Category: Construction

“LUS Fiber” Launched

LUS launched its brand and a new informational website this morning. Not at the site of the new headend building, as had been planned, but at city hall. A storm rolling the through Acadiana led to the last minute change of venue.

We did get a groundbreaking ceremony of sorts. A group of advocates from the administration and the public lined up in the front of the council meeting room and posed for a series of photos with golden shovels. As symbolism it was effective: we saw folks from the administration who’d been instrumental in the plan coming together standing shoulder to shoulder again with community activists and supporters. All lined up proudly in front of the room grinning to beat the band. There were two golden shovels and in a nice bit of symbolism Mayor Joey Durel handled one while community leader Gobb Williams posed with the other. I’ve gotta get a picture of that.

For those of us involved in the fiber fight as members of Lafayette Coming Together it was a special point of pride to see some of the key members of the activist organization that drove the referendum forward honored: Andre Comeaux, Kevin Domingue, Max Hoyt, Mike Stagg, John St. Julien, and Gobb Williams.

Less symbolically and more substantially we got our first glimpse of the new branding devices. What’s the service to be called? “LSUFiber.” That’s what you were already calling it? That, I think, is the point: without any other name by which to tag it we all got in the habit during the long fiber fight of calling what we were fighting for “LUS fiber” –everyone already knows what the term refers to; the identity is already well-established in the community. Why spend a lot of money trying to get some new term accepted? The new logotype that is pictured above was also on display. Expect to see it on a new fleet of trucks and service vehicles in your neighborhood. They’ll carry the slogan: “Building a Fiber-Fast Community.”

Citizens should start looking for door hangers announcing the upcoming service–that door hanger will carry a return card that will allow people to express interest and get in line for first crack at serrvice when it is finally offered in their region.

We also got access to the new informational website. It’s a flash-dependent site you can find at http://www.lusfiber.com/ There you’ll find an initial FAQ and, tantilizingly, a chance to sign up for news updates. As the rollout gets underway the site will include updates on the construction and new services—both of which announcements are eagerly awaited.

What didn’t we get? Any announcement of just where the build will begin and who will get first crack at our new service. I’d hoped we get that today since I’ve had hints that a large percentage of Lafayette, including my neighborhood would be in the first section. But we’re to be kept wondering a bit longer though Terry Huval promised that it’d be revealed soon…and that eager citizens would be given a chance to express their interest and get in line early as the day of deliverance came near. (Ok, no he didn’t phrase it quite like that. 🙂 )

One more milestone laid down….

LUS “Ground-Breaking Announcement”

LUS is a going to make a “ground-breaking” announcement… They’re being a little coy about it but, at the very least they’re gonna 1) announce breaking ground on the headend facility (groundbreaking, get it?) and 2) announce their “brand”–The logo and slogan you’ll see on the side of all those trucks and on your monthly telecom bill come the day. With any luck at all they’ll feed us some more substantial information about our build. They’re slated to start construction sometime soon; so they’re bound to have some more juicy tidbits to hand….I’m ready to know more, much more.

January 10th, 11 AM at the headend building site, 234 Distribution Dr. (click the image for a map) Watch the evening news on the 10th….and the papers the next morning. Hope for something good with your coffee.

The Year in Review

The Year In Review @ LafayetteProFiber

2007 was the year Lafayette’s fiber project emerged from the wilderness and people began to dream in earnest. The final delaying lawsuit was dismissed, the bonds sold, and contracts let for construction. Dreams followed the announcement of intriguing new features like a wireless addition and the 100 megs of intranet bandwidth and people began to dream of what we might do with it it to close the digital divide or provide new ways to strengthen the community.

January……..
At the year’s beginning we were still awaiting a decision from the State Supreme Court on the last lawsuit holding up the bond sale. The Fiber to the Schools project advanced, ensuring a parish-wide fiber backbone and early hints of a wireless project were realized when LUS put out a bid for a municipal wireless network — one initially designed to provide government services. The competition was clearly still out there as Cox introduced Video On Demand, upping the ante on what Lafayette’s network needed to provide in its initial offerings.

