Posted on 01/30/2005 8:59:29 PM PST by NativeTexun
09:52 PM CST on Sunday, January 30, 2005 Associated Press
There's a fish fry today to celebrate the big news in Mink, La., a hamlet of 15 households: phone service. Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to call 83-year-old Alma Louise Bolton from Baton Rouge today to celebrate the end of isolation for one of the nation's last areas without regular phone service.
Long-distance charge: BellSouth Corp. spent $700,000 – or about $47,000 per phone – to extend about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to Mink, in the Kisatchie National Forest. The rest of the state's phone bills will cover the cost.
Cell hell: In 1998, Judy Ballard's husband had a heart attack. A neighbor raced to the top of the Red River levee to try to get a cellphone signal. The 911 operator he reached was in Mississippi. It took 90 minutes for an emergency crew to arrive.
Rung out: BellSouth regional director Kevin McCotter said Mink fell into an area not claimed by any phone company, and it just cost too much to make lines worth it without state aid. "Unless a solution had been developed, then, no, we wouldn't have gone there on our own volition."
(END OF ARTICLE)
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Cell phones don't work without a cell site.
As a reminder about how phone services work. It's all territorial. BellSouth may be the biggest player in Louisian but it's not the only phone company. No one provided Mink with service because of the cost. No one wanted that territory. Now Bellsouth has opted to run the area at a loss because the gov't will hopefully make it easier for them in other areas.
Who's going to dial the number for Kathleen?
I expect Madame Governor will pull one of those practical jokes like "Do you have Prince Edward in a can?" Or Alma Louise will answer "Joe's Bar!"
considering it'd be 10 digits and the highest Kathleen can remember is 3 I'm curious as well.
Why would they need long distance service, no one can understand them outside the bayous.
Either way there's a huge cost. They'd still have to install a substation. I don't see it happening for less than a a couple of hundred k.
But then again, Bellsouth is a landline company. The state wanted landlines apparently and not cellphones.
I'm sure when she explained that it was between Kile and Mora, that cleared it up. If that didn't work, the neighboring cities of Pine Coupee, Gorum, Sampusand, Kisatchie, and Lotus would pinpoint it.
Is Mink in the bayou area? From the article, it's in the middle of a national forest .. name I can't remember. Mink is in Nachitoches Parish.
Yu be frum da by-you? ; > How dem krawfish be?
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