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Networking Government Politics

LA City Votes For Municipal Fiber Network 326

Posted by Zonk from the down-with-the-bell dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On Saturday, Lafayette, Louisiana voters gave BellSouth and Cox the collective finger and approved a municipal FTTH network by a 62% to 38% margin. The Daily Advertiser has coverage of the vote and possible repercussions. The hotly-contested vote was prompted by a lawsuit by BellSouth and Cox Communications, who bitterly opposed the plan. BellSouth threatened to close a Cingular call center if the plan passed, and the companies employed push polling, including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming and block religious channels."
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LA City Votes For Municipal Fiber Network More

LA City Votes For Municipal Fiber Network

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  • The cities have a right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous&yahoo,com> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:49PM (#13089011) Homepage Journal
    The phone companies have long enjoyed local monopolies that were only recently (last decade or so) broken down with requirements that they have to share their copper. The cable companies on the other hand won a recent FCC ruling that they don't have to share their coax [pcworld.com].

    The fact is that these companies are rolling out fiber to the home on their own phased schedules, the timelines of which do not sit well with a lot of bandwidth-starved consumers, particularly those in markets that are far down the roadmaps. So it's not surprising that the municipalities are trying to accelerate this rollout with a DIY philosophy. The municipal governments are doing what they really should be doing, which is serving their residents. You don't see the cities implementing municipal-run ISPs to compete with existing, viable solutions from the cable and telephone companies. The municipal-run ISPs are being constructed precisely because they're filling a gap the big communications corporations are voluntarily leaving.

    The sad thing is that the cable companies and telephone companies are trying to protect these markets by suing the cities rather than rolling out the services that they want. Their philosophy is "you'll get it when we get around to you, and if your government tries to provide services in the meantime (or invite in alternative service providers), we'll try to prevent it". This is wrong and arrogant. It treats consumers like a resource these companies have some sort of divine right to exploit, rather than a market which can and should be able to vote with its ballots and pocketbooks.

    In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it. While I can understand the desire of the big communication companies to protect their markets, they should protect them by serving them, not by suing those who would fill the gaps they're leaving.

    We are in a world where broadband is synoonymous with prosperity, or close to it. The availability of broadband is an economic growth factor and an economic indicator. No single corporation should have the power to determine the timeline when such a powerful tool comes to a community. - G

    • Re:The cities have a right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:19PM (#13089179) Journal
      I see it from the other angle. This is about infrastructure, and that is one of the reasons taxes are paid. I see no issue with Govt. providing that infrastructure, but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure.

      Example: Govt. should build roads, not cars.

      That said Govt. should build water mains, waste lines and electrical connections, but I don't necessarily want to see private industry providing water to individuals or processing sewage. I do not mind private electrical generation or a mixed public/private electrical co-op. What is the difference between these though?

      Perhaps it is because given a stable grid power is power there is no difference in electrons at the level of the home user. A unit of water on the other hand can be fundamentally different coming from different processing facilities, but since it would be carried in a single medium there is no differentiation except for local.

      Anybody else's thoughts on the matter?

      • Re:The cities have a right (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Big Jojo ( 50231 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:46PM (#13089342)
        ... but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure. Example: Govt. should build roads, not cars.

        Neither road nor car is a "service". They're both objects.

        Policing roads ... service. Cleaning them, snowplowing, maintaining ... service.

        Your position is clearly bogus!

        One way to look at this is historically. And in the historical sense, community infrastructure has only very recently come to be seen as something that governments "should" stay out of ... you know, because if they were to offer service near cost, then more money would stay in the hands of citizens; there wouldn't be as many ways the corporate oligarchies could rip them off.

        Notice by the way that your example of a "stable grid" for electricity assumes artificial scarcity. No reason that we couldn't be using lots of local energy sources -- methane from recycling, wind, solar, a factory's off-hour capacity -- and have an economy that's not so readily gamed by the Enrons of this world.

        • Well, what the municipalities really maintain is the road network, not just "a road."

          Of course, a stretch of road, in the middle of nowhere, connected to nothing, would be simply an object. Over time, it would deteriorate, and eventually become nothing but a line of dust. The roads which are built by the government are first of all part of a complex network, useful not only because of what they are, but because of other roads that they connect to. Also, they're useful because they are maintained.

