Category: Louisiana

Fiber Availability Mailer Appears!!

I’m thrilled to announce that at least one person has gotten his fiber announcement delivered through snail mail: ME!

Thrilled is not really the word. 🙂

Look for the distinctive blue (Cyan, or pretty near) that dominates.

After you cut through the tape that holds it closed it’ll unfold into a glossy brochure with two pages of inserts detailing the services and pricing offered.

At right are what mine looked like when I threw them down on the dining table to take these pics. Click on them to get a larger version.

The cover turns out to be the “newsflyer” I fell across via Google back in January…

Man To Watch: Skrmetta & Pay To Play Politics in LA

Put Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta on your guys to watch closely list—he apparently thinks there’s nothing wrong with letting the companies you regulate help pay for your office and then holding a white tie soiree to retire the debt you run up winning a public office that is supposed to regulate them. All citizens should feel obliged to watch this guy but the charge is especially incumbent upon those of us here in Lafayette who now own a piece of one of those companies the PSC regulates.

Back in the old days, before AT&T (nĂ©e BellSouth) drafted up the (un)Fair Competition Act a publicly-owned and operated company like LUS was not placed under the the thumb of the guys over in Baton Rouge. In fact the constitution appeared to explicitly forbid it. The assumption back then was that local people didn’t need any help from the state to do right by themselves. The old Idea behind regulation, especially the regulation of what are essentially utilities, was that people who had to rely on large for-profit monopolies to provide services needed the protection of at least a state level protector. It’s been a while since it was obvious to outside observers that the regulators did much to control the behavior of companies they regulated; instead it seems that the regulators too often run the show behind the scene and use the state to raise rates, “deregulate” their monopolies, or keep down any incipient competition.

It’s the latter that Lafayette partisans need to worry about: the PSC is notoriously a creature of the phone company and AT&T is hard at work making sure that doesn’t change. LUS, as the only company regulated under the (un)Fair Act, is sure to be the target of rules rigged up by AT&T. And Skrmetta is gonna have some big time debts to pay off.

According to New Orlean’s City Business the newly elected Republican was the only candidate running in that race that accepted campaign money from the industries he was elected to regulate.

Now that he’s actually elected he is apparently an even better investment. Bill Oliver, president of AT&T Louisiana makes no bones about his sponsoring a $1000 dollar a head soiree to help pay off campaign debts. ($5, 000 dollars for corporate sponsorship) Sez Oliver:

“He’s a new commissioner, he’s got a serious amount of debt and my intent is to help hold an event that would eliminate his debt,” Oliver said. “It’s legal and I’m following the guidelines of state laws.”

and

Oliver said he doesn’t think fundraisers such as his compromise relationships because they are legal. He said if citizens feel the law should be changed, they should approach the Legislature.

Silly me, here I thought that there was a whole category of things that were legal but flat out wrong. Legal or not the real question should be whether it is the right thing to do to either offer to pay of the personal debt of a man who regulates you (or to accept money from a corporation you are morally obligated to regulate).

Good government types think it stinks; PAR, a pro-business organization generally —indeed Oliver sits on the board—has advocated and continues to advocate a law to make such shenanigans illegal since it is apparent that appealing to honor and a sense of ethics is a waste of effort.

Under heavy pressure from public opinion and those obnoxious editorial writers who think that accepting favors from those you regulate is, uh, questionable the PSC recently wrote rules forbidding its members from accepting lunch favors from those they regulate. AT&T was exhibit A spending nearly 2,000 dollars on lunch for PSC members and staffers in ’08. Maybe, just maybe, lunch is less serious issue than helping pay to gain the office itself….you’d think. And they talk about pay to play in Illinois.

At any rate: watch this guy. Skrmetta, Eric Skremetta. He’s made it clear that he won’t do the right thing unless he’s closely watched. And maybe not even then. Congrats and hearty at-a-boy to City Business who shows that they have retained some sense of what justifies papers and journalism: educating the public. Theirs is a truly incisive article.

Lagniappe: In the category of guys to watch: don’t forget Jindal’s legislative liason: Former BellSouth head lobbyist Tommy Williams. He headed up the Gov’s ethics reform. (Convincingly putting to rest the rumor that it had anything to do with stemming the corporate side of corrruption.) He was a VP at BellSouth…and had a history with Lafayette and LUS’ fiber project that included a role at the PSC you might want to recall.

