A Downside to Our Rural Life

It has been a frustrating morning. It rained here all night, and today our telephone connection is so crackly it almost drowns out the usual loud background hum on the line. For the last several years, we’ve been trapped in a direct cause-and-effect situation… it rains and we lose our telephone service. Several repairmen have told us that the fault is a long stretch of telephone lines “somewhere” with exposed connections. When the connections get wet, the lines short out. This problem has existed for probably six years now, and every time it rains or the weather is humid, our telephone becomes unusable. We keep reporting the problem, and the telephone company keeps acknowledging the problem and apologizing for the inconvenience, but they never make a permanent fix. Today the phone lines are about as bad as they have ever been. We could report the problem yet again, or we can just wait a few hours until the sun we are starting to see now dries out the connections. That seems to be all the repairmen do anyway… wait for a drier time… because even when they have supposedly “fixed” the problem, the same thing happens again the next time it rains.

We have a cell phone, but that is no help here because there is no cell service in this area… and of course there is no broadband access either, so we are left with dial-up Internet access over these incredibly bad telephone lines. Contrary to the impression given by those television commercials where people are using wireless broadband in the desert, underwater, deep in the woods, or in otherwise generally inaccessible areas, and the voice-over says that no area is out of reach… this area IS. Although we CAN get satellite TV here, the satellite broadband companies available in our area tell us that the mountains and trees surrounding our house block the line of sight to their satellites. We have one last possibility… the telephone company has been promising a wireless broadband for our area for over two years now, but so far they haven’t delivered on those promises. We are still hoping that sometime they will… and that their broadband connection would be better than their telephone service.

Which brings me back to today. The Internet connection has disconnected five times while I have been writing this post and has just disconnected again. We have spent the last four hours trying to conduct our normal business and “work” with our current telephone reality, and it is frustrating. Sometimes there actually is a dial tone, and if we keep trying and trying and trying, we can occasionally make a short call or connect to the Internet (at a ridiculously SLOOOOOOW 2.4 Kbps) and try to get an e-mail message through before the connection cuts off again. The static on the line is still so loud, we can barely hear the person we’re trying to talk to… and they of course can barely hear us… making a necessary business call nearly impossible.

This… and our unreliable electrical service… are probably the biggest downsides to our life here… but that (the electrical service, I mean) is another story.

Written by Shirley | Filed Under Personal, Simple Living, Voluntary Simplicity

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Comments

Comment by ChristyACB:

Keep your chin up! There will always be sunny days where it runs like the wind! Ironically, those will also be the days when you’re likely outside enjoying the sunshine and don’t care. ;)

Christy

Comment by LizBeth:

I hear you, sister! That’s our last small town all over again. All I can say for it was, sure was nicer than the Big City and all its frights. We’re in the middle of a blizzard right now. Guess I ought to go see if the phone is working today right here! . . . . . .Really enjoy your blog. Thanks for all you put into it. Liz

Comment by Ashley:

Yep. I grew up with the same rain/static phone lines. :)

Now I live in town. Where the power outages don’t always coincide with bad weather?!? It seems pretty random. And we have a stoplight that goes red and stays red in damp weather. *shakes head*

I’ll trade you! Actually, our house is on the market next week. We are doing everything we can to move ASAP. Life is short, ya know. We don’t want to spend more of ours where we don’t want to be, if we can help it!! :)

Comment by Jo:

Dear Shirley,

I can relate to your frustration. I don’t know how long I have dreamed of having all utility lines either buried or inside sectional pipe that can be easily accessed by utility workers. It would cost a bundle for the switch from pole mounted lines but it would pay for itself over time.

And the trees would love it!

Comment by cricket:

Well at least they dident tell you that its in your head like they did me!!!!! so now my main phone is the cell and von/cable phone. they need to replace the lines to fix the problem.

Comment by Shannon:

We have the same problem with our phone in wet weather! It crackles and pops!

We have satellite for our internet. Otherwise we could never get on in the Spring! lol!

I’ll take living in the country any day. :D

Hugs!

Comment by Kelly:

I can relate to the backroads, northern New England living as well. As I’m sure you know, it’s mud season. The other day on my way to work where I need to look professional (I was wearing a business suit/skirt) I was lost in my thoughts and got myself stuck in the mud on our dirt (now mud) back road. Thankfully, I wasn’t too far away from my house, so I grabbed my mud boots, which were in my back seat, and hiked the half mile back to my house for help. When I was standing in the doorway, mudboots and skirt, my partner laughed at me and came down to check out the situation. When he had gone back up to the house to get his truck, one of his workers came down the road and thankfully had a chain and pulled me out of the mud. When I called into work about 20 minutes later (once I was in cell phone service again) my coworker and I had a good laugh…

Comment by Kate:

I’ve lived in cities most of my life, but two years ago bought a tiny cabin in a very rural area of Vermont. The utilities are a regular problem, with the weather and trees. When bought the property, I immediately reported a problem just like you described — crackling in the line that was so bad I couldn’t hear the person on the other end. It was fixed a couple days later and hasn’t happened again. They found the source a few miles away.

One caveat I want to give about dsl internet service, which is in some rural areas also. I have dsl service in my city place, where it is supposed to work best (very close to the control center), but I frequently have problems with the provider, Verizon, that have not been fixed and probably won’t ever be. I have to report it to the Attorney General.

Comment by KG:

Alas, urban life is not devoid of this same phone/rain problem. My parents live in a large city of 700,000+ people and they’ve had the problem you describe for the 20 years they’ve lived there. I know they have reported the problem many times, but I guess finding a solution is not a top priority for the phone company.

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