Category: Fiber fight

(Broadband Hero) “Durel details fiber project for journal”

The Advertiser reports that Mayor Durel has penned an article on our fiber project in the NATOA Journal. The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisers lauded Durel as its “Broadband Hero of the Year” last year and the article is an apparent outgrowth of that award.

The NATAO story (not available online) celebrated the economic development potential of the new system and highlighted the 100 meg intranet according to the Advertiser.

The Broadband Hero award is worth highlighting itself. I had a post prepared on this that never made it out of the draft stage back in November and am chagrined at the omission. NATOA is a muscular association of telecom officers for public bodies that is extremely influential nationally and has lead the fight against bad laws — and kept up the pressure after the laws predictably failed—on issues like municipal broadband and state video franchises. Louisiana has first hand experience in both these areas of how badly these incumbent-written laws have been for local communities. NATOA, then, is both prestigious and determined. Getting an award from them, being invited to present at their conference, and having an article placed in their national journal bragging on your mid-sized south Louisiana city is no small thing on the national scene.

The reason for the “Hero” designation is evident from the wording of the award:

…for championing the need for robust, competitive communications services in his community; for championing the cause of local decision-making in communications; and for leading his community to counter efforts to thwart local communications initiatives.

Durel and Huval’s muscular, public, relentless defense of the fiber project was absolutely essential to its success. Many communities lack determined leaders and the award is well-deserved.

KVOL Gets Silly

According to a couple of friends KVOL has been hosting a rerun of the same old FUD attacks on the fiber optic network LUS is currently building. It’s August and, I suppose, they can’t find anything real to cover in these hot, lazy summer days. The latest bit of retread nonsense came yesterday when one of the 3 antifiber guys during the referendum, Neal Breakfield, was on the afternoon drive-time show. (He’s supposed to be on again this afternoon, so if you want to tune in and put up your two cents worth try 1330 AM from 4 to 6…It would be useful to remind him why his argument lost back during the fiber fight.)

The folks at KVOL are trying to make a go of this talk radio thing. (And not too successfully apparently: The last Arbitron rating has the station bringing up the rear with a 24 out of 28 rating in our market based on a .5 market share.) They’ve apparently decided that being anti-everything is the formula for success in talk radio—but it’s not working so far. Maybe only about .5 percent of people of Lafayette are that negative.

Be that as it may, the current jihad they’re apparently carrying on against the LUSFiber build is a nonstarter that is guaranteed to put them on the wrong side of most of the community. The whole issue was thoroughly “talked” out 3 years ago and the fiber advocates won a resounding victory at the polls. KVOL would do better to go after the nearly 2/3s of the population that voted for the idea and leave their .5 percent antis to the pleasant pursuit of complaining about unprofessional dress of the guys that cut grass along the highways and their neighbors’ chickens.

Update 8/15/08: Neal Breakfield has said in the comments that my remarks about KVOL’s Arbitron rates were “baseless.” They are not. Though Todd Elliot called and tried to demand that I take this post down and Stephanie Ware tried to make the same plea the truth is the truth. Arbitron does ranks KVOL at the bottom of the barrel in listenership. Neither Todd nor Stephanie tried to deny that what I said was true—they just didn’t, contrary to their fearless-truthtellers on-air personas, want the public (or their advertisers, I presume) to know this inconvenient truth about their own organization.

KVOL may well be on to something regarding their redflex crusade. I don’t think automated, privatized “policing” is wise public policy either. It might even do something for their ratings. But whatever good they do the community—or themselves—by pointing out real problems they lose when they make the common criticism that they are just “anti-everything” credible. Attacking even the good things this community is doing for itself is a sure-fire way to give ammunition to those who would criticize KVOL as merely anti-everything. Lafayette is pro-fiber. We proved it at the polls 3 years ago. Lafayette went through a huge public battle over fiber, the community was as well-informed as one can be over a complex public infrastructure issue. There were full page ads filled with the names of people and businesses that were willing to publicly support our fiber initiative. And the community decided to do for itself what the incumbents plainly said they would not do for us. The vote was 2 to 1. The people know what they want and they know what they voted for and hearing KVOL attack it only serves to confirm the idea that KVOL is anti-anything. I’m giving good advice here: if you have a good cause stick to it. Don’t muddy the waters.

