Canadian valley fights to stay "cellphone free," yet plans VoIP-friendly MuniFi

The luddites have evidently busted out of the early-1800s and resettled in the Slocan Valley up in rural British Columbia: an "economic development group" of residents in this opposite-of-silicon valley has asked a company not to erect a cellphone tower that would provide access to the valley, claiming that the move will in some way attract people by detracting cellphone owners and their tendencies to be loud and anti-social. If their demand is successful, they hope to go on and promote the valley's "cellphone free status": personally, we'd be cowering in shame. The ultimate irony is that the same authority is putting up a WiFi network to give residents access to the internet, and -- how do we put this -- VoIP. Hey, they can always claim health concerns when and if that "issue arises."

[David @ Jul 21st 2007 2:57PM]

Damn, and I was really hoping to be able to fight Avril Lavigne with my cellphone this time too ;)

[kyle allen @ Jul 21st 2007 2:57PM]

Canadians putting up free wifi eh? good for them eh?

[sbrown @ Jul 21st 2007 3:44PM]

Your stereotypical imitation of a Canadian was uncanny.

[Chuckles McGee @ Jul 21st 2007 3:27PM]

Yeah, those darn antisocial people, constantly trying to communicate with people on cell phones!

[Mike @ Jul 21st 2007 4:03PM]

I actually have to agree with the antisocial declaration.

In my younger days I had a job which involved interacting with the public on a regular basis. At the time it surprised me how many people would refuse to get off their cell phone or even just put it down for the 5 minutes it would take to go through their transaction.

Now that I'm older and more cynical I'm not at all surprised when I am at a restaurant and see one in a group of two or three sitting on their phone for extended periods of time. I don't get surprised when I see flashes of, or worse, hear rings of cell phones in movies or museums.

Compared to someone actually interacting with flesh and blood humans as they go through their day to day activities I would say that hiding with a cell phone at your ear is an anti-social behavior.

I would equate it to the differences between "city life" and "small town" life. Having lived in both I wouldn't say people who live in cities are anti-social, but the social atmosphere between strangers interacting in public certainly appears that way. Mobiles only increase that appearance.

[hnkelley @ Jul 21st 2007 5:19PM]

MIKE:
"In my younger days I had a job which involved interacting with the public on a regular basis. At the time it surprised me how many people would refuse to get off their cell phone or even just put it down for the 5 minutes it would take to go through their transaction."

In MY younger days, PAGERS (not even cell phones) were still just for drug dealers! You make an excellent point. I just had to laugh at a young guy's in-my-younger-days comment. And yes, I remember 8-tracks.

[Victor @ Jul 21st 2007 4:27PM]

Great for them. Cellphones are an annoyance.

[Nissa @ Jul 21st 2007 8:36PM]

My grandparents live in the area, so I've spent a fair bit of time there.

People in the area aren't luddites, but they do live in the area for a certain green/outdoorsy/hippie lifestyle. These are small towns - a few hundred people each. There are more galleries, bookstores, and cafes between New Denver and Silverton than there are in my small town of several thousand. For the most part, people aren't living there for the convenience - they're living their for the lifestyle.

I don't know if enforcing a cellphone-free environment is reasonable, but it's a nice place. The people aren't living in the past, hence the internet upgrade (my grandparents are very excited!), but are cellphones hugely necessary when you live within a mile of most of the people or places you'd need to visit regularly?

[Nate @ Jul 22nd 2007 10:54AM]

Is the author trying to be dense, or does he really not understand the glaring difference between cell phones and WiFi when it comes to annoying technologies? I'm glad there are places like this.

[Leah Main @ Jul 23rd 2007 11:38PM]

Okay, let me take this one thing at a time, just to set the record straight: Bill Roberts is an appointed member of the Slocan Valley Economic Development Commission, a Commission created through the Regional District of Central Kootenay (the BC equivalent, roughly, of "counties"). The Commission works to increase the possibilities of economic growth in a valley encompassing three towns and the surrounding rural area in southeastern BC. I am the Recording Sect. of the Commission, which voted at its last meeting "That should cell phone transmission service not be available in New Denver, this will be used by EDC as a marketing tool …", and has not formally participated as an entity in the very public discussion about cell phone technology. The residents opposing the installation of cell phone transmission in the town of New Denver acted on a grassroots basis, not as an arm of any formal commission, government or group. And, yes, the Economic Development Commission has been working for several years toward construction of a wireless highspeed internet network intended to serve a majority of residents in the rural portion of the catchment area. Highspeed internet service was identified several years ago at a series of public meetings as a service people WANT, and one that is perceived as being an economic driver for rural communities.

[Chuck Anziulewicz @ Jul 28th 2007 9:02AM]

Reading this item reminds me something I read on Andrew Sullivan's website one:

"Eating dinner at a bar the other night, I sat next to a sales rep for a company that produces portable home dialysis units. He was drinking pretty hard, celebrating a deal that he'd just closed and telling me how soaring diabetes rates were going to create ever greater demand for his revolutionary product. I thought he was going to propose a toast to kidney failure.

"But what bothered me most about our conversation was the streamlined plastic phone device implanted in his right ear and connected via Bluetooth to the Palm Treo lying on the bar in front of him. Every minute or two the earjack would light up, suddenly pulsing white and blue, and I'd forget whatever I was saying to him or whatever he was saying to me. Finally, I asked him what the light was. "That just means the thing's turned on," he said. As he said this, he was looking at his Treo screen, which he did about every thirty or forty seconds. His face changed -- had some important message arrived? Still speaking to me, but without much focus now, he tapped out a line or two of text with his amazingly prehensile thumbs. He'd left the scene, I sensed; he was somewhere else. At headquarters, perhaps. And I'd been placed on hold.

"I didn't like it. I never like it. And it happens constantly. I'll be in the middle of what I take to be a sincere human interaction with somebody and they'll start cutting in and out -- checking the Blackberry, texting on the cell phone, stylus-ing the electronic calendar. No apologies, either. No 'excuse mes.' As though a mixture of physical proximity and electronic separation is the accepted new mode of social togetherness. I swear I've seen couples out on dates who speak to each other only when the menu comes, to negotiate their appetizers, and then drift off into conversations with others until the check arrives.

"And yet they call it "communications technology."

"When the dialysis salesman returned to earth, I committed a faux pas by asking him what he'd just been writing about. I thought I was entitled to ask this question because he'd been conducting his business in front of me. I found out otherwise. He glared at me. What kind of spying busybody was I? The warmth between us never returned and we ate our salads in different universes, staring at the TV behind the bar. The light in his earjack pulsed. I paid my tab. When I left, I mumbled a goodbye, but the salesman didn't acknowledge it. He was tapping on his keys."