LUS Promotion Offers Free Speed…A+ speeds

LUS is running one of its typically underpromoted promotions. This one is a lot of fun: free speed. Every internet customer is getting bumped up a full speed tier for August and September. Announced on LUS fiber’s facebook page not long ago and on their web site the promotion lets a subscriber experience a 30 meg symmetrical speed if you are paying for 10 and a 50 meg connection if you are subscribed at 30 and — wait for it: a 100 meg connection if you’ve normally got 50.

I’m paying for a 50 meg connection so I am set up to be getting a 100 meg right now. And I am. I tested it out using both SpeedTest and M-Labs—SpeedTest is the most popular of the online tests and M-Labs is the techno-policy-nerd’s favorite toy. M-Labs says I’m doing good: 93 megs down and 80 megs up with just 21 ms of latency. SpeedTest thinks I’ve got 94.5 down and 53.76 upload speeds also with 21 ms latency. And that’s to a server in Houston about 200 miles away as the crow flies. Between overhead and the vagaries of routers in multiple hops along the way those are the sorts of numbers I’d expect , being the practical sort.

Speaking of practical, you might reasonably ask what sorts of numbers you’d see when doing something practical like downloading a real file big enough to demonstrate the value of 100 megs of service. Two nights ago I downloaded Apples newest operating system: OS X 7—Lion. It weighs in at a monstrous 3.76 GB. The average US user, according to Akamai, gets 5.3 mbps of download speed. At that rate, according to Gaijin, downloading the OS would take about an hour and a half. I downloaded it in about 6.5 minutes…which works out to something in the range of 75 mbps.

All in all LUS Fiber
offers astonishing speeds—SpeedTest gives my test of the system an A+ , saying that its better than 99% of Americans get. I also tested my system a couple of months ago before my free upgrade and pulled down a reading of “only” 58 megs of download. That was an A+ rating at better than 99% too.

Lafayette, we’ve got it good…better than most of us probably realize.

Lagniappe: LUS is again running its “Refer a Friend” program—if you’ve got a friend who wants some of that insane internet (or any other service) and they give you as a reference you both get 50 bucks off your LUS Fiber bills.


Lagniappe 2: If you’re on LUS Fiber contribute your stats to the discussion @ speedTest: http://www.speedtest.net/wave/0f5c1a0f979e0aeahttp://www.speedtest.net/wave/0f5c1a0f979e0aea

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.

The Independent Covers LUS Fiber

The Independent published a cover story on the state of LUS Fiber, the first of two in a series. The article, entitled “Waiting to Connect” tallies the issues and missteps of the first two year or so of its service. As you’d expect the story focuses on the dramatic moments—and those are the ones where things did not got smoothly. Those things that worked out exactly as planned…like an ambitous roll-out schedule that for launch and final buildout that many loudly doubted could be done went of with only minor hitches. That’s not “news.”

The Independent does a the community the service of searching out the details on many of the glitches those of us in the community saw occurring but did not understand the background that might explain them. So if you were curious about the set top box debacle–you get a partial explanation here. There’s also mention of why that last small bit of the network isn’t yet complete…contractor troubles. Cox’s game-playing with the NCTC (which reflects very much to the discredit of both Cox and that cooperative) is treated in greater detail. A reason for the larger-than-expected basic tier is laid out plainly and its relation to costs and the NCTC mess clearly shown. It’s good to get these kinds of explanations.

But it shouldn’t need to wait on the local news weekly for supporters to find out these details. LUS needs to be much more open with its constituents-customers. That they are local and trusted is by far their greatest advantage. By avoiding talking about their problems LUS makes the problems “theirs” instead of “ours.” A very large mistake. Look at the support that immediately flared up when the unjust exclusion of LUS from the national cable coop was made public–or even the minor flap when Cox played snit with the “I’m proud of LUS Fiber” signs. Both of those, to be plain brutal, were marketing opportunities. LUS needs to seek the support of its citizens…and can only do that if it is much more open than its competitors.

Big Cable Is Bleeding

An interesting story today in GigaOm ruminates on the third quarter loses in video subscriptions for the top US cable corporations. While there is both an upside and and a downside to these reports the downside is pretty dramatically evident:

There’s now even more evidence that subscribers are cutting the cord and opting out of paying for cable: By adding up subscriber losses from four of the top five cable companies, we found that more than half a million users have ditched their cable companies….(No. 3 cable provider Cox Communications is privately held and therefore doesn’t have to announce its subscriber losses for all the world to see.)