          Really, t

      • Re:The cities have a right (Score:5, Interesting)

        by vought ( 160908 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:52PM (#13089718)
        I grew up in Lafayette. Rather, I grew up in Carencro, a few miles north, but since two Interstates cross in Lafayette (I-10 and I-49) more people know where it is. I spent much of my childhood there, since both my parents worked in "town".

        Louisiana, despite the craven Christo-Republicanism currently grippping the state, has long and deep populist roots. Louisiana was one of the first states to have free textbooks for public school kids, and during a time when the state's agricultural base was in tatters, Huey Long rode to success on taxing the oil companies who were then punching a hole in the mud wherever they could, and using the money (well, most of it, anyway, or whatever didn't fall under the table) to build roads across the waterways that divided the state.

        John Breaux and Bennet Johnson continued this tradition on the federal level to a certain extent; while Louisiana never had a large Air Force, Army, or Navy presence, and missed out on much of the Space Race southern welfare programs of the 60s, the state did get some heap-big federal dollars for I-10 across the Atchafalaya, I-55 through Manchac, and I-49 from Lafayette to Alexandria, which was one of the largest earthmoving projects in Insterstate highway history, and opened a remote part of the state to high speed travel, cutting the time from Lafayette to Alexandria to just under two hours in 1999 from a little under five hours in 1980.

        Because of the infrastructure building, Louisiana is a far, far different place today. Lafayette's vote is a reflection of the very deeply-held Louisiana belief that big comanies get their money from the citizens anyway; why shouldn't we try to build one ourselves, with our money, and do it better?

        Lafayette, by the way, has one of the best public utility systems around. LUS has always been self-sustaining, sells power to other utilities to lower ratepayer burden, and Lafayette is one of the cities that when hit by a hurricane, always amanges to get the power back on within a few days. They've also done an amazing job of cleaning up the neglected Vermilion river.

        I'm proud to be from there, especially with the outcome of this vote, and the margin.

        Go Cajuns!
      • I see no issue with Govt. providing that infrastructure, but I do take issue with govt. providing the services passed with the infrastructure.

        My home town of 30,000 did the exact same thing as Lafayette after the cable companies and BellSouth failed to meet their promised goals of providing service. Citizens voted overwhelmingly to authorize the local power system to provide cable, internet and telephone service, and almost immediately coverage in the area more than doubled. Since then, every citizen w

    • Re:The cities have a right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geekee ( 591277 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:23PM (#13089200)
      "The sad thing is that the cable companies and telephone companies are trying to protect these markets by suing the cities rather than rolling out the services that they want. Their philosophy is "you'll get it when we get around to you, and if your government tries to provide services in the meantime (or invite in alternative service providers), we'll try to prevent it". This is wrong and arrogant. It treats consumers like a resource these companies have some sort of divine right to exploit, rather than a market which can and should be able to vote with its ballots and pocketbooks."

      No, companies treat customers like a market. They no fiber is too expensive and no one would pay for it in a market where cable and twisted pair are available. So now everyone's forced to pay for something that will be of real benefit to only a small minority in the near term.

      "In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it."

      Govt. is not a market force. Govt. intervention means, by definition, that the market is not free.

      "The availability of broadband is an economic growth factor and an economic indicator. No single corporation should have the power to determine the timeline when such a powerful tool comes to a community. "

      It is local govt. who have set this artificial monopoly. No local govt. just lets anyone string cable, fiber, etc. Companies are at the mercy of govt. regulation, not the other way around.

      • Re:The cities have a right (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:31PM (#13089244) Homepage
        Considering that it was the will of the voters, which could said to be the equal footing of, say, voters in a corporation, and it was over 70% of the voters who said "yes", I'd say this is a form of market force - only here the "corporation" is also called the "city council", and the voting is "one person, one vote" not "they who own the most shares get the most votes".
        • Your analogy is false because the customers of a business are generally not those doing the voting, whereas in government, the users of the service (customers, in a sense) are. Corporations are neccesarily private and are defined that way in law (the word actually has a real and legally binding meaning, you know). Last I heard, public corporations were referred to as authorities. Read up on Robert Moses and his reign of tyranny if you think that public authorities are a good idea. Robert Caro has written a
          • then they shouldn't have an obligation to be there

            They don't have any such obligation, nor is anyone trying to force an obligation upon them. On the other hand they don't have any business suing the municipality for providing service to areas they refuse to string line to.

