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Great Background on Why Lafayette Vote is Significant

USATODAY.com - Bells dig in to dominate high-speed Internet realm In this article from January 2005, USA Today author Leslie Cauley does a good job of putting the Lafayette debate in perspective. The bottom line is that Bell companies seek to be both deregulated in treatment from state regulatory commissions and the FCC, but protected from competition by having municipalities, as potential competitors, hamstrung when they seek to build networks to compete with them. Having your cake and eating it too is a good place to be if you can make it happen.

Cauley follows up with an article from July 10 Towns battle big companies to expand broadband to update the artguments and analysis. This succinct quote says a lot about why what happened yesterday in Lafayette is signficant.

Michael Carlini, an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, likens Lafayette's fight with BellSouth to the bitter face-offs between the railroad and riverboat industries that were commonplace right after the Civil War. At the time, the riverboat was king, and the railroads were just getting started.

Carlini says the experience of Chicago and St. Louis is instructive: Trying to curry favor with riverboat operators, St. Louis' political machine imposed severe restrictions on railroad entry. Chicago, in sharp contrast, invited the railroads in.

The result: Chicago flourished, thanks in large part to the influx of commerce from outside the area. St. Louis, less accessible, became a second-tier city.

Carlini sees parallels with broadband. Only instead of fighting over the mode of transportation - riverboats vs. the railroads - it's about infrastructure.

Says Carlini: "We're killing ourselves from a global-competitiveness standpoint so that a few companies (like BellSouth) can keep making money on an obsolete business model."

Posted on July 17, 2005 at 11:12 AM

Comments

Actually, she got my name wrong in the article - it's JAMES Carlini and more information can be found at my web site www.carlinij.com and my editorials which you have also found at www.eprairie.com

Posted by: JAMES CARLINI on November 10, 2005 03:17 AM


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