As the story goes on to point out cable loses are not a new story; the available market is popularly understood to be pretty saturated but what is new is that satellite TV and IPTV (mainly Verizon in the east and ATT’s UVerse) is no longer making up for cable’s shrinking base.

Fewer people are subscribing to paid channels. Period. Full Stop.

That’s a real change.

The Downside:
Much of the speculation on the net is that people are not watching less video but are instead getting their video over the internet. (The terms to google are “internet” and “cable cutters.”) Less acknowledged is that the recent transition to Over The Air (OTA) HD digital broadcast may also have had an impact. A digital signal is by its nature clean (or not available); the “bad” snow and breakup that plagued analog signals at the edges of the broadcast area and the generally poorer-than-cable picture and sound is no longer true and people are discovering that their old antennas are bringing in a really nice picture. A combination of OTA local and network television with free internet downloads are very tempting. Add in a ready supply of “must have” TV and movies from the likes of Netflix and iTunes and you have a solution that makes for a more than adequate—and much cheaper—alternative for many.

All that has implications for Lafayette—even beyond the few people who hold stock in one of the big players. These days we all have an interest in seeing LUS Fiber succeed and prosper. And LUS has structured its business plan around seizing a substantial portion of the video market. I’ve no reason to think that there is any real trouble there in the short run. LUS knew well that the city’s video market was already saturated and that it would have to take customers away from Cox to succeed on this leg of the triple play of video, phone, and internet services. The utility’s business plan called for a three year ramp up to getting the 23% penetration that they’ve said we’d need to make break-even. We’re at the beginning of that three-year cycle that kicks off when the system is complete and Huval has claimed that we’re above that number in areas where the network has been in place for more than a few months. My guess is that the recent video-only price increase was intended to make sure that the video side continued to contribute its projected share to the plan to make break-even in the face of recent video price increases (example).

Because LUS has modeled its business plan after the video-focused one that has succeed so handsomely for the major players we need to be concerned when the larger industry has trouble spots like this one.

The Upside:
But an interesting counterpoint to gloom and doom is that while subscribers are declining the amount of money each subscriber that is kept contributes is continuing to rise:

Comcast reported on its earnings call that average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 10 percent year-over-year, ending the third quarter at about $130 per month. Charter’s ARPU also rose about 9 percent, to $126. And while Cablevision’s reported average revenue per sub didn’t grow as fast as the others, it’s now a whopping $149.

What’s happening, of course, is that prices are rising and people are, by and large, paying. That resulted in higher revenue and higher profits for the big cable companies. LUS has reported that people are buying more services (all of the triple play for instance) and higher tiers (especially on the internet side) than their original metrics predicted. That’s good news, of course, all other things being equal it should mean that they could make break-even with a smaller number than originally predicted. (Though all other things are seldom equal…the upswing in video costs no doubt hits hard.)

The contrast between the incumbent cable market losing customers at the same time that profits and prices increase is evidence of some pretty serious market failure and confirms the idea that what we are dealing with is a quasi-monopoly situation. People pay until the can’t pay any longer simply because the lack of real competition at any price, much less a lower price, means there isn’t much in the way of practical choices.

Lafayette’s LUS Fiber is an IPTV system…in this it is like AT&T and Verizon. The upside here is that this is the segment of the market that appears to be growing fairly strongly according to Q3 filings reports. In fact, that’s the main point the GigaOm story misses: the adds the two new IPTV video providers have account for 440,000 of the half million loses the old cable side of the market suffered. That accords well with LUS’ experience as well. They are growing their market; in our fairly simple context it is pretty clear that LUS’ gains come at Cox’s expense as far as the video market is concerned. What LUS provides that AT&T and Verizon do not is substantially cheaper, long-term, ungimmicky prices; LUS offers no discounts on bundles (hence part of their surprise at the larger-than-expected uptake of multiple services) and it offers no discounts that are “limited” in term. The traditional providers all offer special introductory offers, 6 month specials, and aggressive offers to “lost” customers.