            This works both ways. Companies don't have to serve those they don't want to serve, and municipalities aren't required to preserve 'fallow' territory simply because the companies *might* want to bring it service at some later date.
            • We agree. Perhaps I just worded it less accurately than I intended. The only issue with the municipalities getting in is that they could end up closing the market via regulation (rather than allowing the cable company to come in and compete if it wants to). This is the slippery slope I see. No the company shouldn't be able to win a lawsuit for it, but suing might be in their best interest, since it establishes their protest of having to compete with the government for customers (which is never pretty).

    • In a free market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:24PM (#13089202) Homepage
      In a free market, if you ignore a market segment, you should not have a legal way to prevent others from coming in and serving it.

      Let's not forget that the free market is nothing but an idealized abstraction [wikipedia.org]. This case is yet another example of market forces being incapable of driving the services/products in the right direction. Sure, it's generally much better when market forces alone take care of the situation, but this doesn't mean that when it can't we should do nothing and invoke the free market dogma.

      • invoke the free market dogma.

        This might be true if the forces of the free market were actually working in this situation, but they aren't. Local and state restrictions essentially mean that only large players can get into the public utility game, and most municipalities in the country grant de facto monopolies to various cable and phone companies in return for a chunk of the profits.

        In this case the city had the option of repealing a number of the regulations which keep individuals and small groups from
    • I bet you that most of the ghettos in this country could get broadband. Yet something tells me that that doesn't imply for even a second that they are prosperous.

      You're right, though, that the city government can do this. However, the private corporations involved can also shutdown their services and liquidate and/or sabotage all of their infrastructure.

      There's nothing "free market" about what you support. The government getting involved to compete is socialism, not capitalism.

      • You're right, though, that the city government can do this. However, the private corporations involved can also shutdown their services and liquidate and/or sabotage all of their infrastructure.

        Say, is anyone supposed to give a flying fuck about that?
        Let them sabotage all they want and drive more people to public networks, as long as these manage to make money over acceptable time frames (a few years) and ain't permanently deficitary there is no problem here, the customers (you) pays the right price for

        • Say, is anyone supposed to give a flying fuck about that?

          Except that it leaves the city with absolutely no competitors over time, and gives the government complete and utter control over every citizen's internet access. Don't you find that just a bit disturbing, or are you one of those folks who trusts government (and your neighbors) implicitly?

          Max

    • Re:The cities have a right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:36PM (#13089269)
      *shrug*

      The government is the biggest, baddest monopoly of all. It's also an insidious one because there is no direct correlation between its fees (taxes) and its expenditures. If your cell phone company, for example, charges you a ruinous rate, you can see exactly how ruinous it is. You can then decide whether their cell service is really that important to you, and if it's not, you can cancel and take your money elsewhere. If it's your government providing your service, not only can you not take your money elsewhere except by moving (which can have very high costs), you also have no idea how much of your yearly "bill" is actually going to the service. It's like paying your rent, electric, water, sewer, garbage, telephone, Internet, and cable bills all at once, with no idea how much goes to each. Your rent may be $500/mo or it may be $5000/mo. And of course, if you don't want telephone service - maybe you have a cell phone - you have no way of saying "Don't bill me for this, because I'm not using it." You're paying for it whether you use it or not.

      So those are some of the reasons why governments providing services is usually a very bad thing. Now for what I think would be the right way to handle broadband, and yes, it does include government intervention.

      Basically, the government would own the fiber and some of the supporting hardware (routers etc). It would buy it all at first and pay for it via loans or bonds or whatever else (but not taxes). It would then turn around and lease the fiber to private companies at cost, plus some more to pay off the initial investment in, say, five or ten years. Obviously companies could lease part of the network - for example a high-speed link between two offices - or some of the bandwidth of the entire network (an ISP). All maintenance and upgrade costs would be split up among the interested lessees. The government would be involved in this only as an arbiter and guarantor of quality of service (i.e. it ensures a base level of maintenance and that there is enough bandwidth for everyone who wants it).

