Month: April 2006

What’s Being Said Department
Found on the Washington Post funnies page:

Now why is it that the most clear-sighted commentator of this issue is a cartoonist headquartered in Oakland, CA and published in the Washington Post? Can’t we at least get the Advertiser to buy this guy’s strip? We could get rid of the Charlie Brown reruns.

Update:
This is part of a series published on April 5th. Take a peek at what he did on the 3rd, 4th, and today, the 6th. I particularly recommend the kickoff piece on the third.

New Orleans is preparing to defy BellSouth’s law. Wired News reports that:

A showdown may be looming over a free wireless internet network that New Orleans set up to boost recovery after Hurricane Katrina pummeled the city.

Calling the network vital to the city’s economic comeback, New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert is vowing to keep the system running as is, even if it means breaking a state law that permits its full operation only during emergencies.

Wired, not completely accurately, reports that:

The system, established with $1 million in donated equipment, made its debut last fall in the wake of the hurricane disaster. It’s the first free wireless internet network owned and run by a major city.

While offering the network to its citizens without charge is an historic first the network was already up and running but was only used for public safety functions. All the city did was beef it with donated equipment and make what the people already owned available to them after the storm.

Wired characterizes the Battle of New Orleans thusly:

… a state law, passed two years ago in response to other attempts to establish government-owned internet systems, dictates the network can run at 512 kbps only as long as the city remains under a state of emergency — a declaration still in place more than seven months after the storm.

Once the state of emergency is lifted — and no one has said when that might take place — state law says the bandwidth must be slowed to 128 kbps.

Meffert says the reduction will make the service virtually useless for businesses and others trying to re-establish commerce in the city.

and

Hundreds of similar projects in other cities have met with stiff opposition from phone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at blocking competition from government agencies.

The story goes on to report on the current status of the Louisiana law at the bottom of New Orlean’s wifi status:

Bills to allow New Orleans to keep the network operating full-time at 512 kbps failed during a recent special legislative session. Several similar bills are pending in the current regular session, but Meffert says city lobbyists give them little hope of passage because of opposition from the telecommunications lobby.

“We’ve been told in no uncertain terms those bills are going to get shot down,” Meffert said.

Meffert gives up to easily. While there is a bill, offered by a New Orleans legislator, [SB 211] to simply exempt wireless from the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act that does resemble the failed special session bill in intent the other bills are radically different. They do more than enable New Orleans to provide wireless networks: the best of them free all Louisiana communities to pursue whatever alternative makes the best sense locally. Full Repeal [House Bill 245] is the most obvious solution to a law which has, frankly, proven dangerous to public safety as well an infringement of the rights of local communities to tend to their own needs. Meffert and New Orleans needs allies; New Orleans is entirely too used to going it alone and it shows in Meffert’s response to adversity. The law that was proposed during the special session was deeply flawed and alienated potential allies. Its failure should not be read as prefiguring telecom success in the current session–especially if New Orleans abandons its current narrow strategy and allies with communities across the state to completely repeal the law that stands in their way.

Terry Huval’s guest editorial in the Advertiser yesterday points the way toward that coalition. The New Orleans and Acadiana are two of the most influential caucuses in the legislature. If the municipalities in those areas swing their delegations solidly behind repeal of a law which only serves to protect companies like BellSouth and Cox from competition they richly deserve repeal is a real possibility–and the only alternative that could garner the widespread support necessary to free New Orleans.

The people of this state need to band together and retake their rights to help themselves. New Orleans and Lafayette getting together on repeal is the necessary first step.

Small print for out-of-state readers not familiar with our situation here in Louisiana:

The story quotes BellSouth’s Merlin Villar desperately claiming that BS is not opposing BellSouth’s network and that BellSouth’s law does not “…prevent New Orleans or any other local government from providing Wi-Fi service.” These are simply lies. They are intended for the national readership of such articles. Nobody in Louisiana pays the least attention to such obviously false claims. BellSouth threatened New Orleans in the same way it threatened Lafayette, with economic retribution for launching a competing service. BellSouth has its lobbyists out in force in the legislature right now. Again that’s something anyone from Louisiana can simply observe. Villar’s claim that the law does not prevent “Wi-Fi service” is nauseatingly misleading. Using BellSouth’s logic its law doesn’t prevent local governments from offering “fiber-optic service.” It only prevents cities from offering more than a useless 128K of connection speed over any telecom system wired, wireless or semiphore. So, sure we could spend millions on any network if we wanted–we just couldn’t offer the public anything of value. That’s too deceptive to be called anything but a lie. If you’re not from Louisiana you need to be aware that when your time comes that these guys will say anything.

