After several years of lawsuits and four million dollars spent, the city of Lafayette in Louisiana has successfully provided broadband connectivity for its residential citizens through a public fibre network.

Currently, Lafayette boasts one of the largest and most successful fibre deployments in the U.S with its residents picking up a 50Mbps symmetrical connection for only $57.95 a month. The city’s prices are lower than prices from telecommunication companies by a 20 percent difference.

The city won the fibre network battle after numerous lawsuits from local telephone companies and cable operators, and even from a couple local citizens who brought their case to the Supreme Court.

A growing trend in community-owned fibre networks is evident through similar instances in North Carolina and in Monticello, Minnesota. A local North Carolina paper wrote about the issues Time Warner places on its Wilson customers:

"[The town of] Wilson says it has the fastest residential Internet speed in the state—100 megabits per second. Time Warner's residential customers there make do with 15 megabits per second... If Time Warner had been offering 100 megabit-per-second Internet speeds in the first place, Wilson might not have felt a need to go into the business," wrote The Fayetteville Observer.

Read more on Louisiana’s fibre network victory.