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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."
surely they have cell phone signals there... why bother with a land line? how are they going to recuperate the capital cost?
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.
The latency would be horrible. You'd have to end every sentence with "over". May as well just use a CB Radio.
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!
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.
What the fuck have we been paying that universal service fee for?
Land line telephones = bad; cell phones (or telephones kept "out of the house") = good.
Utility power = bad; small portable generators = good
Computers = bad; Palm Pilots/Pocket PCs = good (no word on the Zaurus though - maybe that just gets you into Purgatory)
John Deere = bad; draft horses = good (and with that they're able to make a larger profit per acre farming than the typical farm in the country).
There's probably something to learn from them about not letting technology drive your life, but I don't have time to think about that now - back to Slashdot!
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
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'
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.
It's good to realize that the Amish are not anti-technology. What they are against is anything that could complicate their lives - such as home phones ringing all the time or the monthly electric bill. They certainly don't live like cave men - they just find novel ways of getting what they need while remaining self-sufficient, such as using gas lighting and said generators for such things as running electronic cash registers.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
John Deere = bad; draft horses = good (and with that they're able to make a larger profit per acre farming than the typical farm in the country).
Years ago I used to chat to a horse trainer on the net who lived near an Amish community, and she wasn't happy with the way the Amish were exempted from the law in a number of areas. The main one she was concerned with being animal cruelty laws. Her horses lived for about 25-30 years in general. The Amish horses were 'lucky' to make 15. The Amish literally used them up and threw them away, because horses can always make more horses. I expect your tractor based farms could make a lot of money if they did no maintenance, and got new tractors for nothing into the bargain.
Not living in the area myself, I can't vouch for the truth of it.p>
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.