Ar’s Technica’s Mat Anderson writes about a very successful municipal fiber project in Louisiana. Residents there can get symmetric 50 Mbps broadband for under $60 per month.
And Anderson describes the significant roadblocks thrown in the way of Lafayette’s plans by the incumbents after they had initially refused to consider this area—all the usual tactics starting with a “fairness bill” passed by the Louisiana legislature that made it very difficult for municipalities to build their own broadband plant.
Here’s the money quote from Terry Huval, Lafayette’s Director of Utilities, given during his testimony before the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship:
“In Lafayette, we asked the cable companies and telephone companies to provide these services. And they said no: Lafayette was too small, and they weren’t gonna make that kind of investment.
Yet when we tried to to it ourselves, they opposed us.”