Month: August 2006

–Got some catching up to do from our little vacation to the Outer Banks. (Where what they call hot, we call air conditioning!)

Lafayette is going to appeal the 3rd Circuit’s ruling. From the Advertiser article:

Lafayette officials will ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to hear arguments on the proposed Lafayette Utilities System fiber-to-the-home project.

City-Parish Attorney Pat Ottinger said the city will file a writ application to the state Supreme Court asking that it take up the case.

“At this point, we think our position is still correct,” said LUS Director Terry Huval.

–Good. It is time to fight.

In the past the city has not chosen to appeal any ruling that has not gone its way–effectively deciding on the path of trying to appease the unappeasable. (The majority of cases have confirmed Lafayette’s position–something that is easy to forget at moments like this.) At the time the officials made a defensible case. Uppermost in the minds of LUS and the city was trying to get around delays as quickly as possible. But, as proved the case with the (un)Fair Competition law itself, expedience proved costly in the long run. This is a lesson the city and LUS have had to learn and relearn over the different phrases of this conflict. The simple truth is that you can’t cut fair deals with unprincipled people. (Evidence: Even Senator Ellington, the (un)Fair Act’s “author” said that BellSouth’s suit was betraying the deal, Example: playing games with Durel and the city council before earlier bond votes.)

The difficulty here, in my judgment, is that the Lafayette officials are honorable men. They believe that when you make a deal that, naturally, you abide by that deal–especially the parts that are not to your advantage. BellSouth and Cox executives apparently see nothing beyond their own advantage. Handshake deals are for suckers. They think it “smart” to take what advantage is offered and pursue their own interests without any reference to earlier “deals.” We can rail against this interpretation of “business” ethics but it is best to simply know who you are dealing with and to quit trying to work with people of this ilk.

At any rate the effect of the latest ruling is try makes sure that the city-parish will benefit as little as possible — its an extension of the “make sure it costs more” tactic that has gone hand in hand with the incumbents “endless delay” tactic. Bridging loans made to other elements of LUS get repaid, with interest to LUS and amount to a way to transfer income to the rest of the organization. That slight of hand is part of forcing up the price consumers of LUS pay; and it was understood to be part of the “deal” by the legislature, LUS, and the city-parish–that’s outrageous enough. But what wasn’t supposed to be part of the deal is what the 3rd Circuit is now trying to force on the community: that the extra costs in interest to consumers can’t come back to the owners of the utility (those same consumers) as income to the rest of LUS which could, conceivably, be used to lower utility rates in the other divisions or to lower taxes. Instead, in this scenario, the interest income is forced out of Lafayette and out of the public and into private hands. This was not the deal. Under duress LUS and the city were forced to accept artificially higher prices for its telecom services. It was not supposed to have to be forced to hand any part of those higher prices over to private, profit making entities…it was supposed to be able to retain those for the people of the city. That’s what’s being threatened now.

It is worth noting, again, that neither BellSouth nor Cox is forbidden by law from using income from ANY of its various holdings. Only Lafayette is restricted in this way. –If you believe this is supposed to benefit our community through some strange logic I merely refer you to the plain fact that Lafayette has proven itself quite capable of protecting itself (to Cox and BS’s distress); we don’t need; and don’t want; and surely aren’t grateful for the “help” the state imposed upon us at BellSouth’s request.

As the LUS fiber project continues its journey through the courts, it is worth noting that it did not have to be this way.

That this project finds itself in legal jeopardy today is a direct result of the failure of the Durel administration to recognize the nature of its primary opponent on this issue, BellSouth. BellSouth has been intent on killing this project and any other project like it from the start. That’s why their initial legislative response was a bill to prohibit local governments from getting into the telecommunications business.

The Durel administration and its advisors failed to recognize the way BellSouth and other Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) have used the legal system to thwart competition and to strangle competitors. And it is that failure that led it into two strategic mistakes that may yet prove fatal to this project.

The first failure was to agree to the terms of the Fair Competition Act of 2004.