February……..
In early February Durel’s “State of the City” address lauded the fiber build but failed to slake our appetite for new news on the wireless component. The Advertiser’s attempt to move into an internet-centric future advanced in fits and starts but it emerged with arguably the best local video site in town, far outclassing the efforts of the local TV stations and proving that with the construction of new net-based infrastructure the race will not necessarily go to the established incumbents. An attempt to resuscitate the breathless prose of the fiber fight fell flat at the Advertiser as a story about the cost of defending ourselves against the incumbents produced no discernible ripple of concern from a populace immunized against such sensationalism by the long fiber battle.

Late in the month, after weeks of waiting, came the Supreme Court decision we’d been waiting—and hoping—for. The Court unanimously overturned the 3rd Circuit’s ruling and pretty roundly spanked them for their mistakes in letting the argument go on for so long. The final victory for Lafayette was widely heralded as one that would have consequences in locales beyond Lafayette or Louisiana. Cox, after years of vigorous attempts to delay or destroy the project, testily denied that it made any difference to them. Dreaming about what we could do with the shiny new toy starts almost immediately and LUS announced plans to solicit ideas from the community.

March……..
The first, and in retrospect apparently last, of the Fiber Forums is held and the community had plenty of ideas. (Cox and AT&T also attended and took conspicuously copious notes.) If nothing else the forum demonstrated that the LUS understood that a generous attitude will pay unanticipated dividends. And that simple insight is one which will do more to make the system a success than any elaborate business plan. Wireless hopes, big intranet bandwidth, symmetrical speeds and more were all promised and their implications discussed.

An old issue, the digital divide, returned, Lafayette was named a “Smart Community,” and the first high paying jobs attracted by the fiber arrived. LUS started to spend visible money on the networks construction, selecting a design firm to lay out plans for the headend building that would house the electronics and for a warehouse to store the masses of equipment that would be needed in the construction phase.

April……..
April brought a shower of small advances. The Digital Divide Committee was reconvened, the location of the headend facility at the intersection of I-10 and I-49 was set, and an engineer to oversee the construction and help make crucial decisions was chosen.

May…….
March brought a reblooming of the old FUD tactics from the incumbent corporations. Cox kicked off the festival with an embarrassing attempt to pretend its hybrid fiber-coax network was a fiber network in a venue where everyone knew better. Just a bit later we got a whiff of old push poll tactics when a new, apparently limited version was trialed in Lafayette. Then Naquin’s (AT&T’s PR team?) attorneys carried water for the incumbents by engaging in a rather transparently false threat to sue LUS just a week before the city went to New York to interview for the crucial bond ratings.

June……..
As the seasons turned Huval went to Councilor William’s “Real Talk” and talked—about the retail wireless plans, about a faster construction schedule, about a larger basic cable lineup than anticipated, about internet speeds where the slowest package would be faster than the fastest speeds available in most of the country. Oh yeah, and symmetrical bandwidth coupled with a 100 meg intranet. Enough to leave the most ardent proponent breathless. Lafayette Pro Fiber floated a dream about a “Lafayette Commons” that would take our commonly owned network and use it to make a place to share local information build community.

The bond sale was authorized and the bonds were put on the market. The first unit sold solidified the legal standing of the entire business plan since bond holders are constitutionally protected from any change in the plan no future legal challenges to the basic plan can be successful.

July…….
In July LUS’ Huval was honored by his national peers—he was both given an achievement award and made the chairman of the board of the American Public Power Association. The success of the fiber fight clearly raised his stock nationally as well as locally. The bond sale closed; meaning the money was in the bank and available to spend. The newly hired engineer’s men were in the field surveying poles—making sure there was plenty of room for the fiber to be hung.

August……..
Joey Durel took over leadership of the Louisiana Municipal and pledged to work “to give local governments more ability to control their own destinies while not placing roadblocks in the way of our progress.” Among other things, that probably referred to the infamous imposition by the legislature of the (un)Fair Competition Act. An LMA with aware leadership will fight such laws. The City-Parish Council approved the fiber funding plan. Dreaming about what might well turn out to be the nation’s best telecom system continued apace and a new Digital Divide report was made to the council.

September…….
Another small media tempest erupted as the kids headed back to school. The headend building came in way over budget and LUS had to scale back and issue a new set of specs to keep its price under control. The headend was one in a series of public projects whose price spiraled upwards in the wake of Lafayette’s post-Katrina/Rita building boom.

