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Looking for work? LUS is looking for workers.

Lafayette City-parish Government (LCG) has posted job opportunities for those wanting to work in the utility system’s now-building Fiber To The Home (FTTH) network. You can scan through the listings on the LCG website—where you’ll have to go to download the PDF application forms should you decide to apply. A quicker way to get a sense of what is being offered currently can be found at careerbuilder; they’ve pulled together most of those that seem to have something to do with fiber or technology. (But the master list is at the LCG site.)

Some examples:

SYSTEMS ANALYST (FIBER)…….$3,569-$4,647/MONTH/DOE Responsible for project management, cost analysis, implementation, upgrades, and troubleshooting of information systems, server software, and other network related system software such as OSS, BSS, DNS, and network management systems. Will serve on multiple projects as team leader. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related and considerable experience with software applications required.

CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEMS OPERATOR (FIBER) …….$3,404-$5,098/MONTH/DOE Responsible for supervision and participation of technical operations and maintenance of a communications center which include plant, equipment, antennae, power supplies and all other network, video, and data equipment and operating systems required to deliver telephone, video and data services. Vocational technical training electronics and telecommunications. Experience with Cable TV head end, high speed Internet, or telephone switch operation required.

COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM OPERATOR (FIBER) ………
SENIOR COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK TECHNICIAN (FIBER)…..

Also accepting applications for Equipment Operator IV (Backhoe, Motor Grader, Excavator, Gradall, Dozer), Engineer II (Electrical & Civil), Power Plant Machinist, Power Plant Technician, Engineer III (Electrical & Civil), Engineering Aide II (Rodman), Equipment Operator II (Tandem Dump Truck), Planner II, Network Administrator, Programmer Analyst (GIS), and others.

It looks like they are looking for experience more than for certificates…and it looks like they’re hoping to hire from the competition.

Working for LUS, by all accounts that I’ve heard, is a good experience. But beyond that working for your community carries its own satisfaction. One of the reasons that we can still fill jobs for teachers and policemen is that there are still folks for whom that matters. Most of us get to the point sooner or later where what we do and why we do it becomes more important than how much we are paid or how comfortable a job it is. If you’re working in an allied field and would like to get a job where you could learn about the latest & coolest AND get a job where you’d be working for your own community this is your chance.

—There are, if the server stats are too be trusted, a lot of folks who read this blog, as determinedly local as it, even though they don’t have a direct interest in Lafayette’s struggle. (Thanks, incidentally!) Maybe you, or someone you know would like to come and live in city where community is still a palpable thing, where culture exists outside of museums and performance halls, and the foodways are firmly planted in the local landscape. It’s a community that is willing to stand up on its own two feet and fight for the sort of network it wants. If you’re sympathetic with that impulse maybe you’d like to live somewhere where it is possible. Lafayette is an exciting place that is only going to get a lot more interesting for people committed to tech and community life. If you’d like to contribute we’d love to have you.

Aerial Fiber is now being installed in the McComb neighborhood! My neighborhood! If your electricity is on poles you should start looking for a boom truck and a truck pulling a large spool of fiber.

Lafayette’s fiber is being installed both aerially (on poles) and underground—depending on how your electricity is delivered. This is the first aerial fiber to go up. Unlike the underground installation, aerial fiber moves along pretty quick and leaves little sign of its installation. So if the truck comes through while you are away or at work you may not immediately realize it.

If, like me, you are eager to confirm the presence of fiber along your street, there are some things to look for.

The first sign will be a door-hanger on your front door. In my case a nice guy from Electric.com came by last week and generously agreed to chat for awhile. The fiber in our neighborhood will be the first aerial fiber in the city. They’ve apparently had some problems getting the materials together to start hanging the fiber but are now starting to ramp up with one crew at first to get the technique down and work out kinks. Next week another crew will come online.

A boom truck (This one was at the corner of 12th and Magnolia.)

A huge spool of Fiber

The LUS Fiber logo will be on the trucks, along with “Electric.com” (the subcontractors) or “Atlantic Engineering” (the engineers).

But if you miss them—or want to go cruising around looking for the nearest fiber—the thing to look for is is the unique fiber attaching devices on the poles. While the fiber itself is just another black wire the attachments look like nothing else. There are two styles: running pieces and pieces that turn a curve, usually at a corner. Both are designed as they are, I presume, to make sure that the fiber isn’t allowed to bend sharply enough to damage the glass fibers inside.

