The last 3 towns in La. lacking telephone service of any kind wil...
The last 3 towns in La. lacking telephone service of any kind will finally be joining the connected world. The northern La. villages of Mink, Shaw and Black Hawk will finally get dial tone this spring, following more than…
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a year of effort by the La. PSC. The town of Mink will be getting landline service from BellSouth, while Shaw and Black Hawk will be getting cellular service because their geography made landline service impractical. The extension of service will cost about $46,000 per customer, most of which is expected to come from the state universal service fund. PSC Comr. Foster Campbell noted people made do with makeshift radiotelephone relay arrangements that were unreliable and incapable of supporting 911 or modern data communications. The villages somehow fell between the cracks as the phone network expanded. In recent weeks, the plight of these phoneless citizens began attracting regional and national media attention even as the PSC was working with telecom carriers to bring telephone service to them.