djb@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu (David Brightbill) (09/02/89)
I spend several days each month at a beach house on a small island off the Florida gulf coast. There are about 100 houses and an 8 room hotel on the island but no landline based phone service. The hotel and a couple of the residences have celluar or old style mobile phones with directional antennas pointed toward the nearest provider (about 80 miles away). Power to the island comes from the mainland via a submarine cable...we call it the island extension cord. There is no submarine telco cable. I got to thinking about what it would take to make telco service available. Is the local BOC (a real real small rural company) in any way required to provide service to our island? If they didn't want to, could anyone petition the PSC to start an exchange? This is all in the range of fantasy as neither I, nor I expect, most of my island neighbors would want a phone at the beach. On those very rare occasions when I need to place a call, I do it over the VHF radio on the boat. If someone needs to reach me by phone at the island, they are out of luck. (really boss, I would have come in to fix the system but there is just no way of reaching me at the beach...tee hee)