Kansas City Kansas Gets Google’s Gig Network

50, 000 to 500, 000Google announced that Kansas City (in Kansas) will be the location of its fiber-optic gig network. Congratulations to the people of Kansas City!

Googgle will build a 1 gigabit network in Kansas City that will be available to every person and institution in town. A gigabit is 1000 megabits—in a nation where the most common speeds are something between 1 and 10 megabits that is a quantitative change that promises to make a qualitative difference. Google will also provide the weight of its own resources and especially its research arm to support the effort.

Google has been straightforward about the purposes of the network. It believes that modern ultra-high speed internet has been lagging in the United States and that it should be possible to build new fiber networks that are both faster and cheaper than the old copper networks of the incumbent providers. It also hopes to show such networks can be run successfully as open networks; that is, as networks that allow anyone to offer services over the fiber. But Google was unable to name any companies that had committed to use its network. That will have to happen fast as they’ve promised to launch the network in 2012. Getting any of the incumbent phone and cable networks to offer service over superior but locally-owned fiber has been a major stumbling block for other community-based networks that hoped to make a go of the open network model.

 The question, especially for the 1,100 other cities and towns whose applications were not as successful as Kansas City’s, will be “Why them?” We’re unlikely to get a clear answer but one thing that Google prides itself on itself on is its adherence to “data-based” decision making. (Example) So I tried to see Kansas City through that lense. The first thing that leaps out is that KCK (Kansas City, Kansas) is in the middle…in a lot of senses. It’s about midway on a line between the geographic center of the lower 48 states and the population center of the country. It’s also about the right size—about 150,000 people— between the  50, 000 to 500, 000 that to which they’d originally committed. And if you take a peek at KCK on wikipedia you’ll find that the demographics are pretty middling too…a sizable minority population and a high-middle income level. So its a nice middle-american kind of city from which to get their implementation data. If it works in Kansas City.

Well at least now Lafayette will have someone to envy the way that others envy us—Google’s KCK network will be faster than ours by the same sort of factor that ours is faster than the rest of the country’s. Until we fix that. There’s also comfort in the fact that one of our own will be leading the technical effort for Google. The real upside, for us and the country is that another community-based network will be lit up and in position to light the way.

Welcome aboard Kansas City.

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.

“LUS Fiber now available to most of city”

Regardless of the title “LUS Fiber now available to most of city” the real story is that LUS Fiber has officially finished its build out.

“We were planning initially to have the build out finished by March or April, but we completed it ahead of time and on budget,” said Terry Huval, LUS Director. “We’re on every public street now.”

Mayor-President Durel added his remarks to the occasion:

Durel described the technology as “the infrastructure of the 21st century,” and said most of the country won’t have comparable services in 15 years.

“In 1896 the people of Lafayette voted to bring electricity here,” Durel said. “Where would we be if we didn’t have the leadership and community support we had back then? What we’re doing today, we’re doing for Lafayette 50 years from now.”

Now the build is essentially complete; further expansion of the system to some larger buildings and apartment complexes will look more like retail installs than full-scale infrastructure construction.

It is a pivotal moment in the project.

It is time to turn our attention to what we can do with our new network. Attention within LUS has necessarily been focused on getting the thing built. Now the focus can move to longer range questions. It’s both a happy day and a day for serious reflection.

LUS’ Ben Segura Goes to Google

Ben Segura, a lead engineer at LUS Fiber, has been hired away by Google. His linkedIn profile says he started January 1st. He’ll be quartered in Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters and manage the Technical Program (job description) for Google’s widely publicized 1 Gb “Google Fiber for Communities” project. It’s a considerable understatement to say that’s a good job. Google has promised to install a 1 Gb fiber-to-the-home system in one or a few communities around the country and he’ll head up the technical effort for one of the most watched—and most—hopeful projects around.

What that program offers is truly impressive, which accounts for the more than 1,100 communities (including eight in Louisiana alone) that have applied for the very few places that will be available. About the extent of the program, Google sez:

We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people

It’s a testament to the prestige of Lafayette’s experiment that Google finds Segura’s experience compelling. Segura’s only related work experience is at LUS (and his degree is from ULL.) As I understand it, a standout item on his resume was developing a way to make our 100 Mb intranet work. The LUS intranet—100 megs between all citizen-subscribers, regardless of the speed of the tier of service they purchase—has been a bragging point for Lafayette and is widely recognized as LUS’ most unique feature. Google makes a point in their project overview of saying: “Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better, and faster for everyone.”