      (One important part is that this has to be leased at cost. No more, no less. If the government makes a profit, it will dump it into other projects: see Social Security. If it loses money regularly, it will try to raise it via taxes or by diverting funds from other projects. It's really critical that this be a self-sufficient, not-for-profit program. Obviously with floating costs, lessee turnover, etc., some years this will turn a profit and some years it will take a loss. But with good planning this should be manageable, and it goes without saying that any profits should be set aside to cover future losses or, hell, refunded directly. As long as the program isn't running an annual loss, most lessees would be content to pay the remainder at the end of the year if they were given refunds years when it made money. If you are running in the red every year, then you need to consider the possibility that people in your area really don't find this a valuable service and settle for providing high-speed Internet access just in libraries or other centralized areas.)

      The neat part is that this really opens up the market to small area businesses by knocking out the enormous initial investments. It also allows the fiber to be "multi-use" through multiple providers: you can get Internet, phone, and cable TV over the same fiber from three different companies.

      Of course, this will never happen. Either it will be blocked by the big companies or it will become yet another socialist pork project (because we really need more of those). But Slashdot is the forum for subjunctive dreaming!

      • Re:The cities have a right (Score:4, Insightful)

        by penix1 ( 722987 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:01PM (#13089442) Homepage
        "If your cell phone company, for example, charges you a ruinous rate, you can see exactly how ruinous it is. You can then decide whether their cell service is really that important to you, and if it's not, you can cancel and take your money elsewhere."

        Therein lies the problem. There is no "elsewhere" to take it in most rural areas. Cable & phone companies are government sanctioned monopolies. I'm sure you have cable in your area. Let's say it is Cox. Try taking your cable business to Charter and see what answer you get.

        Governments provide services like these when corporate entities can't or won't. That is one of the jobs of government.

        B.
      • The government is the biggest, baddest monopoly of all. It's also an insidious one because there is no direct correlation between its fees (taxes) and its expenditures.

        There is no direct correlation in business either. The price for products and services are set by what the market will bear, not what it costs to make.
      • The government is the biggest, baddest monopoly of all.
        There is a key difference: with government you get to vote.

        Anyways, I agree with your plan: let the city build the infrastructure, and let companies compete for ISP services on that fiber.

        • There is a key difference: with government you get to vote.

          And your neighbors can vote to erect a firewall that prevents 'disturbing internet sites' from 'corrupting the youth of the city'. Thanks, but I'll pass on letting my fellow citizens tell me what I can and cannot see on the internet.

          Max

  • Los Angeles (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tablespork ( 564764 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:50PM (#13089020)
    Anybody else think that title could have been worded better to avoid confusion with the more common LA?
    • Are you kidding? I'm sure all of the foreign readers automatically think of the Bayou State, and not the smog city in California when "LA" is written...

    • Re:Los Angeles (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rickler ( 894262 )
      "LA city" usually means a city. Not a city in a state.

      Would you write "NY city" and expect people to think your talking about Buffalo and not the city of New York? :rolleyes:
      • New York City is the name of a city. Thus, NYC, or NY City would be apropos. However L.A. is an abbreviation of Los Angeles, please note the name is NOT Los Angeles City.

        'New York city' is not equivalent to 'New York City'. Note the importance of capitalization in this matter. When City is capitalized a specific city with the name New York City is being referred to. Whereas, New York city refers to some unspecified city in the state of New York.

        Good Grief, people take a course in basic English composition
    • You're assuming they know how to spell 'Louisiana'.
    • Yeah, I'm sure people all around the world know where Los Angeles California is! LA is the proper 2 letter abbreviation for Louisiana, and LA is a state, that's more important than any city. Btw last time I checked LA has a bigger population too.

      Mod this an unintentional troll. Think before you post.

