

Louisiana fiber network running -- despite cable, telco lawsuits - pasbesoin
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/05/lousiana-fiber-network-running-despite-cable-telco-lawsuits.ars

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S_A_P
I live in an area that has 2 providers, Comcast and Consolidated. Neither are
a good choice, both are pricey, and for some reason there is some law/policy
in place preventing other companies( like AT&T or verizon )from competing in
my location. It saddens me that the telcos seem to be impeding progress here
and preventing us from getting any kind of reasonable bandwidth to our homes.

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wheaties
All is fair in love and war. Where one can not win with a better product,
marketing, or price, one can legislate the outcome thereby removing the
outcome of failure. Doesn't it make you all warm and fuzzy inside?

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Alex63
At first glance this seems like a simple case of local government giving
citizens what they want - something that should be applauded. Having worked in
the old regulated telco environment, I have some questions that aren't
answered by the original story. Firstly, it would be interesting to know how
the municipality plans to recoup its capital investment. Are plant investments
being paid for with taxes, or is this being operated like a co-op? Do
taxpayers have the option to _not_ pay for this service (either directly or
through taxes)?

I assume that the city does not have to pay for rights of way to install
plant. If that is the case, they _do_ have a competitive advantage over
private providers. Capital costs and regulatory restrictions are often the
reason why there is no private competition for incumbent providers, and those
regulatory restrictions are often put in place to encourage the incumbent's
initial capital investment.

I wonder if the same result could have been achieved via private competition
if the city had made rights of way available to all interested parties, and
existing regulations had been lifted.

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wingo
Lovely article, and prescient in its own way in the context of diaspora-like
services: when we really control our own data, computation will be pushed out
to the leaf nodes of the net, which will require symmetry in net architecture.

The A in ADSL is another form of ser[vf]itude.

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protomyth
If the Federal Gov really wanted fiber, then it should pass a law allowing
municipalities to build out their own fiber networks under a certain set of
requirements.

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wingo
It did.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

(More broadly: one need not ask permission for natural rights.)

~~~
protomyth
Well, the states are not helping, you kinda need to go a level lower. Also, to
be fair, the tenth amendment has taken a beating over the year courtesy of the
Commerce clause.

