The roaring ring from the once-familiar, university-issued manila phones won’t be echoing down dorm halls this fall.
Instead, students will have to provide their own telecommunication device.
Increased cell-phone use among students has led to a decrease in the use of university-provided long-distance services. Therefore, MSU is receiving less commission from its long distance company, AT&T, said Tom Koch, telecommunications coordinator at University Housing.
The drop isn’t substantial enough for University Housing to reduce calling services for students, he said.
But MSU will no longer provide phones for dorm rooms, although they will still be available upon student request. Koch said 60 to 80 percent of students bring their own phone from home.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find a good way to incorporate cell phones into dorm communication packages,” he said.
MSU’s dorm phone service costs 7 cents per minute for long-distance calls, and students are billed individually through personal access numbers.
In addition to long-distance service, dorm communication packages also include cable television, Ethernet, caller ID and local phone services.
In the dorms, 35 percent of students use their long-distance accounts, Koch said. That makes MSU one of AT&T’s biggest customers, even with the decrease in use.
Cell-phone use among students is on the rise despite Koch’s assessment that the university long-distance program saves students money. AT&T spokesman Ritch Blasi said 130 million people nationwide own cell phones, and young adults account for a good portion of them.
“Particularly over the last couple years, the youth market has been growing rapidly,” he said.
With students constantly relocating, cell phones are probably the best way to maintain a consistent phone number and provide parents, who often still support students financially, with a way to budget air time, Blasi said.
“The more reliance people have on (cell phones), the more they’re going to get away from household phones,” he said.
Interior design junior Andrea Bray used the university system as a freshman, but she has since gotten a cell phone doesn’t plan to go back the long-distance service.
“It’s just easier with my cell phone,” she said. “I can carry it around with me.”