The reader who wants to confirm KVOL’s rankings for themselves can travel to the Arbitron radio page and in the pull down menu on that page labled “market” select “Lafayette, LA.” There you will find that I was actually as generous as possible in my characterization of KVOL’s ranking in my original post. In the latest rankings, in Spring of ’08, Arbitron ranked KVOL as tied for last place with with KPEL and WYPY among ranked stations with all 3 clocking in at a .5% listenership.

Other corrections: I had mispelled Arbitron in the original post. That is now corrected. I’ve also included the link to the radio page in there.

“World’s Cheapest Laptop “

A key issue for any community network is the hardware users have to have to connect to the network. Certainly that was a, perhaps the, big issue during the fiber fight here in Lafayette. LCG and LUS promised to work hard to get appropriate hardware into poorer households. (We’ve been keeping our eyes open here. —1,2, among others.)

That’s getting cheaper. Amazingly cheaper. We’ve reported on cheap alternatives before but today’s winner in the cheap Network Attached Device (NAD) sweepstakes is a little laptop that cost 130 dollars apiece in batches of 50… Well, wow……You can get 50 for 6500 dollars.

The device is one of the new category christened “netbooks.” (Remember “ultraportables?” Like that. Only less.)

The price of these guys continues to fall….without visible limit. At 130 dollars a pop this would make a very interesting—and pretty damned affordable—digital divide device.

Not a perfect one, mind you. The specs are kinda puny, in line with the price: A 7 inch screen, a slow (by this year’s standards) processor, no wifi, no hard drive (well a, 1 gig solid state drive, aka flash memory).

The lack of wifi or even a real network connection makes this thing a poor digital divide for Lafayette. A laptop whose only connectivity if via a dongle? Hunh? Sometimes you really do need to talk to the marketing guys. But if it had wifi then a network like Lafayette’s could easily make up for the meager specs in things like storage space and processor power. That can all be located on the network. All you need to have in your mobile device is a fast way to get online and the capacity to run a decent browser. In lafayette the 100 meg intranet will allow anyone to run programs and store data online without much penalty. (Imagine an on-network server with all of Google’s apps — or a homegrown equivalent– serving out services over a 100 meg connection. Who needs to pay endlessly to keep up Microsoft Office?)

This may not be quite the thing. But the day is coming when a iPhone type device is crossed with a tiny laptop like this and becomes the tote-around thing to keep you connected and on top of your work. …

And when it comes it will cost less than 130 dollars. And places like Lafayette will be where it will be most valuable. Keep you eyes open.

BellSouth Lobbyist Resigns

BellSouth-AT&T Lobbyist/Jindal Legislative Ramrod Tommy Williams is going back to being a lobbyist again the T-P reports. No big surprise, that.

We’ve been watching Tommy’s career ever since he was a BellSouth Louisiana Vice President during the fiber fight here in Lafayette. Tommy’s son, John, was the BellSouth rep in Lafayette at that time. John was the one, you may recall, who first denied that BellSouth had anything to do with the infamous Lafayette push poll but later had to admit that BS had, in fact, come up with the idea, while complaining that, his father’s standing not withstanding, he didn’t know anything about a poll run in his area. Not an illustrious clan. Tommy left his job lobbying for BS and became an indpendent contractor for them back when AT&T bought up BellSouth and continued lobbying for the company right on through the transition—he still officially represents the phone company on the Broadband Advisory Council.

Williams senior is giving up his job as Bobby Jindal’s Legislative Director. In that position he was responsible for making sure the administration’s legislative agenda made it through the House and Senate.

The Times-Picayune article’s take on the resignation emphasizes the tattered relationship between the legislature and Jindal in the wake of the last session–and it hit the net before Jindal flopped back to flip and vetoed the legislative pay raise after all this morining. Tattered is probably now a mild description of the legislature’s pique at loosing that particular perk.

My perhaps cynical guess is, however, that the AT&T lobbyist had already managed to pass what his longer-term employers thought was most important, even if it wasn’t particularly part of the Governor’s agenda: passing the state-wide video franchise law.

