Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

I think you live in a world where there's lots of competition (i.e. California). Move to Mississippi or Louisiana, and you quickly find that your choice is Comcast or nothing....or maybe it's AT&T or nothing. And in the case of Comcast, if you don't get their Cable, the price of broadband jumps about 30%. AT&T does the same thing, though they are currently required to offer naked DSL in areas that were served by Bell South. That will eventually go away.

Adding a 3rd line is more competition. And in some cases (see Lafayette Louisiana), DSL was frequently unavailable, but that didn't stop Bell South (now AT&T) from fighting it in courts (several of those were done by way of a Lafayette Resident that nobody has ever seen).

Go look at prices for less built up areas and compare them to a Houston, Dallas, Virginia et. al., and you quickly see that these smaller areas are paying MORE money for less bandwidth than their friends in these other places, where there's generally more competition.

So while municipal broadband/cable may not make any sense in these places where supply is great and prices are relatively low, I suspect that will not be the case in many other parts of the country.

Oh and FWIW, my broadband prices jumped about 30% in the last 6 months....and they're 50% more than what I paid in Dallas.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

Broadband typically costs $40/month on average and you're constantly getting speed upgrades at that same price range. A tank of gas these days go for $60 and that usually only lasts one week.

The problem here is that Tim Wu and his friends are suggesting that we need Muni-fiber to compete in addition to the existing Cable/DSL system.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

All I can say, George, is that 4 years ago I was paying around $30 to $35 month (not a special) for broadband including all taxes. I'm not paying close to $50. If I lived in a larger market, I could the same service for significantly less...or of the same money, I'd get significantly more bandwidth.

We currently have, at best, a duopoly in most places. More competition is not a bad thing. I can promise you that in Lafayette, the AT&T and Cox will lose customers, lower prices or significantly upgrade their infrastructure. It'll be the equivalent of Verizon bringing FIOS to the city.....and we all know that when FIOS comes to town, everyone else has to lower prices or significantly upgrade their equipment.

If you can't get FIOS, then why not build it yourself? You clearly don't like the idea. In the case I speak of, the city voted and they overwhelmingly voted for it.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

I'm saying that if you even have one broadband provider, it's not worth the tax payers trying to build a second or third pipe in to the home. It's not worth the increase in local sales taxes.

Like Mr. Wu, you seem to be under the false impression that there is some sort of excessive monopoly profit that could be squeezed out if only there was a second or third pipe in the game. But having only a single pipe in a given area does NOT mean there is a monopoly because the Cable Company still competes with the DSL Company in the overall picture. Because there is uniform pricing in DSL and Cable services, it matters not that there are a few places that don't have both providers in every region. Uniform pricing gives every region he benefit of competition between two incumbent providers that are fighting tooth and nail with each other.

So if you brought in a second or third Municipal pipe, you would only see a price drop if the Municipal service was cheaper than the other alternatives and that's pretty much never been the case.

The other point you seem to be making is that you want a Municipal fiber system EVEN if there is solid 6 Mbps DSL service and/or Cable service in the region. I personally would benefit this and I suspect you would benefit from it as well because we are the type of people that would use it even if it cost $70/month. But I can’t look at tax payers who mostly make less than we do with a straight face that we deserve their sales tax subsidy. I wouldn’t mind having it, but I don’t see it as ethical.

Now if there were absolutely ZERO broadband in my area and the Telco and Cable Company refuses to ever bring anything in and there were businesses that would leave if they can’t get broadband service, then I might be able to justify a Municipal broadband system because it benefits the community as a whole but there are a whole lot of other alternatives I would try first such as cutting red tape for private companies. But I don’t believe it’s a good idea to demand a third pipe at the expense of the tax payers and you’re just looking for a massive failure like they have in Utah if you tried to force the issue of Fiber when most customers feel that DSL or Cable is good enough.

George Ou

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

Fios vs typical Cable/DSL. Sounds like a winner to me, even if prices don't go down. And FYI, no new taxes were levied for this project.

Finally, I'm going to say it again, just because AT&T and Cox or Comcast are in a market, doesn't mean you have the option of both carriers.

You're paid to write, and what you say may turn out to be true, but it could turn out that the City of Lafayette ends up with Fios like service in a market that isn't close to the size of a typical FIOS market. AT&T and/or cox may now upgrade their infrastructure to compete, but even if that happens, you can be certain that the reason for it is because of that 3rd pipe that's forcing them to do it if they want to compete.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

"Finally, I'm going to say it again, just because AT&T and Cox or Comcast are in a market, doesn't mean you have the option of both carriers. "

I think you missed the part where I said it doesn't matter if they're both in the market when you have uniform pricing. Even without that choice, you still get the benefit of those 2 competing against each other.

No taxes for a Municipal Fiber project just sounds too good to be true. Vermont has a somewhat "successful" Muni-Fiber project but it's way more expensive than Verizon and way slower. So it's quite possible that they would give Verizon second thoughts about bringing in FiOS service because of the existing fiber competition.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

Again, you live in a major city with where all the big boys like to play and invest in infrastructure. Lafayette, a city of roughly 120k, is not.

The argument that it might keep FIOS out is silly. FIOS isn't scheduled for Lafayette. I know of no announcements for such service in New Orleans or Baton Rouge, so the idea that it might come to Lafayette anytime soon is ridiculous, unless your window for service is 10 or 15 years from now, while service from LUS will start sometime next year and available to everyone by the end of 2011.