Cox fired its most effective shot yet across the bow of LUS by securing a long-term contract with ULL athletics for exclusive rights to telecast replays of coaches programs, sporting events and university athletic programs on its cable systems—and we can rest assured they’ll not be reselling such valuable material to the local opposition. For ULL fans this is a very big deal—such deals have lead to a lot of fan anger on both coasts where such deals are more common.

The Advertiser endorsed the dreams of bridging the digital divide in a supportive editorial and Huval spoke up on Federal broadband policy in his role of APPA chair saying plainly that the incumbent telecom corporations had failed American in spite of massive subsidies and called for letting “the public sector take the reins in communities where citizens want them to do so.”

October……..
Dreaming of a better wireless network provided a bit of fun in October. The surprise announcement that LUS would imitate Apple and open its own “fiber storefront” to educate and promote the brand was greeted with approval. And the construction news rolled on with Alcatel being picked to provide the electronic guts of Lafayette’s new system.

November……..
LUS signed a franchise agreement with the city-parish that was virtually a copy of Cox’s and immediately tried to reassure folks during its approval that the agreement wasn’t nearly all they hoped to provide the community. One of the few areas where LUS laid out a plan in their franchise agreement for going beyond what Cox had already done was in its support of AOC, the local access channel. That touched of some dreaming about what a 21st century AOC might really look like. Mike weighed in with some dreams about an asynchronous Lafayette in which AOC or a surrogate would play a major role.

If history repeated itself with the franchise agreement, an awareness of the recent fiber battle seemed completely missing from the minds of some candidates for the state representative seats up for grabs this year. Let’s hope their more aware colleagues educate them as to what a successful telecommunications utility could mean for the hopes and dreams of their community.

December……..
As the year wound down toward the holiday season the bid on the revamped fiber headend was accepted and the crews were spotted in a North Lafayette neighborhood moving wires on poles in preparation for hanging fiber.

The future is upon us. Since the plan is to light up a section of the city somewhere near the first of the coming year, with any luck next year’s edition of this missive will be able to say that fiber has been lit up in Lafayette and that we no longer need to wait for the future.

It’s a new year indeed.

Signs of the Times 1; LUS prepping poles

Signs of these Times Dept. — Poles being prepped for Fiber

LUS came yesterday and reworked the poles and electricity on my street; ostensibly to fix voltage problems. –They did put in 3 transformers to handle the load formerly carried by one and said that would help stabilize voltage and make it easier and faster to repair damage after a storm. But more interestingly for our readers: they made room for the upcoming fiber in the middle of the pole by moving three wires and the street light currently in the middle to the top of the pole. That consolidated the electricity near the top. So now there is ample room for fiber between the electricity on top and the the cable/phone wires below. (No doubt, a survey of the poles I mentioned in an earlier post found they needed more space on my block. I didn’t get my hopes up then.)

One of the linemen explained it all to me. He also said my North Lafayette neighborhood (off Louisiana near Hwy. 90) would be included in the first area built. (Wahooo!!!) From there, he claimed it would go out as far as Pont des Mouton Rd. and, after I queried further, out Johnson to near Don’s.

That’s a huge chunk of the city…I hope he’s right. (At least about my little block. I’m gonna burn a candle…) Now I’m looking forward to an announcement. I speculated earlier that LUS might bite off a big chunk initially based on the way the budget was structured. This encourages me to think I might have been right.

Langiappe sighting:

While doing final Christmas shopping yesterday I saw an Atlantic Engineering truck with magnetic LUS and “Utility survey” stickers on the side tooling down Johnson. All the signs are good…

(If you have a construction sighting you’d like to report, just drop me a line. I’d love to hear about it.)

“Winning LUS bids set to be revealed”

Lafayette Utilities System will announce on Tuesday the apparent low bidder on two contracts to run fiber-optic lines in front of each home and business in the city.

…There are actually two construction contracts, one to run fiber-optic lines over existing utility poles, the other contract to bury lines where no poles exist.

That’s the latest construction news on Lafayette’s fiber network as pulled from the Advocate’s story.

The article also reviews the head-end contract (this version comes in under-budget) and the Alcatel-Lucent electronics contract. The fiber itself, according to the Advocate, will be bid out separately next week.

The main import of all this is not so much the particular contracts, their terms, or who wins them. Our interest lies in the progress they represent: The project is moving forward. The day when the first truck rolls begin is nigh. Presuming the schedule continues to hold we should have a nice New Years present early in January.

