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Last La. community connected to phone system; first call Monday
By MARK BALLARD
mballard@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
Just as Alexander Graham Bell did 129 years ago, 15 families in the tiny northeastern Louisiana town of Mink are about to inaugurate phone service with a telephone call of their own.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to make the first call to their newly installed phones on Monday.
The community will mark the occasion with a fish fry at the Kisatchie Baptist Church at La. 117 and La. 118 in the isolated southwestern corner of Natchitoches Parish.
BellSouth Corp. extended about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to pick up the 15 isolated households -- one of the last areas in the nation without access to phone service -- at a cost of $700,000. That's about $47,000 per phone.
And you're paying for it.
"It'll be on all the rate payers in Louisiana," said Lawrence C. St. Blanc, secretary for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utility and telecommunications companies in the state.
The Public Service Commission is setting up a fund to ensure that the poor and people in rural areas, where telephone lines and seemingly basic services are expensive to provide, have access to telephones by subsidizing reduced rates.
The fund also will reimburse 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. What the charge is per bill has not been determined, St. Blanc said.
"This will be the first state charge that we ever had on a bill," he said.
But the monthly costs should be less than the $2 or so federal officials already charge for various services, St. Blanc said. Exactly how the state fund will work will be discussed by the PSC at its Feb. 23 meeting.
However, the first use of the money will be to repay BellSouth Corp. for extending telephone lines out to Mink.
Tucked into a primeval forest, Mink is the last area of full-time residents in Louisiana without phone service, St. Blanc said. "At least that we know about," he said.
By MARK BALLARD
mballard@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
Just as Alexander Graham Bell did 129 years ago, 15 families in the tiny northeastern Louisiana town of Mink are about to inaugurate phone service with a telephone call of their own.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to make the first call to their newly installed phones on Monday.
The community will mark the occasion with a fish fry at the Kisatchie Baptist Church at La. 117 and La. 118 in the isolated southwestern corner of Natchitoches Parish.
BellSouth Corp. extended about 30 miles of cable through thick forests to pick up the 15 isolated households -- one of the last areas in the nation without access to phone service -- at a cost of $700,000. That's about $47,000 per phone.
And you're paying for it.
"It'll be on all the rate payers in Louisiana," said Lawrence C. St. Blanc, secretary for the Public Service Commission, which regulates utility and telecommunications companies in the state.
The Public Service Commission is setting up a fund to ensure that the poor and people in rural areas, where telephone lines and seemingly basic services are expensive to provide, have access to telephones by subsidizing reduced rates.
The fund also will reimburse 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. What the charge is per bill has not been determined, St. Blanc said.
"This will be the first state charge that we ever had on a bill," he said.
But the monthly costs should be less than the $2 or so federal officials already charge for various services, St. Blanc said. Exactly how the state fund will work will be discussed by the PSC at its Feb. 23 meeting.
However, the first use of the money will be to repay BellSouth Corp. for extending telephone lines out to Mink.
Tucked into a primeval forest, Mink is the last area of full-time residents in Louisiana without phone service, St. Blanc said. "At least that we know about," he said.