Truth be told, putting a lobbyist in charge of the lobbying for an ethics package never made all that much sense. The judgment that the administration’s legislative ethics package actually damages the cause of ethic’s reform in the “gret state of Louisiana” has been coalescing since the resignation of 9 of the 11 members of the ethics board.

Williams didn’t actually get much done for Jindal that Jindal he could be proud of. On the other hand, AT&T will surely be happy to have him back home. Practically speaking, spending much more time representing a governor’s ethics program whose main thrust has turned out to be making sure that legislators bear the brunt of the public disclosure laws that Jindal thinks will heal our state’s image (while opposing transparency for his own administration) will not endear him to the legislators that are his audience in his real job. As a lobbyist he needs to get back on the job of glad-handing and getting on the good side of his real constituency.

His resignation, breathless reporting aside, is no big surprise.

All in all though, his abscence has to be good for Lafayette’s fiber project. As we’ve noted before, his presence in the governor’s inner councils can’t be a good thing for a project that he has vehemetly opposed.

(Tip o’ the hat to Mike who sent in the pointer to this one.)

Monopoly, Community Wisdom, and LUS

History counts for a lot in trying to understand a community and Terry Huval’s commentary in today’s Advertiser lashing the railroad monopoly is a good starting point for understanding how history works.

There’s been a lot of comment on “conservative” Lafayette could have voted, overwhelmingly, to start its own community-owned telecommunications utility. As a community which relishes confounding the expectations of outsiders we are happy to encourage the perception that we can’t be easily predicted.

In truth, what this community calls conservativism has very little to do with what is called conservative elsewhere in this country. (I suggest you spend a few minutes reflecting on Mardi Gras, Festival International, and the multitude of drive-through daiquiri shacks before you too quickly reject that statement.)

We often make reference to our latin heritage in explaining the cultural differences between South Louisiana and the rest of the South or the rest of the country—and that is accurate, as far as it goes. Just “being different” goes a long way toward explaining how a community that takes bold stands understands itself. But more particular histories count as well.

The fact that Lafayette has an LUS — a broad community-owned set of utility systems— makes it different from the adjoining towns. Our experience is different; we have a different history because we’ve decided to do things, like build a utility, for ourselves. We pay attention to different parts of the world precisely because we can make a difference in how our utilities are delivered–something most communities do not bother to interest themselves in because the cannot change it much.

So nobody here is surprised when the head of our local utility reaches out to repeatedly lash the railroad monopoly.

We don’t realize that ideas like these are vanishingly rare in the public conversation of most of our United States:

A recent guest column inaccurately addressed attempts by the Lafayette Utilities System to curb monopolistic railroad pricing….The real issue is that Lafayette is a captive rail customer that has no reasonable choice but to use railroads for coal deliveries to its power plant and has become subject to uncontrolled monopolistic rail pricing power…Rail companies take advantage of customers like Lafayette because they are allowed to do so.

Monopoly corporate power—and the federal government’s collusion in maintaining it—is not a topic for discussion in most communities because most communities don’t have utilities which are victims of monopoly pricing which are consequentially forced to pass on overcharges to the community they serve:

Due to these rail price abuses, LUS customers and businesses are paying a $15 million premium in electricity costs annually – with a cost share of $1.5 million being paid by our local education system.

And LUS can do something about it on our behalf. Terry Huval has repeatedly testified in Congress regarding the railroad monopoly’s exploitive pricing. There, no doubt, having the head of a small southern utility company stand shoulder to shoulder with giant mining corporations, the chemical companies and the oil industry, lends credibility to the claims that last mile monopolies in the rail industry are bad for everyone.

A number of public and private industries, including our state’s petrochemical industries, have banded nationally to form Consumers United for Rail Equity. Together, we support the passage of laws placing rail companies under the same anti-trust restrictions imposed on other businesses.

Monopolies are, in short, bad for business and bad for communities. Lafayette’s ownership of its own utility is a continuing source of rational, non-ideological conversation about such issues. LUS is a constant reminder that public ownership, good service, being pro-business, and being pro-community stance are not inconsistent.