The final upside, however, is the one that interests me as a supporter of LUS fiber the most: the moment is rapidly approaching when the quality of the internet connection is all that really matters to savvy consumers. When that day comes LUS will have a clear advantage. People can legitimately dispute over which video system is best. (I’ve my judgment and I argue it is well-founded but, hey, I’m pretty clearly biased toward the local provider.) But there is little to no room to dispute over the internet connection. It’s simply faster, cheaper, and has vastly lower latency. If you like Netflix you’ll love LUS Fiber. And in the not too distant future that’s just about all that will matter.

Lagniapppe:
GigaOm has a new weekly series on cord-cutting that is, appropriately, offered via free streaming internet video. 🙂

LUS Fiber Video Rate Increase

LUS Fiber will see its first rate increase as of November 24th according to a letter from Terry Huval. That letter was posted on October the 15th and is making its way to subscribers.

Only the prices for higher-end video services are being raised—phone and internet services are not. The letter I received mentions only changes to the “Digital Plus” tier (from $58.31 to $67.82 monthly) and to the premium movie channels, Cinemax (to $7.78), Starz/Encore (to $10.85), Showtime (to $12.11) and HBO (to $14.81.) The Digital Plus tier is LUS’ most extensive and highest priced offering. It seems that the lower-priced tiers are not changing at this time. [Update: Amanda McElfresh at the Advertiser has the fuller story in a short piece posted in the afternoon of 10/18; there she notes that all the video tiers were being updated:

Expanded basic tier will go from $39.95 per month to $46.95 per month, an increase of $7

Digital Access will go from $46.44 per month to $54.95 per month, an increase of $8.51]

It will have been about 22 months since LUS first began service when these initial increases show up on peoples’ bills; November is a somewhat traditional time to see cable rate increases and generally they come in yearly—or such was my experience while I was on Cox. (Cox’s most recent rate increase was 11 months ago in November of last year; that included increases throughout Cox’s video offerings and price increases to its internet offerings as well.)

LUS explains the changes as a consequence of the rising costs of programming, complains that it has been shut out of money-saving deals by its exclusion from potentially money-saving deals available to members of a cooperative of small providers. Readers will recall that there was quite an uproar about The Nation Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) not too long ago—LUS has filed a formal complaint with the FCC and while it is not mentioned in the letter to its customers LUS, in both its filings and its public messages basically blamed Cox. Cox joined the coop after the fiber referendum where LUS won the right to build the system. Cox’s new membership in one of the nations largest cable systems was highly unusual for the organization—which originally was formed to allow smaller operations to compete with huge corporations like Cox. Cox now has a seat on the board. The whole thing smelled even odder after the two other municipal fiber utilities that had originally been denied membership along with LUS were admitted after joining in the preliminaries to the FCC complaint. The only visible difference between LUS and the other two cities was that Cox was competing in Lafayette—and not in the other two cities.

National News Connects…
While the ongoing battle over Coop membership surely played a role, it’s unlikely that price increases could be put off indefinitely. Video programming is simply expensive, and getting more expensive yearly.

For instance, technology and business news on the internet was rife with stories about how the Fox network was locked in a showdown with cable giant Cablevision over the upcoming programming contract. Fox is allegedly more than doubling in price this year from 70 million to 150 million and Cablevision is refusing to go along. Fox’s channels all went dark today exciting angst from sports fans. But what roiled the internet was that Hulu was briefly forced to cut off internet access to Fox shows for Cablevision customers—and only for customers of Cablevision. So if you bought your internet connection from Cablevision you couldn’t get last weeks programming from Hulu….even if you used AT&T or the DishNetwork for video. That didn’t last long, Hulu was allowed to open up access again rather quickly. But it raises real network neutrality issues. But perhaps more importantly, Fox was willing to flash the knife in this conflict, showing the cable companies that it controlled internet access to its programming with the implicit threat that it could go over the head of the programmers at the cable companies and take its content directly to users if it so chose. Large pipe internet connections have started to shift the balance of power between content providers and the cable companies. We may have just seen the first shot in a war that makes cable companies much less powerful. Many people anticipate that cable will not be able to avoid being cut out of its powerful—and profitable—role as the necessary link between consumers and producers. The Fox network just fired a warning shot across the bow of not only Cablevision but all of the national cable companies.

Update 10/19/10: The Advertiser has posted the official, it’s-in-the-paper version of the rate increase story…

LUS: Who Governs?

