Why Does Louisiana Hate Broadband?

I've been watching a train wreck in slow motion the past few weeks as the state I now call home fumbles away $80 million of federal money to bring broadband to connect the unconnected.

The story is that the Louisiana State University Board of Regents was awarded an $80 million broadband stimulus grant from NTIA to extend LONI, Louisiana's statewide research fiber network, primarily into the northeast part of the state.

In particular the LONI extension was going to bring affordable 100Mbps service to rural high schools across wide swathes of Louisiana.

Only now those schools won't be getting these connections. Why?

Public details are sparse at this point, but NTIA's justification for pulling the funding is that there were serious doubts about whether the project would be able to spend its money fast enough to meet programmatic goals.

The other thing we know is that at some point in the process the Board of Regents asked the Governor's Office to get involved in helping get things back on track.

Only instead of focusing on how to execute more efficiently the plan as originally conceived, LA Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater appears to have shifted gears and tried to radically change the plan.

What was originally envisioned as $80 million spent to extend the physical infrastructure LONI into rural parts of the state that aren't currently adequately connected, instead became a plan to use that money on long-term lease with private providers.

Not surprisingly, the NTIA rejected these changes. I say "not surprisingly" not because I'm against public/private partnerships but because of the realities of this broadband stimulus program. There's no way NTIA could let a grantee not only radically change their plan this late in the game, but also do so in the direction away from investing this money directly into building out new infrastructure.

Here are some choice quotes reflecting LA Gov Jindal's perspective:

"Rainwater, whom the Board of Regents asked to help save the funding, said the grant as modeled would have 'basically created a public telecom.'

'The grant as presented would literally have built new infrastructure on top of existing infrastructure,' Rainwater said. 'It would have been a government takeover of what typically is a private service.'"

There is truth to what he's saying here, but he's missing the point. Would there be some new infrastructure built on top of existing infrastructure? Yes, but primarily in two situations.

The first is simply that there is infrastructure that's out there that's either outdated and incapable of delivering the service that's needed, or overpriced and not affordable to schools. In either case, the needs of our community anchor organizations aren't being met.

The second is that there was going to be a small percentage of the money used to replace some local loops of leased fiber within some cities around Louisiana.

The back story on this is that when the Louisiana legislature approved the $30 million to build LONI in the first place, it was touted as having the potential to be a tremendous tool for economic development. Unfortunately what happened is that other than a few runs of Department of Transportation fiber that were given to LONI, the rest of LONI is made up of leased circuits from carriers with very restrictive usage terms.

Basically, the only thing that can run on most of LONI is pure research traffic with no commercial component.

Well, when you're trying to commercialize university research this can create a problem. And I know it's significantly limited the potential use of LONI in general while specifically negating most of the network's potential as an economic development tool.

By overbuilding these leased local loops and becoming a "public telecom" LONI was going to finally be able to realize its potential as an economic development engine for Louisiana's push to be a national leader in the digital media industry.

Making my blood boil even further, check out these statements:

"Rainwater said he won't pursue an appeal to recover the grant."

And,

"Rainwater acknowledged that there are areas in the northeastern Louisiana Delta where there is no broadband infrastructure in place. 'We'll be working with them to create some true public-private partnerships,' Rainwater said."

For starters, how can any state be so nonchalant about losing $80 million to improve their broadband infrastructure? Who cares who's going to ultimately own that infrastructure? If nothing else, think about the dozens of jobs this money would have created both directly and indirectly.

Then for them to make vague references to "true public-private partnerships" is a real insult to rural Louisiana communities. Even if there were serious plans in place with funding identified, which I don't think there are, these communities just went from build out starting tomorrow to in an ideal world not happening for another couple of years. And realistically, these communities just went from the promise of getting connected by 2013 to 2015 at the earliest and likely not until 2020, if ever.

I'm truly appalled at how this whole thing's gone down, though I wish I could say I'm surprised. We continue to have officials at all levels of government refusing to acknowledge the basic tenant of rural broadband: you're either subsidizing deployment or profits.

You're either spending public dollars on building out public infrastructure, or you're spending public dollars on trying to make rural areas profitable enough to entice private providers to build out their own infrastructure.

Has telecommunications traditionally been an area where services were delivered by the private sector? Yes, but isn't the reason rural America isn't connected yet because of a breakdown in this reliance on market-driven forces?

In my opinion the number one question on policymakers' minds should be: "How do I get my communities connected enough to be competitive in the global digital economy?"

Unfortunately, our state lawmakers in Louisiana seem more worried about the question of: "How do we hold as close to the status quo as we can despite the current broadband marketplace being broken in many smaller communities?"

If ever there were evidence of a state prioritizing the protection of corporate interests over the welfare of their constituent communities, this is it.

I just hope that this development doesn't set back rural Louisiana the decade or more I'm afraid it will.