An LUS-style intranet certainly fills that bill and maximizing intranet service will be one way that Google can begin to meet the implied promise it makes by touting a 1 Gig connection. —In most networks in this country the speed of the last mile is the main constraint on your experience but on a 1 gig local network the constraints will be out in the larger internet and users will seldom experience the full power of their enormous pipe. As we’ve discovered in Lafayette having a fast local connection is great, but it does not mean that your internet connection will be able to keep up. Google can, and surely will, put its own services on the local network. (My own suggestion to Google is that it do the same in Lafayette–and in any other muni network that will guarantee the full-bore speed to all its users that Lafayette does. That would expand its support of high-speed networks beyond its few sites and make a larger market for innovation.) Google will, as well, make sure that the connection to the backbone is always 1 gig (that can be an issue in Lafayette); what it can’t do is make the link up and down from the target server to the backbone is any faster; typically that link will not support 1 gig.

Segura’s first project site will likely be the exploratory project Google is putting together in Stanford (where Google’s first server was located back in the day when the founders were doctoral candidates.) The first site or sites in the large-scale project will be announced early this year and Segura will have a huge influence on the technologies they use to accomplish the communities and Google’s goals. It’s a job where a person can make a difference.

Congratulations to Ben; its a great thing for him and his family and a good thing for Lafayette to have a native son heading up a project of this nature at the world’s most influential internet company.

Menu–>Extras->App Dashboard !! LUSFiber Gets Apps!

LUS Fiber has apps for your TV. (But they’ve yet to announce they’ve got ’em.) Right now you can get a look at three of them: Weather, Messages, and News and the stub of links to on-screen Caller ID and Email. Yup, eat your hearts out Cox, LUS customers got apps. Now they’re not much when compared with some of your smartphone apps but they are a definite start and their provenance as iPhone-style apps is apparent. They’ll get better and more interesting with time just like smartphone apps did. Whether the day will come when apps are as important on TV screens as they are on smartphone screens is an open question. But having them this early puts LUS Fiber and Lafayette out on the cutting edge. There’s a mobile phone developers community in Lafayette; I wonder if they will get involved?

LUS Weather App (click to enlarge)

The weather app is an obvious example of a useful app. Wasn’t “weather” on your first smartphone homescreen? It pops up as a vertical Iphone-like panel on left side of your screen. Simple…and you can go in and change the location if you really want to. (It’s cold and rainy in Vancouver, for those who want to know.) The weather app appears over the ongoing show as a translucent overlay…the show underneath goes on.

This all works because the that little Motorola set top box from LUS is really a small computer. It can be programmed to do pretty much anything that a not-too-powerful media computer or smartphone can do. The real issue is having the software to make this potential real. In our case this is Microsoft’s MediaRoom, the new UI/media manager that LUS brought onboard relatively recently. One of the big advantages of going with MediaRoom is that it brings along the entire MS ecosystem (one of its chief disadvantages too…). So apps developed by Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, or any third-party producer targeting AT&T or numerous national telecoms across the world that use MediaRoom will be easily deployed in Lafayette—we won’t have to reinvent the wheel. (This also means that cool apps developed for LUS will have a world-wide market.) Similarly, the hooks for smartphone apps and computer-based interaction are also well-developed. I’m looking forward to scheduling online and using my smartphone as a universal remote.

There are those who question whether folks need or want apps on their TV. There were folks who felt the same about apps on a phone. (Wasn’t that a truly weird and silly idea only 5 years ago? How quickly perceptions change.) The apps that have been successful on the smartphone were aimed at individual users. It will be very interesting to see what will be successful on the more social device that a TV screen is in many homes.

How To:
So how do you get to see these app and how are they used?