Update-2/11/09: Mike took a look at the ethics reports and says that AT&T and AT&T’s pac contibuted $15,000 dollars to the campaign before the “soiree.” That soiree was apparently meant to retire a $350,000 dollar personal loan that Skrmetta made to his own campaign. All this brings up pretty significant questions about a system in which only the wealthy can afford to run for public office but can, if they see no ethical conflicts, rely on those whose livelihoods they influence, to “generously” retire the large personal debts they acquire running for office. I cannot believe that anyone, including AT&T and Eric Skrmetta, really thinks there is no quid pro qou, no implicit pay to play in such a scenerio.

Watch these guys.

WBS: “After Five Years Of Fighting, Lafayette Gets Their Fiber”

What’s Being Said Dept.

Karl Bode over Broadband Reports is another that has been tracking Lafayette’s trials for years and his take on the long-anticipated launch is similar to others who have been watching. It was a fight; one that the citizens won:

We’ve been tracking the deployment of municipally-owned fiber in Lafayette, Louisiana for years, the project being particularly notable for some of the sleazy efforts made by Cox and AT&T (then SBC) to kill it. Those efforts, back in 2005, included everything from hinting at exporting local support jobs if the deal was approved, to hiring push pollsters to try and convince locals that the government-controlled project would result in politicians rationing consumer TV viewing. Needless to say, Cox and Bellsouth lost.

Bode also notes that we’re getting something for our efforts:

A few weeks ago, Lafayette Utilities System (LUS) unveiled their pricing for the service, offering triple play bundles ranging from $84.85 to $200, with downstream broadband services ranging from 10Mbps to 50Mbps (all symmetrical). LUS offers standalone symmetrical 10Mbps for $28.95, 30Mbps for $44.95, and 50Mbps for $57.95. There’s no caps, no contracts, and no installation fee.

Those prices handily beat not only local competitors Cox and AT&T (it’s now pretty clear why they fought so hard), but carriers in other markets too. Comcast offers a 50Mbps tier in select markets for $139.95 (when bundled), but its upstream speed is 5Mbps. Verizon’s 50Mbps/20Mbps service costs $144.95/month standalone, or $139.95 when bundled. The fastest speed AT&T currently offers customers is 18Mbps/1.5Mbps, which is $65 a month if you bundle TV service.

But the real treat for locals is the unalloyed envy exhibited by the usually raucous and dismissive crowd of commentators at the site. The first commentator says: “I would literally murder someone to get symmetrical 50Mbps…” and the ensuing debate continues with a review of which body part other discussants would give to have that access.

As a special treat Joey Durel logs in and plugs the 100 meg peer-to-peer network:

Thank you all for your comments. We are excited by the possibilities this brings to our community. We put together a very conservative business plan and should easily be able to sustain our pricing. Of course as programming costs go up, our prices will go up, and so will the competition. One thing not mentioned is the fact that we are also giving 100MBS peer to peer, for FREE. And, if this initiative doesn’t live up to the expectations, my neck is on the chopping block. I think it is worth the minimal risk. And, by the way, this is not backed by the government, so taxpayers are not at risk. These are revenue bonds backed by our utilities system, and while there is some risk it is actually very low. Thanks again,

Joey Durel
Lafayette City-Parish President

And, hey, on top of all that it is sunny and warm in the hub city.

WBS: “Lafayette, La., finally gets its fiber network”

What’s Being Said Dept.

Marguerite Reardon over at CNet has been following the Lafayette Fiber saga since the beginning (and posted on-target pieces both on the fight and on the victory) so it’s not surprising to see that she’s capped that with a good piece on “Lafayette, La., finally gets its fiber network.”

After nearly five years of planning and fighting with local cable and phone companies, the Lafayette Utilities System opened its fiber-optic broadband network for business.

Whew! I thought it was more than “discussions”….. and, on CNet’s account the fight was actually about something:

It’s easy to see why Cox Communications, the local cable operator, and AT&T, which bought local phone company BellSouth, are threatened by LUS. Pricing for the new triple play services are very competitive. Consumers can get a triple play bundle from about $85 to $200 a month. And the broadband services offer download and upload speeds between 10Mbps to 50Mbps. The standalone broadband service costs about $29 for symmetrical 10Mbps downloads and uploads; $45 for 30Mbps, and $58 for 50Mbps service. The service doesn’t require a contract and there’s no installation fee.

