Whose tubes? Our tubes!

At least in Lafayette, this is true. One very rare case of something getting done the right way in Louisiana.

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.