Category: Lafayette

Why no Google Fiber for Baton Rouge? (Updated)

The folks in Baton Rouge are probably asking themselves why they didn’t get Google’s gigabit fiber network. After all for a while the Facebook page “Bring Google Fiber to Baton Rouge” had more fans than any in the country and there seemed a pretty large groundswell of support. There was a heavily rewritten AP article in the Advocate that interviewed a BR Chamber officer and recounted the history of local public involvement. (Unfortunately not online check p. B-6 of 3/31/11 paper.) It all seemed so hopeful. The Chamber held out hope that Baton Rouge might get in on the second round.

I don’t think so. At least not until we put our own house in order.

Here’s at least one reason that Google avoided Louisiana:

See Kansas? It’s Green. Texas and Arkansas are Red. Louisiana is a sickly Orange. Google is only going to green states. This map has nothing to do with solar energy or recycling. The green denotes a place where there are no state-wide legal barriers to a community building and owning its own fiber-optic network. Red states absolutely forbid it. Louisiana is among those who are hostile but do not completely outlaw the idea. (Witness Lafayette’s ongoing battle.)

Google wants to strike out and do something truly different. They are frank about thinking the Cox’s and AT&T’s of this nation haven’t done a good job and that local communities can do better and should be helped to do so. Google has no reason in the world to go to a state that tries to make the sort of community involvement they count on illegal.

They aren’t coming to Louisiana until the “(un)fair competition act” is abolished. If Baton Rouge (or New Orleans, or Shreveport or Bossier, or any of the other Louisiana cities that applied) want to have a shot at Google’s second round the first thing they have to do is get their own house in order.

Repeal Louisiana’s (un)fair competition act…

(Check out the great map at muninetworks.com from which I grabbed the above illustration. It chock full of valuable, if depressing, information.)

Update 4/1/11: Stacy Higginbotham, tech journalist extraordinaire over at GigaOm, covers the Texas version of this story. Apparently Austin had a very credible, widely supported effort to get their city picked. The local organizer thinks:

“Austin caught their eye for all the right reasons, and we had support at the highest levels with the involvement of the mayor and the city manager, but given the Texas limitations on municipalities getting involved in network, there was only so far we could go,” Rosenthal said. “So I look at the Texas Legislature, because they really put us in a box with regard to Google, and every response the city gave had to be measured within that box.”

Yup, I expect he’s exactly right. Texas forbids muni networks. Google is doing this to encourage muni networks. The are NOT going to pick a city in a state with lousy laws that forbid what they are trying to get other municipalities to do. That’s only common sense.

Update 4/4/11: Take a look at what the paper in Kansas City, Kansas thinks were the reasons that its city made the cut. The story, understandably, tends to focus on drama and secrecy but there are some very interesting nuggets in there about the underlying factors that might have favored KCK once the first cuts were made.

Update 4/4/11, 8:15 PM: As part of the ongoing discussion in the comments I reviewed the Louisiana law constraining muni networks. There I found what I thought I remembered: The law explicitly includes the sort of public-private partnership that Google is undertaking in Kansas City. So anyone who is murmuring that Google could do a project similar to the KCK one in Louisiana simply has not read the law. You can bet that Google has. See the element of the law which defines a public-private partnership as one that must adhere to all aspects of the law at RS 45:844.47 B(3): “Through a partnership or joint venture.” If Baton Rouge wants Google to consider them in the second round they’ll want to repeal this law first.

LUS Fiber as Background…

Lafayette’s community-owned fiber network is well on its way to becoming a background factor in the city’s self-image. At one point most public mention of LUS Fiber was a—contentious—foreground issue. The story was about the fiber network. That’s changed. And that’s good.

These days stories tend to mention LUS Fiber as an assumed “good thing” and are focused on the immediate foreground issue. The next step is for our massive connectivity to be simply assumed without mention—after all nobody talks about the water utility when discussing gardening. We’ve not quite reached that point. For now at least we are still aware that we’ve got something special.