The maximum download speed offered by AT&T is 6Mbps for $43 a month. And it’s cheapest is a 768Kbps service for $20 a month. Cox only offers Internet download speeds up to 15Mbps. Depending on what specific services are selected, bundled pricing from AT&T and Cox is comparable. The big exception is that AT&T and Cox offer these prices as part of a promotion, whereas LUS prices are the actual standard prices and will not expire.

Lafayette is just one of many cities that has tried to build it own broadband network. Other cities and regions such as Provo, Utahhave attempted to do the same thing. In nearly every instance, cable and phone companies have tried to prevent these network build outs.

Now just why is it that to get coverage that notices the real history, the actual fight, a succienct comparison of the offerings, and the real reasons why the incumbents (rightly) feared a community network we have to a national tech news source?

“LUS Fiber delays start” (Updated)

LUS has missed its deadline to serve the first customers in January of this year. They point to uncompleted contracts for cable channels as the reason for the delay—contracts LUS has signed but the folks that control the channel packages have not returned. All the recent coverage has hinted at such a delay: Huval has said for at least a month or six weeks that the only thing standing in the way of a launch was those contracts.

———–
As to the story and the situation: Arrrgh. Let’s start with the headline.

“LUS Fiber delays start”? Start? Really? How ’bout “LUS Fiber delay starts”? *(See update below) See what a difference the accurate placement of a single letter can make? I’ve complained endlessly and without effect about the tendency to sensationalize in the Advertiser so I won’t belabor the point today. Just note that it’s not a new frustration. I’ll also take the opportunity to renew the plaint that the Adverstiser not ignore what has really delayed this project for years: the unremitting opposition of the incumbent providers: AT&T and Cox. As story about “delays” that carefully doesn’t mention the source of years of delay is simply suspect reporting.

Ok, glad to get that off my chest. Still, there’s a bit more complaining to do. 🙂

The story does report on a real question that does need to be covered. The only thing worse than sensationalism would be to not cover it at all: LUS has missed its self-imposed deadline to serve the first customers by January of this year. And it let that date pass without making a public announcement in advance of the event. That’s just not good public relations—or marketing. Better, much better, would be to hold a press conference lay it all out explicitly and to put it in the context of a huge project the people have been patiently waiting for — and a minor delay in comparison to the other painful delays that have occured as a consequence of outside interference. Get ahead of this sort of thing is the advice I would have given. My honest hope is that LUS intended announce this at last Tuesday’s Council meeting—but if so I think they were mistaken to have honored the council’s request to put it off. Granted the Council was right about their agenda and that did turn out to be an ungoodly long meeting. But LUS and the administration would have been smart to have asked for 5 minutes of the council’s indulgence for a quick update that covered the change in plans if they could not stomach a full press conference. I strongly suspect that we will hear about it tonight’s council meeting…I do expect that LUS will send out those promised blue announcement cards as soon as possible; possibly even this week. But the PR mistake will linger.
—————

Beyond my frustrated complaint about the way the Adverstiser and LUS have handled this affair there is likely a really interesting story to tell. Or several. Which contracts with national providers have not completed signing? (We know the ones with local stations are done—including one that ended up in an FCC complaint.) What factors are playing into the decision to not launch with an incomplete linup? What is the source of the dispute? Was there another way to handle these contracts? Any one of these would make a useful story.

The question of which providers have neglected to return signed contracts might be interesting because we know that some packages are actually owned by incumbent cable providers who might well think it useful to embarass a standard bearer for municipal broadband. For instance, Time-Warner includes among its subdiaries major cable provider Time-Warner Cable as well as a huge set of cable channel packages including HBO, Turner Broadcasting (TMC), WB, CNN, and the Cartoon network. Comcast owns Cox owns the Travel channel. It’s not a big stretch to think the cable companies might find this an easy tactic to use: Comcast, for instance, is famous for using its control of various sporting channels and contracts to its advantage in larger contract negotiations.

Why not just launch without the last few channels? You could always give a price break/rebate on the portion of the final package that customers don’t get. The factors that are in play in deciding to delay the launch, and bear the cost of bad publicity, must include the so-called “Fair Competion” Act that the incumbents initially wrote and the legislature finally passed. The purpose of the act was far from “fair competition,” instead it consists of a series of restrictions that apply only to the publicly-owned competition. (Only LUS in our state.) One of the elements in that law starts a time clock with dire consequences for LUS if it doesn’t make a paper profit by a particular date. So any slow start imposes penalties by law…LUS needs to start off fast, and could easily conclude that not having the channel lineup complete would lead people to take a “wait and see” stance—not something they can afford to encourage.