I can’t help but feel for Villar; it must be embarrassing and humiliating to be told to say this stuff. Bill Oliver, the Louisiana BellSouth president, should do his own dirty work. Or better yet, start being a bit less disingenuous.

Terry Huval, LUS director, writes a guest editorial in yesterday’s newspaper that highlights the emergency and recovery lessons being learned in the wake of Katrina and Rita. He notes that BellSouth’s antiquated copper technology has not served us well, and that the snail’s pace of reconstruction has slowed recovery, especially in New Orleans. He links that to the continued attempts by BellSouth to block Lafayette’s fiber, New Orleans’ WiFi networks, and the the way that the BellSouth’s law (the Local Government Fair competition Act) serves to prevent storm-torn communities from building infrastructure that would help the prepare for future hurricanes. Huval urges the people of the state to think of repealing the (un)Fair Competition Act as actually being emergency/recovery legislation that lets people help themselves.

Readers will not be surprised to learn I think Mr. Huval is dead right.

We in Louisiana have learned that what is most needed in emergency situations is for “the big guys,” if they’re not going to stand up and help, to at least stand out of our way while we help ourselves. In Erath and Delcambre folks got in their fishing boats and went out to pluck their friends and neighbors from the rooftops. When the boats pulled up to where the flood water came over the road local deputies were there to direct them toward people who needed out. By the time the cameras showed up it was all over so you never saw dramatic shots of helicopter rescues on national television. They just weren’t needed. In Erath, nobody asked permission to go in and help. They just did it themselves. Probably they’d learned from the flotilla of small boats that set out from Lafayette after Katrina a few weeks earlier loaded up with fellas that knew their way around shallow-draft boats and with emergency medical types distributed out one to a boat. They took off from Acadiana Mall for New Orleans. Everyone knows the story. Federal and Sate officials turned them back and sent them home–or tried to. Some of the boats simply pulled over, put in, and headed out. When the authorities tried to order them out they’d drop off people a bit away from the bank to wade the last bits and took off again until they ran out of gas. So by the time Rita rolled in folks around here had it figured out: You listen to the local guys who know what they are doing and ignore those big, self-important, guys that think they know “what’s best” for your friends and neighbors.

That’s what real disaster response is…it’s what it has to be. Nobody else, even if actually willing and eager to help, will be able to match on-the-ground-knowledge of what’s really needed that local people acting in their own community’s best interest will have. The big guy need to be there to help and if they are not helping need to get out of the way.

The situation in telecommunications is analogous and Huval is right to draw out the comparison. The Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act came into existence when important, smart guys at BellSouth and Cox went to other big, important guys in the State Legislature with a request. They wanted the responsible (wiser, brighter) guys in the legislature to tell local (foolish and ignorant) people what they could not do to help build up their community.

The (un)Fair Competition Act telling trying to tell locals whether and how to do what they think best for local needs is as foolish as the FEMA orders in New Orleans that told locals that they were forbidden to help out their neighbors. The solution is the same in both cases; the officials need to hear: “If you can’t be of help, at least get out of our way.”

You might think, that as long as local economies are struggling to get back on their feet after the storms that getting into the telecom business, however good an idea, would simply be out of reach. You’d be wrong. First the sort of municipal WiFi net that New Orleans transformed into a community network is relatively cheap–and that network was crucial in the first weeks after Katrina; it is now proven emergency technology. But Huval mentions “GO Zone” funds. I had to look it up; but what I found was impressive: there is a huge pot of special bond money that communities can dip into to rebuild after the storms that was authorized by the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act a few months after Katrina. And telecom is specifically one of the things for which it can be used. So there is inexpensive funding for rebuilding local telecom networks and building more storm-resistant nets. If the state will get out of our way and repeal BellSouth’s law. But the potential goes beyond emergency wifi networks.