A couple of recent experiences reflect that new state: In a bragging speech, our “state of the city-parish address,” LUS Fiber rates a nice mention—but only a mention. On a website touting a new “traditional urban village” development one of the advantages of the new subdivision is Lafayette’s fiber to the home network. In a blog post focusing on education and technology at a Catholic high school making use of the 100 meg intranet is merely one of several bullet points on the to-do list.

It is a sign of maturity I suppose. LUS Fiber is now part of the community.

That’s what was supposed to happen.

It’s Official: LUS Apps

Emailed Announcement

This morning LUS officially announced its newly implemented TV Apps in an emailed publicity release.  (see PDF)

Lafayette Pro Fiber reported this development on December 30th shortly after an alert user posted the appearance of a new “Extras” button in the menu bar on a local tech talk board. A more extensive review, replete with pictures, an alternate method of access, and hints at further services can be found in that day’s post.

The significance of this announcement lies less in the apps we see today—they’re pretty mundane for anyone using a smart phone—than what they offer for the future and the promise the keep in the present. LUS opted for an IPTV-based system rather than run its new video service using more traditional technologies. IP based systems are much more flexible and extensible. The internet functions as an IP based framework that supports a fantastic range of functions. The appearance of apps on the system shortly after the completion of the network makes good on the promise that LUS Fiber’s IPTV will offer its users new and excitingly different ways of using their TV. It also validates the choice of Microsofts’ MediaRoom as an interface platform. MediaRoom provides a layer that allows the apps to coexist with the video stream and provides developers with a relatively comfortable environment that does NOT require that they learn arcane set top box commands or limited-only-to-cable development environments. The developer interface is a minor variant on the familiar .Net framework.

It is easy to imagine chat apps that float over popular “event” shows like the Saints or Ragin Cajun games, or scrabble games played between different family households or…(your favorite idea here). LUS’ system will allow users to link video, phone, and data functions. Almost anything you can imagine could conceivably be presented on the TV screen and manipulated there. The MediaRoom layer makes it much easier to get between here and there without depending upon extreme specialists that, frankly, a smaller city like Lafayette simply cannot afford on its own. We’ve already got a (small) .Net community. And the developer base worldwide is simply huge.

We live in interesting times.

You Know You’re In Lafayette When?

You know you’re in Lafayette when the story on local music legend D. L. Menard contains the following color quote:

Menard doesn’t remember the Grammy-nomination night as a big night, though later it hit him. “It was (producer and musician) Terry Huval who told me. He found out on the Internet.”

Oh, producer and musician Mr. Huval found it on the internet did he? (There’s important things and then there are really important things.)

Pat Ottinger, City Attorney, Steps down

Pat Ottinger, the city attorney through the entire (successful!) fiber fight is stepping down. The media are all carrying the story; you can look at fleshed out versions from The Independent, The Advertiser, and The Advocate.

Ottinger is the unsung hero of the fiber fight. He worked long hours and fought tirelessly to make sure that Lafayette got the chance to make its own future in spite of well-funded corporate lawyers, Cox, BellSouth and their stooges in the state legislature. His work was instrumental in defending what we had won after the referendum battle. Lawyers don’t get much glory; that’s not the sort of profession you go into if glory and adulation are what makes you run. We’ll surely get a more complete run-down on his accomplishments in the coming weeks as editors put together their stories and in that larger history the legal battles that swirled around Lafayette’s decision to build its own future will be far from the only story. But that is the one I’ve watched closely and I can say without reservation that Lafayette was well-served.

The city has lost a real public servant, one whose earnestness and self-evident competence should serve as a standing rebuke to those who’d disparage those among us who choose to serve.

Lagniappe: I spent a few minutes looking through old LPF stories…the first one to mention Ottinger by name is worth your review as an example of the value of having an Ottinger on your side: The City replies to the BellSouth lawsuit

Double take…Cox & French TV5

Just before Christmas I did a sharp double-take when thumbing through the Advertiser with our morning coffee—Cox was running expensive full-page, color ads promoting TV5 Monde, the french channel. While I didn’t spit out any coffee I was taken aback. Cox, you see, has never before pretended to be a friend of Lousiana’s French speakers and this kind of promotion is a particularly galling extension of the corporation’s continued attempts to ingratiate itself with the Lafayette community after taking a brutal hit to its public relations image during the fiber referendum battle.