It may be the nature of legislative compromise for parties to try to get at least some of what they want in what amounts to the horse trading that is the legislative process. Clearly, the team of advisors working on the Lafayette side of the Fair Competition negotiations did not pay close enough attention on what they were allowing BellSouth to insert into the bill, apparently focusing on the elements in the bill they felt Lafayette needed in order to proceed. Remember that the Lafayette fiber project had already advanced beyond some of the stages covered by the bill that ultimately became law.

I believed then (and have said so on a number of occasions since) that Lafayette was content to leave barriers erected behind its project in the belief that the law would allow our city to proceed on its project. It was short-sighted and it was, in fact, a colossal misreading of the situation.

But, the real mistake was agreeing to the legislation at all. People on the Durel team and in LUS have told the story how they had been assured by Governor Blanco that she would veto any bill that they could not live with. They naively agreed to this law and, in the process, set the trap that has now ensnared this project.

Why do I say that the Durel administration was naive?

Because the history of the phone industry is one defined by the ability of the incumbent carriers (in this case BellSouth) to use the legal system to resolve and eliminate competitive threats. By agreeing to a law regarding municipal telecommunications systems, the Durel administration was putting the ultimate fate of the project where BellSouth wanted it and where it operates best: the courts. That’s right! It’s better in court than it is winning its way in the Legislature and at the PSC.

The ultimate mistake that the Durel administration made was in assuming that it could negotiate in good faith with BellSouth on the provisions of this act. The administration gave BellSouth the benefit of the doubt which they clearly did not deserve.

During the fiber campaign, the administration appeared to have learned from that mistake (helped along, no doubt, by a round of court cases involving lawyers from BellSouth). BellSouth’s various, transparently phony attempts to demonstrate that they had great plans for network infrastructure in Lafayette or were possibly willing to strike a deal with Lafayette were recognized as being the desperate acts of a desperate company that they were.

With the fiber victory behind us and more litigation ahead of the project, the Durel administration apparently forgot what it had learned and made its second glaring error in judgment this year going into the Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature.

As you may recall, Lafayette had a series of bills introduced that would have repealed in part or in whole the Fair Competition Act. All but one of those bills was withdrawn in exchange for a pledge from BellSouth not to engage in any further litigation against the LUS project. Knowing full well that the agreement would not end the litigation, the Durel administration agreed to this bone-headed deal that cleared way for state approval of the AT&T buyout of BellSouth and removed Lafayette (and its influential legislative delegation) from the battlefield in the fight over the statewide video franchise bill BellSouth sought.

Let’s see: you give your opponent everything they want in exchange for approximately nothing! Heck of a deal!

As you know, that legislation (HB 699) won approval from both houses of the Legislature but was vetoed by Governor Blanco.

What’s that old saying? “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

The LUS fiber project finds itself in legal jeopardy today because the Durel administration has at key moments of this multi-year, multi-chapter drama played naive Opie to BellSouth’s cynical Godfather. At this point, not surprisingly, the score reads: “Advantage Godfather.”

It didn’t have to be this way.

I’ve been contacted by folks wondering where I am. …

North Carolina, on the outer banks. 🙂 And loving the break from the ordinary. Worked into the wee hours on a website and flew out of BR early, early in the morn. I’m going to crash and try and grab some sleep before my friends come in.

But here’s the links folks have grown to expect. Late, I know. But still:

The Advocate: LUS loses fiber-optic suit appeal
The Advertiser: Fiber effort hits roadblock

I’ve still not read the decision fully but Blanchard has proven trustworthy:

“The ‘provision of covered services,’ contemplated by the Fair Competition Act does not include the ‘payment of bond obligations,’ ” according to the 3rd Circuit’s ruling.

Well…That’s not what LUS–nor apparently even the “author” of the legislation–thought thought they were agreeing to. It’s also what every other company in the world does as a regular part of doing business. Bridge loans, internal loans, hell, BellSouth will use its profits from Cingular ratepayers to prop up it’s dying wireline business. The decision is fundamentally unjust.

More when I’ve had the time to look over materials.