Conversations like these are opportunities to take another look at the odd modern rhetoric that demeans taxation, recoils at public ownership, dismisses reasonable regulation of natural monopolies, and glorifies private greed. It isn’t true, for example, that all public services are a result of taxation. LUS is supported by fees-for-service. And those freely paid fees actually displace some of the taxes that other communities must impose:

Contrary to the misstatements made by the guest columnist, LUS is not supported by tax revenues of any kind. Instead, LUS makes substantial payments to help support the cost of local government functions, such as fire and police.

By contrast the federal and state governments often directly subsidize or give other special breaks to huge industries like the railroads–these cost governments income which must be made up by taxes. In most of the country mentioning such favoritism is considered an impolite violation of the illusion that corporations don’t seek or accept . Not in Lafayette:

On the other hand, the major railroad systems have had a long and continuing history of receiving governmental assistance directly from tax dollars paid by citizens and businesses….

Rail companies falsely suggest these proposals will “re-regulate” or place financial burden on the railroads. Reading the elements of the proposed legislation and reviewing the financial growth in recent years of the railroad companies quickly dispel those myths.

In short, we have an ongoing, concrete conversation in Lafayette about practical local decisions that are mostly abstract and ideological in other parts of the country. It makes a different sort of sense in Lafayette to rail against railroad monopolies (and telecommunications monopolies) because we don’t have to just lie down and accept it. We have utilities that can fight back in our defense. That makes a lot of difference in the public discourse here. And helps explain why we were able to understand how empty the ideology offered by the incumbents during the fiber fight was: we’d heard it all before.

As Huval says in his closing statement:

LUS will continue to represent its customer-owners by standing up to fight entities and practices that hurt our community.

Having someone to fight for us is a huge advantage. Having someone to keep or local conversation grounded in reality is an even greater advantage in the long run. Thanks, LUS.

Cox: New Building, Old Line

Cox Communications has opened its new headquarters for what is left of its operations on our side of the Atchafalaya basin. (Cox shed its former holdings to the north and west back in 2005) It’s a serious investment in the region and looks like a nice building—complete with meditation rooms. The Advertiser‘s tone is in the traditional laudatory vein that local newspapers inevitably adopt whenever a company opens a new building or invests in the area. It’s a welcome relief, I am sure, from the usual grind of the news beat where “good” news usually means “no news” and I’m pleased that Cox, its employees, and the area have a new building.

But I can’t help but be annoyed by Cox continuing to run out its silly “Me too!” line about it having fiber and nobody knowing about it. [Note that the online version has a final “press release” paragraph on fiber that didn’t make it into the print version.] This is smoke and mirrors and it is intended to confuse the public about the difference between Lafayette’s new system and its older one. It also reveals that Cox still doesn’t understand what happened during the fiber referendum fight and why it lost that fight.

Cox has tried, in its press releases and its advertising to say that it has “a fiber network.” This article, to its credit, doesn’t repeat the silliness of using that phrase—whether that is due to the good judgment of the writer or the fact that Cox has quit trying to run that particular form of misinformation is not clear. Just for the record: the implication that Cox has anything like the fiber to the home network that LUS is currently building is just silly and Lafayette is now sophisticated enough to both understand that and to understand why Cox would want to obscure the difference. Every network in town has a fiber core: Lafayette’s ring, AT&T’s network, Cox’s, and the miscellaneous national networks that also have terminations in our city. Cox, like all its competition uses fiber’s massive capacity as a the cheapest way to handle massive amounts of bandwidth where it has to have that capacity: in the backbone that supplies the less capable copper leading to homes. Having a fiber backbone just isn’t noteworthy—what is noteworthy is how close you bring that fiber to your final customer. Only LUS will bring that massive capacity all the way to your home or business.

What’s more interesting to me than that old story is that telling it seems to mean that Cox actually believes that it lost the vote in Lafayette because the people believed that they wanted “fiber.” So Cox is determined to pretend that it will give us fiber (not quite to the home) too…. But “fiber” is not the reason that Cox lost that election. It lost because it tried to deceive us about fiber to the home—something it is still trying to do with its current PR double-talk. In the end it all came down to trust. And Cox proved itself, through deceptive PR, silly “academic forums,” insulting push polls, threats to our jobs, and endless rhetoric about the dangers of a trusted local utility providing local services cheaply that it couldn’t be trusted. Every time its PR personnel try pass off some half-true claim about fiber networks Cox reminds us why we didn’t trust them back then. Until it figures out why it lost in 05 Cox will continue to lose in Lafayette.