Lafayette is getting its fiber.

LUS accepts bids for fiber head-end facility

The Independent blog carries a short, LUS accepts bids for fiber head-end facility, that lays out the details of the new head-end facility. Alert readers will have encountered this issue before (1, 2) but he gist is that LUS had to withdraw its original RFP for the construction of a custom headend building and substitute a call for a smaller prefab building. From the INDsider:

The total bill of approximately $957,000 is well within LUS’ $1.4 million budget for the facility. LUS recently re-bid the project as a smaller, prefabricated facility after original bids for a custom building came back more than 100 percent over budget.

It’s disappointing that we’ll not have the larger, custom building to work with…expansion and long-term durability in hurricane country are both desirable. Of course the legal climate engendered by the (un)Fair Competition Act makes keeping costs down in the initial phase imperative. (That law mandates that the network has to be continuously self-supporting even in the first years while it is working without income. That foolishness can be dealt with but tools to insure that LUS stays within a punitive law means opting for longer, larger loans—and the subsequent expense in interest—than would otherwise be prudent. Yet another way that our legislature has allowed itself to be used as a tool to stifle competition with the incumbent providers by raising the costs of runnig Lafayette’s system.)

On the other hand, it’s encouraging that the headend cost has not only been brought in line with the budget but has come in substantially cheaper so that there is now a bit more breathing room in the early cost picture as a result. All dark clouds have silver linings.

LUS Cable Franchise Set

The LUS franchise agreement was approved yesterday evening in a quick, low-key Lafayette Public Utility Authority session before the main event. The LPUA, the five person subset of the city-parish council meeting that has legal authority over LUS, was down to three members all of whom voted to approve the measure. Williams and Benjamin, as has been their wont, did not choose to attend.

Huval gave a brief powerpoint presentation which focused on one main point: the franchise agreement is as near a copy as is possible of Cox’s 2000 agreement. A chart of the ways in which the two contracts were the same was the central feature of the presentation. This parallelism was repeatedly presented as a direct consequence of Lousiana’s “Fair Competition Act,” a point we have made in these pages as well.

The point I found most interesting—and most promising in view of my disappointments with the franchise—is that at the begining of his presentation Huval was careful to emphasize that LUS intended to do considerably “more.” That “more” was completely unspecified but leaves a lot of room for hope.

LUS Franchise Goes to Council Vote

LUS’ cable franchise agreement is on the agenda to be approved this evening during the 4:30 LPUA meeting before the regular council meeting.

Now this little story doesn’t rate so much as a mention in local media since various tempest in a teapot issues are distracting us from this more fundamentally important issue. (The Redflex and the Settlers Trace Boulevard controversies will have been forgotten when the money rolling into consolidated government from this contract are a central portion of every year’s budget.) I’ve earlier gone on at some length about why this is a big deal, and how state and federal shenanigens play into the unhappy need to write this franchise contract in a way that helps Cox and AT&T avoid full price competition. You can get the sad story in my November 3rd post.

If you poke around a bit and use Google you can actually find the text of the agreement on the council website. (The links in the agenda document do not work…a common problem, I have found. Someone needs to show the folks uploading them how to redirect the links.)

It makes for interesting reading. Well, ok, maybe not really interesting reading. But it makes interesting points. For instance here’s my top ten (in no particular order):

1) No Censorship. LCG denies itself the right to censor any content that flows over the LUS system:

8.12 Selection of Programming.
During the term of this Franchise, and consistent with 47 U.S.C. § 533(e)(2)[Link], LCG shall neither prohibit LUS Communications from providing nor require LUS Communications to provide any program or otherwise censor communications over the Cable and Telecommunications System; except that, nothing in this section shall be read to authorize LUS Communications to engage in communications which are prohibited by law.

This writes into the local ordinance a reassuring portion of the Federal Code that forbids a local franchising authority from exercising any editorial control over programming. Good. This firmly eliminates any stupid attempt to tamper with programming that has a paying audience in order to satisfy the self-righteousness of those who would like to control the tastes of others. With the passage of this ordinance it would be against Federal law, local ordinance, and LUS’ franchise contract with the city-parish to mess with programming. Endless pointless and silly debates in our city-parish council are thereby avoided. Kudos to the drafters of this ordinance.

