Rural customers in Montana blame phone companies for big increase in dropped calls

Last February, Chris Valentine’s family in Great Britain had to call her hillside home near Birney almost a dozen times before they could reach her.

"This is a real serious problem for rural areas. We depend on land lines. The nearest cell phone tower is 25 miles away in Ashland," said Valentine, who retired to Birney to write poetry after working as a drug and alcohol counselor on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.

Jim Schlosser doesn’t know how much business his family has lost due to dropped long-distance calls. Out-of-staters trying to buy some Angus cattle or truckloads of bentonite from their company, Wyoming Sunmade, tend to call once or twice and then give up, he said.

"There were about 30 days last winter when we really didn’t have a phone. Then for a couple of months, we got about half of the calls, I figure," said Schlosser, whose family’s ranch sprawls from Wyoming into Montana.

By JAN FALSTAD [email protected]

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