  • Dirty Cox (Score:5, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Sunday July 17, 2005 @05:50PM (#13089021)
    including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming

    Cox is right. After all, we saw that happen with roads and highways. You know, if they were privatized, you'd be able to drive them any hour of the day as much as you want, but since they're owned by the public, you have to ration your usage of them. Sometimes you'll be halfway to your destination only to find that your allocated monthly miles have expired and you have to walk home... and then you find out that your monthly allocation of side-walk travel has expired as well and you're all sorts of fucked.

    Seriously though, I do wonder how difficult it will be when there is an outage? What are your means of resolution?

    and block religious channels

    Yeah. Because god knows we can't do without the umpteen thousand religious channels on cable. Why, that's why I pay $120 for my digital cable. Just so I can have to surf through the 10 religious channels, the half dozen stupid local/public access channels with idiots and their religious/nude/idiotic shows and the half dozen shopping network channels. Why, dear lord we can't do without all of that. Thank god Cox sets us up the Jesus so sufficiently.

    As for Cingular threatning to close the call-center... Come on... like they hadn't already planned to ship the jobs overseas or open up a call center in the midwest where they can get labor for half the cost? This was just a convenient point of leverage for them to use. If they won, they won. If they lost, they still win because they were going to move 'em anyway.
    • religious/nude ... shows

      Ah, it hurts [billygraham.org]!
    • Sweet jesus [sorry] you have loads of wits about you.

      If you're ever in Ottawa give me a ring. I owe you a pint.

      Tom -- who is glad to see someone else with good common sense about them
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I am a religious person, though admittedly one who is not particularly into collective worship in public.

        The whole 'the government will bar religious shows' sounds bogus.

        I'm sure there's a way to fairly auction some channel space to private individuals, and then make it clear that the religious show was put on by the private individuals and does not translate to an endorsement by the government, which is all you really need. As for the internet - there's already a lot of fiber optic cable owned by the gov
        • As an agnostic, I am tired of people confusing seperation of church and state. Yeah, it's a bad idea and I'm a tad offended by putting religious monuments of a specific popular religion inside a courthouse. And yeah, I'd be offended if the Christians and Muslims got to have their cable and public acccess shows and the Wiccans and whatever-elsians didn't. And I'd be pissed if someone tried to force me to believe a religion. Or spent public funding on it.

          However, as most public access policies seem to be fai

      • Re:Dirty Cox (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Seumas ( 6865 ) *
        Maybe things are different down there, but in my experience, almost every city provides public access programming that is created, produced and performed by whoever wants to be involved. The shows are broadcast over cable, by the cable companies but these are based on agreements they (as a utility) have with the local governments.

        So if the government forces private broadcast carriers to provide public access shows (including religious content which seems to make up 50% of public access -- the other 50% bei
      • After all, you have to maintain a seperation between church and state.

        Y'know, I didn't think of that. As an ardent (small 'l') libertarian it never occurred to me that a government-owned cable company might not be able to run religious channels.

        Here's my libertarian membership card - sign me up!

        Max
    • As for Cingular threatning to close the call-center... Come on... like they hadn't already planned to ship the jobs overseas or open up a call center in the midwest where they can get labor for half the cost?

      I'm sure the city had some sort of early termination fee, right? I hear that is a requirement for anything in the telco space...
      /ducks
    • You know, if they were privatized, you'd be able to drive them any hour of the day as much as you want, but since they're owned by the public, you have to ration your usage of them.

      I know you're trying to be sarcastic, but this is actually truer than you think: it's called traffic. Despite the fact that costs-per-additional-car are much higher during rush hour than during non-peak times, these costs aren't borne (directly) by the driver. The result is that people drive even when they don't "need" to, re
      • The result is that people drive even when they don't "need" to, resulting in more traffic for those who really DO need to use the roads at those times.

        And how do you qualify or quantify "need" there?
    • " Just so I can have to surf through the 10 religious channels, the half dozen stupid local/public access channels with idiots and their religious/nude/idiotic shows and the half dozen shopping network channels"
      Yea I do not want to see any Wiccian or Buddhist channels on my TV. Good grief where are the freedom people when someone bashes freedom of religion?
      Seriously though a City could have issues with any religious programming thanks to some peoples extreme views on separation of church and state.
      I am for
      • Of course the sad thing is LA is probably one of the last places that need this.

        Just to clarify, this is Lafayette, LA [Louisiana], not Los Angeles, California.

