Rich Tehrani alerted me to this amazing story about Douglas Rupp, who lives in a remote river valley near Index, Washington, and all the trouble he's gone through trying to get phone service out to his home.
Rupp heats with wood, uses hydro and solar for power, gets Internet and TV service via satellite dish, and bought a 20-foot-long Army amphibious vehicle to haul supplies across the river to his home. But so far telephone service is eluding him.
The article in The Daily Herald of Everett, Washington, says Rupp has spent over $30,000 trying to rig up some way to get phone service to his house, including building a 50-foot antenna on his roof (not high enough) and pounding over 100 ladder rungs into a 120-foot tree to put an antenna up there (still not high enough), and constructing complicated reflecting devices to try to redirect cell phone signals to his house (nope).
As part of the merger deal for Verizon and MCI, Rupp and his neighbors hoped to to bundle in a requirement for Verizon to run telephone service into the area, but it looks as if state regulators back-pedaled on the deal.
AB -- 1/2/06
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Actually it was 120 rungs in a 160-foot tree.