The increasing use of cell phones has diminished the power of landline phones greatly. This change has also affected Plymouth State University. Starting next year, landline phones will be pulled from the residence halls.
“The cost to provide land-line service to the residence halls will substantially increase next year due to [raised] costs to maintain the university phone system,” Amy Berg, Director of Information Technology Operations at Plymouth State, said.Plymouth pays a premium price to their service providers for all their networking capabilities, also known as ResNet, which includes cable, telephone and internet. In recent years, though, students have been using their cell phones instead of the landline phones.
“If students aren’t using them, [landline phones] why are we paying for them?” Frank Cocchiarella, Director of Residential Life for PSU said.
Consequently, the included service is being revoked to save money in other places. Cocchiarella said the price of fuel has increased three-fold. Cutting costs where they’re not needed will help greatly with sustaining a reasonable room price.Residential Life does not receive money from tuition. The budget is limited to the prices of the rooms themselves. This means that although cutting out the landline phone service won’t decrease room prices, they won’t increase as expected.
Starting next fall semester, any student who desires landline phone services in his or her res hall room or student apartment can contact the campus telecommunications services to wire their room separately. Handling landline phone services this way will save cell phone users from paying for a service of which they take no advantage.The university will still keep several emergency landline phones around campus for 911 emergencies. “Unlike a cellular phone, the university’s emergency phones provide enhanced 911 services which [include] the exact location of the caller to the police dispatcher. This is very important especially when the caller is unable to speak or does not know their exact location,” said Berg. These phones will be available in all buildings across campus.Residential Life will also be offering an alternative to landline phones, so that students can be reached even without hard wired phones. This alternative solves the problem of campus administration’s communication with students especially in emergencies or for important notices. The new service is called unified communications.
Each student, whether he or she resides on or off campus, will receive a unified communications virtual phone number.
According to Berg, “Each student will receive a virtual phone number that will be assigned to him/her for their entire career at PSU. This virtual phone number will not have a physical telephone attached to it. Instead, it will ring directly into the student’s unified communications mailbox. Unified communications is a voice mailbox that integrates with email and the web. Faculty/staff may contact a student by calling his/her virtual phone number and then leave a voice message in his/her unified communications mailbox.
Immediately, the unified communications system will email the student that he/she has a voice message. The next time the student checks email, he/she will be able to click on a URL and login to their unified communication mailbox. Then, he/she can listen to the message via their computer.”
Unified communications will begin in the fall of 2008, but it will only initially work when dialed from university phone systems. Beginning with the spring 2009 semester, the voicemail will be capable of being accessed from any phone on or off campus.
This program will not cost the students. Even though Berg said that students won’t be able to forward their virtual phone number to their cell phone, unified communications allows Plymouth State administration to reach any student without knowing their cell phone number.
The problem of landline phones is one spreading rapidly through New Hampshire. Landlines have slowly become outdated technology since the advent of cell phones. Plymouth State is the first school in the New Hampshire University System to make this change, but Keene and the University of New Hampshire will be following.
“How soon do you do it; how long do you wait? It’s time we get this done,” Cocchierella said.