette will benefit by greater attention to local needs and the sponsorship of local events. And in that regard Cox has certainly been very aggressive (and BellSouth has been nowhere to be seen). I hear TechSouth had to make a new sponsorship category so that Cox could have parity or near parity with LUS on the roster of sponsors. At the Southwest Louisiana Black Chamber of Commerce meeting recently Cox was a major sponsor and Mayor Durel was the keynote speaker. After Joey’s very conventional address Jacqui Vines, who was not on the program, spoke right after the mayor and touted the upcoming competition. The other sponsors had a ritual moment apiece near the end of the program. Lafayette Coming Together had a large table but LUS was not in evidence. Cox is definitely not intending to let LUS have the title of home-town favorite without some competition.

One of the interesting moments at the Black
Chamber meeting came when the guest were handed a favor that indicated that Cox wasn’t going to cede precedence to LUS on technical matters either. Each attendee was handed a device labeled: “Cox, Lousiana’s fiber connection.” It was a small chinese-made device that sported a short bundle of LED lit pieces of plastic fiber. I have heard that Cox has shown up with these devices at other events. It is a lot of fun to wave around in a dimly lit room. Now a bundle of plastic fiber isn’t broadband fiber-optics and Cox’s fiber-optic backbone isn’t fiber to the home either. But Cox has wisely conceded that the public understands that it wants fiber to the home and has decided that, in lieu of actually providing it, it can at least lay rhetorical claim to the technology.

We can, and should, conclude from all this that Cox is preparing to compete in Lafayette wherever it can and in some areas where it can’t. All the signs and portents read the same way; Cox is girding for battle.

The comic strip Candorville continues to focus its humor on BellSouth’s attempts to stop New Orleans’ WiFi network (this is # 5). When I visited today I saw the accompanying image on my screen. (Click for a large version.)

I guess someone up there has a sense or humor. (Or, more likely, some clever Google ad algorithm knows that my ISP is in Louisiana.) I bet BellSouth FastAccess won’t get much mileage out of ads on that page.