If there are contracts outstanding one has to think that there have been disputes over carriage terms. LUS has apparently not just accepted anything that they are offered and have tried to hold out for good terms. The most obvious reason to hold out might well be simple cost: there is some push and pull on cost and providers naturally want to get as much as possible for their product and could well think that LUS doesn’t have as much to bargin with as the monster companies like Cox or Comcast. But there may well be more subtle and even more disturbing possibilities. We here in Lafayette think its a great thing to get a 100 meg intranet and set-top boxes with even limited internet capacity. But content providers in this country are well known for their at-times irrational response to the rapidly growing dominance of the internet and all digital media. They’ve been noticeably antsy about IPTV (Internet Protocal TV as opposed to RF-based cable) and I’ve heard that the mention of opening the settop boxes through which “their” media flows to the evil internet for digital divide reasons causes them some irrational spasms. Trying to step in and dictate local policy as to who does and does not get internet access under the guise of protecting their interests would be all too in-character for an industry everyone has learned to disdain. (Video owners would be wise to learn from the painful experience of the music industry.—Standing in front of the engine of change and trying to slow it down only gets you run over.)

Finally, LUS initially intended to join a coop to get its programming and probably could do so in the future. But at the moment they became set on trying to write their own contracts that window was closed by an odd set of events that temporarily closed the coop to new membership. I’d heard that they’d actually managed to secure some improved deals on the contracts they were able to close early on…but that may not have proven a consistent consequence. They may eventually decide to backout and take advantage of the coop offerings in some cases—contracts that might be cheaper or have fewer use restrictions. This is a murky area, but like I said, an interesting one to follow-up on.

Laigniappe: There’s also a story on the line cuts that have followed digging up a big chunk of the city. While any breaks in service, and especially gas breaks, are disturbing they are also inevitable as the utility digs up a huge chunk of the city.

Update 12:42 am 2/4: My wife suggests another interpretation of the headline “LUS Fiber delays start” that points out that “delays start” is ambiguous it could mean that the delays are beginning (what I took umbrage at) or that the startup is delayed (a fair depiction). The first she primly informs reads delay as a noun and starts as a verb while the latter reads delays as a verb and starts as a noun. She’s the grammarian. My best guess is that the misinterpretation is mine and the headline poorly written but not mean-spirited. Mea culpa. (She now leans over and insists I say that she brought in the paper and supplied the initial interpretation. True enough…but I wrote it up without noticing anything else. Partners. 🙂 )

More Expensive than Hurricanes

Having lavished some ink on Cox today it only seems fair to give a little attention to AT&T, Lafayette’s other incumbent friend in this digtial age.

An article in Multichannel News reports on AT&T’s slowdown in builidng out its “fiber to the node” network. FTTN is the half-measure that was supposed to be the less costly but adequate reply to Verizon’s more capable fiber to the home rebuilding program.

AT&T’s strategy isn’t working and it is scaling back its investment:

AT&T tacked on 264,000 U-verse TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2008, but video and other growth areas were more than offset by dropping wireline voice connections, and the telco also said it would scale back capital spending on building out the U-verse network.

That’s really no surprise and the scuttlebut about U-verse pullbacks has been going on all year. But what really caught my eye was the following:

the telco said costs associated with subsidizing sales of the popular iPhones reduced pretax fourth-quarter earnings by approximately $450 million. Costs related to hurricanes, by comparison, reduced pretax earnings by approximately $120 million.

Really!? In a year that boasted major storms Fay, Gustav, and Ike making landfall in its territory the iPhone ate into its (still substantial) profits more than hurricanes? I bet the denizens of Houston, Lake Charles and Baton Rouge are going to be surprised. Especially as the people of the gulf coast states shoulder the burden of making up those “losses” for AT&T. There’s a grim oblique humor in this sort of thing that the residents of Louisiana south of the interstate have grown to savor. (The iPhone has earlier been lauded in these pages a great NAD and digital divide device…)

Still, hasn’t the iPhone been a great thing for AT&T? If my life is any indication it has been…I was at one of those geeky/food/socials for an out of town tech maven that seem to be a Lafayette trademark on Sunday and once people started calling around for early-season crawfish the woman at the end of the table looked around and remarked that 7 of the 8 attendees had pulled out iPhones. Even six months ago there’d have been a healthy mix of Blackberries and CE machines in the mix. No longer. And apparently that’s not far out the ordinary:

AT&T hung its subscriber numbers on the board this morning: 2.1 million Net Gain in Wireless Subscribers in the fourth quarter and…1.9 million Apple iPhone 3G activations.