But…hey I’m for fighting. LUS and the city has never appealed and adverse decision. I’ve argued with that before. I’ll being doing so again. The fact that the incumbents want to change the game in the middle should be no surprise. That why the (un)Fair Act was pushed by BellSouth and Cox from the beginning–they wanted to change the rules to benefit themselves. Initially by essentially making the LUS project impossible and then, when compromise was forced on them, to try and cripple the enterprise.

But this interpretation from the 3rd Circuit is not what Lafayette’s folks understood to be the compromise deal that was agreed upon. If part of the law is obfuscated by legalese that the court chooses to focus on other parts are clear…the law was supposed to let LUS do what other companies are able to do commercially. That’s what the legislators “gave back” to LUS…and that is what the Third Circuit is taking away.

I don’t think LUS and the city have much of a choice: the people voted for the plan that was out there. Lafayette is committed by that vote to trying to make it work. The third circuit is a lost cause. Appeal to the Lousiana Supreme Court. If it loses there bring it that clear and final decision to the legislature; make them look at what was done with their “fair deal” and demand repeal.

Fight.

There’s never any way but forward.

Just thought that you should all know….the 3rd circuit has ruled against LUS and Lafayette.

I have yet to read the 19 page decision and so don’t understand the basis for the decision (available at: http://www.la3circuit.org/opinions/2006/08/081006/06-0904opi.pdf) but the bottom line is that LUS lost.

Terry Huval tells me that that they’re not going to say anything specific about the ruling until they digest it, that it could mean a rehearing by (I presume) the full 3rd Circuit or could go direct to the State Supreme Court. An appeal was in the in the works by one or another of the parties anyway….so there will be no more delay than was already in the works.

He also says that if the ruling stands it will become clearer that Louisiana’s “Local Government Fair Competition Act” is a nothing more than a barrier to entry for local governments wanting to provide telecommunications services, despite an overwhelming public vote in favor of such an initiative.

In that he is absolutely right.

This makes me mad. And that probably doesn’t help anyone. 🙂

I will say this upfront: If this interpretation of the law is upheld it reduces the whole law to nonsense and should quiet anyone who claims that this law was supposed to be about “fairness.” It would put restrictions on one company—and only one company–that NONE of the its competitors would have to endure. It would mean that little LUS, whose whole territory is the city of Lafayette, couldn’t even borrow from itself. This while its enormous competitors can rake in monopoly profits from every state in the southeast and in Cox’s situation far beyond and use it as they please. Their profits from, for instance Cingular wireless, or any other division can be used as the please. Can you imagine the uproar if anyone tried to suggest that Cox or BellSouth couldn’t use their profits to start a new division? Justice and equity has nothing to do with this. There is nothing fair about the law. If our legislators are to craven to repeal it, they ought, at least, be willing to add the four characters I always add:

The Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act.

Recall please, that even the bill’s author said that BellSouth is challenging aspects of the law he thought were agreed to in discussions. This law and its absurdist internal contradictions is being used to frustrate the express desires of the people. This sort of hypertechnical decision. based on legalistic definitions that make no sense in common usage or the context of the law destroys people’s faith in the legal system.

It’s not only Cox, BellSouth, Naquin, and a batch of lawyers from across the basin who should be ashamed: it’s the third circuit as well.

“High-tech projects begin to pay off” is the title of an article in the business section of today’s Advertiser. NuComm cited technology and the spirit of energy that technology complex indicated for its decision to choose Lafayette over the other approximately 200 locales it investigated. It mentioned no other differentiator. That deal will bring a 1000 jobs and inject about 115 million in total benefits into the city each year. Citing Fiber To The Home, the LITE center, and LONI, the paper talks to university, LUS, and business people about the economic development benefits to our community.

When Réal Bergevin, the founder of Canada-based NuComm, said the company had chosen Lafayette for its new call center, he singled out three projects that made the city stand out: LUS’ fiber-to-the-home plan, the LITE center and LONI.

While some may not be entirely sure of what they do, this high-tech trinity has become a cornerstone of the city’s economic strategy…

Huval said the city-owned utility always is at the table talking to prospective business because electricity cost is a main concern for companies. But the talk usually turns to the fiber plan.

“Every time we’ve met with a prospect to describe that to them, their eyes light up,”…

Mike Spears, CEO of Firefly Digital, said local companies benefit, too. His Web design and software development company is positioning itself to offer services to companies who use the LITE center.

“The benefits cascade across the entire market,” he said.

During the fight for the fiber network economic development was one of the benefits promoted by the fiberistas. This single big event realizes that hope even before the network is built. It might seem logical on the surface to assign 1/3 of the benefit of this deal to the FTTH network. That’s conservative since there’s no reason to think a company like NuComm will find LITE’s graphical supercomputer useful or that it will do the sort of research that will gain it access to LONI’s superfast but basically academic network. So the main immediate benefit to the company (besides the food, music, culture, and local attitude) is that it will have access to the local area network of at least 100 megs. Mike’s written usefully about that benefit, as I pointed out yesterday, and the bottom line is that NuComm will get a huge pipe to their center at relatively low cost by working with LUS (you can bet that a deal has already been cut there) and their employees will have a 100 megs of internal-to-the-system-bandwidth with which to connect back to their office network. Understand that most local networks operate at 100 megs internally so that means that homeworkers will have the same access to databases and VOIP functions that their colleagues at Northgate mall will have. As NuComm gets their workforce trained and start to expand they would be crazy not to buy computers and a nice connection for homeworkers. That would allow them to avoid the substantial additional costs of opening and running new physical centers. (Setting up this one is due to cost 3.5 million. The real financial benefit of Lafayette’s advanced technology is FTTH. And that’s the reason NuComm brought its jobs here.

So assigning only 1/3 of the benefit of NuComm’s investment to the FTTH project is conservative in the extreme. Even at that discounted rate 1/2 of 115 million that is 57.5 million in benefits to the local economy each year. Setting up the system is to cost 125 million. If you do the math you’ll see that that 125 million will be returned to the region in just a bit over 2 years 1 month as a consequence of Lafayette approving the fiber initiative. That’s not a bad ROI on Lafayette’s investment for Acadiana.

That’s not the last of it; already an article has appeared that speculates that NuComm’s entry will further dry up an already tight labor market and put upward pressure on wages at the low end of the market.

All that can only be good for local citizens, Lafayette, Acadiana, and Louisiana. And we all need the good news.

Addenda: North Lafayette, in particular should be happy…and if it wants to know who in their community did the most to bring this benefit to the heart of the north side let me be the first to congratulate Gobb Williams whose tireless work to pass the initiative has borne fruit for his community–just as he said it would.

Just for the record…

During the recent battle in the Louisiana legislature over BellSouth’s state-wide cable franchising bill there were folks who made the claim that the municipalities were being disingenuous–even dishonest–when they said that language in the bill that would have excluded “information services” from the calculations used to determine franchise fees could result in no franchise fees being paid at all. Lafayette Pro Fiber insisted the danger was real; both on these pages (example) and through meetings with legislators and local officials.

Eventually, under heavy pressure from the municipalities and facing the threat of a vocal outcry on the floor of the senate–which was realized— (the committees responsible for oversight were predictably supine) the bill was heavily amended to secure, so far as is possible, a definition of the fees basis that included IPTV. All the while BellSouth’s representatives and their lawyers played dumb about the implications of the use of the term “information service” and the way the FCC uses the term to exclude all local oversight for data services.

The threat was real.

And it’s now revealed that our federal legislators are aware of the issue. (They probably have knowledgeable staff.) From a recent article in the National Journal:

The FCC debate over Internet-enabled services began in 2004, as a way to deregulate services that allow phone calls over a computer.

But the proceeding has become the primary vehicle for AT&T to argue that its video service is not a cable service.

Verizon Communications and other telecom companies do not agree with AT&T’s efforts, and neither does House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas.

“Our friends at AT&T have sent this silly letter saying they’re not a cable service, which they shouldn’t have done,” Barton said during an April subcommittee vote on the telecom bill. He called AT&T’s argument “stupido.”

Added Barton, “We explicitly say they’re a cable service.”

AT&T/BS tried to pull a fast one on the state–one that they are still trying to pull on the Federal level. The Federal legislators are on to them. But AT&T still plans to try and convince the FCC that their cable TV service is actually something else–and that they shouldn’t have to pay any attention to those pesky municipalities that actually own the property they want to use.

Madame Blanco did us good in vetoing that bill. And the Federals may have learned a thing from the fight here.

Hey, its nice when you turn out to be a prophet….or at least when Mike does.

Today’s announcement (Advertiser, Advocate, Advertiser again, and yet again) of a major new employment should kick $115 million yearly into the Lafayette area economy in the form of a major new call center. The NuComm deal will mean a 1,000 jobs, with benefits, centered in Lafayette’s Northside. The deal-makers touted their own influence, a package of incentives, and the local Lafayette technology initiatives for the coup. Announced by the Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) the announcement emphasized Fiber To The Home, LEDA’s LITE center, and local participation in Lamda Rail. But LITE and Lambda Rail are mostly positive indications of our atttitude. The fiber to the home project will bring real economic benefits to companies that are trying to decide where to locate their call center business.

Mike predicted it–and made it clear what the economic benefits to companies would be:

Imagine the possibilities in a fibered-up Lafayette!

If you’ve noticed recently, some television ads extol the virtues of company websites that let you click to connect directly to an operator. It’s internet protocol-based phone systems that allow this intermodal interaction to take place.

Lafayette could become a magnet for these types of jobs when the LUS fiber network lights up. The high-speed network could easily handle voice and Internet traffic of the busiest call centers, distributed or concentrated. Not only that, the network could enable another mode of communications (video!) over the Internet portion of the network that would further enable our community to distinguish itself as a hotspot for leading edge business applications.

Think about it! A city with the potential to become the home to thousands of call center operators working from the comfort of their homes.

How’s that for prescience?

This announcement is big win for state and especially local officials and development personnel and they deserve all the congratulations we can extend. But beyond that it is a big win for the people of Lafayette who endorsed the fiber initiative partly in hopes of spurring economic development. A part of the community’s hope was that voting for the fiber project would help make the area more attractive and help us keep our kids in the area. This announcement is a down payment on a future their collective ability to dream of a better future for their community enabled. Kudos to Lafayette.

A few juicy fiber and tech oriented quotes for the readers of this blog:

He said NuComm plans to take full advantage of the high-tech projects the city has embarked upon including fiber-to-the-home and the Louisiana Immersive Technology Center on that list.

“I can see most of our employees in (the) next five years being able to work from home, which is attractive to a lot of people.” (Advertiser)

Bergevin said he is also excited about the technological developments in Lafayette — including the city’s municipal telecommunications project, the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise and the state’s connection to the National Lambda Rail, which enables a large bandwidth connection to the rest of the world. (Advocate)

A bit of Lafayette chauvinism:

State Secretary of Economic Development Michael Olivier said parts of the state undamaged by the hurricanes, such as Lafayette, will have to “carry the economic football” for the whole of Louisiana for awhile.

LEDA CEO and President Greg Gothreaux said that Lafayette’s unemployment reached an all-time low in April, at 2.7 percent.
Over the past five years, Lafayette accounted for 40 percent of the net new jobs created in the state, Gothreaux said. (Advocate)

And a bit of good sense:

LEDA Board Chairman Walter Guillory said he is excited by the announcement, but said he is picturing a future visit to the call center once it has started operations, providing jobs that improve people’s quality of life.

“I think that’s going to be the true blessing,” Guillory said. (Advocate)

Much like a decade ago, telecommunications reform legislation will await the new Congress that will be elected in the fall elections.