    • Re:Dirty Cox (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Geoffreyerffoeg ( 729040 )
      You don't sound like you'te from Lafayette. The vast majority of us go to church. I would guess that over half of my high school classmates go to church - and that's probably the one demographic with the lowest religiousness. One website I saw reports around 80% church membership for Lafayette.

      (Interestingly, for all that Slashdot does to promote the First Amendment, you do seem a little touchy when someone starts to use the freedom of speech to promote freedom of religion.)
    • Yeah. Because god knows we can't do without the umpteen thousand religious channels on cable.

      Exactly. He knows, but without the cable channel, how will he let us know?

    • Heh! (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      The real twist in your analogy is that private-sector roads are almost invariably toll roads and almost invariably rationed. :)


      And, yeah, the odds are that Cingular was going to off-shore all the work anyway, all the difference this makes is that they get to have some free advertising in the form of PR statements.

  • including statements that a city-run cable system might ration TV programming and block religious channels.

    I considered giving that argument a minimal amount of credence until I realized that the story was referring to Louisiana, not Los Angeles!

    After all, I would speculate that the religious community in Louisiana would be just a little more powerful.

  • When the free market is subjected to harm.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:04PM (#13089092)
    .. the government is the one to step in. In this case it is the city-level goverment. Indeed, that is what the government is there to do: provide what the free market cannot. The free market has been obstructed in this instance due to the monopolistic practices of the cable and phone companies. So it's more than acceptable for the people to unite, in the form of the city government, against the monopolistic forces that are obstructing the free market.

    Some simple-minded individuals like to cry "communism" or "socialism" at this point. But anyone with any economic knowledge knows that you sometimes need the government to intervene in order to maximize the benefit and potential of the capitalistic free market for all of society (not just a few cable and phone companies).

  • Looking at the local offer by Cox, I would argue that the program cannot get any worse. Perhaps with better access for people like you and me we will see less influence by the so called news networks, religious propaganda machines (why shall I pay for this junk?) and instead get an educated program from local universities, concerned citizens and political parties other than the two half parties who are running the show, and possibly from people who would otherwise never dare to go public. The perspective of

  • Business and Religion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:17PM (#13089167) Homepage Journal
    ...a city-run cable system might ... block religious channels.
    That's an ironic claim. There used to be a lot more religious channels on commercial cable than there are now. What happened to them? Providers needed their bandwidth for all those useless "bundles" that they're forced to buy. Viewers complained, but business is business.

  • Religious channels (Score:5, Interesting)

    by charvolant ( 224858 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:21PM (#13089186) Homepage
    I'm not familiar with the US model of church and state separation. Do US cities forbid religious parades on the grounds that public roads are maintained and operated by the government? Or is there some subtle legal difference between common roads and a common fibre optic network? Or is this, perchance, just a bit of puffed smoke?

    • Re:Religious channels (Score:5, Informative)

      by Akai ( 11434 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:13PM (#13089508) Homepage Journal
      It's a big bit of puffed smoke.

      The seperation of church and state is not the exclustion of all religion from the public space, it is the avoidance of sponsoring or establishng a state religion.

      In you public grounds example, if a local government were to allow a christian group to hold a christmas pagent, then they legally would be oblidged to allow the local pagans to celebrate the soltice on the same or comparable grounds.

      For TV, that's another thing, because religion on TV is a private enterprise function, not a government function. A municiple cable company most likely would be governed by the same FCC statutes that corporate cable companies must follow. These statutes include a provision called "must carry" which allows any TV Station over a certain signal strengh to request and recieve carriage on the cable network.

      For non-broadcast cable relgious stations, that would be a business, as opposed to a legal decision I think. The Click Network [click-network.com] is Tacoma, Washington's municiple network, run by the city-owned power company. A quick perusal of their cabler offering includes many local channels, some no doubt religious, as well as several cable religious channels. Tacoma isn't exactly the bible-belt, so if there were going to be challenges to the programming content they most likely would have occured there, than in the heart of the south.

      • Tacoma isn't exactly the bible-belt, so if there were going to be challenges to the programming content they most likely would have occured there, than in the heart of the south.