Here’s what’ll happen when the crews show up: They’ll run down the street putting the hardware in place, come back and run the fiber through the connectors and tighten up the line, and, finally, make another run and push the rubber cushions into the connectors.

Then its time for you to wait, impatiently, until they come by your house to drop a line to the side of your home and install the electronics box on the wall.

It’s coming…

The Freedom To Connect (F2C) conference is this coming Monday-Tuesday and readers are cordially invited to “attend.” A live stream will be announced on the central web page starting at 8:30 Monday.

It’s well worth the click-through. I recently outlined the virtues of the conference and you can take a look at my review. But being able to “virtually” attend—and at F@C even participate by commenting on the scrolling chat screen that dominates the stage behind the presenters—is one of those amazing things the internet has made possible.

I’ll be on 1:00 Monday panel “Open Fiber” and my focus will be Lafayette’s fiber and net citizenship. (A hint: I think citizenship is, or should be, the goal—and that local, public ownership is the only realistic path.) That panel should be especially interesting for Lafayette’s fiberistas but the lineup, my name notwithstanding, is really impressive.

Give it a look, take advantage of the net to inform yourself on how to keep it.

A bit more on the fiber build-out announcement. (If you just want to know if you are in phase 1 (and who doesn’t?) come back here after visiting the initial post.) I had promised more on a few things that were side issues in the context of announcing the plan for building the network. Those were: 1) pricing, 2) service outside Lafayette, and 3) the focus on the intranet and peer-to-peer speed.

Pricing:
There was a subtle but significant shift in the way that LUS talked about pricing. It sounds to me as though LUS is getting more confident. Originally LUS made a single promise, repeatedly: that they’d give 20% of the price of a bundle of services. No absolute pricing (it would depend on what their opponents were charging at the time) and no indication that they’d undercut individual services. That makes a lot of sense really—different services have different profit margins and allowing your competitors Cox or AT&T to dictate, however indirectly, your pricing just isn’t wise. I’m sure they wouldn’t make any promises now…but what has changed is they way they are talking when they are not being hyper-careful. Now they are talking as if that they will undercut “services” by 20% and offer an $85 dollar bundle. Just from listening, its pretty apparent that they are assuming that that will able to do both of those things. That’s good news for Lafayette consumers–especially since the “services” that LUS offers for those cheaper prices will be much more robust than the competitions at the “same” level….our internet, for instance will probably start at about 10 megs (where the competition will be at 1 or less for their cheapest tier) and will include that 100 megs of intranet bandwidth between LUS subscribers and businesses located on-network. More, much more, for less.

Service Outside of the City of Lafayette
This was a theme in the discussions with individual press members after the formal presentation. Frustratingly, I didn’t get to listen to all of them…I got interviewed a bit myself, an odd thing from my point of view…and when you’re talking you don’t get to listen. A lesson I should have learned as a teacher. 🙂 But from what I caught ( and you should check your TV and newspapers) Durel was willing to discuss the possibility in a forthright manner. The city of Lafayette, it was emphasized, gets it first and that will be finished before the system moves on to surrounding areas. The citizens of the city, after all, went to war to get the network and are making the investment; they deserve to get what they’ve worked for. But if other locales want to talk about building out their own infrastructure or take on bonded indebtedness to have LUS build it….well that is something that LUS and LCG, are willing even happy, to consider. A lot of questions arise almost immediately. Governance issues follow closely on the heals of investments and LUS is pretty much the last vestige of a true city-of-Lafayette. Similarly, building code issues jump up to the forefront pretty quickly when you start talking about expansion into areas not governed by city codes. But the message was clear. LUS is open for business and willing to consider expansion bids just as soon as it gets some time to give it proper attention.

The Intranet, Peer-to-Peer Bandwidth, and 100 Megs of Internal Speed
Durel’s introductory remarks focused on the intranet and the potential for all that enourmous peer-to-peer bandwidth to change things in Lafayette. Durel mostly focused on the potential for development and smart growth issues. He’s right there. But this is the feature that the nerds I know are most excited about and the non-geeky understand the least. Businesses that are focused on network applications or that use communications heavily will gravitate to Lafayette, just as Durel notes — and the NuConn call center and Blue Bayou productions are just the start.

