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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."
almost 90% of the population dont even use ground line phones.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Just because 6.2% of people don't have wired phones doesn't mean that the service isn't available to them. A lot of people ditch their wired lines and just use their cell phone.
I guess telcos did not want to pay to run lines through the baiue
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I can't get DSL.......
surely they have cell phone signals there... why bother with a land line? how are they going to recuperate the capital cost?
Just because 6.2% of people don't have wired phones doesn't mean that the service isn't available to them. A lot of people ditch their wired lines and just use their cell phone.
I'm guessing it's bad credit.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
" 6.2% of US homes don't have phone service "
Does this include the number of people who have cellphones that dont want a land line.
Or how about the people that just dont want a land line. Or get digital phone service from their cable provider.
TruePunk | Games
So much for Canada being the great white north.
... for the cars on blocks in the yard?
...
Or cell phones. Most of the time you have to ask the guards just to make a call, but if every cell had a phone
"Yes, the telephone is not everywhere. In fact, televisions are more common in American homes today."
So guess what?
Cable is about to explode with services.
Check out vonage.com
Get yourself connected.
$10 for equipment
$15 per month unlimted North America calling.
Say goodbye to the phrase, "Long Distance".
Then say hello to, "TiVo, Replay and MythTv" while your at it.
probably meaning land or cell.
Amish
If the 'gators don't get him, the Klan will. Either way we'll all be better off.
I didn't have a land line either until I finally bought a house. Now the only reason I have it is because it's required for the security system. What a waste, every call on the land line is a telemarketer...about 6-10 a day.
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.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Heck why not just get Direcway and VOIP service at leat youll have high speed internet and phone service.
Good idea!
Wait, no, that's dumb.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Now yu' can talk to that Filly down the road without gettin'
on a horse...Next thing yu' know your a dad agin'...what will they think of next!
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.
Whaaaaaa?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Both the Chinese and the Indians support massive numbers of abortions targetting female fetuses. You tell me. Who is the barbarian?
Consider that Nielson would probably have done telephone surveys to determine these statistics, how exactly do they calculate how many people don't have phones?
"Hey, call Floyd and ask if he's got a phone!"
Who's Floyd? What's his number?
I don't know, but there must be a Floyd. Hmm, not in the white pages, so he must not have a phone
So don't call him, but when you call him, ask him if he has a T.V.
Can you say Reductio ad absurdum kids? I knew you could!
It means "No Secrets"
From the article:
Apparently, life around there is incredibly boring too. From the descriptions the article has of the inhabitants, I can't imagine their phone calls being very thrilling. hanzie********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
If it's 6.2%, it wouldn't be anywhere near 19 million Americans, unless America had around 310 million people, which it does not.
The truth is that there are plenty of homes in the US that aren't even on the electric grid!
i ng-l/ms g00481.html
/ 2004/12/03 /grid.html
as of 1994 100,000 homes
http://lists.cohousing.org/archives/cohous
How-To
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network
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?
Sure the fines proposed are dumb, but it seems wrong for public service companies to be able to pick and choose who gets which service.
Means large parts of the united states probably wont see broadband in this decade because it's not immediately profitable for their providers.
I dont see why the government can't set goals for broadband availability since it'll cripple the US if parts of it fall behind Europe and Asia.
We didn't get telephone service to my home until 1971 or so.
Before that, if we needed to make a telephone call, we had to go to my grandmother's house.
More often, we'd call my grandmother on the radio and she'd place the call for us.
Vonage sucks.. Why pay so much when you can get it for FREE.
What the fuck have we been paying that universal service fee for?
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-01-20-no-ph ones_x.htm
---The Federal Communications Commission does not keep track of places without phone service, but a survey released in October found that 93.8 percent of American households had telephones of some sort
Was it a PHONE survey? Please dont say it so..
Maybe.
Nobody else would think this article was even semi-literate enough to be reposted here. Not even Taco would have posted it. Maybe it links back to Roland's blog or something. I dunno.
"Thanks for calling, I'll find a telephone booth and call you back." When your paying a dollar+ a minute, it adds up.
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
All those millions of "additional fees" that are tacked to to phone bills to pay for communities like this?
Is there any relation to servicing these people?
Knowing the phone industry, it probably goes into the bottomless pit of general revenue...
do you really think any gator would touch him?!
Checking a few articles, it looks like you've been trolling every other story here on Slashdot (for moderators: just browse at -1 threshold, and look for comments containing "China", or the same link from the parent post). Can't you read the title: "News for Nerds" ?
If you really feel strong about the subject, just go make your own site, or contribute to other sites on the subject, okay? Slashdot moderators will have spotted this by now, and just mod you out of sight, so you're wasting your time. Otherwise, get a life!
(some ugly namecalling deleted)
it's 25 bucks, not 15 per month. 15 only gets you 500 minutes. I guess that's enough if you have a cell phone or live in your parents's basement and have no friends.
Both plans come with callerID, 3-way calling,repeat redial,etc.
The BEST feature that I actually use is making Vonage ring my landline AND cell phone at the SAME TIME when I am receiving an incoming phone call. What's the big deal? You will never miss an important phone call and will have the option to answer landline (save cell minutes) if you are near your phone or use your cell as a remote caller id - no need to answer, just look to see who is calling. And of course you can just answer the cell if you are nowhere near your house.
1) they can't afford it - it's a sad fact but many poor people simply cannot afford a phone, even at subsidized rates.
2) they use cellular
3) they don't want a phone
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is it they can't have land lines, or they choose not to. ~6% unable to get it is far greater than 6% who choose not to get it.
What's a TelePhone? *goes back to whirting letters and useing his Telegraph*
Insert Pithy Quote here.
As a resident of the state of Louisiana, I can tell you that there has NEVER been cell service on most of I-49... which is mostly just forested area. I can remember driving my sister to college back in the mid-90s (when my dad had a humongous cell phone w/ a battery pack)... there wasn't service back then, and there still isn't service now.
Anyone have any ideas where the remaining people live? I'd like to move there. I can feel my blood pressure lowering just thinking about it.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
most folk'll always had a phone, but then again some folk'll aren't cleetus the slack jaws yokel /fiddles
So how long will it be before someone in Mink gets AOL dialup?
Thats the "Call Hunting" feature.
;-)
Anyway, the $15 is from another service.
(Didn't think anyone was paying attention.)
Louisiana doesn't have land, they have swamp. Swamplines?
"If it fits in the fryer, it's dinner."
- Cajun Jack
--
make install -not war
I think the headline was supposed to be sort of sarcastic.
blog & fiction: jd87
If they don't have phone service, then let them get fiber to the premises.
</bad marie antoinette joke>
It's the opposite of cheaper, but every one of those people should be able to get telephone service...
All they need to do is get two-way satellite internet service (Admittedly not cheap), and then subscribe for VoIP. The benefit of course is that since they're not technically in any area code, they can pick any area code and join it.
Yes, satellite has high latency (Something like 500ms minimum), but on a telephone half a second of delay isn't really noticeable. The only question would be if the VoIP app would be able to handle the latency.
Whatever happened to the "Universal Service Fund" we pay for on our phone bills? Isn't that supposed to cover the cost of running phone lines to people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere?
slashdot missed this story by the better part of a week ;) (check the date on it!)
The posting's title was obviously sarcastic.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I had a 2nd line for a period of time. I was waiting for DSL or cable modem in my neighborhood. I never put a phone on the 2nd line, but I gave out that number to any business that asked. I didn't care. I certainly wasn't going to give them my unlisted number. I tried calling it once... and it just rang and rang. No voicemail, nothing. Perfect. I wish I had an idea of how many telemarketers or even auto-dialers tried that number. I still use it today. I know no one has it... several businesses use a phone number as a lookup.
-- No sig for you!
Well It's almost 2005 and they're JUST getting phone service so I would think the residents of Mink (or residenT) don't/doesn't even know what the Internet is... If they do then OMG they can have DIALUP now!! WOAH!!! Why don't they just run a single T1 line to that village to give them all Internet and they can do voice over IP?
In Australia, the government is going to sell Telstra, the national telco, subject to there being a sufficient standard of service in rural areas. I think Telstra should be divided into its core services ie. the national network, owned by the government, and its non-core services like adsl, expensive premium phone services and suspect expansions into Asia. At the moment, Telstra is (almost) the only provider of adsl, and it charges competing companies as much or more for wholesale adsl as it charges customers retail.
Back on to topic: a nationally owned core-network company would have no problem sending out landlines, especially to a community of fifteen houses. In comparison, when cable television was belatedly introduced in Australia, two competing companies strung up their cables in many places in Melbourne until they ran out of money. So there is a duplicated service in many places (especially now the two programming providers have merged and are showing the same thing), and no service in many places. If I answer one of the fliers in my mail advertising Foxtel TV, and give my inner-city medium density housing address, I'm told that "the satellite service is available to your address, Sir". The objectives of a private company are to make a profit and provide service, wheras a public company should provide service and then (perhaps) make a profit.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
"Sure the fines proposed are dumb, but it seems wrong for public service companies to be able to pick and choose who gets which service."
And yet people complain about the Universal Service fee on their bills, and used arguments like "If they want to live in rural areas? They should pay for the service. No one's subsidizing me."
So basically all the above is simply that people (and companies) will talk the talk. But when it comes to money, they will not walk the walk. The latter because it costs too much, and the former because they can't see the social good.
BTW. One can find out who has phone and electricity, every four years. It's called the US Census.
The combined average IQ of the internet has fallen five points.
LOL I forgot... just having a T1 line wouldn't be enough... they also need computers and electricity! oops hee hee
This reminds me of when Clinton went to the Navajo Reservation and promised that all the Navajo kids living there would get and internet connection in their home for education. Of course, since ~50% of the Navajo living on the rez don't have electricity, let alone a phone line, there was quite the discussion as to how this was going to happen.
Eventually the BIA built a powerlines out to most places and gave them a wireless network.
"1) they can't afford it - it's a sad fact but many poor people simply cannot afford a phone, even at subsidized rates."
Who's ranks will be swelling here in a few years.
Go bad economy, and devalued dollar.
At least on the bright side, they don't have to worry about the constant bombardment that the phone represents. That's why the Amish keep the things at arms length.
I don't have a landline. I have a cell phone and my neighbour's wlan. A couple of my friends don't have landlines, either -- they hate the telco.
So what? I don't need one. If someone wants to call me, they can call my cell.
"Yes, and it does. That's where the "Federal Grants" the parent speaks of come from. They aren't actually grants - it is a fund into which we all pay and from which telcos dip to provide Jim Urbanite who moved 30 miles out in the middle of nowhere and now demands phone service with a $500K copper loop."
Sounds like someone's a little bitter. Just be glad you'll never move rural anywere in your life. So you'll never get the chance to test it.
https://www.donotcall.gov/default.aspx it's well worth the minimal time it takes. The vast majority of telemarketers respect this list, and don't call you. The reason is that they can face severe fines if they do. There are always a few morons, and it won't get rid of those, but you can expect to see 95%+ of the calls go away. The main ones you'll recieve are from companies that you do bussiness with, they are still allowed to call you.
Also, you should check on the requirement of a line for the security system. Normally security systems that use such a feature use a seperate copper pair for their transmissions, thus a phone line shouldn't really be necessary.
"The communications industry contributes to a national Universal Service Fund that underwrites uneconomical service in sparsely populated areas, but it has yet to be activated in Louisiana, said Curtin, leaving BellSouth stuck with the tab. But the Louisiana Public Service Commission said it expected to reimburse BellSouth out of a new state service fund next year."
Last I checked *I* contributed to this becuase the phone
companies feel the need to be reimbursed for the cost of
business of their (near) monopolies. That LA would consider further reimbursing HellSouth is galling.
He had been living at his cabin in the woods for 4 years before he got a phone line. It was only 1/2 mile, but 10K$ 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.
Twice what they got last time... Apparently at the expense of lost computer purchases, jobs etc.
Maybe priorities are wrong?
http://www.klfy.com/Global/story.asp?S=2706433
get it right retard. That was Georgia.
Glad to hear from a satisfied Vonage user. Looking at reviews over the internet, you see so many pro's and con's. I was all set to jump on VoIP when they decided to let SBC control prices on the critical internet-to-POTS connection. I was taking a step back to see how Vonage/Packet 8/et al responded pricewise.
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
Still, 6.2% sounds high. It might be counting all the cabins and get-a-ways people own on lakes and in the mountians that don't have phone lines?
"What the fuck have we been paying that universal service fee for?"
Maybe the better question is: "WTF why am I living in a society?" Just think, not living in a society means that you'll never have to worry about society placing demands on you, and you on it. You can keep everything you make, and no one can tell you what to do with it. True freedom like the founding fathers intended. But then you wouldn't have all those nice things that being part of a society provides, up to and including a universal transportation system. Payed for from a sort of Universal Fund who's participants most likely asked "What the fuck have we been paying these taxes for?"
Commonly referred to as, "the armpit of the south." To those of us who have been there, or passed though, this comes as no suprise.
The math in the post is wrong. Several people live in one house, so the population affected is probably much smaller than the cited number.
-b., whose uncle's phone number in Poland was "Lacko 42" until 2001.
That's high tech? By that standard a calculator would be science fiction!
I read in the local paper last year about some guy trying to get a wired line from the local phone company (Verizon) and they told him it would be about $35,000 or so to hook him up, due to there being no local phone network in the area. Far as I know, he's still without a phone though he said he was going to start his own phone company. That's the last I've heard of that story. Still waiting for him to start his own phone company, too. ;-)
Case you're all curious, this is not Louisiana, but Northeast Michigan where spots of no land lines aren't unheard of and cell phone service is poor to nonexistant. Basically, I live in a forest and the area is very sparsely populated, but the hunting and fishing is good, girlwatching is a favorite pastime, and you're pretty much guaranteed a White Christmas.
I imagine there's quite a few places in the Upper Penninsula that don't have phone service either as a lot of it is definately undeveloped forestland out there. However, I can't answer anyone that question for sure.
What the hell, they are going to pull copper pairs to each of those houses ???
couln't they just pull a 10GE fiber and each house would have had a 1G internet connection, with phone and catv ???
pfff pathetic
There are added advantages to land lines over cell towers. Granted cell phones have added mobility, but you get hit with overage charges and service contracts. Land lines (once they're installed) the service is cheaper, you can have broadband (at a much cheaper rate than wireless broadband) and during bad weather, provided your lines are underground, you still have good service. Also, living in Louisiana, there are certain are very difficult to get good coverage, whether it be land or wireless, just because of the geography and the sparse population.
That said, there's a lot that it interesting about how the Amish regulate technology. My family used to buy milk (the unpasturized in-a-jug sort) from them, and some members of my family provide medical services to some of them.
I think you get the emphasis slightly wrong. While there is a "sanctity of the house" sort of thing going on, it isn't that simple. What is important is continuity of worship, maintenence of the community, and the notion that most of the world is out to get you. And, honestly, the third part of that isn't unreasonable, if you wrap your head around the first part, and then the second follows. There's also a notion of severance from the worldly-world; they participate, in recognition of physics, but would rather not, and as a compromise, enforce a barrier built out of arms-length dealing, clothing, and behaviour.
To be honest, they're my favorite cult, if I had to pick one. Menonites can be(and are, in places) a lot worse, and Adventists seem to spend a lot of time on the separation issue, to the pain of the adherents. I haven't had much contact with others, but we can all read about them.
For the record, I'm an athiest by faith, an agnostic by thought, and mostly interested in mathematical abstractions, which inform my worldview in much the same way that religion does for others. So what do I know, I'm a kook, as these things go.
I forget what 8 was for.
The sole purpose of the submitter was to throw mud on the US for apparently not giving access to such a basic service to every man, woman, and child, regardless of the massive size of the US and the utter remoteness of some areas. Shall we ammend the Declaration of Independence to accommodate the submitter's ever-expanding list of people's rights - life liberty, the pursuit of happiness, free quality healthcare for all, free food, free housing, high self-esteem, and now a telephone for every man, woman, and child living in the most remote corner of the country? Seriously, if you want a welfare state then go to Europe.
The problem with these kinds of WASP white-trash is that the generations of inbreeding have rendered their IQ's so low, combined with their belief that their race has been chosen by their God to murder all the others, that they have to justify their hatred by pointing out the so called "barbaric" acts of other non-Aryan societies. All this while they vote for thugs, burn African-Americans alive, and spread anti-semetic proaganda among their own ranks.
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
Vacation properties.
Some people actually want places that are removed from technology as far as possible.
And from the sound of the ages of the people in the towns being interviewed, they will be DEAD by the time it gets rolled out. Why bother?
Seriously how many times in the past year have I dreamed of a place with nothing electronic in it...no phones, computers, TV's ETC.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Fuck you, whitey
In past surveys, one of the major reasons that people do not have telephones is financial. Poor people often have bad credit, the telephone company wants all old bills paid before restoring service, the telephone company wants a large deposit, the head-of-household is unable to control usage of the telephone by other family members and visitors, and the cost is unpredictable. A typical scenario is that a household gets a telephone, the service gets abused for long distance and other premium calls, the household gets a large bill that they can't pay, the bill doesn't get paid, resulting in termination of service and a poor credit reference. Restoration of service would be expensive and would just setup the household for another cycle of abuse and disconnection. As a solution, some people have suggested requiring the telephone company to offer a fixed-cost service that would have permanent blocks for long distance and premium calls. The bill would be guaranteed to be $X a month, no matter how the phone was used.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
What's a Methodist? A Baptist that can read.
--
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Sadly in the year 2005 a community which has been asking the Louisiana Government to act on this for an incredibly long time.
What's even more interesting? A news.com article suggests the reason why service has not been installed is that no Telco claims the area and it's too expensive. News.com also suggests the reason why no service has been installed is the USF is not available in Louisiana. Last time I checked Louisiana residents are still being hit for the Universal Service Fund on every single Residential and Business phone line.
It's sad the Louisiana Public Service Commission is more concerned about tow trucks without proper documentation than providing a simple service with available State and Federal monies. Don't believe me, go to http://www.lpsc.org/ and review the public records.
Go away, your not helping the Coonass cause.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Moderation -1
100% Troll
I don't know which word you didn't understand, TrollMod, but I lived in Louisiana for years. That post is "+1, Funny".
--
make install -not war
At this point that would actually be a decent idea. Why run landline phone service when running new fiber would be about the same and could provide Internet (and they could use VoIP).
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Before I moved to Minneapolis, I lived in out-state Minnesota where I was aware of several pockets of people living "off-grid." They did not have phone service or electric service. In some cases this was by choice, the residents didn't even work at getting these services. I personally did without wired phone for many years (and didn't have a cel phone either).
These things are not necessities, they are options. In some cases, people don't want them. In other cases, companies don't want to go to the expense of delivering the service.
Living off grid or without a phone, does not mean you are a luddite. Today, you can power your home with generators or solar power and you can have a cellular phone (if there is service in the area). In some remote places there is a rural radio telephone service. This is used when the expense of delivering phone service via wire is too costly. It is like high powered analog service.
My favorite fishing lake has no cellular service, even my work-required "nation-wide" pager won't beep when I am out there! This is part of what attracts me to this particular lake. On one end of the lake, there is a small community of cabins that do not have electricity. They seem to like it that way. They all have nice boats and those terrible jet-ski's and all sorts of other toy so it is not like they can't afford it.
I really think everybody should get to do what he wants to do - free country and free people etc. But just tell me how you earn your living, please ? Just curious ....
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
the old telephone companies haven't yet wired Louisiana, and the states are crying about taxing and controlling voip so rural service is provided?
Is my understanding of this correct?
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