How it started
History
In the late 1990s, the Lafayette Utilities System (Lafayette's municipally owned utilities company) needed to upgrade its outdated microwave system for connecting their substations. LUS chose to upgrade with Fiber Optic technology. In 2002, after installing the system for their needs, they used the surplus fiber optic strands to provide wholesale service to hospitals, universities and the Lafayette Parish School System.
In 2003 during the campaign for city-parish president, candidate Joey Durel expressed in a Chamber of Commerce debate with his opponent that he would not be in favor of LUS competing in the private sector. However, once taking office, Joey Durel led the charge for a citywide fiber to the premise initiative. As he often said, "I begged the private sector to do it so that we wouldn't have to." With the incumbents refusing, local government was the only option.
In 2004, the city announced its proposal for a municipal fiber network providing broadband internet, cable TV, and telephone services to the city of Lafayette. 70 percent of residents and 80 percent of businesses responded positively to a market survey conducted by LUS. The questions asked and the raw results of the telephone poll were requested by interested parties in the public but were never released. The announcement of the project came within 4 months of Durel's inauguration, just one day after the closing of submission of new bills in the state legislature. This would presumably prevent a challenge in the state legislature by the incumbent phone and cable provider, as there are many laws on the books regulating phone and cable TV providers, but no laws regulating a local municipality entering such business sectors.
Representatives from the ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Provider) Bellsouth (now AT&T) lobbied representatives in the legislature to modify an existing bill to regulate municipal entities entering into the telecommunications business. This bill, negotiated between representatives from Bellsouth, Cox Communications, LUS, Louisiana Energy and Power Authority, Louisiana Municipal Association, Louisiana policy jury association, and Governor Kathleen Blanco became the Local Government Fair Competition Act of 2004. This bill was adapted from the Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act, a model piece of legislation provided by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
As per the requirements of Local Government Fair Competition Act (LGFCA), LUS conducted a Feasibility Study and presented the study in November 2004. The Lafayette city-parish council voted to adopt the study and proceed with the sale of bonds by resolution in December 2004 and opted to forgo a referendum. This resolution resulted in a petition for a referendum in January 2005 and a subsequent lawsuit in February. The petition was conducted by a non-profit group calling themselves Fiber411.com. The group was founded by 3 citizens of Lafayette who spoke out at the public hearings against the Feasibility Study and later joined by other volunteers and concerned citizens. While some accused the group of being shills for Bellsouth and Cox, the three were of backgrounds in oil and gas leasing, home building and oilfield engineering respectively, had never met prior to November 2004 and had no ties to the communications industry nor local government.
From Wikipedia’s article on LUSFiber, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2