English: Fibre optic strands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A November 2013 report by the Reason Foundation, a self-proclaimed libertarian, free-market think tank, claims municipal broadband projects like Lafayette Utilities System’s fiber network are fundamentally flawed and practically destined to fail.
“For all the enthusiasm about municipal broadband, one fact remains: A great majority of systems fail,” author Steven Titch wrote in “Lessons in Municipal Broadband from Lafayette, Louisiana.” “Those that survive end up falling short of their promised goals of lower prices, better service and ubiquity.”
Titch claims that LUS Fiber boasts about revenues on the rise, but more and more of those revenues are coming from the city-owned utility system. He said LUS “might be bending the rules” that prohibit the utility from subsidizing the fiber entity.
But LUS Director Terry Huval said Monday it’s Titch’s report that’s flawed and biased.
“Steven Titch, a paid analyst, and formerly a news editor in the telecommunications industry, has been criticizing LUS Fiber and other municipal broadband systems for virtually the past decade,” Huval wrote in response to the report.
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About Mark Milliman
Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