The question of who governs LUS—and apropos this blog, LUS Fiber—was raised last night at the meeting of the Lafayette charter commission. Terry Huval, LUS director, suggested that he favors some sort of governing board. This drew sharp questions from the commission and featured articles from both the Advocate and the Advertiser. The Independent blog weighed in early alerting readers to the meeting and offering useful background information. But AOC, as part of its desire to inform the public, has uploaded the full meeting to the web and I’ve embedded it here:

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The stories, understandably, focus on the sure-to-be-contentious issue of governance. It’s a source of conflict because LUS’ governance is the point which most clearly illustrates the reasoning of those who are pushing for deconsolidation, for giving Lafayette back its own city government. LUS was owned by, and arguably was the most valuable asset of the city of Lafayette back in the days before consolidation. The clear intent of the new consolidated city-parish charter was to keep control of LUS in the hands of the city. In pursuit of that goal LUS was to be governed by the LPUA—a panel made up of all the members of the city-parish council whose district contained at least 60% city residents. Almost immediately, however, legal opinions were sought and contradictions were found between those sections that gave control of LUS to the LPUA and those that gave control of “all” functions to the full council. A subtext here is the general tenor of the time immediately after consolidation— a “we can all get along” feeling was apparently widespread and when bond attorney’s voiced a feeling that bond issues would be look stronger if both the LPUA and the full C-P Council approved them that principle was quickly generalized to all governance matters. With a few tweaks to the implementation details that has been how LUS has been governed since.

This all blew up recently when LUS asked for the first electric rate hike in more than a decade. Arguably (and I do so argue) the ensuing deconsolidation conflict grew from the fact that ideologically conservative Bellard and Theriot, rural members of the council with few city citizens in their districts, refused to honor the majority decision of the LPUA to grant the hike. That resulted in a squeaker vote and served notice that the traditional ways of working around the deficiencies of the charter could no longer be relied on. People began looking for ways to “fix” the problem by fixing the charter. But once that Pandora’s box was opened the issue quickly morphed into one focusing on sovereignty for the City of Lafayette—a new city-only council, a real mayor for the city, and total city control of city assets. LUS has become a secondary issue for most of those passionate about issue but it remains the biggest practical problem, and among those whose bent is practical and pragmatic a solution to the problem of LUS governance would go a long way toward ending their worries.

(Unintended consequences alert: Bellard and Theriot are the councilmen most passionately opposed to deconsolidation. It’s a practical not principled position. The new ideological conservatives are supposed to be all for smaller government and moving power closer to the people as a matter of principle—and deconsolidation would do both. But Bellard and Theriot have the practical problem that their largely rural constituencies would be the ones left without resources in a new, rump, parish government. So, principle aside, they are against it. If they’d been old-fashioned conservatives earlier and honored the tradition of allowing the LPUA to decide on matters relating to the city utility they’d not be in this position today.)

What was interesting in Huval’s presentation lay as much in what he did not suggest as what he did.

What was suggested (@ 1:16 minutes in the above video) was drawn from data offered by the American Public Power Association (a body of which Mr. Huval is a past president):

  1. 44% are run by an appointed Board
  2. 28% are run by an elected Board
  3. 28% are controlled by the Council or local equivalent

The Commision had asked Mr. Huval to suggest a range of alternatives and this is what he offered in response. Huval clearly did not want to wade in any deeper though he seemed, in several remarks, to favor some form of a board. For instance, he remarked that he’d recommend, and repeated this recommendation several times, that a condition of membership on the board be residence in the city of Lafayette. At another moment he was also clearly concerned that it was at least possible for a council to be made up representatives who, even if their districts were mostly in the city, were not themselves city residents.

What was not suggested was any of a range of alternatives that had been batted about and which were mentioned in passing by Commission members. Specifically: proportional voting. In such a scheme all members of the council who had any city citizens in their district would get a proportional vote on the LPUA/Council on matters relating to LUS. So, in one example, if Representative A had a 20% city constituency then he’d get 20% of a vote and Representative B, whose district was 80% city would get a vote that was 4 times as large as A’s. Bruce Conque, a commission member who’d floated such a suggestion, was not present at this meeting.

Also not suggested were ways of dealing with the issue by simply changing the charter to take away any ambiguity as to the governance of LUS. It should be a relatively simple matter to make LPUA control explicit. Why that should not be explored more specifically is a matter for speculation. How much of the bond-worthiness of the city and the parish is due to having the large and stable income of four utilities to stabilize its income?

