"We Speak French, Eat Crawfish, and Have the Fastest Broadband in the World." 

Terry Huval's fascination with fiber started with the fiber on his fiddle strings, so it's pretty appropriate that he regailed Christopher with his skills during this Community Connections episode. 

In the previous episode you heard from former Mayor, Joey Durel about overcoming controversy and Lafayette's LUS Fiber.

In this episode, Huval emphasizes why ownership is so important for cities to control their fiber infrastructure. He also touches on the other benefits of the public fiber network: faster response for outages, better connectivity for public safety and traffic control, and more than $13 million in cost savings for residents and businesses!

We hope you enjoy!

The city of Lafayette, Louisiana had an export problem. For years they had seen their young people become educated and move away from the small city, but local leaders like Joey Durel listened to experts like Terry Huval when they encouraged him to look into building a citywide fiber network.

In this video Christopher Mitchell interviews Joey Durel, former City-Parish President of Lafayette, Louisiana. In 2009 Lafayette Utilities System installed infrastructure for a fiber telecommunications network called LUS Fiber. The network provides digital cable, telephone service, and high-speed Internet to all households in Lafayette.

In the video, Durel emphasizes the hidden benefit of controversy when building advanced Internet networks: controversy educates the public. When local leaders are able to "think outside the box" and encourage discussion and debate, they are much more able to educate their constituents and in turn, make change. 

In January, our friend John St. Julien from Lafayette, Louisiana, passed away. Without John to help organize the people of Lafayette, the LUS Fiber network would not have had the strong grassroots support that made the project a success.

One of the ways John helped get the project going and spread the word about the many benefits of a municipal fiber network was through the Lafayette Pro Fiber Blog. The blog was a collection of resources, writings, and comment fights that shed light on the local issues that affected, and were affected by, Lafayette's previously poor connectivity and the municipal fiber network project.

The blog is a walk through one community's historical record as they took the initiative to invest in their future.

Even though John St. Julien has passed on and the fight for LUS Fiber is over, we want to preserve the record as an important historical document. We have obtained permission from John's loved ones to keep the blog archived online. Those who are new to the story of Lafayette, LUS Fiber, and John St. Julien, now have access to the stories that helped the community make the smart choice and move forward. The blog and its posts are archived here. Unfortunately, we only have stories from the beginning of the blog until 2011. 

As an educator, John knew that teaching people on the front lines was the best way to garner support for a movement to improve local connectivity. He used the blog to raise awareness about a range of matters from basic telecommunications terminology to the shady astroturf techniques meant to misinform voters. For a decade, John used the Lafayette Pro Fiber blog to set the record straight on incumbent lawsuits, strategic delays, and twisted criticisms. The resulting LUS Fiber network has brought jobs to the community, inspired affordable Internet access for all, and saved public dollars.

We learned yesterday that John St. Julien, one of the leading voices behind the strong grassroots support of the LUS Fiber project, passed away on Sunday, January 10. His presence will be missed by us and by the many people he helped through his work to bring better Internet access to Lafayette, Louisiana.

John visited us for the Community Broadband Bits podcast for episodes #19 and #94 to share his advice and experience as a grassroots organizer. John developed the Lafayette Pro Fiber blog in the early days of the the LUS Fiber network fight. The blog helped spread the truth about the network and correct the lies spread by the incumbents. His ability to communicate with the people of Lafayette set the record straight so they could make informed decisions about a municipal fiber network.

When Chris wrote his report about Lafayette's municipal fiber network, he turned to John to learn about the community effort behind the project. Chris had this to say about John and his triumphs:

"I think I met John my second year working on community networks. I had spoken with him several times over the phone and had decided to do a case study of Lafayette. I drove to Lafayette from Dallas and spent an afternoon with him, learning about the struggle against Cox and BellSouth for local self-reliance. Visiting Lafayette while hearing John's stories helped immeasurably to build my passion for this work."

"John taught me many lessons about organizing and compassion over the years. I'm grateful for that wisdom and all the people he shared it with. We will miss him greatly but his work will live on in many others."

In June, 2005, voters in Lafayette chose to invest in a municipal FTTH network, now known as the only municipal gigabit network in the state, LUS Fiber. To celebrate the milestone, City-Parish President Joey Durel has declared July LUS Fiber Month. Current customers' Internet access has been boosted up to gigabit speed at no extra charge for July and the city will celebrate with a series of events this week. The entire community is invited to participate onsite but most of the events will be broadcast live so if you are not there, you can be part of the celebration. See the list of events below.

In the past ten years, the network has attracted thousands of new jobs, created better educational opportunities, and helped bridge the digital divide. Just last fall, three high tech companies committed to bringing approximately 1,300 new jobs to the "Silicon Bayou." The presence of the network, the University of Louisiana's local top-ranked computer science program, and its quality grads were two more key factors for choosing Lafayette. In April, Standard & Poor gave LUS Fiber an A+ bond rating based on the system's "sustained strong fixed charge coverage and liquidity levels, and the communication system’s improved cash flow."