One of the mistakes Cox made during the fiber fight was a set of channel changes that included moving the French channel from basic cable into the stratosphere of channel 226, a location that required both a set top box rental and a the purchase of a special, costly, upper tier add-on package. In a city where the last census showed that 13% of the people spoke french in the home that seemed, and seems, pretty outrageous. Many of those speakers will be in our poorer communities and will be disproportionally older and on fixed incomes. If you speak french as a first language, or are simply determined to keep Louisiana’s francophone heritage active this change was a huge blow…making mass media access to french content more obscure and more expensive. At that time—soon after the storms—Cox also moved the weather channel off basic cable and up into a more expensive channel package. These, and changes to the on-screen channel guide were all intended to drive users off the cheaper, bandwidth intensive lower channels and up onto the more lucrative digital channels that required a rental set top box.

Needless to say people weren’t happy with these changes which pretty blatantly were the sorts of decisions made by corporate honchos in Atlanta who were unappreciative of the local cultures or the facts of life for those living in the Gulf’s vulnerable coastal cities. (See examples of LPF coverage @ A, B, C.) After complaints across south Louisiana (in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette) Cox moved the weather channel back onto a cheaper tier. But TV5 has been permanently moved to an expensive upper-tier ghetto where it is paired with, of all things, a set of specialty sports sites.

The contrast between LUS and Cox on this issue is stark. If you want TV5’s French language programming and have access to LUS Fiber then your best choice is LUS…it’s on a basic tier that doesn’t require the rental of a set top box or a more expensive digital tier. On Cox you’ll need to rent a digital box to get service and opt for a specialized, mostly sports, package.

The Cheapest Packages with TV5 from LUS Fiber and Cox:

—LUS Fiber: on Expanded Basic @ channel 71: $46.95, no set top box: $0, Total: $46.95
—Cox: on Advanced TV Preferred @ channel 266: $64.98, required set top box: $5.25, Total: $70.23

LUS advantage: $23.28 a month or $279.38 a year…

And that’s before you add on other one-time charges. Suppose that, in reaction to Cox’s full page ads in regional newspapers, your old Tante Sue is so delighted at the prospect of French TV that she decides to take the plunge and get some of that cable television. She’d be hit with a connection fee of $53.95 (and possibly various and sundry other cabling fees to get service where her TV is). Even if Tante already has Cox and only has to upgrade to digital to get that channel back she’ll still pay $53.95 to only upgrade to digital! Cox, your ersatz “friend in the digital age” doesn’t particularly want to come visiting…and charges accordingly. And you’ve got that silly extra set of sports channels to click through. So if you want to watch some of your TV in French you’ll end up paying $333.31 more to buy it from Cox than you would if purchased it from LUS during your first year.

Now maybe Tante Sue already has that fancy digital TV stuff and only has to switch to the package that contains it…but she’ll have to give up one of those other “packages” to switch into the “Sports and Information Pak.” So she sits down and has to decide to give up the Turner’s old movie channel or the Cooking channel, or…some other favorite of hers to get a channel in French. Or, of course she could upgrade to higher priced service to get the privilege of adding TV5. No doubt helpful sales agents will suggest that…and that will cost her an additional $6.00 dollars a month.

By contrast LUS Fiber doesn’t do all that contract, install fee nonsense. It’s simple—French TV is in a basic tier…you get it for no extra cost, no monthly box fee, and don’t have to give up other channels to get it. Pay for “expanded basic” @ $46.95 a month and add nothing on. End of story.