Tech types have a romantic vision of businesses that start in garages. Apple is the mythic example. It’s hard to get a start like that now. In most places. But in Lafayette every garage will have easy, cheap, access to that 100 meg intranet. Someone will put a couple of servers in their garage and try out that video conferencing/videophone/whiteboard/distributed computing idea they had. Most will fail to even be noticed and the boyfriend will get to rib her about the four thousand that went down the drain till the end of time. But maybe her cousin will succeed with some other big bandwidth baby of a startup they fired up in extra bedroom.

In Lafayette, as in few other places, it will be possible to dream on shoestring.

But, as exciting as all that is, the intranet will build more than just business. Part of my background is in sociology and we were taught there that communities are, most basically, defined by their boundaries…not just rivers and roads but also the ability of doctors and lawyers to “speak the same language.” We form communities with those with whom we find communication easiest and most productive. A 100 or 200 meg intranet will make communication inside Lafayette much easier than communicate with those on the outside. And we will, at least potentially, be able to use entirely different modes of communication with our neighbors than with those outside the community. The internet has tended to remove barriers. The intranet reinstates them and offers the potential to build up a networked community that makes our physical community stronger. Mike has pointed to some of this in his musings on an asynchronous Lafayette. Similarly I’ve at times talked about the potential of a Lafayette Commons and building up AOC.

To realize the benefits of the intranet to build community in Lafayette will require a different kind of effort than the ones that encourage business. There you mostly provide the tools and try to make sure that you make things easier and cheaper for folks who want to try new things. But building up communities requires something more than staying out of the way. It requires that people make an effort to participate in things they’ve never done before. And it requires that the pastors, the CEO’s, the council members, and assorted leaders and activists collaborate to build a social infrastructure that encourages participation. A good start on this would be for the council to set up an advisory board of some sort, similar to the LINK group and others, that would study and proactively pursue the possibilities for our community.

Lots going on….stay tuned.

Terry Huval and Joey Durel are holding a press conference tomorrow, (Thursday, February 7th) to “announce the first areas in the city to be served by the LUS Fiber project.” The announcement, at 9:00 AM down at City Hall will let all know who will be among the lucky number that will get their fiber first.

The media alert (PDF) that announced the event proudly proclaims:

LUS Fiber (www.lusfiber.com) will deliver state-of-the-art fiber optics to every home and business in the city, including phone, Internet and cable TV services. The system deploys more than 870 miles of fiber optics in a passive optical network using both analog and IP digital video (TV), high-speed Internet and phone that services more than 57,000 homes and businesses within the city of Lafayette.

OK…I’m eager to see the map now. When I get my hands on one I’ll share it here. As I’ve said before, I’m anticipating a larger rather than smaller footprint for the first-stage buildout. That’s what the budget numbers and the dates of their allocations leads me to believe. I’m thinking this will be result in good news for a large percentage of our population.

Tune in Thursday.

And until then…enter your construction sightings on “The Map.”

Some news isn’t so much new as is a reaffirmation. To wit: “Murder on 33rd St.” “Administration refuses to release records” That not new…but it is newsworthy to occasionally reaffirm that the problem hasn’t gone away.

“Incumbents sue to scare community and lenders.” That’s not new either.

It is the same all over.

Tennessee cable is trying their best to prevent Chatanooga’s power utility from providing its citizens with a cheaper, better, fiber-optic alternative to the cable company. The tools:

1. An incumbent-favoring law which gives the local monopoly cable providers a tool to challenge the financing of the community’s network
2. A lawsuit taking advantage of their law; probably baseless but ceratinly something that muddies the water.
3. Bluster and bombast by the incumbent providers aimed not stopping any illegal activity but at driving up the financing cost to the community to offer an alternative.

We saw exactly this same pattern in Lafayette.

The delicious irony: the subprime mortgage crisis is in the process of driving down the interest rate. Monney is cheap and this makes the incumbents crazy since it makes it much easier for a competitor to succeed. So they try to scare them off. But Chatanooga, if they’re smart, won’t allow that to happen. The delay will cause them to sell their bonds in a moment when money is as cheap as it has been in a long time. The cable companies are about to hand the people of Chatanooga the best present they could ever get: cheap money. And all because they’re so intent on raising the cost.

Poetic justice.

A tip of the hat to the new City-Parish Council.

Both the Advertiser and the Advocate carry brief stories about the new council and its new rules. Emphasis was on the new five minute discussion rule for comments and the 45 second announcement rule for councilors–neither of which might not seem like a big deal to most people but which clearly impressed the reporters whose job requires them to sit through the interminable ramblings that sometimes devoured the council’s time.