2) Yearly Surveys. Consolidated government reserves the right to do yearly surveys of LUS’ telecommunications.

B. LCG at its sole option and expense may undertake an annual survey of community views of cable operations in the City, including but not limited to technical quality, response to community needs, and customer service. LCG shall provide thirty (30) days advance written notice to LUS Communications of such a survey and shall, upon thirty (30) days written request, report the results of the survey to LUS Communications.

That’s a good thing as well—and has ramifications well beyond asking the obvious question “Is LUS doing a good job.” Lafayette is going to be way ahead of the curve with its fiber-optic network and some elements of the project will be unique, like the 100 meg intranet. We really should be tracking the sorts of changes that grow up in our community. It would be invaluable to other communities, essential to our finding grant funding for all sorts of nifty experiments, and crucial in justifying the expense when the project is inevitably challenged down the road. (If you think Cox and AT&T will quit badmouthing the project and trying to convince people it is worthless after it starts cutting into their market share you really ought to rethink.) We need a series of good broadband surveys. This has been suggested before…AndrĂ© Comeaux had made a project of this. The idea should be incorporated into a yearly survey. Done right we could get national groups that would like to get their hands on such unique data to help us pay for it. But with or without help we should get on the stick about this. A baseline survey done before LUS offers its first services is absolutely essential to being able to prove that the project has helped Lafayette.

3) In the Public Interest

1.9 Public Interest Promoted.
The provisions of this Franchise shall be liberally construed in favor of the promotion of the public interest.

Perfect. ‘Nuff said.

4) Updating the Agreement

SECTION 6. AMENDMENTS TO FRANCHISE
LCG may amend this Franchise upon the application of LUS Communications to provide services in addition to those authorized by Section 8, subject to appropriate additional conditions to protect the public interest. LCG may also amend the Franchise upon the application of LUS Communications when necessary to enable LUS Communications to take advantage of technological advancements in Cable Services and/or Telecommunications Services that, in the opinion of LCG, will afford LUS Communications an opportunity to serve its customers more efficiently, effectively, and economically. Such amendments shall be subject to such conditions as LCG determines are appropriate to protect the public interest.

It’s nice that someone is being proactive about anticipating technological changes that will drive new services. A clause like this will make it easier to work such changes into the services lineup.

5) Privacy

7.2 Privacy.
B. LUS Communications shall not use the two-way communications capability of the Cable and Telecommunications System for unauthorized or illegal subscriber surveillance of any kind. For purposes of this subsection, tenants who occupy premises where LUS Communications provides Cable Service and/or Telecommunications Service shall be deemed to be subscribers, regardless of who actually pays for the service.

That’s probably should be obvious. But given the loosey-goosey way that phone providers, including our dear AT&T have played loose with the wiretapping laws during this administration this clause clearly directs LUS to make sure that surveillance is legal. That is, to wait for a court to order it. Good.

6) Universal Service

1. Within Franchise Area. For requests from persons within 300 feet of an existing distribution line, LUS Communications shall provide service within seven (7) business days for no charge other than the then-prevailing normal installation charge, unless LUS Communications demonstrates to LCG’s satisfaction that extraordinary circumstances justify a waiver of this requirement or the customer requests that service commence at a later time.

The clauses for those outside the 300 feet area will apply to very few if any folks –since the current franchise area is the well-built-up city of Lafayette. But even there LUS is obligated to offer service at a reasonable cost. Universal service is assured.

7) Public Service

E. Requested School and Public Building Service Drops. LUS Communications shall provide upon request and without charge one cable television service outlet activated for Basic Cable Service to each police station, fire station, School, public library and LCG office building…

That’s only basic, and there are some conditions on service more than 300 feet from a line, but its still pretty sweet. A public utility should provide public services.

8) PEG Channels (aka AOC)

8.9 Public Educational and Governmental Use.
A. PEG Access Channel Capacity. Within six (6) months of the date service begins under this Franchise, LUS CommunicatioLCG two (2) downstream channels solely for PEG access use.

Another 3 channels can be earned by the community if they an fill up the first two.

9) AOC support

G. Equipment and Facilities. Each year during the term of this Franchise, LUS Communications shall provide an annual grant for the PEG access equipment and facilities to LCG or, as directed by LCG, to the Access Corporation(s) designated by LCG, in an amount equal to $50,000. Beginning on the Effective Date, the payment shall be made monthly in an amount of $4,167. LUS Communications shall be permitted to recover all such payments in its monthly Basic Cable Service charges or as otherwise permitted by LCG.

