On 5/30/07, Joshua Zeidner <jjzeidner@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/30/07, Harold <hmichels01@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > While at risk of straying far from the original topic I would like to
> > add a comment regarding the penetration of broadband in the US.
> >
> > My observations are based on a report on PBS. It was probably a
> > FrontLine program at least six months ago.
> >
> > They reported on a town in Louisiana that installed their own community
> > based and financed broadband fiber-optic network to everyone in the
> > town.
>
>
>   Hi Harold,
>
>    You are probably referring to Lafayette:
>      http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/17/2128251
>


  interesting news on Lafayette FTTH project:

  http://isen.com/blog/2007/06/delays-pay-in-lafayette-fiber-project.html

  -jmz


Two factors that were considered. The local telecommunications
> > companies, as are all of the similar companies in the US have been
> > collecting a tax (fee) on their telecommunications that was supposed to
> > have been spent on upgrading the system. This tax has been in place for
> > about twenty years. The companies have been putting the income from the
> > tax/fee toward the bottom line on their revenue statement for all these
> > years.
>
>
>
>    The situation is somewhat of an 'emperor has no clothes' scenario.
> Given the proliferation of Fiber Optics in the 80s and the communications
> backbone that was built circa 1990, the telcos were left with an identity
> crisis.  So they hired Murphy Brown and began playing games with public[0].
> I'm not going to go much further into this here, as this is not a telecom
> forum.  What is becoming evident in this story is the role of american
> intelligence agencies have in the telecom market... and I'll leave it at
> that.
>
>    if you want more information, heres a good place to start:
>
>    http://www.freedom-to-connect.net/
>
>    -jmz
>
>
> [0] A 'stupid network' is not a profitable network.  One of my favorite
> papers on telecom: http://www.isen.com/stupid.html
>
>
>
> The local companies were not upgrading the system and indicated they
> > would not. The companies sued the town when they tried to implement
> > their own system using a special tax the town levied on its citizens.
> > The lawsuit was dismissed and work was proceeding at the time of the
> > report. The installation was going in post Katrina
> >
> > Mention was made that the town was only one of several that were doing
> > similar projects.
> >
> > Harold
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> .0000. communication.
> .0001. development.
> .0010. strategy.
> .0100. appeal.
>
> JOSHUA M. ZEIDNER
> IT Consultant
>
> ( 602 ) 490 8006
> jjzeidner@gmail.com
>