The City of Lafayette, Louisiana made an important decision over a century ago - to establish its own electric utility in order to provide for quality of life and economic growth of the community. Now, a century later, the City again made a fundamental decision to invest in its vision of the future. Their vision is that technology and communications will be a key to quality of life and economic growth in the future.

The development of a state-of-the-art City-wide fiber optic communications system would unlock this key to the future, providing ubiquitous, affordable telecommunications to citizens and businesses, add new dimension in economic development, improve healthcare and educational opportunities, offer high-paying technology jobs, and generally position the City as a technology "magnet."

Creating A Whole New Utility

Working with a large stakeholder group, R. W. Beck helped the City's integrated utility, LUS, realize its vision. Securing the financing for the project was the final crucial step in moving the project from the drawing board into reality and we prepared the Engineer's Report that was used to market the bonds that financed the "Fiber-to-the-Home" project.

The FTTH project will connect every home and business in the City to a state-of-the-art fiber optic network that will deliver telephone, television and internet services. The promise of the technology is to deliver these services with speed, reliability and accuracy standards that are unattainable by current networks. Equally important, the project will enable the City to bridge the "digital divide" and provide high-speed internet connections to a greater number of Lafayette citizens.

Keeping the Community Informed

The project represented a new endeavor for the utility and is one of only a handful of similar projects in the country. R. W. Beck provided the financial guidance and leadership that helped LUS maintain focus on the end result despite complications that included managing a large group of stakeholders, numerous legal challenges and a new structure that engaged two consulting engineers on the project.

A unique aspect to R. W. Beck's involvement was assessing the possible financial impacts to the utility should the retail fiber optic project fail to meet expectations. While this eventuality was highly unlikely, we shared the concern of LUS to demonstrate transparency to all stakeholders and examine this "what if" scenario. The study showed that LUS had the financial strength to withstand such an event and this information proved to be a pivotal element in the deal.

The FTTH project and the vision demonstrated by LUS have served as inspiration for other municipalities. Financial market players have commended the structure of the deal, noting that there has been growing interest in municipal utilities offering telecommunications services for the sake of lowering prices.

R. W. Beck is pleased to have shared in the vision of our long-time client to help improve the quality of life in their community and help them realize an innovative and forward-looking project.

For more information on this project and other R. W. Beck expertise, please contact:

Tim Corrigan
Executive Vice President, Energy
PH 303.299.5328
email