That’s worth pausing a moment to consider one more time: 1.9 million Apple iPhone 3G activations – in the fourth quarter alone…

The iPhone was a rival killer – About 40 percent of the customers carrying the device that Steve Jobs built (so to speak) are new customers to AT&T. How many used to send their monthly bills to Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile USA?

Even wth the estimated 325-425 dollar subsidy that AT&T apparently lays out that’s surely a good thing for the company.

In the long term.

And therein lies the irony for this resident of Lousiana’s flood plain who has been primed for a little grim humor by the earlier news about the iPhone being more expensive for AT&T than our hurricanes. You see, what AT&T is doing is smart, modestly daring business: it is spending money upfront on the promise of getting all those high-margin, big-spending iphone customers for the long time. But it is, almost certainly, losing serious money on the front side and cross-subsidizing this venture with revenue from other aspects of its far-flung empire.

AT&T in its earlier guise as BellSouth was responsible for writing the law that denies Lafayette’s local utility, LUS, the ability to make a similar smart decision to bear upfront losses for long-term gains. There was a lot of preening and huffing and puffing about “cross-subsidization” by AT&T lobbyists and regional vice presidents as if that were some sort of bad thing. As if the money that AT&T realized from its monopoly on landline telephones hadn’t cross-subsidized its move into the expensive wireless regime that now is its the engine of its growth.

It’s darkly funny. I guess.

“LUS’ superfast fiber”

The Advocate published an article, LUS’s Superfast Fiber, this morning as its way of marking the imminent launch of LUS Fiber. I’m pleased to report that it didn’t focus on pricing and marketing details but instead chose to explore “what the new system could mean for the community.”

The top of the story looks at internet speeds:

The fastest connection offered by LUS will be 50 Mbps for a standalone cost of $58 — a speed available in few markets and generally costing more than twice as much.

Connection speeds from customer to customer on the fiber system within Lafayette will be at 100 Mbps, regardless of which connection plan a customer buys.

“100 megs peer-to-peer is mind-blowing,” said John St. Julien, a retired education professor who was part of a grass-roots push for a publicly owned fiber optic system.

It’s so fast that few people see a present need for such speed, which makes it all the more interesting for people like St. Julien.

“The part that I can’t imagine is what I’m most excited about,” he said.

A couple of caveats: As I understand it the 50 meg speed is simply the highest standard tier…if you want more, you can talk to LUS about it. I expect they’ll eventually get around to standardizing a policy on such. LUS’ standard Customer Premise Equipment (the box on the side of the house) tops out at 100 megs at the default internet port but conceiveably that could be doubled by using the second port currently reserved for video traffic.

The 100 megs is indeed mind blowing…and it’s less the speed than the fact that it will be symmetrical which will make interactive, participatory conversations the equal of one-way passive experiences which predominate on our cable and internet media. Right now the quality of passive intertainment and communication far outstrips the quality of active ones because upload speed are a small fraction of download speeds. But we humans much prefer conversation…as is evidenced by the fact that we made texting a surprise essential on cell phones, greedily tolerate cell phone quality audio to continue talking to friends and loved ones on the go, and that (amazingly) email remains the killer app of the internet and the one factor that moves those still offline into the digital realm. LUS’ symmetrical connections makes what we really want —a human connection— an equal player and I fully expect that we’ll find ways to mashup community experiences as soon as we have the bandwidth to make such dreams possible. For instance, I can imagine serving up a high-def video out my local cache to a couple of households around town (say a Northside championship game?) onto nice big TV screeens while holding video chat play-by-plays with four or five special buddies on our laptops. In the background my wife commiserates with their wives in a separate video chat. (The social dynamics remain the same. 🙂 ) Could that swallow up some bandwidth? Is it technically possible now? Yes…yes indeed. If we had the bandwidth. And that’s only the start. Classrooms, good classrooms, are good conversations and tech-enabled teaching will only flourish when tech-enabled conversation is a rich equal to passive teaching designs.