—–on reflection——
Truth is that fiber isn’t all that Lafayette wanted by the time we got to the end of the fiber fight. By the time we voted we knew we wanted to control our own destiny and the fiber fight just proved the context for coming to that decision. As our national history has played itself out telecommunications has turned out to be an essential, and a monopoly business. Those sorts of businesses ought to be public utilities, not private monopolies. It took our wanting fiber and the ugly battle to win it to get Lafayette to realize that. But now we understand that every community should own its own network. Even if it isn’t fiber. The social and economic benefits of controlling that locally and keeping that economic stimulus entirely in local hands is enormous and every community that can ought to do the same.

It isn’t fiber…..it is trust…and local control.

Joey’s Washington Talk

I’ve posted an (audio-only) “movie” of Durel’s remarks at the House hearing on broadband and wireless networks to YouTube for your listening satisfaction.

It’s a very Joey Durel speech. There’s a touch of humor, some testiness, some pride, a bit of anger, and a dash of drama. You heard it during the fiber fight and you can remind yourself how hopeful that sounded back in the day by listening to this latest installment.

And it’s worth the listen. Tidbits to whet your appetite:

He emphasized the purpose of keeping our children home…a central, perhaps the central theme, of the fiber fight.

About Lafayette’s network:

We’re going to have something—and I think this is a strong statement—we’re going to have, that you are probably not going to have in Washington for 20-25 years from now…. And I think that is a sin for America… And when I say that, and I’m not just stressing the fiber optics….We are going to be able to provide our citzens, peer to peer, customer to customer, a 100 megabits for free.

Later he corrected himself to say that you’d have to buy some level of service…but that your insystem, “intranet” bandwidth would be that fast and wouldn’t cost extra. That wowed the committee and they asked about it later.

About the digital divide:

People on our system will be able surf the internet from their television’s with a wireless keypad and a wireless mouse.

That is the really new news from this session. I know what folks have been talking about and I am not positive what this refers to but I suspect that what Durel is referring to is a settop box arrangement where you can surf and work email from the same box that decodes your cable signal. I like the idea—if it is done right and it would be easy to get very wrong. ….More when I know more.

On Congress acting to protect municipal broadband— With tongue firmly in cheek Durel said:

I hope 49 states outlaw doing what we are doing….What I would tell those states is: “Please send your technology companies to Lafayette and we’ll welcome them with open arms and a gumbo.”

The point he was making was that he really hoped was that the Congress would pass the law they were discussing at the hearing and give other communities the right to follow Lafayette’s lead.

Mr. Durel Goes to Washington — updated

Joey Durel presented Lafayette’s case for municipal broadband to Washington this morning. He spoke today before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The committee hearing was in reference to a proposed new law called the “Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act.” Most attention on the net and in trade news has focused on the first section of the bill which focuses on making wireless networks more consumer-friendly. Some articles have suggested that such a law would result in open, unlocked cell phones. The iPhone, for instance, couldn’t be locked in to only AT&T. Others would force companies to provide more transparent and accurate information on coverage and terms. All that, of course, would be a great thing.

But the primary interest of those of us in Lafayette, and the reason our Mayor showed up on capital hill, lies in the second part, Title II: Community Broadband Empowerment. That portion would prevent any state forbidding municipal networks—something that lobbyists have successfully promoted in a number of states…and something that they tried to do in Lousisiana where only Governor Blanco’s clear signal that she’d veto anything that both sides couldn’t agree to lead to a compromise that allowed Lafayette to proceed, though with significant unfair restrictions on its ability to compete. The gist:

No State or local government statute, regulation, or other legal requirement may prohibit, or have the effect of prohibiting, any public provider from providing advanced communications capability or service to any person or to any public or private entity.

