Quick Note Department
Here’s a a bit of Lafayette news that I missed in the furor over the Google’s selection of Kansas City for their experimental gigabit network. 10:12 Corridor, a regional business weekly, called Terry Huval, head of LUS, for his response to the news:
Huval says the LUS Fiber network is already providing Gigabit services to all of the public high schools in Lafayette Parish, and by the time the Kansas City Google system is operating, the LUS Fiber system will be making Gigabit speeds available to homes and businesses in Lafayette. (Emphasis mine.)
So…Google says that it will be providing service “beginning in 2012.” That’s been mostly interpreted as early 2012. That, in turn, would seem to imply that LUS anticipates providing gigabit service sometime this year. (Uh, LUS Fiber PR people, where are you? This is not the sort of thing you allow to be revealed in a casual interview and then fail to take advantage of here.)
We’ve got six months or a bit more in which to hold our breath.
Update: For Your Files—Durel issued a press release following the Google announcement (mentioned in the article cited above): Lafayette to benefit from the Google Fiber for Communities initiative.
I asked Terry about that during at the Gigafest and he did say it was a goal. He didn't specify a time table but he clearly intends to make it happen. EPB Fiber in Chattanooga is getting a lot of attention these days and LUS Fiber should be right up there too.
don't worry, LUS fiber will get a lot of attention when the financial numbers come out this august. I bet money you and LUS will claim they its a success because they have created "competition" and caused COX to lower its cost to the Lafayette consumer. That it, forget how much we losing, look how much we have lowered their profits.
Great plan.
@Anonymous: I don't care about profits, I care about the level of service I receive for the price I pay. I have a sneaking suspicion that ISPs are like power companies, water companies, and railroads in that they are natural monopolies which don't follow the properties of market influence.
anono, It's easy to make snarky predictions and denigrate the value of actual competition (something that was always part of the promotion of fiber) if you don't have the guts to lay your own reputation on the line…that sort of cheap shot is discouraged here.
Well Alex, that's where you have been misinformed. The LUS model is not based on the same model as a pure ISP. Which means Internet Service Provider. LUS model is based on the same model as Cox, etel, and other content providers. I would agree if LUS were just that. Problem is they went into the content business (tv and telephone as well as ISP).
As to "snarky predictions", its not a prediction, that's their numbers. Last year, they projected, not from the feasibility study, but from the actual 09 -10 budget, that they would net $1 million. Instead they lost $4 million. And as they release no financial information, we only have their predictions to go on. not mine.
Well, instead of just replying with [citation needed], I decided to look up the actual budget and run through it. I'm not seeing either of those numbers, so if you can give me page numbers for those citations in the adopted budget for FY2009-2010 and also in the audit for the same period, I'd appreciate it. It would also be stupid for LUS to run a profit until FY 2010-2011 anyway (which isn't over, as it apparently starts on Nov 1) when it had done little to no construction and reinvestment of all capital into infrastructure and servicing its debt (note and bond payments).
http://www.lafayettela.gov/finance/dpt020.asp Page 26
But I was wrong, losses in fiscal year ending Nov. 2010 were not $4 million like I thought. No that just what the "adjustment to budget" by LCG said they would be. Acually, they turned out to be over $8 million on $9.5 in sales. thanks for getting me to update. It's much worse then we were told by LCG ameneded budget.
No one is against their success, it's just it never had a chance. We were led down this road by blogs like this one and leaders who didn't know what they were talking about. That should be obvious to everyone by now. Regardelss of how we want it to be, it isn't.
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