More than 800 miles of fiber-optic cable hum invisibly underground in Lafayette, a city of 120,000, delivering Internet speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second — rare for even major cities. The cutting-edge connectivity in the heart of Cajun country is due not to a private telecom giant but to a public municipal service that offers higher speeds and often lower rates than the private sector.
And it was a long time getting done. And it was a tremendous pain in the ass to do thanks to telecom opposition and thanks to the Jindalista movement to privatize everything (including broadband access).
The Lafayette Pro-fiber blog has been chronicling this initiative for almost 8 years now. It's a great archive for anyone interested in the story.
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