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No More Landlines
Posted on Oct 20, 2008 by The Woodlands of Gainesville
The University of Florida and other student housing communities have removed landland telephones from students’ bedrooms. The Woodlands of Gainesville does not include landlines because most residents use cell phones and there is no demand for landlines, which is what UF has come to realize. See below for the article.
Universities pull the plug on land lines in dorms
By KIMBERLY MILLER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Part of Norbert Dunkel’s job at the University of Florida is to watch what new techie gadgets and must-have computers students bring each fall.
But he’s not the IT guy for the Gainesville campus.
Dunkel, 51, oversees the dorms – residence halls, if you prefer.
When computers first showed up – with their cumbersome towers – Dunkel had to order new student desks to accommodate the beasts.
When those were replaced with sleek laptops, different room accoutrements again were necessary.
When high-speed Internet was introduced, dorms that predate air conditioning had to be rewired.
And last year, the University of Florida became one of the first public schools in the state to yank old-fashioned land-line telephones from most residence hall rooms.
The move saves the school about $600,000 per year.
Dunkel said he expected some complaints about the loss, especially from parents, but none came.
“We were spending an inordinate amount of money for nothing,” said Dunkel, who conducted a survey that showed 98 percent of UF students have cellphones.
Florida State University also has deactivated most land lines in student housing.
Florida Atlantic University told students this year that if they wanted a land line, they had to sign up for it with an outside contractor and pay a $60-per-semester fee.
Next year, the recommendation at FAU likely will be to do away with the land lines.
Of 2,700 students who moved into FAU residence halls this fall, just 22 students requested land-line phone service, which previously came with the cost of a room.
“You used to walk into our rooms and we provided a (land-line) phone. Then we stopped providing those and students would bring their own. Then students stopped bringing phones at all,” said Jill Eckardt, FAU housing director, about land-line telephones.
It should be no surprise that universities are shutting down their residence hall land lines.
A 2008 study by The Nielsen Co. reported that 20.2 million households in the United States, or 17 percent of all homes, are using wireless phones with no land-line service.
And, again not surprisingly, the people going exclusively wireless are more often 18 to 34.
“I’m fine with a cell,” said FAU freshman Brittany Simonelli, who lives in Heritage Park Towers and had a land line at her previous residence.
“Sometimes the signal fades, which gets kind of irritating, but I make do,” Simonelli said.
FAU saved about $100,000 this year by losing the land lines. That savings offset an increase in room costs.
Although the elimination of phone lines is no shocker, Dunkel finds it interesting, especially as it relates to dormitories.
“We’re going through a lot of evolution in the residence halls,” Dunkel said.
Even if some of it seems backward.
UF’s first dorms, built in 1905 and 1906, had no phone wiring.
Later, a single phone was installed on each floor, and students would run knocking on doors when someone had a call. Later, a phone was installed in every room.
And finally, at FAU, phones were installed “per bed” so that each student had a voice jack and a data jack.
Now, the land lines are no longer needed, and most laptop computers can connect wirelessly to the Internet, making the plug-in connection obsolete.
Dunkel said he did see a small increase in the use of residence hall land lines in 2001 after UF figured out how to block students from illegally sharing music on the regular Internet connection.
“They started using the old land line for dial-up, but that proved too slow for most of them,” he said.
The University of Central Florida is one of the few large public schools keeping residence hall land lines.
UCF spokesman Grant Heston said there were concerns about whether 911 operators can locate calls made from out-of-state cellphones, and about cellphones not working after a hurricane.
That’s why most schools have left land-line phones in hallways and resident assistant rooms, and for students who are disabled.
“When I was in college there was a hall phone, and that’s basically where we are now,” said Elise Angiolillo, director of FAU’s telecommunications. “It’s just a new generation with new technology.”
Tagged: university of florida, student housing, landlines, telephones, gainesville, computers
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