As for what the city's fibre will provide, the lowest internet tier is a symmetric 10mb/s line.
I'm pretty sure that's in line with the slowest FIOS connections.

Populism vs Pragmatism:

Seems pretty pragmatic. The city had a need, and the incumbents weren't (and still are not) providing it. It's certainly not because of some anti-corporate sentiment, and it predates the entire net-neutrality movement (which I first heard about sometime in 2005).

Deployment:
The network will start serving customers in the first half of next year and expect to have the network fully deployed by 2011

Cost/Payment:
The network is expected to run around 100 million. It's financed by bonds, which will be paid off by revenue from services rendered. 4 Years ago LUS said they'd provide these services for less than Cox/AT&T. They now say it will run roughly 20% less than the prices charged by Cox/AT&T and no contract is required for service.


regardless, if you're really interested there's plenty on the web going back 4 years. If you have Lexus Nexus, I suspect that Lafayette's Daily Advertiser, New Orleans' Times Picayune and Baton Rouge's Advocate newspapers all have plenty on the topic. Otherwise, Google is your friend

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

LOL, aren't you being dishonest by saying this isn't tax-payer financed? $100,000,000 bond is a lot of money for a city to be spending when you already have broadband.

By the time you have that fiber network built, you'll already have AT&T U-verse FTTN delivering 10 and eventually 50 Mbps of dedicated downstream capacity at a lower price. Most consumers don't need or want 10 Mbps upstream and they don't want symmetric service. I want it because I want to host servers but that’s not what normal consumers do. I would help me to have symmetric broadband subsidized by the tax payers but I don’t believe I’m entitled to other people’s money. Building out fiber service when you already have one or two other providers in town is financially disastrous because the uptake won’t be high since it won’t be cost competitive. A few people will benefit and the city will be in the hole for $100 million dollars.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

How am I being dishonest? The taxpayers aren't paying off the bond, LUS is paying it over 25 years using revenues from fees charged. How is that ANY DIFFERENT than AT&T raising money to build a network and paying those funds back over time?

Aside from the fact that the AT&T's FFTN network that you describe isn't as good as what Lafayette is building, please provided a source, with specifics that show that U-Verse will be available within a year and provide service to all of Lafayette no later than 2011.

If you can't prove that, then your assertion that it will fail, because the competition will provide better/cheaper service for less, doesn't pass the smell test.

Finally, it'd be nice if you'd make up your mind. In this post you said that building out a 3rd service is a financial disaster, while a post earlier you claimed that FIOS would probably come here if not for the city building a network. Either it's a financial disaster in the making, in which case there's no reason for Verizon to ever build such a network here, or it's not and this project makes sense. You can't have it both ways.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

I'd should amend the deployment schedule. I now believe that the first phase will be completed by January 2009 and the entire network is expected to finish within 3 years of the start, which means roughly January of 2011, not the end of 2011.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

Who eats the $100M bond if the "fees" don't come in as expected? Most of these Muni-Fiber projects will charge a substantial connect fee in the hundreds or even thousand dollar range and/or they'll charge a substantial monthly fee. That's great for power users but you don't build a sustainable business just on power users especially when there's much cheaper commercial competition with comparable download speeds.

Re: Broadband Populism or Broadband Pragmatism

Well I'll know by the beginning of next year, because my parents are in the first place it's deployed.

But again, I'll just keep hammering you on your assertion about it keeping out fios. You've said that it might keep out fios. Then you've said it'll be a financial disaster. Now you're saying it's destined to lose money, which begs the question of why Verizon would ever come into disaster waiting to happen?

For that matter, how does Verizon ever make money, without charging these exorbitant connect fees? And why does anyone go to Verizon, when it's clearly aimed at power users, which you've said isn't the basis for a business.

I'm also awaiting the information you have for AT&T doing substantial network upgrades in Lafayette (10-50 Mb/s), which will be deployed before the LUS system is.

When are they starting? When is the scheduled completion date?
And why can verzion come in as a 3rd provider and make money, but the city cannot?

Neat, not really.

I think competition would be nice, but how do you execute competition in rural areas. So far the only ones go to the last mile in many areas would be Satellite providers, and then there are some Wireless installations, but they have had their fair share of troubles. For some reason, Wireless has the same issues Cable does with regards to Bit Torrent.

I live in a community of 10K people which is much smaller than Lafayette, but if I could get FIOS here, trust me, I would pay $100 plus a month to get it. Problem is that I live in a college town of and yet still don't have enough geeks to go together on that style of system. I am not for sure what the cost would be to get an additional fiber line in my area, or what the cost of deployment would be, but I am sure that even if I had the entire town of 12K donating their $100 dollars a month to such a cause, that the odds of getting FIOS going would probably still not be enough.

Then we do have my parents who live in a rural area and have DSL at 256K which is hardly enough to call Broadband, but apparently enough to be considered such by some.

I don't know what the answer is, but how the deployment is occurring in other countries should be heavily investigated. With Canada beating us in the average speed of their broad band, I feel highly insulted. I think the FCC needs to seriously reconsider their current regulations and see that they can do to spurn competition.

I know we aren't nearly as densely populated as areas such as Korea or Japan, but Canada? Eh? What is that all aboot?