        What can you do, it's the closest we can cet this side of the mountains.

  • Outcry (Score:5, Funny)

    by cloudscout ( 104011 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @06:22PM (#13089191) Homepage
    I imagine all four of the citizens who watch the religious channels were lobbying heavily against this.
  • They have a broader set of ordinances mandating fibre to the home, and business-- all with nearby access to the National Lamba Rail.

    The good news is: this is a trend that ought to shake up how we think of broadband-- as a utility like water, gas, and electricity.

  • Well, this is good. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:14PM (#13089511) Homepage
    Now we'll get to see whether the libertarian cries that internet access as a municipal service will cause incurable diseases and economic collapse hold true. I mean, we'll actually have a test case, a normal one not based on ridiculous circumstance (like San Francisco being so incredibly tiny that you can actually serve the entire thing with 802.11).

    Of course I'm a little worried that maybe Louisiana is not the best place to try something like this... since Louisiana is by some metrics of measurement the most corruption-plagued state government in the union... does the City of Lafayette tend to suffer from this similarly?

    I'm also REALLY curious about what happens if the cable/phone monopolies try to "retaliate" against Lafayette. I think the easiest way for the nation to start seeing the cable/phone companies for what they really are is if we start seeing stories in the media about how if you don't pass laws in your local community the exact way the telco/cable corps want, they'll make you regret it ...

    but of course considering most people get their news from cable television itself maybe the media just won't speak of such things.
    • Now we'll get to see whether the libertarian cries that internet access as a municipal service will cause incurable diseases and economic collapse hold true.

      Oh, the drama! I see you aren't prone to exaggeration.

      I dunno what the Libertarian Pary thinks about this, nor do I care. As a libertarian though, I would have preferred it if the city had decided to repeal the restrictions that government utility creation and do with with municipal monopolies altogether. Either that or create the infrastructure i
      • I see you aren't prone to exaggeration.

        Oh, definitely, that was entirely hyperbolic. But, if you've seen some of the previous slashdot articles on these subjects (say the Texas case), it isn't that far off. Assuming of course that you browse at score:0.

        ^_^

    • Re:Well, this is good. (Score:3, Informative)

      by vought ( 160908 )
      Of course I'm a little worried that maybe Louisiana is not the best place to try something like this... since Louisiana is by some metrics of measurement the most corruption-plagued state government in the union... does the City of Lafayette tend to suffer from this similarly?

      No. While Louisiana is famous for it's politicians who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Lafayette is one of the brightest spots on the map when it comes to honesty and relative transparency in city-parish government.

  • More idiocy on broadband... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:20PM (#13089552)
    ...this is the same /. that is generally leery of statist anything and so pro-personal rights, right?

    But as soon as municipal broadband is broached, people who'd usually don a tinfoil hat with regard to any government involvement start drooling like idiots if they think they're going to get higher speeds at lower costs, and screw it if the big bad government is doing it. Suddenly they aren't so bad.

    The point about the government not being there to make cars, just the roads is applicable. Heck, they can't even maintain the roads under the cars. Some places are under perpetual construction. And mostly, it is because of incompetence and venal attitude. Hey, we can draw it out as a permanent taxation reason.

    It's far from paranoia to suggest that government would do the same with this. Nor is it paranoia to suggest that once they had total coverage that they'd abuse their power to force private companies to sell their services at a dead loss until they went out of business or at least stopped serving those places.

    Do you want the same US government that has given us interstate fights over segregation, womens' rights, gay marriage, the Meese Porn Report, etc., etc., ad nauseum, to be controlling your information pipe?

    Since George W. Bush took office the first time, we've heard nothing but paranoid anti-American ravings of vitriol aimed at him and his admin. Yes, let's suddenly forget our stance about government taking our Internet away and censoring everything and lying to us and suddenly act as though we never said any of that. As long as you get gigabit pr0n and sub 5ms ping times to frag your friends, right? As long as you get to thumb your nose at the cable company, right?