Nor was there any discussion of separating the traditional utilities—which operate as a municipal monopoly and the LUS Fiber division which operates in a much more competitive environment and under a vastly different set of constraints. State law already separates LUS Fiber from the rest of LUS for many purposes (part of the infamous (un)fair competition act) and discussion of the value of a separate LUS Fiber board would seem in order—even if it were finally decided that was not the way to go.

A lot of the questions asked by the Commissioners centered or touched on the role of LUS in encouraging or discouraging annexation of developing areas into the city. Mostly this centered around water (which is now being sold to surrounding areas at a rate that is higher than the retail rate in the city!) LUS Fiber, which is too young to have an historical role to play in that story was largely unmentioned. But it should be clear that LUS Fiber adds significantly to what the city of Lafayette can offer unincorporated areas. What isn’t being discussed is how LUS’ tight ties to the city have limited the growth of the utilities themselves. To the extent that the people of the community own their own utilities they keep local money at home and can use the resources to best serve the people of the community rather than the best interests of out-of-town investors. LUS has traditionally been seen as a huge benefit to the town and then city of Lafayette and it is often cited as a partial explanation for the way Lafayette moved past larger, but less progressive cities to become the hub city of the region. Is there any way to extend those benefits to others in the region without being unfair to the people of the city of Lafayette? I’d hate to see the value of public ownership stifled by peculiar historical arrangements. Of all the suggestions so far put forward the most easily adaptable to allowing the utilities to benefit the people outside the city limits would seem to be proportional voting. It’d make sense to separate LUS Fiber and the other utilities so that they could advance at differing rates. (It is my understanding that bond covenants which entangle all of the traditional utilities would likely make it impossible to separate out the water service from the electric. I’d be happy to stand corrected.)

Interestingly, the current dustup isn’t the first time the issue of LUS governance has been raised locally. The local League of Women Voters (full disclosure: I’m an active member) recommended an oversight board as the “final recommendation” in their extensive study of LUS Fiber’s potential for the community. Interestingly Terry Huval was at that time adamantly opposed to the idea, attending a public meeting SLCC called to discuss the issues raised by the report chiefly to make the point that such a board for LUS Fiber was not a good idea. It isn’t clear what has changed between then and now…beyond the uncomfortable realization during the rate hike discussion that LUS could no longer count on the city-parish council to honor what city councilors thought best for the utility.

“LUS now offering 100 Mbps residential Internet”

Nathan Stubbs over at the Independent blog has a brief article announcing that LUS Fiber is now officially offering a 100 Mbps residential tier. That makes Lafayette one of the very few places in this country where homes can easily and relatively affordably buy a 100 Mbps of connectivity.

It’s not entirely clear why LUS has decided to offer this service at this time. Huval points to demand; apparently regular folks are asking for a speed that LUS thought only businesses would desire:

He adds LUS Fiber continues to be pleasantly surprised by the higher levels of service being sought by the average residential and commercial customers. “The level of service [being sold] is higher than we expected,” he says, “which is very positive.”

The utility was already offering a commercial tier at the 100 Mbps speed for $199.95 a month. Huval has long said that any resident that wanted to pay for the commercial version was free to order it up so it is a little unclear as to just what is new about this explicitly residential service offering. (The LUS Fiber residential internet page has not yet been updated to reflect this change.) Unlike the 10 and 50 Mbps residential offerings the new 100 Mbps residential tier it is not cheaper than the corresponding business ones. The other residential tiers are cheaper than their corresponding business tiers by 45-48%. Nor, according to Huval’s remarks in the comments is the monthly usage cap any different—in both the residential and the commercial versions of the 100 meg package is capped at 8 terabits. (Note: that’d be about 1 terabyte of hard disk storage.) The idea behind the higher prices for businesses is that they use much more bandwidth than households—and LUS pays for its connectivity by capacity.

Another possible reason to formalize a 100 Mbps tier right now is that Chattanooga’s still-building municipal fiber-optic utility recently announced a 1 Gbps option on its system. Chattanooga’s Gig is expensive for a regular consumer at $399 a month. In general, while Chattanooga has offered higher speeds, their pricing schedule has been more expensive than LUS’. That relationship no longer holds with LUS pricing its residential 100 Mbps package at the same cost as its commercial one—LUS’ price is 200 dollars a month while Chattanooga’s is a 14o…

It sounds a bit as if this new residential tier hasn’t been completely thought out. I’ll not be surprised if revisions that bring it more into align with other residential packages don’t appear.