The July issue of the local Independent tells the story of the network. According to Terry Huval, Director of LUS Fiber, the self-reliant streak has always been part of Lafayette's culture - in 1996 the city celebrated its 100th year vote to create its own electric and water system. The Independent article describes that culture as it permeated the vision shared by City-Parish President Joey Durel and  Huval.

The community of Lafayette voted 10 years ago this month to create its own municipal FTTH network. In doing so, they created a standard that other communities have tried to emulate. On Tuesday, July 14th at 1:30 p.m. CDT, City-Parish President Joey Durel and LUS Fiber Director Terry Huval will host a Reddit Ask Me Anything about the initiative.

This is a great opportunity to learn about the community's vision, mobilization efforts, and the way it overcame challenges to create a highly successful municipal fiber network.

Prepare your questions and join the conversation at http://reddit.com/r/iama

Here is your video invitation from Terry Huval:

LUS Fiber is now sharing its municipal gigabit network with travelers at the Lafayette Regional Airport, reports KLFY News 10. According to the article, free Wi-Fi is available at the airport supported by LUS Fiber.

“Today’s travelers expect to stay connected when they are away from the office or home. With complimentary WiFi, guests can check important email, post to social media and browse the Internet,” said Steven Picou, Executive Director of Lafayette Regional Airport. “We recognize that to deliver complimentary Internet access contributes towards a positive customer impression of the airport, as well as Lafayette.”

LUS Fiber and the city of Lafayette has recently attracted a number of high tech companies and understands the value of first impressions. The airport is the perfect place to dazzle visiting potential employers:

“We know that businesses choose to come to Lafayette for a variety of reasons and many have cited our 100% fiber-optic network as one of those reasons,” said City-Parish President Joey Durel. “As a gateway to Lafayette, we want visitors to experience the ultra high speeds of a Gigabit Internet connection, from the moment they arrive to the moment they leave.”

We have long applauded communities that have built their own fiber networks and then elect to expand them to neighboring communities. In Louisiana for example, Lafayette could hoard its network, forcing people that want the best connectivity in the region to move within its borders. But instead, it is preparing to expand the network.

City-Parish President Joey Durel announced that the municipal network would begin expanding beyond Lafayette city limits. An article in The Advocate quoted Durel:

“As I have traveled this parish, one of the most common things I am asked is, ‘When will we get fiber?’ That answer depended in large part on making fiber successful in Lafayette. We’re there,” Durel told the crowd that filled the Cajundome Convention Center.

Durel noted that municipalities that make agreements with Lafayette based on future annexation will be considered if they are willing to pay for the cost of expansion in their communities. Youngsville is reported to be the first town be consider Lafayette's proposal for bringing better local residential and business connectivity.

Any expansion of municipal networks has to answer some of the same important questions of any partnerships - how to allocate risk and benefits. It doesn't seem appropriate for Lafayette to assume the full risk of expanding the network to Youngsville, for example. Those who receive the benefits should assume some risk, and those who assume risk should be compensated in some measure.

One community, Broussard, is balking. Apparently, the town of 6,800 people located just outside Lafayette city limits does not want to contribute to the cost of fiber in their community, reports The Advocate. Understanding these fights from afar is always challenging because neighboring communities have often developed animosity over decades from both real and imagined slights.

Broussard has taken a hard line:

When the FCC announced its intention last week to neutralize the negative impacts of Tennessee and North Carolina anti-muni laws, celebrating reached far beyond Chattanooga and Wilson. In Lafayette, home to LUS Fiber, City-Parish President Joey Durel took time to write a supportive letter to Wilson's Mayor Bruce Rose.

We reproduce the text of that letter below. As Durel points out, the two communities have strong similarities and the victory in Wilson has also reached Lafayette. Durel notes that a community's decision to better its connectivity should always be a local choice, that partisanship is not a natural part of the equation, and he encouraged Rose to "stay strong."

Dear Mayor Rose:

As Mayor of Lafayette, LA, a city that proudly provides electric and communications services to our businesses and residents, I want to congratulate you, your colleagues, and your constituents on your achievement in delivering world-class Internet services to the residents and businesses of Wilson - and on the strong endorsement you received last week from the Federal Communications Commission.

As in Wilson, the Lafayette community has been united in our support for high-capacity broadband connectivity to the Internet as an essential tool of economic development and as a means of securing our community's economic future. While some will use any means possible to distract you from achieving your goals for your community, our deeply conservative electorate has consistently supported our electric utility's great achievement in building a future-proof broadband Internet infrastructure, and this support has been consistently bi-partisan. My Democrat colleagues have joined me and my fellow Republicans in insisting that we in Lafayette should have the right to choose our broadband Internet future. We here in Lafayette will determine how our community engages this essential economic development tool, and we will not have our economic future dictated to us by others.