So Why?
Cox’s French language offer is simply not a credible competitor with LUS’. Which brings up the issue of why Cox is bothering to dump substantial advertising dollars into full page color advertising. Well, two reasons. 1) PR, “public relations.” It looks good to be promoting the French language, particularly in Lafayette, the largest city in the French speaking areas of Louisiana. It doesn’t hurt that such ads promote a sense that Cox “cares” about local people and local issues. Cox has been doing its best to counter the lousy PR it gave itself during the fiber fight and promoting French is an apple and babies sort of issue: who could oppose it? 2) through most of the area of Cox’s “greater Louisiana” district, which ranges from Gonzales through Baton Rouge and over to Lafayette there is a distinct, well-established French subculture. Somebody (finally) figured that out. There are certainly many “Tante Sue’s” out there and it wouldn’t take many of them being pushed to buy cable outside Lafayette or upgrade to digital or higher tiers to substantially increase Cox’s profit. And that, I imagine, is what clinched the argument with the higher-ups in Atlanta when the promotion was pitched.

The moral of this story is that there is a difference between supporting local communities and exploiting them…LUS Fiber is providing native language support to the traditional local communities with minimal barriers. Cox is providing French to burnish its local reputation and make some bucks. Motivation matters and Lafayette’s French speakers should be pleased to have a community-owned alternative to the national corporation that offers much better prices and more widely available placement for the French channel.

Lagniappe: Cox has tried (and failed) before to make cozy with Lafayette by pretending a fellowship with the french strand of our heritage; that much cruder era was exemplified by the infamous TJCrawdad. and the “down-home” ad that used an actor delivering the generic “hick” Arkansas accent and a Cox delivery van with Texas plates to tout their local bona fides.

“Let LUS join cable cooperative”

The Advertiser opines that the National Cable Television Cooperative (and by implication Cox cable) should let LUS join the coop. They’re right. Some of the highlights from the editorial:

LUS is seeking membership in the cooperative, a body created by the federal government to leverage the purchasing power of small cable TV companies.

…the lawsuit was just another punch thrown in the fight between LUS and its private competitors. The court was right to reject the lawsuit and to allow LUS’ attempt to join the cooperative to proceed.

…Denying LUS membership in the cooperative is fundamentally unfair.

…Originally, the membership applications of LUS and city utilities in Wilson, N.C., and Chattanooga, Tenn., were ignored. Wilson and Chattanooga eventually were granted membership, but not LUS.The private competitors of the other two systems are not members of the cooperative. Cox is. There’s nothing subtle about that.

Indeed, there is nothing subtle about what is going on here. Cox is playing bully-boy with its more than 6 million subscribers (vs. Lafayette’s 52,000 Total households) to keep Lafayette out of a buying coop that is chartered precisely to allow small guys like LUS to compete with the likes of Cox. —Leading to the conclusion that is also the title of the editorial:

Let LUS join cable cooperative.

“Hardly Cooperative”—Dissent within the NCTC

In response to my last post loyal reader Jeff has pointed to a very interesting story in Multichannel News that focuses on dissension in the ranks of the NCTC following recent changes in membership that give large national cable companies influence over what had been an alliance of small, local companies. There’s plenty of meat on the story but what really caught my attention was the suggestion that the larger companies subscriber numbers don’t necessarily add as much weight to contract negotiations as one might think and the even more interesting revelation that the coop already has a number of large overbuilders, including Verizon, as members.

Big cable and little systems:
One of the complaints that the older, smaller members of the coop have is that the larger members don’t really add their numbers to the common pool in a way that makes everyone’s prices cheaper:

By its own account, the NCTC said that typically, about half of the co-op’s subscribers — between 10 million and 12 million — participate in most of its programming agreements.

The rest, mostly the larger MSO members such as Cox, Charter Communications and Cablevision Systems, cut their own separate arrangements with programmers, save for a handful of deals through the co-op. That, according to smaller operators and programmers alike, diminishes the value of the scale those larger members bring. (Cox, Charter and Cablevision represent about 14 million subscribers, or more than half of the 27 million claimed by the NCTC).

