Seeing straight comes after waking up. Usually. It was 03 hundred Sunday when I called it a day.Sleep 9 a.m.Z,my three-year old,was being quiet. She wanted to see if I really was asleep.Mom showed a finger across lips.Shush.Z quietly lifted the sheet to see if my yes were open. There was a hand in front of Dad 's yes.She very carefully lifted a finger. Then thought to lift an yelid. It reminded me of our customers.  They want a different kind of telephone service than what we are used to.And they want it now!And DSL is not broadband.The yes hiding behind fingers could be any of us.But like that three-year-old,our doing something can be measured in minutes. Are regulators in this picture? Mom? Dad? The blankets? Desire? Wants? $23,000 PER CUSTOMER A year ago May,SBC 's Nevada Bell asked if I 'd buy some rural areas out from Austin.Seems the old Canadian multiplex rural subscriber radio to 65 ranchers carried a gawd-awful maintenance cost.Crappy service.Bell wanted out.Chuck offered them a buck,providing they get out of the way.No joy. Bell 's regulatory guys told me it was not T xas that nixed the deal.Rather it was PUC regulatory.Their solution: Bell inv sts $800 thou,and without a public hearing,Staff would OK using a half mil in state-controlled dough totaling $23K/sub to upgrade phones to 63 remote dwellings for dependable fiber main line voice grade telephone.SBC Nevada Bell earns $12 per month/sub. LANDER COUNTY, NEVADA Was not asked for an opinion on this deal.They have filed petitions asking alternate solutions for less dough be considered.County-wide EAS is mentioned.Tiny fingers are prying at the yelids of SBC 's N vada Bell and the PSC.It 's going to be interesting to see who wak s up and when. WIND GENERATORS Depending on size and location,modern wind farms are generating electricity for four to six cents per Kwh.With advances in generators,costs should drop to 3-cents in a f w years.GE has standardized production units starting around $800,000 for a 750kw Turbine.The housing on top of the pole is about the size of a Greyhound Bus!DOE has some neat maps showing where high potential steady wind is anticipated at www.eren.doe.gov/wind. BLM folk say they won't block windpower construction on gov rnment lands.It helps if you are an RUS borrower.Assume the usual arrowhead hunt would be needed for associated roads,and ROW to get the lectricity from the turbine to somewhere else. TAQUA TIMING Fifteen years ago the tandem behind my Windov r Operator office started life as a two cabinet 600-port Harris.Eight years ago,a 2000-port Harris replaced it.Normal switch life is 8 years.This time Taqua sent me a 40,000-port replacement.Same size as the 540-line box.Wow!I call it Tiny Tim.This thing is maybe three feet square!It tak s multiple T-1/E-1 and DS-3.It has a packet interface card,allowing VoIP. NETWORKING Frontier and Qwest each hav one or more tandems between me and the IXC network.By and large,we 're in good shape with the xception of being choked by limited capacity from AT&T and Nevada 's Frontier.I suffer from the Stone Age mentality of Frontier,which refuses to provide OC-3 the last mile.  “Art,you gotta break it down to T-1 's so we can run it on copper.” I've offered glass and will giv them the OC-3/12 interface.“No Art we don 'wanna.” They've lost 10%of their customers to cell and they are going to lose my transit access cause I 'm also going to bypass. © Beehive Telephone Co.