community broadband networks

In this week's Community Connections, Christopher chats with Anne Schweiger, Broadband and Digital Equity Advocate for the city of Boston. Schweiger talks about the challenges that Boston faces, including a lack of competition and adoption of broadband in the home. She talks about the importance of "baking good broadband practice" into building codes for cities.

In February, 2016 the Boston Globe editorial board came out in support of a municipal network. 

Boston has its own conduit network and significant fiber assets, but residents and businesses must seek service from large private providers. 

On Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Christopher Mitchell sat down with Bill Wallace of US Ignite and Mark Erickson of the city of Winthrop, Minnesota, to talk about the exciting applications communities can develop if they have the connectivity they need.

This interview is paired with ILSR's report, RS Fiber: Fertile Fields for New Rural Internet Cooperative. The report documents a groundbreaking new model that’s sprung up in South Central Minnesota that can be replicated all over the nation, in the thousands of cities and counties that have been refused service by big cable and telecom corporations.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this video podcast on RS Fiber, to be released Thursday as part of our ongoing series featuring community and policy leaders in the field.

In June, 2005, voters in Lafayette chose to invest in a municipal FTTH network, now known as the only municipal gigabit network in the state, LUS Fiber. To celebrate the milestone, City-Parish President Joey Durel has declared July LUS Fiber Month. Current customers' Internet access has been boosted up to gigabit speed at no extra charge for July and the city will celebrate with a series of events this week. The entire community is invited to participate onsite but most of the events will be broadcast live so if you are not there, you can be part of the celebration. See the list of events below.

In the past ten years, the network has attracted thousands of new jobs, created better educational opportunities, and helped bridge the digital divide. Just last fall, three high tech companies committed to bringing approximately 1,300 new jobs to the "Silicon Bayou." The presence of the network, the University of Louisiana's local top-ranked computer science program, and its quality grads were two more key factors for choosing Lafayette. In April, Standard & Poor gave LUS Fiber an A+ bond rating based on the system's "sustained strong fixed charge coverage and liquidity levels, and the communication system’s improved cash flow."

The July issue of the local Independent tells the story of the network. According to Terry Huval, Director of LUS Fiber, the self-reliant streak has always been part of Lafayette's culture - in 1996 the city celebrated its 100th year vote to create its own electric and water system. The Independent article describes that culture as it permeated the vision shared by City-Parish President Joey Durel and  Huval.

"The vision was simple: Lafayette was already benefiting from a very successful electric, water and wastewater system, and LUS could leverage its expertise to offer Internet and other telecommunications services, if that is what our community wanted,” he says. “After we threw out the idea, the entrepreneurial, wildcatter spirit of Lafayette seemed to take it from there.”

Even with a vision, it took strong community organizing to overcome incumbent efforts to derail any municipal network project. John St. Julien was at the front of those efforts; he spoke with Chris in episode #19 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast about organizing strategies and fending off attacks from incumbent providers. Mobilizing to improve connectivity with a fiber network brought together individuals from every demographic in the community. Business leaders worked with community activists because they all needed better connectivity.

Fighting misinformation and lies from incumbents became a valuable tool, reports the Independent:

The citizen group was able to settle into reaction mode: Once the dumb, clunky messages came out, they took to their emails and blog and pointed out every single lie. It wasn’t just an opportunity to educate; it was an opportunity to draw on local pride and, again, that spirit of audacity. “It was a lot of fun to watch, waiting for them to say something else ridiculous and outrageous,” John St. Julien remembers.

Those clunky messages eventually backfired and, with anti-incumbent sentiment strong, the voters chose to serve themselves with a publicly owned, accountable, reliable municipal network.

Achieving success has not been easy as LUS Fiber has had to contend with lawsuits, delays, restrictive state laws, and twisted criticisms over the past ten years. While Lafayette has much to celebrate, Huval reflected in the Independent article on what more could have been accomplished if the situation were different:

We entered this arena as underdogs.

We had to fight for every success we achieved. We were forced to accept a law that was going to make our entry into this business far more difficult. We incurred lawsuit delay after lawsuit delay — delays that impacted our entry into this competitive market for three years. I know of no local government telecom system that has had to go through the extreme challenges we encountered.

If we would not have had all these early legal impediments, we would have been on-line faster and drawn in far more customers, more quickly. If we could have captured the level of strong enthusiasm in those early years, there is no doubt our revenues would have been stronger, and we could have been even more creative and aggressive. ... Under the circumstances, there was not much we could have done differently and still reach a successful business result.