No doubt the smaller companies do benefit to a degree. But the big guys still usually get better deals. So why do the big guys bother? Apparently so that they can have a fallback if they get in too big a tousle with a stubborn content provider:

The latest example of that was Cablevision Systems, which joined the co-op in 2009 essentially to take advantage of its agreement with Tennis Channel. Cablevision had been in a heated battle with Tennis for months over its placement on a sports tier, which the programmer had resisted. The MSO was able to circumvent that resistance by joining the NCTC, which already had a deal in place that allowed members to put the channel on a tier.

That Tennis Channel agreement is set to expire next year and according to people familiar with the situation, the network is likely to seek to remove that tier provision from their NCTC agreement.

So Cablevision, which seldom actually adds its numbers to the deal-making in a way that benefits the rest of the NCTC, does uses the NCTC’s contract when it can’t get a benefit any other way. The logical response of the content providers is to no longer give the smaller NCTC participants a better deal than they’d give the better-heeled big cable companies. Not an ideal outcome for the little guys.

The NCTC has no policy against competing members joining the coop
Since the NCTC has pretty much refused to say publicly why it won’t allow LUS to join by far the most reasonable idea has been the one the city of Lafayette has consistently put forward: Cox has used its new influence as the largest single member of the organization and its seat on the board to keep LUS out. I’ve assumed the NCTC were unwilling to say that because that motive is so blatantly anti-competitive.

But it turns out that they may not want to say that they won’t accept new members who compete with established members because they know that such a claim would be transparently false. There is apparently no policy, official or otherwise, that bars competing members of the industry from belonging to the NCTC. It is, in fact, common practice:

The NCTC counts the three largest overbuilders as members — RCN, WideOpenWest and Knology — and WOW even has representation on its board (WOW vice president of programming Peter Smith is NCTC vice chairman). The largest telco competitor, Verizon Communications, also is a member (through its ownership of the former overbuilder, GTE Ventures). Missing from the ranks is AT&T, which has a competing video service, U-Verse. The reason: AT&T has stressed on several occasions that because U-Verse is an IPTV service (its programming is delivered via broadband and at the demand of the consumer, not in a continuous stream), it should not be considered a cable-TV service by regulators.

An “Overbuilder” is what LUS is—someone who comes in and builds a new system over an area in which there is already one. If anyone were going to be excluded simply because they are competition to established members of the coop it would be these larger overbuilders whose business model is to seek to expand by building new systems in established territories when the industry standard is to expand not by competition but by acquisition. With both long-standing overbuilders and Verizon’s new fiber to the home system both accorded a place at NCTC table it is all but impossible to figure out a (consistent, rational) reason for LUS to be excluded.

Just exactly what is left but Cox’s simple spite and a blind determination damage the one community that has defied them?

Consider that the next time you notice Cox claiming to be “your friend in the digital age.”

LUS wins first round with NCTC re FCC (But what about the FTC?) —Updated

LUS has successfully argued that the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) was wrong to attempt to use the Federal Courts in Kansas to prevent LUS Fiber/LCG from complaining to the FCC (or the FTC or, well, anybody they want to) about the NCTC blocking their bid for membership. The case has been thrown out of court with the Federal Court in Kansas stating that it had no jurisdiction and, further, that the planitiff the NCTC was really trying to use the courts as an inappropriate battleground or as way to try and establish a decision before a case is actually brought—neither of which is legitimate:

The timing indicates that plaintiff is attempting to use this declaratory judgment action for purposes of procedural fencing or to provide an arena for a race to res judicata.

Backstory:
Folks who’ve followed the long fiber fight in Lafayette (currently in its seventh year) will recognize this as the latest iteration of the incumbents using the court system to delay LUS Fiber from moving forward. The consistent result for any case pursued to final appeal has been for the final decision to find in LUS’ favor. This is simply the latest instance in which the real result, and likely the only really intended result was to cause delay and expense for the people of the city.

The immediate backstory for this instance is that LUS and two other municipal fiber to the home providers had been denied entry to the NCTC which provides their coalition of small cable firms with prices for content that are competitive with those the large multi-system cable companies are able to get. LUS had to wait during a two year moratorium on new members was put in place during 06 and 07; the moratorium was extended multiple times. LUS Fiber then immediately applied for membership when the NCTC lifted the moratorium on new members. But the NCTC quickly inducted two very unusual new members completely at odds with their previous membership: large cable corporatons Charter and, yes, Cox Communications. LUS and other muni providers were put on indefinite hold—their applications simply not responded to—far in excess of the organizations own deadlines for acting on applications. LUS and the other muni providers finally signaled their intent to ask the FCC for relief on the grounds that this exclusion from the cheaper prices available through the “small provider” coop amounted to anti-competitive behavior. The NCTC quickly offered to admit the other two cities on the condition that they drop their complaint. Neither city faced competition from either Cox or Charter who now had members on the board of directors. They agreed. LUS, who does compete with the largest (brand new) member of the NCTC was not offered membership and the basis for refusal to act on LUS’ application has yet to be explained. Except, of course, by the Lafayette utility which unambiguously points to Cox. No denial or confirmation has been offered by the NCTC.

(If that recounting was too condensed or abridged please take a look at the account on “Stop the Cap” What makes their take even more interesting is the fact that the author has a prior, at one time supportive, relationship with the NCTC. His judgment is damning.)

The Case at Hand:
The NCTC asked the court for a “declaratory judgment” that would have precluded LUS/LCG from seeking any of the remedies that its FCC filing said were possible. Those ranged from asking the FCC for redress, to asking the FTC to withdraw its letter stating that the NCTC was not in restraint of trade, to requesting congressional review, to seeking redress under Louisiana law. The court walked through each claim by the NCTC and essentially found that the plaintiffs, the NCTC, asked the court to assert an authority it did not have—and to effectively reach a decision in advance of having a case actually presented.

Consequences, FCC:
So the complaint to the FCC will not be blocked. When Lafayette will hear back on that is anybody’s guess but the filings with the Kansas court claimed that they thought that the chance of having to go beyond the FCC to receive satisfaction were small. That sounds like confidence to me. That confidence is reinforced when I realize what a potential “nuclear option” the NCTC is risking if LUS and Lafayette were to go to their second option…

With LUS’ complaint cleared to go forward what the NCTC has to decide is what they’d risk by allowing their pro-Cox position to be struck down by the FCC. Mainly it would seem to be that they’d lose their much of their current ability to arbitrarily deny an applicant membership. Their defense would have to put up some sort of reason to deny—something which they haven’t deigned to do to date. Each potential defense, and were Lafayette’s response successful, endangers an excuse which they might want to use at a future date. (For example: it would be risky to try and claim that LUS is using a different, IP-based technology from the rest of their clientle both because that isn’t entirely true—IP is already embedded in much cable tech and they’ve admitted other muni providers using identical tech—but more worryingly because the loss of this excuse would endanger their ongoing policy of refusing to admit small, local telephone companies that are beginning to offer video.) Letting the FCC reach a conclusion on this matter is an open-ended risk for the NCTC; they can’t know how far the new FCC under Genachowski will go. Openly stating that they are excluding competitors of current members would be even more risky, especially if they are successful—where the Federal Communications Commission might let such blatantly anticompetitive activity slide if it thought it served some higher purpose related to its telecom-related mandate it is unlikely that the FTC would be happy to hear that the NCTC had explicitly changed its raison d’être to one that is intends to exclude competitors in order to gain an advantage for its members. The central purpose of the Federal Trade Commission is to prevent collusion in restraint of trade..more on this below.

I won’t be surprised if we soon hear that the NCTC has decided to let LUS join provided they drop their FCC complaint.

…Especially if they consider that even a refusal to act in Lafayette’s favor on the part of the FCC might have truly dire results if the city has to go to its second option.