But as mind-blowing as that much symmetrical speed is there’s more…..everyone, everyone, who purchases internet service from LUS will be able to communicate at that unheard-of speed. This punches up the value for all. The fancy academic term for this is “network effects.” The classic example is telephones: when one in a thousand has a phone it’s almost useless. But when we all have phones and cell phones disembodied, at-a-distance speech no longer seems magical and has become a natural, inevitable, even inescapble part of our everyday life. LUS’ brilliance lies in incorporating that bandwidth in all net services at a very low price…in making it ubiquitous they make their cheap connections much more valuable than by merely making them fast. When one in a thousand has interoperable video phones the things are a silly curiousity…but when everyone gets access to such service they suddenly have huge utility.

100 megs of symmetrical, uniformly available, connections is really amazing and the fact that we can’t imagine all the details of how we will use them doesn’t mean that the emergence of such uses isn’t as inevitable as hurricanes in September.

Of course, the story does do some imagining of its own:

At any of the speeds offered by LUS, regular media downloads would be exceptional, multiuser video games on the Internet would flow smoothly, video conferencing would be a more pleasant experience, and interactive virtual classrooms would seem a real possibility.

Huval imagines a city where working at home becomes easier for folks who deal with the types of massive computer files that have trouble squeezing through residential Internet connections.

Video gaming is currently the driver pushing both hardware and network speed and quality forward. Lafayette will soon be the premiere place for tournaments and the local hotelier, gaming outlets, and conference centers really ought to be gearing up now.

Burgess’ exploration of possibilities ends at a review of the digital divide potential of LUS’ set-top boxes.

LUS Fiber customers will be able to access e-mail and the Internet without a computer through a basic Internet browser programmed into the TV set-top box.

A customer could plug a keyboard into the set-top box or navigate the Internet through arrow keys on the remote control and type with a virtual keyboard that pops up on the television screen.

Huval said he is aware of no other system in the United States that allows Internet access through the television.

LUS Fiber will be built out in phases, with the first phase including the area east of Evangeline Thruway and in the Johnston Street corridor from University Avenue past the Mall of Acadiana.

The set-top box solution will surely push internet access into more homes than any conceivable alternative way to connect to the internet. These features are built into current set-top boxes but are so seldom activated by private for-profit corporations that they haven’t been upgraded. Consequently they are underpowered by the measure of most advanced users. But they do allow access to those parts of the web that motivate adoption: email and simple browsing. With luck (and work) the next generation will be more capable and these devices will prove bridges to more robust access. None of that should take away from the fact that LUS is actually doing three VERY substantial things to close the digital divide: 1) lowering prices, 2) offering a much faster, more robust service for that price, and 3) offering a no-additional-price way to get on the network.

Why Lafayette?
It’s a great thing, all in all, and the doubter in us all has to ask: why here? Why does Lafayette get such great stuff? Well the short, prideful answer is that we fought for it. Where other cities backed off scared of the battle or were defeated in the fight Lafayette refused to back off and, in fact, waged an aggressive, scarring battle with the incumbent carriers. So vigorous was the fight that by the time the vote was held the incumbents had largely ceded the field. But that is only a part of the answer as to “why in Lafayette, La?” The rest has to do with the fact that this network is local and publically owned. People, regular citizens, fought for a real digital divide program. Regular, local, geek-types and businessmen insisted that a full-throttle intranet was both possible and desireable and made themselves irritating enough that the possibility was really explored—and found to be perfectly feasible after all.

The secret sauce in Lafayette is local, public ownership with responsive leadership. The sort of ownership that makes its citizen/owners believe they have a real stake and real influence. As long as those factors remain LUS has a bright future and its citizens can and should learn to expect, demand, and indeed create, more of the same.

We’re On the Map…Sorta

Supercomputing….

Well we’re on the map over at the New York Times. Or at least LONI, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, is.

And a mighty strange map it is. Check out the lower left hand corner for #77

(Getting technical, and since we’re talking about supercomputers how can you not be technical, the “computer” they’re talking about in the list from which the above referenced map is drawn is the 35 teraflop “Queen Bee” (LONI says 50.7 but now we’re picking nits) a node in the LONI grid that is ‘sposed to be an 85 teraflop machine in its own right. The Queen Bee herself is technically in Baton Rouge but is named after a Lafayette resident. It used to be number #23 on the list back in the glory days.)

