California RV Park for the New Millennium
April 29, 1999
A new RV park in Bakersfield, CA. advertises that it was “built for the new millennium.” So what qualifies a RV park for such a claim? What is so important about a park being developed for the millennium? Is Bob Stanton (the owner) suggesting that his park will be a haven where escapees from Y2K problems can be safe? I don’t think so. Bob means that his spaces are 23' wide for accommodating large, modern RVs with slide-outs. Also, his office computer and telephone service are Y2K compliant and he provides water, 50 amps, TV cable, and sewage hookups. But after having spent a week in this park, my notion of what qualifies this park for the “millennium” designation is due primarily to the fact that they have instant telephone hookups at each site for their overnight customers -- giving customers instant access to the Internet. As a matter of fact, Bob provides two phone jacks at each site. One – for the reasonable price of $5 per week – is available for instant (overnight) use and the second can be connected by the local phone company for long-term use.
So why is it so important to have instant phone hookups in preparation for the new millennium? I think that providing instant access to the Internet is crucial. When we first began living the RV lifestyle more than ten years ago, surrendering our regular home telephone was a sacrifice we were willing to make in order to enjoy the freedom to move around the country whenever and wherever we chose. We could use pay phones, cell phones and “snail-mail” to keep in touch with friends and relatives. Now, we are not so easily satisfied. With the advent of the Internet, email became the preferred means of easy communication for us. We could write one note, letter or story and instantly send it to a list of friends and relatives. Many RVers conduct business “on the road” and find that access to the Internet is vital to their success.
Modem-friendly RV parks have been touted as a reasonable solution to this problem. So now when you read about the features of a RV park in campground directories, they may describe a park as “modem friendly” or something similar. However, providing a phone jack somewhere in the park does not mean that you will be welcome to tie it up for hours while searching the Internet. It usually means that if that line is not busy with park business, you may use it for a few minutes to quickly send and receive your email. This service was a major step in the evolution of park technology, but I doubt that it will be sufficient for the needs of the next millennium.
We were shocked in 1996, when we first checked into the Bakersfield Palms RV Park in Bakersfield, CA and found out that they not only had instant phone hookups, but would also provide a phone. There, in the comfort of our own motorhome, we could chat with the kids, order supplies and mail by phone, make reservations at the next RV Park, and check our email. It was great! At that point I began to search for similar parks and, with the assistance of many cooperators, now have a list* consisting of 122 such parks in the USA and Canada. Yes, I will continue to use “modem-friendly” RV parks, but only when an “Internet-friendly” RV park is not available. I prefer not to “bug” the park manager to use the jack in his office to obtain email. I do not wish to feel guilty when I tie up his phone an extra five minutes to take a quick Internet peek at my investments or something.
The clientele of RV parks is constantly evolving. All of us old codgers who did not grow up with a computer mouse in our cookie-crumb-covered hands are slowly being replaced by a more computer-literate generation. This new generation will likely insist on access to the Internet (in whatever form it eventually evolves) wherever they stop for the night. Certainly, instant phone hookups at each RV site are not the only way to access the Internet. Cell, pay and satellite phones can provide access by the RVing public to the Internet. But my experiences with cell and pay phone linkages has been far from satisfactory. I much prefer a regular phone line because they tend to be more dependable and far less expensive. Satellite phones are prohibitively expensive for most of us. Satellite DSS dish downloads are an option, but still require a regular phone line for uploads. Consequently, some parks are betting that regular phone lines will still provide the predominant RV linkages to the Internet into the near future. Do they worry that investing $24,000 or so into a phone system may be a bad investment because it may be obsolete in the near future? Of course! But even the Direct PC (like Direct TV) satellite technology requires a regular phone line for uploading. Won’t an abundance of RV parks with overnight phone hookups increase the probability of that some RVers will choose the Direct PC route? How long will we be able to resist the 400 Kbps download rate?
It may be impossible for anyone to accurately predict what the needs of the RVers will be in the next century and what new technology will be available to them. Who knows what new invention will change the way we live. But some park managers are trying to build parks to the specifications that they anticipate RVers will require. For example, Ray Brockie (ggbee4344@aol.com) is in the planning stages of building a new RV Park that he calls Project Two Thousand (P2K), where each RV site will have a T1 (data only) phone. According to Ray, “the working society is fast becoming mobile. Employers don't have to provide office space, insurance etc. and employees don't have to spend money on clothes, lunches or gas and can often work at their own convenience as far as time of day is concerned. We want to be able to provide a pleasant, appealing, yet workable environment for those people as well.” Ray is also concerned with the problem of “built-in obsolescence.” He is considering T1 lines rather than voice lines partly because T1's are less expensive. He expects each T1 line to serve 28 sites. Cost of this line to the customer would be included in site rental for what he calls “plug-n-play” service.
However, Mel Chaney (www.concentric.net/~Lmchaney) recently commented on Ray’s option.
“The problem with Ray's solution of installing a T1 line ... is that it is an Ethernet one, not a telephone line. That would mean each PC on a campsite would need to be assigned a TCP/IP address and have an Ethernet NIC board installed. Those aren't cheap for laptops and are complex installations normally performed by a professional.
“The only other solution for him is to install modems on the central side of each line from the campsites and put a dedicated modem on each. The modems would be interfaced to a costly concentrator, via parallel port which in turn connects via Ethernet to the router and the T1 line. Not even the costliest of hotels are doing this -- they are staying with telephone lines connected to their internal telephone switch.
“ I wish him luck, but think he's bitten off more than any RVer will ever need or want to pay for.
Ray’s choices forced me to ponder the importance of voice phone lines as compared to data lines. If forced to choose between one and the other, which would I choose? Historically, we find voice phone lines familiar and easy, so tend to prefer them. But they suffer from one serious drawback. Some consider that hanging-up-first during a phone conversation is a form of rudeness. Consequently, conversations may last for extended periods of time because no one wishes to be the first to hang up. Even during extended periods when everybody runs out of subject matter, and the conversation begins to drag, there is a reluctance to hang up. When we are forced to write out our ideas and information, we tend to be much more conservative with verbiage. Consequently, email can be a much more efficient form of communication. Given the choice, I might prefer a data line to a voice line (but please don’t tell my wife and kids).
Having an overnight, instant, phone hookup at a modern RV park may not be the most important feature needed to prepare for the new millennium, but right now it gets my vote.
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