Part of the story of New Orleans that hasn’t been adequately told was that much of the business district never lost services. My own personal domain and email is hosted out of a server farm in New Orleans. And I never lost a minute’s service during the whole Katrina period. That service (directnic, I highly recommend them.) stayed up and had a live web-cam through the storm and the worst weeks that followed. How? Mainly because they were mostly supplied by buried fiber-optic cable. We tend to forget that the internet was was designed to resist the ultimate disaster: atomic war. Buried utilities survive storms. Could we use GO Zone money to defend ourselves by burying the utilities? I don’t know.

But until the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act is repealed local Louisiana governments won’t be able to take full advantage of recovery opportunities.

That’s my take. You can share your take with your Representatives and Senators.

From the Freedom To Connect conference

Representative Boucher of Virgina just affirmed my sense that good representation is possible. I know that’s not an appropriately cynical belief and brings into question my good sense and intelligence. But there it is: Representative Boucher is a good rep and I wish he’d move to my state.

Extremely attentive and retentive readers will recollect that I’ve broken my rule about focusing on Lafayette/Louisiana-centric telecom issue to praise Boucher before. In his talk this morning he talked about the House bill that is currently being put together in the Congress.

The biggest news for Lafayette is that the bill has a pro-municipal component that Boucher believes has no significant opposition. Passage of the law in this form would mean that the state of Louisiana would never be able to come back and outlaw Lafayette’s network or prohibit sister cities and towns from following our lead. The law would explicitly forbid states from outlawing municipal entry into telecom or from passing any law that would have that effect. This is a VERY good thing for the expansion of real broadband service in Louisana–and everywhere in the United States.

It’s too bad that we didn’t have this protection when LUS first floated its idea: BellSouth might still have been able to pass a bad law but LUS and Lafayette would have known that they could never be forbidden to go forward and might not have been so tempted to compromise about issues that have since proven dangerous. It may be that, absent LUS’s success in getting past it, a court might find Louisiana’s law in violation of federal statue. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Louisiana law came to define the worst law that an incumbent could hope for?

OK, this article isn’t really about Lafayette, at least not directly. But, it does point to one of the emerging opportunities that Lafayette will have once BellSouth/AT&T decide they’ve spent enough of their and our money on lawyers fighting the LUS fiber project.

It’s an article about a Virginia congressman complaining that the federal government isn’t doing enough to take advantage of the cost savings and efficiencies that come from having workers do their jobs via the Internet — either from home or from some other place.

The potential that Lafayette has (what with the 100 megabit local network connection and the fat pipes to the Internet) is to become a place where people whose work enables them to conduct their business from any place in the work could choose to do so from here.

In the 90s, these folks were known as lone eagles but, in the Free Agent era, they are more plentiful, better paid, and just an “attractive community with fat pipes” away from setting up shop in some unexpected place — like, say, Lafayette.

It’s consistent with the theory espoused by economist Richard Florida in his books about the Creative Class. The three things communities need in order to attract these folks are: 1) technology; 2) talent; and 3) tolerance.

We’re about to have the first two nailed, while we’ve got a fair bit of work to do on #3. But, two out of three will still put us well ahead of most communities. Imagine how well we could do if we actually got ALL of our ducks in a row?

Just in case you missed it…

One of the best things about pushing telecommunications infrastructure in Lafayette, and Louisiana, is that it makes it less necessary to give away the store to get companies to come to town.

KATC carried a suggestive story “Foreign Interest in Louisiana” and if you read it through the main implication is that tech can make a difference. No one suggests that it’s all that’s necessary and I am sure there are other “incentives.” But providing advanced technology as a way of encouraging buisness leaves the community owning resources instead of giving them away. This story makes it clear that it can work.

IBM is pushing this line too…which has to be a litle strange for big blue.

(note for those accessing this in the archives: this post and the post it links to were published on April 1st.)

By joining forces the Telecom and Cable companies have apparently steamrollered consumer groups and net neutality advocates like Google rammed through a major telecom rewrite in a mere 12 hours reports the Benton Foundation. You can click throught to their description of the bill and a list of comments on the poorly understood new law. What does appear certain is the law will be an unmitigated disaster for the country–and particularly for Lafayette.

The last 2 weeks had been period in which battles over net neutrality and a growing wave of resentment over a proposed national franchise bill spearhead by local politicians back home in the congressional districts led many to many to believe that a rewrite of telecom law was impossible in this session of Congress. But the Republican majority has apparently taken their re-election hopes in their hands and bet that telecom dollars will figure bigger in the upcoming election than citizen outrage.