This is support for AOC. I’d be happier if it went directly to the designee rather than passing through the fingers of the council but it cements support for the valuable local institution even in the face of looming federal rules that would put its existance in danger.

10) 21st Century Public Access

L. On-Demand PEG Access Programming. In addition to therequirements of this Section 8.9, LUS Communications may make PEG Access programming available to Subscribers on-demand, or may permit any designated Access Corporation(s) to make programming available on-demand. On-Demand PEG Access programming shall not be required to be carried on a Basic Cable Service tier.

This hints at the beginings of a 21st century vision for what AOC could become. Even niftier would be access to net bandwidth and support for high bandwidth, on-network storage. Maybe we can negotiate for that at a later date.


Parting Thoughts:
All in all not a bad document. Not the document of my dreams however. That one would have had glorious clauses pushing a real digital divide program, extended public obligations, funding for a commons portal and a 21st century version of AOC. Sigh. Still, I have to say not a bad document. Just not worthy of the full vision I think most of Lafayette shares.

Construction Costs in Lafayette

This week’s Ind carries a story on the shockingly high bids that came in for the Acadiana Center for the Arts building–and mentioned the Fiber project headend building, the Lafayette Public Library’s South Branch, and high-priced roads, in supporting roles. All of the bids on these projects came in way over-budget and the public bodies are scrambling to make ends meet.

As the Independent tells the story what is going on is a combination of Rita/Katrina demand soaking up contractor time, a dislike among contractors for working with government (and especially with Lafayette’s government), and skyrocketing global demand for steel and copper. (I’m confident that ridiculous overpricing on Federal projects — many on a cost-plus basis — has also distorted the local market, especially among contractors specializing in governmental projects.)

Readers of this blog will likely be most interested in the tidbits about our fiber project:

Lafayette Utilities System Director Terry Huval experienced similar sticker shock when LUS went to bid the headend facility of its new fiber-to-the-home telecommunications business. “We were very surprised,” Huval says. “Our instructions to our architect were that we had a $1.4 million budget for this facility and that we needed to stay within that budget. We relied on the architect’s best advice during the design process and we were all surprised with the high bids.” Huval says cost-estimating was done by LUS’ fiber consultant, CCG Consulting out of Georgia. He says the firm based its estimate on costs it experienced in other places and escalated those by 30 percent to account for the high construction costs in post-Katrina south Louisiana. They were still off by 93 percent.

That makes sense, LUS relied on their hired construction experts, like any business would, and the local situation just didn’t match their experts’ expectations. Huval presents a rationally balanced analysis that discretely points out that the onus isn’t all on government. Sometimes what is at the core of contractor dislike is that such bids are transparently competitive:

LUS’ Huval says that while he has heard several contractors comment on the city not being a preferred client, he doesn’t believe that is necessarily attributable to any city policy that is not required by law. “I think the reason we are receiving less bids for government work,” he says, “is the contractors are simply making more money in the private sector as opposed to competing on the strict governmental lowest qualified bid requirement. Any time the contractor supply-to-project demand curve shifts to the advantage of the contractors, governmental projects awarded based on the lowest qualified bid will be less attractive to contractors.”

I’d add that the good-buddy system of duck blinds and favors doesn’t work with governmental contracts and that some of the complaints of contractors about insuring their work and getting paid out before the work is complete is just responsible business practice that the good ole boy system works around.

Still, extremely high bids have consequences:

Because costs came in so high, LUS has now scaled down to a pre-fabricated building, 1,500 square feet smaller than what it originally planned to build. “The pre-fab building will have all the critical elements we need for the first several years of the fiber-to-the-home business,” Huval says. “We can always expand the building at the time we need to do so. The customized building would have served us for more years without an expansion.”

That may be penny-wise and pound-foolish. I’m not at all sure that it wouldn’t be wiser to bite the bullet on the front end and get a building that didn’t require you to add on new expenses in that dimension when you want to expand your network to cover new areas. Of course, no one is talking about expanding LUS’ footprint except in the above very indirect ways. Yet. But I’d hate see a new headend expense counted against an expansion to Broussard or supplying New Orleans with VOIP services.