Potential Consequences, FTC:
The second avenue of redress mentioned by the city’s lawyers was asking the Federal Trade Commission to withdraw its “business letter.” That pretty much mystified me until I dug up the latest version of the FTC’s letter. As it turns out what the letter does is to certify that the FTC does not think that the NCTC operating practices constitute an illegal restraint of trade that would lead them to start enforcement proceedings. But reading the letter makes it clear that its all pretty tentative and as I read it I started to wonder if the new size and constitution of the NCTC after it has bulked up and changed its nature by bringing in some of the nations largest cable companies (it now constitutes the largest group of customers in the nation) would change the FTC’s view. And then I hit the final substantive paragraph, reproduced in full with my emphasis:

For these reasons, the Department has no current intention to challenge the NCTC’s proposed procedures for jointly negotiating national cable programming contracts for its active members. This letter expresses the Department’s current enforcement intentions, and is predicated on the accuracy of the information and assertions that you have presented to us. If the conditions you have presented are substantially changed—if, for example, a major MSO or a DBS provider were to join NCTC or there were other significant changes to NCTC’s active membership—the conclusions we have drawn would no longer necessarily apply. In accordance with its normal practice, the Department reserves the right to bring an enforcement action in the future if the actual activities of NCTC or its members prove to be anticompetitive in any purpose or effect in any market.

That has GOT to send a chill through the hearts of the bureaucrats that head up the NCTC. And may well explain the panicky legal response to LUS’ simple notification of intent to take their complaint to the FCC that the court has here so easily dismissed. Perhaps the FTC, not the FCC, is the entity they really fear. The FCC would merely make them play fair. The FTC could destroy them. That they’ve exposed their organization to such a danger should frighten the NCTC membership. And should thoroughly frighten its membership. If LUS/Lafayette were to pursue this it seems very likely that the FTC would have to seriously reconsider its reassurances. After all the NCTC has admitted not one but two major MSOs (mulitple system operators)—Cox and Charter. And it is acting rather transparently in the interests of one of them. That seems like a huge risk for the NCTC take. Playing a game of brinksmanship with LUS could easily lead to the dissolution of the coop. Something which wouldn’t bother Cox or Charter; they’ve always had the heft to go it alone. In fact they’d find it a lot easier to compete with any of the little guys who now take advantage of the better prices the coop offers. It’s win-win for Cox and Charter—either they gain a price advantage over little LUS that competes with Cox or they gain a price advantage over all the little guys when the coop fails to meet FTC standards. It’s hard to avoid concluding that the little guys that the coop was once run to benefit have been snookered.

Conclusion:
At the end of the day the real question remains unchanged; the lawsuit did not serve any real purpose but delay and to drain the resources of the defendant:

With respect to plaintiff’s malicious prosecution claims, a declaratory judgment would not clarify the legal relationship between the parties with respect to the question at issue: whether plaintiff broke the law when it denied defendant’s membership application.

Does LUS/LCG and Lafayette have grounds for claiming that this was frivolous lawsuit? I have no idea. But it certainly has proved, in fact, if not in intent, meaningless.

(Court order link via the inestimable Baller-Herbst List…)

Lagniappe:
The Lafayette legal team has released a press release that outlines their take on the victory in Kansas.

Update:
The Advertiser, the Advocate, and the Independent have all weighed in with responses to the LCG press release.

“LUS Fiber to hold ‘Community Fest’ Nov. 20”

Both the Advertiser and the Independent have short stories up telling essentially the same no-doubt-press-release generated story. It is also featured on LUS Fiber’s front page.

From the Advertiser:

The event will run from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Parc International and will feature a free concert by Curley Taylor and Zydeco Trouble.

KJCB apparently will co-sponoser and give away a big screen TV. Local churches and noprofits will sell lunches, keeping the proceeds….

What’s most interesting is that this event is LUS Fiber’s first community outreach event (unless you count the opening of the LUS Fiber store—and I don’t). Choosing to celebrate a local ethnic community is a reasonable opening move for Lafayette-owned utility.

So far we’ve seen all but no marketing of LUS Fiber…yard signs being the most exciting effort to date.) The Indpendent ties this event to the impending completion of the network. Here’s to hoping we see a more vigorous marketing outreach soon. I’m hoping for one that emphasizes local ownership, local control, and keeping local money in local hands.