Now that leaves significant wiggle room for endless litigation. (Lafayette knows well the danger of laws being used to simply delay a local project. We lost years going down that path.) Louisiana’s (Un)Fair Competition Act significantly cripples the fiscal operation of any municipality in the state that wants to offer its citizens a cheaper, more competitive deal—large swaths of the law incongruously force the state regulators to raise (not lower, raise) the price they offer their citizen/customers based on expenses that municipalities do not have. (NO portion of the law sets an upper limit on prices….this is “regulation in the public interest” where the public’s interest is scarcely served. Clearly no one thinks the citizen-owners will overcharge themselves. So all that is left is to protect is…the enormous corporations??? AT&T don’t need to be protected from Lafayette, quite the opposite is true.) Sadly, Lafayette may prove that such laws, as unfair as they are, do not “prohibit, or have the effect of prohibiting” an exceptionally determined municipality. It would be unfair to the nation as a whole if Lafayette’s unusual energy and determination had the effect of barring communities across the nation from safely following its lead.

A good federal law would not leave such large loopholes–states ought also to be prohibited from enacting laws that would make local communities labor under regulatory disadvantages that do not apply equally to their large, corporate competitors.

I didn’t hear about the session until it was already underway but thanks to the miracles of the internet was able to tune in to session then. I missed Joey’s initial remarks but captured most of the discussion that followed. That went as you might expect: Representatives reperesented the interests of their state (or corporation). The representative from California was worried that strong California consumer guarantees not be diluted–while the speaker from the industry clearly hoped it would be. The senator from AT&T’s San Antonio hometown insisted that “government” had some unfair advantage—completely ignoring how crazy was the idea that Lafayette’s little power/sewer/water utility could ever operate at anything other than a huge competitive disadvantage to the immense monolithic power of AT&T.

Joey acquitted himself well; insisting that we were doing for ourselves what corporations refused to do for us and had done so with the uniform support of local business and local bipartisan political endorsement. Not to mention an overwhelming vote of the people. That seemed hard for the opponents to respond to—as well it might. The contrast between someone whose first interest was his community and someone who was trying promote corporate interests instead was, I am sure, uncomfortable for the representatives who are hoping to prevent the passage of such a law.

Some fun sound bites:
Durel was talking about taking the fight all the way to the state supreme court. He commented:

“those were probably the best marketing dollar we could had ever spent. It was great publicity for us.”

Now thats a bit of bravado. It might even be kinda true.

Several times Joey was challenged with some industry rhetoric—mostly about promises that the incumbents made or didn’t make. Several times he answered:

“Smoke and mirrors.”

That’s the Joey we know and remember from the fiber fight. There was little such bluntness in the rest of the discussion.

Some of the questioners seemed to be suspicious of the very idea that the community might offer a product for less money than the amount they were paying to buy their service from private providers. Durel was ready for that one. He said that he’d tell them what he told his own community:

“You’ll still be able to have less quality for more money.”

And the room erupted into laughter.

NOTE: My thanks to the alert reader who pointed me to this event!

Update 10:20 PM: The archive for this meeting is already up. I’m happy since I missed the first of the live meeting. You can get the written version of Durel’s remarks and stream or download an audio of the meeting. That’s pretty impressive transparency…and a pretty nifty use of the internet to make government accessible. Durel’s set-piece talk starts at 28 minutes. He deviates significantly–very significantly, it is almost a completely different speech from the written remarks and the spoken version is much more interesting, emphasizing keeping our children home, development, that we’ll have peer to peer 100 megs for “free,” and about the digital divide: “People on our system will be able surf the internet from their television, with a wireless keypad and a wireless mouse.”

With tongue firmly in cheek Durel also said: “I hope 49 states outlaw doing what we are doing. Please send your technology companies to Lafayette and we’ll welcome them with open arms and a gumbo.”

“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….

They want Fiber in the Wilderness…

I spotted this during a weekend drive in the country with out of town friends. It’s on Wilderness Road (aptly named) in the extreme northeastern corner of the parish. I’m pretty sure the sign is one of those Robert Dafford, the muralist, put out on his own dime during the fiber fight.

No, this house, won’t be among the first to get served by LUS…in fact it will probably be one of the last places in the parish to get it, even presuming (as I tend to) that one day fiber will blanket our area. No doubt the owner of this house knows that—and supports the idea anyway.

But the desire is clear. We all share it. We all should get it.