We have had multiple cases of the phone and 911 system failures in the past. Often times it is just the 911 system, which occurs when the fiber optic lines that originate in Victorville are cut by someone along the line between there and southern Inyo County. The phone lines here are closer to working to full capacity than in other areas of the state. On busy weekends in Mammoth (35,000 visitors in a town of 8,500) we can lose long distance. If it gets worse we can sometimes have difficulty making local calls and we have even had times when we don't get a dial tone. This happens because Mono County is at the end of the phone lines. The utilities in Mono County do not connect to the north toward Carson City. Phone and electricity lines end at the junction of State 108 and 395. The town of Walker, in the Antelope Valley (as opposed to more famous Antelope Valleys) is served by utilities from Nevada. There are no parallel lines for rerouting traffic to allow bypassing failures or isolating a trouble spot from others.
This near capacity situation is best illustrated by the Internet situation in Mammoth. It has been about 10 years since new Internet accounts have been available. It is like trying to buy a season ticket for the Green Bay Packers. A little additional capacity was provided when one fiber optic line was installed between Bishop and Mammoth about 8 years ago but it was immediately soaked up by the increased business use..
Two government agencies are the exception to the above. The state's microwave system is one. There is a site in Nevada that links Conway Summit in Mono County to a site near the California boundary in Alpine County. From there it links into sites near Tahoe and connects to the rest of the system. The eastern Sierra is on a state microwave loop rather than a dead end. The state's green phone likely links on this path as well as through the south end of the loop.
The other agency is the U.S. Forest Service, Toiyabe National Forest microwave linked radio system. When it was installed in the late 80's enough capacity was built to allow for about 18 phone circuits for voice and data that dumps into the commercial system in Reno, Nevada. About 8 or 10 of those were given to the county enabling the county seat to communicate. There is some sort of Congressional policy or law that prohibits this, even though it would save the feds a huge sum of money, but in this case with no alternative it was allowed. When I worked on the Toiyabe our phone bill from Bridgeport was greatly reduced because we could hit a button on our phones and get a Reno dial tone and Reno was the largest chunk of our long distance costs.
Private phone companies can't justify the investment to connect to the north as the small customer base will not provide a sufficient return. I'm not sure if there are any T-1 lines north of Bishop. This will change in the upcoming months as the federal government has stepped in with an economic recovery project that will connect Victorville, California to Carson City, Nevada with a high capacity fiber optic line. The project is called "Internet 395" as it follows the highway of the same number.
This situation and the outages have occurred during non-disaster times, imagine the problem if a disaster struck. I'm glad that the various agencies have built systems that don't depend on private infrastructure, even with the new line expected to become operational at the end of 2013. Redundancy is a good thing in disaster preparedness.
This near capacity situation is best illustrated by the Internet situation in Mammoth. It has been about 10 years since new Internet accounts have been available. It is like trying to buy a season ticket for the Green Bay Packers. A little additional capacity was provided when one fiber optic line was installed between Bishop and Mammoth about 8 years ago but it was immediately soaked up by the increased business use..
Two government agencies are the exception to the above. The state's microwave system is one. There is a site in Nevada that links Conway Summit in Mono County to a site near the California boundary in Alpine County. From there it links into sites near Tahoe and connects to the rest of the system. The eastern Sierra is on a state microwave loop rather than a dead end. The state's green phone likely links on this path as well as through the south end of the loop.
The other agency is the U.S. Forest Service, Toiyabe National Forest microwave linked radio system. When it was installed in the late 80's enough capacity was built to allow for about 18 phone circuits for voice and data that dumps into the commercial system in Reno, Nevada. About 8 or 10 of those were given to the county enabling the county seat to communicate. There is some sort of Congressional policy or law that prohibits this, even though it would save the feds a huge sum of money, but in this case with no alternative it was allowed. When I worked on the Toiyabe our phone bill from Bridgeport was greatly reduced because we could hit a button on our phones and get a Reno dial tone and Reno was the largest chunk of our long distance costs.
Private phone companies can't justify the investment to connect to the north as the small customer base will not provide a sufficient return. I'm not sure if there are any T-1 lines north of Bishop. This will change in the upcoming months as the federal government has stepped in with an economic recovery project that will connect Victorville, California to Carson City, Nevada with a high capacity fiber optic line. The project is called "Internet 395" as it follows the highway of the same number.
This situation and the outages have occurred during non-disaster times, imagine the problem if a disaster struck. I'm glad that the various agencies have built systems that don't depend on private infrastructure, even with the new line expected to become operational at the end of 2013. Redundancy is a good thing in disaster preparedness.
Last edited:
