“LUS wins fiber fight”

The Advertiser, in “LUS wins fiber fight,” focuses its coverage this morning on reaction, both public and official, to yesterday’s victory at the state Supreme Court.

The story also offers a succinct overview of the decision itself, highlighting the crucial error made by the 3rd Circuit of failing to separate the building and operating stages of the fiber project. The Court held that the 3rd Circuit erred in applying constraints set on cross-subsidization of operating expenses to the building phase.

Reaction included the note that the ruling in favor of Lafayette’s project means an end to bond challenges according to City Attorney Ottinger:

…Ottinger said Thursday that no additional lawsuits challenging the bond ordinance can be filed because the time for doing so has expired.

Greg Gautreaux, of LEDA, naturally enough emphasizes economic development promoting Lafayette as testbed for new ideas and projects.

Reaction from beyond downtown came from Stephen Handwerk who said that Lafayette would become “branch location” for Hollywood and that “They’re going to come here now.”

Walter Guillory insisted that digital divide issues, a central selling point in planning for a fiber-optic network not be forgotten saying “he plans on holding officials to those promises.”

Richard Warren was qouted as a member of the Lafayette grassroots organization central to the referendum battle, Lafayette Coming Together (Stephen Handwerk and Walter Guillory were members as well) focused on opportunity:

[Warren] said he hopes entrepreneurs benefit from the fiber initiative.

But more importantly is that low-income residents have affordable access to high-speed Internet, particularly for educational purposes, Warren said.

Its’ a new day. The next task is to decide how to build and what to do with our new system. That sounds like a lot more fun than the battle we’ve been engaged in.