Followers of fiber news will be most interested in the rest of the news: that the utility governing body will no longer meet separately before regular council meetings and fiber partisans will be interested in, and heartened by the new leadership of the council.

The LPUA, the Lafayette Parish Utility Authority, is made up of the members of the City-parish council whose district is mostly in the city. They’ve always met separately an hour before the regular meeting twice a month to transact regular business. But big commitments have always been brought to the regular council as well since the full legal responsibility for things like bonded indebtedness is cloudy. (After all the city of Lafayette no longer really exists as a truly independent legal body as far as I can understand.–So who really owns LUS?) As a consequence there was a lot of overlap and double voting on issues. The new regime will make every meeting a joint LPUA-City-Parish meeting. This will probably be more efficient and it will also mean that LUS issues will be handled in a meeting that is better attended. The extra scrutiny is probably a good, if not entirely comfortable thing for LUS.

It also means new prominence for the head of the LPUA. At one time I thought Don Bertrand, newly elected from District 7, was up for the job. This would have been a happy moment for Lafayette’s fiberistas since Don was one of the leaders of Lafayette Coming Together during the fiber fight and the man most responsible for bring the local Republican party on board in favor of the idea. You couldn’t ask for a public official more committed to and thoughtful about the project. But Don didn’t get the post–instead he has become the chair of the full council, a position from which he will have even more influence. I think that was the right choice for the community and the right choice for fiber.

Brandon Shelvin, the new LPUA head also appears to be a friend of fiber. In fact the new council seems to be pretty solid there–in contrast to the uniformed view that some of our representative candidates displayed during the LWV debate, the council candidates appeared to understand what is at stake in the new system they will oversee. (None of the candidates who had even mixed feelings about fiber made it past the primary in the council election. The present council will surely see that as a clear message.)

With eight of nine new members, a new organizational structures, and ‘interesting’ topics in the offing it should be an interesting year for council-watchers.

Broadband Reports has a “worth-your-read” overview article of the sad state of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is that little-known but uber-important federal regulatory body that was chartered to prevent corporate abuse in the monopoly-prone national communications market. It has been so thoroughly captured by the corporations that it is supposed to regulate that it defines broadband as a mere 200 kbps, doesn’t collect anything resembling adequate data on the market it is supposed to regulate, and hides what little data it does collect from the consuming public.

Broadband reports gives a good rundown on the current state of this body’s data collection processes and the forces which might force some change.

Tidbits:

It’s that time of year again; time for the FCC to release U.S. broadband data that’s about as reliable as a heroin addict in charge of your retirement funds. Despite years of criticism from everyone from consumer advocates to the GAO, the FCC continues to insist that if one home in a zip-code has broadband, that broadband is wired for service…

One interesting note: FCC data shows that broadband over powerline (BPL), which the agency once called the “great broadband hope,” actually had fewer total subscribers at the end of December than when the year started. The FCC has consistently lauded BPL as a third competitive pipe that would bring competition to the market, and has used its “success” as justification for deregulation…

The FCC’s rulings will have an enormous effect on LUS’ ability to compete. Ironically for us as consumers hoping for relief via LUS competion the FCC’s pro-corporate rulings might actually rebound to our benefit since federal rules meant to “deregulate” override state laws and local contracts that emphasize local sovereignty, consumer protection, and municipal property rights. LUS, as a newly minted telecom corp. benefits. Luckily it belongs to us….and presumably won’t be tempted to abuse its new freedoms. (Of course we ought to watch it…:-))

The FCC’s Rose-Colored Broadband Glasses – It’s that time of year again…. – dslreports.com

Common Cause does its best to disabuse anyone of the idea that Ed Whitacre’s retirement as head of AT&T will bring a change in the company’s approach to network neutrality and the Internet.

According to Common Cause, Whitacre’s successor Randall Stephenson is (if anything) just as bent on laying a proprietary claim to be able to control and price what travels over AT&T’s network. With the former BellSouth now included in AT&T’s service footprint, the company now is the primary telecom provider in about 22 states. It also owns the ‘old’ AT&T’s national data network and the former Cingular wireless network. The company is the largest communications company in the United States and, any way you cut it, a force to be reckoned with.

So, who leads the company has a material impact on the lives of a large number of businesses and consumers starting with AT&T’s customers.

Americans generally distrust large institutions, ranging from government to corporations. AT&T and its new leader are apparently bent on ensuring that the fires for that distrust remain stoked.

