Repeal! Guest Editorial

Daily Advertiser Guest Editorial:
Repeal act that gives BellSouth leverage to delay fiber plan
By John St. Julien
Original URL: http://www.acadiananow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060114/OPINION01/601140334/1014/OPINION
Saturday, January 14th, 2006

(This version contains in-line extensions or references in green text. Passing your cursor over the the visible text will bring up new, green, text that tells the reader a bit more.)

BellSouth has kept the people of Lafayette from building their own fiber-optic utility for long enough. Had the incumbents simply allowed Lafayette to move forward without trying to outlaw new competition, the project would now be in construction, with first hook-ups expectedly shortly.

It's clear that the current providers, and especially BellSouth, haven't dealt fairly with our community. Beneath it all, the most fundamental issue is respect.The incumbents have consistently treated the people and their elected officials like rubes or children. What is conspicuously absent is the sort of respect for your opponent that leads to dealing with opposition truthfully and keeping your word when you strike a deal. They've taken compromises we made to keep the project moving and used them to increase our costs and delay our project. We need to take away the weapon they're using. Every delay since the vote has been based on this law. Were it not in place, hearings before the PSC would have been unnecessary and none of the lawsuits filed would have been possible. Demand repeal of the Local Government Fair Competition Act.

It's a matter of bad faith on the part of these companies, who can no longer be considered good citizens of our community. BellSouth and Cox refuse to build a fiber-optic system here, yet they're trying to block us from building one ourselves. They've used a string of ugly tactics: insulting push polls, a deceptive "academic conference," a threat to move the Cingular call center out of Lafayette and more.

The Local Government Fair Competition Act, (Click on the title to view the Act as signed by the Governor) which was sold to the city as a compromise that would allow our project to go forward with some restrictions, instead has been used to delay the project and raise the costs to citizens. To make matters worse, that law has crippled New Orleans' ability to use its own wireless network to aid her people following Katrina and it blocks other Louisiana communities from taking care of themselves as well. New Orleans' experience with BellSouth was brutal and a rival to the way Lafayette was treated over the Cingular call center. BellSouth's office, which took water but was repairable, was in a part of New Orleast that was deserted after the storm. BellSouth chose to abandon it and move those jobs to the north shore. Turning an uncomfortable situation to its advantage it offered to give the building to the city which was in need of a new central police station. All seemed fine until the city decided it would share its wireless security infrastructure, which had weathered the storm relatively undamaged, with its citizens for free. Down came the hammer. An enraged Oliver called the city's director of homeland security to tell him the deal was off. When this exchange was publicized that was changed to "still being negotiated." We've heard nothing more about a final resolution. If New Orleans were not in a state of emergency the Local Government (un)Fair Competition Act would limit speeds on any network it shared with its citizens to meager, subbroadband 200k. It is clear that communities in our state ought to consider building networks that would be robust enough to take care of their whole city's needs in case of a catastophic hurricane. But if BellSouth's law survives most of that capacity will go wasted most of the time solely to sustain BellSouth and Cox's profit margin. The idea is, or should be, absurd; our citizens ought to be able to use their own networks without being vetoed by an out of state corporation with no particular allegiance to their community.