Rural Area Finally Gets Phone Service
POSTED: 6:06 pm EST January 31, 2005
UPDATED: 6:36 pm EST January 31, 2005
MINK, La. -- There was a fish-fry Monday in Natchitoches to celebrate the big news in Mink-- the tiny town's 15 households have gotten phone service.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco officially marked the moment with a call from Baton Rouge to Alma Louise Bolton, 83, in Mink, to celebrate the end of one of the nation's last areas without access to regular phone service.
In addition to Mink, which is about 150 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, there's the Shaw-Blackhawk area of Concordia Parish, about 85 miles east, which is also finally getting dial tone.
BellSouth Corp. spent $700,000 -- or about $47,000 per phone -- to extend about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to Mink. The rest of the state's phone bills will cover the cost.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission is setting up a fund to ensure that the poor and people in rural areas have access to telephones. The fund will both subsidize their rates and repay phone companies when the cost of connecting isolated rural pockets to residential phone service exceeds $1,500 per phone.
Called the Universal Service Fund, the money will come from a charge added to the bills of all phone users in the state. The charge per bill has not been determined, but officials said it should be less than $1 a month.
The Shaw-Blackhawk area has a few year-round residents and many hunting camps, most of them occupied all winter, and it did have cellular service after Centennial Wireless recently put up a cell phone tower near the Red River levee.
Judy Ballard said the phone service is wonderful but it came at a high price.
She said her husband had a heart attack in May 1998. A neighbor raced to the top of the Red River levee to try to get a cellular phone signal. He reached a 911 operator in Mississippi, but it took 90 minutes for an emergency crew to arrive and her husband died.
That situation helped bring attention to the problem of no reliable phone service in the area.
How can these people live with out a phone????
However, I now HAVE to have one!