Juicy, and outrageous, bits:

In votes cast in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the House and Senate passed, by narrow majorities, the Telecommunications Competition and Investment Act of 2006. President Bush signed it without a ceremony after a quick return from a visit to Mexico just a few hours ago. Because of the timing of the votes — held when even C-SPAN cameras were dark — and the President’s signature, coverage of the new legislation is spotty…

The complex provisions related to Universal Service, critics are already saying, will redirect up to 30% of USF funds to just four states: Alaska, Texas, Illinois and Montana…

In addition, the legislation phases in spectrum fees on all licenses beginning in Fiscal Year 2007 and ends the use of “unlicensed” spectrum.

Municipal telecommunications networks, including so-called “Wi-Fi” networks, will be prohibited beginning January 1, 2008.

Finally, the bill aims to end the “Net Neutrality” debate by 1) allowing network operators to discriminate between traffic if it is “economically advantageous,” 2) relying solely on “market-driven agreements” to determine interconnection and 3) restricting use of a network by the terms of service agreed to when subscribing.

The text of the bill is not yet publicly available, but is expected within the next two weeks when FCC enforcement/regulation is due to commence.

The biggest surprise in all this is the provision shutting down unliscensed spectrum. This means that wifi networks, as we currently understand them, will simply be illegal and there will be no free spectrum. My guess is that this clause was the price for bringing cell companies on board. There was no discussion of such a clause prior to last night’s vote and it is the clause surest to excite consumer outrage and coffee-house based revolt. Look for Repeal!! to be as popular nationally as it is in Lafayette.

The clause outlawing all municipal networks in 2008 would, if true, make proceeding with Lafayette’s fiber optic system uneconomic as they city could not make back its investment in that time frame.

Taken separately any one of these clauses would be a sickening example of corporate greed and legislative cravenness. Taken together, you can only drop back and hope that it is is an elaborate April Fool’s day joke.

Update: More on this story at: C/Net, Google, Slashdot, and OpenOffice.org

I’ll be traveling to Washington for the Freedom To Connect (F2C) conference this coming Monday and Tuesday and expect to enjoy it… and the cherry blossoms which I hear are in full bloom right now. You’ll not have access to the cherry trees but if you want to listen you can; F2C is being “audiocast!”

F2C is organized around the idea that connectivity is essential to a properly functioning community and to a healthy society more generally. The organizers that that “The Freedom to Connect” is a generalized way to think about the family of related ideas we are familiar with as The Freedom of Speech, Assembly, or Press. The implication is that we have find ways to protect making connections in our generation that echo those ways our elders found in their day. These guys were ahead of the curve in their concern as the last several months of increasing furor over net neutrality demonstrates.

Isenberg and Pulver, the co-organizers, are well-known for their smart advocacy of ideas that eventually find an audience and influence. (Isenberg formalized the contrast between smart and dumb networks that is crucial to understanding the now-common contrasts between edge and center in network design and the oft-muttered phrase “edge-to-edge.”)

The charm of small, well-defined conferences that are organized by major participants in the area as this one is, is that the conversation is likely to be even better than is promised by the schedule of speakers. If you decide to listen in my recommendation would be not to drop the connection after the speaker finishes–the follow-up questions are likely to be spicy. (I’ll try and pass on any interesting hallway and reception room bits I hear.)

The topics will revolve around the aforementioned freedom to connect and this years hot topic, net neutrality. For my part I’ll be interested in seeing how realistically folks approach the seldom acknowledged structural problems involved. While there are fewer advocates of achieving net freedom through total deregulation than there used to be (AT&T’s Whitacre has pretty much cut the knees out from underneath those who think that political and economic freedom are the same thing) most “solutions” I see proposed don’t adequately deal with the issue of the natural monopoly that is last mile big broadband connectivity. (For a take which recognizes the issue but does hope to find an escape see Turner’s take on the conference.) The lack of advocacy for pure public and community solutions is mainly, I think, because there is no one who benefits economically from the recognition that the only practical solution to a last mile natural monopoly is public or cooperative ownership other than the eventual customers themselves–no one will get rich directly off commonly owned infrastructure. So I’ll be there to stick up where I can for not being mislead by an ideology of free enterprise into solutions that sell our freedom for someone else’s profit. We’ll see how well that is received.