Its no secret that people who move or are new to Yosemite can not get phone or internet service. Or at least it seems that way. I say it seems that way because you can still get phone and DSL internet service, you just have to know how the system works. I am going to tell you how you can fix this problem. It is so simple, so easy to do, Its going to take some time to explain it. Back in the early 80s when I arrived in Yosemite, none of the streets in Yosemite Valley had names or addresses. Back then I could apply for credit cards and bank accounts with no problem. During this process of applying for an account or credit I had to give a street address. Yosemite didnt have street names or addresses and the outside world didnt understand this and I told them Well its in a National Park. After a while I just started to make up street names and number addresses to appease the bankers. They got an address and I got my account. Everybody was happy. After all what difference did it make what street address I was using because all the mail had to be picked up at the post office? I was well known at the post office and all my mail went to my P O Box. During the 80s of deregulation of utilities monopoly laws and the break up of AT&T. The US Supreme Court said utility customers no longer had to use the services of the utility company that owned the lines and infrastructure in your neighborhood. Meaning you now can buy your electricity from any electric utility company you want so long as that company wanted to sell it to you. Electric companies buy and sell electricity from each other everyday. If one has an excess of electricity they will sell it to another electric company. Remember Enron? Thus, you as a customer could now buy from whom ever was willing to sell it to you. This also works for phone service. You can get phone service from anyone you want so long as they are willing to provide it to you. If the infrastructure is there then the utility monopoly law says the competition has to be made available. Now at this point I suspect you are going to start calling up phone companies and try and get phone service to your house and Im going to tell you this will not work. Keep reading and the solution will come. When I lived in Wawona I experienced power outages all the time from heavy snow fall. In Wawona we went for days without power. It happened every year. When you called the electric company and gave them your address they didnt know what you were talking about because the address was not listed in their database. So if you wanted PG&E to look at your line you had to give them the number that was on the meter. Page 2 When the internet came to Yosemite it was dial up and the only game in town was AT&T or it just seemed that way. When people got online via AT&T and they searched the web they found that other companies were also providing internet dial up service to Yosemite. How can this be? The law says if the infrastructure is already there then the utility companies must provide the competition. People started to change dial up services because it was cheaper than AT&T. In the late 1990s and 2001 now comes the 911 service call laws and the US Patriot Act. The 911 service call laws says that every street and every address that has a phone or the potential of phone service must be listed in the 911 call centers database so that anyone who picks up a phone and dials 911 the system will know where the caller is located. So in order to comply with the law the streets in Yosemite got names. When the Patriot Act went in to effect in 2001 it became more difficult for me to acquire new credit, bank accounts and other types of financial and non financial services such as utilities. I have heard horror stories from others who tried to get mortgage loans but were refused because they lived in Yosemite and their address was not in the system. Not only were they turned down for credit or utility services but I too have experienced of being turned down for services for the same reason. In a moment I will tell you why we were turned down. If you build a house on a new street, you apply to the US Postal Service and tell them of a new residence and they determined the number of the address and either the city, county determine the name of the street. If the street already exist then the postal service only assigns a number. I made several request to Bill Carroll the former Post Master in Yosemite to have him enter my address into the database. I told him it was difficult for me to acquire new services and sometimes I was being turned down. I told him I needed my address in the database but he didnt care and said he didnt want to be inconvenienced. He said since 1991 he never once entered a new address into the database and was not going to start now. He refused several of my request and demands to put my address in the database. Now take a look at all those new Curry housing addresses that he did not enter in while he was Post Master. I also made several address request from Dean Granholm who is the Vice President, Area Operations Pacific Area as senior postal official in an area that encompasses California, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the trust territories. However Dean Granholm never responded to my request. By law the Post Master is responsible for address verification and determines if your address is legal. I guess Bill Carroll does not see Curry new housing as legal addresses. Under the US Patriot Act financial institutions are to verify the legitimacy of an address and to do that they use the postal database to verify an address to minimize or deter terrorist money laundering schemes. If your address is not listed they wont grant you the service. To make things easy and uniform other companies do the same thing including utility companies. Vendors, financial institutions and utility companies and other companies use the US Postal database to verify an address prior to accepting an application for a new account. Page 3 Companies buy the database from vendors who sell the US Postal database and those companies who buy the database update their current version on a schedule of their choice. AT&T can provide the DSL service, they just dont want to. They say the lines are at 120% capacity. While this may be true they were still providing the DSL service but decided to stop. I dont know anyone who was complaining that their services was intermittent or was frequently being dropped. And since the population growth