For starters, Mr. Stephenson opposes the idea that if an AT&T (i.e., BellSouth/Cingular) customer that you can access video from non-AT&T sources via the Internet. Common Cause provides this bit of evidence:

In 2005, Stephenson was asked whether his DSL customers would be able to watch live video from any website. “Oh no,” Stephenson declared. “We’re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.” That could leave all the other “content guys” who can’t afford to make a deal with AT&T – independent musicians and artists, nonprofits and charities, small businesses and entrepreneurs – locked out from reaching Internet users who use AT&T to access the ‘Net.

Think about that for a minute.

Left to the preferences of Whitacre/Stephenson, there would be no Google, no eBay, no iTunes. Why? Because AT&T would, first, require these services to be customers of the company and, second, then charge them a premium in order to ensure that their packets (all of these operations run over Internet Protocol networks) get express treatment. Oh, consumers would still pay their bandwidth fees as well, meaning that AT&T intends to milk providers, consumers and (inevitably) take a slice of the revenue stream for content as it tightens its grip on network infrastructure.

Did you know you can now pay bills using your cell phone (NYT archived $)? Here are some key paragraphs from that NYT story:

AT&T and several banks, including BancorpSouth, SunTrust and Wachovia, are working on a common banking application that can also be downloaded or preinstalled on cellphones. The company creating the software is Firethorn, which is based in Atlanta and works with banks and cellular companies to create a common interface. The idea is that customers will have a standard way of banking on their phones — leading to less confusion — and carriers like AT&T won’t have to design individual applications to accommodate each of the hundreds of different banks around the country.

I tried BancorpSouth’s service using Firethorn’s software on an LG CU500v flip phone. The experience was similar to that of Citi Mobile; it allowed me to view account information or make transactions, including last-minute bill payments. There were delays of 4 to 5 seconds in switching between accounts, but in many ways it was simpler and easier to master than online Web banking on a PC. The only drawback is that you have to be an AT&T/Cingular subscriber.

So, phones will be mobile ATMs. Do the words “transaction fee” come to mind?

So, Stephenson views AT&T’s network as an opportunity for the company to operate a toll booth on traffic and skim a percentage or charge an outright fee on commerce that happens to flow over the network.

As Common Cause correctly points out, AT&T will have most customers over a barrel:

To make matters worse, most Americans don’t have much choice when it comes to high speed Internet providers, so they won’t be able to switch to another company if their Internet provider starts blocking or slowing down certain websites. Usually the only options are the telephone company (high early termination fees if you cancel your service) or the cable company (often prohibitively more expensive).

Of course, we will have more choice here in Lafayette than most places thanks to the LUS fiber system which will undercut the sometimes cozy duopoly relationship that phone and cable companies frequently develop in markets they share.

But, what I find most disturbing about Stephenson is his membership on something called the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee. Common Cause describe it this way:

The NSTAC is a secretive panel made up of industry executives who provide advice to the President on national security, emergency preparedness and other communications policy. Its meetings are almost always closed to the public for national security reasons. And its website claims that documents and records produced by NSTAC are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because it is not technically a federal “agency.”

What immediately comes to mind here is the Bush administration’s illegal warrant less wiretapping program. AT&T has been sued over its cooperation in that program. Stephenson, as a member of the NSTAC board and as a member of AT&T’s leadership team was, no doubt, aware of the program and probably encouraged AT&T to cooperate with it.

What is known is pretty grim, from a Constitutional stand point but the program and AT&T’s cooperation may well have been much more extensive than what is currently known by the public. The hints came in the dramatic Senate testimony of former Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey about the race to beat Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to the hospital bed of then-ill Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The reason for the race was that Comey and apparently the head of the FBI Robert Muller and even Ashcroft threatened to resign if the wiretap program that they believed was illegal.

What was that program? And, how was AT&T enabling it to operate?

So, to sum up: AT&T is now headed by a man who believes network ownership is an excuse to tax anything that moves over it; that if you’re in business and your data crosses the AT&T network AT&T is entitled to a cut; and that this right of ownership also gives the company the right to engage in any kind of activity the president’s attorney says is legal.

Looks like Big Brother has got a friend at the head of Big Mama.

Hey! Did you hear the news?

Ed Whitacre is retiring!

Who’s that?

The head of AT&T.

If you don’t know who he is, don’t worry about it. He doesn’t know who you are either. 😉