I’ve been involved in telecommunications issues for just about the entire decade since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That act is a near-classic example of the law of unintended consequences, as well, as the ability of powerful corporations to bend the law to their will over time when they are committed to a strategy.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 had as its intent the unleashing of competitive forces in the telecommunications industry. When it became law, the Internet was not widely used although it had crossed its tipping point and was well on its way to widespread adoption and use. Reed Hundt, who was FCC Chairman during the period when the bill was in its formative stages and finally became law, wrote a book about that era that is at once enlightening and familiar.

The fact that telecommunications reform is on the table again is at least partially the result of the phone and cable companies so successfully turning that attempt to promote competition into a law that instead secured their place as dual controllers of network access, that is, duopolists. As a result, network innovation has been stifled, prices for network access and services remain artificially high, and America has fallen from the global lead in broadband access to somewhere in the teens back in the pack.

With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, it should come as no surprise that the bills that promise ‘reform’ actually constitute a spanking new round of corporate giveaways, this time to the phone giants AT&T and Verizon. One sticking point that appears to have prevented these bad pieces of legislation from becoming law has been the issue of network neutrality.

The fire storm was set off by AT&T Chairman Ed Whitacre when he said his company was going to charge companies who used AT&T’s network a premium if they wanted their content to get preferential treatment. Whitacre’s proposal would put control of consumer’s Internet experience under the control of the network operator from which they bought their network services.

This issue had actually be bubbling in the background for a number of years as companies toyed with the idea of creating branded Internet appliances that only happened to work with their networks. I recall that at a community networking conference in Austin in 2000 that Gary Chapman of UT-Austin said that was one of his concerns about the course the Internet was taking as the broadband era emerged. Not surprisingly, SBC was the main phone company in Austin, Ed Whitacre was the CEO and the company was advertising a kitchen-top device as a dream appliance that would find utility on its new broadband network. SBC became AT&T in 2005 when it bought the former Ma Bell.

And while there have been all kinds of arguments laid our for and against the need for network neutrality legislation, one point that seems to have been missed is that the phone companies have had this test before and failed it miserably.

The test that they failed but that they claim they will pass this time is whether they can fairly run networks that are open to other providers that they intend to compete against. That is, can AT&T, Verizon and other network owners act as both wholesale network access sellers and network retail service providers. Their histories say that they cannot.

The philosophy that undergirds opposition to network neutrality legislation is that network owners (AT&T, Verizon and others) can abide by and meet the terms and conditions of the business arrangements they would make with content providers against which they would compete in the market place. That is, AT&T would enter into a contractual relationship with, say, Google to provide priority treatment for network packets carrying Google traffic.

As long as those packets contain, say, search results, the contract should be uncontroversial. Ah, but what if Google steps more boldly into video? What if Google created a movie and/or program download service that became hugely popular to the point that it was reducing viewing of cable offerings that were being carried over AT&T’s Project Lightspeed fiber network? Would AT&T agree to those contractual terms at the expense of cannibalizing the revenues from its own IPTV service?

We have direct evidence that it would not abide by the terms of the contract and that evidence comes from the record of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) actions to drive the Competitive Local Exchange Companies (CLECs) off their networks and out of business.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 set up a mechanism which was intended to create a means for service providers to compensate each other for allowing their respective customers to access those on other networks. It was called Reciprocal Compensation. The RBOCs (including the companies that will soon comprise AT&T: SBC, BellSouth, Pacific Telesys and Ameritech) agreed to this language, expecting full well that since they had all the customers, the CLECs would pay them money to connect their small based of customers to the RBOC customers.

The CLECs, who were sold access to RBOC networks on a wholesale basis, happened to become home to a lot of dial-up Internet Service Providers just as Internet usage was exploding. As a result, Reciprocal Compensation dollars were reversed; that is, the RBOCs owed the CLECs money because so many of their customers were making calls to local ISP numbers in order to gain access to the Internet.

Confronted with this reversal of revenues and the potential loss of still more, RBOCs began withholding Reciprocal Compensation payments from CLECs, thereby depriving the CLECs of critical revenue and then citing the CLEC’s resulting inability to pay for network access as the basis to shut them out of the network.