for Yosemite, Wawona, El Portal, and Yosemite West is at a stand still I dont see an increase in data on the lines. General Motors is the manufacture of the cars and Pepsi is the manufacture of the drink but they dont sell to the to the individual like you and I. Pepsi sells their drinks to the Safeways, the Albertsons and the 7 Eleven's and they sell it to us. Pepsi doesnt want to have to deal with the individual sale to the individual they sell it bulk to stores. We the individual dont buy our cars from General Motors we buy them from the dealer. No matter who you buy your car from its the same car. General Motors doesnt want to have to deal with the individual so they sell in bulk to the dealer. AT&T is the dealer who doesnt want to sell you a car anymore because they think the highways are too crowded and someone could get hurt. So they are are hoping that people will die or stop driving so the highways will clear up before they start selling more cars. But we the individual cant wait to get a new car from AT&T and get on the highway again. So we the individual go to a little unknown car dealer across town and people start buying cars from them. Soon the highways are back to their old capacity. But since Yosemite is not having or will ever have a population boom it would seem 120% is the number it will never cross. ASI is the manufacture of the DSL service. They dont want to sell it to the individual because it would be too much of a hassle for them. So they sell it in bulk data to AT&T and AT&T sells it to you. ASI also sells DSL service to a lot of other stores and those stores have names, such as Earthlink, and AOL. At this point I dont think I have to tell you what you need to do if you want to expand your financial and utility options. Go to the current post master of Yosemite or El Portal and have them enter your address into the US Postal Service database. Then wait for those companies to update their vendor service to see if you can get the utility service you want but be prepared for some resistance from the post master even though by law they have to enter in your address into the database otherwise they are discriminating against you by allowing others to have an advantage over you who do have their address in the Postal database. Bill Carroll didnt want to be inconvenienced but his inconvenience is now our inconvenience. And when you do get the phone and DSL service you want from another company why would you ever go back to AT&T when the infrastructure was already here and they refused to provide you the service you wanted? Earthlink will provide the DSL service if they have an address to work with. Why? Because the infrastructure is here and the law says utilities who own the lines and the infrastructure must allow for competition to be made available. ======================================================= ======================================================= A few years ago before Bill left I spoke to John the current postmaster and he was vehemently against it. They don't want to deal with mail having street addresses, only PO Boxes. But yet in Mariposa you have to have a PO Box if you live IN TOWN. They get lots of mail with street addresses. And either they know the box number or stick it in General Delivery, after 14 days if no one checks their general delivery mail it gets sent back. Lazy I tell you. These Yosemite postmasters just don't want to deal with it. And yet they still deliver mail to me that contains a Wawona street address to my valley box. When I told Bill Carroll I wanted my address in the system he scoffed at it by saying that the people in Wawona don't seem to have this problem and they are land owners. Why are you and just you having this problem? What Bill and other people don't understand is that prior to the PATRIOT Act people told their creditors what their address was and believed them because they eventually did indeed receive their mail. Back in the 90's I established a Wawona address and now that address is listed in the 3 main Credit Bureau's database, so when I apply for credit it's listed. When I moved back to the Valley I used a Valley address at the train wreck and new housing and was denied credit, stock brokers accounts, bank accounts. So I just continued to use my old Wawona address to get what I want. However that doesn't work with utilities. They need a real address where you really are at. My address is listed in Google Street Maps because Google Maps, Yahoo, Garmin GPS all use county accessors records because if you have a 500 acre vacant lot with no house do you think the post office is going to put that address into the database? The county accessor has ALL the addresses because they collect the tax. When I call Verizon they say yes we do provide hard wire land line phone services just like AT&T and DSL. OK, what is your address? My address is 8072 Sierra Circle #11 95389. I'm sorry but that address does not exist. What do you mean it doesn't exist??!?! If you move out and that person had DSL and then a new person moves in all you need to know is the old phone number and AT&T repair service will submit a repair ticket to put the DSL back into service provided is has been less than 30 days since the move out. Even if your address is in the postal data base Verizon will still not be able to give you DSL because AT&T has told their system that it is not available and Verizon is just reading off of AT&T's system. So therefore Have you filed a complaint with the California Utilities Commissioner? I sent a letter to Tom McClintock. You would think he would be interested because you would want to keep track and control the voters. Ever go down to Jiffy Lube and they ask what your zip code is? So you live in Tuolomne Meadows? No I don't live in Tuolomne Meadows!!!! Well that's what it says here. Or if you tell Verizon your zip code and name of town and if you or the system doesn't spell your town correctly they the Verizon customer service won't see it. Sometimes it's Yosemite National Park Yosemite Yosemite Nat'l PK If you give them a spelling that is different from the database, you are going nowhere. Bill would get mad that I got mail from National Geographic that had Tuolomne Meadows and told me over and over again that I was to contact all correspondence to stop sending mail to the wrong city. But Bill, just put my address into the system. ======================================================== ========================================================