Accounting graduate student Deb Morabito said it's about time the university provided Ethernet service to all its residents, not just those who live in the dorms.

"Right now, if it's between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. it takes about 40 minutes to get online," she said. She added such a slow connection has been inconvenient during her three years of residency in Spartan Village.

MSU's Board of Trustees approved a contract to extend Ethernet service to the apartments Friday.

Installation of Ethernet services to MSU's residence halls took six years, said Chuck Gagliano, assistant vice president of housing and food services. The same company that wired the dorms will handle the apartment projects.

"As we did each year, we applied things learned from previous years to make better installations and better processes," he said.

The current phase of installations, which is the last, has taken about two and a half years of planning, proposals and getting contracts worded correctly he added.

According to Fred Poston, vice president for finance and operations, the campus fiber optic cable system will extend to serve Spartan Village, as well as faculty and Cherry Lane apartments.

"This will lay the primary line, residents still have to connect to it," he said of the project.

Director of University Housing Angela Brown said the process has been longer than they had hoped, but they are glad to be moving forward with it.

She said the university is planning ahead in order to avoid the abuse of bandwidth by residents in downloading music and movies.

"We'll be working with David Gift to look at ways of monitoring and educating groups of students on how to access the Ethernet properly," she said.