The Apps Dashboard

Well the first thing to do is to take a quick journey to your “Menu” function. If your set top box has updated recently you’ll see something new: an “Extras” function on the bar across the top. (If you’re missing it go to settings and restart your machine; that’ll bring up the new software.) Select “Extras” and you’ll see a new button appear: “App Dashboard.” Click on that and up comes your new selection bar on the bottom of the screen over whatever you were watching. From there you can select and activate Weather, News, or Messages.

You might ask yourself why the “Extras” selection only shows an “Apps Dashboard” function; wouldn’t it have been easier and more efficient to just access your apps by calling it that and make it a one click, easy-as-pie function? Why make everyone click twice? Well, almost certainly because they are thinking about other things to put below “Apps Dashboard” in the Extras section. And there is a clue hidden elsewhere in the system.

Wait,There’s more!

The Main Interactive Menu…not yet rebranded

You can access the apps dashboard in another way. I discovered that if you hit the “interactive” button on your LUS Motorola remote you’ll gain access to another screen that has an “Apps Dashboard” button. But it also has other, currently inaccessible, functions: A “PIN Application,” ” Caller ID,” “Email,” and the mysterious ” Widi.” The Apps Dashboard button works, and for those that are using the supplied remote it’s probably an easier way to get there than traversing the menu system.

The “PIN Application” is ugly and it apparently only exists to allow you to enter your PIN and validate who you are. That’s likely to be there for the next two slots; you’d likely need to validate yourself via your account identity to start up Caller ID and surely would need it to enter Email.

The Widi is more mysterious but I suspect that it stands in for a technology called WiDi for WiFi Direct, which is a standard promulgated by the wifi alliance. The technology allows you to “throw” your computer screen onto the TV, and the hardware is pretty widely available. (See an explanitory video.) So you could share YouTube videos, show your photos, or watch Netflix on the TV screen via your computer wirelessly. The full standard would let you you replicate your computer screen to the TV, use the TV as a second monitor displaying its own content, or simply extend the computer screen so that the active area spanned both screens. The advantage of having WiDi available on your set top box is that 1) you wouldn’t need to put yet another $110+ dollar box in your stack, a wifi dongle would suffice and 2) conceivably the App could be made multi-functional…there are more than one set of wireless standards out there.

So there you have it. Apps on your TV here in Lafayette.

Tip o’ the hat to Raymond Camden over at LafayetteTech who first noticed the new functions and posted it to the board…LafayetteTech is a great place to hang out; if you’re at all techy check it out and join.

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.

LUS Fiber Refer-a-Friend v2.0

LUS is doubling down on its referral promotion. You’re probably familiar with the initial version of this social marketing idea—in that one a friend would cite you as the person that gave them a referral to LUS and LUS in return pulled 50 dollars off you bill. Nice! Version 2.0 doubles that by making sure both you and your referring friend get the benefit. And, apparently you can get that referral credit for as many friends as you convince to sign—up to the amount of your bill. Since the fine print says that you get your 50 bucks in 10 dollar increments over 5 months that means that you could get your bill zeroed out for nearly half a year if you can convince all the cousins to join up and they’d get a nice discount as well…something to talk about over the holiday table! But you have to do it by January 30th when the promotion is slated to end.

Scuttlebutt has it that the initial referral program was very successful. I’d expect this one to be at least twice as popular.

You can check out all the details at the LUS website or, if you prefer, you can listen to Dee Stanley give you the pitch at 291-8100—a robo call from Stanley is what put me onto the new launch.

This is a natural form of social marketing for any tight-knit community. If you’re the geek in the clan or the one who always knows where the best deals or in your group people trust your advice on matters like this already. Word of mouth advertising is always the best way to get new customers anyway. Turning referrals into a win-win for both sides is bound to be popular. This makes a lot more sense in a real community like Lafayette than spending the same bucket of money on conventional advertising. Everyone understands that you have spend money to acquire customers but instead of spending it on fancy advertising it makes a lot of sense to hand the money spent acquiring customers back to the members of the community that are making the project a success. I know that a more standard campaign has to be coming, and eagerly await it, but there is something very right about this being LUS’ first move.

It’s a good deal all around. And the 50 bucks deal is just a good example of the larger process: we all save when our friends and neighbors join up and support the community resource. The more customers LUS Fiber gets the more accounts its expenses are spread over and the lower everyone’s rates can be.

“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.