This was a case where the RBOCs were network wholesale access providers. The CLECs were competing with the retail service provider side of the RBOCs. When the competition began to erode the networks on the retail side, the RBOCs moved to undermine access on the wholesale side.

With their network ownership secured through predatory practices sanctioned by Republican control of the Congress and the FCC, AT&T and Verizon would now have consumers and content providers believe that they will now reform their behavior and honor business deals with content providers even when the results of those deals endanger the business models that they’ve bet their respective fortunes on.

They couldn’t do it less than a decade ago when the stakes were lower and their network investments were smaller.

These companies, their predecessors and their allies have poured millions of dollars into lobbying and political action committees (PACs) to convince regulators, the Congress and the public that all they are interested in is the ability to operate like the free-marketeers they claim to be.

The history of these companies tells another story. That story is that they cannot respond in an ethical way to the contradictory forces that work upon them when they assume the role of network owner and service content provider. Their history is that when the revenues from their retail operations are threatened (in the new era it will be video services), they turn to eliminate the threat (in the new era it will be in the form of Internet-based video providers like Google, or Apple, or YouTube, or DemocracyTV, etc.

The surest way to do that is to do what they did to the CLECs: remove those threats by denying them access to their networks.

So, network neutrality is not a philosophical discussion about some free enterprise fantasy land conjured up by the phone companies; it is a real world response to the anti-competitive instincts of companies that believe they can get their way if only they throw enough money at enough members of Congress. When Republicans control Congress this plan has succeeded more than it has failed, at the expense of American consumers and small businesses.

To bring the national down to the local level, Charles Boustany and the entire Louisiana delegation voted against network neutrality legislation in the current Congressional term.

A letter to the editor in today’s Advertiser complains about Cox’s recent “basic cable” channel lineup change that drops the Weather channel. The change would force folks who want to keep the weather channel to purchase a more expensive package.

The author remarks:

What a disservice! For all our citizens who depend so much on knowing the weather for the next day and night and cannot afford the cost increase of over $30. This change is an insult.

Yes, sir: It is time the city-parish “fiber plan” takes on a new crusade – surely to be one of compassion and sensitivity.

To that I’d add that pulling the weather channel during hurrincane season in Louisiana shows the sort of sensitivity to local needs that we’ve come to expectd from Cox.

I spent a chunk of my life as a carpenter and getting a good idea of the day’s weather from the weather channel quickly and easily early in the morning was a part of the daily ritual. I’m sure many people use the weather channel to plan their day. It and the channel guide are the losses that will probably effect the most people. The weather channel costs Cox some money but the channel guide effectively costs nothing to provide. Both of these should be on the basic cable tier that is designed to get people access to the local coverage they need without buying into all the expensive channels. Taking it off is a way of forcing people off the basic, inexpensive cable that the big companies resent being forced to offer.

I trust LUS will do better–and I trust that they’ll be smart enough to make offering such utterly basic services in the basic tier a marketing point.

Try opening this in a new window. Come on, it’s an experiment… Leave it somewhere where you can watch as it loads. It should add some interest to what follows.

——————-

It’s worth taking an occasional break from analysis of fiber-related issues in Lafayette to look at things that one can do with all that connectivity. In the past that’s included web-based applications such ad video editing that push the edge of current network capacity.

But there also some “tools” out there that surprise us in the use they make of the the complexity of the web. My son recently sent me a link to a fascinating example that combines art, google image search, some arcane programming, and the topics of user’s “dreams” to produce utterly unique sets of drawings the author (artist?) calls “dreamlines.”

The artist describes his work on a concept page that makes it clear that he is inspired by work in universities on perception, emergence, and the interplay of simple rules to create complex results. But for the rest of us the real point is that he gives us access to something that wouldn’t exist, couldn’t exist even in its raw materials, if it weren’t for the web. It’s also something that would load faster and run better if we all had big bandwidth. (See, I connected it back to the blog topic.)

Play with it. That’s what Saturdays are for: messing around. You can start your own dream by filling in the blank on his access page.