    Wake up and smell the contradictions here people. The same government that can't keep a shuttle from blowing up every few years and launch the remaining one it has without turning into nervous piles of drool... The same government that drops trousers and bends over for the MPAA/RIAA and nods like a bunch of doofuses at the mention of requiring DRM... The same governments that can't manage their cities, can't get along with their suburbs, can't respect the freedom of their citizens nor understand that the government manages at the leisure of the citizenry and that the citizenry aren't free at the leisure of the government... These are the people you want running your Internet and tv entertainment pipes.

    I don't think so.

    • Right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Sunday July 17, 2005 @07:42PM (#13089666) Homepage
      Because everything the government does has to be either all good or all bad.

      There's no way that government could be something with both positive and negative aspects, or a necessary evil with potentially useful functions. There's no way you can view referendum-based local democracy and a national governmental bureaucracy run by termed elected representatives as somehow different. There's no way that you can consider the removal of checks balances and constitutional limitations on law enforcement to be bad, while considering taxing the public and providing public services in return to be potentially good.

      Nope, either you fully approve of all potential uses of governments from bombing randomly selected foreign countries to city-level arts funding, and approve equally of all government leaders regardless of the rightness of their specific actions or level of public support they're acting with, or you're an anarchocapitalist.

      There's black, and there's white. Anything in between is just hypocrisy.
  • Not sure why the Telcos and cable companies are fighting this. They can make a killing in managing these networks. Lets do the math, the city incurs all the cost of building the infrstructure. But, the city will have no experience in managing and maintaing a high speed network. Well the only folks with that kind of experience are the big telcos and cable companies. They can charge hugh fees to montitor and maintain these networks without owning any of the infrastructure.

  • What is Push Polling: (Score:3, Informative)

    by boijames ( 641781 ) on Sunday July 17, 2005 @08:43PM (#13089993) Homepage
    From Wikipedia:

    A push poll is a political campaigntechnique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll]. Push polls are generally viewed as a form of negative campaigning. The term is also sometimes used incorrectly to refer to legitimate polls which test political messages, some of which may be negative. Push polling has been condemned by the American Association of Political Consultants.

    The mildest forms of push polling are designed merely to remind voters of a particular issue. For instance, a push poll might ask respondents to rank candidates based on their support of abortion in order to get voters thinking about that issue.

    More negative are attacks on another candidate by using polls. These attacks often contain information with little or no basis in fact.

    True push polls tend to be very short, with only a handful of questions, so as to make as many calls as possible. The data obtained is discarded, not analyzed. Any poll that does not ask demographic information -- such as age, income, or race -- is generally not a legitimate poll, but some form of advertising.

    Perhaps the most famous alleged use of push polls is in the 2000 United States Republican Party primaries, when it was alleged that George W. Bush's campaign used push polling to torpedo the campaign of Senator John McCain. Voters in South Carolina reported being asked "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" an allegation that had no substance but planted the idea of undisclosed allegations in the minds of thousands of primary voters. McCain and his wife had in fact adopted an Asian child.

  • Our local municipal utility company wanted to get in on this game about three years ago. They wanted to raise the money through bonds, and were successful with the City Commission in securing the bonds. Work began, but not before two voices were raised: A local upstart Bell$outh-Buyback company, and a multimagillion dollar flash-in-the-pan cable company both went to the public airwaves and local newspaper, and began fomenting all kinds of arrogance about how the public shouldn't fund this venture without
  • where this vote took place. We've been subject to waiting for Cox and Bellsouth to get off their a$$ and offer us something other than sub-par services. If not for anything else, we'll have a little more competition... and the consumer always wins with more competition.
    Lafayette, LA has been gradually moving toward being a more tech focused city. With this development, hopefully we'll see some businesses spring up or be attracted to the area. I'm a CS student at UL ( http://louisiana.edu/ [louisiana.edu]) located in
  • On Saturday, Lafayette, Louisiana voters gave BellSouth and Cox the collective finger and approved a municipal FTTH network by a 62% to 38% margin.

    Good for them! That's a real breath of fresh air, especially coming from a state like Louisiana. Hopefully more states/municipalities will follow their lead!
  • So if you're not going to give me the bandwidth I want - and I know it's technically possible, other places have it. Then 'eff off and let my city give it to me. Supply and demand at the core.

    Chances are though - the city will turn yellow and bow to the money, hookers, and lawsuits being tossed at them.

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