Louisiana fiber network running -- despite cable, telco lawsuits

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.

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.

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.

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.