“Dore clarifies position on LUS rate hike”

That title might better be: “Dore commits to LUS rate hike.”

According to the Independent blog Sam Dore is now a committed supporter of the LUS rate hike and will both vote for it himself and work for its passage. Dore explains it as less a shift in position than a matter of timing but that commitment changes the odds on the measure’s passage.

In a LPUA meeting late last year Dore was sided with Ken Boudreaux and Brandon Shelvin to make a 3-2 majority in favor of voting down a rate hike. The five-person LPUA board must approve any changes concerning the city’s utility assets and that loss made a vote by the larger council pointless. Dore, and in particular Boudreaux, cited timing, a lack of information and the feeling that the administration had put forward and a take-it or leave-it position that didn’t brook compromise or negotiation.

Among the non-LPUA members of the council, the so-called rural districts, it rumor has it that Purvis Morrison who is planning a run for mayor of Scott is now in support of the increase. That decision could only have been reinforced by the power outage in Scott during Monday’s frigid night that was attributed to an overtaxed connection by Entergy and when that same connection went out again Tuesday night LUS’ Huval pointed to outages as just the sort of problem that he wanted to avoid by doing the timely capacity upgrades the rate increase would fund.

That brings the pro-rate increase count up to 4…with 3 of those votes being mostly out of the city and thus having few LUS customers to contend with— and the few that they do have are in the more prosperous southern reaches. It seems likely that this time around the administration and LUS have done a better job of vote counting.

Time will tell.

“LUS sacks Cox with Saints vs. Cowboys game”

From the Independent blog:

“If you’re paying $39.95 a month for LUS’ 83-channel expanded basic cable service, breathe a sigh of relief. You’ll watch the undefeated Saints take on the Dallas Cowboys (8-5) on Channel 38 Saturday night at 7:20 p.m. But if you’re one of Cox Communications’ approximately 100,000 Acadiana customers who subscribes to expanded basic, 72 channels for $52.99 per month, it’s going to cost you more.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. —You can sign up with the local guys or you can pay more for less and still not get what you want from Cox. It’s a choice that ought to be easy. What do you think Lafayette?

The Saints Mania that has taken hold here (and across south Lousiana) has made people more than a little crazy and I’ve got email this week asking whether LUS will have the game. I had a hard time understanding what folks were anxious about since it is on expanded basic, and expanded basic is pretty much the default level for most folks. Now that I see that Cox is only carrying it on a more expensive tier I have to suspect that the truly fanatic were hearing about that and worried that the same would be true of LUS…there was a big blow-up in the Baton Rouge media earlier this week and apparently Cox worked hard at getting it set up there even though BR wouldn’t normally be allowed to see it. I’m sure they’d like to have been able to do the same in Lafayette—if only to avoid the unfavorable contrast with LUS Fiber.

It’s not really just about this game and single, immensely popular show…it is more about the contrasting corporate policies that Cox and LUS Fiber pursue. Cox has, time and again, moved “must have” weather, French language, TV guide, and sports channels off the basic tiers and pushed them up into the upper, more costly, tiers in unpopular if financially understandable, moves. After all they are in it to make money for their owners. LUS Fiber, on the other hand, really doesn’t have nearly the same pressure to “upsell” its customers since those customers are its owners. Keeping your owners happy means entirely different things to a large corporation and small town utility.

And that’s the real lesson of this story.

Curtis, Cox, and LUS

Today’s “Curtis” syndicated comic, found in this morning’s Advertiser could easily have been inspired by the marketing tactics we’re seeing Lafayette… (The story line involves young Curtis hoping to con his dad into a special cable “deal.”)

A friend tells me he was recently offered 3 months of free cable service when he called to cancel his Cox service and move to LUS. That, apparently, is just how desperate Cox is beginning to get as LUS continues to roll out its service—ahead of schedule. The incumbents have repeatedly insisted that “goverment-owned” LUS would never be able to meet its ambitious roll-out goals but that particular canard hasn’t been repeated recently as it became obvious that the service would not only achieve its goal but that our community-owned utility is actually ahead of schedule (LUS recently announced that it would finish its roll-out in July, about six months early.)

Incidentally, LUS’ is a great service and my friend (IMHO) was right to spurn the short range savings for the long-term savings, no-nonsense, no “deals” package the hometown alternative offers. Not to mention: our money stays here and it builds infrastructure we own.