Now that Muni-Fi is so unsexy...
Killer App just got back from a tour of Lafayette, Louisiana's FTTH project -- a tour that must have been brief given the project
isn't built yet, and won't have customer online for eighteen months. They say they'll be offering their impressions of the non-existent network this week, but do offer a nice historical primer on how the project came about:
"LUS was created 100 years ago under remarkably similar circumstances as it stands today: new networks (these for transmitting electricity) were being laid in the region but not to their city, so instead of waiting for private entities to deem their city worthy of investing in, they created LUS and built out their own electrical grid. As a result, their community has been able to establish itself as a dynamic, progressive counterweight to Baton Rouge and New Orleans."
Lafayette, as you might recall, had to fight incumbent broadband providers Cox and BellSouth
tooth and nail in order to deploy the project. On the heels of the very sudden press realization that citywide Wi-Fi
isn't magic pixie dust, we'll expect that municipal FTTH will see greater attention, with Lafayette's $110 million dollar project a major litmus test.
Which online web site will be hyping Muni-FTTH