Venice: Internet Access As Birthright

There’s getting it and then there is really getting it.

“Venice provides free Internet access to newborns”

Venice will become the first city in the world to provide newborn residents with free Internet access, a spokeswoman for the city council said Friday.

Newborns will receive a user ID and password entitling them to free Internet access at the same time as they get their birth certificate, the spokeswoman said.

“The resident’s new digital identity will give free access to the Web, because we consider that’s an important universal right,”

Whoa….

(From NetworkWorld via the inestimable Baller list.)

After Thought: Yes, the remark about New Orleans is snarky. I suppose sad recent news has made the residents of other sinking cities a bit nervous… Another connection: Where Venice is using a fiber infrastructure to power a municipal wifi system in hopes of keeping from sinking financially as well as physically that avenue to pride and hope was closed to New Orleans by the incumbent’s (un)Fair Competiton act and Cox and AT&T’s unwillingness to give the city a break when it became apparent that a law aimed at Lafayette was doing unintended damage to a city staggered by Katrina. We can all hope that one consequence of the change in Washington is real change in telecom policy that would allow communities to use their own resources as they see fit. At the very least maybe they will go ahead and pass that bill that been pending for years to gaurantee that the states can’t forbid municipal networks.

There was a time, not all that long ago where Louisiana voices were front and center on the community side of this issue. If Tauzin and Breaux had had their way maybe New Orleans could be bragging on, and attracting business on the basis of, their shiny new muni wifi network. Landreiu? Melancon? You listening? Want a good way use your new found power and influence? Be seen as progressive? Help communities?

LUS to buy user-produced electricity

Lafayette has yet another opportunity to step out front by leveraging its new fiber network. Tuesday’s City-Parish Council meeting put in place rules that will enable citizens to sell electricity back to LUS. With the new ordinance and an LUS supplied bi-directional meter customers can get credit for electricity that they supply the grid—effectively getting paid the going rate for electricity they produce.

The Good
That’s pretty neat; a recent story line in the Advocate focused on solar panels and other green energy with a solar power system at Lafayette Middle School playing the star role in the discussion.

Louisiana actually has some of the more encouraging laws in the nation with state tax credits that can pay half the cost of a new solar system worth $25,ooo dollars; so if you want a gadget-guy dream system the state will eventually pay for half. Even so the raw economics are not quite there yet; at least not in the city:

…Bercier said, LUS rates are low enough that the economic incentive is not great at this time.

“LUS is a hard one. They are still relatively cheap,” he said. “We are definitely never going to put them out of business.”

Of course, the price of oil will be more next year than this and the cost of solar energy continues to drop. We’re very near the break-even point nationally right now from what I read and even with the good deal we get from LUS Lafayette’s turn can’t be far behind.

The Better
All that is good green, conscientious, community-oriented, money-saving stuff. Beyond that, though, lie some pretty exciting opportunities for Lafayette to leverage its new network to do an do an even better job of reducing our carbon footprint and lowering the costs of providing power to the community.

As good as they are those bi-directional meters are the crudest and least efficient way to allow customers to take some of the burden off the electrical grid. We’ve already noted here that the real cost savings come from dealing with “peak demand”—there are huge costs associated with providing a lot of extra capacity that is only used for a week or two during the hottest—and hence most AC-intensive—days of the year. With active metering instead of merely static bi-directional recording LUS could 1) turn off high energy consuming devices (do you really need to heat your water to 150 while the temperature is 102?) 2) charge more for power at peak times–such power costs us all more to generate—and also pay more for power that is produced by individuals. (Your solar panels are likely to be producing real power while that August sun is beating down.) 3) Turn on and off small home generators. (How many Lafayette homes have a natural gas generator sitting on a pad near the AC unit post-hurricanes? Plenty.) We in Lafayette just built a brace of very expensive natural-gas fired electrical plants chiefly to supply peak demand. In fact those two plants cost twice as much as our fiber network. A cost-benefit analysis would, I suspect, reveal that firing up those residential generators very occasionally would be cheaper than building more such hugely expensive capacity. All that is something you can only do if you have your own communications network in place.

Lafayette could well lead the country in devising innovative ways to both lower the use of electricity and lower its costs by using our new network to full capacity.

Interested?

Langiappe: KLFY has also produced a short story on this.