Dorm-phone use drops as students rely on cells U.Va. cites wireless technology in telecommunications-income slump.
BY KATE ANDREWS
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Even on 20-degree days, University of Virginia students pause outside, checking their cell phones for messages and catching up with friends.
As the school — and the rest of America — becomes increasingly "wired," the use of traditional landlines is decreasing, according to U.Va.’s chief housing officer, Mark Doherty.
And that poses a difficulty for the university, which owns the phone service offered in its dorm rooms and gains money from each long-distance call made on those lines.
Income from long-distance calls covers U.Va.’s contract payment to MCI, but the money no longer goes far enough to pay for technology updates in the dorms, as it did a decade ago.
"The volume of student long-distance calling has been dropping for many years," said James A. Jokl, director of U.Va.’s communications and systems. "I suspect many reasons, including e-mail and calling cards in the past and additionally cell phones more recently."
In the 1997-98 academic year, students spent more than 5 million minutes making long-distance calls. That rate fell to 600,000 minutes last year, bringing in only $30,000.
Dan Bowman, a junior who lives off campus, has used his cell phone as his primary means of phone communication since he came to U.Va. "I never used my dorm phone," he said. "Very rarely do people use dorm phones, especially upperclassmen." Neither Bowman nor his roommates have a landline in their home, because all have cell phones.
Crystal Campbell, a second-year student who lives in a dorm, juggles two phones as a way to save money. Often, she will give her cell number to a friend, and when the friend calls, Campbell will ask her to dial her room phone number. "If I’m low on minutes," she said, "I use my dorm phone."
In 1992, U.Va. began adding to its existing phone service as a larger project installing data, voice mail and video services in residence halls. All dorms also have high-speed Internet connections now.
In the early 1990s, U.Va.’s long-distance rates were competitive, Jokl said, and some of the income from student calls paid for the rewiring of dorms for the data network and phone service.
A contract with MCI through the Virginia Information Technologies Agency costs the university about 3 cents a minute for interstate calls and 3.4 cents a minute for in-state calls.
U.Va. charges 5 cents a minute for any long-distance call, a rate that will decrease to 4 cents in February.
But it’s difficult to beat free long distance on a cell phone or low rates from phone cards, Doherty acknowledged. The university’s income from dorm phone calls now just covers the cost of providing phone service.
Many students don’t even bother signing up for a long-distance policy on their dorm phones.
But housing and technology officials have done some brainstorming. One idea is for the university to offer students cell phones, although that may be unrealistic because many students come to school already equipped with them.
Officials also are working with phone service providers to improve cell reception inside dorm rooms — a significant problem inside the steel-and-concrete McCormick Road residence halls. The university may install antennas in the buildings.
"We don’t have plans for significant changes now," Jokl said, "but we, like most other schools, always ponder what we’ll be able to do in the future."
Kate Andrews is a staff writer at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.
