[RTC List] The Rob & Cherie Arkley Fiberoptic Cable

[William Van Hefner]

Michael,

Benefits private industry?!!? I don't know what planet you are living on,
but down here on Earth I spent the entire day without any phone service.
My Sprint Wireless service didn't allow me to make any local or long
distance calls or even reach an operator. God only knows what would have
happened, had I needed to dial 9-1-1. This issue is not about how to
benefit "private industry", it is about serving the needs of the average
Humboldt County citizen, which is what our public officials are supposedly
elected to do. If it's important to me, then it should be important to
them. The last time I checked, representing the voters was their job, not
just something they did in their spare time.

For that matter "private industry", consists of businesses owned and
worked at by real human beings. The "public sector" is made up of those
whose job it is to serve the public who pays their salaries. Our
government was created to serve the people and protect their rights, not
the other way around.

As for your concern in regards to Mr. Arkley, I'd say that he has just as
much right to demand that our public officials represent our interests as
taxpayers as any other citizen. If our public officials do not have time
to listen to the concerns of their constituents, then they should be
promptly impeached or voted out of office as quickly as the law will
allow.

And as for your insistence that fiber redundancy would only benefit the
"few", and your inference that the rich would benefit more than the poor,
you might want to get out into our community a little more often in order
to see how directly this affects all aspects of people's lives. For
starters, the trend these days is that not everyone can afford both a
landline and a wireless phone. Those with low incomes generally have to
choose between one or the other, and the price drop in wireless phones has
made them the more acceptable of the two. What happens to their ability to
communicate with their families when they have no phone service? For that
matter, what happens to those families who are going through hard times
and can't afford to put dinner on the table without using a credit card?
How long should they have to go without groceries while AT&T patches
cables back together? What about the elderly who depend on home monitoring
services, most of which dial numbers outside of the area? What about the
public buildings that rely upon reliable phone service for their (fire)
alarm systems (mine dials a 1-800 number)? What if a child got sick and
his parents could not reach the poison control hotline, or someone who was
mentally ill couldn't reach a suicide hotline? Perhaps you could explain
to their families that these services weren't really important, because
only rich people or private businesses stood much to gain by having a
reliable and inexpensive way for 99%+ of the public to communicate with
the outside world?

Anyone putting 30 seconds or more of thought into this knows how vital it
is to public safety that we do not allow this situation to continue.
Wealthy businesspeople can obviously afford to get around the problem. The
average Humboldt County citizen can't. Mr. Arkley has nothing to
personally gain in any of this. His company can afford to bring in their
own wireless system if they want to. It seems to me to be in poor taste to
mock him when he is going out of his way to help support the rest of us.

-- 

William Van Hefner
President

Vantek Communications, Inc.
3144 Broadway, Ste 3
Eureka, CA 95501-3838
707.476.0833 ph
800.331.4638 fx
e-mail: vantek at sonic.net

> It's not the Supes job to do this. This benefits private industry, and
> private industry should cover it.
> What a perfect application for your huge amount of wealth. You could even
> name it The Arkley Cable.