Louisiana Towns Going High-Tech

wolverineinspector writes "Mink, LA is finally getting telephone land lines after the neighbouring communities got theirs in 1970. In the article they also say that as many as 6.2% of US homes don't have phone service - that would mean that 19 million Americans don't have wired phone lines available to them."

Re:Just because 6.2% don't have phones

[the_2nd_coming]

what part of don't have phone service mean to you? it means they have no phones. no lines, no towers.

Re:why bother when there are cell phones?

[nxtr]

If you had read the article, you would've realized that they went to the town dump to make a call, because they got the best reception there.

It said phones "of some kind"

[Moonpie Madness]

probably meaning land or cell.

Demand - Supply

[FuturePastNow]

My mother lives way out in the country, and the local telco quoted her an obscene price to run a landline to the house. Unfortunately, she lives too far from the highway to get decent cellphone coverage. She ended up having to pay it.

I have to believe, though, that if the people of Mink, LA really wanted phone coverage some company would have wanted to sell it to them. I guess it wasn't worth it, until now, for just fifteen homes.

Re:Just because 6.2% don't have phones

[Bluetick]

But you have it available to you (as do I, but I don't use it, I use celphones). The quote said 6.2% of people in the US don't have phone service available to them. The number of people without phone service is likely quite higher with people moving to cellphones or cable phone service.

Rural Telecommunications Acts

[green pizza]

In the USA, there are Rural Telecommunication (and electrification) Acts. I'm not sure about new construction, but I know that in rural Texas if you have an old isolated homestead in need of telephone service, you can call up the nearest telco and they'll string out lines no matter what it costs. It all gets paid for by federal grants.

The only catch is the telco territory boundries. Sometimes two telcos will bicker over who gets to (or who has to) string the lines. A vist to your state's public services commissioner will get things moving though.

Re:Huh?

[imthesponge]

http://216.239.63.104/search?q=cache:-AAPfXFzjjEJ: www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-Sta te_Link/IAD/subs0704.pdf&hl=en [216.239.63.104] (google cache)

They use the Census.

"Recognizing the need for more precise periodic measurements of subscribership, the Commission requested that the Census Bureau include questions on telephone availability as part of its CPS, which monitors demographic trends between the decennial censuses."

technology in rural America

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth is that there are plenty of homes in the US that aren't even on the electric grid!

as of 1994 100,000 homes
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohousi ng-l/ms g00481.html

How-To
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/ 2004/12/03 /grid.html

I was talking to a tech friend of mine the other day. He said about 40% of the homes where he came from didn't have electricity! This was in Id, USA... Crazy eh?

Re:Most people I know dont have phone lines.

[evilviper]

From the article:

93.8 percent of American households had

telephones of some sort.

If they have any type of phone service, they have been counted.

The statistic doesn't say how many of those 6.2% of people live way out in the middle of nowhere (ie. Alaska), or how many may simply have decided they don't need a telephone.

Re:his math is way off too

[MrDomino]

Yes, it does. [census.gov]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sign up for the Do Not Call list

[Sycraft-fu]

https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx it's well worth the minimal time it takes. The vast majority of telemarketers respect this list, and don't call you. The reason is that they can face severe fines if they do. There are always a few morons, and it won't get rid of those, but you can expect to see 95%+ of the calls go away. The main ones you'll recieve are from companies that you do bussiness with, they are still allowed to call you.

Also, you should check on the requirement of a line for the security system. Normally security systems that use such a feature use a seperate copper pair for their transmissions, thus a phone line shouldn't really be necessary.

weren't the only one offended

[Lawrence_Bird]

"The communications industry contributes to a national Universal Service Fund that underwrites uneconomical service in sparsely populated areas, but it has yet to be activated in Louisiana, said Curtin, leaving BellSouth stuck with the tab. But the Louisiana Public Service Commission said it expected to reimburse BellSouth out of a new state service fund next year."

Last I checked *I* contributed to this becuase the phone
companies feel the need to be reimbursed for the cost of
business of their (near) monopolies. That LA would consider further reimbursing HellSouth is galling.

My Dad got a wired phone in 1998

[bigmoosie]

He had been living at his cabin in the woods for 4 years before he got a phone line. It was only 1/2 mile, but 10K$ was a pretty steep price to pay and have polls sunk and trees trimmed. He used a cell phone but that was rather expensive and even with a monster cell antenna on the roof, if there was a cloud over the house there was no reception. He ran off of gas and a generator for 2 years and put solar power in. Just recently he had power lines run out to his house.

For me, it's cheaper to use a cell phone than a land line. Plus with cellular number portability, I can take my number anywhere I move to and not have to worry about giving a new number out to people.

~ryan

PS I live in VT.