We concur. Lafayette's success is all the more powerful given the tremendous obstacles they had to overcome. But they overcame them and kept a sense of humor throughout. We have greatly enjoyed every opportunity to interact with everyone we have met from Lafayette - from Joey Durel, Terry Huval, and John St Julien to recent transplant Geoff Daily to the folks making poboys at Olde Tyme Grocery.

Thanks to the city utility, local Cox customers report that the company appears to be reacting to the competition with more reasonable rates and better customer service. LUS Fiber is in the black and revenues are projected to reach $50 million per year in the next nine years. While LUS Fiber and the people of Lafayette are celebrating success as measured by time on the calendar, they can also celebrate their own grit and determination. 

Durel to the Independent:

I knew this had the possibility of transforming Lafayette — that 25 years later, Lafayette would be a better place because of this...Even if fiber just breaks even, but we create thousands of new jobs because of it, that’s a win.

Watch video below from KLFY Channel 10 reported on the network earlier this month, highlighting one of the telemedicine applications made possible by LUS Fiber.

Schedule of events:

Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) With City-Parish President Joey Durel and LUS Fiber Director Terry Huval

Tuesday, July 14th - 1:30 - 3:30 p.m.

Get answers to your questions as we host an AMA session. Join us by going to http://reddit.com/r/iama

Fiber for Breakfast

Wednesday, July 15 - 7:00 - 10:30 a.m. CST


Live Remote Broadcast on KATC-TV 
LUS Fiber Customer Service Center - 1875 W. Pinhook Road
Join us for a live remote braodcast on KATC-TV and a breakfast bite.

George Porter, Jr. & the Runnin Pardners
 The Park at the Horse Farm

Levitt Amp Concert Series feat.

Wednesday, July 15 - 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.


Come out and celebrate with LUS Fiber - a night of great music and fun, in a venue steeped with history.

LUS Fiber joins City-Parish President Joey Durel for "Lafayette Live" on KPEL


Thursday, July 16 - 7:30 - 8:00 p
.m.

City-Parish President Joey Durel is joined by LUS Fiber Director Terry Huval during "Lafayette Live" on 96.5 KPEL. Be sure to tune-in as they reminisce the 2005 Election and the ten-year road that followed.

Our report, Broadband at the Speed of Light: How Three Communities Built Next-Generation Networks dives deep into Lafayette's accomplishment. But in terms of our enthusiasm for what Lafayette has accomplished, well ... Kermit is a pretty good proxy for how we feel:

With the release of the city of Seattle's community broadband feasibility study, media outlets turned to ILSR and our own Christopher Mitchell for context, and to help uncover what can be done to help improve connectivity for all Seattleites. 

The same week, Christopher was invited to the city by Upgrade Seattle to help launch their initiative. Below are some selected publicity highlights from Seattle. 

KUOW's "The Record" with Ross Reynolds. How can Seattle get affordable broadband Internet  

KEXP's "Mind Over Matters" with Mike McCormick. Video is below. "What is Seattle's Next Step?" You can also listen to the Audio version here.

GovTech: Colin Wood interviewed Chris for his June 12 article Muni Broadband Goes Mainstream.

“You don’t just want better Internet access,” Mitchell said. “You want to know for whom and at what cost. Is your problem connecting low-income populations? That requires different thinking than if you’re just trying to attract some high-tech businesses to your town.”

CrossCut.com: Amelia Havenec covered the lunch & learn conversation between Chris and Upgrade Seattle organizer Hollis Wong-Wear. Following setbacks, municipal broadband supporters continue urging action

“The focus should be on the people who are not connected, the people who are left behind,” Mitchell responded. “Low income people pay $10 a month for Comcast. But you can only connect one device per household. To make sure everybody has a basic connection at home, there’s a $5 million budget to bring one-gigabit, fiber-to-the-premises internet access to tens of thousands of single-family homes in Beacon Hill, Central District, and Queen Anne. With all the transportation planning right now, it’s a good time to identify a fiber conduit in the ground.”

GeekWire: Taylor Soper interviewed Chris as well. The two talked about how the debate over municipal broadband echoes the debate over whether to electrify cities in the 20th century. Municipal broadband in Seattle? New group lobbies city for public Internet

“The big electric companies had formed into giant monopolies, not unlike the monopolies we deal with today with Internet,” Mitchell said. “They repeatedly claimed that local government could not operate a municipal electric grid and said it would end up in failure and disaster. As you know in Seattle, that’s not true. We’ve seen local government take technology of the day and craft it so everyone benefits from it.”

Video: