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Posted by John Mayson on November 15, 2007, 12:01 am
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As I've had time I've been reading back issues of this newsgroup. It
still amazes me how far we've come in such a short time span.
I came across a posting from 1993 (sorry, I can't find it on Google
Groups) about a college without phones in the dorm rooms and how the
local telco was balking about the free phones (to call the campus
exchange only) competing with the pay phones.
I went to college in the late 1980's. Phones in the students' dorm
rooms was still a recent event. There was a blank spot on the walls
where the free and pay phones used to be located. I also remember the
campus having to do away with the free phones in other buildings that
called the two campus exchanges only because they were competing with
the then Southern Bell payphones. I figured out that the call boxes
across campus could be used to dial off-campus. It was like using a
speaker phone, but I once even used my AT&T calling card to place a
long distance call on one just to show it could be done.
I got to be thinking. Today almost all college students have cell
phones. I visited a local college campus recently and was amazed to
see no one was speaking to another human being. They were yacking
into cell phones. Do colleges still need to have land lines in the
dorm rooms? Sure, there's going to be that odd student here and there
without a cell phone.
Just thinking today... :-)
John
--
Austin, Texas, USA
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Posted by Brian Bebeau on November 15, 2007, 10:26 pm
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John Mayson wrote:
> I got to be thinking. Today almost all college students have cell
> phones. I visited a local college campus recently and was amazed to
> see no one was speaking to another human being. They were yacking
> into cell phones. Do colleges still need to have land lines in the
> dorm rooms? Sure, there's going to be that odd student here and there
> without a cell phone.
This link, http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.asp?id=3592, is to a news release
from the University of Cincinnati about their plan to remove almost all
landlines from dorms and offices.
http://www.uc.edu/ucit/ucitnow/Volume_34/fall_07/reshalls.html gives an
update on it, and states that students can get free cell phones if they
want.
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Posted by Steven Stone on November 16, 2007, 12:56 pm
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|I got to be thinking. Today almost all college students have cell
|phones. I visited a local college campus recently and was amazed to
|see no one was speaking to another human being. They were yacking
|into cell phones. Do colleges still need to have land lines in the
|dorm rooms?
My daughter has a landline phone in her dorm in a NJ state college.
Each student has their own personal dorm phone and number.
It rarely gets used. Most comms are text messages on the laptop or cell
phone now a days. Far cry from the hall pay phone of yesteryear.
Steve
73 de N2UBP
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Posted by on November 16, 2007, 1:01 pm
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> I got to be thinking. Today almost all college students have cell
> phones. I visited a local college campus recently and was amazed to
> see no one was speaking to another human being. They were yacking
> into cell phones. Do colleges still need to have land lines in the
> dorm rooms? Sure, there's going to be that odd student here and there
> without a cell phone.
In the 1970s college dorm telephones usually were payphone booths in
the hallway for both inward and outward calling. There may also have
been a house phone connected to the college PBX.
For college kids of that era, plenty still used the traditional mail
to communicate with parents, old friends, lovers, etc since long
distance charges, while dropping, were still expensive. When Bell
came out with big discounts for direct dialed calls after 11 pm,
college kids used it since they were often up at odd hours (of course
some roommates were not and didn't appreciated a midnight phone call.)
Newer dorms came with the provision of land lines. Students had to
order and pay for the service themselves if they wanted it. Roommates
had to work out among each other how to pay the toll charges,
sometimes there wasn't always an agreement about who made what call.
A few students who lived in dorms without phones could still order a
phone installed, but would have to pay the installation costs as well
and of course the monthly bill.
My guess is today most dorm rooms have the option for a land line
phone and some do, some don't, depending on the wishes of the
students. There are some advantages to land line service.
I asked a parent of a college student and he said they could get
landline service but don't have it; their cell phone reception is poor
in the room.
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Posted by danny burstein on November 16, 2007, 11:31 pm
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>For college kids of that era, plenty still used the traditional mail
>to communicate with parents, old friends, lovers, etc since long
>distance charges, while dropping, were still expensive. When Bell
>came out with big discounts for direct dialed calls after 11 pm,
>college kids used it since they were often up at odd hours (of course
>some roommates were not and didn't appreciated a midnight phone call.)
I lived in the neighborhood next to West Harlem Community
College (name changed to protect the innocent) in upper
Manhattan in the 1970s.
Pretty much anytime I tried making a long distance
call from my home between 23:00 and midnight I'd
get an "all circuits busy" intercept.
Naturally every time the repair folk checked things
out they were either doing it during the daytime
or from another location.. so things were fine.
I finally got ahold of someone who put two and two
together and realized that the long distance trunks
between the local central office (which served
my exchange and the college's) and the Long Lines
Center were getting maxed out when all the kids
called out at 11 pm...
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
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